{"id":3005,"date":"2011-03-22T15:33:28","date_gmt":"2011-03-22T19:33:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/daveraphael.com\/blog\/?p=3005"},"modified":"2011-03-22T15:42:26","modified_gmt":"2011-03-22T19:42:26","slug":"hellonike","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/daveraphael.com\/blog\/hellonike\/","title":{"rendered":"hellonike."},"content":{"rendered":"

This is the first thing you see when you crest the story and a half stair centrally located at the house of hoops on west 34th in New York City:<\/p>\n

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Busy dropping eight thousand feet of altitude inside a tin can in one hundred fifty seconds through the high desert, low lift sky far above the best gathering of superfreaks in north america, I had my hands too full to hop a jet airliner to Australia to see Sara Blake’s<\/a> first solo show this past September<\/a>, and I have been chomping at the bit to see her work in person ever since.<\/p>\n

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Opportunity finally reared its head and…\u00a0 Succinctly:\u00a0 holy fuck.\u00a0 capital f.<\/p>\n

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I had been hearing about this work for a while and nearly fell over when I saw it.\u00a0 Was. Not. Expecting. This. Shit.<\/p>\n

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The checkout register is surrounded on the left and right with these ten foot murals.<\/p>\n

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You could not possibly ask for better retail placement than this.\u00a0 While you are paying for your items, you’ve got 180 degrees of Zso, it’s huge, it’s beautiful and it’s insane.\u00a0 All that wasted time spent at a register waiting for processes to conclude, imagine being able to look at something this insane.\u00a0 Try to imagine that.\u00a0 Dare ya.<\/p>\n

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There are other pieces strategically placed throughout the store.\u00a0 You’ve gotta see them in person to get the full effect, they are treated with a clear coat that leaves a really trick three-dee effect which in many ways feels, well, looks, cooler than canvas in person.<\/p>\n

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The top floor of the store has displays split between Zso and a different digitial artist, his work is in two spots in the store behind the sneaker displays.\u00a0 Whomever is responsible for beautifully laying out this store had the clarity of vision to not obstruct the Zso work with product.\u00a0 When you have final works this good, how could you?\u00a0 Big high five to the people who put this together as a team.<\/p>\n

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What might not be entirely evident in our relentlessly digital age is that all this work is hand drawn.\u00a0 You know, with a pencil, bones, muscle and heart.\u00a0 There is certainly nothing special about that, humans have been rockin’ that shit since teenage pharaohs ruled some law on Egyptians in gold leaf.\u00a0 What *is* special in the truly realized age of Pocket Calculator is having to draw revision after revision, by hand, by hours, by blood sweat and tears, foundation up every time, when clients ask for revisions usually delivered instantly-ish via a few keystrokes and clicks for minor changes.<\/p>\n

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What you are looking at is all hand drawn, on paper, and anyone that has ever had a commercial client knows, it can often take a lot of back and forth to get everything just right so that everyone involved is seeing the same final vision.\u00a0 I can’t begin to imagine the work that was wholly involved in any of these pieces.\u00a0 Its truly staggering to think about.<\/p>\n

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This is absolutely the type of thing you would expect to enter a gallery to witness, were you lucky enough to witness it at all.\u00a0 In this case, you get to see it in a sneaker store.\u00a0 They dont have an open bar at seven on Thursday night, but you can walk out with a few pairs of sneaks and that ties the work here together seamlessly.\u00a0 All I know is that if Terrence Mckenna ever called me and asked for advice on sports apparel, Id insist he get on a plane from Hawaii and allow me to take him to 34th street, and I know, with no pause, when he reached the top of the stairs his head would turn to me, the sales staff and all the customers nearby would hear, with inter-dimensional clarity: holy fuck.<\/p>\n

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If you live anywhere near NYC, make it a point to check this out.<\/p>\n

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Check out more of Sara Blake’s work: hellozso<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is the first thing you see when you crest the story and a half stair centrally located at the house of hoops on west 34th in New York City:   Busy dropping eight thousand feet of altitude inside a tin can in one hundred fifty seconds through the high desert, low lift sky far […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3005","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/daveraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3005","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/daveraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/daveraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/daveraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/daveraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3005"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"http:\/\/daveraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3005\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3072,"href":"http:\/\/daveraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3005\/revisions\/3072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/daveraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/daveraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/daveraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}