This is a resource for the Edge of the Canvas class at Seattle Art Museum. The artists listed are just the tip of the iceberg of amazingly inventive people who are creatively contributing to our surroundings with ephemeral art. These artists were chosen specifically for their unique approaches to what is considered Street art.
Let’s get right to it with this weeks edition of 5 Artists I like.
god has a plan to kill me 1/2 Anthony Lister 2008
Anthony Lister is an artist from Brisbane, Australia who currently resides in NYC. He is part of the current generation of artists that have used doing graffiti work in the streets as part of their arts education. Listers work is a meditation for him on the effects of popular media on youth, shared memories, and the distortions that are created by the manipulation of pop culture by corporations.
Percolator Stuart Davis 1927
Stuart Davis(1892 -1964) is the truth. His Jazz influenced paintings from the 40’s and 50’s laid the groundwork for pop art while still maintaining the modernist edge that he first acquired from Picasso and Brecht thirty years prior. I have always enjoyed the elements of realism he incorporated in his paintings; the cigarette packaging and sparkplug advertising are standouts. I just really dig his work.
Raymond Pettibon 2007
Like alot of folks who came of age in the eighties my first exposure to Raymond Pettibon was through album art. Maybe it was a Black Flag sleeve, definitely Sonic Youth’s Goo. Regardless his work has always had a coolness that I aspired towards. The feeling that you might as well live now because who knows whats right around the bend, we live in a harsh world in dark times. As I have become aware of Pettibon’s body of work I see an artist who confronts and challenges the notion of American exceptionalism by holding a mirror up to our collective faces revealing the ugly beast we are.
Let It Ride Sloe Margaret Kilgallen 1999
Margaret Kilgallen (1967 – 2001) is a defining artist of a moment. That moment has not passed but without her continued presence it is hard to imagine it being nearly what it could be. Her work alongside that of her husband, fellow artist Barry Mcgee embraced the rustic aesthetics of hobo monikers, graffiti, vintage typography, and the folkart of the southwest. This approach to work has been called “The Mission School”, comprised mostly artists coming primarily from San Francisco, most notably Clare Rojas, Ruby Neri, Jo Jackson, and Chris Johanson. Tragically Margaret Kilgallen died in 2001 ,a few weeks after she gave birth to her daughter Asha, from breast cancer.
Viet Nam Will Win Rene Mederos Pazos 1972
Rene Mederos Pazos is a master designer in the Cuban revolutionary tradition. I know the concept of a revolutionary tradition sounds absurd but I don’t know if there are any better ways to describe the amazing poster design movement that has been rumbling along in the island nation for the last 50+ years. Senor Mederos is one of the most acclaimed artists to come from Cuba creating works that show the people, Campesinos and soldier alike, working in solidarity to create a proletarian paradise without Yankee intervention. In his vibrant colors you can almost smell the sugarcane being cut and feel the conga rhythms being pounded out as you prepare camp in the Sierra Madre. I mean really whats not to fall in love with when you can see that in a poster advertising a movie.
To Fear It Is To Know It 
