“Ramadan Kareem” to everyone celebrating it this month. Also in April the Jews will be celebrating Passover and the Christians will be celebrating Easter and the Hindus are celebrating Chaitra Navratri. New York has the most diverse assembly of amazing and beautiful neighbors and we are all richer as a result.
In Hollywood and elsewhere people are celebrating/mourning the events surrounding Will Smith. In street art style, his infamous act shows up on a wall this week already (below).
It’s been cold in NYC this week! Fingers are cold, noses are cold, and migrating geese are humming the Clash’s “Should I Stay or Should I Go”. The Cyclone at Luna Park in Coney Island, opened yesterday and assures New Yorkers that Spring is already here even if you don’t feel it yet.
We’re excited to see the new exhibition Jean-Michel Basquiat: King Pleasure opens here this week. Congratulations to his family for bringing this enormous undertaking to fruition, especially Jean-Michel’s sisters Lisane Basquiat and Jeanine Heriveaux and his stepmother Nora Fitzpatrick.
Also, don’t sleep on the Whitney Biennial, opening Wednesday! Curators David Breslin and Adrienne Edwards say they have had a guiding principle; “It’s got to be buck wild.” That’s enough for us. Hopefully, some people will be buck naked at the show. A special shout-out to Biennial artist Jane Dixon. Her paintings and photographs of New York in the 80s captured its electricity and unpolished promise – during the time when she lived with filmmaker Charlie Ahearn in an apartment overlooking the tawdry excitement of Times Square. She say the city was, “burning, broke, and dangerous.”
Gentle people, start your stopwatch! Let’s see how long it takes for news items and pundits to begin likening our new Staten Island Amazon warehouse union workers to terrorists.
We’ve allowed companies to become richer than nations, so you can imagine what resources they can summon; the most comprehensive campaign to malign, discredit, impugn the character of workers, and thugs to intimidate them. This is the biggest victory for organized labor in a generation, born in a time of unprecedented income disparity across the city and country. Most citizens would be pleased if corporate behemoths simply paid their fair share of taxes.
The street is still one of the best exhibition spaces, never to be recreated fully.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: AJ LaVilla, Clown Soldier, Little Ricky, Sticker Maul, Michael Alan, Dragon76, Diva Dogla, CP Won, Savior El Mundo, Acro, Jennifer Pod is Dead, and Masnah.
A pause. It’s unusual to feel this sense in this city – but it’s there – on a sunny day where the sky is clear of clouds and a flock of geese still waddles and honks in the tall weeds and garbage by the Wallabout Channel. Is it a pause of satisfaction at the end of a summer full of fun, or perhaps a calm resignation before a storm as businesses are staying closed or operating at reduced staff. And while the Federal Reserve and ECB and World Bank insist there is just a smidgen of temporary, transitory inflation, tell us why a pound of butter is $6.00 at the local deli, the average price of a used car is $25K, and shipping container prices have soared to $20K?
There is a steady number of new street art pieces going up on doorways, power boxes, and concrete walls, but they are competing all of the triumphal purple and blue and pink Morning Glories flooding fences and walls and garden gates in neighborhoods throughout Brooklyn – a most generous overflow that summer gives as a parting gift.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Cssh4, Cheak, Clown Soldier, Diva Dogla, Drecks, ERRE, Fat Jak, Font 147, Goblin, Goog, JerkFace, Little Ricky, Mort Art, Praxis, Rambo, Seibot, Sinclair the Vandal, and Smetsky.
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week! Ramadan Kareem to Muslim brothers and sisters in New York and around the world. May you have an easy fast.
We’re bowled over by the beauty in the streets and parks and rooftops right now, with performances and painting and the blossoming of flowers underfoot and on branches overhead. Fires are alit in hearts everywhere.
“All the roofs are wet and underneath smoke that piles softly in streets, tongues are on top of each other mulling over the night.”
from Gamin ~ Frank O’Hara
Yes, there is a sort of battered nervousness in conversations on the streets and as we go about our quotidian duties; a discerned increase in agitation due to economic instability, surges of new Covid strains in our hospitals, and ongoing examples of police brutality toward black and brown people is met with resistance and sometimes violence as well.
Still, consider the robin. In your heart, may hope spring eternal. Also, we learn today that summer may be returning at least one exceedingly creative and participatory public art event as the Gothamist reports that “Coney Island’s Mermaid Parade May Return In The Flesh This Summer.”
And yo! Don’t sleep on the street artists who are putting up new work right now. They are addressing our ills, regaling us with visual puns, poking at our foibles, recontextualizing and performing feats of wonder under cover of night, or while heads are turned in broad daylight. Entertaining, bragging, dreaming… onward they go.
So here’s our weekly interview with the street, this time featuring: Absconded Project, Atakbf, Bastard Bot, City Kitty, Clown Soldier, Degrupo, George Collagi, Lexi Bella, Manik, Marka27, Matt Siren, Peachee Blue, Royce Bannon, Sonni, Teens for Press Freedom, Vexta, and Zaver.
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week. Did you set you clocks ahead one hour? Spring forward!
We open today’s edition of BSA Images Of The Week with Peruvian artist The Monks. He’s been splashing the streets of New York with his vibrant work… and with a much-needed infusion of color during our winter grays – as a prelude to the imminent Spring in NYC.
We’re feeling good. Is that bad? Maybe it’s the lack of daily tweets that used to hector and batter the populace for 4 years that we are slowly emerging from beneath. It’s like the Twitter Gods are showing mercy on us all.
Maybe it’s the centrist rescue bill finally passed this week that will place newly-minted cash into the hands of the newly-minted poor and desperate working-class, slowing the steady decades-long growth of the gaping chasm between haves and have-nots. (Still “no” to $15 minimum wage, “no” to Medicare for All, “yes” to a bombing in Syria). You can’t blame the Democrats, though – they only have the House, Senate, and White House.
Maybe we’re also feeling partially positive because we had two consecutive days of sunshine and even experienced 60-degree temperatures. Daffodils are positively poised for popping through the dog poop in public parks presently. No doubt we’re also feeling hopeful because a deluge of new art will begin rushing through city streets in the next few weeks as artists, like everyone else, will be racing outside like giddy teenagers.
Not that they haven’t been getting up already. They have.
Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring Clown Soldier, CRKSNK, Donut, Fours Crew, Goog, HAZE, Kiwi, Meter, Nemz, Polka, Rambo, Roachi, Samva, Sara Lynne-Leo, Texas & Gane, The Monks, Toath, Zexor, and ZigZag.
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week. 新年快乐! Happy Lunar New Year! It’s the Year of the Ox, and there was a lot of celebration during this snowy week in New York, although it appeared to be subdued by the standards of pre-Covid times definitely.
Also, Happy Valentines Day to you! We love you more every day! Don’t change a thing; you’re perfect the way you are.
Finally, the 2nd Impeachment of Donald Trump took place this week and it was on every television, radio, laptop, and phone screen it seems.
“Anyone who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities” is the quote attributed to Voltaire that the Democrat from Maryland Jamie Raskin spoke this week at the 2nd Impeachment trial of the former president in the Senate. It ranks as one of the more memorable.
It would be a stretch to call it a trial when many who voted in this verdict were also witnesses, victims, judges, jury, and/or co-conspirators of the accused. Still, it appears to be the only available way to hold a president accountable for their actions in the U.S.
We would say that it was a good show, but it was not a good show…
Finally, he has been acquitted by a vote of 57 to 43 in the Senate. A two-thirds majority was needed. One outcome is he can run for office again if he wishes. No matter the result of these events, it was inevitable that there would be a pervasive feeling of unrest.
One question remains: Was the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol the end of an era or the beginning?
Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring 7 Line Arts Studio, Al Diaz, Awol Erizcu, BK Foxx, Clown Soldier, Fire Flower, Goog, Pear, Queen Andrea, Riley Gale, SAMO, and Seung Jin.
Many images this week are from our short visit to Querétaro, Mexico this week – where, among other things, we saw first hand many of the murals mounted by the festival Nueve Arte Urbano over the past few years. Each festival around the world is unique to its local culture – with the possible exception of the highly commercial ones that are self-styling as a franchise of cool McArt dipped in tangy “Street” flavored sauce. We had a good survey of this mural/street art/graffiti scene in the context of Mexico’s historic mural masters, and a true sense of how counterculture can be embraced by so-called “mainstream” culture for the betterment of both.
In
short, the DNA of this festival is not about self-promotion but engaging
community in meaningful dialogue, respecting tradition of indigenous culture,
and embracing the modern day rebels who have brought art to the streets in
myriad ways. Combined with an unprecedented 101 photo exhibition of graffiti,
Street Art, and urban culture mounted on the streets that was too meta for our
brains, we saw people walking the walk, not just talking the talk. We only wish
we had more time, and a drone!
Additionally this week we have a few more favorite shots from a quick trip to Berlin last week. Berlin is basically Brooklyn’s sister city and it was also in the full throes of Spring, with long lines at the all-night dance clubs way after the sun came up. This weekend it looks like Brooklyn is warming up too – almost beer garden time!
Until then, let’s head over to Bamonte’s for a vodka martini with the fine men and women of what’s left of Italian American Williamsburg here in Brooklyn. This is an institution that’s 119 years old lined with framed photos of famous Italian Americans and celebrities who ate there like Telly Savalas and that guy from the Sopranos!
No music, only the clinking of glasses and animated storytelling and some people who may have been dining here when the Dodgers were still in Brooklyn – all eating lobster tails, shrimp cocktail, clams oreganata, iceberg lettuce salads, pastas, meat balls, fish, sautéed porkchops, scalloped potatoes, green beans, chicken parmesan, and blueberry pie or tiramisu. Okay it’s not five star, you big hotshot, but it’s at least as good as your Aunt Rosa’s kitchen, amiright? Bamontes not good enough for you now, you big Broccolini?
And the portions, my god, you won’t need to eat again
until Good Friday.
So here’s our weekly interview with the street, this time featuring 007, 1UP Crew, Calladitos, City Kitty, Clown Soldier, CS SZYMAN, Deih XLF, drsc0, Ger-Man, La Madriguera Grafica, Mantra, Nespoon, Paola Delfin, Santiago Savi, Victor Lopez, and Voxx Romana.
1. Dscreet is on “The Other Side Show” (London)
2. Neck Face is “Simply The Worst” Tonight in LA
3. Stormie Mills “Dark Lights” Friday (Perth, AU)
4. “Welcome to the Neighborhood” Low Brow Artique Grand Opening Saturday (Bushwick, BK)
5. MEGGS at White Walls (San Francisco)
6. VINZ Solo in 3 Places Saturday (Netherlands)
7. Cassius Fouler Now Open in Brooklyn
8. “Summer Selections” Group Show at Woodward (LES)
9. Morley “I Don’t Make Sense Without You”at Outsiders Gallery in Newcastle, UK
10. David Ellis and Kris Kuksi “Go West” to LA
11. Jeremy Fish at Fifty24SF Gallery in San Francisco
12. BASK One Stand in Detroit (VIDEO)
13. Snyder in Los Angeles (VIDEO)
Dscreet is on “The Other Side Show” (London)
“It will be my first solo show in four years and centers around the theme of duality – light and dark and black and white,” says Dscreet, the London based Street Artist of Burning Candy fame and infamy as he returns to the gallery with a solo show titled “The Other Side Show” at the Roktic Gallery in London. This show is now open.
For further information regarding this show click here.
Neck Face is “Simply The Worst” Tonight in LA
Neck Face returns to New Image Art Gallery in West Hollywood, CA to state why he is “Simply The Worst”. This show opens today and you are encouraged to wear something that it is not you.
For further information regarding this show click here.
“Welcome to the Neighborhood” Low Brow Artique Grand Opening Saturday (Bushwick, BK)
Uh-Oh, there goes the neighborhood. Tomorrow Street Artist Bishop 203 invites you to the grand opening of his gallery and art shop Low Brow Artique in Bushwick.
The opening will be celebrated with a group exhibition of Brooklyn based Street Artists including Cern, Clown Soldier, Elle, ENX, See One, Sheryo, Willow and Yok. Come wish this impresario good luck. An art supply spot in the front and a gallery in the back, “Low Brow” hopes to raise some eyebrows tomorrow night.
For further information regarding this show click here.
MEGGS at White Walls (San Francisco)
“Mythology tells the stories of gods, heroes, humans and supernatural beings as the personification of natural phenomena and more importantly the human condition… ” Saturday Meggs delves deeper into the subject of fantasy in San Francisco for his new solo show “Truth in Myth” opening tomorrow at the White Walls Gallery.
Meggs Red Skull. Detail. (image courtesy of the gallery)
For further information regarding this show click here.
VINZ Solo in 3 Places Saturday (Netherlands)
Spanish Street Artist VINZ has invaded Amsterdam with “Rules of Etiquette” his first solo show in The Netherlands opening tomorrow on three different locations: The Garage, Andenken Gallery and Battalion.
For further information regarding this show click here.
Cassius Fouler Now Open in Brooklyn
Opened last night at Weldon Arts Gallery, “Four Borough” is a cool collection from Cassius as he continues to merge symbols and irony and inside jokes with a deceptively simple and friendly hand delivery.
Woodward Gallery has put together “Summer Selections” an eclectic show of dead and alive artists, with some modern and contemporary masters mixed in with a select group of Street Artists that might or might not be the masters of tomorrow. Come in, cool off and judge for yourself.
Artists included are : Jean Michel Basquiat • Rick Begneaud • Susan Breen • Thomas Buildmore • Alexander Calder • Celso • Deborah Claxton • Darkcloud • Paul Gauguin • Sybil Gibson • Richard Hambleton • Curt Hoppe • Infinity • Jasper Johns • Russell King • Kosbe • LAII • Moody • Margaret Morrison • Mel Ramos • Robert Rauschenberg • Matt Siren • stikman • Jeremy Szopinski • Francesco Tumbiolo • Jo Ellen Van Ouwerkerk • Andy Warhol.
This show is now open to the general public. Click here for more details on this show.
Also happening this weekend:
The Outsiders Gallery in Newcastle, UK new show featuring Morley and entitled “I Don’t Make Sense Without You” is now open to the general public. Click here for more details on this show.
The Joshua Liner Gallery new show in Los Angeles at the Mark Moore Gallery pairs David Ellis and Kris Kuksi for “Go West”. This show is opens tomorrow in Culver City, CA. Click here for more details on this show.
Jeremy Fish is at the Fifty24SF Gallery in San Francisco with the opening tomorrow of his new show “Where Hearts Get Left”. Click here for more details about this show.
BASK One Stand in Detroit (VIDEO)
A quick look at how BASK did his recent piece in Detroit.
Snyder in Los Angeles (VIDEO)
For Street Art that verges on handmade crafting and display work, here’s a homey installation from Snyder.
For the inaugural exhibition, Low Brow Artique presents Welcome to the Neighborhood, which emphasizes the diversity in Brooklyn-based artists. The exhibition will be open to the public July 14th to August 5, with an opening reception on July 14 to 7 to 10pm. Featuring a wide range of thematic elements, the gallery presents the work of Cern, Clown Soldier, Elle, ENX, See One, Sheryo, Willow and Yok. While some of these artists have overlapping thematic elements, each representation distinguishes the artwork produced in this borough.
The work of artists Willow and Cern can be seen as an eloquent contrast in the representation of natural imagery in this urban environment. Both artists use striking color palettes in their depictions of different species; the end result of this work, however, is strikingly different. Mixing Latin American surrealism with characters based in his graffiti background, Cern brings creatures to flight that exist outside of a specific time and space and, instead, in a reality of your dreams. In contrast, Willow painstakingly builds up an array of colors in his brushstrokes to recreate a Genus of his choosing. Whether or not these species were present in his rural upbringing does not matter; he still paints each one with the care as if he has known them forever.
In contrast to the emerging themes in the area, such as wildlife, artists such as See One are working in a style independent of any other. In a recent break with his character- based graffiti background, the artist has started creating abstract pieces, which he calls “shards.” These jagged shapes, which are often accompanied by equally-as-pointed titles, encompass a style that is unique to the artist.
By bringing together this array of public artists, Welcome to the Neighborhood represents the visual diversity currently alive within Brooklyn. Ranging from collage to illustration, from the abstract to the tangible, those who find themselves currently creating work in Brooklyn form a contrast in artistic expressions. It is, however, this diversity that makes so many of us, including Low Brow Artique, proud to call the area “home.”
The community mural: A time honored urban tradition rooted in local flavors and tastes. Every major city and many small towns have them and most people who live near one of these colorful creations also have stories they can tell you about them. Apart from the graffiti scene or the Street Art scene, Allison and Garrison Buxton have one focus in mind when curating artists into this neighborhood in Queens to paint for the third year in a row: The nexus of community and creativity.
The styles, perspectives, and command of the aerosol can may vary, but the enthusiasm and refreshing lack of attitude at this non-commercial weekend event are undeniable. This year the number of participating artists grew to over 90 and the number of dishes served by neighbors on folding buffet tables in the middle of the street was probably 10 times that. It’s easy to see that this working class neighborhood full of racing kids on bikes and people posing for photos in front of murals is one true definition of New York today. For this sunny summer event, it’s the electricity of live creativity on the street that draws people out to talk with each other.
Thank you to Garrison and Allison Buxton for their indefatigable efforts to bring the community of artists together. Thank you to the families and business of Welling Court for opening their doors and their walls to the creative spirit.
Prints are often a good way for an artist to reach younger collectors and those with limited funds, and a good way for a gallery to get the doors open for traffic with a new generation of collectors. Hendershot Gallery new show in the Bowery opened last night with a Street Art centric collection of (mostly) prints that hit a nice cross-section of some of the current action on the streets. In addition they invited Gilf!, Clown Soldier, Chris Stain, and ASVP to hit some walls in the basement stenciling, screen printing or wheat pasting directly on the surface, so see if they’ll lend you the key to the dungeon while your are there.
Artists also included in the show are: Anthony Lister, Gaia, Gilf!, Icy & Sot, Imminent Disaster, Judith Supine, Know Hope, Labrona, Other and Paul Insect.
YOUNG NEW YORK At Risk Youth Being Seen, Heard, and Known | youngnewyorkers.org
SILENT ART AUCTION & FUNDRAISER
We are pleased to announce Young New York: A Silent Art Auction & Fundraiser, Tuesday May 29, 2012 at White Box in the Lower East Side. This one night event will benefit Young New York (YNY), an art focused social justice program working with 16 and 17 year olds who, legally classified as adults, have been thrown into New York State’s adult criminal justice system.
The funds from the silent auction will help build the first stage of the program – a series of cutting edge creative workshops with fifteen young New Yorkers. The young New Yorkers will work closely with a team of successful artists, designers, teachers and social workers to responsibly and creatively develop their message around their own experiences with, and hopes for, the treatment of youth in New York State’s criminal justice system.
The evening will feature the works of Steven Holl and Steve Powers ESPO along with many other established and emerging international artists whose work touches on the realm of the social in urban space, thereby creating a dialogue with the work being developed in the YNY workshops.
The space for the event has been provided by White Box, food provided by Maimonide of Brooklyn, and drinks provided by Bomb Lager. Additional support has also been provided by Loci Architecture and gopro.
Young New York is supported by the Goodman Fellowship at Columbia University and Brooklyn Defender Services.
Featuring Artists: Steven Holl, Steve Powers ESPO, NohjColey, Joe Iurato, Miguel Ovalle, Overunder, Gaia, Rodolfo Diaz, Marissa Paternoster, Ian Kuali’i, LNY, Blackmath, Doodles, Feral Child, Cake,ND’A, QRST, Sean 9 Lugo, Radical!, C215 from the Vandalog collection, Gilf, Beau Stanton, Rachel Hays, SUE works, Clown Soldier, Jill Cohen, Yulia Pinkusevich, Alyse Dunn, NEVER, Shane Nash, Jesse Hazelip, Sheryo,the YOK, ASVP, Labrona,Then One,Tom Smith, Day Le, Danielle Riechers, Jon Burgerman, Darnell Scott, Nathan Pickett, Joseph Grazi, John Breiner, Anne Grauso, SMURFO, Beau Stanton, Jamie Bruno, Luna Park, Sam Dylan Gordon, Fay Ku, Michael Bilsborough, NANOOK, Felipe Baeza, Sam Fleichner and more!
Curated by Natalie Trainor & LNY
Auction & Reception: Tuesday, May 29, 2012, 6-10 PM
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
