All posts tagged: Detroit

Roula David and Jesse Corey : Wishes & Hopes for 2017

December 30, 2016 Artists

As we near the new year we’ve asked a special guest every day to take a moment to reflect on 2016 and to tell us about one photograph that best captures the year for him or her. It’s an assortment of treats for you to enjoy and contemplate as we all reflect on the year that has passed and conjure our hopes and wishes for the new year to come. It’s our way of sharing the sweetness of the season and of saying ‘Thank You’ for inspiring us throughout the year.

The dynamo Detroit couple who run Inner State Gallery and the 50+ artist festival called Murals in The Market, Roula David and Jesse Cory are perhaps best known for owning and operating 1xRun, a stellar and sophisticated artists’ print business that boasts an impressive roster of street and street culture-related creators. More impressively, these folks value community, family, Detroit culture and its history: What these two (and Oscar) build is so much more than bricks and mortar.

Title: @oscarfromtheblock holding down his shipping desk at the @1xRUN offices.
Location: Service Street, Detroit, Michigan
Date: 2016
Photo by Jesse Cory

The back entrance to our studio is where Oscar welcomes artists, guest, clients, collectors from across the globe, his excitement and greeting is memorable and makes for quite a first impression.

This entrance and this block is also incredibly special to us. Service Street in Detroit is well known as being one of the most creative blocks for over 30 years. Some of the city’s first artist lofts and loft parties happened here. This is where we relocated our business, gallery, and home 4 years ago. This past year we hosted the kickoff for @muralsinthemarket on Service Street and it is alway a very Detroit (and a very American) landscape to bring our artists to as soon as they land.

“Our photo is a little combo of all. It has our sticker door at 1xRUN on our favorite street, Service Street, with our favorite little puppy Oscar.”

Follow them : @jessecory @rouladavid @oscarfromtheblock

BSA Film Friday: 11.18.16

November 18, 2016 Artists

Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.

Now screening :
1. Labrona Unveiled
2. Opiemme: Lodz Of Eggs
3. Resoborg “Love Imvelo” in South Africa
4. Brad Eastman AKA Beastman in Sydney

BSA Special Feature: Labrona Unveiled

Not exactly overlooked but perhaps under-sung, the work of freight train-writer/figurative painter Labrona has appeared on BSA since our beginning and for the first time you have an opportunity to see the artist and hear his voice. Up until now he has preferred to be remain somewhat anonymous individually but is pulling back the curtain in his unassuming way.

See and hear him describe his sort of organic progression from the illegal walls on street to the to legal murals and gallery canvasses. You do not get the sense that Labrona has been in it for fame, rather the love of art and his own studies of art history.

Opiemme: Lodz Of Eggs

The Italian artist Opiemme realized a site specific project for Urban Forms Foundation recently in Lodz with a collective performance involving community members throwing paint filled eggs.

It is rather difficult to understand what it all means, or how it is related to the astrological sign Taurus, or even if the participants had a clear idea what the bigger story was. But it looks like a fun interactive event for people to engage with art.

Resoborg “Love Imvelo” in South Africa

Wesley van Eeden aka Resoborg was in South Africa recently painting a mural for a lifestyle brand of clothing. He says that “Love Imvelo” is influenced by the Zulu word for the environment and he was to encourage our love for it.

Brad Eastman AKA Beastman in Sydney

Brad Eastman talks about his wall for a real estate firm in downtown Sydney.

Wastedland 2. Andrew H. Shirley Corrals Counter-Culture in Detroit

October 22, 2016 Artists, Interview

“The only way to support a revolution is to make your own.” Abbie Hoffman

EKG Labs. Wastedland 2. Detroit, September 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

PREAMBLE

At any given moment a counter-culture is developing before your eyes. Authoritarian governments know this. So do, as it turns out, lifestyle brands, sociologists, and PR firms.

Born of a genuine disaffection with the dominant culture as it steamrolls blithely forward, counter-culture has the ability to draw sharp contrasts into focus, expose secrets, challenge hypocrisies, redress inequality. It can also crack open a moribund mindset and give oxygen and sunlight and water to new ideas, new ways of being, alternate paradigms.

UFO 907 & William Thomas Porter. Wastedland 2. Detroit, September 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Counter-culture is essential to growth of culture, and while it can be shocking, disruptive, even painful at times, the wise know that the marginalized often lead the body politic toward a stronger equilibrium, a more perfect union.

Graffiti may not have begun as a subculture or a counter-culture, but virtually all of our recognized institutions steadfastly resisted it. Over time, they have become more open to suggestion, if with reservations and conditions. Eventually, everything is transformed by it in degrees.

EKG Labs. Wastedland 2. Detroit, September 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

DETROIT CHARTS THE MOVEMENT

May we suggest that when it comes to the counter-cultural aspects of graffiti and Street Art, Detroit is a fine example of being in multiple stages of acceptance and denial, with examples of the counter-culture all along the continuum from rejection to absorption.

During a recent visit we saw old-school Detroit graffiti heads with their elaborate pieces next to newcomer kids from other cities bringing a raw-graff anti-style. You could also find corporate lifestyle brands polishing their art-cool bonafides while gently intermingling with grassroots community-minded mural organizing.

Further up the financial ladder you’ll witness blue-chip collector/investors getting down in a gallery culture that supports marquee art names, and major institutions courting younger “edgy” artists who started their “careers” far outside the mainstream, often outside the law.

EKG Labs. Wastedland 2. Detroit, September 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Andrew H. Shirley steps carefully in many ways as he leads us up a cracked staircase of oil-caked concrete, piss-poor lighting and the occasional puddle of murk. Our ears are still ringing from the sounds of a busted muffler in his car and we’re mulling over the sight of his dashboard vitrine that seemed to contain bones, feathers, amulets and pop culture debris reflecting in a ochre filmed windshield.

On the way here to Lincoln Art Park, we have passed graffitied car carcasses, crumbling ex factories, and fire torched exoskeletons of houses – all which lead to this loading dock entrance of a building once owned by Ford, now run as a recycling plant and, as it turns out, an art exhibition gallery.

Our ride to Wastedland 2. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“So there was 40 years of garbage and the whole floor was filled with it,” Andrew says, “I came in here and I had to unload all of that sh*t by myself”.

A native of the big D, the slim-framed Mr. Shirley has spent half of his 40 years outside of it; writing graffiti, pitching and creating art projects, promoting scenes, studying film making and custom bike-making… generally pushing the margins of cultural acceptability in a way that looks sketchy on a resume – but would make smart brands salivate, if they had the guts.

“This is the 20th anniversary of me leaving this town and I have been back several times with several different shows,” he says about the group exhibitions and events that feature what he calls ‘underground aesthetics’.

“This is the first big public project where I brought a lot of my friends from New York and included the artists and makers here in Detroit who I have come to know over the years – all under one roof and showcasing all of their talents.”

Wastedland 2. Detroit, September 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

THE FILM

Also, a film screening.

It’s the debut of “Wastedland2” in the middle of this 7,000 square foot dark cavern with a small grouping of stolen church pews facing the screen. The original Wastedland was a smaller tale – a petri dish of ideas that expanded and took root in a showier piece of exploration and mystery with higher production values.

The seating area is orbited by mini-dioramas of characters and scenes featured in the half hour graffiti mockumentary. Here is a handmade shack by Adam Void that perhaps epitomizes a metaphorical outsider clubhouse mentality common to the graffiti game.

To stage left is a stuffed 6-foot tall Cranky Cat standing erect amid piles of spent paint cans, a fire extinguisher, and exhaust tubes leading nowhere. In the movie Cranky is a feral and grouchy/whining character who propels the drunken aerosol action forward with escapades of ex-urban painting and existential fireside conversation with Wolftits and Amoeba Man in their “Wizard of Oz”-like pilgrimage in search of truths. There is no Dorothy and no Toto in the film, but the animal head masks are trippy and comical even in the darkest moments. Each graffiti artist, according to EKG, was asked to make a costume that mimicked their spirit-animal. Amoeba Man’s plastic-wrapped head mask is a tour-de-force.

Standing silently in the center of the floor behind the seating area in the exhibit is the massive tentacled steam-punked multi-eyed orb made of wood and steel that gives physical presence to the elusive anonymous graffiti crew called UFO 907. He also is the films’ diety and the holder of the aforementioned elusive truths.

Behind him on the wall is another slatted and animated version of UFO – perhaps more similar to the wiggly UFO 907 character sprayed across hundreds of walls in NYC. This animated sculpture version has a reservoir of black ink that drips on the floor.

Wastedland 2 is a road trip without road, a therapeutic buddy film without saccharine, staged in a post apocalyptic terrain that is revealed as graffiti oasis. The hapless beer- and weed-fueled journey is pure youthful angst suspended in chemicals and many in the audience laughed in recognition at the head-banging frustration voiced about fundamental life questions by these furry characters.

Despite the obvious obstacles posed by frozen facial expressions, there is a warmth in the interactions. Of note particularly is the party scene of mixed genders and the stumbling awkwardness of Wolftits with a potential lady friend; this will be the first time you’ve seen the mating game portrayed quite like this.

“Cranky Cat’s Hovel” with Cranky Cat. Wastedland 2. Detroit, September 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“This piece played the character of God in the film,” Andrew says, pointing to the all-seeing sculpture. “You may have seen that it was actually in a field in upstate New York.”

Yes, we made the trip to the rolling hills of cow-country to see it twice in a field of gently waving weeds. Previously we saw it in the lobby of the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Previous to that we saw it being carved, soldiered, and under construction in UFO’s studio in Brooklyn. Truthfully, it does seem rather god-like.

Andrew says he transported the hulking orb by truck from rural New York to post-industrial Detroit, which must have taken 9 or 10 hours if he crossed into Canada and squeezed between the Great Lakes of Ontario and Erie.

EKG Labs. Wastedland 2. Detroit, September 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

This old factory has definitely not been refurbished into a “white box” gallery space, and there are no guards. There may be a guard dog. The floors are occasionally flooded by a leak from a source that is hard to pinpoint, the lighting is so irregular as to appear incidental, and visitors should be careful not to bang their head on the soot-covered sculptures of clouds by artist DarkClouds that are affixed slightly above with stalactite-like ebony drips that could be solid or liquid.

Dark Clouds. Wastedland 2. Detroit, September 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

As you parse the floors and avoid the paint-peeling columns Mr. Shirley is narrating just ahead of you with an earnest voice that weaves in and out of range, dashing off to find an extension chord perhaps, or a ladder, or to find someone to come explain the muscular graffiti pieces on display in the adjoining passage.

GANGSTERS AND WHITE KIDS

BRZM ISH/ SYW. Wastedland 2. Detroit, September 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Presently a twenty-something guy named Zak Warman appears and walks us past 10 or so freshly wild and layered graffiti pieces each displayed in their own bay, each representing important players from the last couple of decades in the Detroit graffiti scene. Zak tells us says that the Motor City scene is characterized by two distinct styles and constituencies at the moment, and this show combines both.

“I guess like the ‘gangster graffiti’ and the ‘white kid graffiti’ would be the best way to put it,” he explains while surveying the lineup and glancing at the rest of the show. “You know, the people who were like born in the gutter here and the people who came here in their teen years who moved here and such.”

YOGURT / DFW. Wastedland 2. Detroit, September 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“There’s people here who would never have painted together but maybe it was just the way that I showed them or my proposal. I was like ‘let’s just set everything aside that’s happened over the years – this is about us it is not about you. This is about everybody not just about our own f**king personal graff beef.’ ”

“It’s like the first time that everyone has come together into one big family.”

Mr. Shirley jumps in to further describe the nature of the work and the creators. “It is very important in Detroit to be able to ‘piece’, ” he says of the verb ‘piece’ that describes the noun ‘piece’ – a large, complex, and labor-intensive graffiti painting.

“In some places having a good tag is that first staple and then you move up from that tag,” he explains. “But here, because of the amount of time and space that you have to develop your craft all of these dudes really regard piecing above everything else.”

He walks down to the end of the line to point at a painted work. “These guys at the end – PERU and ARMY – they were doing 10-color pieces on the streets, as was SEKT – before anyone else. These guys represent a span of time from the early and mid 90s into the 2000s.” In most cities you don’t have that luxury of time to develop an illegal piece, but Detroit has a number of stories like this.

PERU ARMY. Wastedland 2. Detroit, September 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

A common story around Detroit is that, due to de-industrialization, the collapsing economy and the shrinking municipal budgets in the 1990s and 00s, the police were only arresting people for felonies. Since graffiti was not a felony, the police would simply drive by while aerosol was being sprayed.

“It’s not a myth,” says Andrew. “I painted a water tower one time – it’s still here today.” He recounts a story where one cop sat vigil on a rooftop for hours watching him paint on the water tower, only to be replaced by another until finally the painting was done. “I think he was just making sure that I didn’t get hurt and that I was okay,” he says with a sense of wonder.

SEKT EBC / DFW. Wastedland 2. Detroit, September 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

PARTING FOG

EKG Labs . Drake. Wastedland 2. Detroit, September 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

It’s time to depart the Wastedland 2 exhibition and go to the streets in this run-down part of Detroit, where the art on the walls is roughly the same as the stuff we’ve just come to see.

It is unclear if this underground is simply about aesthetics, or if there is a deeper message. Maybe this is not a counter-culture after all, but a subculture.

As we stand by the elevated installation by artist EKG, dry-ice smoke billows out of a fully formed madman’s laboratory behind black curtains. Amid the visual field of blinkering orange light tubes and smoke that harken back to 1950s Sci-Fi movies, you see another character from the movie; the film’s box-headed admin assistant who robotically types out reams of black scrolls full of orange symbols to decode at a pivotal moment. This is an apt skillset to possess in an underground scene that is heavily coded and rife with implied and layered messages. A simple man of few words, EKG dubbed his character The Cyber Spirit Stenographer in The Court of The Overlord.

EKG Labs. Wastedland 2. Detroit, September 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

We consider the amorphous steam from the Cyber Spirit and wonder how porous the veil is between the mainstream and the outsider artists who fuel this scene. When does counter-culture become culture? We can’t say for sure.

“Detroit is a pretty good example of counter-culture becoming culture, actually,” replies Andrew H. Shirley to our inquiry. “There is this corporatization that happens and there are culture vultures on the corners and in the nooks and crannies in underground scenes of America and they are exploiting it for monetary gain.” True. But there is also word-of-mouth that spreads the news and the willing, thrilling adoption of techniques and languages by the naturally inquisitive types whose brain synapses are electrified by discovery. With shows like this does Mr. Shirley feel like he is aiding and abetting the mainstreaming of a subculture like graffiti and its D.I.Y tributaries?

“I’d like to pull back the curtains and give a little peek of it but I’m not trying to shine too many flashlights or provide too much of a narrative into the ‘hows’ and ‘whats’ and ‘whys’. I think it’s important for the common man to see that there is an alternative perspective because too often they are just inundated by the media that is controlled by the corporations – who are telling them what to wear, how to think, how to act, what to pray to, what to feel and how to live their life.”

EKG Labs. Wastedland 2. Detroit, September 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

SOME LAST WORDS ON FESTIVALS

He does have a little beef with mural festivals though.

He thinks his Wastedland 2 show deals a fairer hand to local artist communities. “This is kind of in contrast to what seems to be an international phenomenon of bringing muralists, many of them the same muralists, from city to city – developing a ‘look’ that is kind of becoming a blanketed look,” he says.

“Detroit has so many f**king artists and part of the problem for me is that there are a lot of these mural festivals that are two thirds or 75% or 90% international artists and 10% or 20% local artists. It doesn’t allow for the city to see what is really happening here. I wanted to have a show where the background and the forefront of the show was about what was happening here.”

“While I do think the mural festival is very important in bringing in outside influence and outside interest into the city, for me it is just as important, or more important, to really praise and understand the origins of these movements in Detroit. That’s why I have reached out and had the help of friends to get these artists into the show.”

That said, we’ll say that the Wastedland 2 event was heavily promoted by the folks at the recent Murals In The Market Festival and many of the international artists who participated in the mural festival were also in attendance at the Shirley curated show, the bonfires, and music events at the sculpture park – as well as the screening of the movie.

Of course we also saw Gen Y and even Gen Z there with backpacks full of paint, dangling their legs off the retaining wall that overlooked the huge bonfire — who seemed to disappear when the freight train that ran along the lots’ perimeter came to a halt. There was also a guy from the Detroit Institute of Arts and a local plumber who talked to us about building a tree house in his front yard. Maybe it is harder to define culture than we thought.

Wastedland 2. Detroit, September 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Amy Smalls . George Vidas. Wastedland 2. Detroit, September 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Amy Smalls . George Vidas . GEN2. Wastedland 2. Detroit, September 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Rambo . UFO907 . Ryan C. Doyle. Wastedland 2. Detroit, September 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Amanda Wong . Andrew H. Shirley. Wastedland 2. Detroit, September 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dark Clouds. Wastedland 2. Detroit, September 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Wolftits popcorn making machine. Wastedland 2. Detroit, September 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Adam Void. Wastedland 2. Detroit, September 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Greg Henderson. Wastedland 2. Detroit, September 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Participating artists at Detroit Wastedland2, curated by Andrew H. Shirley include ARMY, BRZM, DRAKE, DONT, DYKE, ELMER, FOUR EYES, LIGER, MINCE, PERU, PORAB, REVEREND, SECT, SKWAT, TOUCH, TURDL, YOGRT and others from Detroit and also artists Adam Void, Amanda Wong, Amy Smalls and George Vidas , Ben Wolf, DARKCLOUDS, EKG, Greg Henderson, Hugo Domecq, RAMBO, Ryan C. Doyle, UFO 907, William Thomas Porter, WOLFTITS, among others.

Performers included The Unstoppable Death Machines, DJ Ihatejail.com (Crazy Jim from Wolf Eyes), Ishtar, Lt. Dan, and Dj’s Abacus, Prismviews, Black Noi$e, Abby and 100% Halal Meat

This article is also published on The Huffington Post

Next stop on the film’s multi-city launch: Richmond,Virginia on November 4.

“Wastedland 2” and the accompanying show will feature new artwork from: Adam Void, Amanda Wong, Amy Smalls and George Vidas, Andrew H. Shirley, Conrad Carlson, DARKCLOUDS, EKG, Greg Henderson, NOXER, RAMBO, Russell Murphy, Ryan C. Doyle, UFO 907, William Thomas Porter, WOLFTITS, and live performances from The Unstoppable Death Machines and Richmond’s DUMB WAITER and TOWARD SPACE. There will also be graffiti installations from local Richmond vandals and the 907 crew.

BSA Film Friday: 10.21.16

October 21, 2016 Artists

Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.

Now screening :

1. “What If You Fly” Sean Yoro AKA HULA
2. Herakut in Paris for “100 Walls for Youth”
3. Cleon Peterson: “Endless Sleep” at the Eiffel Tower
4. The Yok & Sheryo “Ping Pong Auto Shack” Murals In The Market 2016 /1xRUN/Detroit

BSA Special Feature: “What If You Fly” Sean Yoro AKA HULA

This is outdoor painting that tests concepts of precariousness, ephemerality, temporality.

“It’s too bad that it didn’t last but that’s the way the world works. Not everything lasts very long,” says Inuit native Jesse Mike of the experimental portrait by Hula on a floating chunk of ice.

“One of my main priorities for working outside is to interact with the environment,” says the artist lying on a small raft of snow bobbing gently in ice cold water – his painting literally mixed into the snow next to him.

This is painting in the arctic, in between the drift ice and the main pack ice. Before it melts.

Herakut in Paris for “100 Walls for Youth”

A fascinating intermingling of realism, fantasy, and poetry, the composition features a helmeted youth sees a winged horse in the sublime otherworld that children so easily inhabit. Part of the 100 Walls for Youth program just begun with Street Artist C215, this wall also neatly aligns with the upcoming exhibition of the artists at the gallery November 25th

Gautier Jourdain, co-owner of Mathgoth, tells us that Jasmin (Hera) and Falk (Akut) looked no further than the streets of Paris for inspiration. “They asked a student who passed by in the street if she would like to be a model for their painting. She said yes and they took pictures and used them for direct reference.”

For our article and photos of this installation go here:

Cleon Peterson: “Endless Sleep” at the Eiffel Tower

Cleon Peterson tells the story of how he developed “Endless Sleep”, his painting at the base of the Eiffel Tower in Paris during the Nuit Blanche festival.

The Yok & Sheryo “Ping Pong Auto Shack” Murals In The Market 2016 /1xRUN/Detroit

Those Krazy Kids from Singapore and Down Under somehow have landed in Detroit briefly and have decided to Shack Up. Sexy ladies, devils, and tattoos all mill about.

Beau Stanton: A Vibrant Beacon Rises From the Ruins in Detroit

October 11, 2016 Artists, Interview

Artist Beau Stanton has a studio practice and a street practice, but most wouldn’t think of him as a Street Artist, per se. Classically trained in illustration and oil painting, his precise and hand-rendered style borrows from traditional, historical, nautical, and religious influences. Related from their original context, his appropriated icons, figures, and sense of ornamentation are placed in relation to one another in a way that creates new timeless stories that are rooted in the past but are also in this moment.

Beau Stanton. Detroit, USA. September 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

On leave from Brooklyn for a brief residency in Detroit, lately Stanton has been spending his time urban exploring 20^th century American civilization by wandering through abandoned car manufacturing plants and old churches that have left to crumble, taking inspiration from both the orderly design and mechanical interplay observed in factories and the ornamentally inspirational language used in sacred houses of worship.

Environments and implied histories like these overlap in varied practices during his short career that includes oil paintings, murals, larger scale installations, stained glass, and multimedia. Back at his residency studio he is now trying his hand at the artful laying hand cut tile, glass, ceramic, brick, found materials and mortar. Mosaic work is next and you can see him applying his study of the century-spanning craft with the same meticulous attention to detail that earmarks his work elsewhere.

Beau Stanton. Detroit, USA. September 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

We were also exploring in Detroit recently and came upon a lone house painted by Stanton in a pavement gridded grassy field that once was a neighborhood. It is a common sight in modern Detroit, these remnants of a working class and middle class decimated by “free trade” and corporate greed. Entire neighborhoods now are barren and dotted with huge overgrown trees that were once in front yards, perhaps holding a swing or shading a couple of lawn chairs. Block after block one can see how livelihoods crumbled and burned to the ground – and now there is only the occasional house or church or small business still standing where once there was a community.

Painted during last years’ Murals in the Market festival, Stanton’s multi-sided mural uses vaguely familiar figures and ornamentation in eye-popping hues that suggest vibrant life is here again. The new construction of a house is made a beacon by his vision, a hopeful note that some think is a harbinger of the big D’s resurgent and budding future. Within it you may see allusions to Detroit’s Victorian architecture and mansions, ornamental gears of progress, rays of vision and inspiration. Of course, its all subjective.

Beau Stanton. Detroit, USA. September 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

We asked Beau about his house and his observations on Detroit during his time in the city right now.

Brooklyn Street Art: How did you find out about this cinder-block house?
Beau Stanton: Last year for the first Murals in the Market, the festival directors Roula David and Jesse Cory approached me to paint this house having known I’d been interested in doing a house intervention piece for a long time. This was basically a dream scenario for me.

BSA: How do the designs you painted respond to the area around it?
Beau Stanton: The house is really visible from St. Aubin Street as one of the only remaining homes in a several block radius so I wanted to do something really bright and colorful that would make this weird little house appear renewed and re-occupied after being abandoned for almost a decade. The images on the vertically oriented sides are both symbolic, a rendition of a classical bearded god figure crowned by historic Detroit architecture emerging from my usual mechanical wave patterns, and on the opposite side a tree with mostly bare branches with leaves starting to sprout as if coming into Spring.

Beau Stanton. Detroit, USA. September 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

BSA: You are preparing for an upcoming show this fall, right? What will you be focusing on?
Beau Stanton: I am currently a resident at the Red Bull House of Art in Detroit’s Eastern Market, the three month residency culminates with a large exhibition in the on site gallery where I will be showing alongside the other two residents Coby Kennedy and Lala Abbadon.

I’m using this residency as an opportunity to try out some new techniques and installation ideas I’ve wanted to do for a while involving a lot of resources one can only find in Detroit. The main focus of my work will be large scale mosaics that are composed of locally sourced glass, ceramic, brick, marble, and other materials that I’ve been finding mostly in abandoned factories. I want the work to have Detroit DNA while also playing with ideas of urban archaeology, alternate past/future scenarios, and ultimately creating something beautiful from the remains of Detroit’s glorious past, while celebrating the renewal and sense of optimism that is really palpable here.

Beau Stanton. Detroit, USA. September 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

BSA: Often you have included mythical and/or nautical themes in your paintings. Did you have in mind the Detroit River or surrounding cityscape when conceptualizing this piece.
Beau Stanton: The main image of the head and crown incorporate about half a dozen historic homes from the nearby neighborhood of Brush Park. Although most of these beautiful Victorian buildings are no longer around, a few of them have been recently restored to their original grandeur including the iconic Ransom Gillis house, one of my early Detroit obsessions.

BSA: How would you describe Detroit and the artist scene right now?
Beau Stanton: One of the first things I noticed on my first visit here several years ago was how supportive and tight knit the art scene is in Detroit. When you come to this city, the abundance of space creates a sense that you can do or make anything, this can be intoxicating at first causing one to dream really big. Eventually you come back to Earth but the essence of that feeling remains and I think that this is why you see such great work coming out of this city right now, both on the street and in the gallery.

Beau Stanton. Detroit, USA. September 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

BSA Images of the Week 10.09.16

October 9, 2016 Artists, BSA Images Of The Week

Donald Trump didn’t change. Your “News” did.

Any New Yorker on the street can tell you that Donald Trump has always been this way – he hasn’t made a “secret” of it. We just called this stuff “tabloid news”, and tabloids were an exception. Now they nearly rule all public discourse.

Lowest-common-denominator “News” has produced a lowest-common-denominator candidate. He almost clinched the highest elected office. There is a trail of polarized destruction in the wake.

For over a year this profit-driven entertainment media actually created a cancerous candidate who gives them daily “clickable content” while they hold their noses and count the dollars. These people aren’t serving you, or democracy. We are all collectively debased – men and women, black and white, Mexican and Muslim, rich and poor, families, children, teachers, workers, nurses, doctors, cashiers, church people, atheists – as a result.

The GOP’s flirtation with starting and fanning racist bonfires over the past decade or so has finally swallowed it in flames, leaving it in smoking embers, their leaders completely covered with fecal matter, quieted and stunned. The reputation of the US around the world took a battering thanks to this tabloid news candidate as well. Traveling to Street Art events outside the US this year, invariably someone would shake us by the lapels and ask us what the hell was going on with this Trump guy?!.

In recognition of the woman-hating man who came dangerously close to the White House, here are a number of different women and girls by Street Artists creating in the public sphere at the moment, covering a range of styles, backgrounds, techniques and points of view.

So, here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Beast, Danielle Mastrion, Faile, finDAC, Jilly Ballistic, Kevin Lyons, Leticia Mondragora, LMNOPI, Marina Capdevila, Myth, Never Crew, Ouch, Shepard Fairey, Sipros, Slick, Spaik, Stray Ones, Taker, Who’s Dirk, and Zimer.

Our top image: FinDac (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Shepard Fairey. Detail. For The L.I.S.A. Project in The East Village. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Shepard Fairey. The L.I.S.A. Project in The East Village. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Zimer (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Danielle Mastrion and Lexi Bella collaboration. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Beast (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Faile (photo © Jaime Rojo)

LMNOPI (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Leticia Mandragora (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Marina Capdevilla in Switzerland for Vision Art Festival. (photo © Marina Capdevila)

Myth (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Stray Ones (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Stray Ones. Catch him if you can! (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Ouch (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Taker for The Bushwick Collective. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Never Crew in Luzern, Switzerland for Viva Con Agua. (photo © Never Crew)

Sipros for The Bushwick Collective. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Jilly Ballistic. Palimpsest in the NYC Subway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Artist Unknown. Sexual predator for USA President. How can you people defend him still? (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Artist Unknown. She is not perfect. She is also not crazy. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Whos Dirk (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Slick. Murals In The Market/1XRun 2016. Detroit, Michigan. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Kevin Lyons. Murals In The Market/1XRun 2016. Detroit, Michigan. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Spaik. Sardegna in Italy. (photo © Spaik)

Untitled. Subway dreams. NYC Subway. Manhattan, NYC. October 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

BSA Images Of The Week: 10.02.16 : Spotlight on Climate Change

October 2, 2016 Artists, BSA Images Of The Week, Interview

Faile. Detail. The Greenest Point Project. Greenpoint, Brooklyn. NYC. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

He loves me, he loves me not. He loves me, he tells me I’m an idiot because I trust scientists about climate change and that actually it is a hoax created by the Chinese.

Sorry, everything reminds us of Donald J. Trump and his outlandish claim for the presidency. Even when we are looking at the new Faile mural in Greenpoint, Brooklyn called Love Me, Love Me Not.

The Greenest Point is an initiative that wants to raise awareness of Climate Change and three Street Artists have just completed two murals here in Brooklyn to support it. The organization says that they hope to gather “together people from different backgrounds, professions and skill-sets who are bonded by aligned values and a common vision.” By integrating Street Art with technology, film, sound and voice, they hope that we’ll be more capable of piecing together the climate change puzzle as a collective.

Faile. Detail. The Greenest Point Project. Greenpoint, Brooklyn. NYC. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

We don’t pretend to be scientists, but we trust the ones we have and we decided that this week we would dedicate BSA Images of the Week just to this new project and this topic. We also know that it is now well-documented that tobacco companies fought us citizens with disinformation and legislative trickery for decades before they finally admitted that smoking was killing us and our families, so there is reason to believe that oil companies and related industries who flood our media and politicians with money are possibly buying time while we’re all heating up the atmosphere.

Here are new images of the two new murals in Greenpoint and Williamsburg, Brooklyn and an interview with the three artists who participated; Vexta, Askew, and long time Greenpoint studio residents, Faile.

BSA: Why do you think art is an important vehicle to highlight climate issues?
Faile: We feel it’s important to create work that can resonate with people on an emotional level. Something that we can live with everyday and that has a place in our lives that brings meaning to our experience. This is how we think people must learn to connect to climate change. It’s not something you can just think about, it’s something that you have to do everyday. It has to become part of you. We hope art has the power to be that wink and nod that you are on the right track. That the little things you do are meaningful and that change starts with you in the most simple of ways.

Vexta and Askew. The Greenest Point Project. Greenpoint, Brooklyn. NYC. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

BSA: Greenpoint has a history of blue collar communities who worked in factories producing goods for the both the merchant marine and the USA Navy. Those factories are all gone and only a few of the original settlers remain in the neighborhood such as the Polish community. How do you think the murals painted for the festival relate to them?
Vexta: Our collaborative mural hopefully offers a voice to people directly to people who will become a part of the history of Greenpoint and its legacy. We will have QR codes installed that link to video pieces that physically give Askew’s subjects a voice as well as linking to the birds calls and information about their situation.
Faile: We tried to be aware of the history of Greenpoint. The communities that make this neighborhood what it is. We tried to incorporate some nods to them through the work, specifically with the traditional Polish pattern in the socks. Unfortunately, Greenpoint is also home to some of the worst ecological disasters this country has ever experienced, the effects of which are still present. We wanted to bring something positive and something beautiful to the neighborhood that spoke to everyone. There are other historical murals in the neighborhood so it didn’t feel like it required another.

The neighborhood is also quickly changing. It’s home to many young families and has a vibrant creative class, not to mention our studio for the last 12 years. When creating an artwork in a public space, especially a park, there’s always that balance of trying to make something that people can connect with on a visceral, then psychological level in an immediate way–once that connection is made you hope they can dig a little deeper into the more subversive side of the meaning.

BSA: Do you think art and in particular the murals painted for this festival have the power to change the conversation on climate change and positively move and engage the people who either are indifferent to the issue or just refuse to believe that climate change is a real issue caused by humans?
Faile:Whether you believe it or not there are basic things that people can do in their everyday lives to create a more beautiful environment around them. Picking up trash, recycling, being mindful that our resources are precious – none of these really imply that you have to have an opinion about climate change. Just the fact that we have a green space now in Transmitter Park is progress towards an environment that we can fall in love with.

We think that’s ultimately what the idea of Love Me, Love Me Not is asking. What kind of environment do you want? Do you want renewable green spaces that offer future generations beauty and room to reflect within nature? Or do you want to pave over the toxic soil and oil spills with the risk of repeating the past? If people can even ask themselves that question then we are at least engaging them into the dialogue where the seeds of action can be planted.

Vexta and Askew. Detail. The Greenest Point Project. Greenpoint, Brooklyn. NYC. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

BSA: Why do you think art is an important vehicle to highlight climate issues?
Vexta: For me as an artist it is the means that I have to talk about what I know to be important. Art also stands as this symbolic, most often visual, gesture that can bring people together, ignite debate and shine a light towards a new way of thinking that is perhaps still in the shadows of the mainstream. There is no more pressing issue right now than Climate Change.

There was a famous piece of graffiti up for a long time in my home city of Melbourne that read “No Jobs on a Dead Planet” in a beautiful font running down a power plant chimney. This work spurred my thinking back before I had begun making art professionally. That simple creative action out in public space was powerful and it spoke a simple truth and showed me that you can do a lot with a little. Art and art out in the streets is a great vehicle for talking about issues like climate change, because its a gesture in a shared space, it provides something to meditate on or think about that ultimately is a shared reality, this makes sense to me as climate change is a problem we need to work together to address.

Askew: I think that in particular art in the public space can be a very powerful way to put messaging on issues that matter right out in front of people who may not otherwise engage with it. Also an artist has the freedom to make the image captivating in a way that perhaps other platforms for speaking about serious issues don’t. People get bombarded with so much conflicting information every day especially via the mainstream media, art can put people in the contemplative space to engage differently.

Vexta and Askew. Detail. The Greenest Point Project. Greenpoint, Brooklyn. NYC. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

BSA: You have participated in at least one other art festival whose principal mission is to highlight the well being of our ecology and our planet. What would you say is unique characteristic of The Greenest Point that differentiates it from other festivals with equal goals?
Askew: Well I think this is different because it’s so focused on a specific place whereas the scope of other events I’ve painted look more generally at global issues. I think it’s great for communities to narrow their focus to directly around them to tackle very tangible local change. If every neighborhood did that globally, imagine the impact.
Vexta: I agree with Askew, What is special about The Greenest Point is that it’s very locally based yet has a global focus. The Greenest Point has brought so many different parts of our local community together, from creatives to government to business. It has shown us that people in our neighborhood really care about Climate Change.

BSA: Your collaborative mural with Askew represents the current and future generations of children. What do you think is the principal message to send to the children so they are more aware of the problems facing our planet?
Vexta: My mural with Askew represents a coming together of numerous ideas. The future belongs to the youth and the world’s children will be the ones most impacted by Climate Change. I think they are really aware of this problem and it’s a very scary prospect. Our mural brought together not only representations of young people but also birds found in the NY state area that are currently climate threatened & endangered (according to Audubon’s Birds and Climate Change Report) as well as icebergs made of my shapes that represent the particles that make up all matter.

I would hope that we can inspire them to feel empowered to make small changes that they see as being possible whilst also acknowledging that all the other parts of our world – the birds, animals, water, air and land are just as important as they are. We are all in this together.

Askew: For me personally, celebrating young local people who are giving their time to make change in Greenpoint around sustainability and community-building issues is immediately inspiring to other young people.

BSA: Do you think art and in particular the murals painted for this festival have the power to change the conversation on climate change and positively move and engage the people who either are indifferent to the issue or just refuse to believe that climate change is a real issue caused by humans?
Askew: Everything we do has impact, positive and negative – that’s the duality we deal with inhabiting this space. It’s a closed system, resources are finite and so we must respect them and do our best to live in harmony with this earth that supports us and live peacefully amongst each other and the various other creatures we share this planet with. No one thing is going to make pivotal change but everyone being mindful and keeping the conversation and action going is what will make a difference.

Our special thanks to the team at The Greenest Point and to the artists for sharing their time and talent with BSA readers.

One image from this week by Street Artist Sipros depicts Climate-Change-denying Donald Trump as the character The Joker, from the Batman movies. A frightening piece of political satire, or perhaps propaganda, depending on who you talk to. Mana Urban Art Projects. Jersey City, NJ. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. Lincoln Street Art Park. Detroit, Michigan. Septiembre 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

BSA Film Friday: 09.30.16

September 30, 2016 Artists

Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.

Now screening :

1. “Street Food” from Mathieu Roquigny
2. Moses & Taps™ in Moscow
3. Panmela Castro in NYC “Women’s Rights are Human Rights”
4. Detroit: Murals In The Market. By Selina Miles
5. Murals In The Market 2016 Brings 40+ New Murals To Detroit. By Selina Miles

BSA Special Feature: “Street Food” from Mathieu Roquigny

Some simple stencil activism well placed can be very effective. Vulgar, absurd, playful. Call it what you want, but Mathieu Roquigny is the first one we have seen do it. Do not view during your morning donut and coffee.

Moses & Taps™ in Moscow

Famed train writers and fine artists in the gallery, Moses & Taps got a gig with a paint manufacturer and made a short 50 second overview of three walls they recently did in Moscow.

Panmela Castro in NYC “Women’s Rights are Human Rights”

With her lyrical touch and the softest of soundtracks, Panmaela Castro makes New York look like a welcoming tropical oasis. Also we thank her for the reminder that women’s rights are human rights, because it is evident that not everyone knows this.

Detroit: Murals In The Market. By Selina Miles

We had the pleasure of meeting the spectacular video storyteller Selina Miles in Detroit. She only confirmed to us that the spirit and intellect and talent are all there and so much more is in store from this fine person. Here are a couple of the short videos she made with the 1xRun team while in the Motor City.

Dozens Of Murals Take Shape In Eastern Market For Murals In The Market 2016. By Selina Miles

BSA Images Of The Week: 09.25.16

September 25, 2016 Artists

We spent one whole week in Detroit, Michigan as guests of the good people who present the Murals In The Market , 1xRUN and the Inner State Gallery. We scratched the surface.

Our selections for this week’s edition of BSA Images Of The Week are harvested from Detroit streets and rooftops and hidden little spots – the murals painted for this year’s edition of Murals In The Market, those are coming later on. Enjoy.

So, here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring 907 Crew, Aryz, Avoid, Birdo, Dark Clouds, Droid, Ghostbeard, How & Nosm, Jarus, Kuma, Miss Van, NGC, Ouizi, Patch Whisky, Shepard Fairey, Smells, UFO, Vhils.

Our top image: Droid 907 with their original hybrid of fire extinguisher and outlining. Detroit, Michigan. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

A typical graffiti smorgasbord in an abandoned building in Detroit, Michigan. Multiply this snapshot by 5,000. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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!

DETROIT: Murals In The Market. Dispatch 5. Details to Blow Your Mind

September 24, 2016 Artists

This week BSA is in Detroit with our hosts 1XRun for the Murals in the Market festival they are hosting with 50+ artists from various countries and disciplines and creative trajectories. In a city trying to rise from the economic and post-industrial ashes it is often the dynamic grassroots energy and vision of artists that sets the tone for how the community evolves.

Detroit rocked in many ways this week, not least because Roula David and Jesse Corey know how to manage a big moveable feast of walls and artists and food and lodging and parties and openings and donuts and a print business and gallery and still manage to have quality time with Oscar, their four year old chocolate pug-mix master who pretty much goes wherever he wants and investigates the scene.

Together David and Corey and the team spread their wings wide to make sure everybody gets taken care of, and we salute their talent and passion. The 1XRun crew, and there are like 20 of them, don’t mess around when getting equipment and cold water bottles and cans of paint and ladders to the artists, along with a hundred other small and large favors and forms of assistance that make this thing run smoothly. And kindly.

The details can really make the difference, in life and in art of course. Today we’ll show you some of the details of a few pieces that resonate from this years collection of vibrating visuals on the street in this part of east Detroit. And you can see that some murals are close to being finished as well. A selection of the completed walls will follow soon from this successful second year of Murals in the Market.

DETROIT: Murals In The Market. Dispatch 4: The Beat of the Street and “Mighty Love”

September 22, 2016 Artists

Pat Perry at work on his mural. Also, his truck. Murals In The Market – 1XRUN-Detroit-September 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Every city, every neighborhood it seems, has its own beat on the street. It is a rhythm of movement and sound and light comprised of different elements that meter the activity, determine its pacing, its lilt, its cadence.

Cars figure heavily into the beat of this wide-spread city of Detroit of course, an inherited trait central to the story of this factory town that gives certain deference to cars and trucks careening around corners and flying up battered blocks. Riding bicycles, as we do to quickly cover ground and see murals and artists, is a curiosity and not always respected by drivers.

But the rhythm of the human-powered bike is not entirely foreign here either, as the city boasts some of the most tricked out custom rides you are likely to see and posses of show-biking clubs like Detroit’s East Side Riders, who can shut down a few blocks at a time with flashy illuminated music thumping parades of stylish riders parading through.

The Slow Roll, which is a now a seasonal weekly biking event run by the non-profit Detroit Bike City, Inc. brings as many as 3- 4,000 bicyclists at a time to the city streets, a communal event that reintroduces people to each other and to their city.

There is cacophony in the market, with deliver trucks, sixteen wheelers, and construction and forklifts and all the hallmarks of light industry. Right now there are colorful and oddly dressed artists weaving like mangy cats through the sidewalks and streets with cans in their backpacks and visions in their heads.

Add to the mix the golf-cart driving 1XRun folks who are bringing bottled water, ladders, electrical generators flying around corners and rumbling up and down The Dequindre Cut, a below-grade pathway that used to carry the Grand Trunk Western Railroad line here on the east side – suitably covered with graffiti along its sidewalls.

Toss in a few art gallerists, dreadlocked organic farmers, meat cutters and conduit benders in their respective aprons, graphic design shops, lifestyle brands, waitresses, drug dealers posing as fans, intrepid looky-loos with white-sneakers and cameras and maps of murals, watermelons, gladiolas, bags of string beans, the occasional pop-up DJ tent, camera grip, skateboarder, wide-eyed sophist, tattooed Romeo, army-booted art-school woman, and a random chicken who is pecking among the grass between street bricks by a dumpster and you’ll get an idea of this particular menagerie of sights and sounds.

It’s a beat on the street that is full of rumbling, beeping, clicking, thumping – sometimes placid, sometimes crashing. All full of life and possibility, and one that is only contained in this very moment.

OG Slick is gradually revealing his animated burner on a quiet side street. Process shot. Murals In The Market – 1XRUN-Detroit-September 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Cey Adams at work on his mural, inspired by a classic mid-70s hit “Mighty Love” by the Spinners, sometimes called the Detroit Spinners. Cey took a minute for us to find the song on his iphone and pump up the sound. Then he wished he had brought some speakers, but it still sounded beautiful. A great moment of harmony on the street. Murals In The Market – 1XRUN-Detroit-September 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

English documentary photographer and fan of Street Art and featured artist of Murals in the Market this year, Janette Beckman in front of Chris Saunders mural. Murals In The Market – 1XRUN-Detroit-September 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

_____________________

DETROIT: Murals In The Market. Dispatch 3 with Heidelberg Project, Hueman, Pixel Pancho

September 21, 2016 Artists

The artists are quite spread out over multiple blocks on the street and in lots near and around the market area for the Murals in the Market festival and depending on where you ride your bike or drive your car you are probably going to find one on a scissor lift or ladder hiding from the sun under an umbrella or happily leaning against a wall in the shade nearby.

With Janette Beckman flipping through street art and photography books on the couch at the “headquarters” and Meggs and Mia putting the finishing touches on their combined “Verso” exhibition next door while artists wandered in and out looking for water, soda, and tortas, we climbed into a van with co-founder of Murals in the Market Jesse Cory, his dog Oscar, and artists Faith47, 1010, Hueman and some other friends to see the city through Jesse’s eyes.

There were burned down houses, the Packard plant in a state of pronounced disrepair, lots of empty lots, tags, pieces, burners, and an amazing project called Heidleberg. An artist on the roster this year for this festival, Tyree Guyton has been doing his own reinvention and revitalization of urban space here for three decades, so Street Art has nothing on him.

The series of outdoor installations throughout the multi-building, multi-lot outdoor museum can only be described as personal and eclectic – using found and handmade materials including sneakers, stuffed animals, dolls, boards, mirrors, and plenty of paint.

Impossible to do this long term project justice in only a few lines, we encourage you to be inspired by the outward creativity of one individual in a community. The work is engaging and nearly as charming as the man himself.

After Jesse’s tour we had the opportunity to troll though a 7,000 square foot warehouse of new works with the curator Andrew H. Shirley in a huge recycling center compound containing works by a number of Detroit based graff artists and a visiting crew of graff/street art off-the-grid artists like Rambo, Wolftits, UFO 907, EKG, Adam Void, and many more.

The two-story raw cavernous environment hosted the debut of a new film called “Wastedland2”, a story and film by Mr. Shirley, first shown there on Friday night. The graffiti mockumentary follows fictional graff writers and characters through adventures on the street and off the radar. There is a planned tour of other cities in the offing and we’ll bring you more about this in a later posting.

In the meantime check out some of the scenes from our day in Detroit.

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