Caleb Neelon

The reproduction oil painting neighborhood of Dafen, in the boom city of Shenzhen, China (this history is covered in part 1), posed an interesting question: What do you do in a boom city when its artist district, as it has organically formed, produces art that the art world sneers at? Since 1979, Shenzhen has gone [...]

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I just got back from a mural project at the Dafen Art Museum in Shenzhen, China. Shenzhen is just across the river from Hong Kong, and it’s one of China’s mainland boom cities. Since 1979, when it received a special designation from Deng Xiaoping as a “Special Enterprise Zone,” it’s grown from a collection of [...]

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Beyond the Street, a very large release from Gestalten and edited by Patrick Nguyen and Stuart Mackenzie, sprawls through “the 100 leading figures in urban art.” If I look through it as a collection of what essentially amount to magazine interview-style pieces, it both reads and looks great. Many of the images seem exclusive to [...]

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People who walk into one of Philadelphia artist Jim Houser’s shows often find his small paintings and sculptures so carefully grouped and installed that they just want to move in. In recent years, Houser has incorporated his music into his installations, playing through a stack of painted amps. Coinciding with his summer 2010 show at [...]

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I’ve been organizing a show at Scion LA this week with one of my heroes, Ed Emberley. Remember his drawing books? It’s been great to bring  Ed together with some of the now-adult artists he helped inspire. Saelee Oh, Seonna Hong, Raul Gonzalez, Chris Kline, and Matt Leines are all making 72″ x 72″ paintings [...]

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[Read Part 1] I asked the Nicaraguan graffiti writers what had gone down, how Daniel Ortega came to be the most up man in Nicaragua. They explained that in one night, in a massive piece of political organizing, small groups of Ortega supporters across the country were handed cans of paint and got to work. [...]

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[Read Part 2] Daniel Ortega came to power in Nicaragua in 1979 after a populist revolution. Formally elected president in 1985, he promised to break up the oligarchy and to continue the self-governing ideals of Sandino and Carlos Fonseca, the inspiration and founder of the FSLN, or Sandinista party. This put him in Reagan’s crosshairs, [...]

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