COMBO!

The first-time collaboration set forth by graffiti artists Blu and David Ellis in Grottaglie, Italy at FAME Fest 2009 took ten days to complete. Their concept was to use the canvas they were given, a multi-story, abandoned building, to promote an art which is often seen by the general public as the work of vandal delinquents and gang members. They worked for more than a week battling technical problems and poor weather to create a real world, mixed-media animation that creeps all over the run down building. This was accomplished through a mix of time lapse and stop motion photographic techniques to make the graffiti compositions flow together on the walls. In this way they were able to rediscover animation in the real three-dimensional world and restore the building for their own artistic purposes. Throughout, they explore themes of creation and destruction through transformation with human-like heads turning into various other organic forms. Each piece gives life to another in a cycle of creation versus destruction with no logical causation that hints at the improvisational nature of the art of graffiti itself. Their work proves that whatever may be lost or abandoned can be reborn, in time, through creativity and the ingenuity of a thoughtful and inventive mind.