« Dancing with Giant Lampshades | An Interview with Yuri Lane, Human Beatbox » |
Art Fri May 16 2008
Don't You Want to be a Cool Kid?
submitted by Leah Pietrusiak, occasional correspondent
In April, the Cool Kids from Chicago popped into the Coat of Arms vintage streetwear shop in NYC and picked up some threads for their show—including a championship Bulls sweatshirt from back when. And now the Coat of Arms shop is popping up in Bridgeport tonight armed with a table of threads for an art show and magazine release organized by The Upset, a group of graffiti artist and photographers from Chicago and New York. You know you've always wanted an (other) old-school Starter jacket. And if you don't, go there for the reason the event is really going on: The Upset is celebrating the first edition of their magazine, which they started online as a blog.
The inaugural print edition (as well as the blog) has a good interview with photographer Martha Cooper who co-authored the rad "Subway Art" book (you can view the book online here) in 1984 that documented the artistic volcano in NYC's transportation underground. She talks about her new book "Going Postal" (about postal sticker art), which features a member of the Upset crew who used to live in Chicago but transplanted to NYC. He found out Cooper was keen to his work when he saw the now 60-something-year-old photographer tearing off one of his stickers to take back to her studio to photograph. Now that is pretty cool. Oh, and then there's the music—the awesome local Gutter Butter DJs—and the art tonight, duh like photos by Chicago-based Upset member Oscar Arriola (the piece featured here is by NYC-based Haculla). We dig the stuff by Suckadelic too. The event goes down at the Co-Prosperity Sphere (3219-21 S Morgan Street), from 6-11pm, where the Upset had its first art show last month as part of Version>08 Fest, which made a pretty statement—literally—about the city of Chicago painting over graffiti tags made of out flowers. Why doesn't that surprise us?