This week, K-Guy primates appeared in the urban jungle of NYC while Vango, in Kiellarny, Ireland touched on American pop culture and Brooklyn’s own Faile gifted NYC with an amazing Prayer Wheel.
Experimental show space 17 Frost in Brooklyn tonight hosts the opening of a show that summons Woody Guthrie from the ethers to talk about a time when average working American citizens were asserting their right over resources from multinational companies. An unconventional mashup of NYC graffiti and Hudson River School this show boldly challenges you to make connections where you didn’t know there were any. Reconciling urban abstract with pastoral landscapes can’t be easy, but when both are your influences you are bound to find the is a germ of something new.
Ride ‘Em Cowboy – Beast & Berlusconi
Furious Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has ordered in inquiry after 16 giant posters showing him riding young models like horses sprung up overnight in Milan.
The faked images – some showing the playboy PM beating the girls’ bottoms with a riding crop – are said to be the work of a local Banksy-style street artist called Beast.
In another politically engaged Street Art take on graphic messaging in the public sphere, Brazilian Street Artist Mundano is re-styling posters for the Presidential elections currently taking place in Brazil.
Know Hope in Toronto Tonight
Street Artist Know Hope is currently in Toronto for tonight’s opening of his solo show “There Is Nothing Dear (There Is Too Much Dear)” at the Show and Tell Gallery. “I’m really excited about this show and the pieces in it. Toronto is also a really cool city,” says the artist.
Skewville charms the French
Or at least that’s what Adam says he did.
FAME Wrap Up Video
Italy was once again treated to some of the best worldwide large scale installations of work by Street Artists in one place for the FAME festival. Here is a summary of the scene.
This Land Is My Land
Erik Burke & Cahil Muraghu
Opening Friday, October 8th between 7 – 11pm
Burke and Muraghu’s collaborations are vivid representation of the American landscape. The show’s title, This Land is My Land, taken from Woody Guthrie’s landmark song, embodies the artists’ intent behind both the work and their own lifestyle. Guthrie describes the disenfranchised American staking a hypothetical claim to the landscape, reiterating native American concepts of land ownership. Their work inspired by the New York City graffiti movement and the Hudson River school not only attempts to document the American experience, but lay claim, even if only for a moment, to enlivening our relationship to the landscape through abstraction.
Gallery Hours
Fri, Sat, & Sun, 3:00pm – 7:00pm or by appointment.
A lady, perhaps in her late 60’s or early 70’s with small wire-rimmed glasses stood on the pavement grinning in front of our flickering video projection time-lapses of Street Artists putting up work. She only turned from the screen once to make sure that her posse was also watching. When the video ended, with shoulders pinch up toward her grey fluffy hair, she clapped her hands quietly in front of her smiling mouth, and went back to the sidewalk to talk to her friends about it. She asked them if they had seen it. They had. A bit of wonder for us, her excitement.
We like to think that all of the artists involved in the first ever Nuit Blanche festival in New York received a similar experience for all of their efforts. As artists, few things make us happier than when we get to see the faces of the public enjoying the art being presented.
In New York there aren’t many venues where both the artists and the public get to mingle and talk directly with each other in an open and unrestricted environment: No VIP rooms, no PR handlers, no spokespeople, no velvet ropes, admission tickets, no one looking down their nose. The organizers of “Bring to Light” made this possible for one glorious night in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Perhaps 10,000 art lovers got out of their homes to enjoy one evening of free enlightenment without restriction.
With a five-hour convulsing light carnival by 60 artists, many of whom are well known for avant garde innovation, “Bring to Light” brought to life this former maritime hub of North Brooklyn that once blustered with lumber yards and rope factories. Now a rusty hopscotch of weathered industrial architecture, burned out lots, and faded hopes, Greenpoint in recent years has bloomed with the lifeblood of artists overflowing from neighboring Williamsburg. Aided by a crisp autumn night and Greenpoint’s Open Studios weekend, where artists open their doors to the public, “Bring To Light” was suddenly pulsating with the feet of thousands of art fans. All manner of projectors blasted on the walls with myriad images, forms, and shapes, some breathtakingly beautiful. Other artists created sculptures and installations that worked as light vessels and amorphous creatures while collaborative dancers entertained groupings of appreciative observers.
The show’s organizer DoTank:Brooklyn, calls itself a public vessel for interdisciplinary exploration, and Nuit Blanche seemed like the perfect showcase for everything these (mostly) urban planners are about. More interested in taking action than talking about it, their collective sense of focused urgency is like a refreshing gale of cool October air. Since they actually know how to plan and work with local civic and citizen groups, they were able to pull off New York City’s very first Nuit Blanche event in less than 3 months, and on a shoestring budget.
While DoTank had the initial idea, the Nuit Blanche ball started rolling when festival producer Ethan Vogt got involved to steer the effort in late July. DoTank had experience organizing participator events in public space and Ethan brought his background in film production and a passion for creating cinematic experience outside of traditional venues.
DoTanker Ken Farmer, originally from Memphis, Tennessee usually is riding his bike around the city or working as a consultant at Project for Public Spaces, a nonprofit planning, design and educational organization. He likes to ride his bike around the city and scope out cheap places to eat, or “blue collar hollas”, as he calls them.
A Boston born New Yorker since ’02, Ethan Vogt is a filmmaker who makes documentaries for organizations, music videos with found footage, and has produced three feature films with Andrew Bujalski. Now developing a masters thesis about Media in Performance and Architecture at NYU, Vogt hopes to produce Nuit Blanch for at least the next couple years in New York.
Brooklyn Street Art spoke to both guys about the success of their first Nuit Blanche in New York.
Brooklyn Street Art: How do you feel about the event, now that you are a few days on the other side of it?
Ken Farmer: We could not be more excited about how things turned out. Great weather, great crowd, great support from the community and a great response from both people who attended as well as those who have seen post-event coverage.
Ethan Vogt: Yeah, we are all just thrilled with how it came together – I’ve heard nothing but positive things from artists, visitors, and Greenpoint residents. I would say it exceeded our expectations and we were just in awe of what we had “organized” and “produced.”
Brooklyn Street Art: How long has this event been in the planning?
Ken Farmer: The idea began in July and planning really began in August. We were on pins and needles until the last minute getting the permits approved due to apprehension about an event with no prior history in NYC. Luckily, some key leaders like Councilman Stephen Levin and Borough President Marty Markowitz really believed in the event and helped us get over the hump.
Brooklyn Street Art: Would you call yourselves artists?
Ken Farmer: I’d say…artist and organizer…maybe that’s a curator?…of public spaces.
Ethan Vogt: Sure, I’d say I’m an artist and creative producer. I actually was going to do a projection project for the festival before I got too busy producing. You can see some of my projections and photography online. I feel like my art-making allows me to be a better producer, I often think about what I would want from a producer if I was the artist and then try to be that kind of producer.
Brooklyn Street Art: Who had the idea of launching New York’s first Nuit Blanche, and why did you think it was important to pursue and execute?
Ken Farmer: DoTanker Ted Ulrich organized a similar event in Atlanta and other team members had experienced Nuit Blanche events in other countries. We knew that it provided such a creative transformation of public spaces. Given our interest in short-term interventions to transform the way public space is experienced…we had to try.
Brooklyn Street Art: Can you talk about one of your favorite projections or performances from Saturday night?
Ken Farmer: We had some pretty well known light artists like Chris Jordan and Ryan Uzilevsky, but the thing that amazed me was the way the art, performers and crowd coalesced into a seamless experience. It wasn’t about individuals or feature pieces, it was about the transformed landscape that emerged collectively. This was our curatorial goal, but the reality far exceeded our expectations.
Ethan Vogt: So many of the pieces were amazing, it is hard to choose. I loved the percussion performance, “Scaffolding” by Tom Peyton with Terence Caulkins, Eddie Cooper, Lily Faden, Leo Kremer, and Mike Skinner, I also thought that the way that crowds were interacting with “A Small Explosion” by Kant Smith, “Light & Glass Dance” by Miho Ogai, “Oculus” by Nathaniel Lieb & Sarah Nelson Wright, and “Untitled (Drums, Lights) by Peter Esveld & Philippo Vanucci was remarkable and a very vibrant way of people connecting to artwork that I haven’t seen very many other places in my life.
Brooklyn Street Art: What role does public art play in the life of a neighborhood or a city?
Ken Farmer: It should be a manifestation of its surroundings showcasing the local identity. And it should compel us to appreciate our surroundings–aesthetically, whimsically, critically. But it is frustrating how often it falls short.
Ethan Vogt: I’m no expert on this but I think public art should encourage reflection, debate, and connection. New public spaces like the “High Line” in Chelsea are the kind of thing that I believe embodies this and I would love to someday be involved in producing a project like that.
Brooklyn Street Art: We’re always talking about the intersection between Street Art, Urban Art, Public Art, Performance, Projection Art – do you think that there is a growing interest among city dwellers in reclaiming public space for art?
Ethan Vogt: Yes, Yes, Yes! – I think this festival really struck a chord and that people looking for an authentic, non-consumer, artistic, participatory, and community experience.
Ken Farmer: I think there is a growing interest in authentic, and interactive public art. We are in a beautiful era of D.I.Y. culture. The big, corporate commissioned public art pieces in lifeless lower Manhattan plazas are old news. People want something more relatable and more dynamic. We are seeing a proliferation of low-cost, pop-up elements in public spaces. Some may see it as art, others as amenity, either way…its terrific.
Brooklyn Street Art: Were you surprised how difficult it could be to pull this off?
Ken Farmer: The difficulty lies in the need to do everything by the books. We intend to make this an annual tradition that gets better every year. So we dotted the “i’s” and crossed the “t’s”, which was costly, fiscally as well as temporally, but essential to building community support.
Ethan Vogt: It was extremely difficult to get all the pieces together to make this work but the reward of the experience was well worth it and things will certainly be easier next year.
Brooklyn Street Art: Do you think most people who see the show have any idea the amount of work that goes into it?
Ethan Vogt: I’m not sure if they have a sense of the work but I don’t care, I’m just glad they came out and had a night to remember. Hopefully they might continue to support us next year.
Ken Farmer: Hopefully they don’t know how much work goes in. I think the biggest barometer of the event’s success was how calm it felt. It was amazing to have that big of a crowd, with that many artists and that much excitement, yet have things seem so orderly.
We are extremely appreciative of how the crowd received the event…Thank You New York!
DoTank:Brooklyn is always looking for new partners. Please contact them at info@dotankbrooklyn.org
“Bring to Light” was organized by: Do Tank: Brooklyn Michael Doherty, Ken Farmer, Aurash Khawarzad, Tom Peyton, and Ted Ullrich
Produced by: Ethan Vogt, Furnace Media
Co-produced by: Pepin Gelardi, Jacquie Jordan, Annie de Mayo, Anna Muessig, Stephen Zacks
Please visit the Bring To Light site and click on their Kick Starter Campaign. They are only a few hundred dollars from reaching their fundraising goal. They need your support!
Bring to Light is New York City’s first-ever Nuit Blanche festival. A Nuit Blanche is an all night arts festival of installations and performances celebrating the magic and luminance of light.
BRING TO LIGHT NYC will be held in Greenpoint, Brooklyn primarily on Oak Street between Franklin St. and the East River waterfront beginning at sundown this Saturday Oct. 2. The event is free and open to the public. This unique block will play host to local and international artists, performers, galleries, and musicians as they Bring to Light the street itself as well as its unique assets including metal, set design and textile workshops, residential facades, an indoor gymnastics park, and much more.
Jacob Abramson will perform his Digital Graffiti at “Bring To Light”
The experience will be thrilling, original, mesmerizing, ceremonial, contemplative and illuminating. This is a one-night event to remember, but also the start of something intended to grow into an annual, world-class event. Artists will create works that inhabit street corners, galleries, shops, rooftops, vacant lots and buildings. These spaces will act as sites for light, sound and unexpected installations, performances, projections, works of art with natural and artificial LIGHT.
Please click on the animation here to visit the event’s site for a full list of artists as well as all pertinent information regarding time, location and transportation to the event.
WE ALSO ENCOURAGE YOU TO PLEASE CLICK ON THE “HELP FUND THISEVENT” BANNER ON THEIR SITE. DONATE WHAT YOU CAN TO THE KICK STARTER CAMPAIGN. WE DON’T WANT THESE KIDS TO GO BROKE TO ILLUMINATE US ALL!
BLF in New York
Long before Street Artists like Fauxreel or PosterBoy started messing with them, the BLF (billboardliberation.com) began altering outdoor advertising in 1977. They like to say they are helping improve the billboards. As they say in their press release, “prior campaigns have included work for Exxon, R.J. Reynolds, and Apple Computers.” Thoughtful, no?
A new short film featuring Specter, Signtologist, the Public Art Campaign and Jayshells
Raised by squirrels in a musty old barn located deep in the woods of upstate NY, Dan Taylor’s work is heavily influenced by the anatomical forms of the animal kingdom. In his drawings, sculptures, and mixed media works, Taylor treats organs and musculoskeletal structures as unique environments, which may be fused with other natural forms, as well as occasional unexpected consumerist elements (for example, mylar balloons, luxury handbags, gold leafing or toy soldiers). Some day, the artist’s own remains will be stuffed and put on display to scare children. The artist maintains a website, Mammal Soap.
On Saturday, October 16th, from 7pm to 11pm, Pandemic will host the “Notes from the Inside” opening reception, sponsored by Pabst Blue Ribbon. “Notes from the Inside” will then run through November 6th.
Established in Williamsburg, Brooklyn in 2009, Pandemic is an artist-run space dedicated to showing work from up-and-coming, unknown, and well-established talent alike. Embracing (but not confined to) urban street art, Pandemic is attracted to artists who think outside the confines of conventional normalcy — artists whose fresh concepts and unique visions inspire a broad audience. Pandemic is open Tuesday-Friday from 11am to 6pm and Saturday-Sunday from 12pm to 7pm; the gallery is accessible via the L and J subways and the Q59 bus.
For additional information about Pandemic Gallery, Dan Taylor, or this event, or to obtain additional exhibition preview images, please do not hesitate to contact me by e-mail at (973) 220-5032.
Thanks in advance,
Megan Canter
Media and Development Director
Pandemic Gallery
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PANDEMIC gallery 37 Broadway between Kent and Wythe
Brooklyn, NY 11211 www.pandemicgallery.com
“Williamsburg is so layered and changing so quickly… I am so lucky to be able to document some of these fleeting visual gems”
Shooting Fossils with Your Phone
5 years ago, it was unimaginable. 5 years from now, assumed. Photography with your phone is ushering a new era in art, journalism, and information.
Kate Meersschaert has been capturing the beauty of the urban landscape in the midst of the Williamsburg transition to vertical suburbia, where shallow glass towers rise over blighted lots, Superfund sites, and Street Art. Since this spring she snaps the layers of posters and detritus, steel beams, gummy sidewalks… posts them on her site, and is making a book with them this fall.
Some of Kate’s images are charged with activity, some overlayed with weathered echo, others may prove to have a timeless quality.Because they are a “snapshot” using this technology in this location, they are so 2010.
In New York City, unlike London, Chicago, and San Francisco, the art on the streets has a longer run. Street Artists love to get up in New York and come from all over the world and the rest of the country for the experience of it. The city has plenty of walls and the artists know that if they are lucky to get up their pieces can stay there for weeks or even years without being disturbed. If the piece survives predators or the capricious moods of New York weather, time will add a natural depth to the art. These pieces don’t simply surrender their character, they aggregate it, eventually attaining an aura of invincibility.
Some stencils acquire an ore patina against the rusted metal that is a wonder to behold, a finish that decorative painters strive for years to achieve. Layers of paint begin to peel and give the art a sense of movement and life. Wheat-pastes that survive summer storms and winter Nor’easters are imbued with a new whimsical life as they curl, buckle, shred: starting their transformation and ultimate disappearance.
Street art is ephemeral but it can also be resilient; a metamorphosis that, when underway, is always fascinating and pleasure to see. We present here pieces that have endured many a storm and lived to tell a story.
BRING TO LIGHT
NEW YORK CITY’S FIRST-EVER NUIT BLANCHE
A festival of light and projection art on the industrial waterfront of Greenpoint, Brooklyn
2010 October 2, Saturday
Dusk to Dawn
http://bringtolightnyc.org
DESCRIPTION
On October 2, from sunset to dawn, the streets of Greenpoint, Brooklyn will host Bring to Light, New York City’s first Nuit Blanche, an all-night public art festival begun in 1997 in Paris, Berlin and St. Petersburg that has spread to cities across the world. The New York festival takes place on the postindustrial edges of an area reawakened in recent years by the migration of young culturistas into a mostly Polish neighborhood, and the opening of many new boutiques, bistros, bars and nightclubs. The nearby East River waterfront remains largely industrial, undeveloped, and publicly inaccessible, but for one night, the skywalks, open courtyards, alleys and adjacent streets around the Greenpoint Terminal Market will be lit up with site-specific installations, projections, interactive media, street performances, and a late-night dance party.
Bring to Light features works by over 50 international artists, performers, and musicians spread over four blocks, inhabiting street corners, galleries, shops, rooftops, vacant lots and buildings,
with opening performances on Noble Street, installations and projections inside the American Playground (on Franklin and Noble), and events hosted by neighborhood businesses including furniture company From the Source, Gym Park gymnastics center, Fowler Arts Gallery, Hollywood Stunts, and film production spaces of Seret Studios. These spaces will act as sites for light, sound and unexpected installations, performances, and projections. The event will be broadcast live during a simultaneous Nuit Blanche event in Toronto.
North Brooklyn’s growing food culture will be represented by vendors curated by the Greenpoint Food Market. In conjunction with Bring to Light, all weekend during the day, Greenpoint Open Studios, now in its second year, will offer a chance to visit the converted factories and warehouses, apartments and galleries where local artists produce artwork in all media.
ABOUT THE ORGANIZERS
This event is being organized by DoTank:Brooklyn and produced by Furnace Media in collaboration with community advocates, curators, writers, neighbors and designers. We are thrilled to bring this international tradition of a night-time arts festival to enliven public space around the Greenpoint Waterfront area, just as New Yorkers are rediscovering this historic waterfront and a burgeoning artist community is making its mark,” said the organizers.
DoTank is a public vessel for interdisciplinary exploration, engagement and enhancement of our urban environment through means outside of the formal urban planning process. We make rapid and meaningful change by exploring and testing in our laboratory: Brooklyn, NY.
Furnace Media is a New York City based film and design company founded in 2002 as a laboratory for innovative moving image media. Our work blends live-action filmmaking, re-mixed archival footage, and 3D computer graphics for performance venues outside of traditional movie theaters often in partnership with musicians (www.liveprojections.org) or as site-specific architectural installation.
LOCATION DETAILS
Noble Street between Franklin and West Streets, American Playground, and From the Source, 69 West Street, in Greenpoint, Brooklyn
Nearest subway stops: G train to Greenpoint Ave. or L train to Bedford Ave.
To learn more about this event and see the complete list of participating artists go to:
Our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Daily Void, El Sol 25, Hebru, Homer, JMR, K-Guy, Loaf, OverUnder, Quel Beast, Radical, Tip Toe, Veng RWK, and Wizzard Sleeve
K-Guy Readies a Sign for the Pope
K-GUY has a commentary on the hypocritical practices of the Catholic Church with this piece enitled “See-No-Hear-No-Speak-No”, timed to coincide with The Pope’s visit to London.
To see more work of the above featured artists click on the artist’s links on the menu on the top, scroll down the list of artists to find the artist’s site you wish to visit.
Here is an image of how Specter did his sidebust spot-jock unwanted collaboration with Faile, who told us Thursday night they thought it was funny and well done. See more about Specter’s latest project here on Huffington Post. (image courtesy Stencil History X)
Elfo is a graffiti writer and social commentator whose work intentionally sidesteps traditional notions of style or technical lettering. This …Read More »
In her latest mural, Faring Purth delivers a powerful reflection on connection, continuity, and the complexity of evolving relationships—a true …Read More »
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