All posts tagged: CA

BSA Images Of The Week: 02.15.15

February 15, 2015 Artists, BSA Images Of The Week

Winter has been beating New York with a stick this week, but there’s still new Street Art going up – you just might miss it because you are rushing home to get warm. Also we have a smattering of shots from other cities this week to give you an idea of what’s up.

Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Bifido, Bradley Theodore, BustArt, Claudio Ethos, Clet, Gore-B, GumShoe, Jilly Ballistic, Li-Hill, Mark Samsonovich, Mr. One Teas, Paul Insect and SeeTf.

Top Image >> Mark Samsonovich with an acute observation on this Valentine’s weekend. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Mark Samsonovich (photo © Jaime Rojo)

This GoreB may be 10 years old, but we just saw it for the first time. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Li-Hill has a new mural in Los Angeles, CA. Detail. (photo © Li-Hill)

Li-Hill. Los Angeles. CA. (photo © Li-Hill)

Paul Insect (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Artist Unknown (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Bust Art at work on his new installation in Paris. (photo © BustArt)

BustArt completed installation in Paris. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“This time Winnie the Pooh is taking his crew to the streets and claim a new graffiti area” says the artist.

BustArt. Detail. Paris. (photo © BustArt)

Mr. One Teas and Mickey are painting McDonalds with a wide brush (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Oops, my hat! Dang this wind! Claudio Ethos new piece in Rio De Janeiro, Brasil. (photo © ETHOS)

CLET (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Jilly Ballistic got the guillotine treatment. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

What do you want to be when you grow up. There are number of options. Bifido’s new installation in Rome, Italy. (photo © Bifido)

Bradley Theodore (photo © Jaime Rojo)

This hot busty blond aerosol piece by SeeTf is melting the snow. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

GumShoe (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“My Calvins” Manhattan, NYC. February 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Happy New Year 2015 – BSA Readers Choice Top 10

January 1, 2015 Artists

Happy New Year to All! Thank you for inspiring us to do our best and to those of you who continue to support our personal art project / cultural examination, we extend our gratitude more than ever.

Begun as an enthusiastic discovery of what was happening in a few neighborhoods in New York, we continued to expand our view into more cities around the world last year and into the history and future of the scene. We also aimed to provide you with a critical platform for examination of the street art/ graffiti / public art/ contemporary art continuum with interviews with artists, curators, collectors, organizers, observers and thinkers in the street, studio, gallery, and museum – trouble makers and taste makers alike.

In the end, it’s your observations and the conversations on the street that are most important. As we begin the year with over 300K fans, friends, and followers on social media platforms and 225 articles on the Huffington Post (thanks HuffPost team!), we feel like we get a valuable good survey of current opinions heading our way daily.

With in-depth interviews, investigative articles, opinion infused examinations, plain celebratory reverie, occasionally silly non-sequitors, and public appearances where we get to meet you, we get a good analytical look at an ever-evolving movement, glittery polish and warts and all.

As the new year begins we take a look back at the top stories chosen by BSA Readers in the last 12 months. Among them are two takeover pop-up shows in soon-to-be demolished buildings, a story about commercial abuse of artist copyrights and the effort to fight back, a street art community’s response to the sudden death of an activist street artist, a Street Art tourist trip, and a few inspirational women, men, and Mexican muralists. Even though we published at least once a day for the last 365 days, these are the most popular pieces, as chosen by you, Dear BSA Reader.

10. Exploring Lisbon as a Street Art Tourist

Os Gemeos / Blu (photo © Stephen Kelley)

9. Kara Walker and Her Sugar Sphinx at the Old Domino Factory

Kara Walker. The artist portrait in profile with her sugary sphinx in the background. (photo via iPhone © Jaime Rojo)

8. Women Rock Wynwood Walls at Miami Art Basel 2013

Fafi (photo © Martha Cooper for Wynwood Walls)

7. A Sudden Secret Street Art House Party in Manhattan

Icy & Sot (photo © Jaime Rojo)

6. Niels Shoe Meulman Balancing “Unearthly” Paintings

Niels “Shoe” Meulman. Process shot. (photo © Adele Renault)

5. It’s All the Rage, Street Artists Filing Lawsuits Left and Right

4. Shok-1 Street Art X-Rays Reveal a Unique Hand at the Can

Shok-1 (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

3. 12 Mexican Street Artists Stray Far from Muralism Tradition In NYC

Sego (photo © Jaime Rojo)

2. Army Of One, Inspiration To Many : Jef Campion

Army Of One AKA JC2 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

1. Graffiti and Street Art Lock Up “21st Precinct” in New York

Pixote in action. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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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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Zio Ziegler: Using Intuition on the Street and In the Studio

November 15, 2014 Artists

Zio Ziegler opens his new show tonight in Oakland, CA and today on BSA we give you a full immersion in the “Intuitivism” that he is tapping into and channeling at the moment, as well a sense of his commitment to discovery.

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Zio Ziegler. Oakland, CA. November 2014. (photo © Brock Brake)

The prolific San Francisco based artist opens his studio for you to see here while he ruminates and generates based on multiple influences: cubism and folk art forms parlay with the figurative and realist. It is a complex interplay he pulls off with a confident hand.

Outside Ziegler’s murals on the street have understandably more punch because of their scale and freedom to expand, but the gallery work has a lot of pull because of his attention to details and smart way of weaving complexity. Either way Zio Ziegler is grabbing ahold of the attention of many more these days because of his down to earth demeanor and reliably quality output.

Zio Ziegler. Oakland, CA. November 2014. (photo © Brock Brake)

The PR for this show describes a thinker/feeler, and that goes a long way to explain the many directions dancing as one; “Ziegler approaches the canvas with pent up feelings and relies soley on unconscious reasoning to create.” It is good to see this unconscious at work freely while the technical skills keep sharpening and adding dimension.

Our thanks to photographer Brock Brake for sharing these exclusive images of Zio Ziegler at work and at play with BSA readers.

Zio Ziegler. Oakland, CA. November 2014. (photo © Brock Brake)

Zio Ziegler Solo Exhibition “Intuitivism” opens today at LeQuiVive Gallery in Oakland, CA. Click HERE for more details.

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We wish to express our gratitude to Brock Brake for sharing his work with us and for his collaboration with BSA

“West Side is the Best Side”, Vogue & BAM In Oakland

September 18, 2014 Artists

Today we have the honor of photographer, author and lecturer Mr. James Prigoff sharing with BSA readers his images and observations about a new 8,000 square foot mural that went up in Oakland last month paying tribute to graffiti’s love of locomotives, Oakland’s history as a port town and ship builder, and a line out of Tupac Shakur’s “California Love”. A neighborhood project that aims to educate and beautify, two old school writers from The O named Vogue and BAM (Norman Chuck and Mike Tyau) gathered together some friends and interns to knock this mammoth one out. But enough from us, we’ll let Mr. Prigoff paint the scene for you.

Vogue/Bam collaboration with help from Derp, Jase, King157, Goser, Sear & Done/TDK, Robz & Colour. West Oakland, CA. CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE (photo © Jim Prigoff)

By James Prigoff

I have been documenting Norman Vogue and Mike “BAM” Tyau’s Spraycan painting for thirty years. It was evident in the early days of West Coast “writing” that the two of them and their crews had very special talent.

Following their work over the years brought me to the Wrist Ship Supply building in West Oakland yesterday.

Modern Graffiti Art started on the East Coast with simple tags and evolved over the years until it became the most significant art form of the last forty years. In the evolution, part of the art form became Street Art and today is entitled Urban Art. The variety of imagery would fill endless books, light years away from what once were known as Graffiti Masterpieces.

Vogue/Bam collaboration with help from Derp, Jase, King157, Goser, Sear & Done/TDK, Robz & Colour. West Oakland, CA. (photo © Jim Prigoff)

The mural that these artists have created, “West Side is the Best Side”, is historically important for many reasons and I think it has an significant place among the art form’s historical images for these reasons;

It is technically very proficient as an example of how sophisticated the use of the spray can has become.
It pays tribute to a few of the most important writers to develop on the West Coast, particularly an iconic young R.I.P who wrote DREAM.
It is a classic in that it goes back to the roots of name writing and characters.
It celebrates the train writing that brightened the drab railroad cars and became a vehicle to send the “writer’s” name to distant cities.

Put it all together and they have created a very special piece of art, far more so than the average eye would perceive.

Vogue/Bam collaboration with help from Derp, Jase, King157, Goser, Sear & Done/TDK, Robz & Colour. West Oakland, CA. (photo © Jim Prigoff)

Sage coordinated the deal at first and got all the scissor/boom lifts for the artists to use and coordinated daily operations early on. Jase, King157, Sear & Done/TDK all painted their pieces within one day. Vogue painted his & Dream’s throwies all within one day also. The “Schmoe” piece was painted by Done on the caboose in memory of him since he passed away in a car accident back in July and he was a part of the TDK crew.

I’ve told Sage to help us file this at the Guinness Book of World Records for the largest train mural.

(Continued credits continue at the end of posting)

Vogue/Bam collaboration with help from Derp, Jase, King157, Goser, Sear & Done/TDK, Robz & Colour. West Oakland, CA. (photo © Jim Prigoff)

In addition to Bryan “DERP,” three other interns who worked on the mural include Thavin Rajanakhan, Thitiwat Phromratanapongse, and Dominic Cheng

“We would not have been able to complete the first half of this mural without these guys,” say Vogue and Bam, who wish to express their gratitude to everyone and especially to the interns.

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Niels Shoe Meulman Balancing “Unearthly” Paintings

July 12, 2014 Artists

Most viewers want to know, “How did he do that?” when looking at the medieval script arching and swerving through a splattering of stars or surrounding a black hole. Niels “Shoe” Meulman continues to take Calligraffiti into new realms that are more abstract and mystical, disconnecting the elements from their tissues and reconfiguring them.

Niels “Shoe” Meulman. Process shot. (photo © Adele Renault)

Adele Renault was on hand with Mr. Meulman while he was creating new works in his studio in Amsterdam for “Unearthly Paintings”, which opens today at White Walls Gallery. Here you can see the physical aspect of rearranging atoms, as well as contemplate how Meulman authors actions that produce another series of reactions in the universe.

From the artist: “Art, science and religion have a common origin; the unknown. My latest pieces touch on subjects like ‘antiknowledge’ and ‘the great doubt.’ This exhibition is an exploration to find mysticism in science. Particle accelerators are modern cathedrals for people who believe in quantum mechanics. With every discovery, more questions arise. Scientific findings of the last decades are more fantastic than all of the fables in religious books put together.”

Thank you to photographer and BSA contributor Brock Brake for sharing these images today with BSA readers.

Niels “Shoe” Meulman. Process shot. (photo © Adele Renault)

Niels “Shoe” Meulman solo exhibition “The Unearthly Paintings” opens today at the White Walls Gallery in San Francisco. Click HERE for more information.
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BSA Images Of The Week: 06.22.14

June 22, 2014 Artists, BSA Images Of The Week

It’s not all going to the dogs, peeps – it just looks like it sometimes. We start this week with a ferocious one from Zimer, and follow it by a chihuahua that it could probably eat for lunch. Dog eat dog, yo.

Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring ACNE, City Kitty, Crummy Gummy, EC13, Ema, FAS, Hitnes, Insurgency Inc., Irony and Boe, Kid Acne, Lajaxx, Myth, Not Art, Ozmo, Peter Kirill, Specter, and Zimer.

Top Image >> Zimer (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Irony and Boe Collaboration in East London, UK. June 2014 (photo © Gary Hunter)

Commentary from Gary Hunter, who sent this big dog from London:

“The chihuahua is partly a comment on changing demographic due to development overspilling from the spreading consumerism of nearby financial district Canary Wharf. Located just north of the Isle of ‘Dogs’ in East London the piece is facing ‘Barking’ a town in Essex, just by the A13 a main road in and out of London.

There also used to be a very big Spratt’s (a manufacturer originally from Cincinnati, Ohio) dog biscuit factory nearby, now warehouse apartment conversions. I photographed the ‘model’ (coincidentally called Hunter and owned by London artist Cate Halpin) in great detail in my studio on a very high end Hasselblad digital camera, to bring out every aspect. Irony and Boe then transposed it brick by brick for their painted artwork.

This work is part of ‘Changing Spaces’ a a community cohesion project in east London’s Tower Hamlet’s district, one of the city’s most deprived, yet diverse boroughs – facilitating understanding of the immediate environment, important history, trade and migration.” – GH

FAS. Please help ID the rest of the tags. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Not Art (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Pete Kirill tribute to the great Sophia Loren. (photo © Cesar Miesses)

Artists Unknown. Save the elephants! (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Specter and Ozmo collaboration. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Myth (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Lajaxx (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Insurgency Inc (photo © Jaime Rojo)

City Kitty (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Crummy Gummy. In Los Angeles, CA. “I’m a big fan of H.R. Giger and this piece actually made me a little sad. But I thought it was a cool way to reference his passing” Lisa V (photo © Lisa V)

ACNE (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Hitnes wanted to create the perfect shade of color to highlight the eye of the bunny for the piece he did on a roof top in East Williasmburg this week. Here is how it all began…this plus a little water. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Hitnes. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

EC13 New tile installation in Granada, Spain. June 2014. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Kid Acne (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Kid Acne and Ema are from England and they are visiting NYC and wasting no time on the streets. At the same time they have been showing a very poor judgment with the placing of their pieces by going over many writer’s tags. We like them both but are surprised by their selection of places to wheat paste their art since they are not new to the streets of New York, indeed we might say that they are even veterans of the streets of NYC given this we think they should know better.

Ema (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. Summer 2014, Brooklyn, NYC. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Tag & Buff Duet: SABER and Zes Capture the Tension in LA (VIDEO)

June 9, 2014 Artists

When you live in certain cities you are accustomed to the sort of cat and mouse game that municipalities play with graffiti taggers/writers with the cancelling out of one another’s work with paint. Today we take a look at a legal mural by Saber and Zes in Los Angeles that aims to capture the action between the untamed madness and wild markings of the writer and the blocky beige paint blobs that redact those markings from the visual cityscape, a practice many refer to as “the buff”.

Saber . Zes . MSK collaboration in Los Angeles. (photo © Jordan Ahern)

“This particular style is an homage to this visual conflict that we see everyday on our city’s walls,” Saber tells us of this mural painted on a new art supply store that just opened in downtown LA. He says that the tension between the two forces is what gave energy to the project that used tools like a fire extinguisher, a bug sprayer, and that nice buff color, along with a fair number of fatcaps. Saber says it was a bit of an experiment.

Explaining the approach, Saber tells us they kept their state of mind loose while testing the uncontrolled quality of the substance applicators they were employing. “Usually these tools are used for bombing so the idea that we kept in mind was that there are no mistakes,” he says. “Any mark made on the wall only adds to the layers creating the tension between tagging, color and the beige of buff. Our goal was to capture samples of this conflict that takes place in the urban environment between tagging, handstyles and the relentless buff. Eventually the buffing took on a life of it’s own, almost turning into clouds that were weaving in and out of the scrawls.”

Saber . Zes . MSK collaboration in Los Angeles. (photo © Jordan Ahern)

CREDITS:

Saber Zes MSK

Branded Arts

Photos by Jordan Ahern @dopevinyl

@theseventhLetter

Artists and Craftsman Supply LA

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San Francisco Survey : Street Art and Graffiti

May 28, 2014 Artists

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness,” so says Charles Dickens in the opening paragraph of A Tale of Two Cities, and who can’t believe it is true that he was speaking of today? Whether you are Darnay or Carton, that books two protagonists, this is the prism through which you will see the twin beasts of wisdom and foolishness in all the writings on the walls in our cities.

Easily dismissed for decades by the classists as the uncouth scribblings of the unschooled, the graffiti that persisted throughout train yards and tunnels and cities globally also developed and deepened, expanded and metamorphosed. Once simply seen as outright rebellion, the language around the graffiti scene has transformed, and with reason. Today sometimes clumsily grouped under the moniker “street art” or “urban art” graffiti and its family gets a second view, and a third; while academia and theorists and philosophers grapple to come to terms with a language they didn’t create, cannot compose in, but endeavor to learn.

Reyes (photo © Brock Brake)

Meanwhile it is collected, traded, reproduced, emulated and imitated. For its part, new generations of freewheeling graffiti and its practitioners and celebrants continue unabated; uncommissioned, un-permissioned, and despite ever more apoplectic attempts by municipalities and technologies to silence it, it continues to speak. Further confounding, some of its denizens have taken up arms and laid in the same bed with that most benign and good-willed pillar of public art, the legal mural.

Today we go to San Francisco, one of our most pricey cities, to see what the aerosol writers are saying currently. With new shots that capture part of this moment by photographer Brock Brake, we see that the language of the street and even the row house have become as multitudinous as the dominant culture and as perplexing as it is sometimes powerful. Or not. Are these the best of times?

“..in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only,” says Dickens.

Niels Shoe Meulman. Detail of ‘ununhappy times’, a larger piece by the calligraffitist. (photo © Brock Brake)

“Familia” by Reyes (photo © Brock Brake)

Nekst . Jade (photo © Brock Brake)

A tribute to a deceased and well loved graffiti writer named Nekst by Steel (photo © Brock Brake)

Steel MSK (photo © Brock Brake)

Andrew Schoultz. Detail (photo © Brock Brake)

Andrew Schoultz (photo © Brock Brake)

Andrew Schoultz RIP Jade. (photo © Brock Brake)

Toro (photo © Brock Brake)

Atomik (photo © Brock Brake)

Treas (photo © Brock Brake)

Steel . MSK . d30 (photo © Brock Brake)

d30 Crew (photo © Brock Brake)

Ich (photo © Brock Brake)

Jurne . Amanda Lynn . Mags (photo © Brock Brake)

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This article was also published on The Huffington Post

“Coachella Walls”: Date Farmers Raise Profile of “Anonymous Worker”

May 14, 2014 Artists

Seriously, like Coachella is NOT even like in Coachella. It’s like in Indio. True story.

The annual concert festival that brings legions of middle class to somewhat affluent feathered fringed bikini babes and awesome face-painted dudes dropping acid while texting and buying merch? – and which apparently features big-name indie music at some point over two weekends in April? That’s not here. That town is called Indio.

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Coachella Walls Poster at a local farm. (photo © Medvin Sobio)

Here in Coachella, the “City of Eternal Sunshine,” no one shoots YouTube videos about “How to Survive Coachella” with hints about SPF 55 sunscreen sticks and personal sized hand sanitizer. Here you will find a mostly rural, agricultural, family oriented community which struggles with poverty regularly. They also pick a lot of your food.

That’s why Armando Lerma and Carlos Ramirez, artistically joined as The Date Farmers, began an “arts-driven community revitalization project” on March 31st, recognized in California as Cesar Chavez Day.

Armando Lerma of The Date Farmers keeps and eye on the rambunctious fans. (photo © Medvin Sobio)

Inviting solidly remarkable street art and mural-painting talents to show some camaraderie with the working men and women in this community, the first annual Coachella Walls has now made its mark in the Historic Pueblo Viejo District of downtown. Here also is the recently opened Date Farmers Art Studios, which they hope will serve as the city’s first art gallery and artist residency.

Thematically joined to honor Chavez and the Anonymous Farm Worker, the festival invited a group of muralists and contemporary artists with Latin American cultural influences in their work, including artists like El Mac (Arizona), Nunca (Brazil), Saner (Mexico), Andrew Hem (Cambodia), Liqen (Spain), Albert Reyes (Los Angeles), Vyal Reyes (Los Angeles), Sego (Mexico), The Phantom (Los Angeles), Jim Darling (Texas), and more.

According to the organizers, “Despite supplying the region with close to half a million dollars a year in vegetable crops, many of the farm workers in the Eastern Coachella Valley continue to live in unsafe and unhealthy conditions.” With murals, luck and a whole burlap sack of talent like this, Coachella Walls aims to bring awareness to these issues and others related to the life of the worker here.

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The Date Farmers (photo © Medvin Sobio)

Medvin Sobio was contacted by the Date Farmers to help produce and curate the public art project, and he shows us some of the images that came out of this very first annual event. Coachella Walls is funded by the city of Coachella’s public arts fund and is curated by Sobio, the director of The Academy of Street Art in Los Angeles. Our thanks to Medvin and the Date Farmers for sharing these images with us.

The Date Farmers at work on “Casa de Trabajador”(photo © Medvin Sobio)

The Date Farmers (photo © Medvin Sobio)

Armando and Carlos assessing the progress. The Date Farmers (photo © Medvin Sobio)

The Date Farmers (photo © Medvin Sobio)

Albert Reyes (photo © Medvin Sobio)

Andrew Hem (photo © Medvin Sobio)

Andrew Hem with Carlos Ramirez of The Date Farmers (photo © Medvin Sobio)

Andrew Hem (photo © Medvin Sobio)

El Mac (photo © Medvin Sobio)

Says El Mac about this painting on his blog, “It’s not intended to represent any one specific person, but rather many people, especially the “anonymous farm worker”. Farm workers in this country have been marginalized despite producing the very food we all need for survival. The Coachella valley is an important region for farming, and has been the setting for many of the struggles by the UFW to to improve workers’ rights since the 60s..and you can feel this history there.”

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Images Of The Week: 04.27.14

April 27, 2014 Artists, BSA Images Of The Week

Here our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Adam Fujita, Billy Mode, Cabaio, CB23, City Kitty, Damon, Dylan Egon, JB, Li Hill, Nychos, Olek, Roma411, Tec, Un Pez Verde, and Zola.

“Major Minority” ; The Great Gathering of a Tribe

March 13, 2014 Artists, Interview

Poesia and EKG Talk to BSA about an Audacious Survey

A new show organized by Poesia, a San Francisco based graffiti artist and founder of the site Graffuturism, pulls together one hundred or so artists from eighteen countries with the goal of mapping one constellation in the cosmos – a global survey of urban artists that hopes to articulate a body of aesthetics he’s calling Othercontemporary. And why not? Audacity and vision are qualities these times call for and if successful could lead to a clearer understanding of the trends, techniques, practices, and narratives underlying what has been happening on the streets for the last half century.

With New York artist/historian/semiotic explorer EKG as a guide, the two have been synthesizing their findings and discovering the genuine firing of synapses that indicate they are uncovering the electrical impulses that have made graffiti / street art/ urban art feel so completely relevant to the last two generations. A “Major Minority” hopes to chart the course for the third.

Poesia invites you here to take a look at some of the pieces that will be on display, as shot by Brock Brake. Brooklyn Street Art asked Poesia and EKG about the survey and to make some conjecture about the way forward.

Brooklyn Street Art: Each generation and movement is defined and labeled by its participants, peers, and observers. In your treatise on this moment and this collection of artists you say that Stefano Antonelli coined the term Othercontemporary to perhaps set it apart from Contemporary. Why does this term sound appropriate to you?
Poesia: I had initially used the term Neo-Contemporary. After a brief discussion amongst some peers Stefano mentioned this term – it seemed the most accurate out of the terms being discussed. I feel it’s important because it starts a conversation about something other than contemporary art, and describes rather bluntly our separation from contemporary art, yet defines the contemporary nature of our art form. I have grown tired of comparing what we do to contemporary art, maybe this term will get people talking about something more present.

Brooklyn Street Art: Take a guess and swing the bat wide, why has the established art world taken so long to give recognition to the urban artist?
Poesia: Canonization usually takes place long after the genuine moments of art movements, or when they are at their peak. Its no different even in today’s Internet era, even with all the information at their fingertips academics won’t ever understand why a 12 year old child and a 50 year old adult writes on walls. Its easier to make use of their MFAs by extending the reach of the contemporary art conversation than it is to look at society and to try to understand the writing on the walls.

Brooklyn Street Art: Has something happened in the last 5-10 years that has caused so many urban/street/graffiti artists to make more geometric and abstract work that usually avoids the organic, figurative, and pop? Any idea what is driving it?
Poesia: It’s a culmination – one of those things where maybe all the right ingredients are there and it happens.

Graffiti, being an abstract art form in its nature, lends itself to pure abstraction. Experimentation with the letterform usually takes place more with color and shape than it does conceptually or from a representational perspective. Additionally with the birth of Street Art it opened up the playing field a bit. Artists now were forced to compete visually with representational imagery on walls. It has allowed many artists to leave letterform and the rectangular space of a piece or even “wild style”. The horizontal rectangle was replaced with the square or vertical rectangle – that also pushed for the evolution of the artist.

Brooklyn Street Art: What will a viewer begin to realize when looking over the constellation of works in this show?
Poesia: That painting is alive, and urban art seems to be the most relevant embodiment of this. This post-historical art form seems to be sending a message that there is something left in the visual image and its power. The goal was to show the widest spectrum possible from figurative to minimal in the area of Urban Art and I think we accomplished that.

Brooklyn Street Art: Can you speak about the “unique participatory and non-exclusionary nature” of urban/street/graffiti art practices?
EKG: Graffiti/Street Art (here defined as the public surfaces they affix themselves to, the container superseding the content, the medium as the message) is a broadcast channel that will not exclude anyone who wants to participate. Anybody with a passion to be seen and heard can broadcast on the graffiti/street art wavelength, as long as they are driven to take the risk of breaking the law in order to make their aesthetic statement.

When someone illegally transmits a signal on a public surface, aka a wall or monitor, there is no editorial hierarchy, no censorship board, no review panel, and no proofreaders. It is an individualistic and anarchistic means of expression. In order to transmit your mark, you don’t have to pay anyone, you don’t have to ask for permission, you don’t have to take a vote, you don’t have to take into account anyone else’s approval or opinion about your message.

At heart, graffiti/street art are visual civil disobedience, no matter the initial conscious intention of the mark maker, although a combination of action and intention can make the mark more meaningful to the receiver once they learn more about the broadcaster.

Brooklyn Street Art: “Illegal” and “transgressive” are two root words that reappear in your discussion of the collection. Did this movement germinate from anti-establishment sentiments, marginalized populations?
EKG: Doing anything illegal can be considered transgressive, but, more specifically for this discussion, illegal aesthetic manifestations are a minor infrastructural irritant that accrue a massive semiotic tumescence of cultural weight.

Currently incarcerated under the simplistic and myopic legal category defined as vandalism, aka criminal mischief, illegal aesthetic manifestations should instead be interpreted as more of a cultural statement than actually being a debilitating crime that selfishly and meaninglessly attacks a particular individual or society as a whole, as has been promoted by institutional authorities protecting the status quo.

The Original Writers discovered that Graffiti was a powerful means to: express rebellious dissatisfaction on political, economic, societal and cultural levels; define one’s identity as a powerful entity that was omnipresent, by proxy omniscient; delineate physical and semiotic territories that were theirs as opposed to their foes or society at large; connect with other members of their age group to form alternative communities of like-minds; and gain recognition with their peers and the public overall.

Like the seers who were channeling the oracles of our time, the old school original writers instinctually discovered an art form that continues to engage and challenge our global culture. Fifty years later the movement is still kept alive inside and outside by practitioners of all ages, styles, and intentions. Graffiti is no longer perceived as merely vandalism perpetrated by megalomaniac antisocial teens, but a positive and powerful cultural change agent practiced by conscious objectors of all ages.

Brooklyn Street Art: Specifics please: please place an artists name next to each of the following word whose work comes to mind.

Poesia: Okay, here are examples.

Activist: Boniface Mwangi
Idealist: Moneyless
Geometric: Nawer
Minimal: Christopher Derek Bruno
Expressionist: Jaybo Monk

Brooklyn Street Art: Sometimes it appears that the street is providing the stage for an explosion/implosion of all other historical art movements coalescing and deconstructing and recombining and mutating before us. Perhaps it’s because the street is reflecting society and we are all drinking from the Internet River. Maybe we’re witnessing a true globalism. You can say the movement on the street has roots in graffiti, and we would agree. But is it even possible to make sense of what is happening right now?
Poesia: I can only be a participant in this moment and hope to engage the conversation in real time versus when it won’t matter anymore. I think Urban Art is one of many emerging art forms that have been bubbling on the surface for a while now. As the generation shift takes place we will be accepted at the moment when we are irrelevant, as so many art forms before us. This makes today more important than tomorrow. I don’t know if I have the capability to make sense of it all, but I appreciate every second of it.

“A Major Minority” opens this Friday, March 14 at 1AM Gallery in San Francisco, CA.

Click HERE for more details on this show.

The Full Essay “A Major Minority” Group Exhibition by Poesia and EKG can be found HERE.

The interview answers from EKG were edited for length – please see his full responses on his Facebook page HERE.

We would like to thank Brock Brake for his excellent photos of the art and to Poesia and EKG for their thoughtful and insightful answers to our questions.

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Joereal Takes Painting to the Roof top and Beyond (Video)

February 22, 2014 Artists

Joereal in Los Angeles likes to paint up on his roof and think about yoga and the spiritual life. He sends this brief video for you to contemplate many such things as you travel through this Saturday.

“This ia a southwest inspired Earth spirit,” he tells us. ” The spirit is holding a burning sage , and in the place of smoke a rainbow is emerging. It is said when we burn sage, cedar, sweetgrass etcetra, it gives shape and color to our prayers and intentions. This is an Earth prayer made with vapors and raw energy under an intriguing Los Angeles sky.”

We’ve got the bundle of sagebrush smoking already and it is turning the whole building into once clerestory of peace. Happy Saturday everybody.

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