Articles by Matthew Newton

In his recent Ted Talk, photographer/street artist JR recounted his experiences working on art in impoverished, violence-ridden neighborhoods in countries such as Kenya and Brazil. While humor and wit are central to the artist’s charm, what seems to set him apart from his often-gimmicky, pop-art contemporaries (i.e., Banksy, Shepard Fairey, etc.) is a genuine empathy for the people living in…

In June of 2009, while on vacation in the Pennsylvania mountains with my wife and three-year-old son, I received a phone call from my employer informing me that I no longer had a job. Within seconds, a new reality had been created. What follows is a personal tale of the Great Recession, told in three acts: Act I, Act…

A scene from a Salvation Army store in Lexington, Kentucky during a trip through the south in October of 2009. My most salient memory is watching a slumlord refurnish one of his apartments in a matter of minutes — bossing around workers, telling them to haul a ratty collection of desks and couches to his truck outside.

According to the project notes, Fifty and Fifty “is a collective, curated project where fifty designers are invited to represent their state by illustrating its motto.” While many are text-based exercises in font worship, some designers have upped the ante, infusing mini narratives into the remixed mottos (see above).

“Flint is a city I return to, its deep decline and the determination I find among its residents haunting me, challenging me. We did a second weeklong driving tour in October 2008 — again with Olon, and with planning professor Nihal Perera and a group of students — to Cleveland and Youngstown, Ohio; Braddock, Harrisburg, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Scranton,…

Remember Rock ‘N’ Roll comics from the 90s, the comic books that chronicled the booze- and drug-fueled debauchery of bands like Guns N Roses, Mötley Crüe, Van Halen,  and Metallica? The comics were unlicensed/unauthorized biographies characterized by abysmal artwork (I remember that James Hetfield looked like a transvestite version of himself; David Lee Roth a Botox-injected aerobics instructor) and…

Enthralled by the challenge of infusing emotion into the sometimes cold world of digital art and design, Josh Vanover (aka Spaceknuckle) acknowledges that adding a level of humanity is crucial. “I’m always on some Man versus Machine type thing, trying to inject some soul into the soulless and watch the results,” he says. “The work always comes out looking…

“Five years after the Orleans Parish School Board shut down dozens of hurricane-damaged public schools, New Orleans residents continue to live alongside the wreckage, with no certainty when the blight will be eradicated.  Before Katrina, the school board had 125 campuses with a total capacity of 110,000 students. By the time the storm hit, the number of students attending public…

Found in a box at an estate sale, this photograph piques my curiosity. The mood in the image makes me want to know more about these men. The balding gentleman in the bottom left of the picture looks to be two beers deep already, and settling in for a long night. Work may have just let out, and these…

Before Barry McGee transcended the boundaries of graffiti and began exhibiting in national and international galleries, he was simply known as Twist — a prolific tagger from San Francisco. This is, of course, no revelation. But it bears repeating as a point of origin. Today anyone with an Internet connection can learn the trajectory of McGee’s career in…

A sort of anti, anti-smoking message for moviegoers from a young John Waters: “Smoke anyway, it gives ushers jobs. And if people didn’t smoke, there would be no employment for the youth of today.” And on a related note, this 1986 Waters appearance on Letterman is recommended.

This morning, a series of photographs over at Tiny Vices caught my attention. These shots, taken by Sean Stewart, showed frame houses perched high atop concrete reinforced hillsides, cannibalized muscle cars covered in primer and body putty, and gray overcast skies that reminded me of every winter I’ve ever known. It took less than a second for my mind to…

In the early 1990s, Daniel “Chaka” Ramos was one of the most prolific graffiti writers in Los Angeles. His block letter style tag (inspired by Cha-Kah from Land of the Lost), done almost exclusively in either black or silver spraypaint, was everywhere in L.A. and beyond. According to a 2009 Los Angeles Times article, Chaka’s approach to graffiti was…

As I stare at the towering stacks of unshelved books in my home office, I fantasize of meticulously categorizing them on crisp white shelves. There are eight stacks, each 15 or 20 books high, across a teak coffee table; several smaller stacks on the floor beneath. Another three stacks sits on top of a guitar amplifier, and more…

For years I subscribed to the idea that a pair of tennis shoes slung over a telephone wire indicated the place to buy drugs in a neighborhood. It turns out that’s not entirely true, at least according to this post over at The Shazzamity that looks at the potential origins and meanings behind shoe flinging or “shoefiti.”

Founded in 2007 by Norwegian theater director Morten Traavik, the Miss Landmine pageant seeks to raise awareness of the countless undetonated landmines left behind in war-ravaged countries such as Angola and Cambodia. Its parallel mission is best encapsulated in a phrase pulled from the organization’s manifesto: “Everybody has the right to be beautiful.” The focus here, according to…