scottstead.com

Paintagon 2012: Forward Festival

scottstead — Wed, 09 May 2012 00:28:10 +0000

A week ago, in early May 2012, the Forward Festival took place at 2nd and K Street NE in Washington, DC. Alex Goldstein and The Fridge conceived of and built a Paintagon to receive the paint of five, yes, five local teams of graffiti artists competing for the love of the audience. CHE, G8R, HK181, JAZI, LIGHT UP, ULTRA, VICE VERSA, and PORE showed up and threw up a multitude of colors and created the following pieces of work.

Scotch! Disassociated

scottstead — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 06:24:36 +0000

I recently had the pleasure of sitting down with world renowned San Antonio stencil artist Scotch! at The Fridge DC for an interview. It was a fabulous day full of free stencil classes put on by The Fridge and hosted by the master himself. Ladies and gentlemen, I present, Scotch Willington III.

Andy Warhol: Through the eyes of the children of Perry Center.

scottstead — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 02:08:35 +0000

Decoy, a member of nonprofit art collective Albus Cavus, has been working with a group of Perry Center students to create a unique take on the work of Andy Warhol. Inspired by the exhibits currently on view at Smithsonian museums, these young artists have developed their own versions of Warhol’s famous works, such as his screen tests, cat and shoe sketches, Campbell’s soup cans and Shadows series.

This show is open at The Fridge DC until March 1st. Make sure you check it out! All proceeds from art sales support the Perry Center so they can continue this amazing work with these kids.

Beltway Poetry Slam: Brian Omni Dillon

scottstead — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 17:17:22 +0000

Long awaited is the posting of this video. Wait no more! The infamous Brian Omni Dillon graced the stage of the The Fridge DC in November. I was there to capture this passionate, sometimes vulgar, sometimes uplifting, sometimes depressing but always amazing slam. From his site,

Brian Dillon is a performance poet, author, educator, and organizer from New York City. Currently a professor of performance poetry at NYU’s Gallatin School, he is also the 4th ranked slam poet in the world and a writer-in-residence at the Nuyorican Poet’s Cafe. In 2011 Brian finished in second place alongside his Nuyorican teammates at the National Poetry Slam. His debut novel “Eat The Rich” will be published in the winter of 2011 by DefWords Press. He has served as a guest host and featured poet on the world renowned Indiefeed performance poetry podcast numerous times. In his free-time, Brian is an aficionado of youth ice hockey, designer lighting, and bad music..

Thanks for sharing with us Brian!

Beltway Poetry Slam: The Poets

scottstead — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 16:55:11 +0000

It’s definitely not enough to just know the rules, get a samplin’, hear the introduction…so I’m going to take you inside my first Beltway Poetry Slam with the following videos. These are the artists in the order in which they appeared.

Major thanks to Sarah Lawson for putting this together. And of course thanks to Natalie E. Illum, Regie Cabico, Gray, Slangston Hughes, Da One and Only, Angelique Palmer, Pages, Jonathan B. Tucker, Joseph LMS, Bryce Celotto, Von Da Wizard, and Danny Fox-Moles for showing up and sharing their art, their words and their stories with us. Special congratulations to the finalists Joseph LMS and Jonathan B. Tucker. And a special shout out to Danny Fox-Moles for securing the win. As always, thanks to the Fridge for hosting yet another amazing event.

Beltway Poetry Slam 101

scottstead — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 05:15:37 +0000

Just in case you’ve never been, you have no idea, or it’s just generally seemed intimidating. Picture this, it’s November 29th, 2011. The Fridge. Southeast DC. The Beltway Poetry Slam is about to take off. These are the rules. This is how it’s done. FYI..special guest appearance by World Poetry Slam Champion 2011, Chris August.

Above the Radar II: Time Lapse of a Mural in the Making

scottstead — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 23:57:36 +0000

Else and 4Saken take on the wall at the Fridge. Watch them sketch it, buff it and paint it. Music courtesy of http://freemusicarchive.org/.

Wisdom Tours Bluecoat Distillery

scottstead — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 03:49:04 +0000

Philadelphia Distilling, producers of Bluecoat Gin invited Erik Holzherr, his staff and a few lucky www.Gintender.com subscribers out for a day libations and learning about how Bluecoat is made.

Tech Toys 101: Pansonic Lumix DMC-GH2 Review

scottstead — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 01:15:40 +0000

This week I take a look at the Panasonic Lumix DMC-GH2. Chock full of features, ready for video, and at a decent price point – this camera is worth taking a look at.

Visual.ly Launched Today…

scottstead — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 21:51:56 +0000

…and all I got was this stupid avatar.

All joking aside, I think Visual.ly has a lot of potential. If you know me – you know I love data visualizations. I’m always interested in seeing the visual notes of my pals Jonny Goldstein and Austin Kleon and, of course, the wicked visualizations of design guru JESS3. The first, and currently only available “lab” available is a Twitter Visualizer. This lab polls your Twitter data and creates a visualization of your ‘personality’ on Twitter, ratios of follower to followers, etc. Note: it may take a bit to populate if you have a lot of tweets, followers, etc so be patient. See my results below.

I’m definitely looking forward to seeing how you’ll be able to port data into various ‘labs’ and what other API’s they’ll be interacting with. Two tentative thumbs up for visual.ly, but be warned – my expectations are high going forward.