A Tale of Two Rorys

Actually, this is a very short tale. On my travels around the city last year, I came across this great piece on Washington Street West, with no name I could see, showing a guitarist in green jamming away, delighted with life.

A week or so after I found the above, I was checking out some of the street art along Tobin Street when I came upon another version of this piece. There was less of him there, but it was the same guitarist.

This time he was in blue, and the piece included the name of the artist - Vincent Zara. Mr. Zara does a lot of great portraits of the guitarist Rory Gallagher, so these two pieces are examples of his work in that vein.

Another version of this portrait, on canvas, was included in the exhibition of his work (called "Vincentzara Sells Out") earlier this year at The Pavilion pub in Carey's Lane. I nearly bought it. I probably should have, but someone else beat me to it while I was thinking it over. Oh well.

Here's a link to a photo of the piece on the walls of the Pav, courtesy of Mr. Zara's "Bookface" page:
https://www.facebook.com/vincentzaracork#!/photo.php?fbid=295563533887174&set=pb.100003005906098.-2207520000.1373070164.&type=3&theater

Also, here's a link to a general photo of the exhibition on the walls of the pub:
https://www.facebook.com/vincentzaracork/media_set?set=a.108445375932325.15212.100003005906098&type=3#!/photo.php?fbid=295563460553848&set=a.108445375932325.15212.100003005906098&type=3&theater

Here is a link to an article on the Cork Arts Review website about that Vincent Zara exhibition at the Pav:
http://corkartsreview.com/2012/11/01/street-art-goes-indoors-the-pavillion/

Also, here is a link to the cool poster for the show:
http://corkartsreview.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/vzposter.jpg

By the way, if you are not familiar with Rory Gallagher's music, check out this clip of him from the film of his 1974 Irish tour. The clip also provides some interesting views of Cork as it was 40 years ago....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPNWQ6EOoKQ

The photos on this page were taken by me in August 2012.


EXTRA CREDIT

The Rory on Tobin Street has a couple of interesting neighbours that I'll include here. First, on the left side, a pink frog....

On the other side, there is one of those signature skulls done by Psychonautes. And another pink frog. And some pink cross bones....

We'll cover more of the other pieces along Tobin Street another time.

Pistol Pumps

I found these colourful pieces along Douglas Street. There was a series of four pictures, each showing the same funky "pistol pump" shoe design with different colour combinations - red with a yellow background, yellow with green, pink with orange and blue with purple.

Unfortunately the latter two were splattered with some kind of horrible gunk that I chose not to investigate. So I can only share the others with you.

There may be another inspiration for these that I'm not aware of, but they remind me of something Andy Warhol might have done....

These pictures were all taken by me in August 2012.

Oddly enough, at least to me, it seems people have actually designed shoes like this, with a gun-shaped heel. Just google it and you'll see. Bizarre.


EXTRA CREDIT

This thought-provoking piece was located near the above one, so I am including it here.

Apparent Banksy Tribute

Another flying post today, though I'm feeling better, thanks for asking.

Today's pieces were found together along the Ballyhooly Road a bit beyond St. Luke's. It's hard to tell if they were done by the same person, but it's possible to probable. The blue paint seems to be the same shade on the two pieces, not that that necessarily means anything, but then again it might....

The piece on top looks like a tribute to the iconic Banksy image of a rioting, flower-throwing maniac, which Google tells me was called "Rage, Flower Thrower". I was going to post a link to an image of it somewhere, but it seems to be everywhere, so I won't bother. Copies of it are even available to be purchased on Ebay and from Walmart, amongst others, which might be great or depressing news, depending how you look at it....

The second image is another version of a piece on Wellingon Road that I included in my 1 March post.

I took these photos in August 2012.

Short and Sweet

This is just a quick post. I finally have a moment to write something here, but amn't feeling well. So brief this will be.

These are a few pieces of merit located in the lane just off Brian Boru Street. I took all these photos in the heady days of June 2012....

Pulp Politics or the South Mall Stick-Up

The piece below is one of my favourites in Cork. It's on the South Mall and was done by a guy named Vincent Zara, who has a lot of high quality stuff up around the city.

It shows the Taoiseach and the Minister for Finance getting all "Pulp Fiction" with Santa. Who knew things in the country were that bad?

 

I'm not entirely sure if the above is really one piece or two... Above it looks like one piece, of course. But I saw an exhibition of Mr. Zara's work recently at The Pavilion pub in Carey's Lane, and one of the pieces was called "Pulp Politics". It included just the Enda Kenny/Michael Noonan section, similar to the photo below...


Here's a link to a photo of the Pav piece on Mr. Zara's "Bookface" page:
https://www.facebook.com/vincentzaracork/media_set?set=a.108445375932325.15212.100003005906098&type=3#!/photo.php?fbid=134120666698129&set=a.108445375932325.15212.100003005906098&type=3&theater

But.... here is a photo of another version on his page that does include Santa:
https://www.facebook.com/vincentzaracork/media_set?set=a.108445375932325.15212.100003005906098&type=3#!/photo.php?fbid=134172466692949&set=a.108445375932325.15212.100003005906098&type=3&theater


Anyway, I took these photos in September 2012, and the last time I checked the piece was still there. Unfortunately, it has been slightly marred by "TOY" being written on the piece...

By the way, in case you don't know the piece already, be sure to look up Banksy's famous "Pulp Fiction" mural of John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson menacing Londoners with some dangerous looking bananas....


EXTRA CREDIT

Next to the Vincent Zara piece I've been writing about above is this one by OneR. "ONE LOVE. ONE LIFE."

I like it, so am including it in today's post. the photo was taken by me at the same time as those above.



Grattan Hill Lady

In a little nook off Grattan Hill is a beautiful portrait of what looks to be a young African woman. There's a name tagged next to the woman, so I'm guessing that's the artist. It looks like DSOK, but I could be wrong....

These photos were taken by me in August 2012.

Wellington Road Gems

Here's an assortment of random pieces from the Wellington Road area....

These photos were all taken by me in July 2012....