Jason Shelowitz (aka Jay Shells) is an artist and graphic designer from New York who now resides in Los Angeles. The works in this exhibit showcase Jason’s watercolor work and his unique pyrography —the art of burning images into wood. Jason uses a soldering iron and a pointilism technique to create doting, hyper-realistic portraits of ephemeral urban details, including mailboxes, building facades, and street typography. In 2013, Jason created his most well-known public campaign to date called The Rap Quotes. In this project, Jason turned site-specific rap lyrics into street signs, billboards and phone booth ad spaces and installed them in the exact locations called out in the lyrics. The project was inspired by his love of the culture and vision that we should give back to the communities who gave us Hip Hop. The project was turned into a television show, a book and is a work for the Universal Hip Hop Museum.