Seattle's top street murals: Part 6

(Also, 1, 2, 3 ,4, and 5)

You can find this one on the partially boarded up building  at 2nd and Yesler. Who doesn't like giant sea monsters swimming around?

Seattle's top street murals: Part 5

(Also, 1, 2, 3 and 4.)

If you live in Seattle, you know they're extending the light rail up north through Capitol Hill and (eventually) the U-District. Anyway, the temporary walls surrounding the hole that will be the Cap Hill light rail station are covered in art. The best portion of the wall is some dude puking up rainbow birds. I luvz it.

I wonder if the art is autobiographical. Some dudes Baso Fibonacci, Zach Rochstad, and Japhy Witte have their names written on it. If I ever meet them I'll ask.

Go see it before it gets covered by dirt or graffiti, and/or before the light rail is finished (scheduled for 2014, which means it'll probably done much later than that).

Seattle's top street murals: Part 4

(Also, parts 1, 2, and 3!)

This series is quickly becoming the U-District's best street murals, but I promise you, this is only because it is winter and I am tooooo lazy to have to take the bus anywhere when it is raining/"cold"/gross out.

I present to you the campus parkway street mural. Created in 2004, apparently by Seattle students, it caused a big whoop at the time, because it looked too much like actual graffiti. And the city of Seattle didn't want to condone graffiti. But then they realized, "Oh, wait, we are Seattle, goshdarnit!" And they changed their minds.

Now that it's a good six something years old, there's graffiti on top of art that looks like graffiti! Meta! This mural is quite extensive, so I'll just include highlights:

See? These people did this art for FREE!

I love when art hits you across the head. It makes me laugh.

I thought this part was particularly sweet. Check out those elaborate tags.

 

Angry waterfall which happens to be below a bridge above burning land (not photographed).

Poseidon, or some awesome water monster rides a majestic seahorse. The angry waterfall (above) is presumably mimicking Poseidon's mood. Or maybe it's just having a bad hair day.

A motley crew of sailors are about to be pwned by Poseidon.

 

Tower of Babel?

 

So colorful!

An accordion snakes around the staircase that leads up to 11th Ave NE.

 

My personal favorite piece. "THIS IS YOUR DEEP SPEAKING TO YOUR SHALLOW." I love when middle schoolers try to be profound.

Seattle's top 10 street murals: Part 3

(Previous street mural posts: 1 and 2)

When I moved to the U-District in the summer of '08, I didn't know that Tubs had been anything other than a deserted building with sweet graffiti. Apparently it used to be a sauna place (or something!). It was well-known for its sketchiness.

More than two years later, it's still deserted and covered with graffiti. While I wonder why it never turned into the condo with ground-floor retail it was rumored to become, I have enjoyed its rotating exhibits. New graffiti artists change it up all the time. There's even a flickr page so you can see how it's changed over the years

If you walk by the corner of Roosevelt and 50th right now, you'll probably see some of this:

The side of Tubs (facing Roosevelt)

I imagine Tubs now is way more interesting than Tubs when it was open

Some sweet tags

Front view

 

Mona Lisa peeking through?

Seattle's top 10 street murals: Part 2

I've decided I'll make Seattle's Best Street Art a series. But only street murals are allowed.

Here's another favorite of mine in the U-district, also in close proximity to the Aladdin mural (in fact, on the outer wall of an art store). You can see it just south of NE 45th on 9th Ave.

Not quite Aladdin worthy, but who doesn't love seeing dinosaurs on their way to Trader Joe's?

Seattle's best street art

Seattle likes street art. My personal favorite work is in the parking lot across from Petco and an art supply store (I suppose it was the artists, not the pets, that did it), and next to the Tetres building.

Regarde!

Mural... no really, on a scale from one to ten, YOU are an eleven!

Royal Paintings

This weekend I got to take a break from studying and head on over to the Seattle Asian Art Museum. Without knowing what we were getting into, we entered the special exhibition, "Garden and Cosmos: The Royal Paintings of Jodhpur".

Overview:

These crazy paintings that've been locked up in the maharajah's palace for like... ever... are touring for the first time in the good ol' U.S. of A. The paintings are mad detailed, about old maharajahs ballin' lifestyles, and religion and shit.

One of the maharajah's apparently wanted to document how much he liked women. Seriously. If this dude were alive today, he'd be a rapper because... You may have alotta bitches but he got much more. (umm so I don't feel like editing the photo, so you can just click it.)


There's basically a whole room of this dude ballin' it. Ho's in the water, ho's in the tent. Ho's behind screens, ho's dancing for him. Even the Washington Post told us about it:

Maharajah Bakhat Singh (1706-1752) reminds me of Hugh Hefner. He was mighty as a warrior and ruthless as a son (Bakhat became king after murdering his father), but you wouldn't know this from the art he commissioned. He doesn't ride or hunt. What Bakhat does is party, party all the time.

There were four or five other rooms, but I'd have to say they weren't as hilarious, so I'm not going to talk about them.

People say this exhibit is good, and I'd have to agree with them. I mean, everything's really, really detailed. Like, each one of those hundreds of girls' skirts has a different pattern on them. And they have gold paint all over the place. Grillz, old school style.

But if you want the $40 exhibition book from the gift store, you'll have to wait til next week. They sold out in one day... Dayamnnn.