Welcome to BSA Images of the Week!
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: Binho, Patch Whisky, Atomik, Mr. Blob, Ouch, Ghost Beard, Habibi, Mona Dash, John Pierre, WHKBT, Giulio Rosk, Weerdo, and Chica Dania.
“Gurl, I Just Came For the Sunburn” is the cleverly worded T-shirt design we just conjured, but didn’t see in any of the many stores selling “Miami”-emblazoned memorabilia this weekend. New Yorkers are from a colder climate where sexy college girls are already wearing tight turtleneck sweaters and leggings and handsome boys are sporting corduroy and blazers. Not here in Miami Beach or Wynwood, where less is more, and naked is a matter of opinion.
It’s Carnivale weekend so the streets and hotels are bursting with Brazilian and Trinidadian and otherwise Caribbean influences, including phenomenal costumes, dancing, trap music, and raucous peels of laughter. After some time on Miami Beach surrounded by bathing beauties and dodging freelance vendors selling Pina Coladas, margaritas, marijuana edibles, and other drugs from their backpacks, we caught an energetic and sexy floor show featuring earth-shaking amounts of bouncing beauty and a lip-synching rendition of Megan Thee Stallion’s “Girls in the Hood” that served so much twerking abandon that the fishnet stockings industry ran out of inventory by 3 am Sunday.
Here on the streets this quick sample of shots gives you an idea of the messages and palettes now greeting visitors all over this neighborhood of Wynwood– with some faces lifted from posters so you see how you’re supposed to be stylin’. Call it a survey of local color to ease you into the Miamian week BSA will be sharing with our readers. Bienvenidos!
Our interview with the street today includes Askew One, Atomik, Binho, Claudia La Bianca, Krayzie Bone, Guillermo Zanches, Irene Lopez Leon, Marina Capdevilla, Milu Correch, MSG Crew, Osorno, Pixel Pancho, and Rodo.
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week.
Remember that time when your best friend’s boyfriend was installing a towel rack in the bathroom of their apartment, and he clumsily busted a hole through the wall, revealing a hidden room – which subsequently released a ghost who regularly appeared at the foot of their bed and slammed doors throughout their dwelling? We do. That’s why it was/was not shocking when a New York woman investigated the breeze emanating from her bathroom mirror. She took the mirror off the wall and discovered a portal to a three-room apartment.
Dude, if that happens to us, we’re not putting it on Tik Tok. We’re heading to Bed Bath and Beyond. In a space-starved city, newly discovered square footage is like finding gold bullion or bitcoin between couch cushions.
In other New York news, some street art neighborhoods are devoid of new works these days – perhaps because January and February are a frozen, mischievous purgatory that chases you inside in a normal year – doubly so when you’re on your 37th consecutive month of pajamas, Minecraft, and Chef Boyardee Beefaroni. Have faith; the next tumultuous 8 weeks of winter-spring-winter-spring weather will eventually coax the street artists and graffiti writers outside in a perennial sign of spring like the appearance of a robin on your windowsill.
Despite the paucity of prancing vandals at the moment, our Editor of Photography, Jaime Rojo, still managed to capture new art in the streets this week in Red Hook, Bushwick, Chelsea, and Bushwick – amongst the scores of closed restaurant huts that have besieged sidewalks citywide. Movie theaters will open for 25% capacity now, and perhaps the moribund restaurants will be coming back to life in this city that never quite sleeps.
Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring Adrian Wilson, Berkit, Binho, Blur, Captain Eyeliner, Colin Capernick, Comik, DYM Crew, Ethan Minsker, Know Your Rights Camp, Locs, Matt Siren, Paolo Tolentino, Sara Lynne Leo, Shark, Taboo, The Monks, and Tony De Pew.
“Hooray! Hooray! The first of May. Outdoor f***ing begins today!”
– Or at least that’s what we learned in school. Brooklyn’s hawthorn trees and lilacs are in bloom, as are the cherry trees in the Brooklyn Botanical Garden. High school girls are wearing short skirts and long hair and boys are well, boys; strutting around like peacocks trying to get attention with fun and foolish behavior, and Duke Riley is setting pigeons free after dark till June 12.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring BAT, Billi Kid, Binho, D7606, Damien Mitchell, Enzo Sarto, Freddy Sam, JMZ Walls, Kafka, Maya Hayuk, Modus, Mr. Toll, Otto “Osch” Schade, Pyramid Oracle, Ricky Lee Gordon, Seb Gorey, Weed Dude, and Zeso.
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The spirit of New Yorks’ 5 Pointz graffiti/Street Art holy place has popped up in the same Queens neighborhood where it was demolished in 2014, and since last summer more than 50 local and international aerosol artists have been hitting a new project “Top to Bottom”.
The choice of “Top to Bottom”, a graffiti term that recalls 1970s trains painted their entire height, is no mistake as creative director James P. Quinn reveres the classic style and histories of those original writers like internationally and institutionally celebrated artists Crash and Daze, who have collaborated on a mural here.
Additionally, in yet another sign that the celebration of art on the streets is ever more ecumenical, Quinn and his project lead Geoff Kuffner are bringing the newer Street Artists who are expanding and defining the current era for art in the streets like Case Ma’Claim and Rubin 415. Not surprisingly, both of these artists started in graffiti, as did nearly every name here.
“I felt like a comfortable amount of space should be allocated to certain styles,” says Quinn as he describes the process of parceling out spots for the façade and roof of the 124,000-square-foot former warehouse. Truthfully, he tells us, not all the surfaces and shapes are attractive to graffiti artists, so a variety of styles is best.
“I tried to fit them in where I felt that graff writers could enjoy themselves and do something expansive. There are only a couple of spaces here that fit the epic, horizontally spaced forms of style writing. There are a lot of strange shapes to navigate as a painter here, rather than easy space to develop style as a writer.”
Quinn and Kuffner give a couple of visitors a tour around the entire block on a gray day where heavy fog hangs in the air obscuring the top half of Manhattan and they excitedly recall stories about the many installations in this first project of their newly formed Arts Org NYC. Using the word “garden” often, Quinn reiterates that this project for them is a “proof of concept” for bigger projects that will spread further through the city. “Ultimately I’m approaching it as a mural project,” says Quinn, who has organized mural programs a number of times since the 1990s. “It’s just a beginning.”
Street Art has evolved into districts of murals in cities as a gentrification device in the last five years and despite the critique that it is often used for economic development, many urban art watchers would also agree that we’re in the middle of a renaissance of public/private art. Quinn says he wants to capture part of the public’s new interest and make it grow. “I’d like to leverage the current hype and acceptance of mural painting to open up doors to people – old women, young kids, everybody.”
The neighborhood itself feels like it is in transition but it is not clear where it is heading. With Silvercup Studios and the number 7 subway line nearby and MoMA PS1 within a 10 minute walk, a quick survey reveals mixed light industry, sweatshops, corner delis, and the occasional strip club. Below the off-ramp of the Queensboro Bridge, which sweeps past the “Top to Bottom” exhibition, you will see first and second generation immigrants from the areas’ latin and African communities walking by, and Quinn reminds you that the Queensbridge Projects where Hip-Hop storyteller NAS grew up is just a short walk from here.
Conversation turns to plans for more focused programming on the walls in Phase II, possible fine art shows with local gallery spaces, and ultimately a city-wide mural project that offers art and art-making to greater audiences, including school kids.
“I do feel like murals get focused in certain locations but I feel like the entire city as a whole is still suffering. Huge demographics aren’t getting the painting,” he says, invoking the civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. “I feel like my ‘I Have a Dream’ speech about this project is that I hope it gets to the point where 10 year-olds can have as much access to a neighborhood as developers.”
Does he think that projects like this are pawns for business interests to draw investments into the neighborhood and push poorer populations out? “You can debate whether or not we are opening the way for more shiny condos… but that shit is happening whether we do this or not. For me the importance is keeping us here; So we’re not totally pushed out 30-45 minutes away from here”
Because of its proximity to the now destroyed 5 Pointz, where hundreds, perhaps thousands, of urban artists painted a much larger block repeatedly for two decades, we ask Quinn if he’s concerned with comparisons.
“I’ve always managed other projects like this in my own style and my own way. There are comparable aspects and I have nothing but a huge sensitivity and respect for Meres and 5 Pointz,” he says, referring to the artist and de facto director of the hallowed spot. “It’s comparable only because it’s a building and it’s in Long Island City. But this is only a jump-off. I want to do way more projects like this across the city.”
As the business partners walk past new pieces by DMote, Li-Hill, Icy & Sot, and Jick, the topic of the historically strained relationship between graffiti writers and Street Artists appears to be addressed head-on by the project by the inclusion of all manner of painter. The guys say that it is less of an issue than some people would have you think. As a long-time artist and muralist and curator of projects like this, Quinn says he’s over the supposed rivalry of the two camps, and sees mainly just one camp these days.
“I don’t know what the fans of graffiti or Street Art have any problem with. To me it’s all awesome.”
A stunning panoply of events all at once this Halloween weekend in New York – The Mets are in the “World Series” playing here and everybody is a fan, the New York City Marathon is today (oldest participant is nearly 95), and everybody’s clocks get set back an hour. More than your average number of freaks and weirdos have been on the subway and street and in bars and in your hallway, some asking for candy, and a lot of people decorated their haunted castles. Check out our Halloween Street Art posting from yesterday, Boo!
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Bifido, Binho, Cdre, City Kitty, Crash, Crummy Gummy, Curve, Hunt, London Kaye, Oldy, Rae, Ron English, Solus, Specter, Tony DePew, and Zafuto.
Diagnosis One: America’s deflated rustbelt cities can expect a deteriorated dust bowl demeanor until bankruptcy, followed by tumbleweeds.
Diagnosis Two: Street Art and graffiti are inextricably entwined with and contributing factors for broken windows, societal disarray, economic and moral decay of the aforementioned cities.
Both are failed and need to be re-examined.
For the record, Rochester tops lists in terms of liveability, investment in new technology sectors, and has 91% of it’s citizens covered by health insurance – before Obamacare even kicks in. It has lost jobs and population due to stumbling giants like Xerox and Eastman Kodak and recent annual budgets have had significant shortfalls, but Rochester is putting up a good fight in the healthcare sector.
Dr. Ian Wilson should know. Which brings us to the second diagnosis. Ask the former Brooklyn graff writer now radiologist at the University of Rochester Medical Center if Street Art is synonymous with crime and disorder, and he’ll tell you all about the healing power of Wall\Therapy and murals.
The just-concluded community art project he spearheaded landed local and international graffiti/urban/street artists in Rochester for 10 days of painting – bringing certain parts of the city alive with curious locals hanging out in empty lots and hanging out of slow moving car windows, watching artists with cans as they bob up and down on cherry pickers.
Co-curated this year with lead organizer Erich Lehman, Wilson has pulled off a stylistically wide-ranging collection of nearly 30 walls this year that go from aesthetically sweet to academically rooted. An apt balance, if you think of Ian.
It’s also been a balancing act to please all constituencies and manage to pull off something fresh; he’s dealt with a handful of outspoken critics who question every turn he’s made, yet the festival has been buoyed by a curious and enthusiastic under-30 youth culture whose minds explode with excitement at the thought of the global Street Art scene hitting their own city.
“Mural art can enhance the life experience – an arguable effect of the arts in general,” the doctor says only a little didactically. All week during Wall\Therapy locals and visitors were taking tours on the El Camino Trail, watching walls going up in the South Wedge, and discussing art and the ideas that the artists are working with – whether it’s a portrait of Trayvon Martin in a piece by New Jersey’s LNY, a gentlemen’s fist fight by Ireland’s Conor Harrington, or a tribute to the influence of Xerox on the city by Baltimore’s Gaia.
Add the local talents, a cadre of volunteers and photographers and some serious old-skool big graffiti names from NYC rocking styles that started it all, this year there was more action than a Saturday night ER.
Finally, Wall\Therapy is Wilson’s balancing act of bringing art to the people, and medical care to communities in need. Working with a group of colleagues, he has also embarked on a fundraising program to bring diagnostic equipment to people in the developing world who lack access – and he is now talking about cloud-based diagnoses by a pool of volunteer doctors around the world who can interpret the teleradiology scans remotely.
Can he get all the funding and the equipment and the artists and the walls all together at once? “Realistically, this will have to be done in stages or phases, like some of the procedures that I perform,” he says. If you’ve witnessed this years committed volunteers and organizers at Wall\Therapy, it is a fair assumption that these dual goals of art and healing will happen on a growing scale.
“There is no hope without inspiration. The two travel simultaneously, sharing the same bandwidth,” explains Wilson.
BSA gives a shout out for the valuable contributions to the Wall\Therapy over the last ten days by the artists, organizers, volunteers, and talented photographers. Special thanks to John Magnus Champlin, Erich Lehman, Ian Wilson, Matt DeTurck, Jason Wilder, Alex Stuart, Mark Deff, Lisa Barker, Mark Deff, and Josh Saunders. Shout out to Instagrammers @WallTherapyNY , @heliosunphoto , and @shotbywilder .
Check out excellent Wall\Therapy coverage by Rebecca Rafferty on the Rochester City Newspaper
Check out our previous posts on WALL\THERAPY:
WALL\THERAPY 2013 Starts With FREEDOM in a Tunnel
WALL\THERAPY 2013 Daily Checkup and Scan of Founder Ian Wilson
Wall\Therapy 2013 Tuesday Update 7.22.13
Sarah C. Rutherford Flies High at Wall\Therapy
Wall \ Therapy 2013 Friday Update 07.26.13
To learn more please visit:
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Please note: All content including images and text are © BrooklynStreetArt.com, unless otherwise noted. We like sharing BSA content for non-commercial purposes as long as you credit the photographer(s) and BSA, include a link to the original article URL and do not remove the photographer’s name from the .jpg file. Otherwise, please refrain from re-posting. Thanks!
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Skunk in the tunnel. ROA is back in Rochester.
But he’s not alone – a number of new artists arrived mid week to get the aerosol festivities reinvigorated. Not that they were flagging.
WALL\THERAPY has been up on a record number of walls all week – a rolling panoply of artists and organizers and volunteers and paint and sandwiches and water bottles and cherry pickers and neighbors stopping to watch and ask questions, offer opinions, and send it out on Instagram. Wednesday night was a meet and greet and panel talk with some of the artists and last night was a full on party at a local club. The wide variety of installations is providing entry for a lot of conversations online and in the street about the art and the artists – which is always good for building engagement with public space.
Here are new process photos from the last couple of days from Binho, Cern, Chris Stain, DALeast, Ever, Faith47, Gaia, Mr. Prvrt, Range, ROA, Siloette, Thieven Stephen, and Wise2.
Special thanks to photographers Sara Czernikowski, Jason Wilder, Alex Stuart, Josh Saunders, Lisa Barker, and Mark Deff, for sharing these great process images with BSA readers.
Image above: ROA at the old abandoned subway tunnels. WALL\THERAPY. Rochester, NY. July 2013. (photo © Jason Wilder)
Chris Stain got started earlier in the week and didn’t really like his original piece, so he regathered his ideas to do this brand new piece derived from a photo he took of his son Kesh this spring. Combining an urban cityscape from Queens with the portrait, Chris explains, “Lately I’ve been inspired by double exposure photography and I wanted to explore those possibilities in my own work.”
Take your phone and hit the road! Shoot your own pics and tag them @WallTherapyNY and @BKStreetArt – we’ll send them round the world! Click image above or HERE for the updated Google map.
Check out our previous posts on WALL\THERAPY:
To learn more please visit:
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Please note: All content including images and text are © BrooklynStreetArt.com, unless otherwise noted. We like sharing BSA content for non-commercial purposes as long as you credit the photographer(s) and BSA, include a link to the original article URL and do not remove the photographer’s name from the .jpg file. Otherwise, please refrain from re-posting. Thanks!
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POWWWWW!
Conor Harrington’s right hook is emblematic of the impact that the huge number of artists are having on Rochester right now for WALL\THERAPY. “It’s been a very well organized event and painting side by side with this line up of artists has been a blast,” says NYC graffiti veteran and globetrotter DAZE as he improvises his piece.
Meanwhile Martha Cooper is watching/shooting “Mike Ming about to attack his super colorful wall”, Lady Pink is talking to some neighborhood youth about her work, and EVER from Argentina is showing off his international collection of paint brushes to Deb Vanwert while Jason is snapping photos of him. And the weather is great since these are the two weeks a year when Rochester gets above 60 degrees. We’re up north yo! Just kidding.
Our update today contains fresh stuff from Mike Ming, Cern, Faith47, Gaia, EVER, Pose2, St. Monci, WiseTwo, Siloette, LNY, Binho, Change, Conor Harrington, DAZE, FreddySam, Lady Pink, and Range.
Special thanks to photographers Jason Wilder, Alex Stuart, Josh Saunders, Lisa Barker, and Mark Deff, for sharing these great process images with BSA readers.
Image above of Conor Harrington in progress. WALL\THERAPY. Rochester, NY. July 2013. (photo © Mark Deff)
” The painting I’m working on is a bit improvisational in that even though I had made many provisional sketches for it before hand all that changed once I was in front of the wall. At least part of my inspiration for the painting is coming from my experience here in Rochester – The center of the wall features the Rochester skyline as seen from Hyland park. Everything in the painting is drawn to this center,” explains Daze.
Take your phone and hit the road! Shoot your own pics and tag them @WallTherapyNY and @BKStreetArt – we’ll send them round the world! Click image above or HERE for the updated Google map.
Check out our previous posts on WALL\THERAPY:
To learn more please visit:
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Please note: All content including images and text are © BrooklynStreetArt.com, unless otherwise noted. We like sharing BSA content for non-commercial purposes as long as you credit the photographer(s) and BSA, include a link to the original article URL and do not remove the photographer’s name from the .jpg file. Otherwise, please refrain from re-posting. Thanks!
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WALL\THERAPY began in earnest this weekend with a Friday kickoff party that welcomed arriving artists and the local community together and then jumped directly into the making of art with many murals going up on walls around town in Rochester simultaneously Saturday and Sunday. The dual pronged focus of WALL\THERAPY is a mural festival that draws Street Artists and graffiti artists from around the world to work alongside local artists and to raise awareness of people’s access to medical technology.
Street Art and medicine; You may wonder how the two are related, and the answer is that these are two of Ian Wilson’s greatest passions. A Brooklyn born graff writer who went on to pursue a career in teleradiology, Ian works long doctors hours at his regular gig in a local hospital and puts this WALL\THERAPY event together with partners, volunteers, and community members. Finally, he is working to bring imaging and diagnostic equipment to communities around the world who don’t have this basic tool to treat disease.
Since BSA supports people who actually give back, we are very happy to be the Media Partner for WALL\THERAPY and are proud of the artists who are lending their talents to this initiative in this northwestern town of New York State.
This year the roster has expanded to include an eclectic mix of a few serious old skool NYC graffiti names spanning 4 decades, a healthy handful of international and nationally known Street Artists that are defining the scene today, and some important local talents.
As a group they represent a solid lineup and are a reflection of the inclusive approach that WALL\THERAPY is taking, while skewing toward high quality. The list includes Bile, Binho, Case, Cern, Change, DalEast, Daze, Ever, Faith47, Adam Francey, Freedom, Freddy Sam, Jessie & Katey, Labrona, Lady Pink and Smith, Lea Rizzo, LNY, Mike Ming, Mr. Prvrt, Faring Purth, Pose2 and Range, ROA, Sarah C. Rutherford, and St Monci among others.
All week we will bring you exclusive new images of the creative progress and some insights into the personal stories of some of the artists as they create their works in this unique combining of art, science, and community inspiration.
Thanks today to photographers Jason Wilder, Alex Stuart, and Mark Deff for sharing these images with BSA readers.
Here’s a video from a previous edition of WALL\THERAPY that lays out the inspiration that lead to and the community feeling that comes about from the event.
To learn more please visit:
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Please note: All content including images and text are © BrooklynStreetArt.com, unless otherwise noted. We like sharing BSA content for non-commercial purposes as long as you credit the photographer(s) and BSA, include a link to the original article URL and do not remove the photographer’s name from the .jpg file. Otherwise, please refrain from re-posting. Thanks!
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Wall Therapy
The city known as “The World’s Image Center” will once again be living up to its title as it welcomes nearly 30 world renown street artists for the third installment of WALL\THERAPY. They will be transforming walls both large and small throughout Rochester into works of art, serving our collective need for inspiration.
With an overview of a variety of styles and techniques used in the graffiti scene at the moment, São Paulo is hosting its 2nd international biennial of graffiti and fine art through February 17th. Along with a number of recognized Brazilian names, Museu Brasileiro da Escultura (MuBE) is hosting international graffiti artists and writers from countries around the world including Angola, Canada, France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Japan, Peru, Portugal, Russia, and the US. With 150,000 visitors per year, you know that a lot of graffiti fans are going to get to see this show this month New York graffiti artist Daze was there to represent and he shares with BSA readers his experiences from the event, as well as some excellent photos he chose to represent some of the works in progress and some of the finished works.
“The museum architecturally is a wonderful place and one is encouraged to roam around the grounds and view sculptural works by various national artists. In existence since 1986, rumor has it a shopping mall was originally intended to be built on this site but, after much protesting, a museum was built instead.
The biennial is curated by Binho Ribiero, or “Binho”, as he is more commonly known on the streets in Sao Paulo. A catalyst for many group exhibitions and events in the city, Binho is and old-school writer from the scene and his work can be seen everywhere in Sao Paulo. Arguably one of the most famous Brazillian graff writers, he’s a natural in terms of curating an exhibition of this size and scale.
It was really great to be a part of this and I was really impressed by the diversity in the show. Many of the artists have not had much experience showing their work in either galleries of museums but nevertheless the quality level was quite high. I also saw that all of the artists showed a level of camaraderie and respect that I haven’t seen in some time.” ~ Daze
Our very special thanks to Daze for sharing his words and photos with BSA readers.
2ª Bienal Internacional Graffiti Fine Art is at MuBE – Museu Brasileiro da Escultura from January 22 – Febr 17, 2013.
Admission is free.
Address: Av. Europa, 218. São Paulo
Information: 11 2594-2601, mube@mube.art.br/ www.mube.art.br
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BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
