It was an ‘eventful’ Summer for me this year to say the least, even if it meant having to work and produce them. Back in July, I was asked by LTD to direct and project manage the third installment of the Green Label Art program for their client, Mountain Dew.

For those that don’t know about the initiative, Mountain Dew launched the Green Label platform to foster creative culture by offering support to various creative communities through partnerships as well as offering new channels of distribution and exposure.

Green Label Art gives selected artists (upcoming and established) the opportunity to design their own Mountain Dew bottles that are only available for a limited duration. Past artists have included: Haze, Jeffstaple, Chuck Anderson and Chris Pastras.  Vol. 3′s participating artists consisted of Pushead, Nathan Cabrera, Jeff McMillan, Claw Money, Stephen Bliss and Dustin “UPSO” Hostetler.

One of the tasks at hand was to produce a show for the participating artists at the etnies Showroom on Greene Street, which also houses the office of LTD.  It was a big undertaking, but I was psyched at the opportunity to get to do an ‘Extreme Makeover’ of the space. Okay, it wasn’t that ‘Extreme’, but with the help of Samantha @ The Giftd, Wes @ Confid3ntial and Garrett Construction we were able take the raw space, create a concept and theme, and transform it to have a ‘gallery-like’ feel.

Slowly, but surely it came along and then finally:

Then came the challenging task of producing 5 separate ‘opening reception’ events for the participating artists, giving each artist their own ‘three-day show. It was hectic, with all the trafficking, coordinating and rotating of art, but in the end it was so much fun to be a part of.

There’s some great recaps here, here, here and here.

I got to meet and work with a lot of great and talented people, which always inspires me.

A big thank you to everyone who was a part of this project and helped me to make this all possible.

There’s was also a small sign which accompanied each of the pieces which read:

Now I was a little confused reading this because NPA City Outdoor has had the monopoly in NYC with pretty much all of the ‘snipes’ aka Wildpostings that go up for as long as I can remember. There was even an ‘urban legend’ that the company had ties to the mob, that’s why they ran NYC like that, paying off building owners for the use of their spaces and construction site scaffolding. If you even tried to do your own guerrilla campaign and went over their stuff, like graffitti beef, they’d do a ‘throw up’ over you, find you, then throw you a beating.  I’m exaggerating about the latter, but you get the point, any company/brand wants to do a ‘citywide domination’ with ‘snipes’, NPA is the company you go through. Considering NYC sees new ads going up on a weekly to bi-weekly basis, seems like no one’s enforcing the law that’s mentioned in the above letter. I had no idea what was going on when I saw these pieces up, only later finding out that the artists involved and the letter pictured above were part of an ingeniously planned campaign called the “New York Street Advertising Takeover” put together by the Public Ad Campaign. The event was organized as a reaction to the reality of the ‘unenforced law’ and the group targeted the hundreds of illegal billboards throughout the city as well as Brooklyn, replacing the cluttered ads with art, making much better use of the visual space. Although many of the pieces were short-lived, I tip my hat off to the entire NYSAT effort and hope to see more of the ‘guerrilla style’ art going over the spaces again in the future:

Below is some video footage from NYSTA as well as a link to images of the event:

More images from “New York Street Advertising Takeover” here

A brilliant and inspiring quote from one of my favorite directors Jim Jarmusch, designed by Mark Malazarte.