mytarpit

12 days to go....

Yip...12......
I won't bore you with my state of mind at the minute, but I will apologise for not keeping a proper countdown on my blog. It really was my intention to document the preparation for the show on a daily basis but 1) I never quite found the time to sit down and blog about it, 2) the lack of momentum with some of the pieces was to depressing to write about/ remind myself about.. and 3) I've been secretly having a ball with the lovely Rockpool Candy at:
The Supreme Broship art show in London where we hooked up with the 8-Bit crew for a few days ...

(Jim Mahfood and Scott Campbell being Bros!!)
..... and participating in the underground madness that was CRACK! in Rome...


... but I'm back in front of my canvases now so no excuses! Does anyone know where I can buy adult sized nappies 'cos I'm shi

Shortsighted s-of-b's!

Yip, it's a sad fact but our world is ruled by short sighted, narrow minded S.O.B's!
Having spent a lot of time travelling through some of the coolest cities in the world one thing struck me, they'd be nothing without the artistic back bone that runs through them. Everywhere you go you can see examples of how it's the artists and musicians who move into undesirable areas of cities 'cos they're cheap and turn them into the hip areas of town. They inevitably bring colour, sounds, cool bars/deli's and give it a great vibe. Then as night follows day they become victims of their own success and get priced out of their little Bohemia's...the suits move in and cash in on it all, suffocate it all, kill it and move on. This is a natural process, it's always happened and it always will.
Look at the east-end of London it was a hot bed of underground art, some small pockets of it still are. It's a cool place to live and visit. Couldn't afford to live there but hey-Ho!

Anyway, there is a little city that is trying to encourage this type of evolution.....BELFAST.

But in their usual stupid-assed way they doing it all wrong. All the art is being shipped in, the galleries are starting out as pretentious idiots, and the powers that be (that's a joke for a start) are throwing money at wrong people/organisations in the hope that they can buy a creative legacy.
There's a cool little shop in a grey area of this grey city is LOKO. They sell locally made skateboards, cool gear and most importantly the paints and materials that the local artists use and need. They got local artist DRIS to transform their shop shutters with a brilliant piece of art....

.......and what do they get for their troubles...they have to paint over it.

Meanwhile up the road a rather posh gallery gets a huge amount of cash from the local government to change it's logo. Now I don't live in Belfast,  but I've been to LOKO and I can tell you that we need shops like this to thrive, because it's shops like them who encourage artists to thrive! And frankly this place shines out like glitter on a turd! I could go on, but just let me say that if Belfast doesn't encourage it's local underground artists it's creative boom will be short lived and hollow!

Right I'm off for a pint!

Lodown on I am 8-bit....part the PARTY!

Okay.

Last part of the I am 8-bit blog... the opening night.

First of all I'd like to say the whole experience with Jon And Derek and crew was fucking amazing! The people I met, the fact that all of the artists I talked to are great people, very supportive, very cool! A real privilege!

The opening night party was bloody cool.....

.....probably too cool for me to adequately describe with my limited vocab. So just a few points:

1. Check out Leeni, her music was the business!

2. Scott Campbell is a talented,genuinely funny artist type dude!

 

3. For once I wasn't at the back of the queue.

4. The coolest thing of all! Some of the guys who pick up a tarpitter turned up at the opening! They were really nice people and they really loved the mytarpit ethos.....so come on, if you find one come join the club!

And the coolest skater in LA..

Thank you the city of angles!

You've been a great crowd!

Good Night!

Lodown on I am 8-bit....part the TARPITTERS!

Alrighty then, I split the photos of the L.A tarpitters into 2 galleries. Now some tarpitters have been found and some haven't. Don't be put off by the fact that the opening is over (and I took so long to post this!), there are still some top quality canvases out there. If you found one email me here at mytarpit towers, let me know why you decided to take it and where it's new home is. Go on join the growing legions of Mytarpitters....you know you want to!
Click HERE for gallery 01...
And HERE for gallery 02...

                                                                   And HERE for gallery 03.......

                                    And               HERE              for gallery 04.

Lodown on I am 8-bit....part the HSU!

As I blogged perviously there was already the Crazian! exhibition on in the gallery when we got there. One artist work stood out like a standy out thing and that was the unbelievably talented Martin Hsu.

We were standing admiring his pieces when in walked the man himself. We talked to him for ages... probably too long as his folks were waiting in the car outside!
I knew I wanted to get Martin on board the old mytarpit train, but I didn't expect him to be sooooo into it!
How cool! He was genuinely the nicest guy and I can't wait to get our heads together and come up with something spectacular! So I won't gush any further as I don't want to put him off working with me for good.
His pieces in the Crazian! show were one off paintings of his stunning t-shirt designs. The Propapanda painting is hopefully going to be adopted as a military symbol by the pandas when they rise up and kick our collective arses:
Viva la Panda!
Have a look at the gallery, have a look at his website and then spend lots in his online shop....this guy deserves to be on the tip of every art lovers tongue! Martin we salute you!

Lodown on I am 8-bit....part the Torchinsky!

As the show was about who artists were/are influenced by those early brightly coloured computer games,what better place could there be to show off the boffinesque talents of Jason Torchinsky.

Jason had already made contributions to previous I am 8-bit shows, in particular he is known for his giant Atari joystick. It really is a fantastic experience to Control a game with this monster, it really does transport you back to your youth....back to when those joysticks were objects of mysterious powers who let you influence the video madness that was on the screen (just before that bubble was popped by your best friend who took his apart and showed you the disappointing and primitive mechanism that it actually was!).

Anyway this was one of two interactive experiences that Jason brought to the party. The second looked like something out of a Woody Allen film. In consisted of a series of 3 metal orbs that were held by 3 different people, left and right on one, up and down on the second, and fire on the third. These were used to control the on screen antics. Unfortunately I didn't get to play this one or even see it in action but I heard loads of people talking about how cool it was. I think there is footage of it in action on the World of Wonder site.

In my humble opinion the best thing that Jason brought to the show was an old beaten up arcade game from Kyrgyzstan.......DEAD GOAT POLO!!!! I shit you not! Jason went to the trouble of typing out the back story to his discovering this machine so I'll let him tell it in his own words:

Ulak-Tartysh
Kyrgyzstani Video Game, 1983
Mailuu-Suu, Kyrgyzstan

This amazing piece of Soviet Bloc-era technology is here because of a small car.

I was given a Polski Fiat 126 by a friend in Poland who knew my interest in small, weird cars. The catch was, I had to somehow get it to Los Angeles on my own. Via a chain of friends of friends of brothers of cousins of friends, I was put in contact with a Mr.Godzwa of Polamer Cargo, who offered to fit the car on a container he had going out that had some empty space.

However, the space proved to be far too small, even for the diminutive Polski Fiat. As a way of apologizing for the shipment not working out, Mr.Godzwa was able to fit something much smaller in the available extra space of the container: this old, abandoned arcade machine. Mr.Godzwa knew of my interest in old video games, as in the course of our discussions the Giant Atari Joystick came up, and with that the whole 'i am 8 bit' show, and my obsessive interest in such things.

When I got the message to go to Long Beach to pick up an item, I was puzzled, as Mr.Godzwa told me the Fiat wouldn't fit. What I found was even better. Based on what Mr.Godzwa told me, the Ulak-Tartysh machine was made in Kyrgyzstan in the 1980s and was used in a youth center there for years. After the Soviet Union fell, Kyrgyzstan was on hard times, and almost anything that could be sold was; the machine was sold in a bulk lot to a Polish amusements distributor, and spent much of the intervening time languishing in warehouses. Polamer Shipping ended up with the machine when it was found abandoned in a warehouse they bought.

Ulak-Tartysh, I learned, is a popular sport in much of the old Eastern Bloc, and can best be described as polo played with a dead goat instead of a ball, and with a decidedly much less snooty fan base. It's a dirty, brutal game, but exciting, and excellent for a simple early video game. The machine seems to have been built (as well as I can tell) by a military electronics factory in the industrial town of Mailuu-Suu. It's based on what appears to be a KR1858VM1 chip, which was a copy of the Z80. Most of the other chips are TTL logic ones, with very little large-scale integration. The video seems to be about 148x116 (?) with what I think are 8 colors.

To restore it, I cleaned up the case, and replaced the power supply system with a cobbled-together 110V unit, from the 220V it originally had. I've made repairs, and had to replace the screen, but beyond that it's as I got it. I left the case in its battered state, but the marquee cleaned up surprisingly well. I'm not sure of what all the words mean, but via an online Kyrgz dictionary, it seems the TAPT button means "grab" or something similar, and I think it says "GOOD!" when you get a goal.

I hope everyone appreciates and enjoys this strange visitor from a land and time long gone.

-- Jason Torchinsky, August 2008

Have a look at the gallery.
Oh yeah, one last thing: thanks Jason for giving me that wide-eyed wonder that I thought I'd lost!

Lodown on I am 8-bit....part the Invader!

This was an unexpected highlight. Jon managed to persuade Invader to come back to L.A (as a rule once he's tagged a city he doesn't tag it again), and it was so cool to meet him after reading so much about him and his work.
There was a camera crew present to record the event for G4 so there was a bit of waiting around while they got their shots etc. But then the moment came and Jon shuddered around the corner of the gallery driving an elevated platform buggy thing. 2 words for you.. "health" and "Safety"! Christ that thing swayed all over the place. That coupled with the fact that people in Hollywood don't give a shit where they walked, made for a nervous couple of hours.

It was cool to see Invader at work. I thumbed through his London book while his was swaying in the breeze, he is one talented Dude!
He signed some of his books for the show and was easily persuaded to do a canvas for mytarpit...he loved the concept. Now, I decided not to put this tarpitter up in LA as Jon started to get emails from people saying things like "why does LA get all the cool shit". So it will be stuck up somewhere, and I've got somewhere in mind...watch this space!

Once he'd finished  we went to a burger joint called L'il Devils and had the best kobe burgers on earth, and we chatted away. He has such a cool attitude to his work, a real groovy ethos...almost as groovy as mytarpit....HA HA!

Have a James Duke at the Invader gallery....

Lodown on I am 8-bit....part the Mahfood

One of the real pleasures of this whole LA thang was meeting and getting to spend time with some great artists. Artists who ,I've said before, I have watched from afar (collected their toys, read their interviews etc).

The first of this group of artists that I'd ever encountered was JimMahfood.His comic art and his philosophy on self publishing comics were an inspiration to me, he was is a comic artist with that real punk attitude. Go to amazon and buy Grrl Scouts or the Stupid Comics compilation they are fantastic pieces of comic art storytelling.

I had the privilege of seeing Jim at work in his studio/flat, and got to see first hand his colossal work rate. There where pages of cool artwork taped up everywhere, I didn't take photos in case he twigged me for a fan boy stalker. He's also doing some ltd edition art cans for Colt 45, which I don't think you can get in the U.K, which looked as cool as!
He was well up for doing some canvases for mytarpit/I am 8-bit (although where he found the time to do them is beyond me) and to top it all he invited me for a few beers at his favourite joint. Cool guy, and check out his cool show pieces:
and of course where you have Steve, Billy is sure to follow.....

The starting point for both these cool artworks was the photographs. Jim just stuck 'em onto board and started drawing from there!...talented fucker that he is!

Check out his gallery.

Lodown on I am 8-bit....part the CHUNG!

Right, I know that this is turning into a bit of a gushfest but if you want to read about shit artists then you'd better go to I can't paint for toffee.com.

I met Dave Chung after Jon said he was really up for doing some canvases. I'd already seen the piece he did for the show -
  - which in my humble opinion was probably the best piece there. I mean it is Bionic Commando! The colours and the humour are just fucking spot on...genius! Anyhoo, I got to talk to Dave and he was so approachable and had the same wicked humour that is apparent in his work. The other thing that I liked about Dave is that he was as astounded that people were so into what he did, in a genuine way. He came back to gallery to finish the edging on his canvas where I was able to fob some mini canvases off on him.

I'm gushing again... but fuck me this guy is talent on legs.
Go look on his site...now!.. but not before you check out the Chung gallery.
He painted some awesome canvases for mytarpit and I decided not to put them up in L.A, I have a couple of places in mind for the Chungpitters... watch this space!

Lodown on I am 8-bit....part the Roma

First up, apologies to to Tony Roma..... he's a great artist and for some  reason I don't have any pictures of his main piece. If you see other photos of the show his piece is the one above the bar, beside Gabe's figures. Tony was really up for doing a canvas and boy did he deliver. I feel bad that I didn't get time to talk to Tony more but he was in the gallery when it was all a bit hectic. But a big thanks Tony, and please email me with more details and pictures and Ill put 'em on the site.