The 66th Annual Puerto Rican Parade will loudly, buoyantly, exuberantly traverse and sway along the iconic 5th Avenue in Manhattan today. Subsequently, numerous Brooklyn neighborhoods will burst into a party with lively street festivities and impromptu fiestas adorning sidewalks, sitting on stoops, and hanging out on window ledges. A collective joy and relief are in our hearts across the city this weekend, stemming from the restoration of clear air in the city; after a disheartening episode of a Dystopian Orange haze that tainted our skies for days this week.
Forest fires in Canada had blown smoke down the Hudson River to surprise everyone, and flummox many. The consequences forced people to illuminate their homes during daylight hours and drive their car with headlights on. This extraordinary event posed a threat to both the well-being and livelihoods of countless individuals, with people working outside at great danger. However, for those who turned to our local National Public Radio (NPR) station for insight, rather than talking about construction workers, municipal employees, or street food vendors, their primary concerns were remote work arrangements, ordering from Doordash, and worrying about the smoke’s effect on dogs during their daily walks. The poor and working class are routinely erased from public discourse, which is why unmediated street art often does the work.
Currently, the cityscape is adorned with captivating street art and mesmerizing murals, offering a wide array of entertainment, education, and aesthetic gratification. We hope you take pleasure in exploring photographer Jaime Rojo’s compilation.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: Maya Hayuk, Below Key, Little Ricky, Mint & Serf, Billy Barnacles, Homesick, David Puck, Panic, IMK, Aidz, Robert Vargas, Salo Panto. Artistcjg89, Herman, Gabe, Tank, FLWR, and Sasha Colby.
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week! So much to say, such brief attention spans. Looking around at the chattering masses on the streets of Brooklyn and Manhattan this week, the excitement of beautiful weather and a sense of liberty sends youthful hearts aflutter. The gams! The biceps! The colorful plumage and sartorial flair all wend and weave down the street and subway steps past you, ahead of you, inside you. Also, check out the peonies and lilacs!
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: City Kitty, Praxis VGZ, Little Ricky, The Postman Art, Homesick, Calicho Art, Cramcept, OH!, Kevin Caplicki, Toe Flop, Miki Mu, Tess Parker, Mr. Fou, El Cono, RatchiNYC, and AweOne.
Welcome friends! Shout out to Joey, owner of the Village Works bookstore, whose new location opens this weekend on St Marks Place in Manhattan. Friday night the river of people flooded the banks in this pantheon to New York culture, history, and stylish bravado – and special guests Homesick were in the house to welcome the hundreds of excited streetwise Gen Z’ers to flip through and ponder these curious paper things that you cannot scroll through or zoom in with your fingers, but which are strangely satisfying and enriching non-the-less. If anyone wonders if Covid decimated New York, you have to witness the throngs of people walking, running, riding through a beery haze on the weekend at St. Marks, to know that this city is in full effect, bro.
We say ‘bro’ in the hood way, not the privileged apathetic way – although both are intermingling in the LES right about now with Brooks Brothers boys in camel suits huffing up the sidewalk while a muscled spandexed guy with a six-foot set of wings on his back weaves through the street. It’s not that NY is so liberal, it’s that we really don’t care what your look like or who you’re doing it with – let’s have fun and hang out.
The pumping music from the bars in this neighborhood reflects this moment, of course, with two Mexican pop hits blasting out to the streets in many locations – Grupo Frontera x Bad Bunny’s hit “Un x100to” and Peso Pluma’s “Ella Baila Solo.” A fusion of corridos, banda, urban music, trap, and reggaeton? Porque no? The popularity reflects the influence Latino culture has had on the youth this spring while old white men are busy militarizing the southern border and treating regular people like criminals for seeking a better life.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: Dan Witz, Adam Fujita, Adam Fu, Winston Tseng, SacSix, Little Ricky, Roachi, Alicho Art, Chupa, Huetek, A Visual Bliss, Riisa Boogie, Ideal, Rezones, WEKUP, KIRSE, SMOR, Italo Causa, Georgia Violet, Jenna Leigh, and Never Satisfied.
“Ramadan Kareem” to everyone celebrating it this month. Also in April the Jews will be celebrating Passover and the Christians will be celebrating Easter and the Hindus are celebrating Chaitra Navratri. New York has the most diverse assembly of amazing and beautiful neighbors and we are all richer as a result.
In Hollywood and elsewhere people are celebrating/mourning the events surrounding Will Smith. In street art style, his infamous act shows up on a wall this week already (below).
It’s been cold in NYC this week! Fingers are cold, noses are cold, and migrating geese are humming the Clash’s “Should I Stay or Should I Go”. The Cyclone at Luna Park in Coney Island, opened yesterday and assures New Yorkers that Spring is already here even if you don’t feel it yet.
We’re excited to see the new exhibition Jean-Michel Basquiat: King Pleasure opens here this week. Congratulations to his family for bringing this enormous undertaking to fruition, especially Jean-Michel’s sisters Lisane Basquiat and Jeanine Heriveaux and his stepmother Nora Fitzpatrick.
Also, don’t sleep on the Whitney Biennial, opening Wednesday! Curators David Breslin and Adrienne Edwards say they have had a guiding principle; “It’s got to be buck wild.” That’s enough for us. Hopefully, some people will be buck naked at the show. A special shout-out to Biennial artist Jane Dixon. Her paintings and photographs of New York in the 80s captured its electricity and unpolished promise – during the time when she lived with filmmaker Charlie Ahearn in an apartment overlooking the tawdry excitement of Times Square. She say the city was, “burning, broke, and dangerous.”
Gentle people, start your stopwatch! Let’s see how long it takes for news items and pundits to begin likening our new Staten Island Amazon warehouse union workers to terrorists.
We’ve allowed companies to become richer than nations, so you can imagine what resources they can summon; the most comprehensive campaign to malign, discredit, impugn the character of workers, and thugs to intimidate them. This is the biggest victory for organized labor in a generation, born in a time of unprecedented income disparity across the city and country. Most citizens would be pleased if corporate behemoths simply paid their fair share of taxes.
The street is still one of the best exhibition spaces, never to be recreated fully.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: AJ LaVilla, Clown Soldier, Little Ricky, Sticker Maul, Michael Alan, Dragon76, Diva Dogla, CP Won, Savior El Mundo, Acro, Jennifer Pod is Dead, and Masnah.
Sometimes it is a talisman who is having adventures on the behalf of an artist, a part of him/herself who stays behind and watches the area.
At other times it is a character seen through a mirror, an alter-ego who represents a fictional part of their inner world who has been set free onto the street to interact. It may be a branding element, a logo, or signature that lays claim to the artwork it is attached to. By itself it is often a form of marking territory; a practice begun by graffiti writers decades ago.
Whether it is a symbol or a figure, it is undoubtedly a personification of some part of the artists id, one that is so individual that you can spot it from a distance and if you are a fan, you’ll smile in recognition.
Many street artists have a discernable style, that is true; a hand-style, a recurrent motif, color palette, a topic that reappears, a technique of application, even a likely location in the urban landscape where they are most likely to appear.
Of that number, fewer have developed a character or a motif so well defined in our minds that it can stand alone, but we have found a few over the decades. Each is imbued with memory, with place, with personality, with character.
A pause. It’s unusual to feel this sense in this city – but it’s there – on a sunny day where the sky is clear of clouds and a flock of geese still waddles and honks in the tall weeds and garbage by the Wallabout Channel. Is it a pause of satisfaction at the end of a summer full of fun, or perhaps a calm resignation before a storm as businesses are staying closed or operating at reduced staff. And while the Federal Reserve and ECB and World Bank insist there is just a smidgen of temporary, transitory inflation, tell us why a pound of butter is $6.00 at the local deli, the average price of a used car is $25K, and shipping container prices have soared to $20K?
There is a steady number of new street art pieces going up on doorways, power boxes, and concrete walls, but they are competing all of the triumphal purple and blue and pink Morning Glories flooding fences and walls and garden gates in neighborhoods throughout Brooklyn – a most generous overflow that summer gives as a parting gift.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Cssh4, Cheak, Clown Soldier, Diva Dogla, Drecks, ERRE, Fat Jak, Font 147, Goblin, Goog, JerkFace, Little Ricky, Mort Art, Praxis, Rambo, Seibot, Sinclair the Vandal, and Smetsky.
For all the flooding of our street art consciousness by the mural movement during the last handful of years, we’re still impressed by the completely organic personality of New York’s scene. New York has the ability to absorb countless graffiti and street artists from around the world and still retain its own particular attitude regardless. Prickly, preening, pensive, or ready to throw a punch, you are never quite sure what you will end up with the art on the streets here. However, you are guaranteed to see something unique — and you’ll never have time to be bored.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Al Diaz, Alex Ferror, ATOMS, Billy Barnacles, Brooklsey Dark, Carlitos Skills, Don Rimx, Drecks, Duel1, Gane, Hiss, Jowl, Little Ricky, London Kaye, Lucky Rabbit, Praxis VGZ, Skewville, Smells, and UFO907 .
We like findings spots that feature walls slammed with street art in a most organic way, the aesthetic signature of a current ecosystem mid-evolution. These spots are often a magnet for street artists to get up in NYC, L.A., Berlin, Lisbon, Madrid, Paris, Barcelona, Mexico City, Miami, Boston, London, and beyond. Usually illegal, they allow the artists a quick way to safely leave their imprint on the chaos of the city, a welcome to international artists on their spraycation as well as locals who relish the feeling of standing among peers. The art is usually limited to small original pieces, stickers, and posters, wheat pastes.
We call them “magnet walls” – and NYC has had its share of them. Now, however, they are increasingly endangered because of Gentrification and the voracious real estate market in the city with its apparent never-ending appetite for building new soaring soul-free glass towers. One spot is still welcoming artists to its walls: Freeman Alley. This favorite enclave, composed of two long walls along a narrow corridor in the Lower East Side, is constantly updated in an organic way with contributions by local and international artists. We have surveyed it for years, often publishing our findings in the popular “BSA Images Of The Week.”
Last week we rolled by the alley again and to our surprise, we discovered a gate ajar; one that leads the lobby of a relatively new hotel. Usually locked with a code, this secret Bowery spot instructs guests to enter through the alley. Once inside, they’re greeted with a nicely landscaped, small-scale courtyard leading to a lobby. Surprisingly, it is now bursting with new stickers, posters, stencils, paintings, collages, wild imaginings. Technically, this is a legal magnet wall – but most of the artists whose work is on display here can also be found illegally on the walls of the alley. Here’s a fresh selection just for you:
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week as we head into Passover and Easter. If street art reflects society, and we know that it does, Governor Cuomo is in hot water and may not keep his job. But then, we thought the same about the war criminal George Bush and the grifter Trump, so never mind.
Thank you to reporter Jim O’Grady for interviewing us for a story on WNYC radio this week – along with our colleague Sean Corcoran who is the Curator of Prints and Photographs and a graffiti historian from the Museum of the City of New York.
“As Covid Ravaged New York, Street Artists Fought Back” is the name of Jim’s eight-minute exposition – and his storytelling adds so much to our appreciation of the city and the environment that gives life to our street art and graffiti scene here. Thanks for including us Jim.
So here’s our weekly interview with the street, this time featuring: Chris RWK, CRKSHNK, Dwei, Hope Hummingbird, I Heart Graffiti, Little Ricky, Peachee Blue, Raddington Falls, Rambo, SacSix, Sara Lynne-Leo, Sticker Maul, and Technodrome.
Street art in the last five years has been lit on fire with politically themed illustrations, installations, slogans, opinions, and insights that implore passersby to take action and to be engaged in the direction that society is leading.
The once-consolidated TV-print media system has had many challengers in social media and websites, though those now too are being censored, demonetized, and throttled by the corporations and certain state actors who have infiltrated and hampered the free-flow of opinions and political discourse under various “honorable” guises.
Because major political machines and the corporate media don’t typically use the streets as a communication platform in US cities, aside from the occasional poster campaign for a candidate, the rather unfiltered collection of views and voices come through.
The inheritor of the historically revered “soapbox”, a physical and metaphorical location in a public square where people put forward their opinions, beliefs, philosophies, and ideologies in an impassioned voice, street art currently thrills, perplexes, informs, and annoys. It reaches the tech-savvy and the greater majority of our neighbors who are not on social media.
Given that these opinions could be easily buffed or blighted by any passerby yet are permitted to stay, there is an argument that art on the street is the present Vox Populi, a truer representation of the voice of the people.
In the city that knew him first, Donald Trump is given special scrutiny and particular invective for his actions, inactions, behaviors in the role he has occupied as president of the country since 2016. His official opponent in the race is a career politician, an historically right-wing version of a left-wing party, is somehow positioned as a better alternative for an electorate who is desperate for something, anything better than what they have.
By night’s end (or week end, or year end) we will know who is the winner of today’s election; Trump or Anti-Trump. No matter who prevails, street art will undoubtedly weigh in with its opinion.
Anarchists and lawlessness on the streets of New York? Where are you looking exactly? This is a narrative that charlatans like to slander our fair city with, where we spent 8 hours hanging out on blankets on the grass yesterday in Prospect Park, performing anarchist acts like eating sandwiches, reading books, taking naps, going for walks with thousands of our neighbors. So far this is one of the most beautiful Labor Day Weekends we’ve seen in ages and there was no army present.
Every time the fearmonger’s from outside of NYC try to scare people into voting for something, you have to be amused by their ignorance and obvious disinformation – and wonder if it isn’t a generalized fear of black and brown people that drives their critiques. Maybe they are fearful that New Yorkers are the most ethnically diverse population in the country and we are always getting along just fine with each other, even liking and loving each other on a daily basis and we have been doing so for years. Gorgeous and expansively green Prospect Park in the middle of Brooklyn is a fine example of it this weekend – you’ll see people of many backgrounds hanging out happily and civilly, barbecuing meats and vegetables, playing volleyball with the youth group, tossing the frisbee with their girlfriend, sitting on blankets and playing board games with their kids and neighbors, helping babies take their first steps, helping grandpa into a folding chair.
We didn’t see one fight or argument Saturday, and the park was completely teeming with people, and we saw maybe one or two police officers throughout all day – because apparently tens of thousands of us co-New Yorkers know how to enjoy a sunny day in the park with each other and without invoking chaos. On blankets, in lawn chairs, on picnic tables – there we all were; Indians, Africans, Mexicans, Germans, Italians, Jews, Conservatives, Liberals, Koreans, Chinese, Europeans, Buddists, LGBTQI, singles, couples, families, church groups – too many to list here. You could see all kinds of different foods if you walked around and heard music being played – some of it live and spontaneous, like the Dixieland jazz band, the violin quartet, the guy on the flute. We love New York and we love New Yorkers more than ever before.
So, no, Mike Huckleberry or the Foxes or the Divider in Chief, we don’t fall for it because we know the great people of our city. Scare people in the middle of the country with stories about lawlessness in our city, but you don’t fool us for a second. For the record, 93% of the Black Lives Matter marches across the country this year have been peaceful. We’re all capable of having the hard conversations, despite what you and your networks want people to believe – New York has been proving that for years. Sorry, society is moving on – or in many cases already has moved on – from the cultural hegemony phase. It ain’t perfect, but Jesus sometimes it can feel like it.
And now some street art images recently shot – our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Almost Over Keep Smiling, Antennae, Damon NYC, JKos Art, Little Ricky, Raw, Stikman, and Urban Russian Doll NYC.
Little Ricky thinks Anna Wintour is someone important whom people consider significant or iconic in popular culture, which is already a humorous supposition. In his multiple street iterations of the fashion editor, he has dressed her as a sheep in Chanel, as a sheep in boxing gloves with Andy Warhol (replacing Basquiat), as an American Express fashion gladiator in stickers and wheat pastes on the Streets of New York.
Each tiny episode of his ongoing SHEEP series may bring a perplexed smile to the average person who is looking at them while waiting for the traffic lights to change. In the case of the Wintour character preaching and prognosticating and posing, an insider joke that appeals to the fashion gatekeepers in this city, of which many have self-appointed. The question you may ask is, who’s the sheep, who’s the shepard.
A Street Art icon/brand in the making, Little Ricky’s talisman-woman of a candy pink sheep character inhabits the new strata of 20-teens Street Art that reflects the ease of social media commentary here grafted onto actual walls, the fascination we have with visually sampling pop cultural references, and the time-honored practice of lampooning with absurdity. A California-based Gen X Street Artist with uncommon discipline and work ethos in his practice, Little Ricky has been studying, developing, archiving, formulating his campaigns in the Street and gallery for the better part of a decade now.
Recently
in New York to sample the late-summer fragrance potpurri of pot, urine, and Italian
sausages on the streets of Lower Manhattan, BSA had an opportunity to chat with
Little Ricky one night when we were gallery hopping with a buddy. He talked about new art on lightposts and
guard-rails, the nature of his one-off comical creations, and his deep desire to
launch a Keith Haring show here next year using his ewe-inspired interpretations
of Harings work and life.
Brooklyn Street Art:We’ve seen many Anna Wintour pieces recently by you on the street. How does the muse find you? Little Ricky: I never imagined that I’d be spending a year working with Anna as my muse. It’ll be weird once the year comes to an end. But I know that SHEEP will continue to surprise me and Anna will most likely keep popping up in my work. The connection will always be there.
She can find me on IG. But, since she doesn’t have a personal IG account, I hashtag her name #ANNAWINTOUR and I tag @voguemagazine. Maybe one of her PA’s will get the word out to her. A few months ago, I even sent her a large pink manilla envelope with a SHEEP zine/bio and stickers too. Whether she ever received it is another story. I don’t expect to hear from her, but I have a feeling that our paths may cross at some point. Either way, our stars are crossed, at least in my head.
Brooklyn Street Art:People are sheep, aren’t they? Little Ricky: I’d like to think that we’re all sheep but without the negative connotations. Sure we can all follow along with the masses, or maybe not fit in, but at some point we all crave to be ourselves as we are. At the heart and soul of SHEEP is that we’re ALL different. When Alexander McQueen referred to himself as a ‘pink sheep’ I understood that he was making a comment not only on his sexuality, but more importantly on the idea that he was different from even the black sheep. Reading that sentence in his biography altered the course of my life and is what inspired SHEEP.
After 51 years of life and almost 7 years of working on the series, I’ve learned this. (See if you can follow along or if it makes some sense) Being born is what we ALL have in common. Yet at that moment no one ever has or ever will be identical. In one moment we’re connected and different at the same time. We then spend a lifetime searching for meaning/purpose. The secret- to learn, embrace, and honor all those many little things about ourselves that make us…ME! When we do so, we go back to that moment of connection. So yea we’re all sheep finding our way back to an essence of being.
Brooklyn Street Art:Can you talk about your feelings toward Keith Haring and the impression he and his work made on you? Little Ricky: I feel a deep connection to Keith. It goes beyond being inspired by him. I feel him alongside me like he’s guiding me along. I first came across his work in the late ’80s. The simplicity of his images struck some magic in my soul. They still do. They felt familiar. Until now, I didn’t realize that Keith’s passing in February of 1990 coincided with my coming out the month before. Weird! Maybe he passed the torch along. My first boyfriend who I met in January of 1990 even drove Keith around SF the year before. I wasn’t into the art scene in any way, but I started taking art classes while at UC Berkeley. I imitated his lines and figures, but there was no ‘me’ in what I was creating.
With SHEEP, almost 30 years later, I can see his influence in my work, always will. But now I know, that I’m creating a world of my own with a little touch of his magic. It’s been an effortless process. For that, I give some credit to Keith. When the idea for SHEEP came to mind in 2013, I didn’t know what I’d be creating. I purchased a toy sheep and started doodling. After a while, a shape took form and it looked familiar like I had seen it before.
Thinking about this now, I realize that it was like finding my own Haring ‘baby.’ I wasn’t looking for it, but when I saw it, I knew it was the beginning of everything. P.S. Last year in May, I did a 31-day study I called SHEEPDOG. Each day, I painted an image combining Keith’s dog and my SHEEP. I was surprised that I hadn’t thought of it earlier. It was magical seeing it evolve.
Brooklyn Street Art:Recently Dusty Rebel has been traveling around the world speaking with and filming Street Artists from the GLBTQ community. Why is it important to know if a graffiti writer or Street Artist is GLBTQ? Little Ricky: As I get older, labels have become less important. I jokingly tell my sister that I’m the ‘+’ in the GLBTQ+ If I’m to label myself, it’s definitely queer over gay. I like qweirdo even better! When I started the series, I assumed the street art community was a bunch of heterosexual males. Other than the names Bansky and Shepard Fairey, I knew nothing about it. Knowing that the SHEEP were queer, I felt some hesitation about how the community would embrace them.
Unknowingly, I’d even censor myself so that they weren’t too ‘gay.’ That all changed after the Orlando shootings when I was reminded of the importance of living out loud and proud. But once I started meeting the artists, I came to find out that no one cared about how I identified or if the sheep were gay or not. All that mattered was that I was getting up and they loved what I was doing. Meeting all these artists, queer or not, has been one of the greatest parts of working on SHEEP. So, it’s not so much about knowing who’s queer or not, because in the end, we’re all doing the same thing. But thanks to Dusty, there’s a new found community.
Once I started, other than HomoRiot, I wasn’t aware of anyone else. It took me a few years before we eventually met up. Now, I have a new community of peeps that I get to call friends. I’m excited to meet many more along the way. I feel grateful to Dusty and all his work. He’s shedding light on an untold story and the many artists who often go unrecognized. It’s like the M&M commercial- we do exist!
Brooklyn Street Art:Which city is more fun for Street Art right now? Little Ricky: As much as I love my beloved city of LA, I feel like I’m living ‘in’ art when I’m in NYC. Art’s everywhere! Aside from SHEEP, walking is a great passion and there’s no better city than NY to combine my two loves. When I was there recently, I put in 20 miles in one day. The opportunity to paste-up SHEEP is everywhere and anywhere. LA’s different that way. Even though I do walk a lot and I paste-up wherever I go, it’s not the same. It’s very random. Plus you’re not going to see my work whiledrivingaroundd. SHEEP is definitely for the pedestrian and NY is the perfect place. Initially, I thought my little SHEEP would get lost in it all, but came to find out that New Yorkers do pay attention while walking.
When it comes to the queer art community, street or not, I often wondered if my work didn’t fit in because it wasn’t erotic or specifically depicting a ‘queer’ image/message. But I now know, that regardless, they’re queer and they’re pink! It’s in the heart and soul of the each SHEEP. Whether this is conveyed when coming across my work is not as important as the feeling you have when seeing them. Feel the JOY!
Brooklyn Street Art:In what way is your work political? Is it commentary? Critique? Little Ricky: This was a tough question. I don’t see it as being overtly political or even commentary. There are some pieces that may be so, but overall they’re expressions of joy. I keep it simple. If you smile or laugh out loud when finding my pieces on the street, I know I’ve done my job. I often laugh out loud when creating them. There’s such silliness. For example, the idea of Anna Wintour as a pink sheep in roller skates makes me laugh. When I began the series, they started off as ‘gay’ sheep and now they’re more a symbol about a feeling.
I’ve always felt different, it goes beyond my sexuality. As I age, I feel more and more different. And the more different I feel, the more connected I am. So the SHEEP being out and about, regardless of the character or message, are a symbol of that feeling that we all feel. Being different, feeling different is a beautiful thing!
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
