On the Street

Images of the Week 03.25.12

Saw my first barefoot hippie walking down 7th Avenue on Friday and it was like spotting a Robin on the lawn in Union Square Park. SPRING! Spring time hit New York like a truckload of thick sweet kisses and homeboys started checking every cute move of all the shorties, who mysteriously also fluffed up all their magnolia pink feathers and almost imperceptibly put a bit more sa into their shay. Don’t ask us what any of that means, except that when the days get all comfy and warm like these, it’s all about the birds and the beeeeeeees, B.

Here’s our weekly interview with the street, with some special shots by Jaime Rojo from a secret place in the Bronx as well as some contributions from Lima, Peru by Adolfo Bejar, and in Essen, Germany from Skount. Names this week include DCT, Elliot Tupac, Essam, How & Nosm, EKG, Keith Haring, Mariposa Mentirosa, Radical!, Seth, Skount, V, and Zam. First we start out with some spring flowers by an unknown artist.

Artist Unknown. Street installation to welcome the Spring 2012 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Artist Unknown. Street installation to welcome the Spring 2012 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Mariposa Mentirosa. Street installation to welcome the Spring 2012 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

How & Nosm (photo © Jaime Rojo)

How & Nosm (photo © Jaime Rojo)

How & Nosm (photo © Jaime Rojo)

How & Nosm (photo © Jaime Rojo)

EKG…is feeling a bit cocky. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Artist Unknown  (photo © Jaime Rojo)

V (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Zam (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Radical! (photo © Jaime Rojo)

#Heros Street Art…Keith Haring. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Essam (photo © Jaime Rojo)

DEKRD (photo © Jaime Rojo)

DEKRD (photo © Jaime Rojo)

 SKOUNT “The Automata Repairer” Essen, Germany. (photo © Skount)

SKOUNT “The Automata Repairer” Essen, Germany. (photo © Skount)

DCT, SETH and ELLIOT TUPAC. Lima, Peru. (photo © Adolfo Bejar)

DCT, SETH and ELLIOT TUPAC. Lima, Peru. (photo © Adolfo Bejar)

Untitled. (photo © Jaime Rojo )

 

Read more

Copenhagen Street Art on Lock Down : Tejn

Danish Street Artist Tejn does some paste-ups periodically but the thing he is most known for is his welding.  Also his “Lock On”, a practice of chaining his welded sculptures to the street with a bicycle lock. In much the same way New York Street Artist REVS has been leaving his welded tags around Brooklyn during the last decade, these Lock On’s and welded fake signs are much less ephemeral than what you may typically associate the term “street art” with.

Tejn (photo © Sandra Hoj)

Photographer and BSA contributor Sandra Hoj reports today of her newest findings on the streets of Copenhagen, where Tejn has been installing new work.

Here Ms. Hoj describes the new works;

“The scrap iron sculpture Lock On’s by Danish street artist Tejn are scattered all over Copenhagen at the moment. Whenever I stop to take a picture of one, someone comes up to me to alert me to another piece. These welded sculptures are made from salvaged iron collected from places like our cultural battlefields Christiania and the empty lot of Jagtvej 69, former location of the Youth House. Tejn welds the iron together and returns it to the streets chained and locked with found bike-locks”

Tejn (photo © Sandra Hoj)

Tejn (photo © Sandra Hoj)

Tejn (photo © Sandra Hoj)

Tejn (photo © Sandra Hoj)

Tejn (photo © Sandra Hoj)

 

To see more great photos and observations on Sandra Hoj’s site please click here

Read more

Isaac Cordal “Waiting for Climate Change” at Beaufort 04 (Flemish Coast, Belgium)

Isaac Cordal

Last two months I´ve been working in a project called ‘Waiting for Climate Change’. It will be exhibited on the beach of De Panne as well as in a local historic villa once occupied by Chalutier. This is part of the Beaufort04 edition. For this project I made some ephemeral installations in different locations of the coast.  ‘ Waiting for climate change‘  presents a few stereotypes of persons that confronting climate change in different ways. Some of them climbed to the top of a pole from where they look the horizon.

From March 31st to September 30th, 2012
30 Locations spread across 9 coastal municipalities throughout the Flemish coast.

images

More info:
http://www.beaufort04.be/

 
Read more

Mexico City : A New Surrealist Face for Street Art

Comic, surrealist, role-playing psychological explorations, with a tip of the hat to Breton, Carrington, and Lucha Libre, among others.

Pixel Pancho (photo © XAM)

Mexico City culture can be as varied and diverse as it is homogeneous, with a respect for tradition and, when it comes to artistic expression, a catalyst for exploration. André Breton is reported to have described Mexico as “the most surrealist country in the world,” where painters like Leonora Carrington and Frida Kahlo unhinged their imaginations from the limitations of the material world. As these new images on the streets of Mexico City taken by Brooklyn architectural street artist XAM show, the love for a psychic automatism continues into the public sphere.

Of course the Mexicans are not strangers to art on the streets; “great Latin American muralists” is a phrase almost synonymous with Mexico and names like Rivera, Orozco and Siqueiros coming to mind. Political advocacy and populist criticism of social policy on the walls here is similarly a tradition respected by the culture. Now a century after the revolution and birth of the modern Mexico, the experience of Los Capitalinos, as the residents of Mexico City are called, is affected daily by surrealism, pop culture and global capitalism swimming alongside folk and historical symbology, and a bit of anarchy. It’s all part of one fabric, a rich and varied textile that we export to you here.

Ben Eine (photo © XAM)

Says XAM of his experience, “Barcelona, NYC, Amsterdam, and Paris are all similar in a way when it comes to street art – you can walk around and come across work on the streets fairly easily, but traversing the barrios of Mexico city is much different. I guess in some way you can compare it to San Francisco, Chicago or Los Angeles – there is quality work to be found. The city differs from all mentioned in that it appears to be young when it comes to street art by having a small group of participants.”

“I was hosted by both MUMUTT Arte and Museo del Juguete Antiguo Mexico, who are both responsible for providing concrete canvases in Mexico City for artist such as ROA, M-City, Pixel Pancho, and fresh stuff from the locals like Saner, Sego and the MOZ crew. Mexico City DF has the most museums in the world and MUMUTT and Museo del Juguete are largely responsible for adding street art to the vast archive of amazing work. They escorted me around to locations they provided for the above artists – It is evident that everyone brought their A-game. The weathered concrete walls made wonderful surfaces for imagery such as Dronz & Koko’s character, offering hallucinatory candy at the toy museum to Ben Eine’s work that speaks about class issues on a worksite for a future mall.”

Ben Eine (photo © XAM)

Pixel Pancho (photo © XAM)

Pixel Pancho (photo © XAM)

Liqen (photo © XAM)

Jaz (photo © XAM)

Saner (photo © XAM)

Saner (photo © XAM)

Saner in collaboration with Bastardilla (photo © XAM)

Samurai . Ceci (photo © XAM)

Roman (photo © XAM)

Roman . Acute (photo © XAM)

ROA (photo © XAM)

Meah (photo © XAM)

Broken Crow (photo © XAM)

MCity (photo © XAM)

MCity (photo © XAM)

Moz Crew (photo © XAM)

Moz Crew (photo © XAM)

Moz Crew (photo © XAM)

Kokor . Dronz (photo © XAM)

Bimek . Done (photo © XAM)

Bue (photo © XAM)

Ever (photo © XAM)

SBTG. The artist worked on this piece on commission to promote an event sponsored by a shoe company. We like the placement. (photo © XAM)

Click on the links below to read our previous stories of MAMUTT Arte and MUJAM and to learn more about their work in Mexico City:

http://www.brooklynstreetart.com/theblog/2011/09/20/m-city-in-m-city-polish-stencillist-in-mexico/

http://www.brooklynstreetart.com/theblog/2011/05/07/video-premiere-broken-crow-in-mexico/

http://www.brooklynstreetart.com/theblog/2011/03/04/broken-crow-a-mexican-travelog/

http://www.brooklynstreetart.com/theblog/2011/03/09/broken-crow-a-mexican-travelog-part-ii/

http://www.brooklynstreetart.com/theblog/2011/02/05/roas-magic-naturalism-street-arts-wild-kingdom-in-mexico/

 

 

Read more

Hush in Australia: A New Figure on the Street

Street Artist Hush is in Melbourne, Australia this week getting some work up on the street and preparing for a new show at Metro Gallery. A mixologist who borrows widely from graff, fine, and folk art traditions, the guy has many interests and continues to explore techniques of art making, sharing what he has learned as he goes.

The new collection of work will be wide and deep, including large paintings, one-off screen prints on paper, wood cuts (linotypes), 3-D plastic drawings, and sketches that give viewers a better understanding of his working practice and technique.

Here are a few stylish shots on the street of his newest work by Cleo le Vel. The overall shape may remind you of Russian Matryoshka dolls, but the countenance on this figure is smokey as she is surrounded by decorative motifs and graffiti tags.

Hush (photo © Cleo le Vel)

Hush (photo © Cleo le Vel)

Hush (photo © Cleo le Vel)

Hush (photo © Cleo le Vel)

Read more

Images of the Week: 03.18.12

Our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring Buttless, Curly, Don’t Fret, Droid, ENO, Enzo & Nio, ENO, Eras, Keith Haring, Memo, ND’A, Nev1, Never, Pakpoom Silaphan, Radical!, Read, Sheepman, and Skewville.

Skewville IS NOT ON SALE but you could make him an offer he can’t refuse. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Curly wants to know how much longer he has to toil…any answers? (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Radical and ND’A making a connection.  (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Punk wheat paste. Who is the artist? (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Never . Eras (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Sheepman (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Sheepman (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Nev 1 with girl in her panties. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Enzo & Nio (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Droid . Read (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Buttless helped out Supreme with their ubiquitous yearly banal postering campaign, in much the same way that Faile assisted in 2009 with tiger heads over Lou Reeds’ face. Their big Kate Moss repetition irked a number of Street Artists again this time by mindlessly papering over the individual with the mass message. By the way, is smoking cigarettes the new heroin chic? (photo © Jaime Rojo)

MEMO (photo © Jaime Rojo)

MEMO (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Don’t Fret in Chicago (photo © Don’t Fret)

Pakpoom Silaphan did this portrait of Keith Haring on a vintage Pepsi sign spotted at one of the art fairs last weekend. Might this have been a calculated effort to ride on the success of the Keith Haring retrospective currently on view at the Brooklyn Museum? Maybe it is simply another expression of the well worn practice of re-appropriating pop culture, with Haring clearly now in icon territory. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

We listened for some ambient synthesizer music when this was discovered. ENO (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Read more

ROA: Postcards from The Australian Outback and The Coast of Chile

ROA continues his vertiginous worldwide tour with the animal kingdom in tow, meeting many of the two legged species on the way. Venturing far from his river town of Ghent in Belgium, ROA brings his distinctive monochromatic aerosol painting everywhere; high lands, flat lands, canyons, mountains, crusty old buildings, huts, rusty car carcasses, wooden vessels, water tanks. More often today he also brings them to a gallery or the occasional museum.

ROA. A Bilby. Pilbara, Australia (photo © ROA)

His unassuming depiction of an animal that is native to the area is ROA’s way of offering a non-sentimental, beautiful side of the material world and a way of respecting it; these are the flesh and bones of the animals that we eat, hunt, care for or ignore. Whether we regard them for our use for pleasure or our survival, ROA gives animals the main stage, where we’ll be more likely to appreciate their role, existence, death, and even personality.

At ease in cosmopolitan areas with Street Art scenes like New York, London, Los Angeles or Mexico City, ROA shares here brand new images from his most recent travels in the Australian Outback and the coast of Chile. Their distinctly different climates and unassuming relics of the built environment can serve as thoughtful vessels, breath-taking back drops for the creatures he brings with.  ROA’s acute observational style, rendered with a can in what could be described as a fine and precise hand, continues to illustrate his vivid eye and almost daring approach to his craft.

In person these are striking, a strong reminder of our own mortality and our role as humans on the planet we share with other species. These images below, exclusively for BSA readers, are as beautifully painted as they are placed.

ROA. A Bilby and his tail. Pilbara, Australia (photo © ROA)

ROA. Pilbara, Australia. Kangaroo bones on the foreground. (photo © ROA)

ROA. Valparaiso, Chile.  (photo © ROA)

ROA. Valparaiso, Chile.  (photo © ROA)

ROA. Valparaiso, Chile.  (photo © ROA)

ROA. Santiago, Chile.  (photo © ROA)

ROA. Santiago, Chile.  (photo © ROA)

While in Australia ROA was a guest of FORM, a non-profit organization who works with the Aboriginal communities throughout the Pilbara region. He was invited on a field trip to gain a better anthropological perspective of the native culture and nature of the land.

While in Chile ROA visited Santiago and Valparaiso. In Santiago he painted the horse mural on the San Miguel Neighborhood. He was a guest of the famed local muralist Mono Gonzalez. Mono, as he is locally known, has been painting murals in Chile for several decades since before the dictatorship. Mono is the director of an open air museum called “Museo A Cielo Abierto de San Miguel”. ROA is very thankful for the hospitality of the Familia de Roberto Hernandez.

To learn more about the murals of Museo A Cielo Abierto de San Miguel click on the link below:

http://www.mixart.cl/index.php

 

 

Read more

MOMO with Piet Dieleman at Incubate in Tilburg, The Netherlands

New Video with MOMO and Piet Dieleman

Still from video © MOMO

Brooklyn’s Son and international artist MOMO spent some time in Tilburg, The Netherlands making art and collaborating with local artists and The Incubate Art Festival. Below is a video of the large mural he worked on while in Tilburg.

“It was amazing to work with Piet and see the sorts of decisions he was making with the paint and sprayer, things I would never think to do. And it was great talking with him. Hearing about the first punk scene in Rotterdam, his conception of concrete painting’s ethos, and time’s strange effects on these.” MOMO

To see still images of the mural click on MOMO’s site here

Read more

Jetsonorama & Yote Laying Plans for “The Painted Desert”

Arizona based Street Artists Jetsonorama and Yote are embarking on a new project they’re calling “The Painted Desert” with a growing roster of Street Artists you know.

The project is reaching out to an array of Street Artists to put their stuff up on roadside structures in western agency of the Navajo nation.  As part of a wheat-pasting project Jetsonorama began in 2009, the plans include holding mural making workshops and information sessions for youth who live on the reservation.

 

Jetsonorama (photo © Jetsonorama)

It looks like the project is picking up steam with commitments from Street Artists including Gaia, Chris Stain, Overunder, Doodles, Breeze, and Yote, who are all planning to get up over the next year. Also we hear that Swoon has some special plans, so that will be a point of interest too, and Henry Chalfant is also lending his support.

Says the organizers, “The project seeks to boost the economy by having the art be a destination for those who get it and to share the knowledge that we have as artists with local youth.” Sounds like Street Artists are poised to help the community again.

Learn more about “Painted Desert Project” is on Facebook and you can make a donation to the effort if you like.

 

Read more

Images of the Week: D*Face Drama in NYC With 3 Murals in 1 Week

It’s true that the art fairs descended on New York this week. Equally true is that the multiple fairs don’t just bring rivers of collectors and dealers and Looky-Loos, these teeming steaming orgiastic fuster-clucks with names like Poke, Stroke and Fountain also can bring in a wave of the Street Artists! Look at the seven days alone with BSA posts on LA’s Retna, Tel Aviv’s Know Hope and todays’ very special edition King of Images of the Week, D*Face!

D*Face “Love Lost”. The first and largest mural to go up. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

D*Face, one of Street Art’s original British invaders, hit up New York with three new murals this week (two in Williamsburg, one in SOHO) employing sharply graphic pop lines and a humorously tart tongue to create works of high drama. With themes of lust, treachery and broken promises, the D*Face miniseries was streamed live on the street with no cover charge or icy art matron scanning through her iPad list for your name.

D*Face “Love Lost”. The first and largest mural to go up. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

D*Face “Love Her, Hate Him”. The second mural in SOHO. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

D*Face “Love Her, Hate Him”. The second mural in SOHO. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

D*Face “Love Her, Hate Him”. The second mural in SOHO. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The final mural D*Face did was on Friday in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. While nicely sunny, the wind whipped through often enough to keep his fingers cold and his collar up. But on days like this New York can feel like a small town and the icy weather didn’t prevent a small group from hanging out, helping the artist and entertaining one another. Producer Stephen Thompson, photographer Jason Lewis and videographer Cliff Cristofarah took turns making observations, cracking jokes, fiddling with the music, and checking out the local parade as it scurried by.

For an additional feeling of street art community, Futura sauntered by to say hello and to offer entertaining stories and even go on a run for refreshments; water, coffees, and Mexican Coca Cola (with real sugar!).  With Rob and Cliff taking turns at their MP3 players and the speakers blasting a bit of a 70s arena rock tribute (The Who, Led Zepplin, Black Sabbath), a couple of bike dudes came by to practice their tricks with a dog in the backpack.

D*Face. Third mural in Williamsburg.  (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Brooklyn Street Art: How would you describe these new pieces in New York?
D*Face: All the pieces surround the notion of ‘Love’, ‘Loss’ and ‘Longing’, all drawn from recent personal experiences, everything I create is pulled from experience personal to me, hopefully people will also connect to them too.  I have three new pieces so I wanted to get three good spots with as much visibility as possible, the larger the better.

Brooklyn Street Art: Will you get a chance to skateboard while you’re here?
D*Face: Unfortunately not. I love this city for skateboarding, but I wont get to do much other than paint walls and hopefully cut loose and party a bit.

D*Face. Third mural in Williamsburg.  (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Brooklyn Street Art: Can you talk about where your work is going thematically now?
D*Face: Thematically my work always draws upon personal experiences, whether thats the saturation of media in our lives, our fascination with celebrity and stardom or more singular experiences such as the loss of loved ones, searching your heart for love or holding people close when you should be letting them go.

I mostly rework old imagery that I’ve discovered, chopping bits of one or several images with another to create a new image that I feel is more relevant to today’s society and certainly the message I want to get across. So thematically its a continuation, it just has several veins that it runs off into.

Brooklyn Street Art: It feels like the Occupy Wall Street movement may have taken up some of the same punk aesthetics and energy that you were first drawn to.  Is your work changed or affected at all by OWS?
D*Face: Haha! No not at all, but there’s always someone more punk than you, punk!

D*Face. Third mural in Williamsburg.  (photo © Jaime Rojo)

D*Face. Third mural in Williamsburg.  (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Brooklyn Street Art: Reworking the vocabulary of advertising and the practice of culture jamming can be very effective as education. Do you think of your work as message-driven?
D*Face:
Yes, first and foremost my work has to have a concept, an idea, a message, it’s that which drives my work. Conceptually I’m always trying to push my ideas, push myself, keep myself excited and interested. I don’t want to stand still and see the growth of my work as a flik book, by that I mean small evolutions over time, what I want are solid chapters, which carry a thread of thought linking them all together.

D*Face. Third mural in Williamsburg.  (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Brooklyn Street Art: What role does humor play in your stuff?
D*Face: Oh its massively important, life is pretty heavy at the best of times, so even serious messages or thoughts don’t have to be heavy in execution, even the dark thoughts or concepts in my work I hope are executed in a poppy way, I want to draw people in first, get them to appreciate the aesthetic, then hopefully they start to question the image, its content, its meaning. If they don’t and appreciate it only on its surface value then thats fine. I don’t want to ram messages, political, religious, consumerist or otherwise down peoples throats in a way that burdens life’s load.

D*Face. Third mural in Williamsburg reflected on the side window of a vintage Ford Falcon. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

D*Face. Third mural in Williamsburg. Stephen Thompson his producer and assistant showing some back handed technique and snaazy foot wear.  (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Brooklyn Street Art: You’ve had some serious success in galleries. Why is it still important to you to hit the street today?
D*Face: I’m privileged to have the gallery success I do. I thank everyone that has supported me and my work over the years, to live as an artist, support my family, employ artists to help me, is an amazing opportunity and something I wake up thankful of everyday.

Whilst I love gallery shows and the opportunity to work in a gallery, it brings with it the ability to create different works, execute concepts and play with space in a different way, but you have to want to see ‘art’ or know about the artist or the gallery to see that work, galleries can be intimidating places, I don’t want that, I want my work to be inclusive, not exclusive, so putting work in the streets is the most effective way of doing this.

You can’t beat the feeling of painting in the street, interacting with people, hearing their views, thoughts and ideas on what it is your painting… you know you get to bring the unsuspecting public in, people that may have no interest in art, never walked in a gallery, suddenly when faced with a painting in the street have a different take, a different perspective… it’s really, really interesting, that interaction, even if they don’t like it, you’ve still changed their day, opened their eyes, hopefully you might get them to LOOK at their surroundings and not just see.

D*Face. Doing a bit of mixiology.  (photo © Jaime Rojo)

D*Face. Stephen takes D*Face and Futura’s portrait.  (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Futura tagging a dollar bill for D*Face. (He did one for Word To Mother as well).  (photo © Jaime Rojo)

D*Face. Third mural in Williamsburg.  (photo © Jaime Rojo)

D*Face. Third mural in Williamsburg.  (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Two local kids and a puppy.  (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Cliff gets the law of the land.  (photo © Jaime Rojo)

D*Face. Third mural in Williamsburg.  (photo © Jaime Rojo)

D*Face. Third mural in Williamsburg.  (photo © Jaime Rojo)

D*Face. Third mural in Williamsburg.  (photo © Jaime Rojo)

D*Face. Painting the three dimensional part of the mural in the studio.  (photo © Jaime Rojo)

D*Face. Third mural in Williamsburg.  (photo © Jaime Rojo)

D*Face. Third mural in Williamsburg.  (photo © Jaime Rojo)

D*Face. Third mural in Williamsburg.  (photo © Jaime Rojo)

D*Face. Third mural in Williamsburg.  (photo © Jaime Rojo)

D*Face. Third mural in Williamsburg.  (photo © Jaime Rojo)

D*Face. Third mural in Williamsburg.  (photo © Jaime Rojo)

D*Face (photo © Jaime Rojo)

With special thanks to the Corey Helford Gallery for helping coordinate these murals  and to Rob at Thunderdog Studios for hosting us on the Williamsburg sidewalk.

 

Read more

Street Poet Know Hope is “Stampeded” In The East Village

“All the limbs were fully outreached,

in spite of them being humbled; each

in different and specific ways” *

Know Hope “Stampeded” (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Poet of the street Know Hope is in New York this week contemplating walls and occupying space. He spent some time in the East Village creating a new wall called “Stampeded” with Keith Schweitzer of MaNY Projects.  The Israel based Street Artist uses his figures, with their bending poses and tormented hearts, to enact the stories of the world. Confident and deliberate, Know Hope traces an internal dialogue known mostly to the painter, but also to you if you care to observe.

 

“And it’s through this tainted anthem

and its two-timing confessions that we’re

hinted that with all these walls

all we could really use is a mirror.

 

And the mirror reflects and reflects and it’s

because of it’s reflection and of its fainted

hymn that we realize how tired we all

are.” *

 

Know Hope “Stampeded” (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The angular and contorted limbs of the figures are not dissimilar to those of the artist, and the poetic storylines are not unlike the battles of those who walk by. Quietly, this is a poet with a brush and a pot of paint.

We asked him if he writes the poem first then paints it. He said that sometimes the words come to him as he paints, but he does not consider himself to be a poet – not in the strict meaning of the word. But we disagree, of course.

Know Hope “Stampeded” (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Know Hope “Stampeded” (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Know Hope “Stampeded” (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Know Hope “Stampeded” (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Know Hope “Stampeded” (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Know Hope “Stampeded” (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Know Hope (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Time Lapse Video of Know Hope, “Stampeded” By MaNY Projects:

 

The project was produced by Keith Schweitzer of MaNY Projects in conjunction with Fourth Arts Block (FAB).

* poetry by Know Hope, from “Bound by the Ties: Side-seen Moments” by Know Hope and Coin Bleus

To learn more about MaNY Projects click here.

To learn more about Fourth Arts Block click here.

Read more

RETNA At The Houston Wall in NYC

The weather is turning friendly, and RETNA is encouraging the conversation

We have been having a very mild winter in New York, even scarily warm. The daffodils are almost in bloom and you can already see the faint shades of pink on the buds of the cherry and apple trees. “Wait!”, we want to yell at them, “Wait! – there might be a frost yet.”  But when it is sunny and warm out, everybody wants to come out and play.

RETNA (photo © Jaime Rojo)

For example Los Angeles based Street Artist and fine artist RETNA, who took Saturday through Monday to complete the Houston Wall with his brightly secretive musings, messages, and tributes painted in his now famous alphabet.  Maybe it was the holy day, or the holy hangover, but watching this piece appearing on Sunday was like seeing the wall turn into a soaring stained glass cathedral of gestural markings in crimson and blue, a private prayer out in the open.

Watching an artist at work is always a pleasure and it is a gift to see the unfolding magic of a community coming alive on the street, bonded by the humanizing experience of art in progress.  RETNA can be playful, serious, contemplative, relieved, pleased, and you will see it all.

RETNA (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Houston Street is not one of those quiet hidden romantic streets where an artist can just zone out, no matter the hermetic fit of headphones; this rumbling thoroughfare splits Manhattan loudly and boisterously, dividing Soho from Noho, both ever more expensive and increasingly mall-like these days. Whatever the composition of foot traffic, the sense of community comes alive in this sacred presence of the creative spirit; Passersby, complete strangers, well-wishers and friends stop to say hello, to ask a question, dare a request, or just silently and introspectively observe the process.

RETNA (photo © Jaime Rojo)

A very young painting fan gets an expert lesson on photography from his daddy. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

And he was a very good student of the new RETNA wall. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

RETNA (photo © Jaime Rojo)

RETNA obliged a fan with a request of a personalized tag. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

RETNA…on the back of what he claimed was a one of a kind Georgio Armani jacket. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

RETNA. Cigarette break. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

RETNA (photo © Jaime Rojo)

RETNA (photo © Jaime Rojo)

RETNA (photo © Jaime Rojo)

RETNA (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Read more