If you are a regular at Amoeba Music you may have already seen the silk screened poster art of Forest Stearns who has done several pieces specifically for Amoeba events.  Or maybe you've been lucky to catch Forest doing his art live at one of the interactive music-and-art Amoeba instores he has been a part of over the past year.

These include one with DJ Shadow (San Francisco Ameoba instore) and two with Cut Chemist (San Francisco and Hollywood Amoebas).  He has also done live interactive art with hip-hoppers such as Z-Man and at other events such as Reggae On The River.

Additionally the NorCal artist, who is just about to move to San Francisco, designed the poster for the Noisettes instore show at Amoeba San Francisco which reportedly everyone loved including Universal who Forest says want to take and flesh out to make an animation based on the illustration.  I recently caught up with the aritst to chop it up about life and art, and art and life. For more information visit his website: draweverywheredotcom.


AMOEBLOG: What inspires you to make art?

FOREST STEARNS: Art is what I do. It is a way to be myself. It is exciting and thought provoking, it creates a dialogue and has a lot of history to build from.


AMOEBLOG: And what keeps you doing art on the shitty days?

FOREST STEARNS: The shitty days are cool. I can sleep in then have some tea then by that point I can do some art and the day turns out pretty nice. The shitty days are when you work for someone else and hate it. I work for myself and work with others on projects that I get to choose. I am an optimist, so shitty days can usually be squashed by either looking at the art of others or getting down with some art of my own.

More shots of graffiti from around the San Francisco Amoeba Music on Haight Street - including some pics from directly across the street from Amoeba.

On a recent trip to the Haight Street Amoeba, I once again found myself drawn to the outside walls of  Amoeba Music San Francisco - specifically the top part of the wall outside from Haight Street down to the corner of the alley (away from Golden Gate Park) that leads to the parking lot where all that gradually changing wall of graf lays in beautiful, bright colorful wait - including the barred windows with their intricate tags that always remind me of stumbling upon some hieroglyphics in some ancient cave.

Luckily on the day I took these pics - including above - I caught the Amoeba parking lot almost empty - with only one car parked in front of those beloved droopy eyed heads that offer comfort to many an admirer. There will be another set of pics (Part V) posted in a week -  also taken recently and featuring more of the graf around SF Amoeba.







But today I passed a red brick apartment  building with an ugly ole tag rudely scrawled along the side of it - and I thought to myself: I guess homeboy didn't get the memo!

If you've ever checked out the murals on the outside walls of the three Amoeba Music stores (Hollywood, Berkeley, San Francisco) you may have noticed a similarity in styles between all three. That's because the same two artists, Larry Smulian as designer and Brian Blesser as art executor, contributed their art to the outside of all three music stores.  "Larry does all our ad art, and Brian did our murals on the front of Berkeley way back when, and the side of Haight street, and the top of the front of Haight," said Amoeba Music's Marc Weinstein.




Note that these artists contributed to the Ivar side of the Hollywood Amoeba (not the Cahuenga side of building - more on that art and the artist who created it in a later amoeblog) and that they are not responsible for the graffiti art side of the Haight Street store.





 Most of the pics displayed here in this BLOG are from the Haste Street side of the Berkeley Amoeba Music store and are chosen because they are among this blogger's favorites for many reasons including the historical content's significance -  mainly being the fact that they represent the period during the 1960's history of Berkeley's Peoples Park - which is steeped in radical political activism - not to mention that People's Park is directly behind Amoeba Berkeley in the same block bordered by Telegraph & Bowditch and Haste & Dwight.

This is the third and final part in this particular graffiti-outside-Amoeba Music, San Francisco photo gallery. In the future there will be another series of pictures (some new, some not included here, and some of the same pieces from different angles) from outside Amoeba Music, San Francisco.

That next upcoming series will also include some of the graffiti in the immediate surrounding area on Haight Street - such as that parking lot on the corner and the building directly across from Amoeba on the other side of Haight Street.

But for now here are more shots of graf in that alley on that one side of the Amoeba building off Haight Street. As with the other two parts in this series - posted a few days ago - please feel free to add any stories (good or bad) or opinions (pro or con) on graffiti, or the URLS linking to cool graffiti websites, etc.,  in the COMMENTS box (scroll way down) below. Thanks!