Jeff Soto's Blog

May is already almost over. Where has this year gone? So it looks like I'm a once-a-month "casual" blogger these days. Lots of randomness today...

My last post dealt with overly derivative art. It's not bugging me as much lately. I guess we're all related, there's a lot of the same inspirations, and we're all guilty to an extent. I do feel this art movement is getting stale in some ways.. or at least watered down somehow. All we can do as artists is strive for originality and be supportive and honest with other artists. Tell it like it is.




Painted a Darth Vader head for a group show at the Star Wars 30th Anniversary. The show will be touring around the world after it comes down in L.A. I usually don't do the whole "paint on shoes, toys, skate decks, etc" thing anymore, in fact I told myself a couple years ago the only ones I'd do would be for charity events (stuff like Keep a Breast events). But Darth Vader, man, how can I not paint on that? He's an icon from my childhood.



The Ox-Op series 3 Qees have been released. Here are the two I designed. The red one is the rarer "chase" figure. I like the way they turned out. I have em' for sale on Potatostamp..

More random stuff...


3D picture of Crescent Meadow in the Sequoias. I took this picture of my dad and brother Corey a couple years ago and just thought it turned out cool. What you do is take two pictures, about 2" apart. Then photoshop them next to each other. The trick to seeing it is to relax your eyes until the images overlap. They used to make cameras that had two lenses that would take "3D" pictures. They have a good collection of those at the California Museum of Photography.

Very random stuff..


I picked up a new book on L.A. graf called "Graffiti L.A." by Steve Grody. has a Slick piece on the cover and is chock full of the best graff from Los Angeles. In particular it has alot of work from the late 80's- early 90's which in my opinion was the high point of L.A.'s graffiti. Letters really had flair and style back then, it was like the words were dancing and moving to a beat. Some highlights from that era- CBS, AWR, Hex's Hip Hop Shop, Frame, Risky, Toonz, Mear, early Saber, Skill, then there's the locations like Venice, Motor Yard, Belmont, anyways it's an awesome book.

It brought back lots of memories, and really made me want to pick up the can again. Though we were from the I.E. our crew painted pretty often in L.A. spots, we were respected for our skills but at the same time shunned for being out of towners. We had a few productions that burned everything else in the yards and it'd be a crapshooot weither it'd be left up for a month untouched or painted over that night. It was frustrating and one of the reasons I started getting fed up with the graff scene. Too much politics. Like most things it was all about who you know.


The book is interesting, our old crew is in the "active crews" listing in the back. I guess when Maxx and I went on to other things, the crew kept going as an L.A. crew. There is one piece of ours in the book, a wall at the Commerce yard from 1996 with me, Jipsi, Maxx, PR, and Coed. I remember I called in sick to Target that day, hehe.

So speaking of old graff, old friend Jose sent some pictures of and I painting from the mid 90's....


Maxx...


Me...


This is kinda cool, we painted this for "Elements", a hip hop show Maxx put together in 96(?). The show where he got knocked the funk out (I think I wrote about this somewhere in a previous blog). I painted the left side and Maxx painted the right side. Our idea was a graf writer breaking his bonds and attacking the evil and corrupt media. I think we were feeling like the nightly news was giving graf writers a bad name because they were linking graffiti to gang violence. We never got a photo, and after the event it was left in Maxx's backyard and rain made the particle board disentegrate after a couple of weeks. So it was awesome to get this picture.

I'm looking for a small wall to paint on with Maxx.. nothing too big, just a wall so we can do a lil' something for fun... willing to travel anywhere in So. CA. Anyone have any leads? Email me...

More randomness..


Ever seen one of these fruits? Looks like an alien egg sack. I bought it from the market because it looked cool and I like to try new things. I didn't know what to expect, all I knew was I read you're supposed to eat the jelly-like seeds...


Wow, green inside... and very seedy...


Slurp... pretty nasty. I dont recommend it. Too tart! Tasted like a tart cucumber but maybe it wasn't ripe. I think I'll stick with oranges for now.

More random...


This photo was on my camera. I have no idea how it got there, either someone took it of me when I didn't know or I accidentally shot a self portrait. Jeez, I'm very beardy...


Birthday party...






A lil' more randomness...

I can't figure out how to get youtube videos on here, so here are some links:

Dali on "What's my Line?" From Eric White to Jamie O'Shea's Supertouch blog now I'm showing it. Check this Dali clip from "What's my line". Wow, TV was so much more eloquent 50 years ago. The people sound intelligent. Compare this to the crap on Mtv, it's sad really. Wow, Dali's signature sure looks like graff to me!

I found some more Dali clips-
Dali- Lanvin Chocolate
Dali being born I remember watching this whole film in high school and the egg part still sticks in my mind.
Destino- Dali and Disney collaboration. For more about this check Wikipedia- Destino

Shannon is down with graff too. Bath crayons are awesome.



Thanks for reading!
-Jeff