YASH.

“Where trees don’t grow” Wall for Artscape 2016 in Gothenburg, Sweden.

“Where trees don’t grow” Wall for Artscape 2016 in Gothenburg, Sweden.

 

From Spring Remake 2016 in Snösätra, Stockholm.

From Spring Remake 2016 in Snösätra, Stockholm.

 

Stockholm 2015.

Stockholm 2015.

 

Wall from “Spring remake 2015” in Rågsved, outside Stockholm, Sweden.

Wall from “Spring remake 2015” in Rågsved, outside Stockholm, Sweden.

Linus Lundin – who works under the pseudonym Yash – has done most of his work in the Swedish capital, where he has lived for the last five years after moving from the small town of Gnesta.

His colourful murals are marked by their emotive faces and depictions of animals interacting with humans. Each one takes around five days to complete – not including the extensive planning and sketching that is required beforehand.

“It’s important to get the expressions right in my paintings,” he explained.

“I get my inspiration from my own feelings and the feelings of those around me. I ponder about and depict security, the search for something, and anxiety quite a lot. I also think a lot about the relationship between humans and animals.”

Incredibly, Lundin has no formal education in art beyond high school level. Instead, he developed his style by putting in hours and hours of hard practice.

“I just went out and painted, but there’s a lot of time and work behind everything,” he noted.

“I’ve painted murals for over ten years now, but they didn’t always look like they do now. Finding my aesthetic has been a long process. I was lucky enough to have a wall in the small town I grew up in where I could develop my work legally.”

Full story here. You can see Yash’s artwork here.

Imagine.

London police brawl with men during traffic stop (YouTube).

London police brawl with men during traffic stop (YouTube).

A video showing British police officers brawling with a group of unruly men shows how violent attacks can be stopped without gunfire or even serious injury.

The video shows officers arguing with a group of increasingly aggressive men during a traffic stop in London, reported the Independent.

The men surround the officers as they try to remove two friends from police custody, and then a fight breaks out.

One officer is pulled to the ground during the fracas, and police use chemical irritant spray to subdue the men until backup arrives.

Online commenters at Reddit noticed how the officers were able to take the assailants into custody without shooting or seriously harming anyone.

“Imagine how differently this would have been if this happened in America,” said one Reddit user.

Another commenter pointed out that police even warned the men they would use chemical irritant despite the lengthy scuffle.

“Top of Form British police officers making American police officers look unprofessional, as usual – after 5 minutes of scuffle, the police STILL warns the guy ‘One more step and I will spray you.’ Nobody got seriously hurt that day,” the Reddit user said.

Two of the police constables were treated for minor injuries, and four of the men were arrested on a variety of charges, including assault on police.

[Read more…]

32.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Whitehouse.gov.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Whitehouse.gov.

When Franklin Delano Roosevelt took office in 1933, as many as 2 million sheep grazed on the Navajo Nation.

That was in addition to hundreds of thousands of goats, cattle and horses that foraged on the 27,000-square-mile reservation spanning parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. The Navajo population itself had quintupled since 1870 and, at the onset of the Great Depression in 1929, about 39,000 Navajos lived on the sprawling reservation, embracing a life of pastoralism and moving livestock from winter homes to summer pastures.

But the Navajo, who were almost entirely dependent on income from sheep and wool, were hit hard by the worst economic disaster in American history. The livestock population skyrocketed while revenues plummeted, and the Navajo Agency reported in 1933 that income had “greatly reduced to the vanishing point,” according to Raymond Friday Locke’s “The Book of the Navajo.”

The land was also showing signs of overgrazing and environmental distress, and its deepening gullies and parched vegetation caught the attention of the federal government. Four months after Roosevelt took office, his newly appointed commissioner of Indian Affairs, John Collier, toured the Navajo Nation and proposed an aggressive and often coercive livestock reduction program.

John Collier. Corbis image/Wikipedia.

John Collier. Corbis image/Wikipedia.

[Read more…]

Invictus. (Possibly NSFW.)

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The goal is to fund the publishing of two large-scale, hardcover, coffee table books.  This is my third Kickstarter campaign, and like last year I will produce a book featuring wounded veterans of the Gulf Wars, Invictus and a second book featuring male figure studies using fitness models from around the world, Adonis Blue.
Invictus
Over the past year I have photographed fifteen severely wounded veterans from the Gulf Wars, all of them amputees who lost a limb or multiple limbs from IED attacks while deployed. Of these fifteen veterans, ten served in either the United States Army or Marines.  Five served in either the British Army or The Royal Marines. The format and size of Invictus will be the same as last year’s Always Loyal: hardcover photo book with dust jacket, 96 pages or more and measures 13.5 X 10.4 inches.  Like last year I will include individual bios for each veteran.  All the images are already photographed and only need to be organized and published.  When the book releases, I anticipate a full retail price of $79.

[Read more…]

Cops: High Fivin’

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The behaviour of the cops who murdered Paul O’Neal just get worse. They actually high fived after murdering an unarmed young man, and it was this moment that one cop expressed annoyance over a probable 30 day suspension. These people are utterly despicable, and placing them on administrative leave is not nearly enough. This is outright murder, and the murderers should be punished.

CBS Chicago’s Charlie De Mar saw the video and reported that it shows one officer high fiving another before saying “F***, I’m going to be on desk duty now for 30 days”; and one officer saying to another, “Make sure this (body-camera) is off.”

“We just came from watching Chicago police officers execute Paul O’Neal. … It is one of the most horrific things that I have seen, aside from being in a movie. These police officers decided to play judge, jury and executioner,” he said. “It is amazing to me. It is horrific, it is tragic, that these officers did what they did and took their street justice in their own hands—the things that they are trying to prevent, or supposed to prevent.”

I seriously advise people to avoid the comments on that tweet. There’s a whole lot of poison there. Full story here.

A Christian Calls…

X

Police are investigating a threat made to a local mosque in Watauga, Texas, where an unidentified man threatened to decapitate Muslims who attended it.

Local news station Fox4News reports that the Watauga Mosque received a particularly disturbing threat via a telephone message this week, when a caller made explicitly violent threats that went well beyond the kind of verbal abuse callers normally level against the mosque.

“F*ck you, f*ck Muhammad, f*ck Islam,” said the caller, who identified as a “Christian” during their message. “This is America. If you don’t like the way we do sh*t, get the f*ck out.”

“We’ll start just cutting off the heads of all of you motherf*ckers,” the caller continued. “Huh? How would you like that? Maybe we need another Christian crusade, which I think we do.”

“I’m a Christian, I’m gonna tell you, I’m your f***ing enemy. I hate you, and I will never be your f**kin’ friend.

“When he started talking about chopping off people’s heads and launching a crusade against Muslims, that’s when it started to get scary because that’s an actionable threat,” said Alia Salem, Executive Director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

“I want to be very clear that the Muslim community has no animosity towards the Christian community, but we do ask the Christian community stand up against this kind of hatred. This does not speak for the vast majority of Christians,” said Salem.

I think that would be excellent, if Christians spoke up, and spoke out, with clear condemnation of the Christian caller. You have a great opportunity here to demonstrate that you are not bigoted, nor do you support such bigotry on the part of anyone.

Via Fox4.

The Vast Expanse of Ultra-light Mocha.

Started on the light mocha section of the background, and naturally, I don’t have near enough skeins of ultra-light mocha to finish. So, I’ll work on it until I run out, then do something else, I guess, until I can replenish my supply. Just checked, and found one more skein, so that makes 6 and a quarter skeins to burn right through. Current Hours: 948. Skeins used: 135.

WorkWorkWork58

On Tattoos and Trademarks.

Butch Johnson, owner of Champion Tattoo Company, works on a former US Marine at his art studio in Washington, DC, on April 18, 2016. (AFP Photo/Brendan Smialowski).

Butch Johnson, owner of Champion Tattoo Company, works on a former US Marine at his art studio in Washington, DC, on April 18, 2016. (AFP Photo/Brendan Smialowski).

More than 20 percent of all Americans have at least one tattoo, and for millennials that number jumps to almost 40 percent. What could be more intimately a part of you than a work of body art permanently inked into your skin? You probably assume that the tattoo on your body belongs to you. But, in actuality, somebody else might own your tattoo. Recent lawsuits and events have shown that tattoo artists and companies can have intellectual property rights in tattoos worn by others, including both copyright and trademark rights.

Tattoo-related lawsuits are not uncommon. Just this year, a group of tattoo artists for several high-profile athletes, including Lebron James and Kobe Bryant, filed a copyright lawsuit against the creators of the popular NBA 2K video game franchise because tattoos they created appear in NBA 2K16. The case is still pending in a New York federal court.

[…]

And the issue isn’t limited to celebrities and athletes. For example, Sam Penix, a coffee shop owner living in New York, was threatened with a trademark infringement lawsuit in 2013 based on the “I [coffee cup] NY” tattoo he has across his fist. Penix’s shop logo featured his tattooed fist grabbing a coffee portafilter between the words “Everyman Espresso.” The New York State Department of Economic Development, which owns the “I ♥ NY” trademark, sent Penix a cease-and-desist letter because it believed the logo infringed its trademark. To avoid being sued, Penix agreed to several terms, including some restrictions on how his fist could (and could not) be photographed.

[…]

Until courts and legislators create innovative legal solutions, both tattoo artists and people with tattoos should consider copyright agreements that specifically outline who owns a resulting tattoo. People with trademark tattoos should be aware that displaying their tattoos visibly in commerce could lead to liability. Otherwise, tattooed skin may end up with several owners with competing interests – and even if you live within that skin, you may not own the art that adorns it.

I’ve been thinking about getting more ink. If I do, it will be the same as my existing ink – my own original art work.

The full article is at Raw Story.

Kumo!

Photo by Lorette Guillou, courtesy of La Machine.

Photo by Lorette Guillou, courtesy of La Machine.

Watching Kumo take to the streets is like the live-action version of a CGI flick: A giant alien spider lands in a historic city, its eight legs weaving around buildings as it spews venom into the crowds. Dreamt up by street theater company La Machine, Kumo has since toured Yokohama, Beijing, Reims, and Calais. Earlier this month, it was finally left to roam the French city of Nantes, where La Machine is based, and where the spider was “born” in 2009.

Kumo’s technical data sheet is staggering: At rest, it is 19′ high, but can attain a height of 43′ once it’s up and walking. When it rolls up into a ball for a nap, it measures 20′ in diameter. When it sprawls its legs out, that “legspan” grows to 65′. It can spit out venom (in reality, a fine water mist) and breathe out clouds of fog, all while regarding the crowd suspiciously with its moving eyes. A team of 35 to 40 people worked on its construction for nearly a year—first drafting it, then bringing it to life the 38-ton structure of wood and steel.

Photo by Lorette Guillou, courtesy of La Machine

Photo by Lorette Guillou, courtesy of La Machine.

“We wanted to use its eight legs to turn it into a dancer,” says François Delarozière, the founder and artistic director of La Machine. “This is why we made a base on wheels, so it could move quickly and have the ability to communicate, and be expressive, through movement.” During a performance, 16 people are required to activate the hydraulic and mechanical framework that helps Kumo walk through narrow city streets, wriggling around trees and lampposts. Most are seated aboard the giant, controlling the motion of its legs, eyes, head, and abdomen, and setting off the fog and water effects. Down on the ground, a conductor walks alongside Kumo and directs the whole theatrical team.

Original drawings for the giant spider, courtesy of La Machine.

Original drawings for the giant spider, courtesy of La Machine.

The Creators Project has the full story. After its show in Nantes this summer, Kumo is scheduled to take a rest. But next stop: Ottawa in 2017. To learn more about La Machine, click here.