I recently visited Mexico for the event “Estilo Libre”. The
event begins in Santiago de Queretaro, continues in Mexico
City, and ends in Monterrey. Unfortunately I could only
attend Queretaro.

We flew into Mexico City and then drove 3 hours north to
Santiago de Queretaro.

Downtown Queretaro is a beautiful old, well-preserved,
Spanish colonial town. With cobble stone streets,
beautifully hand-carved large wood doors, court yards in
almost every building, and interesting street vendors on
every corner. We stayed in a two hundred year old hotel
called the Hotel Hidalgo that was a history professor’s
dream with all the notable people that had stayed there.

Queretaro was a very important city during the Mexican
Independence movement and has many statues,
monuments, and historically preserved buildings
commemorating that. Today it is becoming the
international business capitol of the country.

But obviously I was there to paint and meet other like
minds. I spent four days straight painting two different
pieces in two different locations. I decided to use buff paint
primarily, instead of all spray to show people to some new
techniques.

Everywhere we went there seemed to be some sort of
painting project in process. All over the city there are new
community centers being built, from small neighborhood
spaces to huge community centers that can accommodate
the entire city. It was very impressive, and you can sense
there is more importance placed on introducing and
including youth into art projects like murals.

Throughout the years I’ve visited Mexico many times and
these kids are getting better and better. There is endless
wall space and the writers are very focused. I would say
that in the near future Mexico will become an important
painting destination for the rest of the world.

I met some genuine people and some strong writers in
Mexico. Queretaro is a mellow place and I love how
important the history is to citizens. Most of my experiences
on this trip were positive, (minus the five-animal meat
torta).

Thank you to No Limit, SF Crew. Mibe, Humo, Baht, Seta,
Borra, Chino, Aliaz, and anyone else I forgot.

Cathedral In Downtown Queretaro

Cathedral Ceiling

Altar For Mary

Cathedral At Night

Statue For Memorial To One Of The Saviors Of Mexican Independence

Eagles At The Base Of Josefa Statue

Statue Outside Cathedral

Hill Top View Of Los Arcos Aqueduct. It Was Built By The Wealthiest Man In Queretaro Because Of His Love For A Nun

“Pyramid Of El Pueblito”, Toltec Pyramid With Spanish Fort On Top In Queretaro

After All Day Painting, Nothing Like A Nice Little Fire

Mucho Mas Graffiti!

This Kid Painted This After His Lung Collapsed!

Through Upper Playground, I was one of a bunch of artists who where asked to be part of an interesting collaboration with Roland Sands Designs.

Basically Sam Flores, Nate Van Dyke, Estvon Oriol, Jonas, Roland and friends, painted the backdrops for up and coming motorcycle conventions. These are the sickest bikes I’ve seen, and the goal was to create themes that went with each bike. Everyone put in long nights, and it turned into a paint menagerie.

Each artists mural was unique to they’re own style. This is what makes this project interesting. Each piece was great and different by itself, then put those amazing bikes in front of them, it couldn’t get any better.

I was very excited to work on this project because I appreciate the constant contortion of motorcycle design, especially Roland’s approach to style. When I see those sexy lines on a bike, I want to push my artistic style even further.

Futuristic, powerful, hyper, sleek, sharp, dangerous, wicked, complex, these are the perfect attributes that translate well into my painting style.

The bike in front of my wall was a one of a kind Ducati, red, silver, and black. I wanted to match the color pallet with fast-moving, sharp biomechanical bits, mixed with digital racing stripes.

I think this could be one of the first contemporary collaborations with street artist and the motorcycle culture. I’m definitely looking forward to more projects with Roland. Maybe one day soon there will be a sick Saber/Roland bike collaboration.

My Wall, but this is NOT my bike.

Estevon Oriol, hard at work…..

Sam and the girls…….

Nate Van Dyke’s Wall….

Roland Sands’ Wall

Sam Flores’s Wall…..

This is a sketch I did for a friend I haven’t seen in awhile.

Whoever is in the London area and is interested in street art, you’d be a fool to miss this one. Check out the real shit.

Jersey Joe and myself were invited to come speak to a group of students at Art Center College in Pasadena.

I was very excited about the prospect because even though I didn’t go to school there, Art Center has played a role in my early life.

My mother graduated there in 68 and later taught a few classes and became the first female president of the alumni. In other words I spent a lot of time running around the school grounds as a kid and got my first introduction to design there. To be asked to speak there years later, and especially about my part in graffiti and my paintings, was an honor.

Basically Joe and I each created a slide show of some of our work, and took turns going through images and talking about out experiences as artists.

After both Joe and I spoke, we took questions. Most of them seemed to be centered on the business side of what we do, how we deal with corporations etc. The bottom line is this, the more education you have about business, finance, contracts, taxes, the better off you’ll be. People like to take advantage of creative people. Your only defense is information, education, and confidence. Don’t be afraid of being smart. Its time for our generation to wake up to its potential.

As far as Art Center goes, it’s always a pleasure to walk through the halls and see what the students are up to. And it would be awesome to collaborate with the school again in the future. 

A great guy named David commissioned me to paint him a piece. After I completed the work, packed the painting and shipped it out to Houston, I realized I had just sent it into the middle of a hurricane.

It did arrive safely, only a little late. I asked David if he would tell us what he went through and saw. Here is his story…………

HURRICANE IKE

By David Bedikian

Hurricane Ike was a learning experience for me, as I think it was for most of Houston and Southeast Texas. Thing is, it wasn’t the kind of learning experience I thought it would be. Going into it I thought I’d learn what it feels like to be in the middle of winds that can destroy a whole city. I thought I’d learn what a tornado looks like. I thought I’d see massive waves come in and flood everything. I thought I’d see trees come crashing down, and cars fly, and homes disappear . . . In other words, I thought my experience with Ike would be about the storm. I was wrong. Ike wasn’t about any of that. And that was only the beginning of what I learned.

Ike was about people. Ike was about being stuck at home without power, with no gas, with the street outside your house looking like a war zone. Ike was about re-learning how to spend an entire day with no tv, no computer, no car, no friends, and no family. Ike was about being your own repairman, gardener, and cook, but also about being a neighbor, a member of the community, and a friend to people you didn’t know and had never met. I saw people giving toys to kids that they didn’t know. I saw people giving away their extra food and water to people who didn’t have it. I saw people freezing ice in their own refrigerators, and then giving it out to people on the street, even though they didn’t have to and nobody asked them to do it. I saw people with extra gas giving strangers and old folks rides. I saw people repairing other people’s homes. Think about the last time you let ten total strangers into your place, not just thinking but knowing they were genuinely there to help you. Think about that kind of trust. And it all happened, all of it, because this hurricane brought us all together.

The same things, the same people that I saw everyday before were . . . different. I’m a guy in my 20s, with a stressful job and a lot of stuff to do, running around from place to place trying to get things together in my life. I never stopped moving long enough to notice all the people around me. After the hurricane hit, all the people I never stopped long enough to appreciate were the same ones helping me cut broken trees down, clean up the street, find water and food, and pass the time. It didn’t matter if people were rich or poor because neither the 08 S550 benz nor the 82 chevy rustbucket had any gas. It didn’t matter if you had satellite, cable, a 50” plasma, sound system, xbox, or anything else, because none of that was gonna work. It didn’t matter if you had an expensive home or a place that was falling apart, because yknow, it all looked the fuckin same in the dark.

So yeah. Ike was a learning experience. I saw beer become water for washing hands, because the water looked like sludge, and the sludge looked like broken glass and waste. I never knew beer could be so important. I saw a front yard become a grocery store, a community center, and a haven. I never knew some bottled water and peanut butter could look so good. I saw broken houses, broken trees, and broken lives being overcome with the help of total strangers. I never knew that people cared. But most of all I saw that no matter how important you think you are, no matter how much stuff you have, no matter how many friends you’ve got, no matter what school you went to or what neighborhood you live in, there are times when none of it matters. Ike didn’t care. Nobody else cared either. My community got through this because we pulled together and worked to help each other out. Because at the heart of it, we are all good people and hated to see others suffer when there’s something we could do about it.

I wish we could all be like that without needing a Hurricane Ike to remind us of these things. Think about the difference it could make if we all cared that much about our fellow man every day. If we stopped trying to divide ourselves into social classes, ethnicities, religious views, or affiliations and started just being people. People who care about each other. It took a massive storm, a bunch of destruction, hardship and misery for me to really learn that. I had to see it with my own eyes or I wouldn’t have believed it. It shouldn’t have taken all that. And maybe that was the most important learning of all.

Dave

*Images collected by writer

Recently I went through some photos and stumbled on this shot of David Choe in action on a trip we took to Barcelona, I think it was 06.

There was an interesting drawing by Picasso in the “Picasso Museum” that we saw on that trip of a butler jerking off  and taking a shit while serving someone a chicken. We thought it was hilarious.

This was the inspiration for Dave to do his painting of Homer Simpson doing the same with a dreaded mullet that has been grown out the top of his head, the “upper dreaded mullet” (this was a common hairdo in Barcelona we kept seeing everywhere). 

This is a picture I shot a couple of nights ago. The spider was fucking huge!

Saber. spray paint, acrylic, oil stick, charcoal, 22kt gold leaf on canvass

 I just went to the clothing trade show Magic, held in Las Vegas.

It was the typical magic experience, everyone competing to be noticed. Definitely no shortage of characters walking around, fake tits and bad tattoos.

The Seventh Letter “Royal Art Show” was strategically placed by the entrance, so anyone who walked into the convention passed by our display. This was the first year Magic has ever hosted any type of art exhibition.

Over the years I’ve seen graffiti art influence and be taken advantage of by the street wear industry. This exhibition was a great way for us to show people where its source is.

The “Royal Art Show” consisted of two beautiful hand-crafted motorcycle and canvass by Rime, Push, Revok, Retna, Zes, Ewok, Reyes, and myself.

Eklips’s custom bike

           Ewok

  Push

    Retna

   Reyes

   Rime

   Zes

    Revok

 This is a screen print I did for Linkin Park for one of the cities in their US ’08 tour.