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.
“PRHBTN is an annual celebration of art forms that have been criminalized, marginalized, and under-appreciated in the mainstream, featuring public murals alongside an exhibition of street art works in a space that complements the raw, powerful nature of the message and artistry of each piece.”
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
BRIGHTON PRIDE FOR THE NHS
ISO PRIDE 2019
Colour makes us very happy, so when the NHS asked us to paint a wall for Brighton Pride this coming weekend, we knew it had to be this.
Thanks to all the kind people who stopped to say they love it.
Painted with Sprite
Painted with Kobra Paint
SNUB23 GARDEN WALL MURAL COMMISSION
Last year a local Brighton resident commissioned us to paint a mural in their back garden, featuring our colourful iconic Isometric cubes. We selected a palette of bright vivid colours to really brighten up the area and make it feel larger.
A year later the very happy client got back in touch and asked us to extend the mural onto the other walls in the garden.
It was really nice to see that after a year the original piece still looked so new and vibrant. Even the plants which were cut back when we first painted the mural had now grown over and integrated themselves into the piece.
We painted the other walls in the garden in-keeping with the original mural design and colours. Wrapping the whole garden with cubes, making the space feel like a totally new world. We took into consideration the windows of the property, facing out into the garden, so the view from each window felt like their own canvas, full of colour.
The end result was really dramatic and beautiful. The client couldn’t have been happier. They were especially excited about all the BBQs they will have in the space.
SNUB23 X WAHACA MURAL
SNUB23 X WAHACA SUSTAINABLE FISHING MURAL
Over 3 days we painted 2 feature walls in Wahaca Brighton’s VIP Room. Our brief was to create a mural design which helped promote their range of sustainably caught fish dishes. Thus we created a Mural which takes inspiration from edible fish which can be found around the coasts of Mexico, Yellow Fin Tuna and Mackerel. We then used our iconic isometric background to create an abstract bubble scene.
Assisted by: Sprite
Coordinated by Tristan Manco @ Think Beautiful Design
Powered as always by KOBRA Paint
Wahaca Brighton, Wahaca’s home on the South Coast is a few minutes from the Brighton seafront & Brighton Marina in one of the UK’s most sustainably run restaurants. Featuring hand-painted murals by SNUB23 & Mexican street artist Mazatl, Wahaca Brighton is the perfect place to stop in for a quick bite, a long lunch with friends, or a private space to hire for an event.
Tristan Manco is a designer and art director, bringing his unrivalled wealth of creative experience and knowledge to each strand of his work. Design clients past and present include Cheltenham Festivals, Pictures on Walls (POW), Real World, Womad, Universal, EMI Records, Habitat, Rich Mix, Soil Association, Modern Art Oxford and the Arnolfini Gallery. High profile projects include the iconic Blur Think Tank album. Tristan’s design agency, Think Beautiful, brings together a team of highly experienced creatives providing the full spectrum of lead and support on design projects for corporates and small businesses.
Wahaca: Wahaca.co.uk
Think Beautiful Design: thinkbeautifuldesign.co.uk
Tristan Manco: Tristanmanco.com/
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.
