Seasons Change

Seasons Change

the summer will fall to the autumn fable

as the gears of nature become unstable 

celebrate the dead on a mystic pilgrimage

with13 tracks never ending on the mixage

masked fiends parade in the harvest gather

nights grow colder makes the days try harder

Calico Jack sails with the black birds flight

candy apple kids glimmer in the star light

leaves dance around in the October fire

barren trees sway in the winds of lost desire

old man frost warns of the seasons interlude

nights grow intimate to the days solitude

Art or vandalism? 'CAD' says he wants to inspire, motivate people

By Erin Blasko
South Bend Tribune Staff Writer
8:13 PM EDT, June 19, 2011

Looking like a bandit - black ball cap, sunglasses, mouth and nose concealed behind a black bandanna - the lean young man walks purposefully across Beutter Park in Mishawaka, removes his backpack and sets to work, uncommonly calm beneath the bright afternoon sun.

He removes a large but thin sheet of craft paper imprinted with an inspirational quotation and a colorful image of children dancing in the shade, and begins pasting it to a utility box next to the river, his only tools a small brush and something called wheatpaste.

Despite the fact that, technically, he is defacing public property, he does not seem concerned about getting caught. His brushstrokes are quick but calm, and, when finished, he steps back to wipe his hands and admire his work.

“The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives,” the aforementioned quotation, by the physicist Albert Einstein, reads.

“I really enjoy exploration,” the man says of the meaning of the piece, “like the childlike exploration of going out and exploring and not have any boundaries, and I really enjoy Einstein quotes. He’s a very smart guy.”

Finished, he moves on, pasting a number of small wooden blocks stamped with motivational phrases - “Be an Explorer” or “Keep Learning” - to various objects around the park - anything with a flat surface.

A small girl and her mother pass, and the girl glances in his direction. He pauses and waves. It is a kind but firm gesture. Hello. Nothing to see here. Move on.

“I don’t do a whole lot of work in the day,” he says later. “Just the fact that these people probably get scared ... seeing a kid walking around with a bandanna around his face.”

The man describes his work, considered vandalism by some, as “art,” placing him among the growing number of people who consider “street art” a legitimate form of artistic expression, equal in many respects to the more traditional and accepted forms of painting or sculpture.

He has asked that The Tribune not use his name because what he does is technically illegal. His signature, which appears in all of his works, is the acronym “CAD,” which stands for the computer command control-alt-delete.

“I guess it is vandalism in the eyes of the public, but I don’t look at it as vandalism, I look at it more like art,” the 35-year-old food service industry worker says. “And from people, I haven’t had any vandalism responses so far. People tend to like it.”

“I think what CAD does is art,” says Jeremy Zerby, 27, a Mishawaka resident and an admirer of CAD’s work. “Vandalism, in my mind, is damaging to property and the general morale of the place it is happening, like when kids write bad words on playground equipment or a gang paints symbols and colors all over buildings to mark territory. It strikes fear, which inevitably leads to bad vibes and often dangerous consequences.

“What CAD does simply makes you think in a way that is non-confrontational but at the same time bold enough to actually express clearly the message that he or she is trying to convey, if someone is willing to look for that message.”

Also referred to as “post-graffiti,” street art includes traditional graffiti artwork but also stencil graffiti, sticker art, wheatpasting, street poster art, video projection, guerrilla art and street installations, among other forms.

Prominent practitioners include Shepard Fairy, a Los Angeles artist best known as the person behind the Barack Obama “Hope” poster, and “Banksy,” a shadowy London artist whose work ranges from the cheeky to the overtly political.

In one well-publicized case, Banksy traveled to the Palestinian territories in 2005, leaving behind several images on the Palestinian side of the controversial West Bank barrier. In one, the silhouetted image of a young girl floats upward on a bouquet of round helium balloons.

Given the nature of the form, the critical response to street art has been understandably mixed. Fairy has been referred to as both a visionary and a fraud, and though a breath of fresh air to some in the art world, the British art critic Matthew Collings has said of Banksy: “(His) ideas only have the value of a joke.”

Nonetheless, collectors have paid big bucks for Banksy pieces - a polyptych portraying a monkey escaping from a laboratory sold for more than $500,000 in 2008 - and versions of Fairy’s “Hope” poster now hang in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., and the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston.

Even more remarkable, in some of the towns targeted by Banksy, elected boards and councils have actually decided to preserve his work as public art.

“I think it’s great,” CAD says of the growing acceptance of the form among critics and collectors, not to mention the general public, “because I feel like regular art has gotten kind of stagnant ... whereas street art is open to endless possibilities.”

Like many street artists, CAD got his start “tagging.” The most common form of graffiti, tagging involves the repetition of a personalized signature. It is typically done with spray paint, and targets include public and private buildings and walls.

“I got into tagging basically because I was a kid and had a buck-authority-type attitude,” he says, “and I wanted to see how much trouble I could get into.

“I did it a couple of years and then moved on.”

He later attended Indiana University South Bend. He studied graphic design but soon dropped out, he says, because the program focused too much on traditional methods and not enough on computer-aided design.

His work now, which appears around South Bend and Mishawaka, is image-based. He creates it on a personal computer and then prints it off in sections. The stencil pieces he applies with spray paint, and the craft paper images with wheatpaste, an adhesive similar to the kind used in kindergarten classrooms.

He views street art as a progression of tagging. The difference, he says, is that, whereas tagging represents a juvenile reaction to authority, street art represents a thoughtful attempt to provoke thought and discourse in the public domain.

“Name tagging and stuff, I appreciate that, I just wish they would do something more with it,” he said, adding, “Basically I’m just trying to get people to be more active and speak their voice. If you have a voice, it’s gotta be heard.”

One of his pieces actually includes the word “Speak!” It appears below a stenciled portrait of a Slavic-looking man. The man wears a crown, and the word “CAD” appears in place of his mouth.

Other pieces are less direct, including an image of a gnome holding a flower pot, or the Star Wars character Boba Fett, a notorious bounty hunter, aiming a rifle, a “CAD” flag draped from the barrel.

In an article published in the Journal of Consumer Research, John F. Sherry, a marketing professor at the University of Notre Dame, and co-authors Luca M. Visconti, Stefania Borghini and Laurel Anderson, talk about the stimulative power of street art.

“Wherever we look, we observe a recurrent emptiness and disenchantment in the way citizens negotiate urban spaces,” the article, titled “Street Art, Sweet Art? Reclaiming the ‘Public’ in Public Place,” reads. “An ambivalent and multi-faceted phenomenon, street art stimulates lively discussion about public space and its ties to the market.”

The article also draws a direct line between current forms of street art and the “signs, adornments, and writings ... revealed at the archeological sites of Pompei and Ercolano,” stating: “Nowadays, by conceiving urban landscapes as screens, street artists update the heritage of the Renaissance and stimulate dwellers to establish a critical relationship with” the urban environment.

But not everyone appreciates CAD’s contributions to the urban landscape.

“I don’t consider it art,” says Lynn Coleman, assistant to South Bend Mayor Stephen Luecke. “And even if it is art, how could I do art on your building without your permission? If you’re not giving me permission to put stuff on a building, it’s not art, it’s vandalism.

“There’s a place for art,” he continues, “and the city encourages and supports artistic stuff in community. So we support art, but there’s a difference: When you do art, you get permission from folks .... you don’t just go out and arbitrarily make pictures or paint on buildings you don’t have permission to use.”

Graffiti also brings down property values, Coleman says, and it costs property owners - including the city, in many cases - real money to remove it.

Sherry and his co-authors recognize the complicated nature of street art. “Dwellers, art experts, and government officials may actually look at street interventions as acts of beautification or even public art,” they write, “but also as the ultimate defacement of urban order.”

And based on his actions and statements, CAD seems to recognize it, too. He was nervous, he says, when The Tribune contacted him about this story via an e-mail address listed on his blog. And he tries to avoid occupied buildings and places of worship when scouting locations for his works.

“I’m not necessarily trying to remain anonymous,” he says, “but I don’t want the city to link everything back to me and knock on my door.”

In addition, he is trying to get away from stenciling, he says, recognizing the permanent nature of such work and its potential to aggravate property owners and city officials. Instead, he is doing more wheatpasting. Not only is the paste itself eco-friendly, he says, but the kraft paper used in conjunction with it is biodegradable.

“I’m not trying to upset the authorities,” he says. “The point is to have fun and pass art onto other people, and inspire kids to get out there and be more active and creative.”

That said, in at least one of his pieces, he appears to acknowledge the controversial nature of his work, if only ironically. The piece consists of a well-dressed man with a spray-paint canister for a head and, off to the side, a speech bubble.

“People like this,” it says, “are a menace to decent society.”

Staff writer Erin Blasko:
eblasko@sbtinfo.com
574-235-6187


Copyright © 2011, South Bend Tribune

CAD Street Art

Welcome to the CAD archive. CAD (Control Alt Delete) came to life in the early 90s as a way for me to fight the system. Originally from the Midwest, CAD is now located in the pacific northfresh. In 2011, CAD went underground and is no longer working with anyone. 

 

CAD has zero religious and political associations. 

 

CAD Campaigns:

1995 Global Takeover

2010 Speak!

2025 Save The World

 

CAD LIVES 

 

Here is a collection of photos through the years:

Last updated: 1/26

Big ups to Antony Yorke...miss you homie

bumwhush

bumwhush midwest 2011 (Photo by Brian Nemeth)

 

Welcome to my new page, these are my journeys. After a long hiatus and getting my shit together, I'm starting to create again. My goal is to move to the Pacific Northwest in the next few years. Here's some old photos and posters from the Stiffy Green era. Unfortunately, the MySpace band page purge mishap took down our page. If anyone has any of our music we gave out on CDRs or photos from that period, please email them to me here. I'll try to post various pictures here when I come across them.

 

 

 

 

Stiffy Green - Bleak Desolation (2003)

Lyrics and vocals by Jason Schoppe

 

Wondering, blundering in the state of fundamentals

Finding diamonds sifting through the dirt as it resettles

Drowning in the knowledge of the ancients changes all reality

Worship mother nature fuck the single mind mentality

Religion corrupting politics twist freedom into terror mass

Fear cripples happiness alters time never ending hour glass

 

Depression, regression rips consciousness into solitude

Substance abuse for conformity ego conception misconstrued

Perfection pills amends desperate cries for help insecure

A poison growing society not looking within to find a cure

Mankind racing rats inflicted fever to consume 

Towers growing concrete jungle Earth speeds toward the final tomb

 

When they warn, we will mourn

Just a speculation

No permission for this submission

Bleak Desolation

 

Forgotten crypts and all knowing manuscripts

Another crooked cremation

The roundabout to the inside out

Bleak Desolation 

 

 

Stiffy Green - Scenic View (2002)

Lyrics and vocals by Jason Schoppe

 

 The lonely fields of times past have all gone astray

Dump City rapes the mass of egos well known cliche

Randomly placed among the sheep like a bad display

Just another mind jacked, a leader hidden in the pack

Struggling with the authority to destroy the word obey

 

Future sights the dream creeps in desolate imagination

While the soul recoils the deceitful horror of temptation

Ignorance crowns the path of man's selfish foundation

From one side of the weak, to the other side of the meek

Foolish men buy the shifty lies of a god's failed salvation

 

One place to another the path of stories start to intersect

Tongues to the unsuspecting speaks out in merchant dialect

Buying the bullshit for the smell of truth is what to collect

The wicked steals a win, marches fear on the grim

Fiction tattles the seeds that sow actuality goes unchecked

 

Dead end alley cats reported lost in their fables of curiosity

Rainbow laced triggers fire the clip fueled bullets of identity

Secret filled towers burn through unconscious inhumanity

One foot firmly in the grave, one name whispers of a slave

The game of life is nothing more than a well designed conspiracy!

  

 

Stiffy Green - Melodrama Melody (2002) 

Lyrics by Jason Schoppe, vocals Jason Schoppe, Ryan Moree 

 

Life is a masquerade a never ending play

We're all stuck in this overpriced matinee

But I will get beat so I must obey

To betray what I portray

I have to keep these thoughts locked away

 

Over my shoulder I throw out the key

Everything is a self righteous conspiracy

Been trying to cut these strings of mediocrity

I'm a refugee of my own damn insanity

Lost inside the worlds of my superficiality!

 

So, sit your asses down get ready for the show

Gonna take a ride on the misleading rainbow

See the good Doc get shot by the buffalo

Watch as old man Gepetto rapes poor Pinocchio

Slave labor funds the Rebel base in Tokyo!

 

I know whatcha thinkin where did it all go wrong?

Maybe I shouldn't have taken that rip from the bong

All these different feelings why can't they just get along?

Well ding dong, it's time to sing song!

Mr. Miyagi would you please hit the gong?

 

I truckle at the notion of being a robot

Controlled by lies that's corrupting life's plot

The rich get richer while the poor are left to rot

The ol' melting pot is now red hot

On second thought, let's not go to Camelot

 

To naive cos we're heading in the wrong direction

We walk our paths looking for some sort of connection

But when we look in the mirror we hate our reflection

Just one imperfection ruins our complexion

And we bleed it upon others like a bad infection

 

So caught up with ourselves that we don't realize

We delude the truth it's easier to disguise

It's hard to appreciate when we always scrutinize

We love to hate so others can sympathize

 

Watching out the window as the world gets smaller

Money, bitches, and the bling, MTV makes me a baller

Another mother on Judge Judy gets sued by her daughter

QVC is sellin the "know aller" with a wife beating brawler

And the news warns of the neighborhood plastic knife mauler

 

Row, row, row your boat

Gently down the stream

With a full pack of smokes

And a handle of Jim Beam

Drink away my sanity

To lower my self esteem

Mix it with jealousy

Top it with greed extreme!

Dumbing everything down

Is the new American Dream

The more stupid we become,

the more I want to scream!

 

Stiffy Green - Pocket Gods (2002)

Lyrics and vocals by Jason Schoppe

 

One impulsive action

Has caused a reckless reaction

You're so unsure of what to do

You try to be divine

Ya don't want to walk the line

What's right what's wrong

In unclear times

Can be tough to decide

When your thoughts collide

You mistrust your mind

So you follow your instincts

And that's when the shit

Really starts to stink

You meant right

But you did wrong

And now you wonder if

Hell is where you belong

So you pray for no more confusion

Your intelligence is an illusion

And you're right back at the start

Because honestly, let's face it

You're not so smart...

 

Step right up

I gotta special for you

When times are tough

And your feeling blue

No more worries

Of what's evil and good

Like when you do something

You're not sure you should

Just reach in your pocket

And pull out the almighty

Your own personal god

To alleviate your stupidity

Now your mind can be at ease

No more of that mental strain

Of what's right and what's wrong

Your pocket god will explain

Act now and save

3 payments of nine ninety five

Cash or credit

In 2 to 4 it will arrive

 

The pocket God

Save your ass today!

 

Stiffy Green - SOPOT (2004)

Lyrics by Jason Schoppe, vocals by Jason Schoppe & Ryan Moree

Dedicated to Wil Crane 

 

 Moments when the surreal crashes

into reality creates a curious flow

Your thoughts and perception will spin

like a bad case of vertigo

Outspoken duration's unhinging the

emotions of scenes you can't understand

Slowly moving toward the next occurrence

while you're blundering in wonderland

Another hap ass episode of some shit

you just can't seem to explain

When your mind opens up for a glimpse

and makes you feel so damn insane

Eats into your consciousness where

you feel like you're about to lose all control

So intense it sends a tickle down your

spine that shivers your soul

Reaching the end so high in the peaks

of puzzles and enlightenment

Caught up in another

sections of periods of time event 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Last Update: 2/26