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Local design Colwyn Thomas

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Greetings one and all.

One designer that has made a huge impact on the Springleap.com team, is a man whose work was honestly not done justice in the competition itself. That man is Colwyn Thomas, who we all know for such amazing designs as his Hug and Tiger Hug designs.
Fantastic news for all of you living in Durban is that Colwyn will be holding an exhibition at the Cnr Cafe from the 3^rd of July 2009 (6PM). The exhibition is simply called The Curious.
Local design doesn’t get much better than this!

Colwyn Thomas is undeniably one of my favourite local designers at the moment. Every now and then when I check back on this website Stonethecrows, I am blown away by the way his work just gets better and better.
Earlier on I mentioned that the Springleap.com competition did not do his Tiger Hug and Hug designs justice.
Honestly this is true, because at the moment we are limited as to how many colours we can add for and one design. If you take a look at the original designs your jaw would be dragging along the floor. Colwyn Thomas is a local designer who takes oriental influences and blends them with classic natural elements.

Bigwood 2 FEEDBACK

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Greetings peeps

Recently I sent out a blog about the Bigwood2 event which took place on the 18^th of July in Durban.
We here at eSquared knew it was going to be a big one and that it was going to blow our minds…but to this extent…let me just say that the benchmark of up and coming funky South African art set by Bigwood just got BENCHMARKED by Bigwood2.

The amount of truly original work was just astounding, I don’t think anybody was ready for it…you could have walked around the place a hundred times and still not been able to take it all in and process the visual feast.
There was probably only one man, Trevor Paul, who knew what was going to unfold.
Hats off to Trevor for putting on a show that has rocked the artsy community ,with a mega-ton cannon of design power to the head.

Just another American idiot

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Ah, I love Americans. I came across this article this morning and well, I am kinda blown away at the stupidity shown here.Give this a read a see what you think…

The police chief who shot himself in the ankle was waving a loaded pistol and being careless, according to two students who were attending his class to qualify for a concealed-weapons permit. “We were told the gun is the chief’s personal sidearm, but it looked to me like he didn’t know anything about the gun,” Lewis Walker said.

Bart Ulm, another student seeking certification to carry a concealed weapon, said he was surprised Chief Dave Hansen was using a loaded gun to show how it worked.

“Right then, I was very leery, because there’s no need to have live ammo in a gun in the class. But I figured he’s the chief, so he must know what he’s doing,” Ulm told the Standard-Examiner of Ogden.

Hansen held the Glock 40 under a table to disassemble it when a bullet fired, Walker said.

The chief cried, “I’m hit,” and fell over. Students who were screaming “Officer down!” were urged to call 911.

The gun went off in a conference room Saturday at Riverdale police headquarters. Hansen was taken to McKay-Dee Hospital in Ogden for surgery and released Monday, Lt. James Ebert said.

Ebert said the findings of an internal investigation would be announced Wednesday.

Graffiti: art or crime? Part 1

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We see it everyday. On our way to work, on our walls, on bridges, basically on any available spot. Graffiti has started to take over.

There has been lots of talk lately about graffiti taking over the city of Durban. Wherever you go you are bound to find some sort of graffiti. I was asked the other day whether I view graffiti as art or crime. My answer simple, if it is done in a respectful way and not done in a way to vandalise property then it is art. If it is done without respect and purely on the basis of defacing something it is crime.

The city is now offering rewards to people who are able to give information on any of these so called “vandals”. The Durban North area has been hardest hit with churches, schools, restaurants and houses being tagged. The cost of removing the graffiti is huge and as a result of this some people can not afford to remove it from their walls so it is just left there.

So why do these guys spray walls? What is wrong with the spots that they are allowed to graffiti that are given to them by the city? Well, most of these cats are trying to send a message out to the city expressing their unhappiness with certain situations. If it is done in the right way it sends out one hell of a message.

A friend of mine gave me some insight into the whole situation and he reckons that graffiti has become so much part of the modern alternative world that we live in that graffiti is the middle classes own art collection. Think about it.

There is so much to talk about regarding this issue. I am in the process of gathering as much information from varying sources and in doing so both sides of the story can be heard.I have purposefully not included visuals fro this piece as I am in the process of collecting various forms of graffiti from in and around the Durban area. Watch out for part 2, it should make for some interesting reading