New from the Fool’s Gold creative group comes the first installation of their Dust La Rock-curated Artist Series. Featuring brand new T-shirts and art prints from Cody Hudson and JK5, all world-premieres, the series is bound to grab attention from fashionable New Yorkers and curious passersby alike. Starting today from 7-9 p.m. at the Fool’s Gold space in Brooklyn, the event will feature attendance by all artists whose work is on display as well as refreshments and, inevitably, some great music.

Fool’s Gold
536 Metropolitan Ave.
Brooklyn
New York
United States

Barneys Coop has teamed up with Watch makers Timex and tattoo artist, toy maker, book publisher, Joseph Aloi aka. JK5 for this limited edition watch. Green Label Art had a chance to interview this artist about the watch itself.

What were the challenges inherent in cultivating a design for as specific a canvas as a watch?

The challenge for me was to come up with an interesting, distinctive, and beautiful design for the very small, octagonal face. The shape and form was conducive to a symmetrical design with fluid linework that would just glow with the color choices. The top horizontally reads, “JK5″ and “Barneys,” and the sides which I turned and treated horizontally as well read, “Illuminate,” and the numbers one to nine. On the bottom it says, “Love, Light, Create.” The words that had a function on the watch [like “stop” and “reset”] needed to remain so those got contrasting glyph-like type treatments.

How was the collaborative process and would you work with them again?

They were awesome folks to work with. I had a great dialogue with the Barneys and Timex team about the potential to create and design the anatomy of a watch—actually play with the technology. I liked the idea of seeing my sanskrit/elvish/cholo/sci-fi fonts as the digital time display but I really want to create a new watch form and concept from scratch. Thinking about time as a beating heart.

Wow. That’s near impossible for me to envision how far that could go.

They’re open to collaborate further so we shall see.

OK, being familiar with your process I know you always have this incredibly developed, baroque detailed narrative, a complete backstory for each design. What’s up with this watch?

This ancient traveling scribe of the buddha journeyed to a distant, most conscious, visually lyrical planet of the imagined subconscious future, and returns with this relic of a glowing timepiece. It was selected out of three. Encrypted are the messages “Illuminate time through love, light, and creation.” It is always that time.

Back in 2002 under the watchful eye and direction of SUCKADELIC, graf artists EASE and JK5 (who recently collaborated with Mishka) did extensive work on an AT-AT toy by Hasbro. The AT-AT walker was originally seen in George Lucas’ The Empire Strikes Back. The tags surrounding the toy are all done in the fictional alphabet system Aurebesh which was seen extensively in the Star Wars series. The AT-AT toy is among the pieces being auctioned off at Christie’s Graf-At auction featuring numerous graffiti related artifacts and works.

Source: Gizmodo

Back in 1999, critically acclaimed artist JK5 put together a vivid 432 page volume of his work titled Subconsciothesaurusnex. The book would go on to form the basis of this collaboration with New York’s Mishka. Over a three day span, the book was carefully dissected and repasted to create a stunning collage of the artist’s works. The collage would then be applied in various forms including t-shirts, hoodies and hats. Although both the artist and brand represent concepts and imagery off the beaten path, one cannot help but realize the perfect union created by these two entities and their flawless execution. View the entire collection along with background information over at Mishka.