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	<title>Posterchild's Blade Diary &#187; Interview</title>
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	<link>http://www.bladediary.com</link>
	<description>daily updates of stencils, street art, and also STUFF!!</description>
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		<title>400th update!</title>
		<link>http://www.bladediary.com/400th-update/</link>
		<comments>http://www.bladediary.com/400th-update/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 13 Mar 2008 05:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>post</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Blade Diary updates]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Interview]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[anniversaries]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Spider-Man]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Torontoist]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">400th-update</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://www.bladediary.com/400th-update/"><img src="http://www.bladediary.com/stencils/2008-03-13-A.jpg" border="0" alt="Comic" /></a></p>This is my 400th update!
400drth!
In celebration of this milestone I am posting a pic of the very first poster I ever wheatpasted!
Well, kinda. The first poster I pasted is of this same stencil -but- this particular print was staple gunned. I don’t have a photo of the poster I pasted because it was ripped off [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://www.bladediary.com/400th-update/"><img src="http://www.bladediary.com/stencils/2008-03-13-A.jpg" border="0" alt="Comic" /></a></p><p>This is my 400th update!<br />
<em>400</em>drth!<br />
In celebration of this milestone I am posting a pic of the very first poster I ever wheatpasted!<br />
Well, kinda. The first poster I pasted is of this same stencil -but- this particular print was staple gunned. I don’t have a photo of the poster I pasted because it was ripped off right away. By morning it was nothing but an ugly white smear. I learned on my very first mission that I’d need to take photos the night of- if I wanted to guarantee that I had documentation.<br />
I also learned that some people would rather have an ugly white smear than allow someone’s image, no matter the content or the aesthetics, to run on their wall unpermitted. Good lesson to learn.<br />
ALSO<br />
I recently gave a talk (March 10th) at <a href="http://www.utoronto.ca/">U of T</a>’s <a href="http://www.jmbgallery.ca/index.html">JMB</a> gallery.<br />
Coincidently, in order to conceal my identity, I wore <a href=" http://torontoist.com/2008/03/for_the_good_of.php">a Spiderman hoodie</a>!<br />
<a href=" http://www.bladediary.com/?p=177">Peter</a> <a href=" http://www.bladediary.com/?p=340">Parker</a>, eh?<br />
<a href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2914206826626230955&amp;hl=en">Here</a> is the video from the talk if you’re interested. It’s a bit long, <em>but it is engineered to inspire you</em>.<br />
<embed id="VideoPlayback" src="http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=-2914206826626230955&#038;hl=en&#038;fs=true" style="width:400px;height:326px" allowFullScreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"> </embed><br />
I hope you enjoy it.<br />
Anyway,<br />
<a href=" http://www.bladediary.com/?p=101">To</a> <a href=" http://www.bladediary.com/?p=201">quote</a> <a href=" http://www.bladediary.com/?p=302">myself</a>:<br />
&#8220;Thanks for supporting my blade diary so far! I want to really rock your worlds with the next 100 stencils.&#8221;.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
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		<item>
		<title>Follow Up 3 &#8211;  Reddead Astro Lady</title>
		<link>http://www.bladediary.com/follow-up-3-reddead-astro-lady/</link>
		<comments>http://www.bladediary.com/follow-up-3-reddead-astro-lady/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 26 Nov 2007 05:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>post</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Blade Diary updates]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Follow Up]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Interview]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Kinetic]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[New Techniques]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banksy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Faux Reel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gustav Mahler]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[installed hair]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[London]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Specter]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[The Guardian]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Torontoist]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">follow-up-3---reddead-astro-lady</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://www.bladediary.com/follow-up-3-reddead-astro-lady/"><img src="http://www.bladediary.com/stencils/2007-11-26-A.jpg" border="0" alt="Comic" /></a></p>Today is the first of four hair follow-ups. The hair begged to be played with- it was braided, like the pasteups were big dolls- but it was also pulled on, like the pasteups encountered their bratty little sisters. Or maybe they were subjected to the flirting techniques of the playground.
Regardless of the reasons, this poor [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://www.bladediary.com/follow-up-3-reddead-astro-lady/"><img src="http://www.bladediary.com/stencils/2007-11-26-A.jpg" border="0" alt="Comic" /></a></p><p>Today is the first of four hair follow-ups. The hair begged to be played with- it was braided, like the pasteups were big dolls- but it was also pulled on, like the pasteups encountered their bratty little sisters. Or maybe they were subjected to the flirting techniques of the playground.<br />
Regardless of the reasons, this poor beauty had most of her hair pulled out, and for some reason, put into a box at her feet.<br />
Whatever, she still looks good!<br />
<a href="http://www.bladediary.com/?p=278">Before</a> the hair-pulling.<br />
ALSO,<br />
Last Monday I was quoted in the London newspaper, <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,2213103,00.html"><em>The Guardian</em></a>. (Link goes to online version, quoted below)<br />
<em>Who invoked the ghost of Gustav Mahler?</em></p>
<p>Katrina Onstad</p>
<p>Monday November 19, 2007</p>
<p>The Guardian</p>
<p>If you live in the east end of downtown Toronto, Gustav Mahler has been hard to avoid lately. His name is scrawled in black or red spray paint across the kind of neighbourhoods where cafes selling spelt muffins are edging out the drug dealers. Mahler has appeared on walls and alleys, at a community centre, across a piece of public art and over a bridge.<br />
&#8220;I see it everywhere,&#8221; says Joanna, a 21-year-old standing in the cold rain near the intersection of Queen East and Parliament. Behind her, a boarded-up corner store features a 6ft tall GUSTAV MAHLER. &#8220;What does it mean?&#8221; He was a 19th-century composer. &#8220;Oh. How embarrassing.&#8221;<br />
Toronto is a notoriously clean city (many Mahlers have been wiped away), but has a lively graffiti scene. Two years ago, the name Val Kilmer started popping up everywhere, followed by Kilmer&#8217;s head. Kilmer told a local paper: &#8220;I&#8217;m bewildered.&#8221; The &#8220;tags&#8221; were eventually revealed as a prank by students at the Ontario College of Art and Design. &#8220;That was west side. Those kids couldn&#8217;t find their way over here to do Mahler,&#8221; scoffs Dennis O&#8217;Connor, a large, mustachioed man who runs an art gallery. Like many bloggers, O&#8217;Connor jokes that the Toronto Symphony Orchestra may be guerrilla-marketing their upcoming Mahler programme (the TSO denies this).<br />
Oddly, only a few months ago, Toronto graffiti watchers were obsessing online over a ubiquitous stencil of Mahler&#8217;s face. The artist goes by the handle Poster Child, and he denies accusations that he&#8217;s the Mahler-scrawler, though he understands the composer&#8217;s appeal. In an email, he wrote: &#8220;It&#8217;s an erudite gang sign. If you&#8217;re culturally informed enough, you see it, get it, and maybe laugh that someone from your highbrow group is also a dirty tagger.&#8221;<br />
In his gallery, O&#8217;Connor is hanging photographs for a show. &#8220;I love the graffiti. I love being reminded of Death in Venice,&#8221; he says. Soon, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duSL3y2LASI&amp;">Mahler</a> comes piping through the sound system. O&#8217;Connor sighs. &#8220;Isn&#8217;t it beautiful?&#8221;</p>
<p>If you&#8217;re interested, here is some more of the email interview. Only a small slice made the final cut:<br />
<em>Did you see it?</em></p>
<p>Only online. Not on the street. That doesn&#8217;t surprise me though. The<br />
fact is, there were only a handful of these tags, and only in one area<br />
of a big city, and that makes it hard to notice. The larger audience<br />
for this sort of nerd graffiti is online. You might even say it is the<br />
intended audience. The same is true of my work. The majority of people<br />
who will see it, see it online, even though the primary audience may<br />
be intended to be the audience on the street. To put it in London<br />
terms, A Banksy may get seen by thousands on the street, but it&#8217;s seen<br />
by billions on the web.<br />
This new phenomenon has created an interesting issue within graffiti<br />
culture. Before, a graffiti artist became famous by saturation and<br />
dedication- they had to put up hundreds, thousands of tags. Now<br />
someone can put up 6 or 7 &#8220;Gustav Mahler&#8221; tags, and presto, create an<br />
internet impact, make the city blogs, and hell, even make the London<br />
Guardian, in far away England!<br />
This is upsetting, as you can imagine, to the old guard. But the<br />
potential for instant fame is also attractive to other like-minded<br />
people on the internet! So now we have people graffiting the real<br />
world to get up online!<br />
<em>What did you think?</em></p>
<p>I thought it was interesting, but I did have my reservations.<br />
According to the online comments,<br />
<a href="http://torontoist.com/2007/10/who_is_the_myst.php#comments">(http://torontoist.com/2007/10/who_is_the_myst.php#comments)</a><br />
among the targeted surfaces were a community mural and a public<br />
sculpture project. This is definitely poor form, and it is upsetting<br />
for me personally because whoever&#8217;s doing it is being a poor diplomat<br />
for graffiti. We are vandals, but within the culture is an unwritten<br />
respect for certain surfaces.<br />
This lack of respect (and handstyle) are reasons why I suspect that<br />
this was someone coming from an internet background rather than a<br />
graffiti background.<br />
<em>Is it stealing your thunder?</em></p>
<p>Not at all. I have no thunder to steal!<br />
<em>Do you have any theories about what it means?</em></p>
<p>I think it just means what it means. It&#8217;s an inside joke. A erudite<br />
gang sign, if you will.  If you&#8217;re culturally informed enough, you see<br />
it, get it, and maybe laugh that someone from your high brow group is<br />
also a dirty tagger, repping the dead composers, yo. Mourn ya till I<br />
join ya.<br />
<em>Why were you putting up Mahler images earlier in the year?</em></p>
<p>Same sort of reasons, I guess.<br />
<em>What&#8217;s compelling about him?</em></p>
<p>I don&#8217;t really know. I&#8217;m surprised that two people would work with him<br />
in the same city.<br />
<em>Is this new Mahler graffitti adding anything to the cityscape, or is<br />
it just mess?</em></p>
<p>Both. It adds something, and it is a mess.<br />
<em>How is Toronto in terms of graffitti and street art? Is it a creative<br />
city, a boring city &#8212; thoughts on the state of the art?</em></p>
<p>Pretty good! Not bad! We have a nicely entrenched graffiti culture,<br />
and on the street art side, we have some exciting artists like Specter<br />
(<a href="http://www.specterart.com/">http://www.specterart.com/</a>) and Faux Reel (<a href="http://www.fauxreel.ca/">http://www.fauxreel.ca/</a>)<br />
working in the city. We also have the draconian rules<br />
<a href="http://www.bladediary.com/?p=212">http://www.bladediary.com/?p=212</a><br />
But we don&#8217;t have ASBO&#8217;s or CCTV cameras everywhere!<br />
Bansky, if you&#8217;re reading this, Come on over for a visit, the waters fine!<br />
<em>How long have you been putting your work out there in the city?</em></p>
<p>Since I moved here about 2 years ago.</p>
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		<title>Stand-In- Jenna and Jason</title>
		<link>http://www.bladediary.com/standin-jenna-and-jason/</link>
		<comments>http://www.bladediary.com/standin-jenna-and-jason/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 17 Oct 2007 05:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>post</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Blade Diary updates]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Interview]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[buff]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[dead astro costume]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jason Eppink]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nuit Blanche]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[stand-ins]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">standin-jenna-and-jason</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://www.bladediary.com/standin-jenna-and-jason/"><img src="http://www.bladediary.com/stencils/2007-10-17-A.jpg" border="0" alt="Comic" /></a></p>This is Jenna and Jason!

also,

Here is an email interview between Craig, a graduate student at New York University studying History and Archival Management, and myself.

Maybe you&#8217;ll find it interesting?

Your Work:
When did you start photo-documenting your work relative to when you started working (I can see the BladeDiary was started in &#8216;06, but were you making [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://www.bladediary.com/standin-jenna-and-jason/"><img src="http://www.bladediary.com/stencils/2007-10-17-A.jpg" border="0" alt="Comic" /></a></p><p>This is <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=1469814603&#038;size=l">Jenna and Jason</a>!</p>
<p>
also,</p>
<p>
Here is an email interview between Craig, a graduate student at New York University studying History and Archival Management, and myself.</p>
<p>
Maybe you&#8217;ll find it interesting?</p>
<p><i><br />
Your Work:<br/><br />
When did you start photo-documenting your work relative to when you started working (I can see the BladeDiary was started in &#8216;06, but were you making sure to document your work before that)? And Why?</p>
<p></i><br />
I started documenting my work when I thought it was good enough to have a record of! I don&#8217;t have any photos of my earliest, crappiest tagging, and I&#8217;m not sorry for it, because what little of it there was, was really terrible. I pretty much began documenting my work when I became Posterchild, which was around 2003, so yeah, I was definitely documenting my work before Blade Diary. Blade Diary isn&#8217;t the reason to document my work, or the reason to make my work; it&#8217;s a platform to publish my work. (Re-publish, I should say, they were all on the street first.)</p>
<p><i><br />
Are there pieces long gone you can remember which you wished you had a record of?<br />
Photographing your work can serve as both promotion and/or preservation. Do you see your BladeDiary falling into those categories? Or your work in general?</p>
<p></i><br />
Yes, there are definitely works I wish I had a photo of, but here&#8217;s the ironic part, they are all my studio works.  I have whole periods (the longest is almost a year) of my studio work that I have no documentation of! (I&#8217;ve learned my lesson now, and am better with documentation.) But with graffiti, you know it&#8217;s going to go, so right from the beginning, you photograph it. With other work, especially studio work, there&#8217;s no pressure, so you can forget or put off photographing it until it&#8217;s too late. </p>
<p>
It&#8217;s like any other photographic documentation of your life. You go on vacation, go travelling, and take 20 rolls (or fill up your memory card) because you know you&#8217;re only going to visit once. But you realise that you don&#8217;t have any photos of you and your ex together only after you break-up, because it didn&#8217;t have the same time pressures! </p>
<p>
That&#8217;s your everyday life- not the birthdays and weddings and graduations that you pull out the camera for, but the little moments that really become indelible in your memory. You usually don&#8217;t document that stuff because it doesn&#8217;t have the same sense of &#8220;Special fleeting occasion-ness&#8221;. And because most of us don&#8217;t have a camera on us at all times, although that&#8217;s changing, with affordable digital cameras and especially with camera phones. (And, probably because documenting it can &#8220;cheapen&#8221; or &#8220;falsify&#8221; those moments.)</p>
<p>
And do you really look back on those vacation photos? Is the vacation you took in 98&#8217; really one of the most important times of your life to document?  </p>
<p><i><br />
Also related: <br/> How does preservation (photographic or otherwise) fit into a field so ephemeral by nature?</i></p>
<p>
Physical preservation of works is really not a part of graffiti. (In fact, the decay or evolution of works is a key element for many artists, including myself) I mean, the archivally impossible concerns of horrible, flaky supports exposed to all the hazards of the elements aside- preservation just doesn&#8217;t fit with graffiti. While most graffiti artists will agree that no one should go over a great work, or a work by a legend, or a piece by a writer that&#8217;s died, or a piece that&#8217;s historic, that&#8217;s been there for 20 years or something, most writers will also agree that the buff is necessary. Graffiti has a cycle, it&#8217;s not stagnant. It can&#8217;t be preserved outright, even without the legal and archival issues, because outright preservation would equal stagnation. There is a limited real estate available, after all. Imagine for a moment how fine art might be different if there were only a limited number of canvases available? A large number for every city, but limited. Without the enforcement of outside rules, there might develop a loose set of unwritten, internal rules similar to those in graffiti. Great works shouldn&#8217;t be painted over, people who do paint over them should be punished, but to maintain the practice of painting, now and for the future, the great majority of surfaces should be constantly changing. </p>
<p>
Graffiti can be thought of as more of a practice than a product. In graffiti, you&#8217;re only as fresh as your latest piece, it takes years and years and years of practicing graffiti before you can ever even think of resting on your laurels or think of your work as worthy of protection or preservation. So with finite space and an infinite need for space comes very little preservation. </p>
<p>
So, for this reason, documentation and photography has been a part of graffiti from the very beginning. It&#8217;s just a lot easier and cheaper now with digital photography. </p>
<p><i><br />
History/Books about street art/graffiti:<br/><br />
What are your favorite books or writings which you think speak well towards street art and its culture (particularly its history)?<br />
Do you feel that those writing about street art (and its sorrounding culture, perhaps) are speaking well to the history of the medium? Are they situating the medium well into its broader context?</p>
<p></i><br />
I think the best single book about the history and culture of graff (though it can be hard to find) is &#8220;Getting Up: Subway Graffiti in New York&#8221; by Craig Castleman, published in 1982.</p>
<p>
However, I feel that writing about Street art is sub par in general. Mr. Castleman does a good job explaining the time and period and how that influenced and shaped the practice of graffiti, but most writing on street art seems to be too soon, or maybe just too shallow. I&#8217;d love to give it a go myself, If I could ever find a publisher.</p>
<p><i><br />
The future:<br/><br />
Do you have a database/organization to your current collection of photos of your work?<br />
What do you think will/might happen to your stuff when you&#8217;re &#8220;done&#8221;? (as in, &#8220;retired&#8221; or &#8220;dead&#8221; which i suppose for many/most artists is the same thing. I realize this is a super weird question, to think of oneself in those terms&#8230; but&#8230; yknow).</p>
<p></i><br />
They only database of my work is Blade Diary, and that will go down whenever the hosting stops being paid. I suppose some people will have saved images from it to their own hard drives, and may host them elsewhere, and it would be nice to think that some of the better works live on as more than electronic ghosts on the internet, but really, that&#8217;s all I expect. Also, I don&#8217;t think that&#8217;s a super weird question, I think most artists have thought about &#8220;immortality&#8221; at one time or another. Actually, I think that it&#8217;s a serious problem for young artists. I&#8217;ve seen them get all caught up in the idea that their work should be somehow be timeless. It becomes a stumbling block. How do you just work when all your work is somehow supposed to be for the ages? You can&#8217;t. It&#8217;s too much. </p>
<p>
I think my attitude is a much healthier attitude for artists to take on, and it&#8217;s one that is inherent to the graffiti ethos. In fact, it&#8217;s one of the key things that attracted me to graffiti. Just make your work, keep at it, and see how far you can take it. Worry about immortality later; if at all.</p>
<p><i><br />
Do you ever think of the other documents/ephemera of your life getting saved as well? (correspondence, writings, collected items, etc).</p>
<p></i><br />
I&#8217;ve never really thought about that. I think that&#8217;s a much weirder thought than the above one- if I thought about future generations reading my correspondence while I wrote them, damn, that&#8217;s messed up. I don&#8217;t think that would ever happen, though. I&#8217;m just not important or interesting enough. I suppose writings like this might be saved/collected if I&#8217;m ever actually well known enough to warrant such attention.</p>
<p><i><br />
How do you think the documentation of other street/graffiti artists will pan out? (a disgustingly broad question, I know).</i></p>
<p>
Here&#8217;s one interesting thing about documentation and it&#8217;s publication,</p>
<p>
So, we&#8217;ve discussed how graffiti traditionally works. A long, slow process at street level towards recognition and &#8220;success&#8221;. The Internet shook things up. You had people come along, spend an afternoon on a sticker, take a photo, put it online, get put on Wooster Collective or something, and become famous overnight (Maybe just for overnight, but hey) This obviously upset the old guard. </p>
<p>
But there&#8217;s another interesting issue; one I come up against myself. All graff/street art is ephemeral, yes?  And the timeline is, for the most part, random and out of the artists control. A work may last years or for only a few hours. But where do you draw the line?</p>
<p>
<a href="http://www.bladediary.com/?p=285">If a work only lasts as long as the time it takes to photograph it</a>, then hasn&#8217;t it stopped being street art and started being just photography? It&#8217;s stopped having a significant impact or presence on the street, after all. </p>
<p>
Not that there&#8217;s anything wrong or insignificant with photography, it&#8217;s a great medium, but it&#8217;s NOT street art. (Just like a legal mural, now matter what style it is done in, is, by definition, NOT graffiti.)</p>
<p>
But if the intent was for the work to last longer than a few seconds, can one still claim that it was street art? The timeline of works is largely out of the artists control, after all.</p>
<p>
I&#8217;m not sure.</p>
<p>
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		<item>
		<title>Bank Envelop Theme Week- To Santa</title>
		<link>http://www.bladediary.com/bank-envelop-theme-week-to-santa/</link>
		<comments>http://www.bladediary.com/bank-envelop-theme-week-to-santa/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 02 Apr 2007 05:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>post</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Blade Diary updates]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Interview]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[New Techniques]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Theory]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[advertising]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bank Envelopes]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[bomb threat]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Boston]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[dead astro]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[dumpster diving]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[LEDS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mooninites]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ohio]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ravenna five]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Torontoist]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">bank-envelop-theme-week-to-santa</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://www.bladediary.com/bank-envelop-theme-week-to-santa/"><img src="http://www.bladediary.com/stencils/2007-04-02-A.jpg" border="0" alt="Comic" /></a></p>This week will be a theme week,
All the art will be on bank deposit envelops.
As I said before: &#8220;I like the idea of my images getting passed through a machine, going through a system.
I like the idea of someone stuffing my art full of money.
Maybe now my art is finally worth something.&#8221;
Also, some more exciting [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://www.bladediary.com/bank-envelop-theme-week-to-santa/"><img src="http://www.bladediary.com/stencils/2007-04-02-A.jpg" border="0" alt="Comic" /></a></p><p>This week will be a theme week,</p>
<p>All the art will be on bank deposit envelops.</p>
<p>As I said <a href="http://www.bladediary.com/old/images/other/bank.html">before</a>: &#8220;I like the idea of my images getting passed through a machine, going through a system.</p>
<p>I like the idea of someone stuffing my art full of money.<br />
Maybe now my art is finally worth something.&#8221;</p>
<p>Also, some more exciting news- Check out the interview <a href="http://www.torontoist.com/archives/2007/04/tall_poppy_inte_48.php">Torontoist</a> did with me!</p>
<p>Here is the text from the interview:</p>
<p><strong><br />
April 2, 2007</p>
<p>Tall Poppy Interview: Posterchild</strong></p>
<p><em><br />
You are more familiar with street artist Posterchild&#8217;s work than you realize. Visit his site Blade Diary, and you&#8217;ll immediately recognize his posters, stencils and outdoor installations. Like fellow stenciler Banksy once said, &#8220;If you have a statue in the city centre you could go past it every day on your way to school and never even notice it, right. But as soon as someone puts a traffic cone on its head, you&#8217;ve made your own sculpture.&#8221; Posterchild isn&#8217;t just putting up drawings on outdoor walls; he&#8217;s changing the way we see our public spaces. And now that you know his works are there, you&#8217;ll start to see them all over the downtown core.Which will naturally make you want to know more about Posterchild. But anonymity is a time-honoured tradition of street and post graffiti artists. After all, postering is quasi-illegal, and look at all the trouble those Aqua Teen Hunger Force guys got into in Boston. Again, separating the artist from the work forces the viewer to participate in the art—to form his or her own ideas about what the artist is trying to say or what the piece means to him. It&#8217;s also ephemeral—a poster may last a day or a year, all the while constantly changing because of wear and tear and more graffiti.</p>
<p>So all we&#8217;ll tell you is this: We met in a downtown café to talk about astronauts, consumerism and garbage picking and this is what he had to say.</p>
<p>Torontoist: Just what is this thing that you do?<br />
Posterchild: It&#8217;s called &#8220;street art.&#8221; Some people use the term &#8220;post-graffiti, but I don’t like to because that implies that graffiti is done and over with. The term [street art] is meant to imply that it has evolved. I&#8217;m trying to do something kinder and gentler and less illegal.</p>
<p></em></p>
<p><em><br />
In your artist statement, you write &#8220;I gather my materials from the flotsam of the urban environment, process it, and return it to the city.&#8221;<br />
I get a lot of my materials from the garbage. I&#8217;ve made posters from blue prints, Christmas wrapping paper or other advertising posters that have been thrown out. I flip them around and print on the back.</p>
<p></em></p>
<p>One reason we&#8217;re obsessed with newness and novelty in our culture is because companies are always trying to sell us their culture. Which becomes non-participatory. To take their detritus, flip it around, and do my own thing on it&#8230;to become an active participant in the culture and put it in a public space is very satisfying.</p>
<p><em><br />
Who is Posterchild?<br />
I chose that name for two reasons—one because I was going to do posters. Two, I wanted a name that would be emblematic of the culture. It puts me on the level of a guerrilla advertiser or a church putting on a bake sale. In Kingston, if you&#8217;re advertising a church bake sale and you do 1000 posters, you can get a huge fine. [Still] you&#8217;re less likely to get in trouble with postering.</p>
<p></em></p>
<p><em><br />
Yet big businesses can put up ads wherever they want…<br />
The number of illegal billboards in Toronto is shocking. Those trucks that drive around town, just idling. That is just the most aggressive thing I&#8217;ve ever seen. But they have the money to back this up. They buy legitimization.</p>
<p></em></p>
<p><em><br />
Which is why it&#8217;s important to create art work for public spaces?<br />
The reason why I like to keep doing it is that no matter what theme you&#8217;re working with, you&#8217;re doing it in a public space, quasi-illegally. And that carries certain messages in the work no matter what the image is. All street art or graffiti is inherently political because you are saying “I don’t think this space should be this way. I think it should be different.”</p>
<p></em></p>
<p><em><br />
But there are risks, like the Mooninite thing in Boston in January. And last April, some teenagers in Ravenna, Ohio were arrested for putting up your Super Mario Boxes…they brought out the Hazmat team for that.</em></p>
<p>One of my fears when I&#8217;m out picking garbage is not that people are going to get angry at me for what I&#8217;m doing, but what they think I might be doing. I&#8217;m a a shadowy guy out at nighttime with a bag full of suspicious, unknown things.</p>
<p>The Mario blocks are a visual touchstone for people of my generation. The idea was to throw a little magic into day-to-day life. We put it up online and people started doing them all overt the world, which was very cool. This was before September 11. In a post-September 11 world, in small town America, this didn&#8217;t fly. There were six girls that did it in their hometown and the bomb squad was called in, and bio-terrorism experts were brought in all for these shiny boxes with question marks on them and flowers inside.</p>
<p>They&#8217;re always called hoax devices, which is not true. But the language that the [authorities] use implies these &#8220;pranksters&#8221; put up these &#8220;hoax devices.&#8221; A hoax what? A hoax bomb, right? It&#8217;s crazy. Only Batman villains would make shiny terrorist boxes with question marks on them. It&#8217;s such a Joker thing to do. Were they expecting a jack in the box wth sleeping gas to pop out?</p>
<p><em><br />
Still you had a blinking LED light on your &#8220;Doomed Astronaut&#8221; installation last February.<br />
I almost didn&#8217;t do &#8220;The Doomed Astronaut.&#8221; And after the Mooninite thing happened, I was kind of glad it was torn down so quickly because I had this nightmare that some one had called a bomb threat in as me, and the police came after me so hard.</p>
<p></em></p>
<p>I thought that the idea was that we weren&#8217;t going to let [the terrorists] affect the way we live, but its been totally the opposite.</p>
<p><em><br />
Your work features a lot of spacemen. What was the idea behind &#8220;The Doomed Astronaut?&#8221;<br />
The deal with that one was that it said &#8220;air supply&#8221; on the front—that&#8217;s were the LED was. And you&#8217;d think &#8220;Oh, he’s gonna be OK.&#8221; But then you&#8217;d realize that [the air supply] was battery powered and that it was going to run out and the astronaut was probably going to die. I do a lot of dead astronauts.</p>
<p></em></p>
<p><em><br />
Why?<br />
Space is the ultimate example of dreaming, of reaching for the stars. It shows the kind of things that are possible at humanity&#8217;s best. The death part is that it doesn&#8217;t always work.</p>
<p></em></p>
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		<title>Dead Astro Throw Up, Follow Up</title>
		<link>http://www.bladediary.com/dead-astro-throw-up-follow-up/</link>
		<comments>http://www.bladediary.com/dead-astro-throw-up-follow-up/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 30 Mar 2007 05:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>post</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Blade Diary updates]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Follow Up]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Interview]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[New Techniques]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Theory]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA["Throw-ups"]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Adam Neate]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banksy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[rant]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[secret identity]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">dead-astro-throw-up-follow-up</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://www.bladediary.com/dead-astro-throw-up-follow-up/"><img src="http://www.bladediary.com/stencils/2007-03-30-A.jpg" border="0" alt="Comic" /></a></p>Here is what is left of the dead astro throw up. It looked good spinning in the wind (alive, dead, alive, dead, ect.) but now the only thing left is the spraycan.
I originally made the stencil on the spraycan to spray on a pair of shoes!
Check them out:




Not too shabby, eh? It was for a [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://www.bladediary.com/dead-astro-throw-up-follow-up/"><img src="http://www.bladediary.com/stencils/2007-03-30-A.jpg" border="0" alt="Comic" /></a></p><p>Here is what is left of the dead astro throw up. It looked good spinning in the wind (alive, dead, alive, dead, ect.) but now the only thing left is the spraycan.</p>
<p>I originally made the stencil on the spraycan to spray on a pair of shoes!</p>
<p>Check them out:</p>
<p><img src="http://www.bladediary.com/other/kshoe1.jpg" alt="" /></p>
<p><img src="http://www.bladediary.com/other/kshoe2.jpg" alt="" /></p>
<p><img src="http://www.bladediary.com/other/kshoe3.jpg" alt="" /></p>
<p><img src="http://www.bladediary.com/other/kshoe4.jpg" alt="" /></p>
<p>Not too shabby, eh? It was for a <a href="http://www.k-spray.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=13">contest</a> and show, and if I had won, these shoes would of been made into a limted edition run and I would of surely became <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chocolate">rich, famous, popular,</a> and maybe a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selling_out">sellout</a>?</p>
<p>But I didn&#8217;t win.</p>
<p>Anyway, today I have some other things to talk about-</p>
<p>First of all, <a href="http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/editorials/article/0,2777,DRMN_23964_5444660,00.html">here is an interesting article</a> that was sent to me by <em>ExPickwickMoose</em>. Perhaps the most interesting thing about the article is <a href="http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/comment/0,1299,DRMN_15_88116,00.html">the comments</a> it has recieved- it&#8217;s drawing out extreme reactions:</p>
<p>&#8220;Boobie traps and a shoot to kill policy. Taggers contribute nothing to society and have no value as humans.&#8221;</p>
<p>&#8220;Give immunity to anyone who kills a tagger&#8221;</p>
<p>&#8220;Why should homeowners and businesses pay anymore for Denver`s Sanctuary City policy? I look forward to reading about a tagger who falls to his/her death on I-25 while trying to tag some high overpass. Messy-cans &amp; taggers = scum.&#8221;</p>
<p>&#8220;You people are despicable, thinking its okay to kill someone over vandalism of property. Grow up.&#8221;</p>
<p> <img src='http://www.bladediary.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_neutral.gif' alt=':|' class='wp-smiley' /> </p>
<p>Second of all, I was interviewed by <a href="http://ourartsite.com/interview/posterchild.php"><em>our art site</em></a>. It&#8217;s a nice interview, nicely laid out too.</p>
<p><a href="http://ourartsite.com/interview/posterchild.php">Check it out</a>, maybe?</p>
<p>Here is the text from the interview:</p>
<p><strong><br />
Posterchild<br />
By Zach Smith</p>
<p></strong></p>
<p><em><br />
Posterchild runs an exciting website where he posts a new wheatpaste image everyday on his site, and not just the lame run-of-the-mill designs either. Posterchild often digs through history to come up with important figures and events, makes the design, and throws it up for his street audience. A great idea, and a great and insightful interview with a powerful force to be reckoned with.How are you able to update your site five times a week with new stencils and wheatpastes you have done? Seriously.</p>
<p></em></p>
<p>I don’t work. Or at least I didn’t. I had some money saved up from my last job when I decided to go into the art thing whole-hog.</p>
<p>The money that I had put aside was intended for school, but I wasn’t accepted anywhere, (again) so I thought I’d use the money to buy myself some time that I could use to dedicate myself to art completely. My long-term girlfriend had just broken up with me too, so I really had nothing else to do at the time anyway.</p>
<p>It’s been great. I absolutely love doing streetart all the time- and having a place to showcase it worldwide. Blade Diary doesn’t get a lot of traffic in internet terms, but when compared to a gallery show, it’s phenomenal. I average about 200 unique users a day. 200. I’m sure if you’ve added up all the people who have ever been to any of my gallery shows (My alter ego is a Mild Mannered studio artist. An earnest but unsuccessful Mild Mannered studio artist.) there might be 200. MAYBE. And each show takes months and months to prepare the work for, not to mention all the organizing and running around a gallery show requires. With Blade Diary- I make a single work, take a photo of it, put it online, and 200+ people check it out. Along with, of course, the audience offline- the primary audience on the street.</p>
<p>In anycase, my money has now run out and I’ve started working a few odd jobs to make ends meet. I hope to be working somewhere a bit more stable in the near future. I don’t want this to affect Blade Diary, but the reality is I may have to reduce the number of updates to twice a week or something in order to keep the quality high.</p>
<p><em><br />
You are now living in Toronto, Canada. How is the street art scene up there?<br />
Great. I think so anyway. I love it. It’s active, so there are things to watch. There isn’t that much “Street Art” to keep a watch on, but there is a wonderfully entrenched Graff scene here.</p>
<p></em></p>
<p>You know, I was just thinking the other day about how similar Bird Watching is to watching Graff.</p>
<p>Most people don’t give a shit about Birds. Everyone knows birds are there, everyone has seen birds before- but few people could tell a Swallow from a Starling. Graff is just like this. Most people don’t care about it. Even though they might see it everyday, it all looks the same to them. But once you get into it, there is so much to become aware of. It’s an interesting, even fascinating, hobby. You notice it go up, you notice when it gets taken down- you can follow the whole lifecycle. You wonder why some things last days and some pieces are dated 2002. You begin to notice certain writers and you start to track their movement through the city. You inevitably pick favourites, and you may even catch one in the act- if you’re lucky. (I never have, they are elusive creatures.)</p>
<p>And I’m not the only one with their eyes to the walls in Toronto- there is an audience here. I remember putting up a few posters and stickers on my way through Toronto years ago, and I was thrilled to see later that someone had taken a photo of some of them and put these photos up on Flickr! That sort of thing would never happen in Windsor, and I put up hundreds, maybe even a thousand posters in Windsor. In fact, when I put up the Mario Blocks in Windsor, people in the area only realized that they were there when it went on the Internet months later. (Granted, the Mario Blocks didn’t last very long, but regardless…)</p>
<p><em><br />
What first got you interested in stencils and putting them up in the streets?<br />
Banksy. In a way I hate to admit it, because my work is often compared -negatively- to his. I’m not trying to be Banksy, so I don’t like it when people tell me that my stuff reminds them of his work.</p>
<p></em></p>
<p>But you know, there are worse people to be compared to, and regardless of everything else that may be true about Banksy, he has been doing it longer, better and more than most.</p>
<p>He also has kept up the magicians act; he hasn’t shown his hand and ruined it. He has kept his secret identity.</p>
<p>Banksy is a super hero.</p>
<p>So, anyway, the first time I saw his work I was blown away. I was still in art school, and it was revitalizing to see some art that people could actually get into without having to have the joke “explained” to them in several paragraphs of artspeak. Adam Neate was a big inspiration to me in the early days too. I loved not only his aesthetic, but how far divorced his work was from “permanent” spraypaint on walls. He took the ephemeralness of street art to an extreme; just leaving his work propped up against walls like rubbish. It was brilliant, and the biggest punishment he could expect for it would be for littering! It made posters and stapeguns seem downright permanent by comparison. So Mr. Neate helped me become Posterchild.</p>
<p>I was also attracted to how prolific these two artists are. They work hard all the time, and the finished product wasn’t some precious, priceless, untouchable relic. Again, this was such a breath of fresh air to someone in the ivory tower environment that art school can be.</p>
<p><em><br />
How do you keep coming up with new stencil ideas day after day?<br />
It’s fun, so it’s easy.</p>
<p></em></p>
<p>Maybe it’ll get hard to do if it stops being fun.</p>
<p><em><br />
Most of the characters you use are actual people in history, and underneath the stencil you provide some information about this person. What gave you this idea to paste up important people lost to history on the city walls?<br />
I don’t know, I think it was just because a friend gave me a big ‘ol history book around the same time I started Blade Diary. I mean, some of the lesser known figures in history are just very interesting, and their stories can often  illustrate some idea I’m trying to explore.</p>
<p></em></p>
<p><em><br />
You say you &#8220;explore, begin to understand, and ultimately change the city in which I&#8217;m living&#8221; &#8211; how is this so?<br />
That’s just how the street artist’s process works. You have an idea. You go out into the city with no real plan on where it should go. In your search for the perfect spot you scout out several alleyways you would have never walked down normally and you find a couple of other potential spots, which you make a mental note about, and when you finally do put your work up, you are quite literally changing the city- if only a small part of it, and if only for a little while.</p>
<p></em></p>
<p>And so on.</p>
<p>Over time, as you explore the city this way, you get to know its streets and alleys better than cab drivers. You also begin to understand something of the character of the city, of particular neighbourhoods, of specific streets. The longer this goes on, the more work you put up, the better your understanding, and the more you’ve changed the city.</p>
<p><em><br />
Do you receive any resistance from the public when posting any stencils in the streets?<br />
Not really. I’ve only ever gotten enthusiasm, suggestions, and offers of help. One time two “Graff watchers” asked permission to take my photo.</p>
<p></em></p>
<p><em><br />
Where do you see your street art heading this year?<br />
Good places. Summer is just around the bend.</p>
<p></em></p>
<p><em><br />
Shout outs, yells, hollers?<br />
To my Friends, My Family, to Toronto, and to anyone who has been checking out the site.</p>
<p></em></p>
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