All posts tagged: Erich Lehman

$WALL\THERAPY 2015 : Surrealism and The Fantastic$

WALL\THERAPY 2015 : Surrealism and The Fantastic

July 29, 2015 Artists

Surreal is the way the world is portrayed across all of our devices today.

It may be the shrinking staff and budgets of newsrooms who are veering ever closer to the sensational or simply the yellow journalism and the PR-planted hyperbole that is rushing to fill the vacuum, but the presentation of our own world is becoming outlandish.

Orwell could have seen this time when war is described as a peace effort, oligarchy is called democracy, and Reality TV is anything but. Combined with rapid technological developments that produce outcomes previously only imagined, we may feel like our grip on the genuine is definitely loosening somewhat.

So fitting it is that a mid-sized US city hosts a mural festival celebrating the surreal and the fantastic in 2015.

Brittany Williams. Wall Therapy 2015. Rochester, NY (photo © Jaime Rojo)

We don’t know for sure if it was our current funhouse mirror atmosphere that drove the Wall\Therapy festival in Rochester, NY to choose this years’ themes. It may simply be a way of organizing artists whose work reflects these notions back to us and to illuminate one specific growing trend in street culture and murals.

Surely Magritte, Dali, and Ernst would be very pleased by the uptick of modern surrealists and practitioners of the bizarre, fantastical, and dream-like in galleries, in the public sphere, and throughout popular culture in recent years.

Brittany Williams. Wall Therapy 2015. Rochester, NY (photo © Jaime Rojo)

In partnership and as a cultural exchange with Berlin’s Urban Nation (UN) this year, Wall\Therapy 2015 curated this selection of international and local street artists who bring doorways and mirrors for you to step through.

We were glad to be there in person this year and relieved to see that this largely homespun venture continues to be strong and community-minded despite the very hard work that it requires to pull it off. In the face of a rapidly commercializing Street Art festival scene, not only is the grassroots rather refreshing, it is a bit surreal.

Without doubt it is fantastic.

Brittany Williams. Wall Therapy 2015. Rochester, NY (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Jeff Soto . Maxx242. Wall Therapy 2015. Rochester, NY (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Classic graffiti style from NYC’s Daze has always contained elements of surreality. In his three walls he sampled even more styles.”So I used a lot of influences – photo-realistic, almost cubist, there is some lettering, window panes as metaphor. I was also thinking about fabric and the way it folds, and it turned into water,” he says. Wall Therapy 2015. Rochester, NY (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Daze. Wall Therapy 2015. Rochester, NY (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Vexta. Wall Therapy 2015. Rochester, NY (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Vexta: I’ve been doing a lot of collage as my source material – birds, abstract plant shapes, and the galaxy painted over.
BSA: She’s like an earth mother, or universal mother
Vexta: She is every woman.

Vexta. Wall Therapy 2015. Rochester, NY (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Andreas Englund’s mural features his superhero vexed by a stone in his boot. Wall Therapy 2015. Rochester, NY (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Andreas Englund. Wall Therapy 2015. Rochester, NY (photo © Jaime Rojo)

NeverCrew’s Christian Rebecchi and Pablo Togni created a whale inside an ice whale. “We usually work with themes about the balance between humans and nature,” says Togni, “In this situation we wanted to do a piece about the balance between the elements.” Wall Therapy 2015. Rochester, NY (photo © Jaime Rojo)

NeverCrew. Wall Therapy 2015. Rochester, NY (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Handiedan. Wall Therapy 2015. Rochester, NY (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“She is sort of a goddess of East meets West,” says Amsterdam’s Handiedan. Wall Therapy 2015. Rochester, NY (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Nate Hodge. Wall Therapy 2015. Rochester, NY (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Onur . Wes21. Wall Therapy 2015. Rochester, NY (photo © Jaime Rojo)

A highly detailed original sketch that is culled from photographs and their own staging of a model in boots, Onur and Wes21 spent many long hours into a few nights to complete their wall.
Onur: It is more of a scene than a classical mural. The wall is perfect for something like this.
BSA: So it is nature taking a bite out of its aggressor
Onur: Yes, kind of. That’s not bad. We have a sign that says beware of beaver crossing. The animals are a metaphor for something else and we are always looking for stuff like this when we are on the streets.

Onur . Wes21. Wall Therapy 2015. Rochester, NY (photo © Jason Wilder Courtesy of WallTherapy)

Li-Hill. Wall Therapy 2015. Rochester, NY (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Matt Roberts . Joe Guy. Wall Therapy 2015. Rochester, NY (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“We knew we had a week and we thought ‘what can we accomplish?’” says Rochester local Matt Roberts on a break from his wall with Joe Guy Allard. “I do monsters all the time and Joe does those robots. It’s a big old fight scene. I mean, who doesn’t want destruction, some mahem? I grew up on Godzilla movies and Ultraman, stuff like that. Just a lot of B-horror. I’m really into it. The new Godzilla movie is like my Crème Brulee.”

Matt Roberts . Joe Guy. Wall Therapy 2015. Rochester, NY (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Eder Muniz. Wall Therapy 2015. Rochester, NY (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Eder Muniz. (CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE) Wall Therapy 2015. Rochester, NY (photo © @MarkDeffPhoto Courtesy of Wall Therapy)

Our deep gratitude to the Wall\Therapy Family; Ian Wilson and Erich Lehman for their invitation to participate at this edition, and to Yasha Young, director of Urban Nation and this year’s co-curator. To the artists for sharing their talent with us in such a public and generous way. To all of the volunteers including Jason Barber and Maureen Malone for their sincere dedication and attention to detail and to the production team for making certain we all had what we needed and for making our job far easier. To the photographers for sharing their work with us throughout the process. To Jonathan Binstock, Director of the Memorial Art Gallery at The University of Rochester for hosting our BSA Film Friday Live event and to Meg Colombo and Mike Besaw at MAG for helping us with everything we asked for and then more. To the city of Rochester.

Click HERE to learn more about WALL THERAPY

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Please note: All content including images and text are © BrooklynStreetArt.com, unless otherwise noted. We like sharing BSA content for non-commercial purposes as long as you credit the photographer(s) and BSA, include a link to the original article URL and do not remove the photographer’s name from the .jpg file. Otherwise, please refrain from re-posting. Thanks!
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This article is also published on The Huffington Post

Sarah C. Rutherford Flies High at Wall\Therapy

July 25, 2013 Artists

One criticism leveled at Street Art events around the world (and they are around the world now) is that sometimes the invited artists work is stylistically or thematically so foreign to the local taste that the piece does not resonate, or worse, it rattles nerves. A seamless cultural match is not likely when you are bringing someone from, say, Belgium, to say, Rochester, and the fact that an artists style or content causes a friction of opinions is a fair critique, although not specifically a disqualifying one.

By its lineage, Street Art (or Urban Art as its known across the Atlantic) was at least in part spawned from the rather anti-authoritarian practices and ruminations of graffiti and its snotty little brother, vandalism. So you’re bound to get somebody roiled at some point with your art. Actually, if you are not pissing somebody off then you’re probably not trying hard enough.

Sarah C. Rutherford. Work in progress at Wall\Therapy in Rochester, New York (photo © Lisa Barker)

The act of doing your work in the public sphere puts it into a new category of considerations than hanging it quietly inside on a private wall and, by George, every person is entitled to their God-given opinion about it. And there are the children to consider after all. To be fair, there can be a modicum of “fear of the invader” for any city that is suddenly swooped in on by visiting weirdo artists from foreign lands like Argentina, Ireland, South Africa, and Newark. There may also just be unhappy people who are sort of bored. But we digress.

Local Street Artists and graffiti artists who have been toiling for years and who actually know the flavor of the city very well sometimes can similarly get the impression that they’ve been overtaken and overlooked in favor of the imperial aerosol forces, even if they are happy they came. That’s why it’s a smart organizer who takes pains to make sure that at least a few local talents are fully in the mix. It makes the whole feast richer, a great way to synthesize community, a positive way of evoking a host/guest dynamic among the artists and the organizers, and while the styles and interests are definitely going to be varied, the formula encourages a more genuine sense of cultural exchange.

Sarah C. Rutherford. Work in progress at Wall\Therapy in Rochester, New York (photo © Lisa Barker)

At BSA we always value the courageous person who dares to engage the creative spirit and to bring it out to be seen by others, and we are happy to introduce you to a talent who has called Rochester home for seven years and who has been hitting up a wall this week alongside her visiting guests like the total pro she is.

Illustrator and fine artist Sarah C. Rutherford says, “This event often feels like a dream for me as an artist and community leader. I look around at the talented people who are visiting us and those from our city and I feel the power of our voices collectively shaping walls around Rochester.” Modest, too, but the girl’s no slouch.

Sarah C. Rutherford. Work in progress at Wall\Therapy in Rochester, New York (photo © Lisa Barker)

Over the past few years Rutherford has contributed her line drawing talents for a brewing company, a school of music, a cookbook, the Rochester City Newspaper and the New York Times Magazine. An urban explorer who trudges in the rubble like the best of them, she’s admired the work of Street Artist Swoon for many years and has left her own mark on decayed walls in hidden places and has constructed installations with found materials. She also recently nailed a three month painting gig with her friend Lea Rizzo that included seven flights of stairs and 28 walls in the Highland Hospital, so she can handle a brush.

Yet WALL\THERAPY has filled her with a gratitude, she says. “I am so humbled and grateful to have been included as an artist in this event.”

BSA asked Rutherford to talk about her wall.

“My piece involves a familial scene based around peregrine falcons. Here in Roc, we have a falcon cam that was established on the Kodak tower and now has been moved to the Times Square Building.

I also included fragmented pieces of the Rochester logo, as well as magnolias – a popular flower in this area.

Sarah C. Rutherford. Work in progress at Wall\Therapy in Rochester, New York (photo © Lisa Barker)

Finally, I loved this wall for the broken up canvas it provided me – an interesting frosted window with bars, a wood panel amidst the concrete. I included a wooden installation element, something else I am quite fond of doing. I have built this structure in 3-D form before, but it was fun to include it in this manner. I’m hoping to experiment more with this in the future.

Overall, this mural is about the ones we love – the fierceness in which we protect them and the beautiful worlds we create for this love to dwell.”

Sarah says she wanted her mural to be rooted in this city as a matter of local pride, and because of her strong feelings of alliance with it. She sites as inspirational figures the co-curators of this years festival, Ian Wilson and Erich Lehman, as well as the rest of the Wall\Therapy crew and all the many volunteers.

We want to give special thanks to photographer Lisa Barker for sharing this photo essay with BSA readers.

Sarah C. Rutherford. Work in progress at Wall\Therapy in Rochester, New York (photo © Lisa Barker)

Sarah C. Rutherford for Wall\Therapy in Rochester, New York (photo © Lisa Barker)

Sarah C. Rutherford at Wall\Therapy in Rochester, New York (photo © Lisa Barker)

Sarah C. Rutherford. Her completed piece for Wall\Therapy in Rochester, New York (photo © Lisa Barker)

Top image Sarah C. Rutherford. Work in progress at Wall\Therapy in Rochester, New York (photo © Lisa Barker)

Take your phone and hit the road! Shoot your own pics and tag them @WallTherapyNY and @BKStreetArt – we’ll send them round the world! Click HERE for the updated Google map.

Check out our previous posts on WALL\THERAPY:

WALL\THERAPY 2013 Starts With FREEDOM in a Tunnel

WALL\THERAPY 2013 Daily Checkup and Scan of Founder Ian Wilson

Wall\Therapy 2013 Tuesday Update 7.22.13

Wall\Therapy 2013 Wednesday Update 7.24.13

To learn more please visit:

www.wall-therapy.com

www.facebook.com/walltherapyny

twitter.com/walltherapyny

instagram.com/walltherapyny

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Brooklyn Street Art is proud to be the Media Partner of Wall Therapy 2013

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Please note: All content including images and text are © BrooklynStreetArt.com, unless otherwise noted. We like sharing BSA content for non-commercial purposes as long as you credit the photographer(s) and BSA, include a link to the original article URL and do not remove the photographer’s name from the .jpg file. Otherwise, please refrain from re-posting. Thanks!

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WALL\THERAPY 2013 Starts With FREEDOM in a Tunnel

July 20, 2013 Artists, Interview

BSA is totally psyched to be your source for hot exclusive images and a few scintillating stories that unfold during WALL\THERAPY, the Street Art festival anchored in Rochester, New York that is kicking off right about…. Wait! It already started! Here is your first dispatch.

FREEDOM – that’s what Street Art and graffiti means to a whole lot of people – is something that seems endangered around the world (including here), and is the name of a NYC graffiti writer who started off the 2013 Wall Therapy festival by painting in a………. wait for it…………. tunnel!

For the first time in eighteen years.

For those readers not familiar with Freedom Tunnel at Manhattan’s northern West End, it basically got it’s name from this guy because he held it down during the 80s and early 90s. Not only did he basically take up residency there for years, he also stretched his creative legs and let his mind free from the constraints of traditional graff lettering and style to entertain portraiture, pop art, advertising and even the Rennaissance. So how fitting that he’s debuting here in a tunnel, this time in the old Rochester subway, where he decided to return to pop influences that formed his youth.

There are a few artists who we identify as missing links, connective tissue, between New York’s storied graffiti history and today’s Street Art scene, and Freedom is one of them. He spoke with us about this trip back underground:

Brooklyn Street Art: In a way, it strikes us that there was more actual freedom to be yourself in this tunnel than the one that bears your name – whether because the original is now inhospitable or because it carries the weight of memories and associations, possibly even expectations. Is that true?
Freedom: When I painted in the original Freedom Tunnel from 1980 to 1995 nobody cared, and that was great for me. It allowed me to fail — which I think is a big part of the artistic process. The tunnel wasn’t even called the Freedom Tunnel until 1990 and the works inside of it had no value. Today, when I do a piece there’s a whole lot more to think about.

Brooklyn Street Art: Did you scope around this tunnel for a good source of light to frame your work?
Freedom: I spent the entire morning of my first day in the tunnel finding the right spots for the paintings. Admittedly, I miss the shafts of light from the Freedom Tunnel.

Brooklyn Street Art: Here in Rochester you returned to a personal nostalgia with advertising art, pop art, branding and that visual vocabulary. Some of your past work has also referenced European painting tradition and with some of the new Street Artists now making similar references (like Gaia, Dan Witz, Lister’s ballerinas and even Conor Harrington) do you have any inclination to knock out something painterly once in a while?
Freedom: My large murals – even when they are painterly – are merely impressions. I like to think of them as drawings done in spray paint. If I was going to paint on a wall then I might as well go all the way and grid it and become a muralist, but that doesn’t interest me. I do more labor intensive works on canvas.

Brooklyn Street Art: Do you have a personal collection of ephemera that you are digging the most right now? Or is your collection primarily in your mind?
Freedom: If there’s one thing I found out from when they closed down the Freedom Tunnel, it is that it’s a state of mind. When I decided to go back to buried treasure from my youth I Googled images from 1965 to 1967 and I tried to find things that had stuck with me. Thirty years ago I would’ve needed a more specific object, one that I had legitimately held in my hand. Today when I pore through the images I try to find things that are indicative of a bygone era. I’m fascinated by the terrible printing of the 60s – most of it is red, white and blue. That’s what I’m in to now, although it could change.

BSA is very pleased to start the weeks’ coverage of Wall Therapy with the voice of Freedom himself describing his experience as an essay sparked by the memories brought back from painting in a tunnel for the first time in almost two decades. He starts off by telling us how he used to retrieve treasure through street gratings, an apt metaphor for an artist who once turned a tunnel into a museum.

“When I was a kid in the 60’s my parents wouldn’t let me off the block.

I was, however, allowed to go ‘subway fishing’ on Lexington and 88th Street because it did not require me to cross any streets. The grating I fished through was located at a bus stop – which meant there were many buried treasures including: buffalo nickels, mercury dimes, baseball cards, political buttons, matchbook covers, a Green Hornet ring – the list was endless. I was able to fish out lots of great stuff with a string, a lock and a wet piece of gum.

When we moved to the West Side in 1967 I dragged part of my haul with me to my new neighborhood where I traded it for other pop culture ephemera. In 1980, when I started painting in the Freedom Tunnel these images began to re-emerge. Because of their proximity to a spot where (city) Parks employees got drunk and took naps, they painted over the paintings. I moved to a different section of the tunnel.

Thirty-three years later I had the chance to repaint some of the images that were dear to me. The original paintings were done in silver and black – after all, who would ever think of priming a wall?

Everything has changed. These paintings are not only done in color, the bottle cap is done with transparent paint. Tape and cardboard were used to make it a little crisper, and I had an amazing assistant named Justin from the Wall Therapy team who could point out mistakes while I was still on the ladder.

What used to be a paranoid solitary pursuit turned into a celebration of painting.

And that’s kind of what this is about.

My favorite image in Rochester was done by an artist from Capetown. It is a long colorful arm that points to a message – ‘For the City of Rochester, Thank You!’

Add me to that list.”

Chris Pape / FREEDOM

Freedom pieces photographed by Matt DeTurck. All locations are in the old Rochester Subway.

Special thanks to Ian Wilson, Erich Lehman, and John Magnus Champlin.

To learn more please visit:

www.wall-therapy.com

www.facebook.com/walltherapyny

twitter.com/walltherapyny

instagram.com/walltherapyny

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Brooklyn Street Art is proud to be the Media Partner of Wall Therapy 2013

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Brittany Williams. Wall Therapy 2015. Rochester, NY (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Brittany Williams. Wall Therapy 2015. Rochester, NY (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Brittany Williams. Wall Therapy 2015. Rochester, NY (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Jeff Soto . Maxx242. Wall Therapy 2015. Rochester, NY (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Daze. Wall Therapy 2015. Rochester, NY (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Daze. Wall Therapy 2015. Rochester, NY (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Vexta. Wall Therapy 2015. Rochester, NY (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Vexta. Wall Therapy 2015. Rochester, NY (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Vexta. Wall Therapy 2015. Rochester, NY (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Andreas Englund’s mural features his superhero vexed by a stone in his boot. Wall Therapy 2015. Rochester, NY (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Andreas Englund. Wall Therapy 2015. Rochester, NY (photo © Jaime Rojo)

NeverCrew. Wall Therapy 2015. Rochester, NY (photo © Jaime Rojo)

NeverCrew. Wall Therapy 2015. Rochester, NY (photo © Jaime Rojo)

NeverCrew. Wall Therapy 2015. Rochester, NY (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Handiedan. Wall Therapy 2015. Rochester, NY (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“She is sort of a goddess of East meets West,” says Amsterdam’s Handiedan. Wall Therapy 2015. Rochester, NY (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Nate Hodge. Wall Therapy 2015. Rochester, NY (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Nate Hodge. Wall Therapy 2015. Rochester, NY (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Nate Hodge. Wall Therapy 2015. Rochester, NY (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Onur . Wes21. Wall Therapy 2015. Rochester, NY (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Onur . Wes21. Wall Therapy 2015. Rochester, NY (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Onur . Wes21. Wall Therapy 2015. Rochester, NY (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Onur . Wes21. Wall Therapy 2015. Rochester, NY (photo © Jason Wilder Courtesy of WallTherapy)

Li-Hill. Wall Therapy 2015. Rochester, NY (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Li-Hill. Wall Therapy 2015. Rochester, NY (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Li-Hill. Wall Therapy 2015. Rochester, NY (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Matt Roberts . Joe Guy. Wall Therapy 2015. Rochester, NY (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Matt Roberts . Joe Guy. Wall Therapy 2015. Rochester, NY (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Matt Roberts . Joe Guy. Wall Therapy 2015. Rochester, NY (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Eder Muniz. Wall Therapy 2015. Rochester, NY (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Eder Muniz. Wall Therapy 2015. Rochester, NY (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Eder Muniz. Wall Therapy 2015. Rochester, NY (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Eder Muniz. (CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE) Wall Therapy 2015. Rochester, NY (photo © @MarkDeffPhoto Courtesy of Wall Therapy)

Sarah C. Rutherford. Work in progress at Wall\Therapy in Rochester, New York (photo © Lisa Barker)

Sarah C. Rutherford. Work in progress at Wall\Therapy in Rochester, New York (photo © Lisa Barker)

Sarah C. Rutherford. Work in progress at Wall\Therapy in Rochester, New York (photo © Lisa Barker)

“My piece involves a familial scene based around peregrine falcons. Here in Roc, we have a falcon cam that was established on the Kodak tower and now has been moved to the Times Square Building.

I also included fragmented pieces of the Rochester logo, as well as magnolias – a popular flower in this area.

Sarah C. Rutherford. Work in progress at Wall\Therapy in Rochester, New York (photo © Lisa Barker)

Sarah C. Rutherford. Work in progress at Wall\Therapy in Rochester, New York (photo © Lisa Barker)

Sarah C. Rutherford. Work in progress at Wall\Therapy in Rochester, New York (photo © Lisa Barker)

Sarah C. Rutherford. Work in progress at Wall\Therapy in Rochester, New York (photo © Lisa Barker)

Sarah C. Rutherford. Work in progress at Wall\Therapy in Rochester, New York (photo © Lisa Barker)

Sarah C. Rutherford. Work in progress at Wall\Therapy in Rochester, New York (photo © Lisa Barker)

Sarah C. Rutherford for Wall\Therapy in Rochester, New York (photo © Lisa Barker)

Sarah C. Rutherford at Wall\Therapy in Rochester, New York (photo © Lisa Barker)

Sarah C. Rutherford. Her completed piece for Wall\Therapy in Rochester, New York (photo © Lisa Barker)

Freedom. WALL\THERAPY. Rochester, NY. July 2013. (photo © Matt DeTurck)

Freedom. WALL\THERAPY. Rochester, NY. July 2013. (photo © Matt DeTurck)

Freedom. WALL\THERAPY. Rochester, NY. July 2013. (photo © Matt DeTurck)

Freedom. WALL\THERAPY. Rochester, NY. July 2013. (photo © Matt DeTurck)

“When I was a kid in the 60’s my parents wouldn’t let me off the block.

Freedom. WALL\THERAPY. Rochester, NY. July 2013. (photo © Matt DeTurck)

Freedom. WALL\THERAPY. Rochester, NY. July 2013. (photo © Matt DeTurck)

Thirty-three years later I had the chance to repaint some of the images that were dear to me. The original paintings were done in silver and black – after all, who would ever think of priming a wall?

Freedom. WALL\THERAPY. Rochester, NY. July 2013. (photo © Matt DeTurck)

What used to be a paranoid solitary pursuit turned into a celebration of painting.

And that’s kind of what this is about.

My favorite image in Rochester was done by an artist from Capetown. It is a long colorful arm that points to a message – ‘For the City of Rochester, Thank You!’

Add me to that list.” Chris Pape / FREEDOM

Freedom. WALL\THERAPY. Rochester, NY. July 2013. (photo © Matt DeTurck)

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Chris Pape / FREEDOM