Just so that we arnt one in a million blogs posting this today, here is last year’s Converse project with Julian Casablancas, Santogold and Pharrel. This appeared as the bonus track on NERD’s last album.

BIG BAG BIG BOOM – the new wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

Special thanks to Steve at Well & Good for hosting us for the two weeks and a giant hug to all who came out to support the photography and the cause at the root of it all, The REMIX Project. We were able to donate nearly $1500 to the charity providing creative arts mentor programs to the city’s at-risk youth and we can’t thank our supporters enough for that opportunity. A final cheers to Valentine of Riders Cycle & Board for providing all the bicycles for the entire process, he is Toronto’s king of bikes and if you need anything cycle related you ought to check him on the quick.

Special Thanks to our supporters at CARLSBERG, VITAMIN WATER and DAYMAK Ebikes for their generous contributions to the event.

Year 1 is in the books, we will be back for more.

Second up, the equally amazing named Fitz and the Tantrums holding it down. If this is the dawn of the sound of summer 2010, we are all going to have a lovetastic heatwave.

I just made up Mershey Mellow by the way; but Nomi is mad chill so it works.

Hermann & Audrey Exhibit from T-Square Media on Vimeo.

Grade Scool is happy to be helping with the presentation of one of this year’s featured exhibits for the CONTACT photography festival. Partnering with the folks from Hermann & Audrey we have collectively built what will be a must see piece of the 2010 version of North America’s largest photography festival. The show runs from May 5th through 29th and we will be sharing a plenty about what is happening between now and then. To start, we thought we’d share one of the most notable collaborations happening for the exhibit from Steve Carty and Skam.

Check out this dope preview video of their creations for CONTACT and have a read below to learn about the direction and inspiration Carty lined up with arguably Toronto’s most famous graffiti artist.

I’ve been collaborating with graffiti artists, painters and a flashlight for nearly 5 years. This year i decided to bring it to the Contact festival with my series, Lightworkers.

By choosing to collaborate with a most accomplished graffiti artist, Skam as well as painters Jon Todd and Kwame Delfish, I put the flashlights in capable hands. The result is a body of photographs shot both in studio and on location that have the depth of a still as well as a feeling of motion as you follow the light trails through the image.

I took a unique approach with my session with Skam. Graffiti art has always been seen as vandalism, and although Skam never paints anywhere he isn’t hired to paint anymore, the roots of graffiti still lay in the underground, painting clean walls with murals and tags, often leading to arrests and neighbourhood cleanups.

On the other hand, the graffiti Skam creates with a flashlight only exist within my photograph. The entire experience is captured in a single frame. Light trails. Removed from all things except light itself, drawn once, in space over time, and saved forever. A perfect collaboration between artist and photographer.

Choosing a cross section of downtown locations, i tried to give Skam the room to work with the flashlight in ways that he was comfortable as well as forcing him to be in an overall situation that he has never been, not being able to see what he was painting.

Brad Ferguson is Canadian artist Bradley. With the release of his sophomore album Mountain Tiger Bear, Bradley has set himself up nicely in our ears for one of the albums of the year. Reminding us of Belle and Sebastien and the Flaming Lips it is a beautifully Canadian genre mashup of Folk, Rock & Electronica with great repeat listening quality. Check out Bradley’s Radio 3 artist page at http://radio3.cbc.ca/#/bands/Bradley and below for you to enjoy is what we think to be one of the best tracks on a full album of goods called MONSTER.