Baby Baby

The first post-Bronx Clandestine Baby piece. For the little monsters.

February and the Relaunch is just around the corner. Man, I hope toddlers have credit cards.

Slow and Low

Outside of running Clandestine Industries and it's ever so imminent relaunch, I also co-own Gallery 1988 (gallery1988.com), and more specifically am the Gallery Director for the the Los Angeles location, where we recently held Pete and Travis's exhibit, "Without You I'm Just Me," so don't act like you don't know. Last Thursday night, we opened an art show that I'm uber proud of called, "Under The Influence: The Official Art Tribute To Beastie Boys," where, with the blessing of the actual band, 100 pieces of art were created solely influenced by the Boys' songs, lyrics, videos and style. This is our second exhibition in the "Under The Influence" series, as last year artists paid tribute to comic book legend Stan Lee in their very own styles. Well, this year's opening reception honoring the Brooklyn pioneers, Mike D, Ad-Rock and MCA, was an enormous smash hit, with a line around the block and selling tons of original and inspiring art pieces. With a portion of the proceeds benefiting The Gramercy Housing Project, a charity chosen by the band, I wanted to share some of the pieces with you guys. So here we go with some choice pieces I've selected.

Casey Weldon (giving the Biz some love outside of Yo! Gabba Gabba)

Jeff Ramirez 

Alex Pardee (you know him from The Used)

Ellen Schinderman (Needlepoint, bitches) 

Martin Hsu 

Jason D'Aquino (purchased by PW) 

Jonathan Bergeron 

Jen Rarey

Dan Goodsell (of Mr. Toast fame) 

Shepard Fairey (of TIME Magazine fame. I bought this one)

For those in LA, the show will be up until January 29th, but if you want you can check the mic, or the entire show of like 80 more pieces, by CLICKING HERE.

 

Buttons

As I plan on letting off some serious steam tonight by seeing a 3-D showing of "Bolt" (for the second time), I'm eagerly anticipating the next time I can see a new cartoon movie in 3 dimensions (don't suggest NBC's "Chuck" on Superbowl Sunday). And we've already talked about Coraline here on Clandestinish, but what about these:

Nike and the film "Coraline" are teaming up on this incredibly awesome collaboration Dunk, and although I don't know much about the movie, it seems these are loosely based on the way the characters are designed, even down to the button eyes. BUT they sadly seem to be only producing 1,000 pairs, so I hope Nike can't tell the difference between Pete's and my voice. 

(phone rings)

"Hey, this is Pete Wentz from the band Fall Out Boy. I'd love a pair of those Coraline shoes so my wife Ashlee Simpson can see them. Oh, my voice sounds deep? I have a whooping cough. OH, what size do I need? A 12? I'm way taller in real life."

(hang up)

sometimes...

...i find random things laying around the house. last night i caught rigby getting a little snuggly with this furry baby bear hoodie. details on these to come soon i'm sure.

prince: my hero

i've always been overly fascinated by artists that are prolific but borderline crazy (eg. r. kelly, morrissey) but no one can really trump prince. most people have heard the pickup basketball game at paisley park story from chappelle's show but kevin smith probably wins for most thorough, crazybrains prince story told on record.









anyhow, prince recently shut down his fan club site and had attempted to have all prince-related youtube content removed from existence. then comes word today that his NEW site will be going online this month along with streaming versions of some of his best new work in years. what is going on with this guy?

Brandi Milne and the Wet Seal Process

So when Pete and the Powers That Be asked me to become the brand & design manager at the relaunched Clandestine a few months back, one of the few artists I knew we had to work with was Orange County, CA native Brandi Milne. She's a regular at my other job (yes, I'm sort of Jamaican and also totally into stereotype-based humor), showing numerous times at Gallery 1988: LA and SF, as well as a graphic design veteran, making shirts for Hurley, product for Gelaskins and her own children's book, "So Good For Little Bunnies," which was released in 2008 through a publisher called Baby Tattoo. She's one of my favorite people in the universe and I knew she was a great fit for Pete and my vision for the new Clan, so we turned to her for the first actual Clandestine project I would spearhead, our recent collaboration with Wet Seal. Before we get into the shirt (and from now on I'd love to have a feature on the blog, where you see a garment from idea to completion documented. I'll keep all the sketches and such from now on), let's show you some of Brandi Milne's fine art, which is beautiful.

We were approached by Wet Seal to create a co-branded piece, and Pete and I had brainstormed the idea of the shirt not only being "cute," but basically bleeding cuteness out of every orifice. So cute that it made your teeth sting. So I went to Brandi, who had some amazing ideas and sketches almost immediately. Pete and I decided we'd go with a t-shirt, since it just felt right, and we wanted it to be a shirt with a loud, bright character smiling right at you on the front. We loved an idea Brandi had to go with joyful popsicles, so here's what it turned into in the end:

So that was the first piece you could pick up that has my total stank on it, and Brandi Milne did an incredible job. And you still CAN buy it from Wet Seal by clicking here. And Brandi has the "Bomby McGee" shirt coming out in the February relaunch, which we (and the NY Times) has shown off, as well as a few other top secrets in the mix with PW and gang - so stay up like 88 Keys. You can see more of Brandi's work by clicking here. 

Eye Of The Needle

For reals? No, really, for reals? Like, this is real? Totally real? Dude.