The show commemorated the 18th birthday of Anti Hero Skateboards, and I can't quite believe they're only now legal. McNett is one of my personal favorite artists and it was great to see the woodblock, the print, and the deck all displayed together. It really brought the creation of the boards to life, and the energy imbued in the woodblock is unmistakable in the completed deck. I got there just as it opened, and the prints were already selling like hot-cakes, and I'm sure it only accelerated through the night. It was awesome to see it all together, and I hope it got more rowdy as the beers were drunk and the sun went down. Happy birthday, Anti Hero!
Words & Photos: Rachel Ralph - rachel(at)fecalface.com
LAGUNA BEACH, CA: We cruised down to check out Dennis McNett's much anticipated solo show, Wolfbat Shamans and The Whale of Gratitude, at AR4T gallerySaturday, February 4th, presented by VANS. The show was hands down amazing,from hand-carved wood Shaman Masks and totem faces, Portholes, Shields, prints, and a seriously impressive installation–the Whale of Gratitude. Congrats on a great show Dennis. Everyone should go see this show which is up for about 2 months!
"McNett's artistic practice focuses on storytelling through mythopoetic images, sculptures, and public events/performances. His vocabulary of images borrows freely from Greek and Norse myths, Mexican muertos, and the animal kingdom, all synthesized into an idiosyncratic style that is deeply heartfelt. Often inspired by the spirits of close friends and admired figures, McNett has evolved these characters into a unique and personal mythology. Chief among these is the "Wolfbat," a flying creature with bat wings and the head of a wolf. Inspired by the misunderstood Fenris of Norse myth, the Wolfbat "wakes up the sleeping spirit" and was featured in the 2007 Deitch Projects Art Parade in the form of masks worn by participants. Other characters and creatures include eagles, wolves, and skeletons, some of which have been developed into live, impromptu performances in the public sphere." - AR4T press release.
Here's a whole view of one side of the gallery with Dennis's installation of the Wolfbat Shamans and the Whale of Gratitude.
A large selection of NYC based Dennis McNett's woodcut prints, sculptural forms, wall installations, paper mache masks in mythical and animalistic creations come to AR4T Gallery in Laguna Beach, CA with an opening set for Saturday, Feb 4th. Here's a little bit of a taste.
Dennis held a one day show @FFDG back in '09 as part of our In-N-Out series. Photos.
Got an email from NYC based and Pratt professor Dennis McNett who just got home after a 3 month tour of 10 places across the U.S. doing performances or a parade at each stop with local students, artists, wolfbats, etc... Stops included Vermillion, SD, Bellingham, WA, Madison, WI, Jacksonville. FL, St. Louis, MO, Kansas City, MO, Emporia Kansas, Wichita, KA, Omaha, NE, Lubbock, TX, and Odessa, TX.
This adventure involved sacrificial burnings, fortune telling pinatas, overrun streets, metal bands, trains, ufo's, chupakabras, viking ships, and blood ice castles. Here is a small taste of the chaos.
Photos from the raucous Viking Parade opening of Dennis McNett's solo show at Joshua Liner Gallery. Live drummers played inside the viking ship as it paraded around Chelsea with a horde of vocal vikings surrounding it. Once back at the gallery Natur played a set inside another viking ship while people set off fireworks and launched homemade hot air ballons. -Tod Seelie
Our friend and NYC based artist Dennis McNett is preparing for his show Reaping Waves, Vital Vessels, and the Passing of the Wolfbats opening Dec 16th at NYC's Joshua Liner Gallery. He emailed over some of his recent work. Dennis showed last year at FFDG as part of our IN-N-OUT series. Check the photos. It was a super fun show.
Dennis would like you to know that he's looking for participants to join the parade/procession through Chelsea with a 24 foot viking ship. Contact him through his website if you wanna join the fun.
NYC based wood block printer Dennis McNett (who showed at FFDG last summer) created the artwork for a curent Barney's window display in NYC... Looks great. Congrats, Dennis. Check it out
Animalania @Fuse Monday, 23 February 2009 /// Written by Julian Duron
Fuse in NYC hosted a nice little group show last week curated by photographer Aliya Naumoff that included a variety of artists such as AJ Fosik, Dennis McNett and Ryan McGinley.
Andreas interviews this Pratt printmaking teacher whose contrasty harsh wood block print work has been featured on such things as Antihero boards, Vans shoes, and in Jeffrey Deitch's Art Parade.
I don't think at this point it needs to be written since the last update to Fecal Face was a long time ago, but...
I, John Trippe, have put this baby Fecal Face to bed. I'm now focusing my efforts on running ECommerce at DLX which I'm very excited about... I guess you can't take skateboarding out of a skateboarder.
It was a great 15 years, and most of that effort can still be found within the site. Click around. There's a lot of content to explore.
Hit me up if you have any ECommerce related questions. - trippe.io
I'm not sure how many people are lucky enough to have The San Francisco Giants 3 World Series trophies put on display at their work for the company's employees to enjoy during their lunch break, but that's what happened the other day at Deluxe. So great.
SF skateboarding icons Jake Phelps, Mickey Reyes, and Tommy Guerrero with the 3 SF Giants World Series Trophies
When works of art become commodities and nothing else, when every endeavor becomes “creative” and everybody “a creative,” then art sinks back to craft and artists back to artisans—a word that, in its adjectival form, at least, is newly popular again. Artisanal pickles, artisanal poems: what’s the difference, after all? So “art” itself may disappear: art as Art, that old high thing. Which—unless, like me, you think we need a vessel for our inner life—is nothing much to mourn.
Hard-working artisan, solitary genius, credentialed professional—the image of the artist has changed radically over the centuries. What if the latest model to emerge means the end of art as we have known it? --continue reading
"Six Degrees" opens tonight, Friday Jan 16th (7-10pm) at FFDG in San Francisco. ~Group show featuring: Brett Amory, John Felix Arnold III, Mario Ayala, Mariel Bayona, Ryan Beavers, Jud Bergeron, Chris Burch, Ryan De La Hoz, Martin Machado, Jess Mudgett, Meryl Pataky, Lucien Shapiro, Mike Shine, Minka Sicklinger, Nicomi Nix Turner, and Alex Ziv.
"[Satire] is important because it brings out the flaws we all have and throws them up on the screen of another person," said Turner. “How they react sort of shows how important that really is.” Later, he added, "Charlie took a hit for everybody." -read on
As we work on our changes, we're leaving Squarespace and coming back to the old server. Updates are en route.
The content that was on the site between May '14 and today is history... Whatever, wasn't interesting anyway. All the good stuff from the last 10 years is here anyway.
Opening tonight, Friday May 23rd (7-10pm) at Park Life in the Inner Richmond (220 Clement St) is Again Home Again featuring works from the duo Jacob Mcgraw-Mikelson & Rachell Sumpter who split time living in Sacramento and a tiny island at the top of Pudget Sound with their children.
Jacob Magraw will be showing embroidery pieces on cloth along with painted, gouache works on paper --- Rachell Sumpter paints scenes of colored splendor dropped into scenes of desolate wilderness. ~show details
NYC --- A new graffiti abatement program put forth by the police commissioner has beat cops carrying cans of spray paint to fill in and cover graffiti artists work in an effort to clean up the city --> Many cops are thinking it's a waste of resources, but we're waiting to see someone make a project of it. Maybe instructions for the cops on where to fill-in?
The NYPD is arming its cops with cans of spray paint and giving them art-class-style lessons to tackle the scourge of urban graffiti, The Post has learned.
Shootings are on the rise across the city, but the directive from Police Headquarters is to hunt down street art and cover it with black, red and white spray paint, sources said... READ ON
Los Angeles based Alison Blickle who showed here in San Francisco at Eleanor Harwood last year (PHOTOS) recently showed new paintings in New York at Kravets Wehby Gallery. Lovely works.
We haven't been featuring many interviews as of late. Let's change that up as we check in with a few local San Francisco artists like Kevin Earl Taylor here whom we studio visited back in 2009 (PHOTOS & VIDEO). It's been awhile, Kevin...
If you like guns and boobs, head on over to the Shooting Gallery; just don't expect the work to be all cheap ploys and hot chicks. With Make Stuff by Peter Gronquist (Portland) in the main space and Morgan Slade's Snake in the Eagle's Shadow in the project space, there is plenty spectacle to be had, but if you look just beyond it, you might actually get something out of the shows.
Fifty24SF opened Street Anatomy, a new solo show by Austrian artist Nychos a week ago last Friday night. He's been steadily filling our city with murals over the last year, with one downtown on Geary St. last summer, and new ones both in the Haight and in Oakland within the last few weeks, but it was really great to see his work up close and in such detail.
Nate Milton emailed over this great short Gator Skater which is a follow-up to his Dog Skateboard he emailed to us back in 2011... Any relation to this Gator Skater?
Congrats on our buddies at Needles and Pens on being open and rad for 11 years now. Mission Local did this little short video featuring Breezy giving a little heads up on what Needles and Pens is all about.
In a filmmaker's thinking, we wish more videos were done in this style. Too much editing and music with a lacking in actual content. Just because you can doesn't mean you should.
Matt Wagner recently emailed over some photos from The Hellion Gallery in Tokyo, who recently put together a show with AJ Fosik (Portland) called Beast From a Foreign Land. The gallery gave twelve of Fosik's sculptures to twelve Japanese artists (including Hiro Kurata who is currently showing in our group show Salt the Skies) to paint, burn, or build upon.
FFDG is pleased to announce an exclusive online show with San Francisco based Ferris Plock opening on Friday, April 25th (12pm Pacific Time) featuring 5 new medium sized acrylic paintings on wood.
Backwoods Gallery in Melbourne played host to a huge group exhibition a couple of weeks back, with "Gold Blood, Magic Weirdos" Curated by Melbourne artist Sean Morris. Gold Blood brought together 25 talented painters, illustrators and comic artists from Australia, the US, Singapore, England, France and Spain - and marked the end of the Magic Weirdos trilogy, following shows in Perth in 2012 and London in 2013.
San Francisco based Fecal Pal Jeremy Fish opened his latest solo show Hunting Trophies at LA's Mark Moore Gallery last week to massive crowds and cabin walls lined with imagery pertaining to modern conquest and obsession.
Well, John Felix Arnold III is at it again. This time, he and Carolyn LeBourgios packed an entire show into the back of a Prius and drove across the country to install it at Superchief Gallery in NYC. I met with him last week as he told me about the trip over delicious burritos at Taqueria Cancun (which is right across the street from FFDG and serves what I think is the best burrito in the city) as the self proclaimed "Only overweight artist in the game" spilled all the details.
Ever Gold opened a new solo show by NYC based Henry Gunderson a couple Saturday nights ago and it was literally packed. So packed I couldn't actually see most of the art - but a big crowd doesn't seem like a problem. I got a good laugh at what I would call the 'cock climbing wall' as it was one of the few pieces I could see over the crowd. I haven't gotten a chance to go back and check it all out again, but I'm definitely going to as the paintings that I could get a peek at were really high quality and intruiguing. You should do the same.
The paintings in the show are each influenced by a musician, ranging from Freddy Mercury, to Madonna, to A Tribe Called Quest and they are so stylistically consistent with each musician's persona that they read as a cohesive body of work with incredible variation. If you told me they were each painted by a different person, I would not hesitate to believe you and it's really great to see a solo show with so much variety. The show is fun, poppy, very well done, and absolutely worth a look and maybe even a listen.
With rising rent in SF and knowing mostly other young artists without capitol, I desired a way to live rent free, have a space to do my craft, and get to see more of the world. Inspired by the many historical artists who have longed similar longings I discovered the beauty of artist residencies. Lilo runs Adhoc Collective in Vienna which not only has a fully equipped artists creative studio, but an indoor halfpipe, and private artist quarters. It was like a modern day castle or skate cathedral. It exists in almost a utopic state, totally free to those that apply and come with a real passion for both art and skateboarding
I just wanted to share with you a piece I recently finished which took me 4 years to complete. Titled "How To Lose Yourself Completely (The September Issue)", it consists of a copy of the September 2007 issue of Vogue magazine (the issue they made the documentary about) with all faces masked with a sharpie, and everything else entirely whited out. 840 pages of fun. -Bryan Schnelle
While walking our way across San Francisco on Saturday we swung through the opening receptions for Kirk Maxson and Alexis Mackenzie at Eleanor Harwood Gallery in the Mission.
Jeremy Fish opens Hunting Trophies tonight, Saturday April 5th, at the Los Angeles based Mark Moore Gallery. The show features new work from Fish inside the "hunting lodge" where viewers climb inside the head of the hunter and explore the history of all the animals he's killed.
Beautiful piece entitled "The Albatross and the Shipping Container", Ink on Paper, Mounted to Panel, 47" Diameter, by San Francisco based Martin Machado now on display at FFDG. Stop in Saturday (1-6pm) to view the group show "Salt the Skies" now running through April 19th. 2277 Mission St. at 19th.
For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to quit my job, move out of my house, leave everything and travel again. So on August 21, 2013 I pushed a canoe packed full of gear into the headwaters of the Mississippi River in Lake Itasca, Minnesota, along with four of my best friends. Exactly 100 days later, I arrived at a marina near the Gulf of Mexico in a sailboat.
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