Hobbes tackels Calvin off his skateboard at Sunset Junction.
Had fun with this piece for The Uprising Creative .
Sunset Blvd & Lucile
New York Times – Art & Design
Joe Iurato, artist from New Jersey, rounded up a crew of 13 fellow artists, some from as far off as Sweden and South Africa, and handed them a loose mandate. “All we told them was to do something that was in the spirit of the place,” Mr. Kelleher said.
No problem. In a three-night frenzy, working after the last race of the day, the artists went at it. By Nov. 23, a Saturday, the quixotic project, “The Aqueduct Murals,” was completed and ready for first post.
Churchill Downs might have had a better card that day. But Aqueduct, blue-collar cousin to Belmont and Saratoga, had the art.
On a large cinderblock wall, Logan Hicks and Mr. Iurato had laid down, in 13 layers of stenciling, a three-horse dash to the wire in black and white. Near a bank of self-service terminals that cheeped manically as bettors input their exactas and trifectas, James Reka, an Australian artist who lives in Berlin, had painted two stylized horses in swirling black and white arabesques.
Over a line of betting windows, Skewville, a fictional art team created by Ad Deville, an artist whose name is also an invention, installed a cryptic, Barbara Krugerish exhortation in large letters: Update Your Status.
“I went to the track one day and looked around at the type of people who are there,” Mr. Deville said by way of explanation. “Everybody wants to be big-time, everybody wants to be rich, everybody wants to be better, including me.”
The mural project is part inspiration, part desperation. New ideas are at a premium in an industry that has been declining for decades, crowded out by myriad other forms of legal gambling and unable to attract new customers to replenish its aging fan base.
At the Jockey Club’s annual meeting in 2012, members listened glumly as an executive from the consulting firm McKinsey & Company informed them that racetrack attendance had declined 30 percent in the last decade and that the handle — the total number of dollars bet — was down 37 percent.
Like drive-in movie theaters, many tracks are more valuable for the land they sit on than for the racing they offer. Bay Meadows, near San Francisco, closed in 2008. Hollywood Park, which opened for business in 1938, will run its last race at the end of this month.
In the struggle to survive, racetracks have innovated frantically, offering theme nights, free concerts and bizarre promotions. The owners of Gulfstream Park, near Miami, have announced plans to erect a giant bronze and steel statue of Pegasus trampling a dragon on the track’s parking lots. The sculpture, 11 stories tall, is envisioned as the centerpiece of Pegasus Park, an entertainment attraction with hotels, apartments and, perhaps, water slides and Ferris wheels.
More seriously, many tracks, including Aqueduct, have embraced the “racino” concept, joining forces with casino operators to combine horse racing and slot machines in a single package. It is a shotgun wedding with an eager bride, since a percentage of slot revenues goes toward improving the racing product, primarily by raising the money for purses.
Two years ago, the Malaysian-based Genting Group opened Resorts World New York City on the Aqueduct grounds, taking over half the old racetrack building in the process. By law, 44 percent of the casino’s revenues go to a New York State education fund.
The New York Racing Association gets 4 percent of revenues for capital improvements at its three tracks. (The $30,000 budget for Aqueduct Murals came out of the capital-improvements money.) Over all, the deal with Genting has generated about $200 million for the racing association so far.
Critics of the concept argue that racetracks have crawled into bed with the enemy. “Any notion that this might be a mechanism for increasing interest in, or exposure to, the track has disappeared into a contentious relationship where the two entities do nothing to help each other,” Steven Crist, the publisher of The Daily Racing Form, wrote in a column in June. “Genting has removed any signs indicating that there is a racetrack on the premises and won’t even show the track simulcast feed at its casino bars.”
Racetracks are well aware that slot machines do nothing to solve their underlying problems. Eager to attract new patrons, they are willing to try just about anything. Even art. Mr. Kelleher said that “The Aqueduct Murals” would stay indefinitely, and that there might be more to come.
Whether the horseplayers care is an open question. They tend to be a highly focused group, intent on analyzing the next race, formulating a bet and, in many cases, cursing the jockey aboard the horse they just lost money on.
Read full article here – www.nytimes.com/2013/12/10/arts/design/
Angelenos pay tribute to Nelson Mandela – Channel 7 News
Back in July 2013 we were contacted to create a very special mural of Nelson Mandela in association with The Nelson Mandela Foundation and The City of Santa Monica to honor him on the celebration of his 95th birthday. Almost overnight we made this installation happen. On July 18th, 2013 our tribute was completed. A few days ago on December 5th Nelson Mandela transitioned at the age of 95.
On December 5th Channel 7 aired this piece featuring the mural we installed in Venice, CA. Thank you to those that gave us a heads up about the news piece and to those that showed their support during our installation.
July 18, 1918 – December 5, 2013
PICASSO X GIFT UNIVERSAL
VIDEO AND PRINT RELEASE
Print available at HERE
36×16, Edition of 50, Giclee print
Signed and number by artist.
Video by Jordan Ahern
pablo universal from dope vinyl on Vimeo.
Rest In Peace Nelson Mandela
We were contacted back in July 2013 to create a very special mural of MADIBA in association with The Nelson Mandela Foundation to honor him on the celebration of his 95th birthday. Almost overnight we made this installation happen. On July 18th, 2013 our tribute was completed.
Today we celebrate the LIFE of Nelson ‘Madiba’ Mandela as the news of his passing reached our studio.
July 18, 1918 – December 5, 2013
Nelson Mandela, who led the emancipation of South Africa from the white minority rule and served as his country’s first black president, died at the age of 95.
Video by Syd Woodward of Grounded Media Network forBranded Arts and RGBF
David Flores Nelson Mandela Mural installation is located at studio one-on-one
Division 1
The Division 1 team is looking sharp in front of the Kill Mobil installation at their shop in Austin, TX.
Check them out. Only the best.
d1bicycles.com
Gift Universal presents Picasso in print
David Flores Art x Gift Universal present Picasso in print.
36×16, Edition of 50, Giclee print
Signed and number by artist.
$150 USD
This beautiful print, representation of the David Flores mural located @DAXgallery in Costa Mesa, CA.
To be released on:
Friday DEC 6TH, 2013 at NOON (PST)
davidfloresart.com/shop
Forbes Interest In Recent Installation.
Aqueduct Racetrack in South Ozone Park, Queens is the last racetrack in New York City. Across the Belt Parkway from Kennedy Airport, it has its own stop on the subway, and virtually from the day of its opening 1894, it has been disparaged, the down-market cousin of the upscale tracks that used to populate New York City, tracks like Jerome Park and Morris Park in what is now the Bronx, and the extant Belmont Park, on the border of Queens in Nassau County.
The major marketing and broadcast arms in Thoroughbred racing pretty much ignore Aqueduct. The only hats you’ll find there are utilitarian, not decorative: baseball caps or, more commonly, wool hats to keep warm the heads of the hardy who frequent the track from November to April. You’ll be hard-pressed to find the celebrities so prized by the sport’s promoters.
Instead, you’ll find an ethnically diverse crowd, mostly men, whose wagering dollars keep Aqueduct near the top of the league table of monthly handle during the winter months. You’ll find people who have arrived on the A train and who don’t much care that no red carpet awaits them. You’ll find horseplayers.
11 national and international artists.
“Aqueduct is my favorite track,” said Paul Kelleher of the New York Racing Association’s corporate development department. The project is his brainchild.
“I love the grittiness of Aqueduct; it’s got a city vibe to it,” he went on. It was a perfect venue, he thought, to display street art, which often takes the form of murals on urban buildings. He contacted a well-connected friend, Joe Iurato, who agreed to curate the event.
The artists have taken over the track between 8 pm and 4 am this week, creating art on the walls of the track with stencils and spray paint, incorporating racing themes, horses, and jockeys. Iurato is documenting the installation on Twitter and Instagram.
“Part of the beauty of street art is its impermanence,” said Iurato in a press release. “A piece might last an hour or a few years, but every artist accepts that it won’t last forever. An exhibition like this, where works of this scale are housed indoors, isn’t something you see happen very often. In a sense, it preserves a small piece of New York culture that is otherwise constantly fleeting.”
The ephemeral nature of street art has been highlighted recently by the painting over of the Five Pointz graffiti and by Banksy’s recent visit to New York, two events, said Kelleher, unrelated to the Aqueduct Murals project.
“We didn’t align our event with those,” he said. “We didn’t even know Banksy was going to be in New York doing installations, and Five Pointz is predominantly graffiti art, while this will be murals.”
“But,” he added, “it ended up being really well-timed.”
@Thumpers_Adventures
You can find our favorite bunny hopping off planes all over the world.
Live feed can be found on the main page.
DavidFloresArt.com @Thumpers_Adventures