And for one hella good cause. The Estria Foundation coordinated one huge event here in Hawai'i, the "Estria Invitational Graffiti Battle" which took place on Saturday. The event was sponsored by a conglamorate of foundations and organizations here in the 808 and beyond: Estria Foundation, Honolulu Academy of Arts, 808 Urban, Montana Colors, Undermyumbrrella, Sunetric, Fatcar, Graffiti Paper, Fresh Cafe, Angry Woebots, Pow Wow Hawai'i, Elena's, Honolulu Printmakers and Lightsleepers. The event was hosted by the one and only Jason Mateo, who did an awesome job of keeping the masses informed and entertained.
This was one full force event which included workshops on calligraphy, logo design, graffiti history, t-shirt stenciling, screen printing, and artist business and survival. Along with the workshops there was break dancing, spoken word, freestyle vocal cypher, Hawaiian story telling, beatboxing and...a graff battle, which was hella unreal.
At the event there was some exhibitors and information tables. I bought a shirt from 808urban and I really liked this one tent that had some Hawaiian art.
When I got there, I got to meet up with a bunch of 808 peopz: Woes, the Lightsleepers crew, JRR Tokin, Pancho, CKaweeks, etc., etc. which is always good to see.
While I was there I attended one of the workshops, which was the the vision behind "Ola ka Wai, Ola Ka Honua" collab project at Honolulu Community College, which is a part of Estria's Water Writes artistic voyage and social mission on water. (For those of you who may remember, I blogged about it in an earlier post http://haynmade.blogspot.com/2011/07/huge-graff-collab-hits-honolulu.html) It was a pretty good session I must say, and the Honolulu video was shot super well, which again I was super proud of our talented 808 video crew. Lucky for all of you peopz, the vid is on Youtube, so here you go for your viewing pleasure:
We were able to not only view the Honolulu project, but the projects that were held thus far in LA and Oakland, and these videos have been posted on YouTube as well...
After attending this workshop, I have a greater (not that I didn't before) respect for Estria, and his aggressive vision of taking graffiti on a respectful platform at a global level, it's mega mind blowing to me. In the workshop there was a mother who said a quote that I really really liked, "Estria allowed my son to take his graffiti talent from aiming it at the community to aiming it with the community." Unfriggen real.
After the workshop was done, my friend and I went back outside to check out the graff competition. This year, Estria took his graff competitions on three legs thus far, New York, Los Angeles and Honolulu. The finals will be taking place in Oakland on October 8.
But back to the Hawai'i graff battle, the theme for this year's battle was "Hanau" which is Hawaiian for "birth". All I know is I'm happy I wasn't a judge for the battle, because there was some wicked talent.
It was one awesome event, and if you wasn't there, you totally missed out. To Estria everyone who was a part of the event, a job well done.
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