Toasted

The biggest and best addition to the streets this week came from Insa who visited Brum and painted a massive mural at the Custard Factory:

Yayyyy!

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Another mystery paster has appeared, but they've found me! The Hores created this pastey goodness:

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Lisk was in the Birmingham Mail this week (31st Jan). Don't worry, he's not been arrested; a photo of his paste on Floodgate Street was the 'Reader's Picture':

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On Wednesday, I stood in the cold in Wolverhampton for 2 hours to get my hands on 1 of 20 Toaster popcorn boxes and then watch their film 'Everywhere', there was some tweeting (@gutter_floozy) during this:

The film itself was about half an hour of elegantly and artistically (but not pretentiously) showing the Toaster's different ways of getting up, literally everywhere. The film shows their journey from the beginning in Wolverhampton with hand-drawn stickers, to the banners at football matches, to painting a giant toaster on the road during the Tour de France and how they've constantly reinvented the Toaster image to keep it in people's heads. With fond and humorous interviews from the likes of D*face and Space3; the Toaster love was pretty evident on screen and in the room. The screening also meant an opportunity for some Brummy street artists to get drunk together; Lisk, Mew, Tempo33, C3, the Rebel Gunslingers and Vomit were all spotted being a bit rowdy (apologies to the pub and the train that got covered in stickers).

FAHQMT on the train, also spotted with Wah on Floodgate Street:

Detective progress

So last week was an unofficial, early Christmas holiday for the blog but this week we're back to normal!

...Well, I'm not actually in Birmingham at the moment because it was essential that I helped decorate Christmas cakes with my mother/mess about with icing:

So, street art... I have some development on the mystery paster from a few weeks ago:

Tempo33 has 10 videos on YouTube of Birmingham street art from 2008 and 2009 (as well as videos of him pasting in Amsterdam and whatnot), they're an interesting watch to see what was around in Birmingham 3 years ago, some work is still on the streets now but the main reason I'm plugging them is because the mystery paster appears in a couple of them:

Tempo has also said that he knows the mystery paster and he lives in Birmingham but he won't tell me his name. I've tried comparing the 'shouts' at the end of Tempo's videos with the mystery paster to see which of the names I don't recognise come up on them all and I think he could be 'Wanted' but I can't read all the 'shouts' because the fonts are pants and 'Wanted' is such a common word it's impossible to Google 'Wanted street artist' and find what I'm looking for.

So hopefully after whining about it on here; Tempo will bow to public pressure and I won't have to go out knocking on doors and putting up 'Are you the mystery paster?' signs.

An artist I do know is Vomit, who appears in one of Tempo's videos from 2008!

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I've decided to start doing proper interviews with local artists for the blog, probably while having tea and cake or maybe by email if I'm feeling lazy. The first interviewees will be The Rebel Gunslingers because they're my new favourite paster propagandists (and because they drew a hard-looking bear that loves me and pasted it up round the corner from my house):

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Finally a bit of street art hilarity from New Zealand; two taggers were caught vandalising a couple's fence and were forced to dance (while being filmed) until the police arrived. Of course it is now on YouTube for your viewing pleasure: