Postcard from Lille (and South Wales) - Arty days around the world #2

So, after leaving Roanoke we arrived in Lille, France. The country’s fourth largest city and home to a bizarre yearly tradition where restaurants chuck all the mussel shells from peoples plates into the street creating huge piles. Restaurants compete for the biggest pile thus demonstrating they’ve had the most orders for moules frites! Here’s a video of it. Anyway….

Unfortunately we didn’t have too much time to look around as goodonyourwall is moving home shortly (very exciting) so things are a bit busy, but there was plenty to see.

We came across The Dirty Cream, an online gallery and shop. Check them out. They’ve got a good range of stuff from prints to cushions.

It was at The Dirty Cream we came across the work of designer and illustrator Rhys Owen, transporting us from Lille to South Wales. Rhys’s work has been decribed as ‘urban’ however he says himself “I’m about as urban as caravan holilday at Butlins”.

Whatever you want to class it as it’s great. Above is a taster and you can check more of it out at his website (including cushions) Hidden Moves. Prints are available from £20, plus canvases, t-shirts and more.

A Cracking Print 2009 University of Brighton Illustration Graduate Kyle Bean is a rising star. Since graduating he’s built up an impressive client list and portfolio; Wallpaper Magazine, New York Times, Diesel, Selfridges…. He is already well blogged about on tumblr and beyond so this is a quick pick to let you know some of his work is now available as limited edition prints on his rather splendid website (designed by the equally talented Josh Emerson). Our fave is ‘What Came First’, Kyle’s playful visualisation of the age old question. It’s really worth checking out his other work as well, such as the evolution of the mobile phone. ‘What Came First’ is available as an A4 signed limited edition of only 100 and only £22. A good one for the kitchen wall and one to get while you can. Eggcellent (sorry, second ‘bad egg’ pun - actually that kind of makes it three now. I’ll shut up).
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A Cracking Print

2009 University of Brighton Illustration Graduate Kyle Bean is a rising star. Since graduating he’s built up an impressive client list and portfolio; Wallpaper Magazine, New York Times, Diesel, Selfridges….

He is already well blogged about on tumblr and beyond so this is a quick pick to let you know some of his work is now available as limited edition prints on his rather splendid website (designed by the equally talented Josh Emerson).

Our fave is ‘What Came First’, Kyle’s playful visualisation of the age old question. It’s really worth checking out his other work as well, such as the evolution of the mobile phone.

‘What Came First’ is available as an A4 signed limited edition of only 100 and only £22. A good one for the kitchen wall and one to get while you can.

Eggcellent (sorry, second ‘bad egg’ pun - actually that kind of makes it three now. I’ll shut up).

Postcard from Roanoke - Arty days around the world #1

Our first stop in our travels around the world feature took us to Roanoke, Virgina, USA. Before we get on to our find, here are a couple of facts about Roanoke:

  • It’s home to the world’s biggest freestanding man made illuminated star
  • It has an amazing architectural salvage place called Black Dog Salvage. If you fancy a pair of six foot tall sand cast glass wings you should visit them. The have a range of weird and wonderful salvaged items.
  • Roanoke is 3823 miles from goodonyourwalls home

We read that Roanoke had a cultural hub area and was informed there were lots of galleries in the downtown area, however we found them quite hard to find when searching the Internet highways. We are sure we missed some stuff (let us know) on our flying visit and late on we found Roanoke Revolution which seems to pull all things creative together for the city and also provided more info on our chosen artist.

But, we were very happy with our first find on our whistle stop tour of the globe.

Scott “Toobz” Noel is a talented graffiti artist who like a lot of other urban/street artists (however you want classify it) is moving in to galleries and producing work that people want on their walls. From what we can gather though he seems to be fairly unique to Roanoke.

Above is a video interview him and there more to see here. These videos were shot eight months ago and Scott talks abouts work and his plans. At the time of interview he said unless you know him or can essentially track him down apart from one small local framing store his work is hard to come by. Unfortunately this still seems to be the same, as we couldn’t find them available online. We’ve contacted Toobz to find out more and where you might be able to purchase his work. If we here back we will be sure to update you.

Below are a couple of our faves. Toobz produces striking images mainly from a spray can, which is quite remarkable given the clean lines he can produce, all from his spray nozzle. If your interested in finding out more check the videos out.

The day I understood

Special thanks to @soapdeli, @HireYourGuns and Roanoke Revolution. We’re now off to……

Arty days around the world

goodonyourwall has decided to travel the world - from the sofa - in search of prints and other creative coolness

In an occasional series we shall be using the rather fun geo-pick.com to select a random city and country and go exploring.

We will be looking for creative individuals to report on from wherever our travels take us. We’re not looking for big name artists with galleries and loads of press simply creatives who we think deserve a mention.

To keep things simple the search for now will be limited to North America and Europe. Still a fair bit of ground to cover I’m sure you will agree.

If we are struggling to find anything in the chosen city our search will extend into the surrounding regions until we find something.

Ok so our first destination is….(drumroll, oh the excitement)…. Roanoke, Virginia, USA (Nope me neither.)

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