For New Yorkers, walking down the streets of the concrete jungle can be an art experience on any given day. Some may say that you can find art in anything. What one observes can be interrupted in many different ways by different people. So you may ask, what is the basis of art? According to Webster-Merriam, art is the conscious use of skill and creative imagination especially in the production of aesthetic objects. With such a broad meaning one can easily assume that art can be created from anything.
Stride Gum has taken this ideal of art and incorporated it into their packaging. The newest to their gum line is Stride iD. This new gum, geared towards the daring and unrestricted, features emerging artists work on the packaging. Some of the artists featured on the packages are: Nashaath, Rey Ortega and Nick Edwards. These artists were featured because they fit the “kinda” theme. Stride iD “kinda” theme is about embracing the contradictions that makes everyone unique. So you can kinda be a rocker, and kinda be an artist.
One of my favorite artists, Jean-Michel Basquiat, in my opinion embodied this type of attitude. Basquiat is known for being a neo-expressionist and primitivist artist; however, some may not know that he was also a musician.
Before becoming largely known for his artwork, he played in a noise rock band called Test Pattern, later changed to Gray (from the Gray’s Anatomy book). Sometimes being unrestricted can lead to many fruitful opportunities, as it did for Basquiat. While at a restaurant he met Andy Warhol, whom he played Gray’s samples for, which lead to a collaboration and a friendship. By allowing himself to be unrestricted he met someone who helped bolster his career in art as a painter. Throughout his life he was a graffiti artist, music artist, producer and world-wide known painter.
Being unrestricted doesn’t mean not having a plan or a direction. It simply opens the doors for new routes to get to your overall goal. Stride iD through the unique packaging and art helps perpetuate this “kinda” attitude to maybe someday inspire the next Basquiat.
Content and/or other value provided by iD gum.
-Phaon K. Spurlock
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