Street Artists

Best known for its murals and installations on the streets of Los Angeles, the local art collective Cyrcle is transforming a Hollywood gallery into an interactive "hive" - a project that member David Leavitt said is "somewhere between a play, an art show and a video game arcade. " "Organized Chaos!," Cyrcle's second solo gallery show, is designed to work somewhat like pollination: The artists created cubes covered with parts of an image. Patrons are encouraged to take the cubes from a crate and place them into a frame to create their own work.

The street artist known as the “Russian Banksy,” Pasha P183, has been found dead in Moscow, according to reports. He was 29. Teatralnoye Delo theatrical production company, which had commissioned the artist to create a mural for its production "Todd,” said he died Monday, the Associated Press reported. Teatralnoye Delo did not release further information. PHOTOS: Arts and culture in pictures by The Times Pasha P183 was known for leaving artistic installations and politically fueled murals across Moscow, including riot police painted on subway doors and a masked protester holding a flare that caught fire.

With the Olympics only a matter of days away, competitors of another sort have begun making their presence known around England: street artists. While the athletes begin settling into their temporary homes at London's Olympic Park, a variety of artists have been tweaking the games from various angles, including one piece by Criminal Chalkist that first appeared last year in Bristol and is now making its way to London shops as well as ...

Best known for its murals and installations on the streets of Los Angeles, the local art collective Cyrcle is transforming a Hollywood gallery into an interactive "hive" - a project that member David Leavitt said is "somewhere between a play, an art show and a video game arcade. " "Organized Chaos!," Cyrcle's second solo gallery show, is designed to work somewhat like pollination: The artists created cubes covered with parts of an image. Patrons are encouraged to take the cubes from a crate and place them into a frame to create their own work.

Just in time for the summer tourist throngs, mimes, musicians and balloon-animal shapers have been newly empowered to bring their entertainments and tip jars to public parks. In a ruling with potentially wide implications for street artists throughout the West, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday struck down curbs imposed by Seattle on those performing at the popular Seattle Center, home of the landmark Space Needle.

Ten years ago, Julie Kirk was headed down a completely different path from the one that will leave her kneeling in the street in Valencia next weekend. The mother of five was following in her father's footsteps toward a career in computer science when she was bitten by the drawing bug. "I took my first drawing class when I was 26 and that was it," Kirk said. "I knew that was what I wanted to do with my life even if I never made a dime."

Filmmakers Z.S. Grant and John Carr have spent the better part of the past year ricocheting around the country, capturing the stories of politically minded street artists for their documentary series, "Voice of Art. " Their eight-episode Web series - currently airing on rapper Pharrell Williams' YouTube channel, i am OTHER - is as cutting edge and iconoclastic as the neon bright cast of characters featured in it. Each 34-minute episode is...

Anything goes at City Hall--remember the time a fellow lugged in a leaf blower to demonstrate to members of the distinguished council just how noisy the darn things are? But even veterans of that meeting of the Los Angeles City Council were tickled this week when Harry Perry and a dozen other characters from the Venice Boardwalk showed up with balloons, guitars, and handwritten speeches.

Ask the balloon sculptor, the country-Western gospel music singer, the painted man who temporarily tattoos young faces, and the artist with leather brushes whether Balboa Park is drawing the crowds it did in summers past, and they will say no. They say that more-stringent regulations on park entertainment in recent years have driven away many street artists. And the crowds are leaving with the talent, they say.

Your coverage of the Street Art Program of the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department (Calendar, Aug. 23) has caused me to consider our approach to youth, murals, graffiti and public art issues and art education. Without doubt, Los Angeles' No.

Filmmakers Z.S. Grant and John Carr have spent the better part of the past year ricocheting around the country, capturing the stories of politically minded street artists for their documentary series, "Voice of Art. " Their eight-episode Web series - currently airing on rapper Pharrell Williams' YouTube channel, i am OTHER - is as cutting edge and iconoclastic as the neon bright cast of characters featured in it. Each 34-minute episode is...

Four straight rows of four palm trees each stand on the northeast corner of 2nd and Spring streets downtown - a block from Los Angeles City Hall, right alongside LAPD headquarters. They're directly across from the newsroom. I stare out at them from my desk. Lately they have come to look like hourglasses running out of time. Small tufts of green fronds reach to the sky. Ample brown ones drag down toward the dirt. Will the dead fronds ever be trimmed? Would it make a difference?

A mystery street artist with a sense of humor has turned parts of downtown L.A. into a guerrilla art installation. Eight neighborhood landmarks or areas have been marked with official-looking city placards that offer what appear to be background information about the location. One, for instance, says that a downtown dumpster was designed by Andy Warhol. Though the artworks are unsigned, Culture Monster has learned that they are called "Art Appears" and are the work of the artist who calls himself Wild Life.  [ Update, 12:08 p.m. Wednesday : At least two of the signs have been removed since Tuesday, one near City Hall and one near the LAPD headquarters.]

With the Olympics only a matter of days away, competitors of another sort have begun making their presence known around England: street artists. While the athletes begin settling into their temporary homes at London's Olympic Park, a variety of artists have been tweaking the games from various angles, including one piece by Criminal Chalkist that first appeared last year in Bristol and is now making its way to London shops as well as ...

Adding to the already vertiginous thrills that can come with a visit to the Grand Canyon, artist Kurt Wenner has taken the natural wonder to a new, disorienting level with a recently opened installation at nearby Tusayan, Ariz. Appropriately called "Grand Canyon Illusion," Wenner's piece that recently debuted at the canyon's visitor center near the south rim allows visitors to interact with the canyon's head-spinning depths while never taking their feet off the pavement. Initially created with pastels and transferred to more permanent digital prints, the work spans a section of the courtyard's floor and up a wall, giving viewers the illusion of tip-toeing from sandstone spire to spire while looking down a trail spiraling into the apparent distance below.

A nonprofit group seeking to raise awareness of a deadly conflict in Africa apologized Thursday for pasting its campaign posters over one of Los Angeles' best known street murals. The group, Falling Whistles, admits it "screwed up" this week when it covered the mural, known as "Only Time Will Tell," at 2nd and Garey streets in the heart of the Arts District. The mural was a global effort by street artists from several nations, many of whom show their works in galleries and museums around the world.

Wacky Idea No. 1: Fill a city park with blank walls built specifically to attract graffiti. Wacky Idea No. 2: Get big corporations such as Nike, Nestle and Reebok to not only pay for construction of the graffiti walls, but also for the cans of spray paint that street artists would use to cover them. Well, in Los Angeles, wacky rarely means bad. More often it means: How can I buy the screen rights?

He calls himself "the world's fastest painter." So no wonder Adam Geld didn't waste any time when police painted him into a corner in Hollywood. Geld was whipping out one of his finished-in-four-minutes acrylic scenes when Los Angeles police officers made their own scene--arresting him for blocking the Hollywood Boulevard sidewalk and handcuffing him on the spot. Run-ins with police had been common for Geld.

The Italian street artist Blu, whose anti-war mural was removed from the wall of the Geffen Contemporary building last week before the public could see it, has called the destruction of his mural by the Museum of Contemporary Art a form of censorship. Others say it was spectacularly bad planning on the part of the museum, which did not receive a proposal from the artist in advance of his starting work. MOCA director Jeffrey Deitch said Monday that he ordered the whitewash of the mural because its imagery ?

Street art is fugitive by nature ? and vulnerable to being destroyed by angry shopkeepers who just don't appreciate the creativity. But in the strange case of a massive antiwar mural that made a brief appearance downtown last week, it was the Museum of Contemporary Art that both commissioned and removed the work. The mural, by the Italian street artist known as Blu, had a strong antiwar and anti-capitalist bent. It featured a field of military-style coffins draped by large dollar bills instead of flags.