SNUB23 x PRHBTN 2019
This adventure began like many with an email, which at first sounded too good to be true. ‘Please come to Lexington, Kentucky and paint a massive mural. With each further contact our excitement grew, a personal but professional attitude from the organisers reinforced our determination to make this wall special.
We knew it wouldn’t be easy, but also knew that with a bigger wall and more time than we do at most of the weekend events, we could really leave our mark in this faraway place.
Our design took plenty of planning, from calculating the amount of each colour we would need to the scale of each cube. We built a model, tested colour combinations, setting our scale and worked out a schedule.
As with all our painting trips, this one started with a long journey, London to New York then on to Cincinnati, we had totally lost track of what day it was already. From the moment we met John (one half of the mighty PRHBTN duo) we knew that we’d get on, good sense of humour and sarcasm always help. The drive to Lexington flew by and we arrive at what to us looked like a big house from an old American horror movie.
After a day of unpacking kit, cutting stencils and fighting jet lag our first night out was a VIP PRHBTN Launch party at Oracle tattoo shop. Sipping our first real Kentucky bourbon the rollercoaster began, it seemed that everyone we met from that point was someone we’d get on with. We saw the artwork of Patrick Smith, who was exhibiting there, then met the man himself, he is now a good friend. Free tattoos were available, we resisted. That night was a sign of things to come, late nights with good people followed by happy days in the cold and sunshine painting.
No sooner had we begun, than visitors and local business owners visited, all with smiles, some with treats and one woman with the comment "I know what it is... it’s a chicken!" Followed by her own raucous laughter.
Day two of painting marked the arrival of Alex, a wandering art warrior who we met at Art Basel, Miami last year. We are so lucky to meet such great people, Alex is easy to like and it wasn’t long before he became a big part of our trip, even coming along to our fancy dinner at Tom Fielders home. He is now back on the road and leaving his art and happiness wherever he goes.
As you can see from the progress photos, the start was slow and the size of the wall daunting, all that white space seemed endless. But step by step and cube by cube Sprite and I smashed into it, focus and determined.
PRHBTN set up the project just right, taking us to and picking us up from the wall, feeding us delicious food, laughing at our Englishness and putting on a beautiful exhibition in a deluxe location Loundoun House. We saw great art and again met more good people, Sprite met her double and I met ‘Flash Gordon’ well not really but turned out Pat Armstrong is just as much a hero as Flash. We had one day off in the 12 days of painting and we spent with Pat, he drove us to his land in the mountains, we learnt about and fired a bunch of guns while talking about gun control and the land his family left to him, then we hiked across that very land. Then on the way back we took the sky lift (cable car/ski lift) to the natural bridge, a giant chunk of sandstone the formed a bridge across a canyon, we saw it from afar, walked under it and across it. The whole day is one neither of us will forget.
We would like to thank John and Jessica, team PRHBTN for inviting us, supporting us and all the other artist who have been lucky enough to be part of there vision of what a city can look like when it embraces large scale murals.
And a big thank you to the support and generosity of everyone we met.
Clay
Graham and Geoff of Square Pegs Studio
Alex
Rolling oven pizzas
Mirror Twin Brewing
Eppings on Eastside
Blue Door Smokehouse
Paul our Air BnB host
Patrick and Katelynn
Pat Armstrong
Nick and Michelle Hardesty
Kobra paint USA
GRAVITY FLUX at Artbase
GRAVITY FLUX
Escape this reality.
Painted over 3 days at a decayed mental institution the Domjüch, near Neustrelitz, Germany.
Commissioned by Art Base Festival with support from Preh.streetart
Photography by Roland Klaffke
SNUB23 CRUSHED THE JUNK YARD JAM 2019
WE SMASHED IT, QUITE LITERALLY, AT URBAN ARTISTRY’S JUNK YARD JAM IN CREWE.
We were in our element on the Junk Yard. Surrounded by filth, rust and smashed up electronics and cars. The junk yard felt like a dystopian cyber wasteland which fitted our style perfectly, we had to take advantage and paint as many beautifully gnarly surfaces as we could.
We woke up bright and early on the day of the jam as we were eager to get started. The first thing we painted was a 6 wheel fibreglass Mini Bus. We started by throwing buckets water over the Van and painting it as the water dripped off to give a distressed background. On top of this we painted a SNUB Robot and Orange Isometric Cubes.
Next we painted an old metal drum which was inside one of the Junk Yard Jam warehouses. The drum was covered in rust, peeling paint at massive dents. Everyone was confused as to why we wanted to paint something so awkward and messed up, but to us it was perfect.
We painted the drum with SNUB23’s Iconic Robot and Red Isometric cubes. Then to make the whole piece feel like it had always been painted like that we took a scouring pad to the whole thing and scratched off the paint to reveal the beautiful rusty textures underneath.
Our final piece at Urban Artistry’s Junk Yard Jam excluding a few cheeky ISO’s hidden in places was a giant metal box. We have no idea what this was originally but it had the perfect rust surface which we utilised to our advantage and only painted the outline of the SNUB Robot so it looked like the rusty metal was the surface of the robot.
OH WE FORGOT TO MENTION ONE THING…
ONCE WE HAD FINISHED PAINTING THEM… THEY CRUSHED THEM!
We cannot thank the Junk Yard Jam Guys enough for their incredible hospitality and general greatness. We had the best time.
We also have to thank Graff City and Kobra Paint as always for supplying us with paint.
Other great artist who painted alongside us who you should also check out are:
To find out more about the Junk Yard Jam and Urban Artistry you can find everything here:
YARDWORKS 2019 MURAL GLASGOW
YARDWORKS GLASGOW 2019
YARDWORKS GLASGOW 2019
In May we spent 3 days painting at Scotland’s only street art graffiti festival YARDWORKS in Glasgow alongside 120 other artists. 11,000 members of the public visited SWG3 where the event was held over the weekend and just like every year the sun was shining.
It was great fun painting this mural. Especially the roughed up “rust” background technique, which contrasts the sharp lines of the sketch and the crispness of our isometric cube designs.
Since “Yardworks” first started back in 2017 we haven’t missed an event!
Thank you to all the wonderful people who came to visit us and came to say hello throughout the event and a huge thank you to Gaz Mac, Marriene Vosloo and all the other organisers who make Yardworks so fantastic.
The finished mural can be found at the entrance to the SWG3 building on Eastvale Place.
Spray paint supplied by Kobra Paint.
PAINT & BEER 2016
This years Paint & Beer was held at ADM, a large squatted dry dock in Amsterdam.
Over 100 artists painted in the sunshine over the weekend. Guzzling beer brewed by Friekens Brouwerij
Paint from KOBRA
SNUB CITY OF COLOUR 2016
Graffiti ISOmetric portal and robot painted at City of Colour Birmingham 2016. Alongside many great artists.