This week, we have new stuff from New York and Miami, in our visual interview with the streets, featuring Homesick, Smells, SRKSHNK, Crisp, Dr. Revolt, TBanbox, Urwont, OSK OSK, ASIK107, Man in the Box, Dam Crew, Stef Skills, COF Crew, Danny Doya, JAYDEE, Cinco, and WKS Crew.
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week and to the madness of March. Also, we extend warm wishes to our Muslim brothers and sisters for a peaceful and blessed Ramadan.
Meanwhile, here’s our interview with the streets this week, including City Kitty, Homesick, Eye Sticker, Miki Mu, JEMZ, Steve the Bum, NYC Kush Co, Quaker Pirate, DARA, ROS, and Man in the Box.
A pioneer of French graffiti from Guadaloupe, Shuck One, is presenting Regeneration at the Pompidou Center’s Black Paris exhibition (March 19–June 30), honoring Black figures who shaped France’s history through large-scale paintings and collages depicting key moments like the Tirailleurs Sénégalais, the 1967 Guadeloupe riots, and the BUMIDOM migration program, alongside portraits of pioneers such as Aimé Césaire, Angela Davis, and Joséphine Baker.
Meanwhile, here’s our interview with the streets this week, including City Kitty, Homesick, Modomatic, Muebon, Hearts NY, V. Ballentine, Nice Beats, Rams, Batola, PEAKS, Adze, Daniel Daz Carello, Andre Trainer, and Maniphes.
Here’s our weekly conversation with the street, this week featuring Homesick, Degrupo, BK Foxx, Werds, EXR, Manuel Alexandro, Great Boxers, Wild West, Fred Tomaselli, Mr. Mustart, Imok, and Sokem.
New York is gearing up for a deep freeze from the weather and Donald Trump’s inauguration this weekend. With 100 Executive Orders reportedly queued up for him to sign, the forecast for the next four years includes ACA repeals, immigration crackdowns, Medicaid cuts, trade wars, inflation spikes, elimination of laws that corporations find restrictive, and civil rights rollbacks. On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the timing feels bitterly ironic. But hey, maybe it’ll be sunshine and puppies, and everyone who is worried is just overreacting. “Poorer Voters Flocked to Trump,” said the Financial Times, so perhaps those petrified of the next four years are misreading the situation.
Regardless of the outcome over the coming years, we’ll be tracking the creative spirit on the street, and we are thankful for your support, as always.
Meanwhile, the polar vortex is set to bring approximately six inches of snow to New York City, followed by dangerously low temperatures with wind chills making it feel like -15°F. Interestingly, some graffiti writers will tell you that is the best time to get up on walls, because nobody is watching, but then perhaps you might lose feelings in your toes and fingers because of the cold?
The West Chelsea Arts Building in Manhattan, a longtime hub for artists and galleries, is on the market for $170 million, raising concerns about potential rent hikes or evictions for its 200 tenants. Over the years, notable artists like Ross Bleckner, Louise Fishman, and Hiroshi Sugimoto have called it home. Affordable studio space is essential to New York’s creative identity, yet rising costs make it increasingly difficult for emerging artists to thrive here. Imagine if the City prioritized supporting artist spaces instead of leaving culture at the mercy of the real estate market.
Here’s our weekly conversation with the street, this week featuring Stikman, Homesick, ERRE, Cody James, Hops Art, BK Ackler, Denis Ouch, Jenna Morello, WGE, QUES, Real Wrek, Kyle, AKSone, and 974MC.
Only the richest, most aromatic coffee seems to linger in the breezes of Miami, where even winter days can carry a tropical heat that halts you in your tracks. Street art and graffiti flourish like a teenager’s restless energy, leaping unpredictably from block to block, wall to wall, driven by possibility and the city’s desire to reinvent itself. Just when you think Wynwood may have run its course, new work emerges, reminding us that the creative pulse is alive and insistent. When it comes to street art and graffiti it all starts with the artists – and the economic/social underpinnings of a city. Here are some recent highlights from this hub of creativity and inspiration.
Flags are at half-staff for former President Carter, with a national funeral service scheduled at the Washington National Cathedral on Thursday. Meanwhile, former/future President Trump is set to attend his sentencing on Friday following a criminal conviction related to hush money payments. You may not find a more stark contrast between presidents. While speculation surrounds the sentencing outcome, it is widely thought that Trump will not serve any time behind bars, a fine message to young people everywhere.
In Brooklyn, the temperature is hovering around freezing, with biting winds signaling the arrival of harsher weather across this part of the country. Few expect much new street art or graffiti this week as forecasts predict bitter cold and snow along the coast.
Here’s our weekly conversation with the street, this week in New York and Miami, featuring Homesick, Degrupo, Pez, Denis Ouch, Great Boxers, Atomiko, Morcky, Elena Ohlander, Face, Masnah, SKE, Rich Ayers, Gleibys, Genius, JEST, Tesoe, Extra Polo, Lino Ozon, Maestro, Spray Paint Arts, and Emerge 710.
We’re celebrating the end of one year and the beginning of the next by thanking BSA Readers, Friends, and Family for your support in 2024. Picked by our followers, these photos are the heavily circulated and “liked” selections of the year – shot by our Editor of Photography, Jaime Rojo. We’re sharing a new one every day to celebrate all our good times together, our hope for the future, and our love for the street. Happy Holidays Everyone!
This floating plastic bag, like so many, appears mysteriously in the margins of a neighborhood, buffeted by warm, urine-soaked breezes and ice-cream truck melodies and small clouds of industrial pollution stirred by large trucks rumbling past. When artists transform everyday objects and elevate them, we reconsider them. In the case of plastic bags like these, they have been illegal for stores to use here for a few years, deemed bad for the environment. Perhaps the amorphous air-lifted ghost merits a twisted sense of nostalgia for the humble handle-bagged holder of three tins of cat food, a bright yellow bottle of dishwashing liquid, and a lottery card.
Roller-tagged above it are the Homesick boys, once residents of Williamsburg with their mom; now chased away by the surging powers of gentrification that herald luxury brands like Chanel to the neighborhood. Many who grew up in that Brooklyn neighborhood will never live in again because they can’t afford to, a displacement that makes one long for anything evocative of another era, homesick for a time that has past, often before your eyes.
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week! Set your clocks back one hour today.
A chilly but warm NYC welcome to the 50,000+ marathon runners from around the globe as they journey through the dirty, potholed streets of all five boroughs in this rudely friendly, alluring, and romantically gritty city. We’ve already forgotten that we lost the World Series this week and are concentrating instead on welcoming our haplessly plodding runners on the street—with raucous cheers in Queens, impromptu bands in Brooklyn, and dancing in the Bronx, the city becomes a big block party today.
Make sure to check out our graffiti and street art on the way!
Also, early voting is in effect in NYC. The new president of the US will be selected, possibly by you.
Here’s our weekly conversation with the street, this week featuring: City Kitty, Homesick, CRKSHNK, Degrupo, Modomatic, Sticker Maul, Leon Keer, Dot Dot Dot, Raddington Falls, D7606, SacSix, Muebon, Werds, RX Skulls, C3, EXR, OSK, She Posse, Outersource, Semz, Silkmoth, Glenn Ligon, Isa De Prez, and All Over Grey.
“Although different views and opinions are important for a healthy society, we can experience a greater increase in polarization in recent decades, which severely limits bridging or interactions.
In this work I would like to express that we are all connected despite differences in opinion. I see communication with positive sentiment and respect as a good carrier for social connection.” -Leon Keer
“The idea for the original Statue of Liberty was conceived in 1865, when the French historian and abolitionist Édouard de Laboulaye proposed a monument to commemorate the upcoming centennial of U.S. independence (1876), the perseverance of American democracy and the liberation of the nation’s slaves
Liberty holds a torch above her head with her right hand, and in her left-hand carries a tabula ansata inscribed JULY IV MDCCLXXVI (July 4, 1776, in Roman numerals), the date of the U.S. Declaration of Independence. With her left foot, she steps on a broken chain and shackle commemorating the national abolition of slavery following the American Civil War. After its dedication, the statue became an icon of freedom being subsequently seen as a symbol of welcome to immigrants arriving by sea.
In Dotdotdot’s version, just a few days before the upcoming election, much of whose campaign has been marred by racist and anti-immigrant rhetoric, the torch is replaced by a distress flare. A warning to us all.” ~ Nuart Festival, Stavanger, Norway
The beat on the street is washed in autumn sunlight, cooler nights, and traffic jams. If you hear cars honking, you know its New York in the fall. Street artists and graffiti writers are still hard at work, or play, and we like to capture their work here, before it is gone.
And here we go boldly into the streets of New York to find new stuff from: Shepard Fairey, C215, Obey, Homesick, Queen Andrea, Steve the Bum, Boom, Pumpkin, Exiled, Stytte, Delude, Fader, and Aise.
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week and to fall—officially here as of this morning in New York and the rest of the Northern Hemisphere. The leaves are starting to pop with yellows, people are breaking out the wool turtlenecks and corduroy way too early, and somewhere under the bleachers at football games, a few sneaky kisses are being stolen. Meanwhile, students are finally settling into the grind of the school year. But flip it for the folks south of the Equator, where spring’s about to bloom. In both hemispheres, whether it’s fall or spring, artists and vandals will continue to tag the overlooked corners and forgotten walls, staking their claim in public space.
This week in the BSA book review department, we’re diving into a new scholastic tome from one of the few brilliant graffiti scholars out there—Rafael Schacter. You might remember him from his global street art compendium, his curated show ‘Mapping the City’ at Somerset House in London (yes, the one that included people like Brad Downey, Swoon, and Eltono), or even his early work at the Tate back in ’08 with artists on the façade of the museum like Faile, Blu, and Os Gemeos. His latest book, Monumental Graffiti: Tracing Public Art and Resistance in the City (MIT Press), just landed on our doorstep. We’re eyeing it with both curiosity and caution as he’s making some bold connections between monuments and graffiti—connections that are peculiar on their face. He’s digging into a secondary or even third-tier definition of ‘monument,’ so who knows, it might all come together in the end. But this is the same guy who gave us ‘intramural’ graffiti about a decade ago… and, that term hasn’t hit the streets, as it were.
Re: intramural – In his curatorial work Schacter sometimes argues that street art occupies a unique space that is neither fully embraced by institutional frameworks (like museums and galleries, the “inside”) nor entirely outside them (like illegal, unsanctioned art in public spaces, the “outside”). Intramural, extramural. Makes total sense. But aside with the confusion caused by the word ‘mural’ buried inside it, there is perhaps a ‘branding’ problem with the word here in the US. It sounds too much like ‘intramural sports,’ which were always introduced at grade school for both boys and girls to play together to foster team-building skills – right around the age when girls typically think boys are ‘gross,’ and boys think girls are ‘weird.’ So it feels awkward and frightful! I feel like my voice is cracking and I’m growing a very light mustache when I hear it. Let’s see how this graffiti/monument thing works out. If anyone can do it, Rafael can!
And here we go boldly into the streets of New York and Berlin this week with new extramural stuff from: Judith Supine, Crash, 1UP Crew, Homesick, Nespoon, Hera, Phetus, Atomik, Qzar, Wild West, Drew Kane, and Seileise.
The city of New York is hot, clammy, steamy, and caked with grime. It smells like fish, marijuana, musty A/C exhaust, curry, piss, fresh-cut grass, melting pavement, aerosol spray, watermelon, cucumbers, mint, fried zeppole, Axe body spray, laundromat detergent, and pizza. With this oppressive heat, the ‘crazy’ dial seemed turned up – some people on the street appeared to be delusional with baked brains and insufficient hydration. In its chaotic way, the street never stops moving. People are herded onto our crowded, damp, and sticky subway system with its pumping kinetic energy and no coherent schedule, our new airy modern electric tandem buses with chilly automatic voices, our electric bikes and scooters of every design with big puffy tires or small bagel sized ones, our statement cars and bloated SUVs with dark windows, our swerving and sleek skateboards, and our white box trucks slaughtered with wild aerosol sprayed styles and family business-named signage like Dragon Good Luck Delight and Bayridge Appliance Repair.
Graffiti and street art keep popping up and accompany New Yorkers to their next stoop sale, pickle ball game, house party, dinner party, or dog’s birthday party. If this visual feast disappeared, we would all be confused, a piece of our cultural DNA excised. For us, this is the proper visual language of New York, certainly better than most of the new architecture popping up like middle fingers, a rash of uninspiring rectangles formed by mediocrity, their design potential sapped by greed and spreadsheets.
Here is our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring City Kitty, Chris RWK, Homesick, Degrupo, Kooky Spook, Muebon, Epic Uno, RX Skulls, MCA, EXR, CKONE, RZB, BILX, JEMZ, Joshua Montes, and Soupy.
Societal norms and entertainment ethics change, sometimes radically, as time progresses. It would be fantastic if you could determine which era is more shocking and if its behaviors indicate a golden age or a declining one. Just look at New York history at Coney Island, which may seem barbaric and beyond the pale by today’s standards, alongside oddly similar occurrences in contemporary Western society.
On Friday night, during the opening ceremonies of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, X was all atwitter with self-proclaimed Christians expressing outrage over a small segment of the three-and-a-half-hour show that featured a few well-known French drag performers doing a campy modern homage to The Last Supper paintings of the Renaissance. Decades of austerity budgets have starved our education system, and it shows, as many were scandalized by this portrayal of ‘Sodom and Gomorrah’ and other ‘disgusting’ scenes referencing French history, such as the French Revolution, the Enlightenment, World War I and II, the Industrial Revolution, and the Cultural Renaissance. And that depiction of Marie Antoinette holding her head under her arm? There’s a story behind that.
And here is our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring Aiko, Adam Fujita, Homesick, Degrupo, Optimo NYC, Werds, DEK2DX, Lee Holin, Snoeman, NAY 281, Bogus, EXR, Uwont, Jacob Thomas, Chido, Smooth, Kasio, Wild West, JDI, and FAQ COP.
For a decade, SaveArtSpace has transformed New York’s streets into open-air galleries, reclaiming advertising spaces as canvases for public expression. …Read More »
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
