Shannon Cottrell

It's a bright crisp day on the Sunset strip and LA Weekly's at Prism Gallery waiting for our turn to meet Otavio and Gustavo Pandolfo, Brazilian brothers who are known in the contemporary art and graffiti worlds simply as "the twins," or "Os Gêmeos" in Portuguese.

The brothers are here in L.A. for their sparkling, surrealist "Miss You" solo show, their first here since 2003, when they staged a tiny yet groundbreaking exhibit in a 300 square foot space -- the original New Image Art gallery, then a little house on Fairfax.

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photo by Nanette Gonzales

Mr. Brainwash's "Art Show 2011"

Update: Show has been extended, and will be open one more day, on Jan. 8. Doors open at 2 p.m. Location is 960 N. La Brea Ave.

At "Art Show 2011," equivocal street artist Mr. Brainwash's 80,000 square-foot feat, Mr. Brainwash sat at a table in a driveway outside the La Brea warehouse he'd acquired for the show, meeting fans, signing posters and signing stuffed animals. There were more stuffed animals in line than posters, actually, and people walking through the multi-story building carried dolls and animals as well.

A woman in heels held a life-size Raggedy Anne look-alike by the neck, a tall man in dress pants held a stuffed Elmo doll, a guy in a hoody had Buzz Lightyear and three or four others in his backpack. The dolls and animals had all come from the top floor, where a big pile of them filled a corner with the words "Take One" sprayed painted above. The rest of the room had messages about love sprayed on its walls -- love is forever, respect others, follow your heart.

Since Thierry Guetta turned into Mr. Brainwash, hosted his first L.A. mega-show, "Life is Beautiful," in 2008 and became the protagonist/antagonist of Banksy's Oscar-nominated documentary "Exit Through the Gift Shop," too much attention has been on whether Mr. Brainwash is even real. Could his whole "career" be an elaborate hoax, perpetrated by Banksy, to question what art is and expose taste as gullibility?

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Shannon Cottrell

JR in L.A.

Yes, year-end lists. Not even street art is exempt. But hey, 2011 was a banner year for the Los Angeles street art and graffiti communities, as they enjoyed plenty of worldwide attention.

LA Weekly put together the ten L.A.-related street art and graffiti stories that we think were most remarkable in 2011. Please add your own in the comments below.

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Wait, what? Is that Shepard Fairey putting up a mural in broad daylight on La Brea at 11 a.m.? The cops are going to stop him any second!

Fairey is the street artist who rose to fame in 2008 when his Obama "Hope" poster became the emblem of an era, and was a major player in the 2010 Banksy documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop, where you see him and other street artists hastily plastering their creations on rooftops at 3 a.m. That was my image of street artists, not casual crews chatting and spray-painting in the noon-day sun.

"This is a legal wall," Fairey explained. "I used to put stuff illegally on the roof of this place all the time. Then all of a sudden they stopped cleaning it off." Turns out they liked it. They liked it so much they asked for a full building mural. For free, pretty please. And Fairey agreed.

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Anita Rosenberg

Patti and Futura at FUN Gallery NYC

Patti Astor -- indie actress, ground-breaking curator, Manhattan party girl and current SoCal resident -- is stirring things up again, this time here in Echo Park. Patti's headline-grabbing FUN Gallery in NYC (1981-1984) was the very first to give solo shows to street artists Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Kenny Scharf and was the blasting off point for young graf talents Lee Quinones, Futura and Fab Five Freddy.

Patti, crowned the original "Queen of the Downtown Scene" for all her independent film roles, has called on her old friends for "3 Kings" a new show for Shepard Fairey's Subliminal Projects Gallery.

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Shannon Cottrell

Heal the Bay House in progress

Update: After the unveiling of the house, Santa Monica cops and city code enforcement weren't happy. For more info see our post on our news blog: Graffiti House Celebrating Heal The Bay Targeted by Santa Monica Officials

In 2008, a deco-style fortress built in the '50s and originally belonging to a prominent family in Santa Monica fell into foreclosure in the middle of an extensive renovation. Until three months ago it stood vacant, an eerie house on a bluff with a homeless woman squatting the top floor. The terraced gardens in back had overgrown and were infested with rats. The neighbors on this otherwise upscale block wondered and complained.

Then came Adam Corlin, with a cause, a dare, and an endless supply of tarps. Corlin, a successful builder and a fourth generation Santa Monica resident, had his eye on this property, and when the price dropped to 50 percent of its original asking price, he jumped at the opportunity to own it.

But this was no ordinary flip -- Corlin had some time in his hacienda rehab schedule and wanted to raise awareness for his favorite charity, Heal the Bay, the environmental group working to restore Santa Monica Bay. In speaking to the organization, he knew it had to be different than the usual donation or doing volunteer work. He had a blank house in Santa Monica, he had resources to do something big, and he had just met a graf artist appropriately named Risk.

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K.C. Ortiz

One of Revok's 3-D collages

This week in our arts section, Shelley Leopold interviews the street artist Jason Williams, a.k.a. Revok, who served 44 days in jail earlier this year for unpaid property restitution and then left town to work from Detroit, to get away from cops and various legal issues. His work is back in L.A. for a new show "Perseverance" at Known Gallery (though he is not).

One story in Revok's eventful year: though he was part of MOCA's "Art in the Streets" exhibit, he wasn't able to fully revel in the show until he left jail:

Fortunately, MOCA is just a few walkable blocks from the detention center and when Williams was released, he walked right over. "It was pretty embarrassing. 'Yeah, I'm one of the artists that's in the show. I just got out of jail. I don't have my wallet or my cellphone. Can I use your phone to have somebody come and pick me up?' " he laughs.

Read the full story here: Jason Williams (aka Revok) Sends Regards from Detroit With New Show "Perseverance" at Known Gallery

Courtesy of C.A.V.E. Gallery

German street art duo Various & Gould's self-portrait, Street Art Saved OUR Lives

Now that MOCA's "Art in the Streets" exhibition has finally shut its doors, where can you go for your next fix? C.A.V.E. Gallery in Venice has the answer: this Friday, it opened "Street Art Saved My Life: 39 New York Stories," a show curated by Brooklyn Street Art that brings work by New York street artists to L.A., and is produced in collaboration with Culver City gallery Thinkspace.

On Friday, a handful of artists were hanging out in C.A.V.E.'s sunny back yard, smoking and drinking beer on breaks from painting. Brooklyn Street Art founders Steven Harrington and James Rojo had brought several street artists out to L.A., where they created new works in Venice and around downtown. Some, such as Australian artist Anthony Lister, painted as many as eight new pieces during their stay, and others spoke at a panel discussion on street art hosted by MOCA the next day.

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Gregory Bojorquez, courtesy of MOCA

Installation of the "Art in the Streets" exhibit at the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, way back when

MOCA's "Art in the Streets" exhibit, which ended two days ago, has turned out to be the biggest show in the museum's history, with an attendance of over 200,000 during its five-month-long showing.

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Carol Cheh

Maja D'Aoust, the White Witch of L.A., performs at the launch party for Public Fiction and Night Papers. She acted as an oracle and took questions from the audience.

I may have to change my mind about Jeffrey Deitch. I wrote some fairly nasty things about him on my blog, following a series of lamentable moves he made after getting hired as MOCA's director. His stunts with the trendy pseudo-artist James Franco, his godawful Dennis Hopper exhibition and his dreaded plans for a Julian Schnabel retrospective all made him seem out of touch and attracted to empty spectacle. He seemed to be the last thing that L.A.'s complex and indefinable art scene needed.

Lately, however, Deitch has been popping up in some very interesting places. A few weeks ago, he was spotted lurking in the shadows at Human Resources, checking out a collaborative performance between performance artist extraordinaire Dawn Kasper and artist Joel Kyack's noise band, Street Buddy.

And finally, last Friday night, he made a brief appearance at Public Fiction, a small alternative space in Highland Park, at the launch party for their new quarterly journal, also titled Public Fiction, and a newspaper called Night Papers, published by another alternative space called Night Gallery, located in Lincoln Heights. It also turns out that Deitch is personally supporting the publication of both of these journals. Could this be a sign that Deitch is heading in the right direction after all?

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