BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAYThe Victorian era has been gently affecting the instrumentation and arrangement of art bands and the fashions of shabby chic sections of Bohemia since the steam punks started wearing dog-eared top hats and ruffles in the late 1990s and the ripples of this romance continues to gather into vaporous clouds in these early 10’s.
Brent Houzenga (photo © Brock Brake)
Street Artist Brent Houzenga fell under a deep sepia spell when he stumbled across a box of vintage 1890s photographs in the trash and for the last couple of years he’s been scheming on how to bring these anonymous individuals back to life on the street. Billing himself as “The Hybrid Pioneer” a.k.a “The Original Prairie Pirate”, the spritely Houzenga hails from Des Moines, Iowa, and is transfixed by these faces and fashions, re-imagining these earlier travelers in a context they never saw, and in the process he creates a bridge between centuries.
Photographer and BSA contributor Brock Brake trailed Brent recently and shares these images with BSA readers.
Brent Houzenga (photo © Brock Brake)
Brent Houzenga (photo © Brock Brake)
Brent Houzenga (photo © Brock Brake)
Pieces hung in a tight salon configuration on the street. Brent Houzenga (photo © Brock Brake)
Brent Houzenga (photo © Brock Brake)
Brent Houzenga (photo © Brock Brake)
Brent Houzenga (photo © Brock Brake)
Brent Houzenga (photo © Brock Brake)
Brent Houzenga (photo © Brock Brake)
Brent Houzenga (photo © Brock Brake)
“Remixed Remains”, a current solo show at Pawn Works Gallery in Chicago by Brent Houzenga, features new works from this box of old photographs.
“We are really hyped on this guys work though he has not been very exposed within the street art world – as he is in Des Moines and sort of an outsider artist,” says Nick Marzullo of Pawn Works Gallery. Houzenga, however, could not be too much of an outsider, as he has some work in the collection of The Museum of Fine Art in Des Moines and Indianapolis, notes Marzullo, but his “installation is finally finished and the space is like nothing we’ve seen before.”
For details on “Remized Remains” click on the link below:
