The LTRHDS show will be launching this his Friday.

The LTRHDS blog has daily updates of some dope mini interviews with the artists, including the following interview with Usugrow.

Keep checking www.LTRHDS.com/blog for more.

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You have described yourself as a Shinganist–an outsider. You seem to have adopted a very simple way of life… In consumer-driven Japan do you feel like an outsider? Or do you feel that your art is distinctly Japanese?

Certainly, I chose to live very simply in this consumer society… My lifestyle is like a cave person, digging up a potato and exchanging it for a necessary thing. However I don’t consider myself in this world as an outsider even though other people say so.

Sadly but also happily, I am surely a part of society. There are lots of crappy systems… On the other hand, there are also the systems that help us in society. Everything has two sides. You can’t just nibble here and there. I think it’s important to strive and fly the flag… I am not willing to run away from there.

You might get drunk with your mohawk hair, crying against society at a punk rock club, but you will be lining up at the ATM to get some cash and using a post office to send mail to your friend. Don’t you think it’s inconsistent? I am definitely a Japanese artist. You can tell that from my work and lifestyle, in a good and bad way.

Your work tends to feature skulls and motifs of death, yet it has a great sense of peace and beauty to it. To what extent is this a reflection of your own philosophy towards being? Do you consider yourself to be a spiritual person?

I used to draw skulls before because they just look cool, but things have changed recently. There is no more interesting motif than a skull, and I think they fit my philosophy. A skull is a symbol of death, but it also represents a life at the same time. A skull is not originally a skull from the beginning.

You lived, died and became a skull. I want to treat a skull more beautifully as a symbol of universal nature in everyday life. Isn’t it good to have a beautiful skull? I don’t enjoy the feeling of discomfort or consider it cool when a kind of skull appears in a horror movie or on the cover of a heavy metal album causing an unpleasant feeling.

Sometimes I like such a mood just for fun, but it’s not what I want. Also, regarding your question if I consider myself to be a spiritual person, I think everyone has a spiritual feeling and feels that in their everyday life.

For example, when you win a lottery, or when you get a phone call from someone that you are just about to ring. It totally depends on how you feel it… Some people think it’s spiritual and some people think that they are just lucky. But I am sure there are some senses that you can feel but can’t explain well.

The subject of your work shares much in common with traditional tattoo art. Have you ever considered becoming a tattooist? Are you directly inspired by traditional Japanese tattoo art?

It’s a tough question. I was influenced by tattoos because I used to love traditional Japanese tattoos, Chicano style, primitive tribals and their history, so I’ve used it in my work before. I actually used to tattoo people sometimes over ten years ago, but I stopped a couple of years ago.

I don’t have good skills and my attitude towards tattoos became more clear. I don’t want to open any stores or become famous as tattoo artist.

Tattoos are a very personal thing and you’ve got to be responsible for the people you tattoo. It’s totally different from product design or fine art. You’ve got to work with one person responsibly and you’ve got to live a life that makes a person feel honored.

The thing I was most influenced by is not the design of Japanese tattoos, but the traditional spirituality. There are lots of tattoo studios, but all the tattoo artists that I admire are working consistently in a very quiet place, not at an open studio.

I would love to study and begin again ‘cause it’s very creative and I should be responsible for those people that I’ve tattooed before in my practice. So, if I ever begin again I wouldn’t want to tell anyone. This may sound annoying, but it’s not true that money solves problems.

The punk scene had a profound influence over your work. Why do you think music has such an immense power over the way we think and relate to the world? What makes music so powerful and seductive?

As I mentioned above about the spiritual thing… Music is quite spiritual as well. You feel so high when listening to a fast punk beat or heavy metal sound, and you are healed by top-forty cheap love songs that pop into your ears on the street.

We should leave it to the scholars to find out why this happens so we can all live everyday in a creative and positive way by devoting ourselves to music. People have been healed by the power of music since primitive times, so music will never die. Same thing with art. After all, we are all spiritual and primitive animals, I think.

Your art is so precise and delicate… Are you a perfectionist? Are you one of those artists who will destroy a whole piece if one line is out of place? Or are you more relaxed and willing to let your pen guide your hand?

Sometimes I am a perfectionist, sometimes instinctive. Yes, I will destroy a whole piece if one line is out of place, depending on the piece. But this doesn’t happen every time. It totally depends on the work or its purpose. I think it’s necessary to make a choice in everyday life… Whether to believe in your intuition or do everything perfectly.

As for my work, I need perfect details in order to make the comfortable intuitive lines stand out. After all, everything has two sides and it’s important to know both sides, I think. And it’s my philosophy of my art and life.

Below are examples of artwork by Bene.

The mexican artist  Saner is showing his canvases at POW Gallery in London, as it says on the Juxtapoz Magazine’s website.

He usually paints skulls, blooded figures, dark scenes that’s related to death which is  very much part of the mexican culture.

But is not just on canvas that he express himself and his native culture, he paints on walls too and is an amazing graffiti artist.

Painting in Valencia (Spain).

He´s  also into the toy art and made some very cool ones!

Check more of his works at his flickr.

Skate/snowboard photographer Yoshihiro Higai is having his 2nd exhibition “Cold Frame” at Studio Fish i in Daikanyama (sorry there doesn’t seem to be any English info available).

To check the extent of what he has done check out the “Skate 80’s” section on his site:

http://www.venus.dti.ne.jp/~higai/

The also famous twin brothers in the graffiti world, besides OsGemeos (which actually means “The Twins” in portuguese), How and Nosm, now living in NYC but born in Spain, travel all around the globe painting cool characters and some dope letters on the streets. 

And this time they came to Brazil and painted on Rio de Janeiro city pretty much everything they laid eyes on.

They could not pass by Brazil without leaving their marks on a train, since they painted trains in almost every part of the world.

They painted 50 walls in Rio ! And you can check it all  on their flickr page !

The brazilian graffiti artist, Hyper stepped up another level, once again !

He used to paint very futuristic images like this one :

Always reflecting about the future of the human kind, the planet, interacting techonology with nature, trying to make us think about the way we live and where we´re going.

He always kept his influence from his dreams, studies, connections, and this time is no different but his works for 2010, the series called ORIGINS, are “a little bit”  different…

So I had a little chat/interview with him to find out: What´s with the whole indian thing ???

Hyper: At the end of the year of 2009 I had a dream, with an indian shaman  talking to me and I couldn´t stop thinking about it…so I bought a book called “Much before 1500” (which is how many years passed since the Portuguses found Brazil, as the history goes)

In the streets of Belo Horizonte city, his hometown.

Miss G : And what did that book say ?

Hyper: The book says that Brazil was the first land ever to exist, that is the birth of all civilizations, about the shamans and their philosophies…

Sculpture made for an art show.

Miss G : What did the shaman tell you on that dream ?

Hyper: He talked about how the humanity evolved technologically and how that kept us away from the truth and made our future what it is today. That mankind had two different futures ahead of us, one with the sight of destruction, as it is happening, and one that would come from the reunion of the nature with the unity spirit of men… a hippie’s dream ! (laughs)

Miss G : How did the dream become art ?

Hyper : I thought it had a lot to do with my artwork. I was going throught a phase when I wasn´t feeling inpired to create. I was blocked. I needed something new.  And my work is about technology so mixing up that with everything I studied, I crazed it up a little  and that´s what it came out… (laughs)

Hyper,Dalata, Nao and Mona (both from Chile)

He’s an incredible artist, really into what he´s doing, he takes his message and his art very seriously, even the more vandal side of it, bombing. He also makes music and sings (you can check it on his myspace page).

Here is him on a rite of energy passing.

Miss G : Did you ever go to a record label ?

Hyper: No… I don´t have that kind of feeling with music or anything… at least for now. I just like doing it! I think is to keep record of my ideas and thoughts in a more artistic way, to share it, exchange of information really. If  at some point it turns out to be more than that is because someone liked it.

Works with Dalata, also from BH city.

Hyper: My intention is to produce, period. You can´t paint all the time so I try to occupy my time with productive things. I like music, I listen to it all day and I keep banging on things, I like writing, to produce a music…just like graffiti, I do it because I like it ! What comes next is consequence.

As before, his paintings were so beatifull and realistic in a way that made us think that the future could be exactly how he painted…and now even thought his influence is from the past he still show us a  future that could be, if everything were different.

Let´s hope and make a better future for ourselves! Keep it green !

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MPgaX7-F_A[/youtube]

The wordly known street artist, Banksy made a movie which is described on its trailer as “The world´s first street art disaster movie”. Seems like a  very funny movie, with lot of street action shots, even if is not successful ones, looks like it will be very fun to watch.

Check out the trailer :

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTlm6dU2xHk[/youtube]

The release is scheduled to March 5th in UK cinemas, and there´s still no news about the release in other areas so far, but you can check all the news about the movie at http://www.banksyfilm.com/

Creativity goes a long way ! Keep expanding your horizons!

Is there anything you want to know about spray paint history, brands, charts, collections and much more ?

So go check out the Cap Matches Color website for everything there ever was to know about spray paint!

There you´ll find cool ads like these ones

Plus interviews with graffiti writers from back then, like Sen One and others, telling their racking stories, the best and worst spray paints and painting experiences, with awesome photos from the old school.

In this photo, Sen and his IBM CREW :SHOOT, PEL (RIP), SEN-1, POZE, POKE, WEST, LONE, NEL (RIP), ECO.

They also accept contributions of photos,artworks and interviews from old school writers, so if you were there share the history!

Even Martha Cooper contributed (which is how I found out about the site in the first place), after all that´s all she ever did to the graffiti and hip hop culture !

Dondi’s hand spraying a Krylon’s can.

You got to learn where you came from to know where you going !

The graffiti artist REVOK1 did a good job posting about the artist, dj and “that dude” on the Die Antwoord music video “Enter the ninja”, LEON BOTHA.

If you know none of them…go find out!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wc3f4xU_FfQ[/youtube]

And he is also doing a photographic exhibition, in collaboration with Gordon Cark, called “Who Am I? Transgressions”.

Check his website for more.

Oh! And yes, Leon is also the longest know living survivor of Progeria, a condition that makes him look like’ he’s 80 years old when he’s actually 24.

Looks more like a “motivation” than a “condition” to me…after all is just a matter of perspective, so try a more positive and productive one!

Keep it up!!!