This weekend the RWC crew were invited to paint a 100 foot wall at the Guernsey Festival of the Performing Arts, and we invited some of our friends from Jersey to help out.

I collaborated with Strictly Biz (RWC), who painted some super-crisp ooze designs intertwined with some of my letters and skulls. It turned out great and I'm looking forward to working with him again.

Watch this space for photographs of the whole wall, featuring Sao, Evil Spoon and Scyte (Jersey), alongside Rost, Ster and Cose (RWC).

A Facebook devoted entirely to vinyl toy enthusiasts? Yes, it sounds insane. And extremely nerdy, but Show Me Your Vinyl is actually turning out to be a great idea. I joined only a few days ago, and already people are sending me messages asking about my work, and I have even been selected to be the featured artist of the week!

Through SMYV I met Stephen Benzel, who asked me if I would like to donate some work to his charity, Leukemia Can Kiss My @$$! He's a very nice fella and he's working for a very good cause, so shoot over to his website here and buy something! There's loads of great stuff by some some amazing artists for sale, and 50% of all proceeds go straight into leukemia research!

Come on folks, dig deep!

Check out these new drawings, left over from 'Small Stuff 4' at the Bear and Bird Gallery in Florida. Both are 6"x6" Acrylic ink drawings on 18mm thick MDF board.

Head over to my shop to pick one up.

I have finally got my hands on the pics from the RWC vs Quirk lady-scribbling session! As you can see, Lucy at Quirk has done a great job of documenting what turned out to be a very fun, if alcohol-fueled, afternoon. Our excuse was that it was all in aid of launching our new website, and we're sticking to it!

Here's what I came up with, thanks to Livz and Jenny for being very patient and still...

RWC's youngest member, Strictly Biz lived up to his name...

And here's Rost One's work:

Myself and the rest of the Readers Wives crew had a very fun drawing session last Sunday. Quirk Photography organised some very sexy, semi-naked girls to draw on instead of boring old canvasses, so thanks to Lucy from Quirk for hooking us up!

Apart from being very rock and roll, this project was to coincide with the relaunch of the RWC website, which is coming soon. That means you're going to have to wait for the full set of pictures, but here's a couple of teasers...

I'm going to be painting at the Chaos Weekend tomorrow, and I'm very excited. It's been ages since I've chilled outside in the sun with my homies and a few buckets of mulsh. Hopefully see you there!

Here's a painting I finished today.
38cmx39cm, Emulsion and POSCA on 6mm MDF.
For sale: £40 + shipping.

Here's some skulls I painted today, hope you like them. They're for sale for £20 each plus shipping.
If you REALLY like them, you can have all 4 for £60.
They are 15cmx15cm, made of emulsion and POSCA on 18mm MDF.

In other news, my 7'' Munnys for the Munny Munth Contest arrived today, and I'm getting to work immediately. Watch this space!

I also found this amazing artist on the Eye Candies Blog, his name is James Roper.

Aphrodite from Eye Candies interviewed me this week, and today she has posted the whole interview up on her blog, along with some images of my work.
It's always quite enjoyable to rattle on about your work, I just hope it all makes sense.

Here's some chalky collabs I did with Black Cloud in 2008.
If you want to get in touch with Black Cloud contact me and I can pass on your message.

I caught up with Rost, who has been dubbed the 'Midnight Chalker', to ask him about the chalk messages he has written around St. Peter Port. Here's what he had to say...

How many chalk messages are there in total, and how long did the whole process take?

It took 10 hours straights and I think there are about 600 in total, I have about 900 on my list, but I’m lazy.
 
Are all of the messages in your own words?

It’s about 50/50. Some are famous quotes, phrases, sayings, song lyrics and the rest are my thoughts, ideas, feelings and musings.
 
Are you worried that you might get into trouble for defacing public property, and do you think that your chalk messages count as criminal damage?

No.
 
What response to your messages have you had from the public?

I’m not sure; it’s hard to tell.  From what I’ve heard on the Guernsey grapevine it’s been a talking point for the whole community, which is what it was supposed to be.
 
Did anyone see you writing your messages, and if so, how did they react?

Yes. Lots of people saw. I wasn’t very subtle about it. About 40 people stopped to talk to me whilst I was in the process of doing it, only one had a problem with it and she phoned the Police.  Everybody else seemed really positive and a couple of people even thanked me.
 
How did you come up with the idea?

It’s something that myself and a good friend came up with about 5 or 6 years ago. It had more of a political slant to it back then. The plan was to get lots of people involved and cover the whole town over night. Because we owned a TV back then we always found a reason not to do it.
 
I kept the list we compiled then and started scrawling the phrases and sayings into my paintings and collages. The trouble with including them in my artwork is that often they get overlooked as people will only spent a few seconds looking at the artwork and miss them in the dense layers.
 
Over the years I kept adding to the list and just recently I felt that it was about time it had an outing. I wanted the one-liners not to be missed and this seemed the best way to do it.
 
What is it all about?

For such a small community we don’t really talk much. You see people in the street that you see every morning at the same time on your way to work and you know nothing about their story. Are they happy? Do they have someone to hug? Did they write this? I wanted to create something that would make people ask questions about themselves and the other people they share the space with.
 
I wanted the project to really communicate at a basic level with the viewers so that they could relate to the words that were written. Some people that know me will really connect and understand some of the chalkings but the project as a whole is in no means directed towards any one person.
 
“You be the pegs and I’ll be the line and we can hang out and we’ll be just fine.”
 
Many of the chalkings express typical feelings and emotions that everyone feels when they are in love or depressed or poor or worried or excited or happy. I can obviously only give my version of these events, but I think they are universal enough that everyone can relate. I also wanted to write reassuring messages to help people through the day and give them something to smile about on their way to work; with the idea that they would hopefully discuss what they had experienced with their colleagues.
 
“Someone like you could make a difference.”
 
Many of the one-liners are my musings on life, especially relationships, not just my most recent relationship but all my previous forays into love. I didn’t want the sayings to express just the pain and heartache of relationships, many of them recall great times that I’ve shared with people to.
 
“I would be late for work every morning just so I could lay next to you for an extra 5 minutes.”
 
Many of the chalkings were placed in very specific places that hold a place in my heart where I felt actual real emotions or hold distinct memories from my childhood. These are important to the narrative of the story being told. Again, it’s not just my story, it’s the story of the streets.
 
“If these walls could chalk.”
 
Is there anything else you would like to add?

I really do miss my Gran and wished I had talked to her more about life and although I’ve never told her I love my mum more than she can imagine.

Until yesterday, Guernsey's graffiti/street art scene has been pretty much limited to studio work, with the exception of the infamous 'Isolation' stencils. The island is just too small to get away with illegal painting, as Isolation found out when he was quickly caught and fined a whopping £1000. The director of the local state-funded gallery, The Greenhouse, even received personal threats for inviting street artists Matt Sewell and Mysterious Al for an exhibition in 2006.

But yesterday, Rost from the Readers' Wives Crew has revealed the future for Guernsey street art: chalk!

Hundreds of humourous and poetic messages have been written on pavements and walls throughout St. Peter Port, and the public reaction seems very positive. I'm told that writing with chalk on the streets and on walls is perfectly legal. After all, the rain will wash it away, and failing that, a bucket of water will do the trick.

This chalk offensive is not without it's precedents; many of the more lovesick messages written by Rost remind me of Black Cloud's work from 2008:

This piece is, in my opinion, one of the finest pieces of street work in Guernsey. It has a certain beauty on it's own, but it didn't take long for passers-by to start adding to it, and in time it became a sort of shrine for the lovesick. Next to the text "I'm crazy about you, I just don't know how to tell you" someone has written "Tell her".
As far as I know, it's is still there.

In know I'm not alone in thinking that there is something really good going on here, so buy some chalk and get busy!

Read more here