Raw Fury #2

Raw Fury Masthead:

Raw Fury #2 ISSN# 2327-6002 | $13.00 USD Raw Fury #2 IS a zine focusing on contemporary urban art from Chicago and Denver – the cultural bookends of the Midwest.

Is PRESS Institute of Sociometry Post Office Box 44425 Denver CO 80201-4425 sociometry.com Flatlands Studios 629 Cermak, #407 Chicago, IL 60616

Raw Fury IS published once a year by Denver’s Is PRESS (a division of Institute of Sociometry) in partnership with Chicago’s Flatlands Studios. Raw Fury #2 was released on Friday the 13th, “Juneteenth”, 2014 in a limited edition of 150.

Peter Miles Bergman, Is PRESS: Publisher, Features Editor, design & production Eric Von Haynes, Flatlands Studios: Creative Director, Art Editor, printing & shipping Raw Fury #2 features the contributions of 21 artists: In order of appearance: Brooks Golden, Oscar Arriola, m[i]le[s], JOLT, Rubén Aguirre, Mary Valdez, Frank Kwiatkowski, Molly Youngblood, Mark Sink, Jock Sturges, Kristen Sink, Ed Ross, Mike Fudge, Brandon Pickett, Heather Link, Anthony Lewellen, Uriel Correa, Michael Boswell, Paco Barba, Eric Von Haynes, Dred 88 All art © the respective artist | All articles N© Is PRESS 2014

Masthead | Raw Fury #2 |

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Forever Golden

On April 26, 2014 Brooks Golden, the first artist showcased in Raw Fury #1, and a true comrade, passed away leaving the Chicago art world deeply saddened. Brooks, born Jason Blair Brooks, was originally from Milwaukee but lived in Chicago and had been a part of Chicago’s art scene for over 10 years.

A prolific graff writer, street artist and all around creative spirit, his passing has spawned memorial murals all over the city. To those that had the privilege of working with Brooks and calling him a friend, he will be Forever Golden. /RF Photos this page: top Natasha Barraza, bottom Oscar Arriola Facing page: bottom Scott Stewart for the Chicago Sun-Times

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| Raw Fury #2 | Title | Contributor

Contributor | Title | Raw Fury #2 |

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w e N s ’ r a c Os Zine Revue Zines are great for documenting new ideas and movements.

With the amount of new work being produced I could’ve easily added a dozen more titles to this list of my favorite graff, design, and art zines from the past year. Keep an eye out for new work from the following people as well.

Lil’ Buddies v.2. – The all tooth issue! by Edie Fake Chicago artist Edie Fake is back at it with a new collection of anthropomorphic characters photographed on signs seen in Chicago as well as contributions from around the world.

This time the focus is all on happy teeth and dental signs. ediefake.com

Untitled (drug baggies) by Brendan Campbell Brendan Campbell presents this small zine with life-sized photographs of tiny drug baggies found on the streets of Providence, RI giving the viewer a glimpse of the breadth of designs found on packaging by different dealers. amigosshop.storenvy.com

Carnage: Lost in Shibuya by Ray Mock NYC-based graffiti zine publisher Carnage ventures out to the hip Shibuya section of Tokyo for a great dose of the graff scene there. The screen printed cover sports a nice red ink blob for a sun giving it that hand-done flavor. carnagenyc.com

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| Raw Fury #2 | Oscar’s New Zine Revue | Oscar Arriola

Low Dose No-Doz by Ryan Duggan Published in conjunction with his 2013 solo show at Chicago’s Johalla Projects, this risograph-printed zine features paintings and tattoos by Ryan. I’ve long been a fan of Ryan’s deadpan humor and concert screenprints and so was stoked to see him publish his first zine. www.ryanduggan.com

Underneath Providence v.2 by Alex Lukas Artist Alex Lukas presents more rare photos and period articles from the heydays of hanging out in and painting a long forgotten train tunnel underneath Providence, RI..

Alex also publishes a magnificent series of photo zines titled, “Of Note”, that document artistic signs of the human hand on the built environment. alexlukas.com Oscar Arriola | Oscar’s New Zine Revue | Raw Fury #2 |

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How to Paint Signs and Influence People: Icy Caps v.4 by Colt Bowden Californian Colt Bowden has been a one-man powerhouse producer of zines in the past year focusing on different sign painting letter styles.

Previous issues have delved into Egyptian, Casual, and Script lettering and all feature interviews with current sign painting practitioners. This issue covers the classic Icy Cap letters found on gas station ice cube freezers around the country and was printed with a nice and crisp letterpressed cover. coltbowden.com

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| Raw Fury #2 | Oscar’s New Zine Revue

Hair Less Who #1 by Joe Tallarico With a title referencing the seminal 1970’s Chicago Imagist art show, the Hairy Who, and featuring Joe’s trademark hand drawn zig zag backgrounds, this hyper-visual risograph-printed comic zine is a fun read. jtallarico.tumblr.com

Bum Cum v.2 by Bheir NYC-based photographer Bheir continues his documentation of tags on the streets of Chinatown, the LES, and other parts of New York City with this collection of all graffcovered door photos. bumcumnyc.bigcartel.com

Ice Cream Truck Songs by Jeff Kolar Jeff documents the songs played by various ice cream trucks photographed on the South Side of Chicago. This zine was released in conjunction with the 2013 “404: Not Found” show at the Co-Prosperity Sphere in Bridgeport, Chicago, which included a performance of new beats played inside an ice cream truck that was parked outside the gallery. amigosshop.storenvy.com, jeffkolar.us Rat Milk #4 by Overconsume Overconsume visits Korea in the latest issue of Rat Milk. Featuring photos of graffiti, street portraits, and visual mayhem in Seoul and beyond. ratmilkzine.storenvy.com

Oscar Arriola | Raw Fury #2 |

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A re a Cha of n ge

INDIVIDUAL: The West Denver tagger in their threatened native habitat.

GROUP SIZE: Estimates of up to 20,000 over the next two the three years.

NATURE OF GROUP: New residents in the market for homes in the $400s!

INCIDENCE: Area of Change

Full reports on Area of Change and This Could Be Here can be found at Denver’s Westword “A local artist quietly courts controversy at Colfax and Federal” and in full on socimetry.com *Never a name anyone used to call that neighborhood.

Trails of taggers wind like tentacles through South Highlands or SoHi,* a traditionally working-class neighborhood north of West Colfax. The condo curtain is descending from the north – flattening homes all the way to 17th Avenue – endagering prime tagging habitat. Scrappy two-bedroom bungalows in the low $200’s with huge yards, Wal-Mart trampolines, and eroding dog-couches, are being razed n’ replaced with four-per-lot town-homes starting at $450k.

Architecturally rendered block-row buildings with Sketchup Porsches out front anchor splashy banners with real-estate agent’s numbers.

Pre-Sale Available!

In January of 2014 neighborhood tags were photographed, re-drawn in vector, skewed on a perspective grid, and cut into sticky-vinyl. The faithfully rendered tags now deface the vinyl-banner walls of this rendered utopian future.

Coming soon!

Continued on page 14 Institute of Sociometry | Area of Change | Raw Fury #2 |

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AREA OF CHANGE continues research starting in summer 2013 with This Could Be Here, excerpted here. > Below: Google earth still shows what was. Real Estate banners (with a little help from IS) show that this could be here!

This Could Be Here INDIVIDUAL: agent m[i]le[s] GROUP SIZE: Pushing 100,000 per day – a wildly speculative estimate based on 35,000 to 45,000 cars per day plus immediate area residents.

NATURE OF GROUP: Car commuters, pedestrians, cyclists, people on busses and light-rail, attendees of sporting events, residents of “poor and at-risk neighborhoods” all intersecting at a partial cloverleaf occupying 29 acres of land at Colfax Avenue and Federal Boulevard in Denver Colorado.

INCIDENCE: This Could Be Here The Colfax and Federal interchange lies between the IS home office and Auraria Campus on the south west border of Downtown. What should be a short walk or bike down the hill becomes either a zig-zag maze of stadium parking lots and underpasses OR a perilous dash through the interchange to a jersey barrier protected sidewalk littered with broken glass and occasional car-dodging dashes across blind freeway onramps.

West Colfax is hard-luck stretch. Though rapidly gentrifying, the Cheltenham Heights section of SoHi was rattled by gun-fire on weekday afternoons twice last summer. Boxed in by the DHA homes to the north and the Colfax and Federal interchange to the south and east there is no room for the high occupancy neighborhood to breathe and little room to develop. The access streets to Colfax and Federal have some of the highest pedestrian hit and run statistics in the city.

Long having railed on the stupidity of the interchange, IS availed ourselves of extensive City of Denver produced interchange redesign reports, and decided to throw our hat

in the ring as a “pro-bono” guerilla public relations partner to advertise our preference for an “at grade” redesign – restoring it to a surface level intersection. Our resulting advertisement, a 4×4ft sign on a 7ft tall wooden armature, was dropped off at 4am on Monday 07/28/13. It depicts an “artist’s rendering” of what could be in the space. The key operative phrases from the City Planning reports, “celebrated, connected, innovative and healthy” were used to describe the potential for a West Denver gateway neighborhood with an “at-grade” redesign.

A qr code link to the four redesign alternatives with an image of “at-grade”, and the phone number associated with the Colfax and Federal Interchange Alternatives Draft Report. Thursday, a press release initiated article titled, A local artist quietly courts controversy at Colfax and Federal, appeared in the free weekly Westword, completing our campaign with a brief interview and statement from our spokes-agent m[i]le[s] outlining the issue and advocating for the at-grade redesign.

Friday IS was contacted by a long dormant agent who had infiltrated the City Planning office. Steve Chester, the Associate City Planner who’s phone number was on our sign, worked in the same office. The agent described Steve as “very buttoned down kind of guy, prep school”. After letting the office chatter about the article percolate, our agent mole reported back in, “Steve Chester really loved what you did. He liked that you included the “at grade” rendering but was confused about the viability of your renderings… Andrea (Burns, Communications Director) said that she’d like to contact the artist and let him know that the city will probably take it down if the artist does not. Steve Gordon, our supervisor and Managing City Planner, thinks Planning should go get it and display it here in the lobby.

Also, Steve Chester got a phone call from someone on Tuesday who kept referring to the sign he saw. He was thoroughly confused until he was hipped to the reality of the sign.” /RF

Institute of Sociometry | This Could Be Here | Raw Fury #2 |

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FINDINGS: YOU AINT KREW FEWL

...Continued from page 11

Twenty days after deployment, the sign at 1820 Julian that was adorned with vinyls of our IS tag, an appropriated NVSK tag, and bubbly SL throw-up was called out by tagger SKULZB – “YOU AINT KREW FEWL”, with an adjacent NVSK tag.

Note: NVSK was used more than any other tag due to being compact with thick lines and an easier vinyl sticker to apply while on tiptoes.

Our interpretation of this message is multi-tiered; NVSK is clearly a crew as opposed to an individual, and they are calling out IS for stealing their tag without being in the crew (an offense punishable by punching and stabbing). SKULZB correctly crossed out our IS and the appropriated NVSK but left the SL – apparently there’s no beef with SL. On a deeper layer, SKULZB, as a representative of the NVSK crew, has further defiled the utopian dream of the $400,000 townhouses coming soon to 1820 Julian by completely bombing the hypothetical building with implicit threats. More importantly, SKULZB has followed our established precedent by mapping their personal and crew tag onto the perspective of the building in the drawing.

Now that NVSK has been alerted to the interloper on their streets we suspect to see more cross-outs and tags on the other coming soon signs that were modified. To draw a metaphor, it’s as if we strewed chum in the waters surrounding this luxury yacht and it is starting to attract sharks. /RF

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| Raw Fury #2 | Area of Change | Institute of Sociometry

e h t t PainJolt with

n w o T

re r i u g A RubĂŠn

Jolt Bimmer and Jedi The Guerilla Gorilla W. 13th Ave. at the Platte River Denver

Soundtrack: a rattly left-speaker dominant Stankonia by Outkast.

Blocking out color and lines over a long faded East and Emit mural on the south wall of 3501 Brighton Boulevard, prolific Denver painter Jolt and Chicago muralist Rubén Aguirre are getting a late start on a one day collaboration.

The Filling Station, which occupies the building, is the kind of bar that has a locked front door. In 2000, when IS was having our quadrennial Sociometry Fair across the street at the long defunct artists’ collective Soulciety, we wandered across the boulevard and rang their bell. After being ushered in to a full TSA pat-down, we were treated to a classic hip-hop dance battle fuelled by cheap domestic beer and a jukebox that, according to Jolt, hasn’t changed since.

In 2014 Brighton Boulevard is in mid-renaissance. The area is technically part of “RiNo” the made-up arts district of River North – never a name anyone used to call that neighborhood and an obvious rip-off of Chicago’s commercial gallery district.

Brighton Boulevard remains segmented from the rest of RiNo by train tracks from the bustle of north Larimer and by the river from the high-brow Taxi development. Currently it’s half remnants of a truck-driver and blue-collar history and half spillover from neighboring property booms. Modern apartment blocks are beginning to replace warehouses. Soulciety is now the well lit Plinth Gallery focusing on contemporary ceramics.

A full time professional, Jolt is often buttoned down with City of Denver funded murals both through The Urban Arts Fund and the Public Art Commission, and numerous commercial projects for breweries Oskar Blues and Great Divide, to creative consulting with Denver agency Motive on a web series for Mountain Dew. His ongoing project Guerilla Garden is an icon driven art concept, studio venture, and community building initiative.

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| Raw Fury #2 | Paint the Town | Jolt with Rubén Aguirre

Jolt / Can we check out the magazine?

He quickly flips through Raw Fury #1, giving a tacit approval to proceed with the interview while pointing at Rubén, “this guy’s from Chicago”. He immediately jumps up for some sweeping attacks of hot orange on olive green. “I love these two colors together.” I show Rubén the editorial page drawing of Raw Fury co-editor Eric Von Haynes.

Rubén / Yea, I know that dude, he shares a studio (Flatlands) with Statik. (We flipped to the Chicago centric gallery section of RF #1 featuring Brooks Golden, Dred 88, David Cuesta and Oscan Arriola) I know all these guys. Everyone knows Oscar.

With our small world bonifides locked down, both Jolt and Rubén get to work with fluid abstract lines interrupted by hung-over hands-on-knees stints sitting on the rail of Jolts freshly painted matte-black van.

Rubén and Jolt first met at Paint Lewis, the St. Louis graffiti gathering, and have kept up with each other at art events – including the recent 2014 Art Basel Miami.

Rubén is in Colorado at the invitation of Colorado Springs’ Idea Space gallery for their spring show Rhythm Nations on “Transnational Hip Hop in the Gallery, in the Street”. He drove up to Denver yesterday, visiting for the first time in a decade. Last night Jolt took him on an apparently in-depth brewery tasting tour. Jolt ads, “Chile beers, bitters, everything”. Today’s freestyle mural is handicapped-by-hangover at these early stages but has potential for an experimental and inspired collaboration.

Eric Dallimore, owner of Leon Gallery, drops by and Jolt takes us on a tour of the mural’s backside. A small two story, three room space, with a mix of freshly hung drywall, lead paint scraped

Jolt with Rubén Aguirre | Paint the Town | Raw Fury #2 |

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from floor-to-ceiling windows, and a half pulled-up gross orange-shag. This neighborhood beautification project is a future gallery and small studio – another seed planted in the Guerilla Garden.

Jolt is excited to get into a new space, especially one that is public facing. He has only been in the building for two weeks, and plans on opening in time for summer.

Jolt / Maybe we’ll even join RiNo! We’ve always kind of done our own thing... Maybe we’ll start the WiNo arts district and paint the RiNo rhinoceros fallen over!

RF / What would be the district?

Jolt / Us and The Filling Station!

The original Guerilla Garden Studio at 38th and Steele was a production warehouse suitable for massive murals, such as the nine story 5,000 square foot mural on the South Lincoln projects at 1099 Osage. There was no gallery, foot traffic, or public access.

RF / Why did you leave the warehouse? Was it too much to maintain?

Jolt / Naw, it was basically a situation where the rent was tripled – it was going to be almost four grand more a month. He (the landlord) was kinda’ a dick about it, only gave us two weeks.

That’s the thing I didn’t realize about the (legal) weed coming in is it’s pushing artists out of warehouse spaces. I was in a situation before I got this place, where I had to go and start looking at warehouses. The ugliest most dilapidated warehouses are super expensive now. Even when you think you’re in the cut of the city the growers have already found it. And

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| Raw Fury #2 | Paint the Town | Jolt with Rubén Aguirre

Left: Jolt Photo: Guerilla Garden 28th and Larimer, RiNo Denver

it’s all over – all the way out to Commerce City. I bought an acre of land in Globeville. We’re going to build the new Guerilla Garden warehouse. This place is just to get what we’re doing in front of the public.

Below: Rubén Aguirre Photo: Eric Von Haynes 16th St., Pilsen Chicago

RF / Since this is your new spot, do you have the desire to brand it (with the Guerilla Gorilla)? Or is that not what the afternoon is about? Would that turn it into too much of a work day?

Jolt / No, I wanted to be loose about it. I didn’t necessarily want to be too branded with this spot, with the logo. It’s going to be an interesting experiment – to see how people react to the work. I like not being right in where it’s happening. We could be on Larimer, Santa Fe or wherever. I think it’s good to be off the beaten path.

RF / I think the Taxi people are wanting to build a foot bridge across the river right down at the end of this street. There’s always a lot of stuff going on over there but you have to go all the way back to 31rst to cross. So it really might heighten the foot traffic around here.

Jolt / They’re going to build a bridge over the trains too. Across the street’s going to be a park n’ ride. So once the stop sign goes in right here... It’s gonna’ be bangin’.

RF / It seems you’ve gone from a graphic style to a much more abstract style – is that the direction your heading?

Jolt / I do both. Very low-brow cartoony stuff and real abstracted. Not always, like 10 years ago I had a life changing night out and shit changed after that. My art started to move and become more about movement. I also do some (pieces) that are really messy and really loose. I have a lot of different styles. I think it all just has it’s place.

Jolt with Rubén Aguirre | Paint the Town | Raw Fury #2 |

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RF / Are you planning on any more work for the city or the Urban Arts Fund?

Jolt / I have an Urban Arts Fund (proposal) I want to write but I don’t think they’ll go for it. It’s kind of off of what we’ve already done before.

RF / You’re talking about the Globeville mural with Platte Forum?

(Platte Forum is an artist-in-residence and youth development non-profit and 2011 National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Award winner. Jolt collaborated with Platte Forum’s youth program for a mural in Globeville on an abutment of elevated east bound I-70 at 46th and Lincoln. Hispanic activists criticized the depiction of a blue collar farm laborer as not being progressive. Councilwoman Judy Montero, who grew up in the area, scuttled opposition by declaring that looking at the mural “makes me proud”.)

Jolt / Yea – Platte Forum wanted to work with me so I connected them with the Urban Arts Fund. That process is really good for people to go through. It pushes you to have to manage all of that. You’ve got to not only get out there on your own but you have to work with the City Council. It’s good to go through all that stuff but the process can also be kind of stagnant. And now it’s started to be... these committees man. They’re operating like American Idol. I can’t do it...

Jolt refers me to a three minute video of him in front of a city public art selection committee for a mural in La Raza Park, informing the panel in a respectful and professional but unambiguously firm tone that the committee, staffed with non-artists and Chicano community activists with very traditional mural aesthetics, was not qualified to judge his work. “My work and my resume speaks for itself. I would rather sacrifice THE most

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| Raw Fury #2 | Paint the Town | Jolt with Rubén Aguirre

important project to me (the La Raza Park mural) and maintain my integrity and my self respect. I will take Denver’s Art into the future with or without anyone on this board. We’re doing that, we’re working for that, we’re very Left: Jolt and Guerilla Garden passionate about art in this city. I can not put myself in the position to be commissioned wall at judged like this because I don’t feel like I can be judged fairly to be honest the South Lincoln Projects with you guys. And again I would rather sacrifice that and walk away with 11th and Osage St., Denver my integrity and my self-respect.”

Photos: Guerilla Garden

Below: Jolt and Guerilla Garden guerilla warehouse wall

(An interjection and statement from Jolt posted on Denver’s La Raza Park Legacy Project “Those that know me, know this is my hood... I experienced life and death in this park... my identity and spirituality was discovered under this temple...

This is single handedly the most important place in my life. I have this temple tatted across my stomach and forever in my heart.”)

“You guys can take this as my art, as my artistic piece. If this shakes things up for the greater good and things start to move forward out of this very slow, stagnant way of thinking so be it. I’ll still create my art, I’ll still have respect in my neighborhood, and I will love that park regardless. I think David (Ocelotl Garcia) is an incredible artist. I think he’s giving you what a lot of people want. I think that it is very safe. If you look back to my old work when I first started doing murals. Look at my Aztlan Rec. Center mural, I borrowed so many things from Emanuel Martinez (a long established Denver traditional muralist) on purpose to place them in my murals – to pay homage to that – it’s not something that’s foreign to me at all. I’m not disrespecting that in my approach to this. I’m trying to take it to another level. I’m trying to do something, trying to create something with some feeling. That’s what Art is. That’s what Art is supposed to be.”

Jolt with Rubén Aguirre | Paint the Town | Raw Fury #2 |

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(Full disclosure: The day after this conversation with Jolt, this agent, as a sitting member of the Public Art Commission, participated in a unanimous vote to proceed with David Ocelotl Garcia’s commission for La Raza Park.)

Around 5pm Rubén is finding his groove, moving back and forth across the wall filling in detail. Jolt has succumbed to last night and has crawled into the back of the van for a nap.

RF / Hey - I’m taking off. Good to meet you! Will you give this (my card) to Jolt when he wakes up?

Rubén / He’s asleep!? (Looking into the back of the van.)

RF / Are you going to finish this today? You’ve got a couple hours of light left. Or is it what it is once the day is over?

Rubén / (Checking the sun between his fingers.) Oh yea, we’ll finish it.

Raw Fury was privileged to spend a couple of hours with two down-to-earth painters, from a surprisingly interconnected circle of Denver and Chicago artists, getting into the moment and painting for the sake of collaboration, friendship, and beautification of a reviving but still drab part of town.

The Guerilla Gorilla is the rarest on animals. Jolt is one of the few people in Denver who is a consummate professional and still of the street. The source of his clout in the community becomes self-evident as soon as he opens his mouth. Jolt’s passion and enthusiasm for his work and for the city are fluidly articulated but entirely free of bullshit or hucksterism. We’re looking forward to the opening of his new outpost and what that brings to Brighton Boulevard – and we’ll take any excuse to stop by The Filling Station. /RF

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| Raw Fury #2 | Paint the Town | Jolt with Rubén Aguirre

Mary Valdez , City of Denver’s Urban Arts Fund

Mary Valdez coordinates the City of Denver’s Urban Arts Fund which facilitates public mural projects. Raw Fury met up with Mary to get a perspective on the cities struggles and successes with urban art.

RF / What is your title at the Urban Arts Fund, what’s your background, and can you give us an overview of the program?

Mary / My official title is Public Art Coordinator for the City and County of Denver. I also manage the Urban Arts Fund Program. For the last 13 years, I have worked for Denver Arts & Venues, with my focus on public art. My background education is in fine art and art history.

The UAF is a graffiti prevention and youth development program which facilitates the creation of new murals in perpetually vandalized areas. We provide access to positive, creative experiences for youth and transform dilapidated areas into well tended and active community gathering spaces. In an effort to curb tagging in highly targeted areas, the UAF has helped facilitate over seventy murals and has reclaimed over 60,000 sq. feet of space once targeted by vandalism. Like many other cities, graffiti has been, and continues to be, a problem in Denver. The most obvious effect is cost. So far this year the city has removed 2.2 million square feet of graffiti. Several abatement crews work five days a week with a budget of $1.4 million. Vandalism has the potential to affect our communities in other negative ways; it hurts businesses, degrades property values, and worst of all it sends the wrong message to young people who may have another creative outlet. Combining the talents of artists, engaged community members and enthusiastic youth we are sending a positive message of creating great art in public places without vandalizing property.

Mary Valdez | Urban Arts Fund | Raw Fury #2 |

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RF / Does the city see the UAF as a graffiti prevention program or more of an urban art promotion program?

Mary / It’s more of a graffiti prevention program. In 2007 former Mayor (now Colorado Governor) Hickenlooper created the Denver Graffiti Summit that formed several committees, to begin the conversation around prevention of graffiti in Denver. There were young people in the audience begging for opportunities, “why doesn’t Denver see our talent being as important as a sculptor or painter’s talent? This is an art form on the streets, that we believe in”. We were really fascinated with these street artists determination and drive, and started the conversation on how community representatives could work together with city representatives such as our City Agency, Denver Arts & Venues, to create a positive graffiti prevention effort with the help of local artists, while getting youth off the streets, and creating beautiful murals for the city of Denver. It appears that our program can be viewed as urban art promotion, yet it strongly leans in positive efforts as a graffiti prevention program.

RF / Do you have any issues with artists who have come from a graffiti background as kids and feel a disconnect with the UAF’s graffiti prevention mission?

Mary / Not really. It’s an interesting question because I feel a majority of the artists who have received funding from the Urban Arts Fund have been young people who were once on the streets, and may have a record of tagging or had been busted in that past for doing these sort of things.

What I’ve found that’s really fascinating is that these artists are working on murals on a larger scale than they’ve ever done before. So, it broadens their horizons to create murals in outdoor settings that they may not have had the opportunity to paint without the Urban Arts Fund. They are getting recognition from the community. But I love the fact that emerging artists are given that opportunity because they prove they are very talented, and are motivated to apply to larger commissions.

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| Raw Fury #2 | Urban Arts Fund | Mary Valdez

RF / Is the Urban Arts Fund a more effective program for emerging artists than for people who are established enough to already have commercial commissions? And does the community feedback component frustrate artists used to working independently?

Mary / I think it leans more toward emerging artists. We have had a couple of talented artists who have completed commercial commissions, but I would say it’s mostly emerging artists.

Some artists really enjoy the process of community feedback. What we’ve done this year is asked for a sketch from the artist during the application entry with permission from property owner and support from community stakeholders, who live in the neighborhood. So that’s where we’re trying to get better about community outreach and making sure the artists have contacted the stakeholders in that area.

RF / What are some of your favorite UAF murals?

Mary / We’ve got tons of murals saturated in the alleyway between Larimer St. & Walnut St. between 26th29th Ave. The Colorado Crush event in September creates new murals and transforms the area into a vibrant experience. One of my personal favorites would be Bunny M who created a mural off of 22nd and Champa. Also a young artist whom I’ve seen develop over the last couple of years is Bimmer Torres. He’s got a couple of murals he created last year at the Denver Inner City Parish at College View, along with the Swansea Recreation Center. The development of his process has really been remarkable for such a young guy.

Left: bunny M, Urban Arts Fund mural 22nd and Champa, Downtown Denver

Mary Valdez | Urban Arts Fund | Raw Fury #2 |

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Above: Bimmer Torres, Urban Arts Fund mural, 4th and Galapego, Baker Denver

RF / Is there any limit to this? Is there a full saturation level?

Mary / That was something I used to think about. At what point are we going to be told “ok that’s enough”. Denver is a big area. We’ve saturated some areas but I think of other cities such as Miami in the Wynwood neighborhood, and the city of Philadelphia, as we have admired those city projects and their impact. We want to keep reaching out to talented artists and youth, as we now are getting recognition for our efforts, as we continue to add more temporary murals to our collection.

RF / There seems to be a big rise of interest in what we now call Street Art. It might be the maturity of the medium but now kids who are interested in urban art are not only seeing illegal murals in alleyways and backs of buildings but they are seeing people getting paid and the work being left up.

Mary / The mural by David Choe at 13th & Champa is a good example of urban art fitting nicely into a space. This area being Denver’s theater district, and recent offices of Denver Arts & Venues, welcomed David Choe’s donated mural, which was a big leap in endorsing urban art.

I feel like we are turning the page in Denver, as urban art pieces are being recognized as good works of art! /RF

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| Raw Fury #2 | Urban Arts Fund | Mary Valdez

utter Cone C Frank Kwiatkowski

with Molly Youngblood

The Patrician is a mid-century modern apartment building in Denver’s Capitol Hill. Frank Kwiatkowski isn’t listed on the directory. After buzzing the number I had written on a scrap of lined paper, Frank came bounding down the stairs.

RF / The name on your buzzer. Is that your alias? Or the name the bills come under?

Frank / MMmm – something like that...

The Kwiatkowski Press is a heavy 3 foot by 18 inch diameter roll of web-offset paper and a thick pad of large sheets taped to the living room floor. The operation has completely taken over Frank’s small apartment. Stacks of traffic cones being flattened, cut into printing plates, and piles of cone remnants compete for space with a wall rack of substrates, a drift of ink cans, and piles of prints. The 1950’s white aluminum cabinets and porcelain sink bear the evidence of an industrial scale propaganda machine.

Recently The Patrician changed hands. The new landlord and building inspector were doing a walk through off all units. Frank gave them a heads up, “Hey I work from home. I’m an artist”. One can only imagine what went through their minds. That sink!

Frank / Yea... I’m not getting my deposit back...

RF / So what did they SAY when they came in here?

Frank / Not much. They were nice on the surface...

A Denver native, Frank is feeling pushed out of central Denver due to rising rents. He chafes at “Landlordism”, from both apartment managers and gallery owners wanting 50% of sales. Though he primarily shows his work on the street, Frank did have a well attended show last summer at Kitchen’s Ink on Santa Fe. The prints were hung salon style – floor to ceiling.

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| Raw Fury #2 | The Cone Cutter | Frank Kwiatkowski

RF / Did you sell anything at that show?

Frank / No (laughs) that’s how it always goes .

Frank’s prints are the product of a well practiced hand. He is really good at carving backwards lettering. The imagery is stunning and the messages are unambiguous. He produces stacks of prints, selling them from his pedicab and wheatpasting them all over the city.

RF / How much time do you spend on this?

Frank / I’ve been slowing down since I started with the pedicab. I used to do about 40 hours a week. Doing the pedicab helps – it keeps me from getting too obsessive with it.

Frank first got into cutting cones in the 90’s after taking a writing workshop on linoleum block printing. Afterward, he noticed that traffic cones felt malleable and durable like linoleum. 15 years later many of his early cuts are still printable.

Frank’s work is process, form, concept, and message in equal parts. He communicates radical politics with brazen imagery. Each print is physically pressed with boosted material and disseminated directly to the street.

Liberating the cones feeds Frank’s obsession. Besting last year’s record of 303 cones is not a feat he anticipates repeating – especially with new collaborations and pedicabbing. The cones which get, “surprisingly filthy” are cleaned, spliced, heated and flattened, sketched out and carved. After printing, negative space is filled in with a wash of colored marker. Lately Frank has been printing on a giant stack of donated mylar with pre-printed architectural schematics.

Laden with political imagery, death, and needles (Kwiatkowski has been a diabetic his entire adult life), his prints are character driven and often based on personal experience. The prints are a mix of

Frank Kwiatkowski | The Cone Cutter | Raw Fury #2 |

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Avant Garde leftist handbills, Social Realism, and Dios Del Muerte mysticism. The Slave Nation series is overtly activist, RF first saw his work on lamp poles at the site of Occupy Denver.

Cone Cutter and God In A Bottle are more personal and surreal.

Frank / They are panels from a graphic novel – a non-linear graphic novel. That’s how I think of them. They’re characters. I do a lot of it based on my own life, like Cone Cutter, and some are really personal, but they are characters.

After a couple failed experiments with sidewalk-selling, Frank now “pirates” prints from his pedicab. The “free-bird” owner of the pedicab Frank leases is cool with his wheatpasting child injection posters onto his pedicab so long as they don’t cover up the Hapa Sushi ad. Frank insists he never pitches the art, only the rides, “If it comes up in the conversation I’ll talk about my work and show them some prints. I can get $30 for prints from some people.”

In the pedicab scene Frank has found another street culture with its own community and lifestyle. His social media stream is a nightly run down of intoxicated business trippers, woo girls, and mid-level managers, many of whom get their portraits taken with a freshly purchased Slave Nation print. A solitary person with singular focus on his art, pedicabbing has become a steady income and a way for Frank to reach people directly. It’s been such a compliment to his print making that Frank has recently commissioned the Kwiatkowski Express – his own pedicab, custom built and owned outright.

The scope of his work is all encompassing, bordering on monastic. He has never owned a car and is fervently anti-procreation. His entire apartment has turned into a print shop. His t-shirt and red bike leggings are entirely covered in his prints.

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| Raw Fury #2 | The Cone Cutter | Frank Kwiatkowski

Between prolific wheatpasting, an occasional show, pedicabbing, and acting in a short film Cone Cutter by John Hartman, he has begun a new collaboration – printing fabric for Denver fashion designer Molly Youngblood.

Frank suggested we include Molly in the interview. We reconvened at her apartment and work space in what could objectively be called a rough area – amidst the south Lincoln projects in a newly built DHA apartment building. Her workspace is organized and minimalist with a dress form, a wall of sketched concepts, a neat stack of printed patterned leggings, and a wire line with one-off shirts.

The back deck looks out toward Pike’s Peak, the UP rail yards and a community garden Molly coordinates.

RF / What’s your process for all of this?

Frank / All the printing, that phase, happens at my place.

Molly / I do everything unique and one-off, so I just buy the scraps of fabric at Denver Fabric that are left over from New York. Then I cut out the patterns, he prints them and I sew them.

Frank / The fabric is really great materiel for pressing prints. You get this smooth synthetic fabric (holding up checkered leggings) and it’s fantastic.

Cotton is great too.

RF / (To Molly) Have you known Frank forever? Or did you meet him through his art.

Molly / I was selling clothes at (Denver boutique) MegaFauna.

I thought his art was pretty cool so I introduced myself. The main thing to me about custom clothing is people used to sew and make their own clothes and now they can’t even thread a sewing machine. I’m an intermediate seamstress and, for instance making these pants, it’s really pretty easy once you start doing it. We’re bringing back the labor that’s been stripped from our hands.

Frank Kwiatkowski with Molly Youngblood | Raw Fury #2 |

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Frank / Yea! And you know I do have issues with using sweatshop labor.

It’s also the element of collaboration. Painters tend to work by themselves.

With printmaking there’s a lot more collaboration. Same with a seamstress.

You’re working with a variety of people. But it’s more than that. Clothing is out on the street. It IS street art.

RF / Had you previously used art in your clothing designs?

Molly / Yea – I really like it. I sold out of shirts where I took something off the internet and changed it in Photoshop. I just felt it wasn’t as authentic as it needed to be. It seems like clothes with messages just sell better and I think that it’s nice to have something on the shirt other than just a walking billboard for Ralph Lauren. It’s also a great conversation piece and gets people talking to each other. I can bring up controversial topics with the clothes.

RF / Now it’s a walking billboard for Slave Nation!

Frank / If anything, you want to socially engage people with art. If you’re not doing it out on the streets how are you going to do it? Galleries are way too limited and there’s the economic side. She has the same thing with clothing stores. If they’re going to take 50% of your labor, you need to mark it up that much higher.

Molly / Yea it’s disheartening. In the past I’ve done boutiques and I just pulled out. I usually sell everything I make and don’t have a stockpile so I just turned this into my little make-shift store. You really can’t do it another way. It’s not economically feasible. I do it because I really love the concept. It doesn’t make sense to have things travel 1,000’s of miles when there’s people right here who can make them. You don’t have to take advantage of people in other countries where the markup is 1,000%.

RF / It’s like being a printmaker. You are combining two “obsolete” trades! What would happen if you got an offer for 10,000

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| Raw Fury #2 | Frank Kwiatkowski with Molly Youngblood

garments and needed to look at a more industrialized process.

Would you go for that? Or would you want to stick to making one of a kind things in your apartment?

Molly / I think I’d want something in the middle. That is kind of the antithesis to my whole philosophy. I would never outsource for any amount of money. It would be really amazing to have a small factory that was committed to making quality products and providing a quality lifestyle for their people. Fashion is probably trite but I think it can also be used for a greater good.

RF / (To Frank) if that happened would you buy a screen printing press and figure out how that works?

Frank / I don’t think that would happen. One thing I agree with is I’m never going to outsource. The other thing is, regarding screen printing – is that I’m so attached to the traffic cone. People say why don’t you use wood cuts? Or why don’t you go large? I’m very attached to this. To me the cone is a sacred object and the iconography reflects that. Objects have always been that way to me; the traffic cone, the syringe, the carving tool, my pedicab.

RF / So you can’t separate the art from the method of re-production?

Frank / No. So I think I’d stick with pressing cone prints. I can’t give it up.

You know, I have buckets of cone shavings at home... Someday I’m going to do a cast molding. You know how they did the death masks? I’m going to do a cast mold out of these scraps of “Frank”. / RF

The Big Picture With Mark Sink, it’s tempting to rely on a platitude like “Father of the Denver art scene” – except Mark is no ones dad. Mark has been a full time art photographer since 1978, with a stint in New York as a contributing photographer from ’82 to ’90 for Interview, Circus, Details, Vogue, Art Forum, and Art in America. After a move back to native Denver in the early ’90’s he cofounded and was the interim director of the MCA Denver, had a 9 year run with Gallery Sink, founded the Month of Photography, The Denver Artist’s Salon, and has a steady program of exhibiting, curating, lecturing, consulting, and publishing. Mark’s curriculum vitae goes back all the way into the roots of his family tree. His great grandfather James Breese founded the Camera Club of New York. Breese’s uncle Samuel Morse, in between inventing Morse Code, learned photography from it’s inventor, Louis Daguerre, and brought Daguerreotypes to America – becoming one of the first active photographers in the United States. Mark tells exuberant stories about his subjective interactions with the history of photography and art in Denver.

Mark’s history with art in Denver also reaches into the future.

When you arrive at a warehouse show you heard about from teenagers with thrift-store satin-jackets and asymmetric haircuts Mark is already in there. He is everywhere you go and always beats you to it.

Raw Fury visited Mark at his home and garage darkroom. A set back 19th century carriage house with tin-types scattered around a random garden, he is surrounded by nouveaux LoHi McMansions, apartment blocks, stately Denver Squares, and the local-food French restaurant Z Cuisine, the west wall of which is plastered with decaying blown-up wet-plate portraits of women and children.

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| Raw Fury #2 | The Big Picture | Mark Sink

This page: Mark Sink Facing page: top Jock Sturges left Kristen Sink right Mark Sink 30th and Wyandot LoHi Denver, and 37th and Navaho North Denver

His DIY garage darkroom is a fire-hazard of silver baths, ether, Everclear, and syrupy tinctures in sawed off plastic bottles he describes as “not Kambucha”. A 19th century wooden camera blocks the passage into a garage full of bikes and home-owner clutter. Mark, pouring the ether and Everclear on a little piece of black tin, tells me the neighborhood liquor store has concerns about him. He is frequently walking over with his wife and collaborator, art photographer Kristin Sink, and young models for shoots, to buy a bottle of the 151 proof white liquor. “I tell them, it’s for photography. They just give me this look.”

In the small upstairs kitchen, with metal photos that make me look like a civil war ghost drying on the windowsill, I ask Mark about The Big Picture, his curated biannual photo exchange and international wheatpaste project.

RF / How did The Big Picture start?

Mark / It started years ago. It’s a culmination of things through the Houston FotoFest. The director there, Fred Baldwin, inspired Month of Photography. He always wanted to do a mile walk of photography and told me to research it.

We had an in with Epson. So, I was looking into what it costs to have it so you could walk a corridor from a park, or event, to the center of the festival surrounded by photos. It materialized in some other places, subway stations and stuff, but to get permission for that walk from the city with the bureaucracy... It just fell through to try and quickly do something. Well, within a year to “quickly” do something. The idea always stuck with me.

There was a girl Tammera Gallegos who came and wheatpasted my door once with really cool Xeroxed images and did it in a flash. Next thing I know I have this really cool piece of art done sort of street style. That’s right when JR was hitting the news. He won the Ted award with those giant faces of people in poverty. And of course Shepard Fairey was starting to get

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| Raw Fury #2 | The Big Picture | Mark Sink

into the news leading up to Obama’s presidency. It was all kind of coming together then. I was seeing the Xerox plotter machine, looking up the wheatpaste recipe and it’s flour water and sugar.

Kinkos, flour, water, and sugar. Cool. And so we’d go hit a spot and turn a gross alley into a beautiful gallery space. It became instantly addictive.

The idea that I’m really interested in is public art. Art that’s not institutional – in the museum. Art that is architectural, and environmental. Where people out in public space walk into it unexpectedly. And this has really been cool. The alley up by City O’ City, I would just go by on any given day and there would be 20 people standing there. And I’d drive by again and there would still be people standing there!

RF / What do you think it does for an urban population to have unexpected, out of place, or unsanctioned public art?

Mark / Well, what is beyond my expectations is what happens with the wall down there at Z Cuisine. People are shooting wedding pictures in front of it. There’s a guy who documents it every day on his way to work, to show how it’s decaying. There was this kid and mother taking pictures and his mom said, “This wall has inspired my son to become a photographer and he’s become photography crazy!” That’s what drives me. Walking by there and seeing that sort of thing happen has set it in stone. I’ll stick with it.

RF / How do you do The Big Picture exchange?

Mark / First get everyone to submit. For 2015 I’m going to do a free submission unless you get in, then it’s like $10. It’s just printing costs. Hard cost is like $10-15 an image. I’ve been trying to get a patron to give us an architectural plotter. The one at Kinko’s is 15 years old and it kicks out beautiful prints. So

Mark Sink | The Big Picture | Raw Fury #2 |

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I’m wondering where could you find one from an architectural firm that didn’t use it that much. If the Kinkos’ one is 15 years old then they last forever. They have it running day and night.

Some are not good printers, they all have their own personalities. Some come out dark. So we have a couple hot spots – printers we can count on.

After submissions come in, I do a corporate bid. Man they make it really hard to find that phone number, to their national bid desk. I was going to do 1,200 prints and they gave me 60% off. In the old days – It’s always good to have a friend at Kinko’s – I’d get 60% off from this guy and I’d be like “Dude you’re going to loose your job! What if your manager finds out.”

And he’s like, “I am the manager.” It turns out anyone at Kinko’s can offer you up to 60% off.

RF / Are images that get pasted up in Paris or Rome printed there? Or do you send them prints?

Mark / 90% of the time they’ll do the printing there. We just tell them the machine to use and they find one. On a couple of occasions we tube work out to them.

RF / Why wheatpaste verses something like the digital displays, or going to Lamar Billboards, or RTD for permission and taking over the bus shelter ad space?

Mark / I like to stay within the gray area of the street. It’s tricky where we go in because some of it is not approved. We’re trying to stay on a fine line of not going too far. That’s what I’m trying to balance now – with staying unexpected. It has its pluses and minuses. We put up some relatively controversial work, an image of a woman tied up in front of the Guggenheim Museum, and that got the Highlands Mommies after us. And there are some angry lawyers in that group! My ex-wife sent me

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| Raw Fury #2 | The Big Picture | Mark Sink

this thing (from the Highlands Mommies) and is like, “Mark is this you?” It says “We’re going to hunt down whomever is responsible! My law firm...” Raghr ragh... That scared the shit out of me.

Police officers will pass and pull back around and we’re thinking “oh fuck oh fuck, here we go,” the windows roll down and they say “This is awesome! ...Are you supposed to be here?” When they see spray painting they know it’s destruction but something about putting up a photograph, they don’t see it as destructive. Because we’re such media, image recognition oriented people when we see a spray paint line it instantly means “destroying property” and wheatpaste is so ephemeral it doesn’t destroy property. Well... It does, it leaves a mark. It does eat into bricks.

RF / Why wheatpaste blow ups of wet-plate photographs?

Mark / Part of my whole thing, that ties into all of this, photography and everything I’m searching for, are things that are really pure and direct like poetry, writing, architecture. When there’s purity involved and everything is true to the medium. I find that’s what I hunger for. Being out in the public doing the wheatpasting has a kind of purity to it. Shooting a wet-plate, where the light struck the plate and captured the moment rather than it bouncing back into the universe for ever and ever. That is magical in a way. Like a Polaroid – it’s not being translated by a chip. Pow! There it is. There’s something in all these steps I’m taking that is following that purity. That’s what I think I’m finding with wheatpaste. There’s no institutionalization of it and it’s so direct.

Previous and facing page: Mark Sink This page: top Ed Ross, bottom and following page Kristen Sink

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RF / Photography and street art are populist mediums. You can take it to a really high level but at the core it’s something that you don’t have to have training for or permission to do.

Mark / And the pieces become objects. These big pieces crust up and become three dimensional. They become incredible objects.

RF / There is some kind of underlying humour in using late 19th century technology and disseminating it as street art – in such an early 21st century way.

Mark / I’ll shoot a wet plate portrait on the front step this morning and this afternoon I’ll be practicing with my go-pro and circling my drone. I want to do the first wet plate from a drone. To go from technology when photography was 10 years old to this insane technology. For $400 bucks you can have a drone. It’s a crazy-ass world.

RF / Aside from The Big Picture do you have any other ideas for guerilla public art?

Mark / I was inspired recently, and have seen it more and more... I love people who project on things. There’s a guy, Pablo Gimenez Zapiola, he came to Denver and showed me how to wire up my car with a generator so you can shoot projectors. You can do poetry on trains going by. The white light-rail cars at night are a really good medium to shoot images onto. Talk about being ultra-ephemeral. In Texas they have THE sickest projector you’ve ever seen in your life. It can do batman images on clouds. It’s like one of the big keg lights. $10,000 a night... I’d love to set one of those up and do poetry on the downtown buildings from the Highlands looking down or shooting stuff over LoDo in the clouds. That would be really really cool... /RF

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| Raw Fury #2 | The Big Picture | Mark Sink

Gallery: Mike Fudge ~ 42-43 Brandon Pickett ~ 44-45 Heather Link ~ 46-47 Anthony Lewellen ~ 48-49 Uriel Correa ~ 50-52 Michael Boswell ~ 52-53 Paco Barba ~ 54-55 Eric Von Haynes ~ 56-57

Gallery | Table of Contents | Raw Fury #2 |

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Mike Fudge | Studio Process | Raw Fury #2 |

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Brandon Pickett | The Bench Warmers | Raw Fury #2 |

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Heather Link | Eddie Bohn’s | Raw Fury #2 |

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| Raw Fury #2 | When Trouble Comes | Anthony Lewellen

Uriel Correa | ยกTV PARTY! | Raw Fury #2 |

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| Raw Fury #2 | orbs plus more, the return of tegmark | Michael Boswell

Paco Barba | Mash Down | Raw Fury #2 |

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Eric Von Haynes | Gush | Raw Fury #2 |

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Raw Fury Colophon:

Raw Fury #2 ISSN# 2327-6002 | Edition of 150 Cover:140# French Pop-Tone pink lemonade screenprinted at Flatlands Studios, Chicago and letterpress printed at the Metro State Letterpress Lab, Denver.

Insert: 80# French Pop-Tone pink lemonade letterpress printed with engraved traffic cones at the Metro State Letterpress Lab, Denver.

Interviews and Features: 100# Anthem text digitally printed, and bound, at Publication Printers, Denver.

Gallery Section: 80# French butcher paper laser printed at Metro State Letterpress Lab, Denver and Risograph Printed at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago Service Bureau.

Type: Raw Fury #2 is typeset in Berthold Akzidenz Grotesk an 1880’s typeface codified into its current form in 1958 by Günter Gerhard Lange and Cooper Black designed

by Oswald Bruce Cooper in 1920’s Chicago.

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| Raw Fury #2 | Colophon

IS Press Institute of Sociometry Post Office Box 44425 Denver CO 80201-4425 Flatlands Studios 629 Cermak Ste. #407 Chicago, IL 60616 Illustration: Dred 88