One piece in the three-part April Fool's Day on the Border art prank by Ron English
Last Friday, April 1st, guerrilla street artist Ron English was down in Texas, where he spent the early afternoon posting his art on both sides of the US/Mexican border (McAllen, TX & Reynosa, Mexico) as part of his grand scale and very risky (even by his illegal art standards) April Fool's Day on the Border art project. Since the 1980's Ron English has been risking getting arrested (many times actually getting arrested and jailed) for sniping his large scale, anti-corporate & anti-estabishment faux-advertising street art on roadside billboards, bus stop ad spaces, & various other highly visible public spaces.
Ron claims he is the first street artist to ever do something like this on the wall separating the US/Mexico. The Popaganda artist risked not only getting arrested but also the wrath of the notoriously vigilant US border patrol & Homeland Security forces. And on top of all that, the veteran street artist literally risked his own life by entering the territory of trigger happy Mexican drug thugs.
"Very close to where we were at on the Mexican side doing the billboard [was where] all those people got shot. It was scary," said English, referring to the six latest casualties in Mexico's bloody drug war who got gunned down & killed just the day before he crossed the border for his April Fool's Day on the Border stunt.
"Yeah, it's been selling like crazy," confirmed Jackie in the DVD section of the Los Angeles Amoeba Music by phone yesterday. "At the rate it's selling it's probably going to be one of the number one selling DVDs of the year. It's hilarious and you don't even have to be a fan of this art form to enjoy this documentary." In agreement is pioneering street artist & culture jammer Ron English, who appears briefly in the film and who along with Banksy and Swoon put his art on the Palestinian separation wall in the West Bank in 2007.
