Boo! Halloween is tomorrow and you know your subway ride is going to have some Werewolves, Zombies, Sexy Nurses, and Mini Mouses (mice).
Also big fat hairy rats, but they are always there.
To help you get in the mood and for inspiration we have a lil’ selection of Street Art oddities and monsters that have popped up on the street in NYC. If you have not planned your costume yet, here are 40 costumes for lazy people. See you at the PARADE!
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Anser, BustArt, City Kitty, Dasic, Faring Purth, Flood, Gum Shoe, GWAD, Hot Tea, KIN, Labrona, Muse, Never Crew, Nick Walker, One Eye Mickey, and Spok Brillor.
“The Nevercrew and I are the first ever people from outside of Egypt who painted in downtown Cairo, which had its rise in Street Art during the last 4 years and during the revolution. The military is back in charge now and the art on the streets came to a stop since you will end up in prison when they stop you (we had permission for this.” – Bustart
Bristol born graffiti / Street / fine artist Nick Walker has fallen in love with New York during these last couple of years. The stencilist whose work pre-dates the popularity of his town-mate Banksy, has been bringing his bowler-hatted avatar to streets around the world after beginning in Bristols 80s-90s graffiti scene. The well meaning and smartly dressed quizzical investigator is a vandal at heart of course, but one who appreciates culture and architecture.
Walker’s pop-up show “All I Ever Wanted Was My Name On Fire” opened last Friday and if you don’t want to miss it we recommend you take a trip to the Lower East Side to see it before it closes this Friday. In it you see the myriad new venues that Nick has discovered in Gotham and you get a simplistic sense of the discovery that so many newcomers have when first developing a romance with dirty old New York. It’s a romance that you never want to end actually.
A new print run is nearly sold out (if not already) but you also have the opportunity to purchase a copy of his new book at the gallery.
Nick Walker’s “All I Ever Wanted Was My Name on Fire” is currently open to the public until this Wednesday, Oct 22nd. Click HERE for location and hours.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Bishop203, Blek le Rat, Caratoes, Cone SP, Cost, Dasic, Eelco “Virus” van den Berg, ENX, Enzo Sarto, Jerk Face, Nemo’s, Ripo, and Trash Bird.
Veteran New York Street Art/graffiti artist COST was in the news this week after being nabbed for putting up illegal work, and as you might expect, is instantly a hero to some because of it. Literally the same day as the police press release about the arrest we noticed a fellow artist mask taping some letters on a buffed portion of this legal wall where COST and his fellow artist ENX have been riding for a while. We returned a day later to find the message below.
School’s back in session, the Jews just celebrated a new year, Kobra painted new portraits of Warhol and Basquiat in Williamsburg, and if you were at Brooklyn Museum last night you got to see Street Artist and muralist Don Rimx and us live – and us with markers in our hands looking completely lost.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring $howta, Apples on Pictures, Conor Harrington, Dain, EKG, Funky13, Jack the Beard, Jeff Huntington, Jesse James, Matthew Reid, Mr. Prvrt, Os Gemeos, Pyramid Oracle, Ramiro Davaros-Coma, Sam3, Square, Stikman, and What Is Adam.
““I think that the courage to confront evil and turn it by dint of will into something applicable to the development of our evolution, individually and collectively, is exciting, honorable.” ~ Maya Angelou ~
Autumn in New York yo! Crisp cool, sunny days. Girls in tight sweaters. Boys in combat boots. Every cool air festival you can think of is all happening simultaneously – skateboarders closing down Kent Ave on BKs north side, Indian Larry’s block party with motorcycles of every stripe, and this years San Gennaro festival in Little Italy looks like it wants to reclaim this part of town before it is subsumed by the crushing wealth machine now chewing through Chinatown. Literally the festival looks like it spans the entire length of Mulberry from Canal to Houston – that’s longer than the line to get the new iPhone in Soho!
But neither one of those will compare to todays’ expected line of concerned citizens snaking through the streets in Manhattan to address the effect of climate change. Coordinated with marches in cities around the world it’s estimated to draw 100,000 people. We’ve had a sneak peek at what Street Artist Swoon has in store for an installation at the end of the march, including some of the very same materials she just used for her “Submerged Motherlands” at the Brooklyn Museum, but arranged entirely cleverly differently.
A few weeks ago at Nuart we were invite to speak about activism on the street around the world using Street Art as a form of expression, and we are surprised to see a rising wave of it that not many seem aware of – including some of our artworld peers. This week alone a few Street Artists have created new work to promote today’s march. It is not hard to get us into the street on a regular day so this is just one shiny bauble of grassroots creativity that you won’t want to miss. Also, technically, it’s still summer until Tuesday.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Bifido, Crash, Daze, Gilf!, Hek Tad, Jetsonorama, Karl Addison, LMNOPI, Misshab, Sean9Lugo, and Skount.
The street appears in the living room when you visit some artists homes or those of hard core collectors. “Brooklyn is in da house!” suddenly takes on additional meaning. So imagine rolling through a heavily graffitied section of Bushwick this week to find someone’s living room is on display on the street. It’s like a set for a TV show, or a theater stage; The couch, the coffee table, a lamp, paneling, even a hard wood floor comprised of, well, not really hard wood. A hunter’s lodge maybe? A cabin in the Adirondacks? Without a back story, this looked like a stage had been built but you couldn’t be sure what for. Just as our intrepid photographer raised his camera to his eye, the woody indoor scene became exactly that – a stage.
“As I was taking the above photo a fast and furious dude came like a flash out of nowhere on his bike, stopped abruptly, and threw his bike on the floor,” says Jaime. “I didn’t know what to expect and watched him fish a spray can from a plastic shopping bag and step up on the sofa and write his tag upon the living room wall. The actor muttered something I couldn’t hear as he sprayed over another’s tag and then stepped down, leaving just as quickly as he has appeared. It was as if the fourth wall really did exist and he didn’t see me, the audience. I did want to ask him about the tag and about his very fashionable French chignon. But really, I wasn’t even visible.”
See him in action in the photo below.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring C215, Dain, Damon, Dope, Dotmasters, Jamie Paul Scanlon (JPS), Marilyn Minter, NRG US Crew, Pøbel, Richard Best, Stefan Ways, Wolfe Work, You Go Girl!, and Østrem.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Crummy Gummy, Dan Witz, Dasic, Dot Dot Dot, Flood, Hama Woods, Jaye Moon, Jerk Face, LMNOPI, Mr. Toll, Ostream, Pobel, QRST, Robert Janz, The Department of Well Being, Tilt, and Todo Es Mentira.
These new pieces by QRST recently appeared with his ever more sophisticated technique of sculptural painting, now popping the forms forward into the street. The symbology is known to him only, combining religious iconography with street, science and mythological metaphor to tell a story, sometimes to write a diary entry. We found out that these are 3 of 4 new pieces that are about loss and death, relating different aspects of the the same experience, “different personifications of the same dark thing,” according to the artist.
A powerful group of images this week as we do a drive by on Labor Day Weekend in New York. We know it’s the last weekend of Summer but hell no! I’m gonna have another strawberry ice cream out on the stoop.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Alma’s, Anthony Lemer, Arnaud Montagard, Alice Pasquini, Bast, BLY, Cesar Mieses DALeast, Dek, Jerk Face, Paul Insect, Pete Kirill, Ryan McGinness, Sean9Lugo, Seymour Chwast, Solus, Swil, Tripel, Willow, Wing, and You Go Girl!
“This is my latest wall, painted in Syracuse, Sicily with the support of the Istinto Naturale cultural association,” says Alice Pasquini of this new tableau.
“Titled ‘The myth of Arethusa and Alpheus’ it was inspired by the spring of Arethusa in Ortygia (Syracuse), a body of fresh water close to the seashore. The legend says that the nereid Arethusa, trying to escape the advances of the river god Alpheus, fled by turning into a stream, eventually breaking ground in Ortygia where Alpheus found her and was able to mingle in her waters.” ~ AP
Let the mingling begin! Although you have to admit that she doesn’t look like she’s quite committed to the idea.
Dek’s installation of Bronx native Seymour Chwast’s posters from 1987. The timeless and timeliness of a 27 year old poster on the streets is remarkable. War Is Madness. (photo @ Jaime Rojo)
Before the summer ends New York is still happily awash in myriad public festivals, concerts, street fairs, free Shakespeare in the park, stoop sales, fire hydrant fountains, rooftop parties and of course tourists who would like to scale a bridge. Last week our August dog days extended to welcome one of Street Art’s bigger names to swing through with a new mural that drew small crowds with a decidedly optimistic message.
Shepard Fairey doesn’t really do small. It has to be a vast designed and balanced swath of red, black and ochre that takes over an entire wall or it is nothing. Well, maybe he’ll slap up a couple of stickers on lamp posts while you’re not looking.
He also doesn’t appear to do fake. When that extended crane lift finally lowers him to the ground he makes time to say hello to admirers, artists, and the occasional antagonist and to sign his name, shake a hand, listen to a story and offer a thoughtful opinion. In this age of quickly spreading news across social media, word of Fairey’s new mural on Bowery and Broome didn’t take long to ricochet across phones and before you knew it there were people on the sidewalk and dangling off roofs to get a good view.
Not strictly Street Art and not strictly in Little Italy, the new work is part of a commercial neighborhood improvement initiative that has brought pleasing murals by Street Artists to the tourist frequented area of Little Italy over the past two years. Over the course of three days the socially conscious Fairey and his brand Obey scored one wall for a symbol of peace during a summer that has pounded in our ears with war drums in Ukraine, Russia, Syria, Libya, Israel, Palestine, and Iraq, among other sites of strife on the world stage.
A slogan at the bottom of the banner says “Transform Our World With Creative Response”; a nebulous enough sentiment that may be interpreted a few ways, and somewhat ironic on this island that is no longer open to young struggling creatives unless they can pay the $5K monthly rents this neighborhood often demands. But the burning fire in the chest of the dove – we’ll just take a chance and say that it stands for our collective yearning for peace and freedom.
Let’s hope Fairey sees something in the future many of us are missing.
“In our city of Reggio Emilia in Italy there is a very big factory named Officine Reggiane that is completely abandoned. It was famous in Italy for its metal work production (they made the Orient Express train, the crane used for the Costa Concordia, and then there was the longest occupation of a factory in the history of Italy here).
Now this is a major venue for graffiti and a refuge for homeless people. We began going to the factory more that two years ago and some of the people living there became our friends; in particular a man named Abidi, who we named “the boss of the Officine Reggiane”.
So a few weeks ago Abidi announced to us that he is leaving the factory to go back to Tunisia: he had found a wife! So, we thought about a gift we could give him. We are poor, very poor, we just had the paint, so one night we went in the factory (usually we go during the day) and we painted a big portrait of Abidi in the principal part of the place. It’s a gift for Abidi but also for us and for our memories of the Officine Reggiane.”
This weeks “21st Precinct” show of graffiti and street art style mural / installation work did blow some minds for sure, as did last nights official opening – mostly because of the great display of work on four floors. But additionally all sorts of paranoia was afoot when people began writing on social media and to us that they really thought this was a sting operation of some sort.
Aside from the fact that we clearly said in our postings on BSA and Huffpost that the building had long since been decommissioned as a precinct and we were simply focusing on the irony of the facts, minds and nerves were blown nonetheless. Truth is, this is a good show with some thoughtful pieces and installations and not surprisingly, many thematically addressed the contentious relationship some have with the police traditionally. But there is lots of other stuff too and it is worth your time. Just don’t get arrested. Kidding!
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring APC Crew, Art is Trash, Bishop203, Castellaneta, Chekos, Cruz, Foxx Face, Franksy, Gaia, Hek Tad, JJ Veronis, Lorenzo Maza, Mark Samsonovich AKA Love is Telepathic, Melty Cats, Mr. PRVT, Mr. Toll, Nekst, Opiemme, Pixote, Shantell Martin, Skrew, UR New York and Wolfe Metal Work, Tommy Wolfe.
“These are the questions that people asked most often while Chekos and I were painting in Castellaneta.
Ernest Hemingway, Sean Connery, Sigmund Freud, Steve Jobs, Padre Pio, Van Gogh, Giuseppe Verdi, George Clooney, Lenin, Cavour, Garibaldi…are some of the guesses.
The work came from Chekos’s idea, a reflection on the father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud. We tried to bring the spectator to have an experience close to a personality test, with an iconographic work that recalls the Rorschach test. The words “Stereotype” in the center of the composition refer to the process that brings people to recognize different famous people.” ~ Opiemme
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
