Gerard Weber – Weed Week : Now With More Weed capaign
A week-long programming stunt dedicated to weed that appeals to all the senses and culminates on 4/20. The strategy for this campaign was celebrating the ubiquity, normalization, and increasing legalization of weed.
It depicts copious amounts of weed in curious, unexpected places while still being rooted in the real world.
Gerard is a Creative + Art Director with over 12 years experience working alongside a range of brands developing global campaigns. His work has won over 90 awards and has been recognized across marketing, advertising, television, digital, print, experiential and more.
Product Placement – Dave Pollot Original Oil on Thrift Painting
He discribes his process of work:
“I find discarded prints and paintings (ones you may have inherited from great grandma and brought to your local donation bin), and make additions. Sometimes I paint monsters, other times zombies, and most times some pop culture reference- Star Wars, Futurama, Ghostbusters, Mario Brothers…the list goes on. I use oil paints and do my best to match the style of the original artist. My hope is to take these out of the trash can and into a good home; full-circle- from a print that proudly hung on your Grandma’s wall, to a painting that proudly hangs on yours.”
He also writes: “Painting has always been something of a hobby to me, but it wasn’t until I started repurposing thrift art in 2012 that I did it with any real consistency. The idea actually began as a joke between my wife (who loves to shop at thrift stores) and I, but it quickly evolved into an attempt to answer a question: Could I take a piece of unwanted art, and without changing its aesthetic, change its meaning by painting into it some bit of pop culture/nostalgia and make it desirable in the modern world? Since that time, I’ve also started to explore a number of more personal themes in my work.”
His favorite themes are movie parodies, television parodies, horror parodies, old market expansion series, video game parodies and surrealist art.
Shusaku Takaoka is a Japanese graphic designer, who creates digital collages from old paintings, photographs and movie screen shoots with contemporary visual material.
A few days before the action, a door frame with a painted stylized wall was erected on which these texts were added in Hungarian and English:
“A wall means self-closure and/or exclusion. This country would be far more livable if the walls were destroyed. This doorway will be build up with bread and dripping. On May 2015 at 19:30, if you are fed up with walls, come and help break them down: Eat a slice with us!“
After the artist laid down slices of bread with pork fat, the public helped “eat down” the wall.
Trafó house of contemporary arts in Budapest, Hungary produced an “image campaign” around the year 2000, reflecting on the consumable nature of culture.
The text on the poster says: “Gallery. For consumers”
Bread head sculptures – András Böröcz 2003 – New York
One of András Böröcz and his wife Robbin Ami Silverberg’s actions was carried out at the Popieluszko Square next to their apartment, the purpose of which was to have the pigeons floating in the square devouring or at least breaking down the sculptures made of bread. The pigeons walked around the bread heads, but did not harm them, paying tribute to Böröcz’s art. The square was named after a Polish priest murdered in 1987. Later the Polish community in Brooklyn erected a statue for his memory. The head of the statue was broken on the day before the initiation. Böröcz reacted with the Breadhead statue in action, documented by Robbin Ami Silverberg and become the Bread Head Story.
