Welcome. My name's Caleb Neelon. I do artwork and writing. Click around on the links on the left side to see various stuff I've done over the years.
All content on this site is copyright Caleb Neelon / SONIK or somebody that I'm cool with, not you. Viva!!
Those of you interested in buying some art of mine can either see one of the gallery shows I do or email me. Emailing is easy and I can point you in the right direction.
Feel free to contact me, as always. Calebneelon at gmail dot com. I'm on Facebook, too, if you're into that.
Dafen Art Museum mural project writeup
I did a little two-part writeup on the mural exhibition that I took part in at the Dafen Art Museum in Shenzhen, China. It's over on my blog on Print Magazine's Imprint.
Back to school.... Ten short memos to young Boston artists
I often get emails from younger artists looking for advice on getting things rolling, particularly in the Boston area. I certainly don't have things figured out or anything, but there's enough bits and pieces that I'm sure of, or wish I had known, that I could write this short piece. It talks about Boston specifically, but some of it applies anywhere.
Just got back from a mural project at the Dafen Art Museum in Shenzhen, China. I'll be posting a wrap-up on my blog at Imprint very soon, and will link over.... In the meantime, here are some pics.
I did an interview with Mexican artist Dr. Lakra for the August issue of Juxtapoz. That's two Jux cover stories in two months for me, and not only that, but also in this issue is a short profile I did on my homie Raul Gonzalez, who while living in Boston, is Mexican originally, so that's also two stories about Mexicans in one issue. Alls I gotta say is Viva!
Ed Emberley and Friends show photos
Thank you to everyone who came out to see Ed and friends at the show I put together at Scion in LA. There were a lot of you. Now I get to do what for me is the funnest part: giving away the six big paintings that Ben Woodward, Matt Leines, Saelee Oh, Raul Gonzalez, Chris Kline, and Seonna Hong did. They all go to various children's hospitals!
Have a look at photos of the show via the link below.
Signs and Symbols at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts video
Here's a sound-optional video of me working with some of the 125 Boston kids that collaborated with me on this big crazy wall at the Boston MFA. The wall's on view until September.
My new blog at Imprint / Print Magazine
I've written for Print Magazine off and on for the past five or so years, and they have invited me to blog on their new online hub, Imprint. I've started off with a couple of pieces about a trip to Nicaragua I made earlier this summer. Read it HERE.
PS that piece above was done in Managua. It was really hot. Like really hot.
Ed Emberley and Friends!!! Scion Los Angeles, July 17
I am thrilled to have the honor of curating a tribute to one of my favoritest art people in the world, Ed Emberley. It opens on July 17 in Los Angeles.
Os Gemeos cover story for Juxtapoz
Just got home to find the new issue of Juxtapoz Magazine in my mailbox - they had asked me to do a big interview with Os Gemeos, the Brazilian twin brother artists. (If you don't know these guys, really, look em up. I'll ever steer you wrong.) I happily provided Juxtapoz with one of their longest features in quite a while - counting the amazing photos by Lost Art, the thing runs 16 pages.
Got some color...
Chelsea, MA Boys' and Girls' Club. With Marco DePaolis, Kenji Nakayama, and Raul Gonzalez.
needs some color....
BOAT SHOW BOAT SHOW BOAT SHOW
Summer show around the way in Watertown, MA.
May 28! THIS Los Angeles gets kiddy with me and OTHER RAD PEOPLE
New Children's Hospital Boston Art for Kool Kidz products in the store...
Children's Hospital Boston's Art for Kool Kidz program did a great run of baby onesies, t-shirts, and tote bags featuring the bird rocket characters from the Imagination Wall I painted on site at the Hospital. Buy them by clicking on 'store' to the left.... and oh yeah, these are 100% a benefit for the Art for Kool Kidz program - all the bucks go to benefit the program!
FRIDAY RECEPTION FOR FOURTH WALL/CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL!
Show up!
I can paint really fast
Here's a little time-lapse of me painting half of the Imagination Wall at Children's Hospital Boston last fall....
The music was composed for the loop - you can also feel free to cue the Benny Hill theme, which is appropriate for all time-lapses.
Me and one of my favorite art people ever, Ed Emberley....
From last night at the reception for my Signs and Symbols project at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts... this image also functions as a teaser for a summer project I am putting together at Scion Space in LA..... more soon on that!
Imagination Wall at Fourth Wall Gallery - up and done.....
Head on in.... show run until May 28, with the big reception Friday May 21. We did a little run of Imagination Wall- themed t-shirts, totes, and onesies which are all for sale there, all benefitting Art for Kool Kidz at Children's Hospital. Soon I will have them for sale through my site... stay tuned.
Fourth Wall Projects / Children's Hospital Boston almost finished!
Don't sleep on this! I'm doing a 3,000 sq foot solo show as a Children's Hospital Boston Art for Kool Kids benefit!
May 12-28, Fourth Wall Projects at 132 Brookline Ave in Boston - in between Fenway Park and the Landmark Center aka the old Sears building. Closer to the Landmark Center, but on the other side of Brookline Ave. Big reception Friday May 21! Buy art and benefit art programs at the Hospital!
Friday May 14, 5-7pm Museum of Fine Arts reception!
Show up!! Me plus a whole heap of kids!
Signs and Symbols at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts
Flicks! You should also come to the Friday May 14 reception, 5-7 pm. Me and some of the 125 kids I worked with this year will be on hand!
This photo and the ones you'll see if you click the little "see the photos" link below are all by Damon Beale for the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Thanks Damon!
Raven and I went to Sao Paulo, Brazil in December of 1997 to put together a story on Brazilian graffiti for 12ozProphet's sixth issue. Twist had connected us with Os Gemeos, and we went there to introduce them to the world via our magazine. The sight of Sao Paulo and the otherworldly graffiti scene exploding over its gut-wrenching social landscape, the peculiarly Brazilian collision of poverty and wealth, was a complete shock. Meeting Os Gemeos - as well as Nina, Vitche, and Herbert Baglione, gave us friends for life, and the sight of their work was a glimpse into the future of an art movement we thought we knew, but even now, more than a dozen years later, has yet to catch up. Here's a short video edited from footage thought to have been lost for well over a decade.
You get to hear me swear in this. The strangest thing to me though is seeing myself with a beer. I haven't had an alcoholic drink in eight years.
Boston Museum of Fine Arts show.... reception Fri May 14, 5-7 pm.
I've been working this academic year with kids from all over Boston to make a big (like 40' x 13') collaborative installation to be displayed at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. I'll tell you more about it later. It ain't small, and it's in some of the best real estate the Museum has to offer.
More here on the MFA's site
Got some color...
Finished version of the site below... Tobin School, Mission Hill, Boston. Mural faces the Mission Church park.
Needs some color....
Almost finished with this one....
Imagination Wall writeup
The Imagination Wall project at Children's Hospital Boston involved my painting a two-section mural in the Hospital's main lobby, doing so without a sketch, during the busy working day, and making myself accessible - no headphones, etc.
If you walk around public or private areas in Children's Hospital, you'll notice that there is art - big, bold, original art - all over the place. It is everywhere you look. As Boston Phoenix art critic Greg Cook noted in his article on the Imagination Wall project, most hospitals feature soporific artwork - prints of beaches, trees, etc - seemingly designed to lull you to sleep. Well, Children's is the exact opposite: the art there is designed to entertain, to engage, to be, in the Hospital's parlance, 'a positive distraction.' It makes for a very different hospital environment, for sure.
Everything in hospitals has to be backed up by research and replicable studies; it's the way of science. That goes for art as well - the positive effect of art surrounding us that us art types take for granted has to be quantified. Since I didn't opt to go for the Doctorate, my social science research skills aren't where they need to be to do that, but I can paint and tell stories.
Ben:
Ben rolled up to me in a big, elaborate wheelchair, which he controlled with a joystick. He looked about nine or ten, and didn't appear to have much use of his limbs beyond manipulating the wheelchair joystick, but had a huge smile, a Red Sox shirt, and peppered me with great questions, one after another. He was definitely digging what I was doing, and when his dad said 'hey Ben, tell Caleb how you paint' he excitedly began:
"Yeah! I get to paint! We put paint around the wheels of my wheelchair, we put big big paper down, and I roll over it and turn and the paint goes onto the paper and I get to paint!"
Here's where the Hospital art comes in. "That's awesome! See that painting right over there?" I pointed thirty feet away, to a framed canvas of concentric circles of various colors. "See that painting? It was done by an artist with his wheelchair, just like you were talking about!" With a push of the wheelchair joystick, Ben zoomed towards it, stopped, gave an intent stare for a moment, spun on a dime, zoomed right back to me, and asked me, intently: "How'd he get those tight spirals?"
And with that, disability was just a part of the technique.
Tati (see a couple posts below):
I was honored on the second-to-last-day of the Imagination Wall project to get to share a little mostly-opening party with Tati, who was showing prints of her work in an adjacent Au Bon Pain. She picked up painting with acrylics while sick in the hospital - she was in for several months. She got real good real fast. She had this one painting of a breaking ocean wave that was just amazing, such a sense of depth and all.
I asked her if she was still painting, and she said she hadn't been, that she was in school and just doing school stuff. Will she pick it up again? Who knows. She clearly has an aptitude for formal art technique, and certainly could push it if she cared to. But it may well be that painting will remind her in the future of a time she'd rather put behind her, a time when she was stuck in a hospital fighting one of the toughest battles that life can throw at a kid. Either way, art did its job: not simply content to keep up her school studies from a hospital bed, she got real good at something tangible in a time when beating expectations was the only thing that mattered.
Jack:
I never met sixteen-year-old Jack; he was upstairs in a cancer ward and wasn't mobile. I met his family, who stopped by on their way upstairs. In one section of the mural, I had a bull staring upwards at a pile of signs - see the above photo. As I worked, I was asking kids for messages that they'd like to pass on to other kids at the hospital, through the mural - "don't be scared," things like that. I'd then arrange messages onto the pile of signs and paint them in, going for a half poetic, half back-of-a-Cambridge-Volvo-bumper-sticker-collage effect. Jack's parents took some pictures of the mural and brought them up to him, telling me they'd bring back his message, which some hours later they relayed: "I am a warrior."
Spending time in Children's Hospital means being around some truly exceptional parents, people whose sacrifice and dedication is awe-inspiring. It was an honor to meet so many of you.
Imagination Wall, day Ten (last one)
Second week, second wall....
Imagination Wall, Day Nine
Tati and co. Tati, age eleven, is holding the flowers. I was honored tonight to get to share a little mostly-opening party with her. I have been doing my mural, and Tati was showing prints of her work in an adjacent Au Bon Pain. She started painting while sick in the hospital - she was in for several months. She got real good real fast. She had this one painting of a breaking ocean wave that was just amazing, such a sense of depth and all. Props to Tati!
Tomorrow I will wrap my mural up, then return later to do some smaller projects up on the floors with the future exhibitors!
One other thing: notice that I am painting in visual competition with the mylar balloons for sale to the right. It has been an often humbling experience to compete for the attention of passing children against Elmo and Hannah Montana.
Imagination Wall, Day Eight
Imagination Wall, Day Seven
Imagination Wall, Day Six
Imagination Wall, Day Four
Imagination Wall, Day Three
Imagination Wall, Day Two
Imagination Wall, Day One
Imagination Wall starts Monday!
I start work on the Imagination Wall mural on Monday! I went to check out the site today - the pair of walls that make up the mural together are 7 feet tall and 52 feet long - got my work cut out for me!
Announcing IMAGINATION WALL at Children's Hospital Boston
For two weeks starting on Monday, September 21, I will be painting a set of murals on-site at Children's Hospital Boston in the main lobby. I have no sketch for the murals, and I'll be working right in the middle of the very busy hospital's main entrance hall, with with visitors encouraged to say hello and leave notes detailing their hospital wishes and hopes, as I will be doing my best to incorporate them into the murals.
This is a special project for me (I was born almost directly across the street), and I hope some of you can come out and say hello. I will be there roughly 9-5 on weekdays from Monday September 21 to Friday October 2, when I hope to have the murals completed. They will remain on display until the spring of 2010, and I will be doing some arts programming through the fall on the Hospital floors, when I hope to meet and work with kids who may not have been able to come by while I work on the main lobby murals.
I very much encourage you all to come and visit Children's Hospital Boston at some point, and to see the remarkable arts program they have there. Art is a real part of the healing process at Children's, and you really have to see it and walk around the place to understand. I know full well that nobody wants to go to a hospital for fun in their free time, let alone one for children. But among the most valuable lessons I've ever learned in art (thank you once again, graffiti) is that if your stomach's in a knot, you're in a good spot. That rhymed. Hoping to see some of you soon. I'll be very easy to spot in the main lobby, and you shouldn't feel awkward about coming by. Updates to follow.
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