Keep Calm and Carry On

It's been a dark week full of doubt and despair. I've been struggling with the need to hold on to my authentic creative self and my physical self that cannot remain a starving artist forever. Mama needs to eat, yo.

Since moving to London, I've seen those ubiquitous WWII propaganda posters encouraging us to Keep Calm and Carry On. I know there's a level of irony to them now, but I was getting really tired of seeing them until, I decided to use it in my mashup of London street art. The fit seemed natural.

I'm happy with the results and I'll be selling them at my market stall in Brick Lane in the coming weeks. I know I'm not alone in this rickety boat called life and so I've chosen to take this message of carrying on because I still can, to heart. The only bombs over my London are the ones that come from the shadowy corners of my mind.

All photography and mash up by Shehani Kay. Original graffiti #1 & #3 found on the towpath on Regent's Canal. Original graffiti #2 found in Shoreditch.

I need a hero

Click on the image to enlarge.

Original mash up (photography, compilation, digital manipulation and narrative) by Shehani Kay. Inspired by original street art on the wall of Doctor Fourquet in Lavapies, Madrid, by various street artists: Saner, Parsec, E1000ink, Ruina, Sakristan, Pincho, kid chalao, Jaime, Neko, Dier, Ring, Seon, Alberto de Pedro, suso33, vhs (kid chalao, fragil & e1000ink). Thanks to Dug for helping out with the list of credits.

Going from top left across and then down:
a1 & a2: (grupo) parsec; a3: dier; a4: e1000ink; b1: dier & ?; b2 & 3:?; c1-3:saner; d1: suso33; d2: vhs; d3: e1000ink; d4: vhs; e1-3: vhs

The ? indicates that I'm sure of the artist's name but he's one of the artists listed above. If you can identify him, please comment and let me know.

Note to the urban artists:
I love making mash ups of found street art because it imposes limits and a framework. I can't just draw whatever I need to move along my narrative. I have to work within the confines of what I have photographed and what the artists have drawn. Doing this challenges my skills, creativity and imagination as a storyteller and weaver of narratives. The images are like a puzzle and I have to figure out how to piece together a tale. To those whose works I compile, rearrange and manipulate, I hope you understand that I do it with the highest respect for your art. Your work inspires me to invent stories! Thank you.

Photos from the wall:

You can see more photos of the original wall here and here.

Behind the wall is a public place where the group "Operarios del Espacio Público” in collaboration with many area neighbors have been developing a garden called "Esta es una plaza". The potential green space is open to the neighborhood. The space fosters meetings between different generations and cultures in an attempt to enhance local resources and weave relationships between the residents.

All photography by Shehani Kay

Sometimes I crave a little colour...

An original mash up (digital manipulation, text, and photography) by Shehani Kay; based on a mix of street art found on a wall on Calle de Torrecilla del Leal in Lavapies, Madrid. The plant is the work of Planton Kracia and I've been told that Ring painted the yellow blob.

Fearless Failing

Mash up (digital manipulation, text, and photography) by Shehani Kay, based on an original mural by Pajaro found on a wall on Calle Caramuel near metro Puerta de Angel, Madrid

It appears I have failed. I conjured no ghosts, invoked no spirits of any measure. I failed to achieve what I hoped I already had. He told me this, my critic, in a public forum* and so mortified, I dug into my repertoire of quotes and pulled out 3 nuggets from the late, Randy Pausch's last lecture: "your critics are the ones who still love you and care," " Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted," and "don't bail; the best gold is at the bottom of barrels of crap." I brewed a tea from these words and drank it slowly, letting the steam unfurl and dissipate into the air. Then I had a soothing second cup with a quote from Ken Robinson's lecture on creativity:

"...kids will take a chance. If they don't know, they'll have a go. Am I right? They're not frightened of being wrong. Now, I don't mean to say that being wrong is the same thing as being creative. What we do know is, if you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original... And by the time they get to be adults, most kids have lost that capacity. They have become frightened of being wrong. And we run our companies like this, by the way. We stigmatize mistakes. And we're now running national education systems where mistakes are the worst thing you can make. And the result is that we are educating people out of their creative capacities."

Drinking in the words of others who have gone before me is a fortifying tonic, a tincture against the virus of defeat. This morning, I feel renewed. So, fearlessly fail, I say. Never lose that childlike wonder. Never give up. Creating is playing, playing with ideas, tools, mud and whatever happens to be handy. Sometimes, you hit upon something singular and it resonates, more often you don't. The important thing is to fearlessly CREATE regardless of the results and hope that there will indeed be gold at the bottom of these many barrels of crap. And to remember well that our greatest opus lies in how we choose to shape our lives.

peace

* I, of course, deleted his stronger comments because while 'nays' may be helpful for improving your art, bad reviews need not be pinned to your computer monitor as a mocking daily reminder of your failures.

Dance For Me - The Dancing's on the Wall.

Original photography, compilation, digital manipulation and narrative by Shehani Kay. Mashup inspired by original street art by ADW in Vera Playa, Almería, Spain. You can see the original wall here. And for those of you paying attention, I did similar narrative mashups here and here.

Inspired by a wall

Click on the image to see a bigger version.

Photography, digital manipulation, compilation, text, and comic style narrative by me. The original images are from a mural on Calle Olivar 48, for 6ª Muestra de Cine de Lavapiés. According to this dude, the mural was painted by tom14 in collaboration with Nuria.

I took a bunch of photos of this mural and then felt compelled to create a narrative to tie them together. So I did. Yup, this is how I amuse myself these days and I love it.

smile

Lavapies Street Art Collage: photographed, compiled and manipulated by me.