Philly Tech Week 2014:
Art Scavenger Hunt
In celebration of Philadelphia's amazing street artists, Tattooed Mom, HAHA x Paradigm, and Philly Tech Week organized a citywide street art scavenger hunt that highlighted Philadelphia artists, their work, and the neighborhoods that inspired them.
The scavenger hunt began on April 4th, 2014 and continued each day until the end of Philly Tech Week on April 12th, 2014.
Each day of Philadelphia Tech Week we highlighted one artist's work and a specific, awesome neighborhood in Philadelphia. We also released a clue to where you could spot this specific piece of art in the city. Hunters had to take a selfie of themselves in the location with the art visible and share the image via Twitter or Instagram using the hashtags #ptw14 #hahaxpara. Each night, one victorious name was drawn from the day's pool of hunters to win some cool art from the artist of the day. At the end of Philly Tech Week, we picked the two hunters (first place and runner-up) that found the most art on the list and awarded them special prizes for being dedicated art lovers. We had a stellar lineup:
April 4th: JOE BORUCHOW
About: My black and white cutouts are an evolution from when I used stencils to make posters for my band, The Nite Lights. About ten years ago, as my technique improved, the stencils became too fragile to work with. I started to simply photocopy black paper cutouts and found that I was able to get much more coverage pasting and stapling these around town than I had with the stencils, all the while, retaining a fine art object. My process varies with each paper cutout, but there are some things that remain consistent. From thumbnail sketches I develop more detailed studies that I then redraw on black paper paying special attention to the limits of the medium. In a paper cutout, all the black must connect (this makes things like belly buttons challenging). Then I excise all the white space with an Xacto blade, paint out the remaining pencil marks with black spray paint, and scan the cutout. From this I have large prints made, which I use for my large-scale installations.The longer I have been doing uncommissioned public art the more I try to find architectural spaces to frame and add context to my work, ultimately, integrating it into the environment. In a gallery, however, one can to see the original cutouts from which the larger installations are made. Their intricacy and smaller scale often surprise people, giving them a new perspective on the public / private aspects of my work and emphasizing the blend of craft and concept that I attempt to achieve.
Neighborhood: SOUTH PHILLY (EAST)
Because I've made it my home for the past 15 years and have come of age as an artist there!
Artwork Location Hint: (SEE PHOTO)
Likes: Keith Haring, David Lynch, Ru Paul's Drag Race, Lotte Reiniger, Louise Nevelson, Felix Vallotton, Renaissance Lute
Dislikes: fiends, schemers, thieves, paranoiacs
Neighborhood Favorites and Inspirations: Pat Martino, Tattooed Mom, Toynbee, NoseGo, Trinity Framing, David Guinn, Zoe Strauss, Marian Anderson
April 5th: BOB WILL REIGN
About: Bob Will Reign became my logo/character after seeing what was happening in Europe, mainly London and Berlin, around 2003. These cities had strong sticker art scenes. Philadelphia always had a deep rooted graffiti history, which i was interested in, but i wanted to do something a bit different. After seeing the designs that the artists in Europe were putting around their cities, i knew i was about to be hooked. Ten years later, Bob can still be found around Philly in sticker form.
Neighborhood: CALLOWHILL
I chose this neighborhood, with the help of The Airrat, because of its strange location. It is a type of in between area, that people normally don't go to as their destination, rather they cut through it to get where they are going. I have walked and driven through it many times, but installing the art was the first time i actually walked around there. It is right underneath an abandoned section of railways. I knew i had to leave the piece here, in the company of many graffiti writers and one of the masters of the art installation, Stikman.
Artwork Location Hint: Get off the beaten track around 10th and Spring Garden. Look low.
April 6th: BRAILLE STREET ART (AUSTIN SERAPHIN & SONIA PETRUSE)
About: Braille Street Art was created by Sonia Petruse and Austin Seraphin because of a common love of art, politics and technology. Sonia and Austin also started it because there needs to be more accessible art... Accessibility is for everyone!
Neighborhood: OLD CITY
As co-workers at Indy Hall and our appreciation of N3RD St (NERD St if you flip the "3"), we found this area of Old City to be inviting for our work.
Artwork Location Hint: (SEE PHOTO)
Look for our #BrailleStreetArt stickers on newspaper boxes in that area, and open the box. One special box will have a piece hidden inside that will not be affixed! Make sure to tweet us @theCatEars @AustinSeraphin #BrailleStreetArt when you find the special piece <3
April 7th: KID HAZO
About: Kid Hazo is a Philadelphia based street artist out to catch a few smirks and smiles by creating pieces that parody the heart of Philly venues and culture around the city. By interjecting his props and sculptures into the urban environment he tests to truly see if people paying attention to their surroundings in their day to day routines.
Neighborhood: CENTER CITY WEST
It's usually quite fun for me [in this area], because I get to hop over to my favorite public space - Love Park and feed my Vampire Squirrels.
Artwork Location Hint: It's Philly Tech Week. Let's keep it nerdy and head to the belly of the beast in Center City West near one of the largest internet service providers in the area...lots of major tech corporations in this area and we all know technology's never fun unless something goes horribly wrong.
April 8th: HURRAY//FOR
About: I am a 21 year old Philadelphia-based printmaker, illustrator, photographer, zine maker, street artist, biker, and adventurer. Like it has been said many times before, Philly is a great place to be as a creative person because the rent is cheap and it's easy to call it home. My artwork on or off the streets is about storytelling. Having grown up as a first generation American and a girl, my range of experiences and perspectives I was exposed to is unique and is also the main source material for my illustrations. I’m always looking for cool people, fellow artists, and galleries to help me showcase my talents and can be reached at hurrayfor@gmail.com.
Neighborhood: KENSINGTON / FISHTOWN
I love Kensington/Fishtown because it is my home and there are amazing places to get breakfast/brunch, including Rocket Cat Café, Coffee House Too, and El Cafeito. I am most happy in the City of Brotherly Love where I live with all my friends.
Artwork Location Hint: (SEE PHOTOS)
April 9th: Scrandy
About: Originally from Boston, I moved to Philly a little over a year ago and have been slowly working my way through a big bag of oil pastel crayons, usually drawing figures or portraits of people.
Neighborhood: BELLA VISTA
I'm living there and wanted to put something up in the area.
Artwork Location Hint: Just a few steps east of the pictured South Philly Bocce court.
April 10th: AirRat
About: Most likely known for the ongoing Lego Installation project and coming of age in the Philadelphia graffiti scene, The AirRat is now pushing into other installation projects while returning to his young infatuation of the many and constantly evolving Philadelphia letterforms. Both his public and gallery works showcase the broad spectrum of Philadelphia hand styles and transcend their aerosol and brick existence while incorporating other spiritual and life influences.
Neighborhood: NORTHERN LIBERTIES
The AirRat piece is installed in Northern Liberties, currently one of the city's biggest gentrification areas over the past several years with the boom of the stores, restaurants, and bars that line both 2nd and 3rd Streets anchored by the Piazza/Liberties Walk and Spring Garden. Even with all of the gentrification, it is still a great place to find both constantly changing graffiti and street art.
Places to check out in the area: Jinxed, Gunners Run, Emmanuel, 700 Club, Ortliebs, North 3rd, Sedso Design, Dmitri's
Artwork Location Hint: Just east of Liberty Lands Park.
CHANGE OF PLANS FOR APRIL 11th!
Street art is always at risk of being around one hour, but gone the next. Unfortunately, the piece we had planned for you to find from "Common Room" is no longer up, but please read more about the group and their work below. We will definitely be featuring their work in the future.
THE NEW PLAN:
HIGHLIGHT ON ANTI-HARASSMENT STREET ART
An important subject frequently seen in street art in Philadelphia is anti-harassment. We are so lucky to have multiple street artists and groups of street artists dedicated to spreading the word that harassment of all kinds NEEDS to stop. Pussy Division, Tatyana Fazlalizadeh, Amber Lynn's Project GASTRIC, and so many additional artists and projects have done an incredible job facing the issue head on, and we owe them a great deal of thanks for dedicating their time and creativity to such an important cause. Let's show these artists our appreciation for what they do by making April 11th all about the anti-harassment street art in Philadelphia. Make sure to check out the #ptw14 and #hahaxpara hashtags yourself to see what everyone is posting. We may all discover a lot of important work that we did not already know about.
And yes, the contest will still continue. Prize of the day TBA.
Common Room
(Original Artists for April 11th, Photo Credit: Conrad Benner)
About: We are three creative individuals collaborating to create wheat pastes under the name "Common Room." We take photographic images from Nema Etebar's world travels and interpret them in a mono or dual chromatic geometric way. Then we project them onto the wall to create our large scale pieces entirely by hand. We wanted to juxtapose some startling imagery from Africa and India with the streets of Philadelphia to show both the similarity and stark differences in these societies.
April 12th: Tim Gibbon
Final Day
About: I was moved to start wheatpasting around Philadelphia after getting punched by a stranger on the SEPTA train: seeking to balance negativity with positivity, ugliness with beauty. A lot of my work is inspired by and created in collaboration with the students I teach in North Philly.
Neighborhood: Italian Market. My home and favorite stretch of blocks in Philly.
Artwork Location Hint: Where Sharktoof and Minions once reigned.
