Welcome to BSA Images of the Week!
Be it ever so! The long summer days, the walls awash with fresh paint, the overspray and splatter a Greek chorus to cheer our hero/shero. Oh!
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: Jason Naylor, Lexi Bella, Homesick, David Puck, Calicho Art, Atom, Hops Art, Caty Wooley, DLove, Stem and Thorn, Minvske, Jappy Agoncillo, KMS Crew, Vargas, Nicky Doll, Kanoy Muse, Bipolar, Nataniel Marreo, Voice, Mista, Carli Tops, and Pamela Rosenkranz.
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week!
Abortion. Ukraine. Bitcoin. Guns. NFTs.
These are topics/themes that street artists are addressing this week in New York – pretty much wherever you go. It looks like an uptick in activism, often with a sense of humor. Can we make a song with these words? Somebody please tie these topics together and make a tidy summary. Thank you.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: Raddington Falls, Hek Tad, Degrupo, CP Won, Albertus Joeph, Madame Restell, Mike King, Jason Ackerman, Trippin Ape Tribe, Eternal Possessions, and Lask Art.
Welcome the first BSA Images of the Week of 2022! How are you feeling? You’re looking great!
The street art parade marches on, perhaps ever clearer in its intent to reflect the mood, the zeitgeist, the intellectual meanderings of the artist class. In the process of demystifying the graffiti and street art scene over the few decades, we’ve long realized that there always will be surprises, no matter how much of the scene you have decoded. That’s what keeps it FREEEESSSSSSSSHHHH!
This week, as the snow is falling in dirty old NYC and as people are rescinding into their homes for another de facto Covid “lockdown”, we discover that artists are hard at work getting out their message, their id, their frustrations, their aspirations, their wit.
May this adventure never end, and may this trail never go cold.
So here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Adam Fujita, Anderson Bluu, Dorothy Gale, Ernesto Maranje, ERRE, Ethan Minsker, Fake Banksy, Gold Loxe, Ill Surge, J. Cole, Johann Art, Marka 27, Miss 17, NEST, Praxis VGZ, Salami Doggy, and Winsten Tseng .
I believe that as artists we have a commitment to society,” says PERSAK, “and in these difficult times art helps people a lot to keep busy and to distract themselves from so much bombardment of news about COVID-19.”
His new street mural in San Miguel de Allende in Mexico borrows a culturally significant icon to bring home a message to as many people as he can. “The use of a mask is essential to avoid contagion,” he says.
One of a three-mural program he painted here, he says he chose images of worldwide recognizable icons like Van Gogh and the Mona Lisa as well, but this one is closest to home. For PERSAK (Daniel Martínez Carrillo), the goal was simple; “I just want to raise awareness about the health measures that must be followed at this time,” he says.
Learn more about the artist:
IG: Persak_ art, FB: Persak art, YT: Persak graff.
Icy cold coquitos, sidewalk barbecues, walking for hours in Central Park, music booming from party boats on the East River, a birthday party with 30 on the roof. Who can resist New York in the summer? Yes everyone is warning about an economic crash that is coming and you’re still in debt even though you have three roommates and Trump is just making us all feel like we live in a big chaotic racist world.
But for this sunny summer afternoon, let’s just prove him wrong and get some beers and sit on the stoop saying hi to all our neighbors who walk by – asian, black, latino, Middle Eastern, Jewish, white, sihk, Polish, Nigerian, Mexican, muslim, Italian, Swedish. It don’t matter, bro. We’re all New Yorkers and we like it like that.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this time featuring Broken Heartist, Budha Delight, City Kitty, Early Riser, Emma Gonzalez, Joe Iurato, Logan Hicks, Lunge Box, Mowcka, Ouch, Sara Lynne Leo, Skewville, and The Postman Art.
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening :
1. Rammellzee: It’s Not Who But What
2. JANZ Artist in Time – Joanna Kiernan – Trailer
3. Frida Kahlo at V&A on FWTV
4. Sonner’s Sonnet by Resoborg
At first the cult of Rammellzee only consisted of the artist and the characters in his mind. That was a universe.
Less than 10 minutes, this crush of visuals, words, and graphics and storylines converged under the guidance of Oscar Boyson to begin to represent the New York artist. As he would have told you himself, Rammellzee is an equation, as is history, as is hiphop and theater, as is every aspect of your life, your character, your ability to fantasize about a parallel life. He was many things at once.
The grand wizard of Gothic Futurism and Ikonoklast Panzerism from Far Rockaway sprung from the underground and the streets at a time in New York when the city was bankrupt and artists could afford to live and make work there. Here. He made Gods out of garbage and weapons out of skateboards, a full immersion dive into the in-between world with fresh terminology and multiple variations.
After all its not who but what.
In production for five years, a feature documentary about the somewhat unappreciated New York Street Artist Robert Janz shows Janz working in different mediums and environments, primarily the streets of the city. It reveals some of Janz’s history and stays with him, revealing his philosophy of presence in the world as he acts upon it, within it.
London’s V&A Museum has a Frida Kahlo show up until November and Doug Gillen takes a break from the Street Art world to delve into the biography and psychological drama that formed the life and work of this great Mexican artist.
A small Virginia town of 6500 looks for a mural program to boost its community and revitalize it with Street Artists from the city like Gilf!, Alice Mizrachi, NDA, and OverUnder and todays featured artist, the South African graphic designer, illustrator, art director and muralist Resoborg.
Today is Marathon Day in New York City and the leaves on the trees have turned to oranges and reds and yellows to welcome the 26,000 people running through all five boroughs. In two days right here in New York City both Donald J. Trump and Hillary Clinton will wait at their campaign headquarters to see the results of the longest and slimiest presidential campaigns most of us can remember, with many of us reporting that it made us sick.
There is plenty of blame to go around, and hopefully these are simply the fitful growing pains of a fighting, evolving society and not the stabbing spasms of a dissolute, dying republic.
So here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring Amanda Wong, Atomik, Boa Mistura, BK Foxx, Cash4, Giver, Kobra, Lexi Bella, Moter, Olek, Rambo, Reverend, Rocko, Ruben Sanchez, Sheryo, Sokar Uno, Wolftits, and You Go Girl.
We asked Olek about this brand new crocheted billboard she and a small team installed this week in New Jersey. We publish her reflections and statement here for BSA readers.
“This crocheted billboard is my uncommissioned letter to Hillary Clinton, a letter from a woman, an artist, and a naturalized US citizen.
This election has been fueled by hate and negativity. Initially, I did not want to make overtly political art. But then I realized I must, as too much is at stake. I could either make a negative statement about the other candidate or a positive one about Hillary. When a piece of art has 1000 hours of hand labor invested in it, I’d rather it be a positive statement.
Hillary might not be cool, but she is qualified, experienced and competent. I don’t want to hang out with her. I don’t want to drink beer with her. I don’t want to go dancing all night with her. I want her to be our president. I want her to run this country!
This is history happening in front of you, incredible and groundbreaking. The first African-American president will pass the most important job in the USA to the first woman president. No one would have imagined this just 50 years ago. So yes, these are amazing times.
Look at what is happening in Europe. Countries are returning to a conservative stance and people’s rights are being trampled and revoked. Few believed Brexit could take place, but indeed it did. We should learn from this mistake. Hate crimes are escalating. Immigrants, and especially Polish citizens, are being beaten and even killed. We cannot let this happen here in USA. We cannot go down this path of destruction in The United States of America.
I involved people across the USA to help me with this project. It was about a community working together and making a statement. We had two main groups crocheting – one in Virginia Beach and one in NYC. The excitement was tangible as we worked together to realize this vision. Each day we gathered in my tiny studio, those outside of NYC would join via Skype, as we all crocheted around the clock, talking to each other about our commitment to this piece and to Hillary Clinton, listening to music, podcasts, and audiobooks. Everyone involved jumped on this project because they believed in it.
We are happy that we have achieved it.
I am an artist. I am a woman. As both I must make a statement. I cannot remain neutral or silent. I wish more people would find a way make positive statements. Unfortunately, negativity sells much better these days.
It is imperative for the future of our country that we succeed in electing Hillary Clinton as President of The United States of America this November 8th.” – OLEK
Comic, surrealist, role-playing psychological explorations, with a tip of the hat to Breton, Carrington, and Lucha Libre, among others.
Mexico City culture can be as varied and diverse as it is homogeneous, with a respect for tradition and, when it comes to artistic expression, a catalyst for exploration. André Breton is reported to have described Mexico as “the most surrealist country in the world,” where painters like Leonora Carrington and Frida Kahlo unhinged their imaginations from the limitations of the material world. As these new images on the streets of Mexico City taken by Brooklyn architectural street artist XAM show, the love for a psychic automatism continues into the public sphere.
Of course the Mexicans are not strangers to art on the streets; “great Latin American muralists” is a phrase almost synonymous with Mexico and names like Rivera, Orozco and Siqueiros coming to mind. Political advocacy and populist criticism of social policy on the walls here is similarly a tradition respected by the culture. Now a century after the revolution and birth of the modern Mexico, the experience of Los Capitalinos, as the residents of Mexico City are called, is affected daily by surrealism, pop culture and global capitalism swimming alongside folk and historical symbology, and a bit of anarchy. It’s all part of one fabric, a rich and varied textile that we export to you here.
Says XAM of his experience, “Barcelona, NYC, Amsterdam, and Paris are all similar in a way when it comes to street art – you can walk around and come across work on the streets fairly easily, but traversing the barrios of Mexico city is much different. I guess in some way you can compare it to San Francisco, Chicago or Los Angeles – there is quality work to be found. The city differs from all mentioned in that it appears to be young when it comes to street art by having a small group of participants.”
“I was hosted by both MUMUTT Arte and Museo del Juguete Antiguo Mexico, who are both responsible for providing concrete canvases in Mexico City for artist such as ROA, M-City, Pixel Pancho, and fresh stuff from the locals like Saner, Sego and the MOZ crew. Mexico City DF has the most museums in the world and MUMUTT and Museo del Juguete are largely responsible for adding street art to the vast archive of amazing work. They escorted me around to locations they provided for the above artists – It is evident that everyone brought their A-game. The weathered concrete walls made wonderful surfaces for imagery such as Dronz & Koko’s character, offering hallucinatory candy at the toy museum to Ben Eine’s work that speaks about class issues on a worksite for a future mall.”
Click on the links below to read our previous stories of MAMUTT Arte and MUJAM and to learn more about their work in Mexico City:
http://www.brooklynstreetart.com/theblog/2011/09/20/m-city-in-m-city-polish-stencillist-in-mexico/
http://www.brooklynstreetart.com/theblog/2011/05/07/video-premiere-broken-crow-in-mexico/
http://www.brooklynstreetart.com/theblog/2011/03/04/broken-crow-a-mexican-travelog/
http://www.brooklynstreetart.com/theblog/2011/03/09/broken-crow-a-mexican-travelog-part-ii/
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BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
