18. We Get by with a Little Help from our Friends (Part II)

JUI JUIS

The Travelling Apples (see previous post) weren't the only bloggers to respond to our cri de coeur for help in finding Chiang Mai's best street art. We also heard from Lani Cox, who writes the witty, zany, and eponymous blog, Life, the Universe and Lani. If you'd like a good laugh while learning a lot about the ex-pat life, you owe it to yourself to check it out: lanivcox.wordpress.com

Lani was born in Hawaii to a Thai mother and Chinese father. She's lived in a zillion places, making her a real child of the universe. Or at least a child of planet earth - though it wouldn't surprise if she'd done a stint or two on a Jovian moon. For purposes of our tale, however, what you need to know is that she lived in Chiang Mai and was up on the local street-art scene. 

Life, is full of strange coincidences. One of the locations that Lani recommended was well-away from the centre of the city and mostly invisible from the street. But, as it turned out, it was also just around the corner from where we were taking an all-day Thai cooking course. After class, with our bellies full of springs rolls, Tom Yam Goong, glass noodles, garlic shrimp, fried bananas and a number of other Thai delicacies, we waddled over to the street art and started shooting.

Many of the murals were created as part of a 2013 campaign to promote literacy:



NHHS

 



YUREE KENSAKU (Bangkok)

 

(detail from previous picture)

 

SOPER (France)

 

MISS INK (FOR Crew, Bangkok)

 

 

 

 

As you can see, Thailand has a lot of talented street artists working its neighbourhoods. If only they could find the nerve to come out of the shadows and the alleys, and showcase their art on its streets.

 

Well, that's a wrap on our series of posts on Thailand. Next up, Cambodia.

 

 



17. We Get by with a Little Help from our Friends (Part 1)

In the normal course of street-art-hunting, we usually find it fairly easy to track down our targets, even if we're in a city that we're unfamiliar with. Our not-so-magic-formula includes: hours of research on the Internet; wearing away inches of shoe leather on the streets; and engaging locals in conversation about the community art scene.

But every rose has it thorns, and our normal approach just didn't work that well in Chiang Mai. In a city with hundreds of alleys, it just isn't that easy to discover which needle is hiding in which haystack. Sure, we found some pretty decent murals, which we highlighted in our previous two posts. But we knew that much better lay out there. Somewhere. But where?

Luckily, I (Seymour) had been reading -- and very much enjoying -- a blog called Travelling Apples. The "apples" were, in fact, Chris and Sarah Appleford, a young couple from Melbourne who had quit their jobs, sold everything and, along with son Jack, headed off into the great unknown -- blogging about it all the way. I found their writing to be witty and informative and their advice will be especially helpful to adults travelling with the wee folk. (You should check it out at: www.travellingapples.com)

Most importantly for us, they had lived in Chiang Mai, biked it's streets and alleys, and Sarah had even written a post about Chiang Mai street art that was accompanied by her amazing photos. She had clearly found the motherload that we'd been looking for.

Knowing that bloggers are friendly and helpful folk, I dashed off an e-mail to the Travelling Apples asking if they could point us in the right direction. Chris wrote back almost immediately, providing not only guidance, but Google maps and street photos as well. With that advice in hand, we were able to track down the brilliant elephant mural above, the butterfly-themed murals by Iagazzo featured in our last post, and the following colourful murals:

Even better, the Applefords gave us permission to use any of Sarah's photos from Chiang Mai. So once again, with our gratitude to the Travelling Apples, we offer you the following murals:

 

 

So, the world really is, what my old graduate school communications professor, Marshall McLuhan, liked to call a "global village". If you're having trouble at your end of the street, just reach out to one of your digital neighbours. Chances are they'll come through in spades.

 

 

16. A Close-Up Look at Suis Sun, NHHS and Iagazzo

Chiang Mai street artists are a bit more willing to attach their names to their work than their counterparts in Bangkok. This makes it easier to recognize individual styles and identify who's behind the art.

Three of our favourites are Suis Sun and NHHS - both members of Dog Crew - and iagazzo (Patinas):

Suis Sun, from Chiang Mai, creates simple, colour-filled forms that often have a playful nature to them. We like to think his work would be a fun way to introduce a child to the creative world of street art: 

By contrast, NHHS's murals are more complex, and they are painted within clearly defined lines:

 

 

But clearly the most sophisticated street art is by Catalan butterfly- lover iagazzo (Patinas):

 

 

 

 

We hope that the art we are showcasing today encourages others to attach their names to their work. After all, artists can only gain recognition when people are able to associate their names with a body of work. And there are so many artists vying for attention. As Mue Bon reminds us: it's a fish-eat-fish world out there!

 

 

 

15. Chiang Mai: Searching for Street Art

Chiang Mai, like Bangkok (see our previous three posts), doesn't surrender her street art treasures readily or willingly. To see them you have to trudge many miles, in baking heat, breathing foul air and waiting endlessly to cross congested roads as this once laid-back city continues its downward spiral toward urban nightmare.

But, we paid our dues - so you don't have to - and eventually came away with a pretty decent number of pieces, some of which clearly sprang from local myth and culture:

Other pieces that we spotted reflected, shall we say, "non-local" cultures:

Still others grew out of the fertile minds of their creators:

These are just a few of the murals we spotted while our boot heels were a wanderin' about town. Next week we'll take a closer look at the work of some of the stars of Chiang Mai's street-art firmament.