As our thoughts turn to Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, the revolutionary leader of South Africa and Nobel Peace Prize winner who turns 95 this month and who remains seriously ill under the watchful eye of everyone, we send good vibrations and wishes to him and his family.

On a hopeful note we are glad to bring you this story about a young Street Artist from Capetown who is creating a legacy of her own with aerosol cans.  An articulate student of graffiti, Nard is now pursuing a colorfully geometric, often character based street art route on walls around her city and has also begun to travel internationally – recently even to Brooklyn, where she posed for BSA in this photo for Jaime Rojo.

Nard in Brooklyn late winter 2013 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“Graffiti here started in Apartheid when people were writing “Free Mandela” and political messages,” Nard relates in this brand new mini-documentary by Ry George. “They didn’t even know about graffiti as a pop element so they just used to paint those things until they got exposed to hip-hop,” she explains as she describes the stories she has learned about how early graffiti writers actually learned about style through mailing letters, sketches, and photos back and forth with other graffiti writers elsewhere in the world.

Now she is a part of “the biggest art movement in the world,” she says of the global Street Art scene. “That’s because of the freedom that comes with it.”

Screenshot from “Concrete Flower” ( © Nard and Ry George)

Screenshot from “Concrete Flower” ( © Nard and Ry George)

Screenshot from “Concrete Flower” ( © Nard and Ry George)

Screenshot from “Concrete Flower” ( © Nard and Ry George)

“I think when people speak about graffiti they usually mean how it started with letterforms and tags.  When they speak about Street Art it is anything else besides letters. Like the traditional sense of graffiti isn’t exactly how it is because everybody is sticking to that rule of ‘a tag and a throwup and a piece and bombing and ‘getting up’  – the same thing that people did back in the 70s or 80s, and sometimes letters can be Street Art.” – Nard from “Concrete Flower”.

A neighbor steps up to get a close look at Nard’s work. Screenshot from “Concrete Flower” ( © Nard and Ry George)

Screenshot from “Concrete Flower” ( © Nard and Ry George)

‘Concrete Flower” was shot and edited by Ryan George @ry_george, featuring interviews with local graffiti artist FERS @fersyndicate and street art photographer Klaus Warschkow @klauswarschkow. Thanks also to Jamie Litt.

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