The fires of summer still burn, as do their romances. Yet September 1 brings news of the racing teams of muscular autumn artworld horses just beyond the next valley, thundering their way through the streets of New York to the galleries and museums. Among the cries, “Hail Henry!” “Hail JR!” “Hail Roger!”
And the streets! As inspiring and perplexing and exciting as ever, providing the ultimate exhibition.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this time featuring Dee Dee, Hugh Brisman, Hysterical Men, Jazz Guetta, City Kitty, Steve The Bum, De Grupo, Frank Ape, Gianni Lee, Never, Kendra Yee, Ruo Han Wang, Jazz Guetta, Nicholas Di Constanzo, Myth, Terry Urban, A Lucky Rabbit, Molly Crabapple, Ms Saffaa, and Vy.
Meanwhile new stuff is popping off in Ridgewood, Queens, where some of the stuff below is from, proving that the scene is still incredibly relevant to artists and fans alike.
So here is our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring Boy Kong, Chris RWK, City Kitty, Chance Paperboy, Damien Mitchell, Jaye Moon, Kashink, Kirza, K Liu Long, MeresOne, Myth, Raf Urban, Rx Skulls, Square, Squid Licker, Gane, Texas and Zimad.
Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring Alo, BustArt, Dmirworld, Egle Zvirblyte, Faith XLVII, Herakut, Jose Mendez, Kai, Myth, and Skewville.
Clearly we cannot bury our heads in the sand anymore, for those of us who are tempted to. We try to make light of things here or at least add levity, but right now many of our community in NYC are desperately worried about family members in Puerto Rico, and aid has not been getting to them after the storm.
While it is a relief for many to find that Trump is actually one of the most ineffective leaders in terms of getting major legislation or many of the pillars of his anti-everybody-except-the-rich agenda passed, that same ineffectiveness puts citizens in harms way – as appears to be happening right now on that island of US citizens of 3.4 million. When 55% of the island doesn’t have drinkable water, you know a human disaster is close. Meanwhile Trump is tweeting from his golf course in New Jersey to insult a mayor on the island.
New York City Council Speaker Melissa Mark Viverito is on top of the situation but cannot countenance the response from the feds: “I wanna cry. This is worse, not better, 10 days in. And Sr. Trump’s fragile ego is what is driving policy. Criminal.” she says in her latest tweet
At the recommendation of Lee Quinones, a proud New Yorker, Puerto Ricano, and NYC train writer of the 1970s and 1980s – here are some charities you can contribute to:
Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring Adam Fujita, CB23, Ces53, City Kitty, Dan Witz, Dirty Bandits, GIZ, Jazz Guetta, Kafka is Famous, MRVN, Myth, NeverCrew, Smart, Stray Ones, and Such.
As if Donald ever thinks about those people who marched. Ever.
People marched and bellowed with torches Friday night and with swastika flags on Saturday in Charlottesville; mostly white men and boys encouraged by the Trump/Pence team and all the people who are steering-advising. After a car was driven into the crowd of anti-racists the governor declared a state of emergency.
Racism and other -isms are not new. Neither is how they are being fueled and fanned today.
During these caustically hot summer days in the US almost every opinion expressed is characterized as political rhetoric, thanks to years of televised cable shouting matches. Reasoned discourse with gray areas is strictly verboten. But if you really want to know what is happening, just follow the money. Historians tell us that is the struggle, simplified and bare for the eye to see. Paid-for disinformation and millionaire newsreaders may cloud the view, but that’s what’s happening.
The majority of us are good, even fantastic, people who know somehow we are being ripped off and gradually shoved toward the door. The people have the actual power when they seize it. It just may take an economic collapse.
See any on the horizon?
Thankfully we still have Street Art, right? There is no doubt that it has already become more political here in the last year and the odds are that it will probably grow louder – as our graffiti and Street Art is always a direct mirror of us.
So here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuringArt Baby Girl, ASVP, Mad Villian, Brolga, Camo Lords, El Sol 25, Gutti Barrios, Raddington Falls, Monsieur Chat, Myth, Pay to Pray, Raemann, Self Master, Stray Ones, and You Go Girl!.
We really dig these new collaged political cartoons that are on the street as quickly as the weeks news – each depicting one of the many rich white men who are impacting our minds and our bank accounts and our health and sense of security right now. Are we watching the White House or Good Fellas? The backstabbing, front stabbing, chicanery, and ongoing systemic tomfoolery makes you wonder who’s actually running things.
The news cycle is hourly it seems, with tweets and personnel changes and threats happening so fast that people are developing PTSD that is triggered by news alerts on the phone. We have to admire any Street Artist who tries to keep up with the developments and get their commentary on a wall.
Many young and old New Yorkers are wincing from high rent, high debts, crumbling infrastructure, and everyone is working longer hours, if they are lucky enough to work. Some just give up. Meanwhile the one plausible healthcare option that many have gained over the last handful of years? – the servants of the rich have been trying to stab it to death – but they couldn’t muster it this week. Even now – Trump says he’ll stand by and watch it die rather than improve it in any way. Have we ever had a leader who is so cynical?
Even Senator McCain – in our top image above – fresh off his tax-payer funded brain cancer surgery, waivered this week before providing the pivotal vote that saved healthcare for 20 million or so. Most GOP Senators ignored the majority of the US citizens who implored them to fix Obamacare not nix it. But their bank accounts proved far more important than our health. The rich and their corporations are flooding our entire political system and only after we get their money out would we be able to call the USA a democracy. Otherwise we are just fooling ourselves.
So here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring Bifido, El Sol 25, Jarus, London Kaye, Luna Park, Miss17, MSK, Myth, Otto Schade, Rime, SikaOne, Solus, Sonni, Spy33, and Wonderpuss Octopus.
“In this area the government is building a gas pipeline and to do it they are cutting many olive trees. Part of the local economy is based on olive oil production, so people are fighting for preserve their lands and trees. I wanted to address this situation with my artwork.” -Bifido
“This mural depicts a woman sitting at the window sill and reaching outwards. Turning the wall into a window is a metaphor for opening your mind and heart towards new ideas and concepts. The woman is in a red dress because I felt it would compositionally fit into the area of the wall and surrounding buildings.”-Jarus
So here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring Alexis Diaz, Below Key, Bia Does NYC, Blox, Ceas, City Kitty, Donut, Drsc0, El Sol 25, Kimyon333, LDLR, Lego To The Party, Loa Jib Lazee, London Kaye, Lunge Box, Mr. Fijodor, Myth, Pat69, Pixote, Willow and Witch Christ.
“Yes, I’m an infowarrior,” says the African American yelling about how CNN is promoting Sharia Law in downtown Manhattan for the #MarchAgainstSharia and a short distance away someone is wrapping the “Fearless Girl” statue with a black burka. The infowarrior is wearing a red “Make America Free” baseball hat and very much seems like he might be gay. And then your head explodes.
But New York is waaaaaay too diverse to even countenance this weird new wave of anti-Islam sentiment and the counter-demonstrators with their signs dwarfed the haters– and being good liberals, they probably invited them to come over for dinner after all that yelling.
Otherwise the weather has been gorgeous and Street Artists have been getting up in New York, when they are not too busy fighting about the David Choe wall and calculating new ways to spray over it. We have brand new mural works from people like Dasic, Cekis, and Case Maclaim, and there is a lot more political content in the new free-range Street Art that we are seeing, with much of it focused on the corruption at the top of the national government, racism, environmental matters, the growing police state.
The Puerto Rican Day Parade is today down 5th Avenue, with people celebrating – and also fighting over the “freedom fighter”/ “Terrorist” Oscar López Rivera, who was going to be the Grand Marshall but whom will now simply be a marcher. And Lucy Sparrow tells us that “Vagisil” and champagne are the two big sellers at her temporary bodega under the Standard Hotel that is 9000 items made entirely of Felt. Our own story on that this week, so there’s something to look forward to, along with 90 degree weather and more brain-frying tweets from 45 in the White House while the Congress is emptying all the cupboards, privatizing everything that used to be the people’s and leaving the back door open for banks.
Other than that, everything is dope!
So here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring Adam Fujita, Beast, Blanco, Brandon Garrison, Cekis, Dasic, Dirty Bandits, El Sol 25, FKDL, Jetsonorama, Jerk Face, Joe Iurato, Logan Hicks, Mataruda, Mr. Toll, Myth NYC, Opiemme, S0th1s, and She Wolf.
“Resistance is here to stay, welcome to your 100th day” – said people in Climate Marches across the country yesterday to President Exxon-Lockheed. God, has it only been 100 days? It feels like 1,000. Nevertheless, there are a lot of new politically themed pieces popping up on the street regularly, along with completely apolitical and humorous ones. Either way, we always dig the conversation on the street.
Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring: Adam Fujita, Brolga, Carlos Colp, Jaune, Legend, Lost Hills, Lunge Box, Myth, Raf Urban, Taco, and Tatyana Fazlalizadeh.
Of the thousands of images he took this year in places like New York, Berlin, Dresden, Moscow, Marrakesh, Detroit and Miami, photographer Jaime Rojo found that the figurative image still stands prominently in the Street Art scene – along with text-based, abstract and animal world themes.
Surprisingly the scene does not appear to be addressing the troubled and contentious matters of the political and social realms in a large way, but the D.I.Y. scene keeps alive and defies the forces of homogeneity with one-of-a-kind small wheat-pastes, stencils, sculptures, and aerosol sprayed pieces alongside the enormous and detailed paintings that take days to complete.
Every Sunday on BrooklynStreetArt.com, we present “Images Of The Week”, our regular interview with the street. Primarily New York based, BSA interviewed, shot, and displayed images from Street Artists from more than 100 cities over the last year, making the site a truly global resource for artists, fans, collectors, gallerists, museums, curators, academics, and others in the creative ecosystem. We are proud of the help we have given and thankful to the community for what you give back to us and we hope you enjoy this collection – some of the best from 2016.
Brooklyn Street Art 2016 Images of the Year by Jaime Rojo includes the following artists;
1Up, Above, Adele Renault, Alaniz, Amy Smalls, George Vidas, GEN2, Apexer, BordaloII, Buff Monster, C215, Collin Van Der Sluijs, Super A, David Choe, D*Face, Duke Riley, El Sol 25, Sean 9 Lugo, EQC, Faile, Faith47, Faust, Shantell Martin, Felipe Pantone, Hueman, Droid907, Icy & Sot, InDecline, Invader, JJ Veronis, Jilly Ballistic, John Ahearn, JR, London Kaye, Louis Masai, MadC, Marshal Arts, Mongolz, MSK, Rime, Myth, Nina Chanel, Optic Ninja, Otto Osch Schade, Panmela Castro, Plastic Jesus, QRST, Reed b More, Remi Rough, REVS, Self Made, Sharon Dela Cruz, Maripussy, Specter, Stikman, Strok, Swoon, Ted Pim, Thievin’ Stephen, Farin Purth, Thomas Allen, Tobo, Uriginal, Vermibus, Vhils, Wing, Yes Two, Zola.
The artist featured on the main graphic is D*Face as shot by Jaime Rojo in New York.
We haven’t had such a frightening Halloween in years! – and we know we speak for many readers as well while we all look at the monstrous tabloid TV parade that is scaring the electorate. Boo!
Luckily we found some treats on the street! And a few tricks, but those are for our paid site, wink wink.
So here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring Bifido, Buff Monster, City Kitty, Dee Dee, Disto, Droid, Flood, Myth, Nychos, R2, REVS, RODA, Rusk, See True Fame, Sipros, Smells, Smith, Sweet Toof, and Texas.
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.
Elfo is a graffiti writer and social commentator whose work intentionally sidesteps traditional notions of style or technical lettering. This …Read More »
In her latest mural, Faring Purth delivers a powerful reflection on connection, continuity, and the complexity of evolving relationships—a true …Read More »
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
