Forget abduzeedo,CGsociety,Smashing mag,deviantART and the likes and welcome on board as we head to the ghetto in search of inspiration. Not inspiration on how to persevere hard times and conditions, for that kind of inspiration try Survivors TV Series.

I grew up in Mathare and as a kid used to get inspired by artworks I used to see around and wished to one day produce such work. Since then art has evolved as influence from the west infiltrated the community and art took an urban direction mostly inspired by hip hop and rock .Check out wapi at the British council to get a clear picture of what I mean by urban direction.

You don’t need art school to learn color psychology,typography, layout and flow. years of trial and error, researching and extensive reading can do that, am a living proof.

I started out by doing signs and street art. The job is not well paying but respect earned from it makes it worth while. There are times though seldom, that luck would crack a smile upon you and you wake up to well paying gig, like this one time I was contracted by Mathare Mental Hospital to do some signage for them. I used to go home with about 8K a day the contract lasted four days, that was in 2002. what did I do with the money?.

I started a t-shirt design project and bought me a Ghetto blaster (Hewa Mwenda) with the remainder. My neighbour cursed the day I took the music system home. ( I suspect he must have sought some ear plugs or something, how else would he have survived?).

I took lots of pictures (like 200) and they fit into several categories, the good,the Crude and the Hilarius/ridiculous ones (they are sure to crack you up). I decide to feature some of the good ones and do a future post of the crude and hilarious ones. Most artist whose work appear here are my peeps who we used to collaborate with on big projects while some used to be my competitors. Some of these images were shot by my friends Sadio and Ide as I couldn`t manage alone. the activity took the whole day!.

FYI: All these are LOMO pictures taken with my P&S Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W55.