Frances' Create Here Grant

Much has happened but I want to start by saying that Tion Bukue is the graffiti artist we are inviting to Chattanooga. We interviewed Caleb ("Aero"), Manuel Guerlis and Tion Bakue.

Manuel is from Wiesbaden and founded the MOS - Meeting of Styles - format: one giant graffiti festival in a host city that can offer preferably thousands of square feet of permitted space. Add to that many hopefully donated cases of aerosol. Invite international graffiti stars and they bring the music, groupies, galleries etc. There are maybe 10 per year worldwide, and Manuel is still the guy who helps the locals coordinate these things. I loved talking to him. He is very community minded and loves the democraticness of grafitti and the accessibility of it. He has a bundes job working for Lufthansa.

We also interviewed Caleb - "Aero" - who is Manuel's
counterpart MOS-wise in the States. Caleb is beautiful and paints beauty. He is of Hawaiian origin and is an ex- model. I also loved his philosophy, and he is particularly concerned over the eco status and safety of use of aerosol. He started a company called Blubber Colors Spray Paint.

Tion is a professional hip hop manager, writes,performs and records his own songs, skateboards, and does graffiti. He sees all these activities as one aesthetic taking direction through the hand, the voice, the body to express graffiti, hip hop, dance and skate boarding. This urban aesthetic is one that emerges from the street, not the classroom. It is improvised, autobiographical, requires no education, can be practiced by anyone, can be recorded, photographed, vimeoed etc and distributed world wide without that person's mother knowing anything about it. These raps and tags are personal expressions ready to go international with a simple keystroke.


Tion teaches the disciplines in a parallel way starting with a workshop called Wordplay 101. What is the spoken word, the pictorated word, the word as it moves through the body. His other workshop is Art2Empire now that one can selfexpress via this aesthetic, how does one make a living. I love his practical side. How do we make these things work !!

We are booking him for the weekend of Oct 23. We will have the two workshops mentioned above plus a more traditional art class that I will coteach. The workshops will culminate in a graffiti project at the Hart Gallery on Main St. The Heavillon's are allowing MM chalkboard curatorial privileges on their outside wall. Sat night Oct 23rth, we will graffiti their wall, some boards and my van. We will finish the evening with some kind of street party with music etc.

Sometime over the weekend, I want Tion to do a skateboard demo. The next thing is booking the flight, the class space, party time etc.

The important next thing is considering the audience for this workshop/weekend. We want to reach urban teens who are artitsts trying not to be vandals, vandals who could be more interesting as artists, teens who are drawn to the aesthetic who could enjoy a visual arts way of expression. We want to attract tatoo artists, pro and non pro, students who doodle in their books, students and pros from the domains of interior design, architecture and fine arts. We want to attract those interested in american spoken traditions, hip hop artists, south siders, politicians, region planners etc.

So far, we plan to meet with Greta Hayes over at Parks and Recs to find out how to get the word out to our urban unenfranchised youth.

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Hi, I'm Katherine. I'm helping Frances with her grant project, so I'll be making an appearance on here now and then. Last weekend, we had a graffiti booth at SwaggFest, a Parks & Rec event for urban youth. We brought aerosol for kids to try their hand at graffiti art and handed out fliers about Tion's visit. Hoping some of the kids will show up for the October workshops!