"Street Legal" - Catch LA's finest before the show closes!

The rain and general dreariness kept me away from the LA Art Show even though LA's most talented street artists 'come art gallery converts were painting live as part of FADA's (Fine Art Dealers Association) "VOX HUMANA.". Lame I know! So instead of sharing my pics, I've found some great ones from Mr. Satoe.

Redemption But, to represent I'm planning to head downtown to see the closing show entitled, "Street Legal", featuring Mear One, Kofie, Retna and El Mac this coming Weds 3rd March. May be see you at the Rivera & Rivera gallery. If not check back for photos.

LA Art Show reprise Until this year, the LA Art Show had never shown any street art! Surprising, when you consider the number of Californian graffiti and street artists (yes, I'm going to lump them together ;) ) who have become household names locally and internationally. In my own random order (with credibility or verification given): Obey, Seventh Letter/AWR/MSK ( Revok, Retna, Saber, Push, Rime, Zes and many, many more), El Mac, Buff Monster, Mr. Brainwash, Shark Toof etc.

Bryson Strauss, curator of VOX HUMANA, compares Mear One, Kofie, Retna and El Mac timeliness to art world celebrities. “Shepard Fairey and Banksy show at art fairs like Art Basel, but they’ve already been validated and vindicated and selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars. It’s easy to hang [their work] on your wall and say, ‘Now, I’m cool and I’m hip.’”

Kim Martindale, producer of the Los Angeles Art Show, added that VOX HUMANA offers street artists credibility and takes the illegal tarnish off of street art. “Graffiti art is part of that latest movement,” says Martindale. “It’s kind of gone through a transition from where people had pushed it aside and said, ‘Let’s not even look at it. That’s an evil thing for our society.’”

For some fans of street art, VOX HUMANA might be the beginning of the end. This fear seemed best expressed by LA Art Show visitor Marta Avellaneda from Galeria del Paseo in Montevideo, Uruguay, "...They’re muralists, but muralists on canvas. To me,...the fact that...a street performer...becomes part of an art collection -- it loses its feeling.”

I'm sure that the artists disagree. I heard that the exposure from VOX HUMANA got Mear One, Retna, El Mac and Kofie representation to go to Art Basel in Europe. One irony that wasn't lost on me was LA
Convention Center prohibits the use of aerosol paint. That meant Mear One painted with a brush and El Mac’s - the middle-aged woman - was painted in advance of Retna's live letter painting.

The Human Voice I discovered that VOX HUMANA is Latin for “the human voice” and came from David Bayles and Ted Orland's 2001 book, Art & Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking. It's gained a cult-following as an artist's survival guide exploring the way art gets made, the reasons it doesn't get made, and the nature of the difficulties that cause so many artists to give up along the way.

"To all viewers but yourself, what matters is the product: the finished artwork. To you, and you along, what matters is the process."