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.
People are so careful sometimes to let you know that certain artists are self-taught. You wouldn’t think it so necessary to make the distinction but it’s often an important demarcation for the academic or self-appointed expert who wants to preserve the class divide, assuring that only persons from families who can afford luxury branded education could possibly be awarded highest distinction in any category.
Consider even newer terms like “Outsider Art”. It’s right there in the name, people.
Talk about so-called “outsider artists,” and there is a certain air of incredulity that such original, imaginative, high-quality work and brilliance could come from those who haven’t been to an art academy. The occurrence is likened to a supernatural fluke, something mystical perhaps channeled through this vessel of a person, not indicative of their own talents necessarily.
“Self-taught” is a source of pride for graffiti writers – taught by the university of the streets, a few will tell you. Some street artists like to say they evolved from the Do It Yourself (DIY) subcultures of punk and anarchists. It’s a source of pride, often hard-won. For those making money selling graffiti or street artists’ work in a gallery, however, they’ll check your resume in addition to your canvas. Its easier to assure potential buyers that an artist attended an accredited, if not acclaimed, university or program, or studied under the tutelage of an art star. It’s about branding, for sure, but it is also infused with class.
The Mata Ortiz pottery style from the northern central region of Mexico took hold in the 1990s when the Santa Fe style of home décor became popular in parts of the US. Originating from the Indigenous peoples who lived here and in this region before the Europeans arrived, the geometric designs and stylized animal patterning on pottery fragments from prehistoric cultures like the Mimbres and Casas Grandes inspired a new interest among ceramicists and potters.
A farmer who liked to explore near the remains of Paquime countryside and to discover pottery remnants in this desert and forest region, Juan Quesada took inspiration and began to develop his own pottery designs beginning in the 1960s. Over the course of the next decades, his work was “discovered” by an anthropologist and ceramic collector north of the border, and he helped Quesada to develop a sustainable business of sales and to spread word of his talent. These prized pottery works that later became part of museum private collections eventually spawned a small cottage industry in the surrounding area that is primarily known for ranching and lumber. Today Quesada continues to create his own art and has helped hundreds of family and friends to participate, learn, and thrive with the opportunity he authored.
He was also self-taught.
So, we lift a glass of tequila to him and all the self-taught artists and artisans – and those who share their skills with others.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street here in Mexico, this week featuring ARSK, Aser, Bianca S, BN One, CFN, Damasco, EXPm, Llario, Jeack, Juan Quezada, Mabe, Mecivo, Neth, Pese, RCW, Seyk, and Shutney.
“…. At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, and could reach the nation’s ear, I would, to-day, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.” – Frederick Douglass in Rochester, New York 1852
While the West of the US was having an exceptional drought and extreme heat, when you looked north to Canada, you witnessed 710,000 lightning strikes; Western Canada was a literal firestorm. According to The Guardian, “The previous week, northern Europe and Russia also sweltered in an unprecedented heat bubble. June records were broken in Moscow (34.8C), Helsinki (31.7C), Belarus (35.7C), and Estonia (34.6C).” On the east coast of the US, we suffered 4 days of a heatwave, and many graffiti writers found themselves banished to underground tunnels to keep cool – which was okay with almost everybody.
Remember when you used to say that things were DOPE until you saw your cousin get hooked and spiral downward unglamorously? DOPE took on a new connotation after that. Maybe we have to stop saying, “Yo, that girl is FIRE!” because, you know, fire. That thing that is scorching the Earth, but not because of Climate Change, you freak.
But the graffiti and street art we have been finding here: some of these are FIRE!
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Arcadio, Benjamin Keller, BMC, Cdre, Ditty, Luke Dragon, LWart, Mena, MeresOne, MHI, MoiOne, Rat Rockster, RH Doaz, and Scartoccio.
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week! These are the beautiful long summer days that we all wait for. As New York frees itself from the shackles of Covid and our cloistered lives alone the sense of freedom to explore our city and commune with its fabulous chaos is sweeter still. But suddenly restaurants can’t sell you a bottle of booze, so maybe we also will stop seeing sidewalk sales of cocktails as well. Of course with legal weed in New York, people will still be strange and slightly hallucinated and punching random other New Yorkers, no doubt.
When it comes to freewheeling handmade one of a kind art in the public sphere, we still follow the beat on the street.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Drecks, Le Crue, Mirs Monstrengo, Modomatic, Mort Art, SacSix, SMiLE, Sticker Maul, and TV Head ATX.
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week! Today is PRIDE DAY in NYC and Father’s Day in many parts of the world. Congratulations to us all, queer and/or fathers. We’re happy to show you what we’ve been finding as the spring now stretches into Officially Summer. At night in some neighborhoods, you’ll hear a smattering of fireworks as youthful hooligans are already lighting them – anticipate the 4th of July holiday. A sign of our crazy summer ahead; behold the bang-pop-ratatat-tat-bang-bang-swizzle-shizzle-pop now erupting regularly in empty lots and dead-end streets.
It’s great to see so many kids and youth and adults on bicycles now that the City has made myriad networks of safe pathways throughout the five boroughs. If we could get the police to hand out tickets to car drivers, even school bus drivers, sometimes using the bike lanes to circumvent others and put riders in danger.
The street art and graffiti scene are thick, and you don’t want to miss it here this time of year. While some complain that “vandalism” is reaching 1970s levels, many are happy to see a rotating display of artworks on the city skin at a time when so much of our local cultural and entertainment options have been killed or neutered. The institutional and commercial arts will all come back to New York, we have no doubt. Often, the renaissance begins in the streets.
Aliens, robots, skulls, femme Fatales, cats, cartoons, nationalism, existentialism – the new are runs the gamut and if it upsets the audience, it doesn’t run for long. Catch it while you can
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Acne, Adam Fujita, Almost Over Keep Smiling, Captain Eyeliner, City Kitty, Degrupo, Demure, Eugene Delacroix, Jeremy Novy, Lunge Box, Matt Siren, Modomatic, One Rad Latina, Plannedalism, Raddington Falls, Royce Bannon, Russian Doll NYC, SacSix, Sara Lynne-Leo, Save Art Space, Sticker Maul, The Creator, and Vy.
Last week we brought you the first annual Jersey City Mural Festival with generously scaled murals and unbridled color. Muralism isn’t new but mural festivals are now a dominant vehicle or platform of expression on the streets where artists get up and create community. We have always championed the cause of the artist and cheer when they are given the opportunity to work – better even if they get properly paid for the work that they do.
That said, we still admire the small, uncommissioned, one-off pieces, and we’ve always documented that in whatever city we go to: In a way, that is what we actually consider to be street art. Unsanctioned and undercover, you’ll discover the most curious missives as you hike from mural to mural. Don’t miss them! Enjoy.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring 7 Souls Deep, Adrian Wilson, Below Key, Drecks, Early Riser NYC, Ghaston Art, Hiss, Lunge Box, Miyok, Modomatic, Mort Art, Night Owl, Outer Source, Timothy Goodman, Tyler Ives, and Turtle Caps.
It comes as no surprise that the explosion of new graffiti in New York is evident across the river in Jersey City, where we have been hanging out the last few day for the Jersey City Mural Festival. And for those who know their history, it will also come as no surprise that we always dig the illegal unapproved organic graffiti and street art as much as that which has received official approval from our city fathers and mothers.
So here’s new pieces and tags from under the bridges, passageways, and inside the abandoned buildings in JC. The looseness of line and exuberance of color combinations tell us that graff kids are feeling at liberty to get up wherever necessary to get out their name. In the oceanic metaphor of ebbs and flows – this wave is flowing, bro.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Acro, Amore, Carbo, Chaos, Chees, Dzel, Gear, Hugo Girl, Jinx, Loser, Manik, MES, Nate Paints, Pesco, Reato, Rozr, Sean 9 Lugo, Serbo, Short, Sophie Xeon, Sugar, and Visit.
The volume of Street Art has picked up full steam with more graffiti on walls than many OG graff fans can remember were on the trains in the 80s. Competition for spots large and small is more fierce than a Saturday afternoon rush at the nail salon. The quantity of pieces and tags and stencils ebbs and flows, as does the quality and freshness. But looking at it as you walk makes you feel like New York street and cultural life is in full bloom. Large-scale and small, the works appear like mushrooms popping up in the urban forest after a late-spring rain storm.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Conse, D. Scribblings, Damien Mitchel, False, Fhake, Kest Gak, Lorenzo Masnah, Matt Siren, Menace Resa, Michael Zelehoski, Mint & Serf, Mort Art, Royce Bannon, Shiro, Smells, Swif, The Yit Foreward, Toxic, UFO 907, and Zexor.
This wooden sculpture installed in McCarren Park in Williamsburg is made from recycled wood from boarded-up windows. It will remain in place until October 2021.
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week, where we are keeping our minds expanded and eyes wide open as the transformation of society and its fabric is happening right before us. We’re living in a bubble, or on one – an everything bubble at the end of a boomer age that will pop. Institutions compromised, media compromised, social net torn, leaders purchased and adrift. Late spring romanticism buoys us, as does the removal of masks out doors and sometimes inside them. New York is back, but its not sure.
And Jerome Powell finally announced that the dollar is in the gallows – or will rather be once he has successfully inflated to its ultimate death. No, we have no advice – No one is listening anyway.
So here’s our weekly interview with the street, this time featuring: Aaron Hauck, Bastard Bot, Goog, Matt Siren, Mel, Mort Art, Neckface, Royce Bannon, Sac Sic, Samantha French, Stay Busy, Stikman, TNAW, and Winston Tseng.
Welcome to Brooklyn, where the lilacs are in bloom and people are smoking weed in the park, like it was 1985 or something. Remember summer of ’85 in Washington Square Park with rambunctious teens backward skating in the dry fountain on roller skates and people were blasting “Shout” by Tears for Fears on their boxes?
As the COVID positivity rate in New York dove toward 1% this week, we’re all encouraging each other to take off masks, but no one is sure when and where it’s completely safe, except when taking a shower by yourself. On the street and on the Subway the results are mixed, with most New Yorkers opting for being safe.
So here’s our weekly interview with the street, this time featuring: 7 Line Art Studio, Acne, Cabaio, Freakotrophic, G Money NFT, Jet, JJ Veronis, Jowl, Luke Dragon 911, No Sleep, Save Art Space, and Zephyr.
Nomadland won the Oscar for the best movie this year, a fact that you may not know because A. The Oscars are nearly completely irrelevant, and B. Covid era-awards programs have been the equivalent of watching your dad unclogging the kitchen drain. An unvarnished story about a growing ecosystem of Americans living in cars, trucks, and RVs in parking lots across the country, Nomadland toes a line between blaming neo-liberal vulture capitalism/ de-industrialization of the last 40 years and dipping into the American myths of people who just want to live their life free and unencumbered.
Meanwhile, in New York more people are finding the rent to be too high and are moving into RVs, according to The Daily News this week. In the article they speak with Giovanni, a first responder whom we were probably clapping for last year when he was saving lives from Covid.
In the article Giovanni says, “I was an EMT… you want to talk struggling‚ that was really rough,” he explained. “I had to have somebody rent out my living room just to be able to cover the rent. That’s how hard it was. After doing that for three, four years, I was like, I’m done with this. I quit. I’m over it.”
“I went to college, I did pretty much everything that I was told I was supposed to do in order to have a good life. And it didn’t turn out that way,” he explained.
As the moneyed Real Estate kingpins are fighting against extending a rent moratorium in the city to August 31 and to end moratoriums across the country, you have to wonder where everyone will go once the stimulus checks have dried up, inflation kicks in, and landlords evict people.
Meanwhile, we’re following the street art in a number of neighborhoods in New York this week – and wondering where the topical or political works are. The current generation who are putting work on the streets may venture into politics, but only identity politics. BLM, trans rights, that sort of thing.
New York is headed toward 70% vaccinated soon and the city is actually talking about offering to vaccinate tourists! Soon you can go to the Met, see a Broadway show, eat dinner in Little Italy, get cursed out by a homeless guy, and get a stab in the arm from Pfizer! New York, New York! It’s a wonderful town!
So here’s our weekly interview with the street, this time featuring: 2 Much, Armyan, Cautious5, Cekis, City Kitty, Cramcept, Denton Burrows, GIZ, Healer, Homesick, Leviticus, LNE Crew, Lunge Box, MalincheArt, MeresOne, MrBbaby, No Sleep, Paul Richard, Ponzi, Ramiro Davaro-Comas, Smart, and Stikki Peaches.
Hooray Hooray, first of May!” chanted your cousin Felix, “outdoor fucking starts today!”
You both broke out in peals of laughter while your mom was walking out from the kitchen with a basket of garlic bread for your Saturday night spaghetti dinner. “What did you just say??”
It’s hard to believe it’s May already, and the smell of lilacs and aerosol paint and pot smoke is in the air in New York again. Ahhhhhhh. Duck between the skateboards and the hellions delivering Chinese on electric bikes, and you’ll see the chess players are setting up again in the park.
For the 12th week in a row, the President of the United States hasn’t tweeted something glorifying violence or attacking faith in public institutions, and people are beginning to mention the “H” word in reference to the rate of Covid-19 vaccinations in New York.
Keep squeezing your silver and keep your eyes open and don’t get hit by any NFTs. They seem to be dropping everywhere
So here’s our weekly interview with the street, this time featuring: 2 Much, Andrea Carlson, Banksy, Bastard Bot, Bueno, Free Britney, Homsick, Marcos De La Fuente, Myles, Posterboy, Resop, Same PPP, Tom Bob, Vanessa Alvarez, WGE, and ZigZag.
“ArchitectureSculpturePaintingMusicPoetryDancePerformingVandalism” At first glance, these forms diverge, yet the broader realm of the arts and culture cannot deny that street …Read More »
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
