We are running a one week only Ironlak Special, 6/20/2010 – 6/27/2010.  Visit our store at www.analogcartel.com and use coupon code IRONLAKPROMO to receive 25% off you entire paint order.  Don’t forget to pick up a copy of The Art of Storytelling DVD while supplies last.

Finally after months of hard work we are happy to release our online shop.  99% of our products have been uploaded to our inventory, however we still have a ton of Vinyl Toys to import so keep checking back for that.  Our shop can be accessed by clicking the “SHOP” tab in the header bar or by going directly to www.analogcartel.com Hit us back and let us know your thoughts, what products you would like to see in the future and any other comments you have.

After months of waiting and dealing with all the bullshit that goes along with creating an online shop, we finally have an end result that we are competely stoked on.  We are still adding a few products and finishing up our inventory.  We are hitting the web with over 150 t-shirt designs from 15 streetwear and skate brands, we are carrying a full range of Ironlak Paint, Vinyl Toys, Original Artwork, Magazines, Books, Hoodies, Hats and best of all The Art of Storytelling DVD as well as issue #1 of our magzaine. Here a some screens shots of the interface.  Be sure to check in this Sunday

I came across a really good interview that KAWS did for Interview magazine.  Toby Maguire conducted the interview and it is a nice read. Check it out.

The Williamsburg studio of the artist known as KAWS is neatly lined with racks of acrylic-paint bottles in primary colors and guarded by a cluster of standing toy collectibles—life-size 3-D comic book characters of his own design—like a platoon of robot children. By the window, there is a small-scale model of the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, in Connecticut. KAWS, an unassuming, soft-spoken 35-year-old New Jersey native named Brian Donnelly, is plotting his first solo museum show at the Aldrich next month. It will serve as the unofficial grand induction to the institutionalized art world for the graffiti artist, painter, illustrator, sculptor, toymaker, and product designer. Yet KAWS has a long history outside of the white cube. His street-born cartoonish graphics—specifically spermatozoa-shaped figures with x-ed out eyes—have achieved a subcultural iconography. He has applied this KAWS signature to his street art, a clothing line, heroically outsize toys and sculptures, and countless cobranding ventures with labels like A Bathing Ape and Marc Jacobs.

KAWS was a teenager growing up in Jersey City in the late ’80s and early ’90s, where he spent his high school years graffiti-bombing trains, walls, and billboards. He honed his street-art act in New York City, hanging out with the spray can–wielding skate kids in downtown Manhattan. He graduated to a more covert form of interventionist street art in the mid-’90s, when he began unlocking the glass panels encasing bus stop and phone booth ads. He stole the posters, added his own graphics to them in acrylic paint, and then surreptitiously put them back. These hits were so skillfully executed—brushstrokes are never apparent in a KAWS painting—that often no one could distinguish the artist’s work from the original advertisement.

After graduating from New York’s School of Visual Arts in 1996, KAWS traveled to Japan, pursuing his street-art projects with Tokyo subculture heavyweights Hectic and Jun Takahashi of Undercover. In 1999, KAWS made his first toy with Japanese company Bounty Hunter,a vinyl figure of Mickey Mouse with x-ed out eyes (as if Mickey just drank from a bottle marked POISON). Nigo, the tastemaker behind A Bathing Ape, asked KAWS to collaborate on a clothing line in 2001 and began collecting his pop paintings of cartoon characters like the Simpsons, the Smurfs, and SpongeBob SquarePants.

Channeling the commercialist attitude of Claes Oldenburg and, more recently, Takashi Murakami, KAWS has produced everything from x-marked sneakers for Nike to an album cover for a special edition of Kanye West’s 808s & Heartbreak (2008). To sell all the KAWS-mobilia, the artist opened a dazzling Masamichi Katayama–designed store in Tokyo in 2006 called OriginalFake. Although KAWS does not separate product from art or art from product, it was only a matter of time before the art world caught up with him. He found Los Angeles–based dealer Honor Fraser, who took on not only the paintings but the whole breadth of his work.

With a monograph from Skira/Rizzoli due out this fall and the Aldrich show at his doorstep, KAWS has gotten approval from an art-world establishment that he felt would never take his guerrilla act as its own. He bought a building not far from his Brooklyn studio, which his good friend, the interior designer Katayama, will convert into a massive studio that will become the creative hub of the KAWS universe. That’s all in the future, but it is one KAWS can see from the seventh-floor window of his current studio—which is where the actor Tobey Maguire, a fan, friend, and collector, interviewed the artist.

Click here to view the full interview

Some old friends just opened up a record shop in Brooklyn.  I missed the opening night but from what I heard the space, concept, and merchandise is on point.  Stop in and check it out the address is listed below and you can click here to view their facebook page.

BLACK GOLD RECORDS

461 Court Street

Brooklyn NY

11231

Open daily except Moday. 11am-9pm Sundays 11am-5pm.

F or G train to Carroll Street. WE BUY RECORDS!!!

I came across a great interview today on SLAMXHYPE, with Erik Brunetti of FUCT.  Over the years I haven’t kept up too much as to what was going on in the street wear world.  Recently I started to gain an interest again and obviously I went back to what I knew as a kid, FUCT, SSUR, FRESHJIVE, and X-LARGE.  Anyway, it seems like Erik doesn’t do a lot of interviews, so I was real stoked to find this one. You should also check out www.fuct.com it is a great blog and one that I enjoy reading from time to time.  It Looks like Erik is working on a film project now.  You can see a teaser on the site.

Last night we co-sponsored an art show at the Zakka Shop in Brooklyn.  The event was hosted by Mathmatiks and the turnout was great.   It featured works by Nick Kuszyk, Jade Kuei, El Kamino, Chip 7 and Pars Kid.  We gave out over 100 copies of The Art of Storytelling magazine and we also released our first figure called eyeball kid which was a collaboration between The Art of Storytelling, Chip7 and sculptor Danny the Farrow.   All in all it was a great night.  Zakka is now carrying The Art of Storytelling Magazine as well as The Art of Storytelling DVD so if you need copies of either you can pick them up there.

Outside of the event, the shop itself is amazing.  They are stacked with vinyl toys, a ton a rare books and dvd’s, clothing and more. You should definitely stop by to check this place out.  Here are some flicks from the event.

CLICK HERE TO SEE MORE FROM THE SHOW >

D-Nice has been putting out these videos for a while now, they are called True Hip-Hop Stories.  I might have posted one up in the past, but Chip actually brought them to my attention once again.  They are really well put together, both the video quality and content is on point.  It is refreshing to watch a hip-hop interview and not listen to some thugged out bull shit.  I posted the interview with YZ because it was one of my favorites but you should check them all out.  He did pieces with B-Real of Cypress Hill, Doitall, Masta Ace, Doug E Fresh and Slick Rick and a bunch of others.  His website is http://www.d-nice.com and you can watch all the videos on his VIMEO page.

Here is one of my new Gene Simmons sculpts for an upcoming custom figure I will be creating.  I just have to figure out which era I want to use it for.  I will make one with pupils and one without.  I will post the photos when it is finished.  Hit me up if there are any customs you would like to see in the future.

- The Farrow

Just came home to a batch of our first figure, Eyeball Kid by Chip 7.  The molds and paint job came great.  The mold maker did a good job preserving all the detail which was my biggest concern.  We are doing 30 figures in the black color way.  We will have them at the Zakka store for May 25th’s show.  I am going to stop by uncle Nooche’s house tonight an we are going to start the assembly process.  Really stoked to see the finished product.  I will post shots once they are fully assembled.

The 100 Helmets of THE VADER PROJECT

 Freeman’s Los Angeles Auction Preview Exhibition
Opening Reception: Friday, June 11, 2010  6-10pm
Los Angeles Exhibition On View: June 12 – 20, 2010  Noon-6pm
6812 Melrose Avenue
Los Angeles, California
www.thevaderproject.com

The Vader Project Catalog Signing – Los Angeles
Featuring 20 Participating Artists
 Saturday, June 12, 2010  2pm

Freeman’s Philadelphia Auction Showing
On View: July 5-9, 2010

Freeman’s Philadelphia Auction
July 10, 2010
Freeman’s Auction House
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
www.freemansauction.com

 This summer, The Vader Project launches the final chapter of its four-year art odyssey. The iconic collection features 100 Darth Vader Helmets re-imagined by today’s most notable artists. Completing its epic world tour, The Vader Project returns to Los Angeles in June for a special ten-day exhibition in Hollywood as a preview to the upcoming Freeman’s Auction in Philadelphia.
 

Read more »

For some reason last night I ended up on youtube watching clips from Vietnam movies, specifically Apocalypse Now.  I ended up coming across the trailer for a DVD  about soldiers who surfed during the Vietnam War.  The DVD is called Between The Lines. Looks like it could be real good.  It is narrated by John Milius who I believe was in Apocalypse Now

Synopsis:

BETWEEN THE LINES explores the Vietnam War through the prism of the surfing sub-culture. The film offers unique insight into the dramatic effect that the Vietnam War and draft had on young American men who rode waves.

Between the Lines explores the choice that most draft age surfers faced during the Vietnam War era: either go to war or evade the draft. It was one or the other. Between the Lines delves into the lives of two surfers who choose opposite paths. Pat Farley and Brant Page.

While following the lives of these two surfers the film chronicles the impact of the Vietnam War on the surfing lifestyle. From the peaceful shores of Hawaii to the canopy jungles of Vietnam, Between the Lines excavates the surfing cultures response to an extraordinary circumstance.