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).

Sam 'Strictly Business' Falla earned his name from his heads-down attitude to skating, and his highly detailed, meticulously crafted drawings show a similar dedication. Check out some of his drawings on the RWC website here.

When myself, ROST and Kitten Soft set up the CentreFold Gallery in 2008, we were surprised and delighted to see the place become a hub for like-minded local artists. Although CentreFold Gallery is now sadly closed, it helped to create some lasting relationships with other artists and creatives. Sam was a student at this time, but stood out from the crowd simply due to his enthusiasm and immediate grasp of style.

Me and ROST saw Sam come a long way in a very short space of time, and this is probably due to his consistent rate of production. Sam is one of those people who you need to keep an eye on, as every drawing gets better, and you can be sure he will be knocking them out at a healthy rate!

Evolving from his lo-fi photography, zine and street work comes this excellent music blog from Alex 'Tape Echo'. True to his early work, which I have followed since meeting Alex at foundation-level art education, his blog over at http://www.tape-echo.com is beautifully illuminated with Alex's trademark black and white photography and characteristically DIY design aesthetic. For the audio Tape-Echo experience, head over to his podcast here.

Alex has a remarkably sharp eye and ear for good art and music, and his creative style has always been very stripped down and idiosyncratic. I think this is why his ideas translate so fluidly between different mediums, while remaining instantly recognizable. This style is reflected equally in prints, zines, street work, poetry, mixes, DJ sets, and perhaps this is also what makes this music blog stand out. His 'Web Zine' is not just about the sounds of good music, but equally about the clandestine exchange of dubplates, the claustrophobic basement dances of the Bristol scene and the late night, coffee fuelled bedroom mixing sessions; strictly vinyl-only and played on a pair of 1210s and a mixer.

Alex's unique and eloquent perspective on dance and bass music culture is essential reading, and as such he is a name to watch in every aspect of the bass music scene, from production to photography.

The mastermind of Readers' Wives Collective, and cut and paste extraordinaire ROST ONE has just launched a blog for his personal work. Expect daily collage posts as ROST can knock out brilliant work at a million miles an hour!

Here's a taster, fly over to his blog immediately to see more.

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:

Readers' Wives Collective have just launched their new website, check it out to see work by me and the rest of the crew...

Here's the address: http://www.readerswivescollective.com

My RWC colleague Strictly Biz has also set up a blog to showcase his awesome drawing skills. Check it out here.

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 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.

My friends at TAPE-ECHO.COM have just posted up their first podcast. I listened to it earlier today and it's exactly my cup of tea; jazz, dubstep UK funky and techno all with a strong dubby vibe throughout.
TAPE-ECHO.COM represents everything that is analogue, so expect nothing less than real vinyl mixed live on real Technics 1210s!
Check it out, it's perfect summer listening!

Was dredging my hard drive today and found these RWC related paste-ups.

...and here's a rather superlative paste-up by RWC affiliate Black Cloud. Haven't seen much work from him recently, wonder what happened to him...