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
YANKIN' CHAINS x HIGH VIS BIRMINGHAM
YANKIN' CHAINS
Painted over 2 days in sunny Digbeth, Birmingham. Alongside my mighty Sprite.
Painted as part of the High Vis Festival at “The Custard Factory” in Digbeth in September alongside some other fantastic artists including Paul Monsters and Philth
We chose to make ABC Warriors Mongrol the robot from 2000AD the main feature of the wall to celebrate “Day of Dredd” and after finding out legendary artist Phil Winslade from 2000AD, DC Comic would be there at the event.
Powered by @kobrapaint_official
@kobrapaintuk
Good people, good times
“We bring you High-Vis Festival! Its a celebration of all things Street Culture, from street art to street food, graffiti to graphic novels, skateboarding to breakdancing and much more. On Saturday the 8th of sept 2018 in and around The Custard Factory in Digbeth, Birmingham UK over 200 artists, dancers and musicians will be showing off their skills, all for free. If you get bored with watching giant pieces of art coming to life in front of your very eyes by 80+ Aerosol artists, then check out a full-on breakdancing battle brought to you by the world famous Break Mission, a Sneakers and Street apparel market delivered by SneakerHawks, live music by the leading local talent with the help of music uni BIMM, and top draw street food from Digbeth Dining Club on Lower Trinity Street.”
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 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:
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.
