I know, I know… This post has nothing to do with northwest art and design. I’ll be back to that in the next post. For now here’s a few photos from my trip to China and Hong Kong in January. The first 10 or so shots show some of the street art I found while there.

I ran across these great illustrations of animals in suits and cracked up. Hot concept! Ryan Berkley is the portland artist producing these great pieces at affordable prices. Looks like he’ll have new animals up sometime in March on his Etsy site.

Shanna Duncan for years has been doing huge amounts of artwork for Lib Tech snowboards. Her beautiful poster design for the Holy Oly Revival stays true to Lib Techs’ branded look she helped to create. For all the snowboard heads out there, Get up to Summit East on Feb 23rd, the Holy Oly is going to be huge this year!

Don’t miss Amy Ruppel’s website art sale on February 25th at 10am. Amy mixes Beeswax with her drawings that give her artwork an ethereal quality. You can also see her work at Velocity Art and Design in Seattle, and Office PDX in Portland.

Mightypop likes to look at the inner workings of robots and aliens on top of their own silhouettes. Who doesn’t? Brian Flynn’s (Hybrid Design, Super 7) new work takes care of that craving. His screen-prints are available at Office PDX in Portland, Oregon.

The new teaser art for the 2008 Sasquatch festival is up on their site. ‘Squatch is driving a station wagon loaded with all his concert gear, BBQ and all. Mightypop discovered Seattle’s own Invisible Creature did the artwork for this years festival. Besides Sasquatch, they have done great design work for the Foo Fighters, the Fold and Joy Electric. In other words, they rule!

Portland’s Evan B Harris draws like he is remembering some vintage fable passed down from his grandparents. His artwork looks aged and distressed as if found in an estate sale. The Bluebottle art gallery is showcasing his newest pieces, “Born in the Briars, Dies in the Fields”, that are influenced by civil war imagery and the story Watership Down.

Seattle’s Roq la Rue gallery is showcasing a group show this month entitled “A Cabinet Of Natural Curiosities”. They asked all the artists involved to create pieces that in some way relate to animals.

The Artists include: Femke Hiemstra, Travis Louie, Brian Despain, Amy Sol, Lisa Petrucci, Chris Ryniak, Chet Zar, Kozydan, Junko Mizumo, Liz McGrath, Kukula, Laura Plansker, Mark Frauenfelder, Christian Vanminnen, Mark Gleason, Nathan Ota, Catalina Estrada, Sarah Joncas, Kamala Dolphin-Kingsley, John Brophy, Anthony Pontius, Jeremy Bennet, Jim Woodring, Heiko Muller, Javier S. Ortega.

There is alot of talk right now about 2 pieces produced by Lead Pencil Studio (LPS). Several prominent Seattle art critics have pointed out the similarities of LPS to work by artists Roy McMakin and Mariele Neaudecker. I have not seen the art pieces in person and without doing so it is hard to make an assumption one way or another. Jen Graves at the Stranger wrote a detailed article in the current issue about the LPS art in question. Give it a read for yourself.

Mike Klay of Powerslide Design in Seattle has a beautiful new 15″X24″ 2-color screenprint, titled Fox Island Brunch, available on his site. While you’re there go look at the concert posters he has done for the likes of Ladytron, Death Cab For Cutie and Cut Chemist.