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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Shannon Cottrell

JR just blew through town for 48 hours on his way to Japan and left behind two new walls.

Both pieces are part of his ongoing "Wrinkles of the City: LA" project, something he started back in February that the LA Weekly has mapped for your street art pleasure. The subjects are residents of Sunset Hall, a local assisted living facility "for free-thinking elders."

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This past week, the 2011 TED Conference has been taking place in Long Beach. An annual gathering of the brilliant and innovative, TED isn't exactly the easiest event to attend. Fortunately for us, TEDx Goldstar, an independent TED-related event, offered a simulcast of Wednesday's sessions in Long Beach at the Downtown Independent Theater in Los Angeles. We watched all four of Wednesday's sessions-- "Deep Mystery," "Worlds Imagined," "Knowledge Revolution" and "Radical Collaboration"-- which featured guests ranging from physicist Aaron O'Connell, filmmaker Morgan Spurlock (Supersize Me, The Greatest Story Ever Sold), band Antony and the Johnsons and the one and only Bill Gates.

Shannon Cottrell

JR's work spotted at the TED Conference in Long Beach

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Peeking up between buildings on the corner of S. Olive and 8th , "Westsiiiide" represents on the east wall of the Bristol Hotel. Living in LA, we know the origins of this iconic hand sign. Have we been desensitized to the gang connotations over the years after seeing it in 20-odd years of music videos?

Shannon Cottrell

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Read more about JR in "TED Award-Winning Street Artist JR Brings 'The Wrinkles of the City' to Los Angeles." For locations of "The Wrinkles of the City" pieces, see our Google map.

We wanted to share a piece of JR's phenomenal film, Women Are Heroes. Once you see it, you may understand the political bent his work overseas has taken. While we don't have confirmation, we are pretty convinced that this is the project that won him the coveted TED prize.

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Read more about JR in "TED Award-Winning Street Artist JR Brings 'The Wrinkles of the City' to Los Angeles." For locations of "The Wrinkles of the City" pieces, see our Google map.

Shannon Cottrell

JR in Silver Lake

Silver Lake just added another hipster to the neighborhood in the form of an old, bearded, yelling guy. No, it's not our run of the mill homeless dude from underneath the viaduct at the Echoplex, but a new JR portrait on the side of the building at 1755 Glendale Blvd.

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The following story on JR is from the print edition of LA Weekly, out now. See our "JR in L.A." archive for more details and check out our Google map if you want to see JR's work in person.

Maybe you've noticed that Los Angeles is a flurry of street art activity lately, with Banksy up for an Oscar and all. Another stealth creative foreigner arrived last week. JR, the 27-year-old Parisian artist-slash-activist, has brought his colossal, office park-sized Xeroxes to a neighborhood near you.

Shannon Cottrell

With his identity cloaked by a pseudonym taken from the classic American TV show Dallas, JR, wearing his omnipresent fedora and sunglasses, is not easily recognized. His work, however, is immediately distinguishable in the places where he chooses to post, mostly international slums and ghettos.

JR's Los Angeles visit marks the third installment of his expansive project The Wrinkles of the City. The first two were in Cartagena, Spain, and Shanghai in 2010.

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Read more about JR in "TED Award-Winning Street Artist JR Brings 'The Wrinkles of the City' to Los Angeles." For locations of "The Wrinkles of the City" pieces, see our Google map.

Shannon Cottrell

JR has celebrated his birthday by giving LA a couple of gifts! The Poodle Parlor wall is finished and can be seen from Olympic Street Bridge. Another great view of it can be had on the 10 freeway, if you're headed East, past the Santa Fe exit to your right. Eyes on the road (or should we say eye ). No pun intended.

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Read more about JR in "TED Award-Winning Street Artist JR Brings 'The Wrinkles of the City' to Los Angeles." For locations of "The Wrinkles of the City" pieces, see our Google map.

Shannon Cottrell

"The Wrinkles of the City" on 3rd Street

JR heads back downtown and stages his most inventive composition yet on 3rd and Hewitt. Working amidst disgruntled parking lot owners, cranky loft owners and random photographers looking to get in on the action, JR's day is always an interesting one.

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Read more about JR in "TED Award-Winning Street Artist JR Brings 'The Wrinkles of the City' to Los Angeles." For locations of "The Wrinkles of the City" pieces, see our Google map.

Shannon Cottrell

A dark, wall-sized glare that assails passersby with an awkward eye, a handlebar mustache and pores as big as a fist is not a joke, nor is this image an Academy play from the producers of True Grit. It is the latest post in JR's Los Angeles adventure. The team of resolute pasters, beaten up by rain and wind all weekend downtown, beat it to Melrose once the weather broke and made up for lost time. This gargantuan portrait of a crusty local went up in less than two hours.

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