Welcome to BSA Images of the Week. The streets are reflecting this moment in New York this week as artists are showing their colors. Or Ukraine’s colors, rather. Hard to sleep through the night when you know that Gotham is on the hit list if this Russian invasion turns nuclear, hard to process the idea that a cold war is never far from a hot one, despite activists best efforts for all these decades. Hard to believe that sanctions won’t damage many more people than the intended targets. Hard to believe that money-printing is never discussed in the news as THE creator of this inflation and much more inflation to come.
Let’s do everything we can to de-escalate this war, this perpetual specter.
And thank you to the street artists who are keeping the conversations alive. Also this week, new works from F**kin REVS !
Remember to Set Your Clocks Ahead One Hour Today.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: Adam Fujita, Fuckin REVS, Below Key, Sticker Maul, Sara Lynne-Leo, Hek Tad, Gold Loxe, Mike Raz, Smetsky Art, Hear Eye Am, Equalist, Liagam, and Mitya Pisliak.
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week, where New York keeps pushing forward through this stormy winter – although the amount of new street art and graffiti dissipates this time of year as artists stay in their creative caves, waiting for spring. Hang in there peeps.
Great news for New York artists this week: artists can now apply for a monthly stipend of $1,000. This is big news because unlike a lot of Europe, the US and its institutions do not support artists or cultural workers.
Speaking of exemplary New Yorkers, Jeffery Epstein’s friend Jean-Luc Brunel has been found dead in his prison cell, mysteriously. One of Epstein’s other friends, Prince Andrew, reportedly settled out of court this week. “Prince Andrew reportedly agreed to never again deny raping Virginia Giuffre”, says the New York Post, The Independent, and The Sun. The Times says: “A new nursery rhyme is doing the rounds at the Palace:
‘The grand old Duke of York, he had 12 million quid. He gave it to someone he’d never met, for something he never did’”.
Jesus, let’s go out for a walk and see if we discover some new street art.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: Skewville, Specter, City Kitty, Adam Fujita, Pork, Jason Naylor, Below Key, Lexi Bella, Jowl, Nimek, Klonism, Harvey Ball, Eloy Bida, Kat Blouch, Timmy Ache, and Eyedao.
Welcome the first BSA Images of the Week of 2022! How are you feeling? You’re looking great!
The street art parade marches on, perhaps ever clearer in its intent to reflect the mood, the zeitgeist, the intellectual meanderings of the artist class. In the process of demystifying the graffiti and street art scene over the few decades, we’ve long realized that there always will be surprises, no matter how much of the scene you have decoded. That’s what keeps it FREEEESSSSSSSSHHHH!
This week, as the snow is falling in dirty old NYC and as people are rescinding into their homes for another de facto Covid “lockdown”, we discover that artists are hard at work getting out their message, their id, their frustrations, their aspirations, their wit.
May this adventure never end, and may this trail never go cold.
So here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Adam Fujita, Anderson Bluu, Dorothy Gale, Ernesto Maranje, ERRE, Ethan Minsker, Fake Banksy, Gold Loxe, Ill Surge, J. Cole, Johann Art, Marka 27, Miss 17, NEST, Praxis VGZ, Salami Doggy, and Winsten Tseng .
Can you feel the power of July’s full Buck Moon that arrived this weekend? Not to be confused with the full buck-naked moon; those are the guys climbing the fence to skinny dip in McCarren Pool.
Looks like the new George Floyd statue in Flatbush, Brooklyn got defaced by racists but will be restored and move to Union Square in Manhattan. The vandals must have been mad about all the confederate statues that have been coming down around the country.
You’ll be thrilled to learn that two self-driving cars were tested in New York this week, and no skateboarders or seniors were mowed down. The footage looks pretty tame, to tell the truth. Let’s try the test on any average drunken Saturday night and see how the rabble-rousers fare. Truthfully, a driverless car is exactly the way it feels taking a yellow cab sometimes.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Adam Fu, Adrian Wilson, Allison Dayka, Baston, Captain Eyeliner, City Kitty, Comik, David Puck, SEK@DX, Denis Ouch, Duel Heck, Flore, Foxito, La Plaga Invade, Lorenzo Masnah, Lunge Box, Rex Bantron, S. Cifu, Sinclair The Vandal, Sticky Monger, Sule Cant Cook, and Westgard.
Some hard news seems to great us every day, yet New Yorkers don’t give up so easily. And by the way, banging bright and crispy fall weather we’ve been having, right?
Here is our weekly interview with the streets, this week including Adam Fujita, Crash Floor, Disgusting is Good, Drop Dead Grace, Eye Sticker, Labor Camp, Mad Vaillan, Par, Save Art Space, Server Up, Specter, Texas, and Vayne.
They are not staying quiet. If you had doubted the inclination of street artists to join the socio-political fray in 2020, don’t. Among the cute and decorative pieces out there, we are steadily discovering that artists are using the public sphere to take risks, addressing issues that are thorny and puzzling. As ever, the streets are a reflection of our society and all its fabulous dysfunction – a refreshing take on free speech that often makes much more sense than the disinformation war raging hourly right now on corporate media.
Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring Adam Fu, Blood and Soul, Clint Mario, Faust, Gazoo to the Moon, Jarus, Maia Lorian, Pure Genius, Raddington Falls, Sticker Maul, Stikman, TV Head ATX, Will Pay, and Winston Tseng.
The winds of change are gathering force and weaving together – social, political, financial, environmental… and it is all being reflected in street art today. Ironically, because media in the US is addicted to money and misdirection and is completely disinterested in the poor and working class as a whole, thoughtful analysis that pops off city walls seems unadulterated, capable of giving you more truthful assessments of what is missing, what is out of whack, and who’s gotta take action. Your face here.
Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring Adam Fu, AJ LaVilla, Antennae, Black Ligma, City Kitty, CRKSHNK, De Groupo, Hearts NY, Novy, Pork, Surface of Beauty, The Greator, Winston Tseng, X Rebellion NYC, and Zuli Miau.
What a week – as bad news is replaced by horrible news. But seriously, the summer has been beautiful in the streets of New York in so many ways, and we feel lucky here – even though there appears to be an exodus? Yeah we remember it from the 60s and 70s too but it was called “White Flight” then. Wonder who’s leaving now? Kitchen too hot? Please, gurl, go home. The rest of us will be just fine here because we’ve always loved New York in good times and in bad. These are the Golden Years.
The DNC 2020 infomercial this week looked like the 1996 RNC one but with “diversity” – as we get pulled/pushed further and further toward the right. This weeks’ RNC infomercial broadcast from White House grounds will march us off a cliff, no doubt. Speech writers are searching now to set the reich tone. Austerity for all! War is Peace! Suburban Karens Will Crush You!
Let’s see what the streets are telling us.
Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring 7 Line Art Studio, Adam Fu, Billy Barnacles, CB23, Cern, Gee Whiskers, One Rad Latina, and Rar Grafix.
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week. The weather has been beautiful in NYC and the organic art popping up on the streets is still forcefully advocating for social and political solutions amidst great upheaval, even while…
Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring Adam Fujita, Almost Over Keep Smiling, Billie Barnacles, Black Lives Matter, Bosko, Detor, Downtown DaVinci, Eric Haze, Fumero, Insurgo, Marco Santini, Marina Zumi, Praxis VGZ, Sara Lynne Leo, and Who is Dirk.
The New York street artist who works under the moniker “Almost Over Keep Smiling” reinterprets slightly this Boston warning poster telling anybody who was black in a “free” state like Massachusetts or New York to stay away from the police because the federal government had passed a law empowering people to capture them and return them to slavery.
The Act was one of the most controversial elements of the 1850 compromise and heightened Northern fears of a “slave power
conspiracy”. It required that all escaped slaves, upon capture, be
returned to their masters and that officials and citizens of free states
had to cooperate. Abolitionists nicknamed it the “Bloodhound Bill,” for the dogs that were used to track down runaway slaves.[2]
The Act contributed to the growing polarization of the country over the issue of slavery, and is considered one of the causes of the Civil War.
The streets are alive with street art and pointed political protest. NYC citizens are joining the cities and communities across the country who are demonstrating furiously over the newest examples of systemic, latent, and explicit racism and police brutality that have characterized our society for so long. Of course it’s just one fire that has been waiting to spark as economic conditions run parallel with social inequity. In the face of sky-high unemployment, unpaid rents, increasing food insecurity, a “rescue” program that gave the store to the rich, and the ever-growing gap between hyper-rich and the chronically poor/ newly poor, the summer here looks like it could be torrid.
We won’t need or see a large number of street art festivals for a while. This show of politically/socially inspired artworks and text messages is probably just warming up on the streets and you can imagine that artists won’t find it appealing to be sitting on panels and pontificating about the genesis of mark-making, the original roots of punk anarchy, or how they are incorporating being woke or inter-sectionalism into their “street practice”. The creative class, however you define it, has suffered a huge blow and many are out of work, and patience. Based on what we have been witnessing here these past few weeks, you may predict that the more aesthetically inclined will seize the opportunity to make art for the city, on the city.
Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring 1UP Crew, Adam Fujita, Almost Over Keep Smiling, Billy Barnacles, Combo-CK, Denis Ouch, Indecline, Jason Naylor, Lunge Box, Matt Siren, Mr. Toll, and Woof Original.
Such a New York sentiment and at the heart of it we believe in our fellow New Yorkers and people in general to pull through this series of cavalcading catastrophes that are befalling us as many of our would-be leaders stand by and watch.
“Times are tough..” – It’s also a new piece this week on BSA Images of the Week from Captain Eyeliner. Let’s look for common ground, fundamental fairness and a common dream – without being tricked into fighting each other.
Meanwhile here’s some of the genius and humorous works this week on New York streets (and one from Tel Aviv), as we nurse our wounds and mourn our dead, and praise our nurses – and so many others. Hang tough people!
Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring Adam Fujita, Almost Over Keep Smiling, Billy Barnacles, Captain Eyeliner, CRKSNK, Lunge Box, Maya Hayuk, Merk, No Sleep, Praxis, Quasar, Sac Six, Tag, and You Go Girl!
“ArchitectureSculpturePaintingMusicPoetryDancePerformingVandalism” At first glance, these forms diverge, yet the broader realm of the arts and culture cannot deny that street …Read More »