BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
Hooray! Spring is here in New York again. That means daffodils and crocuses are sprouting up among the soda cans and candybar wrappers and cigarette butts in the park’s gardens, and new proud or furtive aerosol missives are being sprayed on crumbling walls and phone booths are getting hi-jacked with posters by artists and galleries are again overflowing onto sidewalks for openings.
Our thanks to everyone who came out for the Heliotrope fundraiser this Thursday, to Swoon for being Swoon, and to her for asking us to curate the new line of prints, and to the six artists who gave their best to us all and to the Heliotrope projects in Haiti specifically: Case Maclaim, Faith XLVII, Icy And Sot, Li-Hill, Miss Van, and Tavar Zawacki (Above). Thank you also to all of Swoon’s team for helping us mount the show.
Also saw the press preview of the new documentary about NYC Street Artist Richard Hambleton called “Shadowman” this week, which was thrilling, frightening, sickening, and beautiful. People in the room were all feeling a bit nauseous when the lights came up – but for various reasons; the commercial art world seems to suck the beauty out of things, artists can be finicky like cats, and the worship of drug culture is dreadfully overglamorized and it killed off lots of cool people and cancer (from smoking) is actively killing the artist right in front of your eyes, which he freely admits to. Also, his work is amazing.
Accurately capturing the ragged, wooly, wildly creative downtown scene in which Hambleton first came up, Director Oren Jacoby premieres “Shadowman” at The Tribeca Film Festival in NYC on April 21, 2017.
On a totally related note, we were sad to learn Friday afternoon of the death of Glenn O’Brien, influential part of the NYC “Downtown” art and cultural scene in the 1970s, 80s and much much more. We had last seen him doing an interview with Lee Quinones in Chinatown for Lee’s show two years ago.
This week we’ll be seeing you at Nuart Aberdeen! It’s Nuarts’ first foray into another city and really it’s just a stone’s throw across The North Sea to Stavanger, the original home of Nuart in Norway. The kids are on spring vacation in Aberdeen all week so we know we’ll see a lot of swag youth traipsing around to see new artworks going up by artists and thoughtful academic types attending conference lectures. Drunken types will be attending the Friday night fight at a local bar. BSA will be at Belmont theater presenting BSA Film Friday LIVE and introducing “Saving Banksy” and “Beautiful Losers” over the weekend. Come on over; can’t wait to meet you!
Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring: Bifido, Chip Thomas, Chzz, Faust, Hydeon, Janz, Mdom, Nick McManus, Pyramid Oracle, Rubin 415, SacSix, Sheryo, Sonni, Swoon, Tatyana Fazlalizadeh, and The Yok.
Top image: Pyramid Oracle (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Rubin415 (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Hydeon at The Centrifuge Project. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
The Yok & Sheryo (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Janz. Ransom notes and collage. The main collaged figure in the center reminds us of the work of Richard Hambleton and the Studio 54 fixture Grace Jones. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Janz. Ransom notes and collage. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Janz. Ransom notes and collage. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Tatyana Fazlalizadeh for Art in Ad Places. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Chip Thomas’ portraits of Rose and Paul at The Reservation. “Rose and Paul who have been together living, loving and experiencing lives challenges + joys together for the past 65 years” -CT (photo © Chip Thomas)
Chip Thomas portraits of Rose and Paul at Antilope Hills. “Rose and Paul who have been together living, loving and experiencing lives challenges + joys together for the past 65 years” -CT (photo © Chip Thomas)
Faust (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Indeed. And shameful. MDOM (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Bifido. Mommy. “This is in a squat place. Some people occupied this space and they use it to give Italian language courses for new migrants, to present concerts, mount exhibitions, build a study room and generally create others things for people in the district. I made this work here to support activity and the guys who every day spend their time helping other people.” Bifido (photo © Bifido)
Sonni (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Woody is riding the wrecking ball by SacSix (photo © Jaime Rojo)
A bejeweled storm trooper from SacSix (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Chzz experiments with robots in Ukraine. (photo © Chzz)
The prints of the six artists for Helitrope Prints that BSA had the honor to curate for Swoon. Form left to right: Tavar Zawacki (Above), Icy & Sot, Miss Van, Fiath XLVII, Swoon, Case Maclaim and Li-Hill. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
The photographer and, in our humble opinion, performance artist Nick McManus perilously stands atop a foot stool to snap the perfect Polaroid group shot at The Heliotrope Foundation’s Pop-Up on Thursday with Swoon’s new hand drawn sketches to his right. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Untitled. SOHO, NYC. April 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
