afflictedyard

Death Row Art

Got the above from a couple of old friends of mine today--Tracey and Dave 'Grave' Parkinson.

They're interesting people, to say the least, and when I first met them  Dave was the only person I knew who owned a shark-proof glove. That is,  a metal chain link glove that was good for, well, protecting oneself against shark bites and Nazi's with knives ( Dave said he had it for the Nazi's).

Tracey and Dave were special though. They loved people and typically it was the most downtrodden that they defended on our radio show--Uppercut--which was, as a matter of advertisement the absolute WORST show on CIUT ( 89.5 Toronto).

The show was a strange mix of activism ( primarily concerned with Nazi skinheads) and what we thought was comedy---crank calls, recordings, interviews with Raelians, weed advocates and people who drank Aqua Velva and directed traffic in their spare time.

The show actually had a interesting (if unemployed) little following and Dave actually got his nickname from the show after numerous skinheads would phone in and call him 'Dave Grave' before threatening to kill him on the way home from the station.

Consequently, Dave was a bit paranoid and a visit to their apartment in Parkdale often found Dave searching for wiretaps and hidden cameras, possibly put there by a Nazi assassin or the Canadian version of the, FBI--CSIS.

After being thrown off for a final time ( I think it was because Katrin played Snoop Dogg to celebrate International Womyns Day or because we started infighting over what sort of crap music to play), Uppercut ended and we all went our separate ways.

A few years later we found each other back online and I found out that they were running an anti-capital punishment organization called CCADP or the Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty.

As is usual with Tracey and Dave Grave Parkinson, their activism is mixed with things that don't seem too 'activist' --for instance this collection of images that they sent me today showing artwork done by some of the inmates they communicate with on death row.

The stuff is weird and nice and in some cases kind of creepy but all of it is quite real in that each piece was done by someone who is locked up and scheduled to die.

Check the rest of them out here:

http://www.afflictedyard.com/deathrow.htm

JPG

No.12 is Afflicted. Turn to page 65 ( but buy the print version--its nicer and you can read it!)

http://www.jpgmag.com/issues/12

Seen. vs Afflicted : Everything starts from Scratch

The Afflicted Yard has never released its images for the production of T-shirts. This is generally because I've always seen the t-shirt thing as having huge potential for the Afflicted Yard and I wanted to wait and do it right rather than to sell the photographs to anyone with a t shirt line -- who would then be able to use the images in any way that they wanted.

I get maybe two or three such requests every month from T-shirt lines all over the planet, and to date I've always refused.

Seen. out of Germany is different, however. Their line is nice--real nice--and on top of it they're consistent.

As a result, Seen. was  given the green light and they've released a (very) limited edition t-shirt featuring  an Afflicted Yard original photograph of Lee Scratch Perry as well as the Porus bullhead and photographs of Kay with the 12-gauge which compose the collaborative logo pictured above .

This is the first time any photograph has been allowed out of the Afflicted Yard for such use, excluding of course the LA LEWIS tees ( which were actually Afflicted Yard T-shirts anyway).

Check it out HERE but do it fast--they just put it up and 8 of the 50 are gone already.

2 of note...

Lee campaign...Rolling Stone (Italy) & Max (Germany)

eeeee..dat you a seh?

Sucker!

Brandi Davis : http://afflictedyard.com/brandi_davis.htm

Hipster

Him tek over the blogosphere...I hear he's a guest DJ at some trendy session in Fort Greene later  ( Podcast) with nuff stars passing through. Puma gonna dere too and some Kaws to sell little vinyl dolls that look like him.

Big hipster ting man...trust me.

Mavado live

Mad show..

http://www.afflictedyard.com/mavado_live.htm

Manda Bala ( Send a Bullet )

So, I was in NYC again last week and me and my cousin decided to go see a movie. By chance we happened across an interesting film called Manda Bala ( Send a Bullet) which is a documentary about kidnapping in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

The film features some pretty crazy interviews with a kidnap victim; an uptown guy who spends thousands of dollars on personal security (including bulletproofing his Porche); a couple of Renato-style cops; a stoned frog farmer; a dodgy politician; a professional criminal who cuts peoples ears off for a living and a doctor who constructs new ones from spare cartilage and sews them back on.

Anyway, its really good. And despite the seemingly grim subject matter, its actually really funny and reminded me a lot of Jamaica in many ways. Hopefully I can attain a copy from the creators and show it in Kingston sometime.

It also gave me an idea for a new photo set--which I've named after the film...check it out here :

http://www.afflictedyard.com/manda_bala.htm

More Danielle Lowe...and her twin sister Diedre!

..and in matching bikini's! The Lord's work continues :
http://www.afflictedyard.com/lowe_twins.htm