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.

14. Bangkok: Street Art WITHOUT Permission

As we mentioned in our last two posts, Bangkok's street artists are quite reluctant to paint in public places without permission. We've read that they consider it to be impolite - which kind of subverts the rebellious spirit that gave birth to graffiti in the first place. Still, it's not a bad self-preservation strategy in a military dictatorship, and Thailand is definitely that.

There are, however, a number of brave souls who pick up paint brush and spray cans, stickers and glue brushes and do what street artists the world over do - they go out in the wee hours of night, find a good wall and cover it in art. And, if you take enough metros, walk enough miles, go down enough alleys and climb under enough bridges, you might just find their work. We wouldn't want you to do that though. We've already done it and we're happy to share our discoveries with you.

Let's start with a shot that demonstrates that we don't just clip street art from the internet - we really do seek it out around the world. Here's Heather in her street-art-hunting gear, posing by a Bangkok canal, underneath overloaded hydro wires, with one of our finds:

Below, you'll find a random selection of some of our other discoveries. You'll note that there aren't any identifying signatures attached to the murals. But hey, if you'd just committed a crime in a military dictatorship, would you sign your name to it? Thought not.

We found a long stretch of murals (unusual for Bangkok), somewhat covered over with banana leaves and vines. We had to clear them away to get some of our shots:

Some of the murals were kind of bloody and ghoulish:

But as these last two murals show, Bangkok is no stranger to murder and mayhem.

Most of these are just good healthy outlets for youthful aggression - although we're not certain about the last one. To us it screams out "Psycho-Killer at work here". If we lived in Bangkok and bodies started showing up in our neighbourhood, we'd want a good full investigation into the painter behind this mural!