June 14th is certainly a day you should mark on your calendars in regards to art. Two events will be taking place, The Art of Digging and the Sonic Visual Arts Expo.

The Art of Digging will be going down at theLightGalleries in Costa Mesa, California. The event, which pays homage to the advancement and progression vinyl culture, brings awareness to the discrediting of music artists due to the increase in downloading. The event will include vinyl art and rare wax displays, live performances, record sales and exchange, and a special guest DJ. For more information click here.

Those on the East Coast can enjoy the Sonic Visual Arts Expo in Hamden, Connecticut that evening instead. Unlike The Art of Digging, this event focuses on the more conventional means of visual arts. Here, artists will be displaying and selling their work, along with a vast number of music acts. The headlining performances will feature Stephanie D’Ranged and Hellfire Graffix. Click here for ticket and location information.

Before pulling on that mask and shaking the spray can in preparation for greatness, before gracing the walls of countless buildings in efforts to share your vision and voice with the public, before any work of art there is a beginning. But there is rarely any documentation of these beginning stages and the intricate processes of the influential Graffiti genre.

Seeking to correct this are Sacha Jenkins — creator of Ego Trip Magazine and the White Rapper Show — and David Villorente, who have compiled Piecebook: Secret Drawings of Graff Writers, a book of sketches and rough drafts done by graffiti artists such as Dondi, Lee, T Kid, Lady Pink, IZ The Wiz, Kel 1st, Seen UA, Ali, Daze, Skeme, Noc 167, Cey, Part TDS, Don 1,West, Caine One, Mare, and many others.

On June 12th, Sacha Jenkins in collaboration with acclaimed artist Chino BYI and 10 Deep will put the book on display in a gallery reception for its release. The event takes place at Reed Space in New York City from 8-10pm.

For more information on how you can attend click here.

Way back in November of last year, we did a post on BombIt!, a rapid-rising documentary that crossed the globe hunting down interviews with those elusive, top graffiti talents like Marka27 and Retna (L.A.); Cope 2, REVS and Taki 183 (NYC); Nishiba (Japan); Boleta and Jorge Tavares (Brasil); Blek le Rat (Paris); and about 40 others from the Netherlands, Mexico, Italy, Sweden, South Africa, Lebanon, Belgium, and Germany, to name a few.

Unprecedented in scope, BombIt! appeared to be the deserving heir to Wild Style’s throne when we saw it last November and now, with the TriBeCa Film Festival under it’s belt, Antidote Films by side and an L.A. Premiere this Friday night, BombIt! is blowing up bigger than ever.

The timing couldn’t be better. The graffiti culture documented by Charlie Ahearn’s classic was, in a sense, local to New York City and has since incubated on a global scale, rearticulated and reimagined on our local streets and neighborhood cultures.

Urban space still excludes folks and voices and as long as it does, graffiti will drop its bombs, but the messages and the means are changing. Hear what glocal graffiti means in the 21st century from the artists who give it voice.

BombIt! L.A. Premiere
Friday, June 6th
Laemmles Sunset 5
8000 Sunset Boulevard, West Hollywood
1:00//3:15//5:30//7:50//10:10pm

According to Greek Mythology, the king of Pessinus, King Midas, came across a Satyr named Silenus in his rose garden. King Midas treated him hospitably and kept him entertained with food and wine while Silenus told him stories and sung songs for ten days. On the eleventh day, King Midas brought Silenus back to his son Dionysus, who promised King Midas a reward of whatever he wanted. His choice was the ability to turn whatever he touched into gold…

In recent weeks, Barcelona has been experiencing its own taste of the Midas touch. Throughout the city, an unknown street artist has been painting ordinary everyday objects such as water fountains, public telephones and garbage cans gold.

So far, no developments have been made in regards to who the artist could be, but it’s been causing quite buzz. The press has referred to the unknown visionary as a guerilla or rebel artist because of his gutsy approach to a new take on visual art.

Yet, it comes off as something more than typical rebellion, and more like an attempt to open the eyes of the people to the beauty and value of their everyday surroundings.

Montreal’s Fine Art Museum is showcasing an outstanding exhibition yet again with an exceptional homage to the 40-year career and legacy of French haute couture maestro Yves Saint Laurent.

Saint Laurent, who started as Christian Dior’s assistant while studying at the Chambre syndicale de la haute couture, has defined and tremendously influenced fashion is today with his trademark pieces like the tuxedo, the blazer and the safari jacket — y’all know that they’ve become basic components of our daily attire.

“Masterful Pencil Strokes”, “The YSL Revolution”, “The Palette,” Lyrical Sources”: these are the different themes of the show, each of which is a reflection on the evolution of Saint Laurent’s style, which was greatly influenced by the artistic movements in painting, literature and cinema of his time.

After Montreal, this amazing retrospective, presented in collaboration with the Fondation Pierre Bergé Yves Saint Laurent and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, will be exhibited in San Francisco next Fall. On your way out check out “Style” — 249 pages of words and illustration by the master himself and written by Pierre Berge, one of Saint Laurent’s closest friends.

More info here.

For the last 8 years MUTEK has brought together artists and lovers of electro-digital art. This 5-day event is a strident celebration of music and digital creativity. In 2000, Alain Mongeau created this festival because he felt Montreal — and North America — needed an event that would fairly represent the genre in its entirety. And it worked!

Despite its ongoing success and its international recognition, the festival remains relatively modest. Because the organizers want it to remain accessible for both the public and the artists, they choose not to schedule two artists in the same time slot.

This year’s line up is an eclectic combination of local talent and international artists. One of the event’s highlights will surely be Kid Koala’s performance at the Metropolis.

More info here.

Williamsburg, NYC wishes it was cool enough to host events like THiRSTNY multimedia extravaganza on the regular. With a deep commitment to transculturals, THiRSTNY pulls artists — installation, performance and visual — dancers, musicians, designers and writers together to find a common aesthetic in their mutual thirst to create.

Watch these media, missions and artistic and cultural backgrounds fuse together through live art and performances this Thursday in Williamsburg as the hipster set who inhabit the cool-glut neighborhood thirst on, wishing THiRSTNY came to call more often.

Drink up here and get directions here.

THiRSTNY
Galapagos Art Space
Thursday, May 29th
9 : 00 pm — ???
Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Punk has been through some rough times. It’s been loved, feared, reviled, killed, rekindled, academicized, imported, mutated and borrowed from since Johnny Rotten first learned to scream and working white boys in Londontown first fell in love with dub system’s DIY culture.

Following in the curatorial footsteps of the Summer of Love exhibit, which also made a splash in New York this summer, Vienna’s Kunsthalle opened Punk. No One Is Innocent last week.

Like Summer of Love, Punk. No One Is Innocent tries to capture the signification-destroying spirit of the movement through its relics, art and artifacts — creating a fascinating and eclectic scrapbook experience.

But, also like Summer of Love, the best thing is that these art and ephemera are grouped by birth location — New York, London and Berlin — highlighting punk’s global appeal as a youth power/art movement and the movements’ local productions.

Bond a little here.

The art of Graffiti is no longer done solely as a hobby. Its popularity has stretched across a vast number of locations, gracing the unsuspecting walls and rooftops of the world. From South Africa to Italy, Australia, Germany and back to the U.S., graffiti artists have been leaving their mark.

In 2003 these daredevil artists were rewarded for their efforts in what has become the largest graffiti battle in the world, Write4Gold. Originating in Europe, Write4Gold brings together graffiti artists who compete for money and fame. It became global in 2006, and since then has marked its territory as one of the most highly anticipated events in the street art culture.

Events take place in the Baltics, Austria, Russia, Denmark and several other locations where they choose finalists for the World Finals, which is held in Germany.

The competition is split up into four categories: concept painting, freestyle throw ups, freestyle tagging and freestyle sketching. The entire event is free to the public and takes place all day, with live band performances and graffiti showcases.

The Budapest competition has found itself a new venue, Mokka Cuka, and takes place this Saturday at 10 am. The competition will feature DJ Swamp, the Vinyl Warriors, and DJ Rocksteady along with other performances and popular Hungarian break dance teams.

Click here for more info and here for some dope videos from previous years here.

Other Upcoming Events Include:

Date: 06.14.2008

Loc: Skaters Palace, Dahlweg 12648153, Münster, Germany

Details: for all crews from Germany, Belgium. Netherlands, Luxemburg, UK, Switzerland

Date: 06.21.2008

Loc: Skatepark Adrenalin, Moscow, Russia

Details: for all crews from Commonwealth of Independent States

Date: 06.29.2008

Loc: Roskilde Festival, Roskilde, Denmark

Details: for all crews from Denmark,Sweden, Finalnd and Norway.

Following up on the success of MG1 Brazil, Mexico-born artist/graphic and apparel designer Marka27 has recently released his new limited edition minigods, called MG2 Mexico. Inspired by the pre-Columbian gods of his motherland, Marka’s mini g.o.d.s — i.e. Givers Of Divine Sounds — are true works of art with a function.

Boasting an even larger and more impressive 17-inch shell and equipped with a working speaker that you can hook up to your laptop or iPod, the new MG2 even comes with an AC adapter so you don’t have to worry about recharging your batteries.

Marka27’s trademark style of combining symbolic elements from ancient indigenous cultures with futuristic aesthetic no doubt will impress die-hard vinyl toy collectors and contemporary urban art aficionados alike. I’ve already got my hands on his Gold SDCC Exclusive Minigods, and all I can say is that even if you are not a collector of vinyl toys, any one of the minigods will be worth all your investment.

When Marka is not busying himself with apparel and product design, you’ll find him channeling his creativity into more hands-on art projects, such as large-scale graffiti pieces, installations and fine art paintings. His work has been shown at the Museum of Fine Arts (Boston), Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (Boston), S.M.F.A Grossman Gallery (Boston), Boston Center For the Arts, Orange County Center for Contemporary Art (L.A), 33 1/3Books and Gallery (L.A.), Crewest Gallery (L.A.), Meltdown (L.A.), S.D Visual Artist Guild, Union 237 Gallery (Philadelphia), among others.

Peep his work here.