A box for Sunday!

Little Sunday here came into the UK on a false dog passport from Lithuania to be sold on at a huge profit. She was caught at dog customs and put into quarantine but after the necessary checks was certified healthy, given a new British passport and found her way to our friend who’s a dog trainer via Dogs Trust. Since then she’s got a little box for her to snooze in and also to stand on whilst training. And who better to give the box a little lick of colour than us. As the box is used both sides up we wanted her name to be legible either way and to give it a nice lady-like colour scheme. Add to that the ‘with love from Lithuania’ and you’ve got the whole package. Now doesn’t she look just adorable?

Cheers

id-iom

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Box it off

Box it off

Once, when I was child, I had a box. It wasn’t a fancy box but it was special to me. I put all my toys and favourite objects in there to keep them safe. Which would be all well and good except that I had a big brother. One day I went to pull some special item from the box only to find it wasn’t there. After a bit of frantic searching it was nowhere to be found. Unsurprisingly it had been taken hostage and hidden away. As it was I knew a few little secrets of my own so kidnapped some precious stuff that belonged to my brother and we eventually had a trade-off situation. I eventually got my box and its contents back but I learned two things that day than can be expressed in common sayings. One is ‘don’t put all your eggs in one basket’ and the other is ‘know where all the bodies are buried’. Here ends the parable of the box.

In case you can’t tell the spurious link to today’s picture is the fact that the face is made of boxes. And that is that.

Bonus fact for the day – The first commercial paperboard (not corrugated) box was produced in England in 1817. So now you know.

Cheers

id-iom

The Letter Box Bandit

The Letter Box Bandit

The Letter Box Bandit

The Letter Box Bandit (Before)

So once again we went east to paint up the wall that we have done before for Global Street Arts’s ‘The walls project’ because you guessed it, it got tagged up again. Although this time it was a little more tasteful than the word ‘Anus’ and we also didn’t have to fight with any film crews for the space this time either.

The letter box bandit comes from a newspaper article i read, about someone who was going around stealing post out of peoples letter boxes. You have to wonder though why you would do such a thing because i know most of the letters i receive are bills or some such rubbish and hardly ever anything interesting and it seems just a complete waste of time. Supposedly this thief was quite determined though carrying his campaign of thievery on for years. He must of had a list of birthdays because why else would you do it?

Although there wasn’t a picture with the article i was thinking what kind of person would be a letter box bandit and i came to the conclusion he would look like some sort of primary school teacher who has nothing better to do with his time after he’s been let out of school at 3 in the afternoon. He’s got a few hours before his wife or friends finish their work and he doesn’t want to spend it in the pub as he’ll just be drunk before anyone gets home, so he decides to embark on a criminal crime wave and become the letter box bandit.

Cheers

id-iom

It’ll probably get worse before it gets any better – UPfest pizza boxes

It’s my party and i’ll cry if i want to (UPfest pizza box)

It’s my party and i’ll cry if i want to (front)

It’s my party and i’ll cry if i want to (interior)

It’s my party and i’ll cry if i want to (back)

It’ll probably get worse before it gets any better (UPfest pizza box)

It’ll probably get worse before it gets any better (front)

It’ll probably get worse before it gets any better (back)

We’ve been working pretty much flat out painting our studio building and juggling a few commissions but when UPfest got in touch to ask if we’d be interested in painting up a couple of pizza boxes for them we jumped at the chance thinking that sometimes a change can be as good as a rest.

There are 50  boxes being produced by different artists and they are to be used as limited edition presentation boxes for the upcoming UPfest book for the first lucky punters. The book celebrates 5 years of UPfest and is a large format book with hundreds of shots from the Bristol festival. The book is released next week and you can order a copy here.

After a wait of a couple of days the boxes arrived and they needed them back by the end of this week so we had to pull something out pretty quickly. After a little inspiration and some fevered design I jumped to work on the screen printing equipment and, predictably, the other half of id-iom sat there gazing into the middle distance with a puzzled look on his face. After again explaining slowly and with small words what was expected of him the cogs eventually started turning and his eyes briefly brightened as some small glimmer of realisation came into his eyes and he sprang (slowly) into action. The rest is history.

Cheers

id-iom

Why don’t you just switch off the television set?

Hands up who remembers ‘Why Don’t You?‘ It was a British kids TV show that, I was surprised to learn, ran up until 1995 (as i thought it had finished in the 80’s!) Anyway it’s not like i remember it particularly fondly but one thing i do remember was the theme song which went ‘Why don’t you just switch off the television set and go do something less boring instead’ which even when i was a kid found slightly stupid considering the fact that it was a TV show and it was advocating turning off the TV.  I used to follow this advice quite literally and take this as my cue to either get my breakfast or just get out of the house and see what trouble i could get into…

Like it says – there’s never anything good on anyway!

Cheers

id-iom

Blow your mind – id-iom @ the Herbert Museum, Coventry

We were invited up to Coventry on the weekend to do some spraypainting for the Herbert Museum as they are soon to do a street art prints exhibition. We only managed to come up with a design towards the middle of last week and so (as ever) didn’t exactly leave ouselves much time for the cutting and general preparation. The concept was fairly simple in that the model (me!) would be opening a carboard box marked ‘Herbert’ and a concentrated beam of light would be coming out of the box (which is meant to represent the contents of the Herbert) that would ‘blow your mind’ and turn into a multicoloured stencil explosion after passing through the prism of his mind.  High concept indeed…

After an early Saturday start and a couple of hours drive the weather wasn’t great but was at least beginning to look up. Thankfully however we were working under a large gazebo-like tent so the few showers that did turn up didn’t even make us pause. After the boards were put together for us we set to work.

There were also a few other artists painting some boards as well including Pahnl, AsOne, Newso and Ame 72. All in all it was a great day out. We didn’t get to see all that much of Coventry and the little we did see I really quite liked. The ruins of the old cathedral (that were destroyed during the blitz) were particularly nice. On the downside thought there were bouncers outside a couple of the city centre pubs by 10.30am which i took to be something of a dubious sign…

We were the last to finish our picture but by the end of the day the weather was glorious and we had managed to gather a pretty reasonable crowd to watch us putting the final touches to it. After we had finished the guys from the Herbert said that our piece would be finding a new home inside the gallery – which is nice!

Big thanks to Dom and Jess from the Herbert for sorting everything out for us!

Cheers

id-iom

id-iom

Title: Blow your mind

Media: Stencils and spraypaint

Size: 2.4m x 2.4m

Thinking inside the box

Everyone’s always telling you to think outside the box. Well i for one am taking a stand and say ‘No!’ Inside the box is the new way. It’s so new people don’t even know about it yet. Just get yourself set up and comfortable and you are away.

Warning: will lead to some seriously extravagant and ill-considered thoughts…

Cheers

id-iom

id-iom

Title: Thinking inside the box

Media: Acylic, ink and paint pen

Size: A2

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