Welcome!
Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring BK Foxx, City Kitty, Dain, Jucer, Nick Walker, Praxis REVOK, Sam Himer, Sheryo, Skount, Smells, The Yok, Turtle Caps, UFO 907, WRDSMTH.
Welcome!
Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring BK Foxx, City Kitty, Dain, Jucer, Nick Walker, Praxis REVOK, Sam Himer, Sheryo, Skount, Smells, The Yok, Turtle Caps, UFO 907, WRDSMTH.
Halloween this year is on a Tuesday so its hard for people to know when exactly to celebrate it – we had 20 or so Trick-or-Treaters Saturday night so that tells you the kids vote in this part of Brooklyn.
Of course with the folks we have running the White House, every day feels like Halloween. “Here, I’ll trick you with this POPULIST costume, and my treat will be to take whats left of your middle class chocolate.”
Trick or Trick!
It doesn’t help that Tabloid TV loves the “Zombies on Parade” – they are like sugar addicts dancing for eyeballs and advertising dollars.
But from a Street Art and public performance perspective, New York is a thrill, a regular monster mash! The East Village parade 2017 on Tuesday will have puppets, 53 bands performing different types of music, dancers, artists, and thousands of New Yorkers in costume. Be safe out here ya’ll.
Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring Karl Addison, Bifido, City Kitty, Denis Ouch, Don Rimx, Elliott Routledge, Julien de Casabianca, Julieta, Lungebox, Nevercrew, Outings Project, Revok, Sipros, Strayones, and TurtleCaps.
Sculptural Street Artist Strayones tells us that the story represented here is a critique of “how business people and wealthy men are making us step over the edge into the abyss”.
“Disposing Machine” is the new mural from Nevercrew in Melano, Switzerland for Artrust. Their statement:
“Habits, attitudes, principles and awareness are conditioned by reality, and reality is conditioned by the perception everyone has of it. The position of humankind in its environment, in its World, is at the same
time part of its nature and a point of view from which to perceive it.
Systems are then interpretations, a way to give human shape to
something that’s not necessarily made for it, as well as a way to decide
which shapes to give and how to read them. As reality could be built and
altered by systems, so nature could then risk to be detached from
human sensing; an human reconstruction of something that exists
outside this given shape but that still is directly subjected to each action
that’s made on it.”
The Italian Street Artist Bifido and Spanish artists Juelieta completed this fantastical work in Lecce, Italy this week for the 167 Art Project. Bifido tells us that the title is “First Fire” and it “talks about the possibility to love each other in a fantastic way, and it focuses on the importance of play in our lives.”
Absent worries that the banks and oligarchs are poised to crash our economy into the ground and that the privatized profiteering war machine wants Trump to start WWIII its been a fantastic and sunny and crisp warm week in New York. Of course the city is a little more somber since the Yankees missed their chance at the World Series last night. In the spirit of sportspersonship we wish the best to the Astros.
Aside from new street art pieces going up on the street JPO had an opening at Wall Works in the Bronx, Bezt was at Spoke Art, Royce Bannon and Matt Siren had Ember City, Philipe Pantone was at GR Gallery, Dusty Rebel is launching his “Street Cuts” App Monday, and we’re just getting a look at the new show we’re co-curating for VINZ Feel Free in a couple of weeks.
Speaking of Pantone, the two walls he did this week were strong and optically dizzying/thrilling as you would expect – while the subtley more sophisticated walls were inside for Planned Iridescence near by at the GR Gallery on Bowery. The big wall done with The L.I.S.A. Project presented several technical and material difficulties which the artist eventually solved but not without having to spend a whole lot more of time on it than originally estimated: a remarkable feat, even if the wall itself isn’t a large one compared to many others he’s executed around the world. Sure enough it got the New York welcome from a graffiti artist who took the liberty to vandalize it under the cover of darkness and on the very same night of the opening party for his show.
We have grown accustomed to see the artworks by Street Artists and muralists in public vandalized, disrespected and gone over. We don’t know what justification or reasons a graffiti writer has when tagging a well executed wall and the so-called “rules” on the street depend on who’s telling them. It is interesting that the color fits right into the palette, almost as if the tagger found an unspent can that had been left on the sidewalk nearby.
Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring Arrex Skulls, Bunny M, City Kitty, D7606, Dain, Felipe Pantone, Fintan Magee, Gods in Love, Megzany, RUN, Stikman, Stray Ones, and Thrashbird.
The Street Artist who goes by the name Gods in Love did this mural in the San Samuele district of Cerignola, Italy last month. He says that this part of the city is called “Fort Apache” by the locals – an indirect reference to the 1981 movie (and 1976 book) about a crime-ridden neighborhood in the Bronx during the 1960s-70s. The Native American tribe named The Apache that preceded the European’s arrival who lived/live in the mid-western part of this continent were known for being fierce warriors – thus the connotation with a violent proud, yet financially destitute, neighborhood in The Bronx, New York.
“A totem is a natural or supernatural entity that has a particular symbolic meaning for a person or tribe, and to whom it feels bound throughout life,” explains the artist. The term derives from the word ototeman used by the Native American people Ojibway. My choice of working on this figure arises from the need to create an image that can be symbolic of belonging to a neighborhood to a group, a symbol of belonging to the protection of the offspring and therefore of the future, a need for legality and correctness to fight or understand, integrating and accepting it, the illness stemmed from the discomfort of life in a changing neighborhood, willing to redeem. Mine is a metaphor, a symbol in which the neighborhood can fully recognize.”
Clearly we cannot bury our heads in the sand anymore, for those of us who are tempted to. We try to make light of things here or at least add levity, but right now many of our community in NYC are desperately worried about family members in Puerto Rico, and aid has not been getting to them after the storm.
While it is a relief for many to find that Trump is actually one of the most ineffective leaders in terms of getting major legislation or many of the pillars of his anti-everybody-except-the-rich agenda passed, that same ineffectiveness puts citizens in harms way – as appears to be happening right now on that island of US citizens of 3.4 million. When 55% of the island doesn’t have drinkable water, you know a human disaster is close. Meanwhile Trump is tweeting from his golf course in New Jersey to insult a mayor on the island.
At the recommendation of Lee Quinones, a proud New Yorker, Puerto Ricano, and NYC train writer of the 1970s and 1980s – here are some charities you can contribute to:
Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring Adam Fujita, CB23, Ces53, City Kitty, Dan Witz, Dirty Bandits, GIZ, Jazz Guetta, Kafka is Famous, MRVN, Myth, NeverCrew, Smart, Stray Ones, and Such.
So here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring Alexis Diaz, Below Key, Bia Does NYC, Blox, Ceas, City Kitty, Donut, Drsc0, El Sol 25, Kimyon333, LDLR, Lego To The Party, Loa Jib Lazee, London Kaye, Lunge Box, Mr. Fijodor, Myth, Pat69, Pixote, Willow and Witch Christ.
Trump thought he could lift his poll numbers or legitimacy or at least his personal wealth by taking a world tour this week where he sold $100 billion in arms to Saudia Arabia, scored $100 million for his daughters brand new women’s fund, appeared to curtsy to the king, stuffed an electoral map in the Western Wall, volunteered that Israel did not give him intelligence that he gave to Russians in the Oval Office, depressed the Pope, irked his wife, shoved the leader of Montenegro to get to the head of the line, was ambush handshook by the new president of France, told the Germans they were very very bad…. can he please stop now? This drip, drip, drip of rotten embarrassing news is driving everyone crazy. Please please don’t start a war. Now his son-in-law is being invited for some interviews with the FBI?
Meanwhile, New York is getting clobbered by rain and new Street Art and murals and is electrified with the excitement of the beginning of summer. Coney Island, Bushwick, Little Italy are hot for new stuff going up again, David Choe is at the Houston Wall this week, the Bushwick Collective Block Party is June 3, and Ad Hoc’s Welling Court begins June 10.
Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring: Alice Pasquini, Baron Von Fancy, Blanco, City Kitty, Crash, Drsc0, Erosie, Jim Drain, Jorit Agoch, kaNO, Martin Whatson, Nick Walker, Pear, Rocket 01, Serge Lowrider, and Tod Seelie.
“As Estha stirred the thick jam he thought Two Thoughts and the Two Thoughts he thought were these:
a) Anything can happen to anyone.
and
b) It is best to be prepared.”
― Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things
As New Yorkers (and the world) discuss whether Trump will self-combust, start a war, take control as a dictator, be revealed as a Russian operative, or be impeached, some things are for sure – every day the reputation of the US is sustaining damage among friends and allies, billionaires are grinning like Cheshire Cats and US citizens are feeling insecure as hell.
In New York, his “hometown”, we found this article from the Bronx Weekly to be full of informative responses from every day neighbors like the ones you see on the street and in the subway, at the laundromat, in the grocery store. Protests against him and his policies keep happening and more are planned; According to this piece in AM New York we’ve already had demonstrations this year outside Trump Tower, Trump International Hotel and Tower, at the Stonewall National Monument, Battery Park, Tompkins Square Park, Washington Square Park, Times Square and outside Kennedy Airport. And of course, we had Melissa McCarthy as Sean Spicer riding his podium through Midtown on Friday morning.
With this as a backdrop, its amazing that more Street Art isn’t overtly political. But what most of us are worried about these days isn’t specifically political – its our lives. And the street always has its way of reflecting us back to ourselves.
Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring: Aito Katazaki, City Kitty, Crash, Crime Scene, drsc0, Extinct Species, Felix Semper, GM.145, Himbad, Megzany, Pink Power, Raf Urban, SacSix, Stikman, and Xors.
Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring: Baron Von Fancy, City Kitty, Claudio Dre, Consumer Art, Ethan Armen, Humenbote, Jerk Face, Mr. Sis, Pantonio, Paola Delfin, Paris Sketch Culture, Peter Tunney, Sac Six, Thomas Allen, Tictail, and Zor.
Inauguration week was just as bumpy as you could have expected with an incredibly divided country discussing the outgoing president, the incoming president, the foreign interference and weird circumstances around the actual election, the nearly all white all billionaire cabinet nominees, and the Women’s March‘s that vastly overwhelmed Trumps ceremony attendee numbers while “sister” marches took place in nearly 700 cities around the world. This president, more than any one in decades, is galvanizing people to take action and get involved, just not in the way he might have preferred and we’ve been seeing a steady dialogue on the street about him since last fall.
He certainly wasted no time by signing his first executive order within minutes of being sworn in, one that aims to repeal Obamacare and that would deny health care. In the early and mid-2000s there was a lot of anti-Bush/ anti-war street art. At this inauguration George W. looked giddy and relaxed (despite a poncho battle) perhaps because he might not be the most disliked president of the century after all. Trump v. Obama inauguration numbers were pretty stark, and this week Trump’s national approval ratings have tanked, although a fresh war always tends to perk up a presidents approval numbers, so maybe he can start one of those. Not sure if his popularity would go up or down if he triggered a crisis in the financial markets, but it does feel like absolutely anything is possible with this wildcard. You can be sure that Street Art will be probably be there to respond! We’re keep our eyes open.
So here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring Adline, City Kitty, D7606, Drsco, El Sol 25, Hek Tad, Homo Riot, Jerk Face, Jose Feliz Perez, Lunge Box, Meguru Yamaguchi, Michael Vasquez, Nimai Keston, Not Art, Shepard Fairey, Sheryo & the Yok, and Vicki Da Silva.
Yeah, we didn’t know what it meant either so we looked it up. Here’s what Wikipedia says: Kompromat (Russian: компромат; IPA: [kəmprɐˈmat], short for компрометирующий материал, literally “compromising material”) is the Russian term for compromising materials about a politician or other public figure. Such materials can be used to create negative publicity, for blackmail, or for ensuring loyalty.
In other words, light artist Vicki Da Silva is referencing the apparent influence of the Russian government over the presidential election by smearing Clinton publicly with information they had found. Luckily they didn’t find any information to influence Trump in any way.
Jerk Face (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Looks like Pepe Le Pew is lurking around for some lovely lady skunk to walk by so he can use his famously suave pickup lines;
We haven’t had such a frightening Halloween in years! – and we know we speak for many readers as well while we all look at the monstrous tabloid TV parade that is scaring the electorate. Boo!
Luckily we found some treats on the street! And a few tricks, but those are for our paid site, wink wink.
So here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring Bifido, Buff Monster, City Kitty, Dee Dee, Disto, Droid, Flood, Myth, Nychos, R2, REVS, RODA, Rusk, See True Fame, Sipros, Smells, Smith, Sweet Toof, and Texas.
It’s been a spectacular amber and golden and green autumn week when you’re able to ride your bike around and see a lot of great new and old Street Art and not break a sweat because the air is fresh and cool and the sun is spectacular.
And the streets are alive!
We found a new REVS, a new JJ Veronis and a big full-poster Clint Mario. Given the fact that two of the pieces are beautifully crafted metal sculptures and one is an ad take over in the subway, that gives you an indication that artists are active right now – and public space is being engaged. Get on your boots and take a hike, take your imagination and a sweatshirt in case you’re in the shade, and Street Art is out there waiting for you.
So here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring Bies, City Kitty, Clint Mario, Downtown DaVinci, Elle, Gaia, Hooker, InDecline, JJ Veronis, REVS, RWK, Sable Elise Smith, and Sean 9 Lugo.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring 907 Crew, Aneko, Cash4, City Kitty, COST, D7606, Gregos, LMNOPI, Opiemme, Phlegm, Pork, Rambo, Smells, UFO, Vhils, and Vudo Child.
Vudo Child. Detail. Unintended selfie. (photo © Jaime Rojo)