All posts tagged: Bushwick

Artists Continue to Fight for Affordable Housing in NYC

January 18, 2018 Artists

They’re not coming here to dine at the Olive Garden or take a tour through the Target.

They’re here for “Hello Dolly”, “Hamilton”, and “Cats”. They’re here for Billie Joel at the Garden, “Springstein on Broadway” and the “David Bowie” opening at the Brooklyn Museum. They’re here for the virtual reality exhibition “Celestial Bodies” at the Museum of Sex, Picasso and Marina Abramović at MoMa, and the 34,000 items in the Met’s Costume Institute. They’re here for Jazz at Birdland, punk at Manitobas, the singers at Joe’s Pub and dancing at “The Dirty Circus” party at House of Yes in Bushwick.

Whether its EDM or country music, Ai Wei Wei or Shepard Fairey, they’re reading about the arts from writers in the The New York Times, ArtForum, Hyperallergic, Time Out, The Village Voice, Daily News and right here.

Brooklyn Skyline. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The creative economy of artists, actors, dancers, musicians, photographers, curators, designers, art directors, architects, producers, writers, authors, painters, poets, coaches, trainers, teachers, filmmakers, lighting designers, stage designers, software programmers, prop makers, furniture designers, singers, chefs, hairdressers, makeup artists, fashion designers, and yes, Street Artists all are the contributors to the valuable cultural lifeblood of New York City.

And all of these people need a place to live and work, to create, to practice, to try and fail, and to try and succeed.

They also need to be able to pay the rent. That has been less and less and less possible in the last three decades at least with skyrocketing prices chasing low and medium income people from one neighborhood to the next.

These cultural creators have been moving from abandoned neighborhood to neglected neighborhood – in the process most often making the neighborhood more desireable – and then pushed out by the real estate investors. An effort to stem this unfair, brutal and insulting process, activists and artists created The Loft Law, which saved thousand artists in the 1980s and 1990s and it protected many Live/Work creative spaces and the cultural richness of the City that Never Sleeps. A second wave of Live/Work spaces were given protection via Albany in 2010 in a 2nd Loft Law that covers creatives who brought neighborhoods around the city like Williamsburg and Bushwick back to life as desireable creative meccas.

Yes, this is one of the stories about gentrification – and yes, protection of affordable space for artists is not more important than affordable apartments for every single New Yorker. There are many programs afoot put in place ( please see: Mayor de Blasio Announces City Secured More Affordable Housing in 2017 Than in Any Prior Year.)

But that’s not why we’re writing today.

We’re writing to support all artists who give to this city and would like to assure that our elected officials, landlords, and the Loft Board remember their responsibility to respect and protect the rights of tenants, their families, their children, their grandchildren, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, mothers, fathers.

Many tenants in the last couple of years have questioned whether the protections afforded under the Loft Law are being run over roughshod or ignored altogether, according to many artists you’ll speak with. There are accusations that hard-won rules are being skipped over, artists are being coerced, that clearly defined processes are being foreshortened and rammed through without input.

It’s an old story, a swinging of the pendulum of justice toward the people and away from the people, but one that needs to be righted occasionally. At this moment, with the Mayor so clearly expressing a desire to protect the rights of the New York creative industry for affordable safe loft Live/Work spaces, it seems possible.

Here is the press release for a protest by 475 Kent tenants today at the meeting of the New York City Loft Board.

475 Kent tenants are asking that you ALL come out and support them.
Loft Board Meeting
2:00 PM
January 18, 2018
New York City Loft Board
22 Reade Street, 1st floor
New York, New York

FAME GAME – 20 Years of Skewville, Escape from New York

September 15, 2016 Artists

Pivotal figures on New York’s homegrown Street Art scene tell BSA that they are getting out while there is still a chance.

Skewville (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Rough edged humorists and twin brothers Droo and Ad Deville are closing down the bong factory in Queens and the former Factory Fresh gallery space in Bushwick, Brooklyn and heading out of town.

No one is saying it is for good.

Beginning on the streets as art hoodlums named Skewville in 1996, the brothers embraced a netherworld of art-making that adroitly courted fame among peers, echoing the graffiti credo of claiming territory, commanding space, and earning respect from a fan base of informed New York urban art watchers.

Skewville. These dogs were put up on this wall on the LES in 2003. They remained hidden under a billboard. The billboard came down in 2012. Shortly after I took this photo the wall was painted black, including the dogs. The dogs are still visible all in black. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“It was just a New York term. Don’t step on my dogs,” Ad Deville explains of his and Droo’s flat wooden sneakers; screen printed, drilled, cut and wired together to sling over street lamp wires.

A New York signature on New York streets, these archetypes of modern city life could be seen silhouetted at a distance and read in detail when you got closer. A genius tag that incorporated street and school stories of their youth in Queens – stories of gangs and drug dealers and tributes to the dead and the marking of territories.

Skewville (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Through the repetition of tossing their tag across the city their “flying dogs” became their unique signature on the skyline. An unheard of way to “get up” that combined the outlaw ethos of graffiti, the repetitive logo-spreading of advertising, and the D.I.Y. craft-making of what was beginning to be commonly called Street Art.

Through the 2000s they took the wooden sneakers around the world and Ad shows us a diary he made that records much of it. “This book is everywhere we tossed. I made a record of it. This is everywhere we went, the first thousand pairs. Everywhere we went – we brought this and documented it.”

Skewville with BAST, TIKI, El Celso and EKG. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

He reads aloud what he is seeing as he flips pages. “Droo missed a bunch of times, everyone was looking… Right in front of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame….” They favored hitting wires near museums and high visibility spots not known for a graffiti or Street Art scene. There are even photos of Skewville sneakers hanging off wires on Utah Park City ski slopes.

5,000 plus pairs, more than they can count now, ended up in London, Seattle, New York, Mexico, Norway, Amsterdam, South Africa, – enough places for Droo to say they were global.

Now the Factory Fresh building is sold – the site of the early Bushwick gallery Ad founded with Ali Ha. They had leap-frogged Williamsburg into Bushwick from running the Orchard Street Art Gallery on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Back when they arrived the ‘Wick had two other galleries that most people knew of – Ad Hoc and English Kills.

Skewville and FAILE. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Meanwhile they’re leaving Queens too. Droo is putting away all the unshipped bongs that emulate Coke and Heineken bottles and school lunch boxes and they’re going through the flatfiles of artworks the guys say they stole from the streets and inherited or bought from friends.

In between the epic era of flying dogs and today they say both had a lot of adventures and laughter and fights and even a period of silence between the two of them over the direction their fine art and commercial careers were headed. Recalling stories there is a lot of joking and they talk over each others sentences, sometimes quibbling over points, or clarifying details and storylines.

Never short of creative ideas, these guys have brought a hilarious blend of street humor that has consistently mocked the over-serious bravado of graffiti/street codes and the pissing matches over territory and style. They have also lampooned consumer culture and played with the obviously manipulative sloganeering of advertising that sells us stuff we don’t need.

Skewville, GoreB, Tiki. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

With rollers and wheatpastes and sculptural installations on the street, on roofs, on walls, in empty lots, and in galleries; they have blended signage and sarcasm with the vernacular of daily life and blocky 2D figure studies that mash Picasso and dime store greeting cards from the 1970s. They’ve recycled garbage cans, milk crates, soda bottles, transister radios, air conditioner panels, suitcases, car tires, and electrical conduit. They’ve screen printed t-shirts, posters, and artworks, and jigsaw cut and constructed enormous boomboxes and merry-go-rounds and illuminated signs that say stuff like “Yo-Yo” and “Sucks Either Way”.

In their hands graffiti throwies and bubble tags suddenly got sharp corners and comically warped perspectives, blocky letters seem obvious but their smart-aleck slogans cryptically allude to conmen and street vernacular. “Brooklyn Beef”, “This Ain’t Kansas”, “Keep On Grass”, “Next Level”, “Today’s Special”, “Act Now”, “Check Yo Self”, “Step Off”, “Brooklyn Flavor”, “Fame Game.”

Skewville, Dan Witz, EKG, ELC, BAST, El Celso and Michael DeFeo. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“For us there are a lot of layers that go over all of the realm,” Ad says and talks about how the game has changed and how the commercial and marketing aspect that new artists bring to the streets has been discouraging to him and the people he came up with.

He shows us the walls he says he actually stole from the street to create a canvas lining a basement show in 2006 with a few artists whose names became familiar to larger audiences and says that this was when the walls actually looked like a Street Art scene was in effect.

Skewville (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“In 2006 there was this show in a basement in Brooklyn – this guy Lou (Auguste) did a documentary called ‘Open Air.’ It was Faile, Bast, Aiko, Dan Witz, ESPO, Tiki Jay One, Michale De Feo, us. I curated the show. We lined the entire gallery with walls we stole off the streets. Nothing was for sale.” That really wasn’t the point, he says, even though already there were already people giving street art tours in Manhattan by then.

But when were the golden years exactly? In the documentary Adam was already lamenting the state of Street Art and its soul-crushing insincerity. “It’s going to die out soon. It’s going to implode,” he says. Elsewhere he says “I think the Internet is what made it so big but that is also what is killing it.”

“You kill the mystique. That’s what sucks about the Internet.”

Skewville (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Ten years later he has invited the Internet to see and paw through boxes of what he has packed for storage just before escaping from Brooklyn. Truthfully, it looks like the brothers are going to need a small warehouse.

Lest you think it’s been easy, the guys can tell you about being overlooked in their early days by galleries and feeling neatly dissed repeatedly by early bloggers who considered themselves Street Art gatekeepers.

Skewville (photo © Jaime Rojo)

On top of it, in 2003 the US Attorney General John Ashcroft launched “Operation Pipe Dreams” and cracked down on companies selling drug paraphernalia – and their bong business was nearly decimated because it seemed that their products did not appear to be for smoking tobacco.

These days their art is only occasionally on the street however they’ve found serious collectors in certain parts of Europe who snap up their canvasses and embrace their new ideas, so even though Droo’s got kids and a regular job and is moving to Long Island and Adam is talking about Berlin, you can wager that Skewville will simply continue to shapeshift and re-configure.

Skewville (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“When we did that Orchard Street show of sneakers in 2003 nobody was interested in them. I remember I was selling a pair for $20 and some guy was trying to talk me down to $15,” Adam says with a half smile. “I have that entire show boxed up and you can all just suck it now.” Recent prices of one pair have topped $600 so apparently $20 would have been a good deal.

In an interview with BSA a few years ago Ad told us a similar tale of grit and regeneration. “Instead of feeling bad that made us work harder to come out with different ideas and make new stuff”.

Skewville (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Just before they both get out of New York we want to know if this seriously means they are quitting the streets and they both say they are ready to keep pursuing other art projects, but not to worry, they’ll still be in the game.

Twenty years of Skewville and of course the scene has changed. Chasing a street rep, a fine art name, and amassing an archive of enough art to mount a mid-career retrospective never would have happened if they hadn’t done the work and made the hustle. But the brothers want to make one thing clear about their seemingly zigzagging path.

“We didn’t do things to make money, we did it for fame,” Ad says.

Check.

Skewville. Originally on 11 Spring building. (photo © Jaime Rojo).

With the galleries and shows, Ad and Ali also helped out a lot of other artists to get opportunities and exposure.

One by one New York artists neighborhoods are rapidly gentrified, ever higher rents are chasing people out, and the art in the streets often means legal murals. They love to make fun of the new kids from the Midwest and the beards and the Street Art tours. When it comes to art and artists in NYC, leaving the city is a refrain we’ve been hearing for five years.

“Skewville is officially leaving New York, at least temporarily,” says Ad. He announces it in that dramatic way that tells you he is looking for a slogan, and examining his our existence.

“The true question is, ‘Is it even worth staying?’ ”

Skewville (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Skewville. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Up In Smoke. Skewville (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Bushwick Is Hot Now. Hurry!

May 29, 2013 Artists

Bushwick Open Studios is Paved With Street Art

Brooklyn’s already percolating artists neighborhood called Bushwick continues to thrive despite the circling of real estate agents, lifestyle brands and celebrity chefs. Born in the mid-late 2000s as it’s older sister Williamsburg to the West began to professionalize, this noisily industrial and dirty artists haven got a reprieve from gentrifying forces when the deep recession slowed the rise of rents for artist spaces, which remained still relatively cheap by Manhattan’s standards. Today the area boasts a diverse influx of artists, students, cultural workers, and entrepreneurs who are experimenting and collaborating on projects and shows.

Spagnola (photo © Jaime Rojo)

That radical economic downturn probably also nurtured the nascent Street Art scene here, which was one of the early outliers of a cultural influx as artists and explorers began to skateboard to the local delis and stare at laptops for hours in the one or two cafes that offered Wi-Fi. Outcroppings of this new art movement combined with old-school graffiti to pop up on selected concrete and corrugated walls, signposts, and deteriorated blocks where the authorities were disinterested and the neighbors only partially curious in their activities.

It’s an age-old New York story by now; a neglected or winding down post industrial neighborhood reacts to the incoming and odd-looking artists with a sort of bemused affection, happy that at least the block is getting some attention for a change. Puzzlement eventually leads to familiarity and then buying you a sandwich – and then asking you to paint a mural inside his foyer. While national and international Street Artists were already making Bushwick a stopping point thanks to some of the earliest galleries like Ad Hoc and Factory Fresh, the scene recently got newly shot in the arm by a local resident who is facilitating much desired legal wall space to a crowd of artists who otherwise would be hunting and hitting up less-than-legal spots. Not to worry, there are plenty of aerosol renegades and ruffians scaling walls at night too; this is New York after all, yo.

Zimad (photo © Jaime Rojo)

But for now the Bushwick Collective, as it is newly christened by wall-man Joe Ficalora, has infused an adrenaline rush of creativity inside and outside the area that is roughly bordered by Flushing Avenue, Starr Street, Knickerbocker Avenue and Cypress Avenue. The Collective has guidelines on content (nudity, politics, profanity) so the works are not completely unfettered in the true spirit of Street Art/graffiti, but most artists are happy for the luxury of time to complete their work and not look over their shoulder. With a selection of murals that are densely gathered and easy to walk through, the new collection has attracted attention from media folks (and tour guides) on the main island brave enough to venture into the gritty wilds of Brooklyn for a Street Art safari.

As Bushwick hosts its 7^th annual open studios cultural event this weekend, intrepid pedestrians who march through opening parties, rooftop DJ jams, dance performances, live bands, transcendent costumery, sidewalk barbecues, open fire hydrants and more than 600 open artist studios will also be buffeted by a visual feast on the streets themselves. As long as the L Train is running (fingers crossed) you can just get off at the Morgan stop. From there it should be pretty easy for any curious art-in-the-street fan to be regaled with big and small works of graffiti, Street Art, tags, wheat-pastes, stencils, rollers, murals, and ad hoc installations all day and night.

Trek Matthews (photo © Jaime Rojo)

A shout out to Arts In Bushwick, an all volunteer organization that has steadily grown and fostered an open sense of community inclusiveness each year for Bushwick Open Studios and to the many volunteers who have contributed greatly to the success of many of the cultural workers here. Without an open studios event many of these shy and quirky artists and performers would simply have stayed unknown and unknowable.

So far Bushwick still has the unbridled imperfect D.I.Y. enthusiasm of an experiment where anything can happen, but grey ladies with kooky bright colored spectacles have already begun to flip it over to inspect it with one hand while pinching their nose with the other, so savor this authentic moment. Ethereal by nature, you know the Street Art scene is never guaranteed to you tomorrow – neither is the mythical artists bohemian hamlet of New York’s yesteryear. For now we’re hopping on our bikes to catch a golden age of Bushwick before it’s repackaged and sold back to us at a price we can’t afford.

The first series of images are walls from the Bushwick Collective, followed by a series of walls that you may also see in the neighborhood.

MOMO (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Solus (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Alice Pasquini (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Toofly and Col Wallnuts (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Stik (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Billy Mode and Chris Stain (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Nard (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Overunder and LNY (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Pixel Pancho (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Brett Flanigan and Cannon Dill (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Gats (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Sheryo and The Yok (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Here are a series of walls not related to Bushwick Collective.

ECB (photo © Jaime Rojo)

A portion of a wall by the 907 Crew, Sadue. Don Pablo Pedro, Smells, Cash4, and Keely (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Phetus (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Rubin (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Peeta (photo © Jaime Rojo)

BR1 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Apolo Torres (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Chris, Veng, RWK and ECB (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Cruz (photo © Jaime Rojo)

KUMA (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Free Humanity (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Keely and Deeker (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Icy & Sot (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Kremen (photo © Jaime Rojo)

For a full list of activities, studios, schedules and directions for Bushwick Open Studios 2013 click HERE.

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Please note: All content including images and text are © BrooklynStreetArt.com, unless otherwise noted. We like sharing BSA content for non-commercial purposes as long as you credit the photographer(s) and BSA, include a link to the original article URL and do not remove the photographer’s name from the .jpg file. Otherwise, please refrain from re-posting. Thanks!

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Images of the Week: 01.27.13

January 27, 2013 Artists

Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring 4 Burners Crew, Bast, Billi Kid, Bunny M, Doug Nox aka the Harlequinade, El Sol 25, Entes y Pesimo, How & Nosm, JMR, Kobra, Rubin, and Stikman.

Top image > KOBRA (photo © Jaime Rojo)

KOBRA. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Rubin . 4 Burners Crew (photo © Jaime Rojo)

JMR in Dallas ( yes that Dallas). (photo © JMR)

How & Nosm covered the windows for their big pop-up show opening this week with Jonathan Levine Gallery. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Click here to read How & Nosm Confessions.

Stikman continues to flirts with dangerous dames. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

El Sol 25 has a new batch of off-kilter kollage. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Intro at Buswhwick Five Points (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Intro at Bushwick Five Points (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Doug Nox AKA The Harlequinade (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Bast (photo © Jaime Rojo)

bunny M (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Billi Kid goes over himself with his own promotional beer. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Entes in Lima, Peru. (photo © Entes)

Entes y Pesimo at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Lima, Peru. (photo © Entes)

Untitled. Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. January 2013 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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ECB Photographed by Joel Zimmer

December 24, 2012 Artists

We’re counting down the last 12 days of 2012 with Street Art photos chosen by BSA readers. Each one was nominated because it has special meaning to a reader or is simply a great photograph from 2012 that they think is great. Our sincere thanks to everyone who shared their favorite images.

Our fifth entry comes from Joel Zimmer from NYC, who nominates this photo taken in Bushwick, Brooklyn in NYC. Many Street Art photographers these days like to experiment with their craft in addition to simply documenting someone elses, and we’re all in favor. Here Joel experiments and bends the planes of the wall to reach out to the viewer. Joel explains that this is a triple exposure of the ECB mural with an Over Under mural under it. He says he made the image “in camera” using a Yashica-A and Portra 400.

ECB, Overunder. (photo © Joel Zimmer)

Visit Joel Zimmer’s site to see more photos of his work here.

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Check out the BSA Images of 2012 video here.

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REKA’S Ladies in Bushwick, Homage to Sandy

November 20, 2012 Artists

Australian Street Artist Reka was in town in the wake of the hurricane named Sandy and he found his plans for painting disrupted by flooded train lines, but eventually got up in three places in Brooklyn. On tour from his native Melbourne since July, Bushwick is just one more name to be tacked onto the list of places for Reka (or Reka One or James Reka) along with Amsterdam, Berlin, Bristol, London, Milan, Paris and the countryside in France.

REKA. Bushwick Five Points, Nov, 2012 NYC (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Here he brought his signature abstract portraits rendered in ochre, beige, moss, brown, black, white, rusted crimson and spice red. Typically illustrative of the female form, these figures are full of action with limbs and hands and elbows akimbo, gesticulating into air, flustered and animated with limbs bending from rivets at the joints. With wavelets of the darkest hair spilling and often with breasts barely pinned in or spinning free to make waves, Reka’s ladies in Brooklyn are unhinged consternation, contemplative and concerned, somehow heavy in their cubist side/front viewed expressions.

REKA. Bushwick Five Points, Nov, 2012 NYC (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The forms photographed here by Jaime Rojo may be cognizant of the destruction that New York is still dealing with, where homes are being bulldozed, many school buildings are permanently closed, checks are lost in the mail, and many families are reliant on others for food and shelter. Rendered in colors we associate with autumn, these new Reka figures are of this moment in Brooklyn, even as the artist moves on in search of his next spot to paint.

REKA. Bushwick Five Points, Nov, 2012 NYC (photo © Jaime Rojo)

REKA. Bushwick Five Points, Nov, 2012 NYC . Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

REKA. Bushwick, Nov, 2012 NYC (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Fun Friday 11.16.12

November 16, 2012 Artists

Here’s our greatest hits list for Fun Friday!

1. Lister “Unsung Heroes” (LNDN/New Castle)
2. Abe Lincoln Jr., Robbie Busch “Split Seven” (BK)
3. Portraiture Group Show in Bushwick tonight (BK)
4. Silent Soho Auction For Boardwalks in Coney and Rockaways Saturday
5 Miss Van Going Wild in Rome
6. Cash4 in”Ca$h For” at Tender Trap in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
7. Mexican Collective Sublevarte Colectivo “The Persistence of Dreams” in Gowanus BK
8. L3SUP3RD3MON and ZLY (VIDEO)
9. MadC and The Jurassic Park Wall (VIDEO)
10. OLEK: “Nobody Can Hurt Me Without My Permission” (VIDEO)

Lister “Unsung Heroes” (LNDN/New Castle)

Anthony Lister’s two shows at The Outsiders Gallery titled “Unslung Heroes” are taking place simultaneously at The Outsiders London and New Castle outlets at the same time. “I try to combine the highbrow and lowbrow,” says Lister, “creating analogies which allow the viewer to feel comfortable with subjects that maybe they’ve made snap judgements on before.”

Both shows are now open.

Anthony Lister in NYC (photo © Jaime Rojo)

For further information regarding these shows click here.

Abe Lincoln Jr., Robbie Busch “Split Seven” (BK)

Split Seven is a fictitious rock n’ roll experience with both artists producing fabricated albums from invented Punk Rock and Heavy Metal bands. Abe Lincoln Jr. and Robbie Busch show “Split Seven” opens tonight at Mighty Tanaka Gallery in Brooklyn.

Abe Lincoln Jr. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

For further information regarding this show click here.

Portraiture Group Show in Bushwick tonight (BK)

At the Low Brow Artique Gallery in Bushwick, Brooklyn artists Rachel Hayes, Jilly Ballistic, Vahge, and Vexta explore the discipline of portraiture with their group exhibition “Rewriting Portraiture” opening today. “Typically the subject of paintings throughout art history, Rewriting Portraiture establishes how those who are the object of desire visually depict their realities.”

For further information regarding this show click here.

Silent Soho Auction For Boardwalks in Coney and Rockaways Saturday

“Bring Back The Boardwalks” is a silent auction with 100% of the proceeds going to the reconstruction of the severely damaged communities of Coney Island and The Rockaways. Several Fine and Street Artists have donated works for this benefit including: Curtis LOVE ME, David Ellis, Dennis McNett, Distort, FAILE, Futura, Jeremy Fish, Shie Moreno, Shepard Fairey and SWOON among others. This event takes place Saturday, Trais Gallery in Soho, located at 76 Wooster Street, 2nd Floor, New York, NY.

Love Me (photo © Jaime Rojo)

For further information regarding this benefit click here.

Miss Van Going Wild in Rome

“Their faces concealed, these disturbing Venuses are both victims and predators, living their lives according to their instincts and feelings.” Miss Van’s new solo show “Wild at Heart” opens tomorrow at the Dorothy Circus Gallery in Rome, Italy.

Miss Van. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

For further information regarding this show click here.

Also happening this week:

Cash4 has a new show “Ca$h For” presented by The Superior Bugout at the Tender Trap in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Click here for more details.

The Interference Archive in The Gowanus, Brooklyn is hosting the Mexican Collective Sublevarte Colectivo with a show titled “The Persistence of Dreams”. This show opens today. Click here for more details.

L3SUP3RD3MON and ZLY (VIDEO)

The two artists paint a wall in the neighborhood of Coyoacán in Mexico City. From Alejandro Schlauer.

MadC and The Jurassic Park Wall (VIDEO)

OLEK: “Nobody Can Hurt Me Without My Permission” (VIDEO)

Images of the Week 11.11.12

November 11, 2012 Artists

Here’s our weekly interview with the street, today featuring AVOID, Dart, EKG, FKDL, Hellbent, How & Nosm, Ian McGillivray, ICH, Phlegm, Pop Mortem, See One, Veng from Robots Will Kill, Werds, Willow, and You Go Girl!

One note as we mark Veterans Day today in the US and this week had the re-election of a President, nothing can be more patriotic than helping out your neighbor in a time of need – and many of our neighbors here in New York still need your help. Please do what you can, whether it’s to donate food or supplies, offer a hand, or send money. Thanks.

You Go Girl (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Willow at Bushwick Five Points (photo © Jaime Rojo)

ICH (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Avoid (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Phlegm did this gate when he was in NYC in the Summer. Sandy forced the gate to come down and we were able to finally flick it. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dart (photo © Jaime Rojo)

EKG and Veng RWK (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Artist Unknown (photo © Jaime Rojo)

FKDL at Bushwick Five Points (photo © Jaime Rojo)

See One and Hellbent. Detail of their collaboration at Bushwick Five Points. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Ian “Pop Mortem” McGillivray (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Nec Spec Nec Met #1 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

See One (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Artist Unknown (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Werds on the back of the box truck. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

This mystery man with a bright happy yellow head was caught walking by the new How & Nosm Houston Wall. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Images of the Week 10.14.12

October 14, 2012 Artists

This week we saw pumpkins piled at the corner deli, the Yanks pushing on toward the series, Streisand returning at 70 to sing again in Brooklyn, that Rasta MC goin’ hard over his stack of speakers outside the barbershop on a sunny cool day, Christopher Columbus as a giant sculpture in somebody’s living room, and we can confirm that underground art parties are now moving to Bed Stuy, bypassing Bushwick. Stranger things will undoubtedly keep happening because Halloween is on Wednesday this year; pretty much guaranteeing a solid week of sexy horror on the street because people won’t know when to party, and you’re going to see at least 3 mock boxing fights between two guys dressed up as Obama and Romney with gloves because the Presidential election is 11/6. The actual 2nd match-up of the candidates is this Tuesday in Long Island to debate. Are the Yankees playing that night?

So here’s our weekly interview with the street, an eclectic trip that takes us to Brooklyn, Paris, Baltimore, and Russia with Cern, Overunder, Philippe HÉRARD, Lili Luciole, Concrete Jungle, Hot Tea, Love Child, Dain, Sorta, and Cynthia von Buhler. We start of with this faux neighborhood painted by Concrete Jungle on a building in Vladivostok.

Concrete Jungle in Vladivostok, Russia. (photo © Concrete Jungle)

Concrete Jungle in Vladivostok, Russia. Detail. (photo © Concrete Jungle)

Concrete Jungle in Vladivostok, Russia. (photo © Concrete Jungle)

As the temperature is dropping to the 40s – 50s in October, it’s good there is some Hot Tea to keep the chill off. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Hot Tea (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Love Child (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dain (photo © Jaime Rojo)

A new portrait of Bob Marley and Haile Selassie via SORTA in Baltimore (photo © SORTA)

WK Interact is scaling a wall, possibly breaking in. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Cynthia von Buhler “Speakeasy Dollhouse” (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Thank you to BSA Collaborator Sandra Hoj for her Parisian Report.

Thank you to Concrete Jungle for exclusive images for BSA of their sick mural in Vladivostok, Russia.

Thank you SORTA for keeping us up on Baltimore developments.

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Gilf! Sows Flowers in the Urban Wild

October 2, 2012 Artists, Detroit, Michigan, On the Street

A one woman urban renewal project, Street Artist Gilf! has been prettifying the decay in a few cities over the last year or so with hand made fluorescent blooms. Not purely decorative, she thinks of them as sculptural, a public works project, and a sort of rorschach test that reveals as much about the audience as the artist. As with any artworks put out on the street, the public will render a verdict. In New York, they ride for about a minute before someone rips them off the wall – to take home in many cases. Also, New Yorkers don’t like “pretty” as much as they like tough stuff – skulls, violence, brooding, etc. With recent blooms popping up inside abandoned buildings, it will be interesting to see how long the garden grows.

We’ve collected a number of these for you to look at together, a sort of urban bouquet for Tuesday. While not wholely representative of Gilf!s various ventures on the street, these installations have a certain signature that’s revealed through these shots from Brooklyn, Baltimore, and Detroit.

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FUN FRIDAY 09.14.12

September 14, 2012 Artists

It’s a BSA Fun Friday and we’re gonna tell you all about some stoopendous Street Art shows this weekend from Brooklyn to Chicago to Paris to Vienna but first….Everybody get up and do some FF dancing like my homeboy PSY in Korea.

This sh*t is Gangnsta, bro.

SEOUL, YOU THINK YOU GOT TALENT…

1. VIDEO “Gangnam Style” Dance Frenzy from Korea
2. Bäst Sells Olive Oil and Opens New Show at Opera Gallery (NYC)
3. “Just Your Type” at Low Brow Artique (BKLN)
4. LUDO “Metal Miltia” at Galerie Itinerrance (PARIS)
5. “All Write You Scumbags” with Reyes and Steel at Klughaus (Chinatown, NYC)
6. “Dominant Species” by ROA at 941 Geary (San Francisco)
7. GAIA, MOMO AND MICHAEL OWEN in “Zim Zum” (Baltimore)
8. Don’t Fret in “No Shoes, No Shirt, No Chardonnay”(Chicago)
9. Tel Aviv: Israeli Street Artist and poet Know Hope “Others’ Truths”
10. The Black River Festival in Vienna, Austria
11. Stephen Powers AKA ESPO “A Love Letter for You”
12. “Permanence at Space 27 Gallery in Montreal, Canada
13. eL Seed in Tunisia (VIDEO)
14. When Lucent Met Herakut (VIDEO)
15. Voice Of Art “Graffiti Against The System” Presents GATS (VIDEO)

Bäst Sells Olive Oil and Opens New Show at Opera Gallery (NYC)

Street Artist Bäst has always mixed a savory chopped image salad. With his dicing, cutting, collaging and stencilling work on the street over the last decade, a lot of his recent stencils are twisted Bodega style signs advertising basic staples for the pantry. But of all the collaborative advertising that Street Artists have been getting into, we never could have predicted this; Olive oil. You can actually go to snooty classist foodery Dean and Deluca and buy a bottle of Bast style olive oil right now. Only 500 were made in this limited edition and the oil smells better than the petroleum-spilled brownfields in industrial Bushwick where you usually see his work, so why not?

This Brooklyn native artist has been amusing, hijacking, and inspiring with his work on the streets of New York for well over a decade and it’s also cool to see his gallery work at his solo show “Germs Tropicana” opened last night at Opera in Manhattan. If the pieces are too pricey, Dean and Deluca is just a couple of blocks away!

For further information regarding this show click here.

“Just Your Type” at Low Brow Artique (BKLN)

Outside is the brand new wall piece by ND’A and Dirty Bandits. Inside this art store/gallery they are joined QRST and Gilf! in this new small show called “Just Your Type”, opening tonight.

For further information regarding this show click here.

LUDO “Metal Miltia” at Galerie Itinerrance (PARIS)

Parisian Street Artist LUDO was in multiple shows around the world and blanketed the Paris Metro and bus shelters with his subvertisements for two years before a gallery in his native city invited him inside. Tonight Galerie Itinerrance will have LUDO’s first solo show entitled “Metal Militia”.

With a truly unique approach to social critique that serves as a cunning indictment of the advertising industry and the military industrial complex, you won’t find anything like the pretty disgust than the work of LUDO.

For further information regarding this show click here.

“All Write You Scumbags” with Reyes and Steel at Klughaus (Chinatown, NYC)

Ever the ballsy wiseguy, the Klaughaus Gallery in Manhattan continues to produce and present quality shows that challenge your possibly prejudicial pre-formed perceptions of propriety and pugnacity. This time they invited West Coast natives Reyes and Steel to exhibit at their space with a show titled “All Write You Scumbags”.

From the press release, “The New York debut for both artists and showcases a distinct chemistry cultivated over years working together as friends, creative partners and members of MSK, one of the highest regarded graffiti artist collectives in the world.” To find out what this means go to their show opening tonight.

For further information regarding this show click here.

“Dominant Species” by ROA at 941 Geary (San Francisco)

Street Artist ROA concludes his US Summer Tour 2012 in San Francisco at his own victorious opening Saturday at 941 Geary Gallery. The show is aptly called “Dominant Species” and will feature many of the cast of creatures you have grown to expect.

“Here is a Street Artist who has very effectively escaped the street, an introvert traveling quietly in the extroverted world, with open eyes and an acute talent for observation; decoding the universe through study of the natural, and unnatural.” BSA

For further information regarding this show click here.

To read BSA’s feature on ROA this week and to see beautiful images of his work in Mexico, Africa and Cambodia earlier this year click here.

GAIA, MOMO AND MICHAEL OWEN in “Zim Zum” (Baltimore)

GAIA, MOMO AND MICHAEL OWEN are transforming the space at the Creative Alliance Gallery in Baltimore with a collaboration that promises to spill over the street and beyond. If you want to see what the trio is up to put the gameboy down and head out to the gallery for their opening tomorrow night with an exhibition titled Zim Zum.

For further information regarding this show click here.

See MOMO in GEOMETRICKS, presented by BSA and curated by Hellbent next weekend in BROOKLYN, baby.

Don’t Fret in “No Shoes, No Shirt, No Chardonnay”(Chicago)

Chicago based Street Artist Don’t Fret has a new solo show, “No Shoes, No Shirt, No Chardonnay” opening Saturday night at the Bizzare Gallery in Chicago. So if you are planning to arrive naked, BYOB and put your wallet under your armpit. Lo-fi comic book doodling that make most people look like family day at the tractor pull, Don’t Fret drawings are people you know and often dang hilarious.

For further information regarding this show click here.

Also happening this Weekend:

If you are in Tel Aviv: Israeli Street Artist and poet Know Hope is releasing a new zine titled “Others’ Truths” and he’s mounted a small exhibition of the drawings that illustrate it. This exhibition will remain open all day today until 4:00 pm. Click here for more details on this show.
The 2012 Edition of The Black River Festival in Vienna, Austria is now open. The festival has an important selection of Street Artists putting up works throughout an entire week of programs. Roster includes Blu, Evan Roth, Florian Riviere, Isaac Cordal, Mark Jenkins, and ZukClub. Click here for more details on this festival.
The film screening by Stephen Powers AKA ESPO “A Love Letter for You” is being hosted by the Joshua Liner Gallery in conjunction with their current show by the artist “A Word is Worth A Thousand Pictures”. The screening will take place tomorrow at The Tribeca Grand Hotel. The artist will be in attendance along with the director and a Q & A will follow the film. Click here for more details on this event.
“Permanence” is the title of the new group show at Space 27 Gallery in Montreal, Canada. With an ambitious line up international and Canadian artists this show aims to juxtapose the “ephemeral nature of street art with the permanence of collectible art.” From their press release. Click here for more details regarding this show.

In the spirit of Unity, we present Street Artist eL Seed in Tunisia (VIDEO)

This week there has been much news of sadness, discord, and suffering in Libya, Egypt, and Yemen. Street Artist and painter eL Seed gives us a moment to pull back and reflect on the beauty and poignancy that a religious belief system can contribute to the lives of some.

Here he creates ‘Madinati’ Calligraffiti on Jara Mosque in Gabes.

When Lucent Met Herakut by The One Point Eight (VIDEO)

“A short documentary which presents the show involving graffiti duo Herakut and the Lucent Dossier group, detailing both the rehearsal process and the final performance in a unique and different way.”

Voice Of Art “Graffiti Against The System” Presents GATS (VIDEO)

WAGMAG Benefit Tuesday – Supporting Brooklyn Artists for a Decade+

May 7, 2012 Artists

This Tuesday night the annual benefit with work donated by 100+ artists will keep WAGMAG free for everyone. The local art guide started around the same time as the current street art explosion did in the early 2000’s – and the handy guide existed solely as a way to get the word out about openings at art collectives and galleries in the then-artist-neighborhood of Williamsburg. While gentrification has chased most of the artists out of Williamsburg now, Brooklyn continues to boom with some of the freshest ideas and talents and WAGMAG’s maps help you to find shows in 15 neighborhoods all over the borough.

The brainchild and labor of love of Brooklyn artist and gallery owner Daniel Aycock in those early years, WAGMAG now is run by Daniel and his artist wife Kathleen Vance. Together they own the Front Room gallery and regularly work with most of the players on the Brooklyn art scene, keeping it real and accessible. They are also big Street Art fans and have allowed the walls on the front of their gallery to be painted and pasted many times over the years by a parade of Street Artists.

In celebration of all the good work they do to enable artists to receive exposure for their work, and to encourage you to go to their fundraiser Tuesday, BSA talked with Daniel and Kathleen about WAGMAG and Brooklyn.

Brooklyn Street Art: How long have you been in Williamsburg?

Daniel Aycock and Kathleen Vance: WAGMAG, started in 2001 as W(illiamsburg) A(nd) G(reenpoint) M(onthly) A(rt) G(uide). Eventually the demand for listings in other neighborhoods throughout Brooklyn made it necessary to expand to include all of the art districts in Brooklyn. Then we dropped the Acronym and became WAGMAG, Brooklyn Art Guide. We now serve the communities of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Boerum Hill, Brooklyn Heights, Bushwick, Carroll Gardens, Clinton Hill, Cobble Hill, DUMBO, Fort Greene, Gowanus, Greenpoint, Park Slope, Prospect Heights, Red Hook and Williamsburg.

Brooklyn artist Scott Chasse donated this piece “Keep Smiling” to the WAGMAG Benefit.

Brooklyn Street Art: Can you describe what WAGMAG is?
Daniel Aycock and Kathleen Vance: It’s a free monthly art guide that promotes art venues and exhibitions in Brooklyn with a free listing service of art exhibitions and events, with locations and times, community maps and critical reviews.

Art venues are listed in community networks with adjoining maps and alphabetical listing of exhibitions updated monthly and circulated throughout New York. Guest writers present recommendations of exhibits to visit, with critical reviews for additional reference. WAGMAG, a Brooklyn Art Guide, is online at wagmag.org and in print with a free 16-page printed guide that is circulated throughout New York and surrounding areas.

Street Artist Gilf! donated this piece “Empower Equality” (62/200) to the WAGMAG Benefit

Brooklyn Street Art: You have had street artists on your wall outside the gallery like Noah Sparkes, C215, Nick Walker. How do you look at street art in Brooklyn?

Daniel Aycock and Kathleen Vance: The offices of WAGMAG are in The Front Room Gallery in Williamsburg, in a building that has historically been a fertile ground for street artists. We love the public access to art, made available 24hrs, 7 days a week by street artists, which is unexpected, sometimes challenging, and innovative in process and placement.

Street Artist Chris of the collective Robots Will Kill donated this piece “We are 138 ” to the WAGMAG Benefit.

Brooklyn Street Art: Are there any Street Artists donating to the WAGMAG benefit this year?
Daniel Aycock and Kathleen Vance: Yeah, absolutely. We have Chris (RWK), LOL, Gilf!, and Noah Sparkes.

Brooklyn Street Art: Why is Brooklyn such a vibrant lively place for artists to work and live?
Daniel Aycock and Kathleen Vance: Brooklyn has been a magnet for artists for decades. The availability of studio space and relatively lower rents creates an oasis outside of Manhattan – making it into a huge artists’ mecca. Brooklyn builds strength from its communities – which have a friendly and open attitude that fuels creativity and expands the boundaries of art-making today.

WAGMAG benefit committee member and artist David Kesting was doodling the rules on a piece of paper during one of the organizing meetings and he came up with the de facto WAGMAG Benefit guide! Good job David! This makes it so much easier to understand how the benefit works. (© David Kesting)

Brooklyn Artist Ward Shelly is one of the better known names who have contributed art to the WAGMAG benefit. This print is called “the History of Science Fiction” (© Ward Shelly)

Street Artist LOL donated this “Love Soldier” to the WAGMAG benefit and will be happy to install it for you (photo © LOL)

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See a full list of the artists works and purchase tickets here:

The WAGMAG Benefit will be at The Boiler (191 North 14th Street) in Williamsburg. Additional info is at www.supportwagmag.org

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