Monday, September 25, 2017

re: more mural photos!

hey friends,

here are some more mural shots, showing the process and time, energy and support it took to create this behemoth mural!
first i had to mount all the pieces up onto the wall with double sided tape, then draw it out in marker, this took about 8 hours or 2 - 4 hour sessions.






then we reached out to the community and invited people
to come participate and help paint the mural!!!





it was a larger undertaking than i expected, but so worth it. indigenizing the landscape, the urban landscape with aboriginal art and presence is so needed in every community. to give voice and creativity to my people is a victory, and i was pretty excited to help create something i hope will inspire and push things forward in creating dialogue and more opportunities for others. 

cheers,

chris bose. 


re: summer art and fun when it wasnt smokey.

hello friends, fans, foe and well wishers,

here are a few images from the summer, i was asked by the kamloops arts council to create a mural for canada 150, but they didnt want a jingoistic, gross mural glorifying the colonial history of canada. i proposed a landscape populated with aboriginal people and a close up of a family from a 150 years ago, sort of a jab at the group of 7, who were commissioned by the canadian government to paint these vast landscapes and towns, but totally devoid of people. but there were tens of thousands of people in the southern interior alone, secwepemc, nlaka pamux, statlimx, nsyilx, ktunaxa and more.

the trick was it would be on 150 panels of wood, that were roughly 12x12 inches. no problem, i came up with a design and they liked it, the city of kamloops liked it and approved it, all murals undergo an approval process with the city. it kind of sucks because it creates a bureaucratically heavy procedure to create art, or public art that is, but it is what it is. plus, that committee, the kamloops arts commission only meets once a month, so if you miss getting your multi page application in with support material, you have to wait weeks more and then weeks more to get a mural approved. it can definitely suck.

anyway, foolish me, i made the mural so it was wavey and not a static rectangle, silly move, haha. it looks cool, but was tough to put up. i learned a lot on this mural, what to do and what not to do. it was fun to paint, we invited community members and groups to come help paint it and i loved how it brought people together, which is what it was intended to do. i also had a studio to work out of, so that was really rad, a space i could go paint and listen to music and enjoy being creative. i will post some pics now and you can check it out. the mural is 26x8 feet roughly and i used acrylic outdoor paint. i found some cool cds at thrift stores and brought my boom box down.







my daughters also helped on the mural, it was rad.


here are a couple images because i finally started
playing with adobe illustrator, what a great tool,
a learning curve, but i enjoy it. 



this was the last piece of graffiti i never did.
2014

cheers and thanks for dropping by,


chris bose.

re: keep crushing it out!

Hello friends, fans, family and foe,

so, despite the last post I did in july 20th, is there an answer? a change? something miraculous? well, no, but i continue to use oxygen and keep moving forward. i have been playing a lot more guitar, and it is mostly ambient, atmospheric, a bit dark and fun to experiment. some would even call it shoegaze guitar style. i am also painting again, a sort of tongue in cheek style of art, posing the question what is aboriginal art? in one painting i did a donut with icing in the colours of the medicine wheel with a couple feathers on each side, another one i have a popsicle melting in the summer sun posing the question is this aboriginal enough? it is the start of a new series i will call Sacrilicious.

i survived a pretty lousy summer here in the lower interior of bc, we had smoke from wildfires almost every day for months. it was so bad at times you couldnt see a block away and the air quality was in the 50s when the chart is 1 - 10. so yeah, that sucked. it was getting a bit depressing because it was constantly dark and smokey, i was house bound by it because of my lungs and breathing problems which made me feel a bit or a lot cabin feverish. i will post some photos. i also made and posted some new guitar videos, they are a lot of fun and i hope people enjoy them, watch them here:


https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrLZoyxEG0cso-CLDInWsidPU6YZFCmSv



all in all i guess all we can do is keep moving forward, even if it seems impossible, we all have struggles and challenges to face in life, when it gets you down reach out to friends or family, dont let yourself feel alone in the world, because you are not. until next time!

cheers,

chris bose.
so, the start of summer to the rest of summer.