#paintphx

The idea that Native Americans and Polynesians share a close kinship is an old idea but gaining renewed in interest in recent years with discovery of DNA links. On a personal quest to explore the commonality between his culture and the native people of Arizona, Hawaiian illustrator, tattoo artist, designer, and muralist Kahiau Beamer, aka Mung Monster, says this 16th Street painting in the Calle 16 Arts District embodies his experience participating in the 2015 Paint PHX festival. Combining the native Hawaiian greeting “Aloha” with “Hajen,” explained to him by Breeze1 as meaning “relative” or “kin” in his native tongue, “Aloha Hajen” tells of a “meeting between two travelers and their spirit guides, clearly from different backgrounds but still addressing one another with a familial respect.”  @mungmonster  @kahiau_art  @paintphx  @calle16phx

Growing up in a chaotic family of 7, Noelle Martinez, aka BusyBirdy, says sometimes she just had to get out and see her city. Introduced to graffiti by her brothers Martinez has taken those vibrant eye catching colors and applied them to her focus on portraying the expressions and emotions of the people she encounters around her. Painting alongside local Phoenix art icon Douglas Miles, BusyBirdy created this work on 2nd St., behind Bentley Projects, for Paint PHX 2016. She says the work represents a certain period in her life—from the “magic maker” hands representing the degree to which all her work “has come from the labor of my hands” to the eyes she says reflect her fierce determination to push forward to the next level as both an artist and individual. “Swift Change” was also offered to Phoenix as a farewell as Martinez prepared to “embark on new adventures in Los Angeles.”  @busybirdy  @paintphx  

Of the wall running along the side of the Bentley Projects the Phoenix New Times says "Topped by barbed wire, it once looked like a stark separation point between the neighborhood it borders and the arts and event venues operated by Bentley Calverley." Douglas Miles believes that "artists move the culture forward" and New Times credits this 2016 wall, painted with the help of his son as part of the PaintPHX Festival, with providing a good bridge between the gallery and the community. Miles says Native people give Phoenix its real flavor and this tribute to them features Geronimo (taller section of wall at far right) who fought incursions into what eventually became Arizona and New Mexico. This "poetic mix of art and politics" on 2nd St. S. is a gift to an older Phoenix community that has been a last holdout against gentrification.  @dmiles1_apache  @paintphx  @bentleygallery​  

#paintphx2016 #paintphx #phoenixart #phxart #phoenixgraffiti #phxgraffiti (at Roosevelt Row Arts District)

Recap of PaintPHX mural festival 2015 made by my friend Erin Graminski

Levitate. Some gorgeous artwork outside of #PazCantina. #paintphx #phx #art #rooseveltrow #spraypaint #mural