All posts tagged: How

External Combustion: How & Nosm with Tristan Eaton in BK

External Combustion: How & Nosm with Tristan Eaton in BK

Murals sometimes need to be refreshed, and springtime is good time to do it before the weather in NYC gets too punishingly hot. We last showed you this wall in Williamsburg in 2011 when Tristan Eaton finished his piece next to How and Nosm. (Street Artist Tristan Eaton Goes Biblical)

For this “refresh” the guys decided to integrate their work entirely with one another rather than confine neighbor pieces to a color palette for continuity. The collaborative serpentine outcome is a densely patterned panoply of imagery and symbolisms that provide a multitude of departure points for your imagination. Here is an example of a meeting of styles that resulted in combustion!

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Tristan Eaton and How & Nosm collab on their previous spot in Williamsburg. The beginnings. Outline by Tristan. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Tristan Eaton and How & Nosm collab on their previous spot in Williamsburg. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Tristan Eaton and How & Nosm collab on their previous spot in Williamsburg. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Tristan Eaton and How & Nosm collab on their previous spot in Williamsburg. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Tristan Eaton and How & Nosm collab on their previous spot in Williamsburg. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Tristan Eaton and How & Nosm collab on their previous spot in Williamsburg. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Tristan Eaton and How & Nosm collab in Williamsburg. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Tristan Eaton and How & Nosm collab in Williamsburg. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Tristan posing behind his stencil in Williamsburg. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Tristan Eaton and How & Nosm collab in Williamsburg. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Tristan Eaton and How & Nosm collab in Williamsburg. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Tristan Eaton and How & Nosm collab in Williamsburg. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Tristan Eaton and How & Nosm collab in Williamsburg. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Tristan Eaton and How & Nosm collab on their previous spot in Williamsburg. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

 

 

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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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How & Nosm’s Red, Hot, Scorching Monoprints Unveiled

How & Nosm’s Red, Hot, Scorching Monoprints Unveiled

Intermezzo: the midst of a roiling mass of interrelated actions, staccato storylines, rotating currents, complicating drama, and banal daily existence. At any moment your life can be this, or seventy-five variations of it.

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How & Nosm “Drought Portal” Detail. 40 x 30 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

How & Nosm regulated their daily existence for nearly seven months to create what may be the most challenging campaign of layered, collaborative, organized hot chaos that they ever have produced. Under the guidance of master print maker Jo Watanabe and his team at Pace Prints in Brooklyn, the graffiti writers turned their mural marksmen skills and their precise methods of art making inside out to create multiple, fluidly sharp monoprints that are each a painting of its own.

“I went to school myself!” exclaims Raoul of the rhythmic and rigorous schedule that required he and his twin brother Davide to show up to work on multiple pieces of multiple prints simultaneously five days a week from 9:30 to 5:30.

Davide describes the method, “You have a whole sheet of 75 different works, multiplied by however many different combinations and screens you can have – you have a black outline on this small section of an artwork, then magenta here, then we decide to spray a stencil on this portion, or fill this one – and in between you have to clean all these different screens. So in the end…”

We interject, “In the end, your head almost explodes.”

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How & Nosm “Drought Portal” close up. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“Well, at some point. Jo is very good at working systematically, because that’s how the Japanese work,” explains the rigidly methodical and razor sharp German who is never late to a meeting with us. He catches himself and laughs in baritone that reverberates, “Actually we work very well together, the Germans and the Japanese! It was awesome.”

Walking through the Pace print facility in Manhattan’s mid 20s it strikes you just how much of a step this is for the brothers to collaborate side by side and fully immersed with such a prestigious fine art print publisher that has been in business since 1968. Names like Chuck Close, Julian Schnabel, Ryan McGuinness, and Qin Feng randomly jump out at you from rack labels while you stroll past acres of contemporary art history in the grand and airy facility.

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How & Nosm “Every All” Detail. 40 x 30 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“We only took seven months to do ours,” says Raoul, “some of these prints, like one from Chuck Close I think, took two and a half years to complete,” he marvels.  Only.  This from one half of a mural team that knocks out mammoth 20’ x 30’ walls in their signature red, white and black palette with exacting detail in the same time that other artists take to sketch their outlines and block in the preliminary color.

As with their walls, the symbolic imagery calls to mind sequences in history, allusions to memories, sharp pangs of emotion; all layered and nested and swimming with one another without beginning or end.  If it feels chaotic, it is by design, to drive away the dullness of the repetition that a typical print run and a typical life can produce.

“You have 25 to 30 screens and you gotta create something new every day,” says Raoul of the challenge to make each one unique. “But you get into a routine. It’s like everyday life. You wake up and have your routine, but you have to make it interesting to yourself every day. “

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How & Nosm “Every All” close up. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

So the education of this experience has produced a riveting and color drenched array of polarities pulling and pushing across paper like few of their previous projects, and you can see that the results have enlivened their minds, sharpened their eyes. Additionally, How Nosm are proud that no computers were used in the project whatsoever.

“So that’s how we started,” says Raoul, “we painted on mylar, – it’s like a plastic,” he holds up the transparent sheet to show.  “We used that to shoot the screens.  We didn’t paint anything on the computer. Everything is hand painted; the layers – and they had so many machines and different ways of achieving effects, I didn’t know. “

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How & Nosm “Under my Thumb” Detail. 40 x 40 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Did Mr. Watanabe and his team learn any new tricks from the grown up graffiti kids? “I mean we are like underdogs compared to who has done prints with them before,” says Davide. “We are the first ones with a hard core graff background. But they admitted that they really actually liked the work and they learned something from us too I think.”

We ask in what way – how the guys think about their work, their process? “Basically how spontaneous you can be with a spray can,” he says as he offers to let us feel the built up aerosol portion of one print that the brothers created with a simple stencil. “All this could have meant extra screens, but we saved them time, and they liked the effect.”

When the opening reception takes place this week at Pace and other new works from the series are unveiled simultaneously at the Armory show, How and Nosm are thinking that in the middle of it all will be some sort of graduation ceremony, at least figuratively. Suddenly everything they have done up until now has been redefined, refined even. In some way, they’ve done this before and in others it is all new.

What can follow this brief chapter in their storied creative career? Leave that for tomorrow. For now, behold. “They are all so unique, they all look so different,” says Raoul as he carefully pulls out one hand-embellished print after another from their elaborate archival wrappings.

“They are basically painting prints, you know?”

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How & Nosm “Under my Thumb” close up. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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How & Nosm “Red Hot Summer” Detail. 40 x 40 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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How & Nosm “Red Hot Summer” Detail. 40 x 40 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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How & Nosm “Lost Fragments” Detail. 52 x 40 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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How & Nosm “Lost Fragments” Close Up (photo © Jaime Rojo)

How & Nosm “Way Things Are” Solo Exhibition at Pace Prints Opens this Thursday, March 6. Click HERE for details.

 

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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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This article is also published on The Huffington Post
 
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BSA Film Friday: 01.10.14

BSA Film Friday: 01.10.14

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Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.

Now screening :

1. Vhils x Pixel Pancho in Lisbon
2. How Nosm in Lisbon
3. NEKST FOREVER from Pose & Revok in Detroit
4. Knarf, Mafia and Fresh Max “3500” in Vienna
5. Bisser in London “Last Breath I” at Blackfriars Cafe

BSA Special Feature: Lisbon Double Feature from Underdogs
Pixel Pancho x Vhils
and How Nosm

Two beautiful videos in a row this week from the platform called Underdogs. “Underdogs is an international working platform based in Lisbon, Portugal that aims at creating space within the contemporary art scene for artists connected with the new languages of urban visual culture.” Since one of the original organizers is Street Artist Vhils, it makes sense that these two videos capture that additional essence of the experience of art making, the discipline, the dedication, the drive.  The camera work, editing, and story telling are fresh and above par here.

Pixel Pancho and Vhils for Underdogs. Lisbon 2013

How & Nosm for Underdogs. Lisbon 2013

NEKST FOREVER from The Seventh Letter: Pose & Revok

With baritone narration from Pose about the impact of one guy on many, this video relates the level of respect the late graffiti artist Nekst had among his peers. Together with Revok and other members of the MSK crew you’ll see them knock out one of the biggest tributes yet in Detroit.

 

Knarf, Mafia and Fresh Max “3500” in Vienna

KNARF, MAFIA and FRESH MAX spent the last 3 months working on a 3500 square meter wall complex near Vienna. Here is a brief overview of their process. They will also be releasing a book on the 24th documenting the project, sketches, and images of the entire painted building.

 

Bisser in London “Last Breath I” at Blackfriars Cafe

A local cafe of 35 years is going to be torn down with the entire building it has been housed in Southwark (South-London). Artist Bisser did an installation,  a “one-off beautification” last month to say goodbye to the place. As it turns out, an entire project has been spawned to create more work by more artists in the building before it is slated for demolition. This video is the first of the series for “The Last Breath Project”

More about the project here: lastbreathproject.co.uk

 

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Images of The Week: 06.23.13

Here’s our weekly interview of the street, this week featuring Creepy, Chris RWK, David Smith, Enzo & Nio, How & Nosm, JR, Pennygaff, Shai Dahan, This is Awkward, Veng RWK, and Werds.

Top image > Enzo & Nio are now property managers? This is confusing. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

JR (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Pennygaff did this tribute as gravestone on the last remaining chunk of Monster Island, a very lively and engaging artists performance space/ gallery / hangout in Williamsburg, Brooklyn –  now demolished to make way for glass and steel highrises. Median rental cost of a 1 bedroom apartment in Williamsburg is $3,150, compared to about $1,500 10 years ago. That’s progress. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

David Smith hit up Williamsburg and Greenpoint with about 100 of these animals this week. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

David Smith (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Veng and Chris from RWK (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Werds (photo © Jaime Rojo)

How & Nosm did a gig with a clothing brand and it debuted in Times Square this week. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

This Is Awkward (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Shai Dahan in Blackpool, England. (photo © Rakin Rahman)

Shai Dahan in Blackpool, England. (photo © Shai Dahan)

Shai Dahan in London, Engalnd. (photo © Shai Dahan)

Artist Unknown (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Creepy at work. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Creepy (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. Riverside Park, NYC. 2013 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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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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BSA Film Friday 06.21.13

Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.

Now screening: Sofles is Infinite, How & Nosm do a Times Square Gig, and DMJC Crew en Pura Calle in Lima Peru.

BSA Special Feature:
SOFLES – Infinite

Shooter/Editor Selina Miles takes the time-lapse genre up a level in this bubonic bass and drums slammed trip through an abandoned warehouse. Experimenting with camera perspectives and simple but effective editing tricks, the urban exploring graff talent Sofles takes on a few ninja qualities thanks to this deft presentation. Of course the style of shooting/editing wouldn’t matter if he wasn’t killing it on almost every wall with various styles and degrees of difficulty until he splits in two and competes with himself! And all this leads us to, of course, the grand crescendo – a darkly sinister piece de resistance. If your boy can’t tell you he is blown away by this little show, he’s just tryin’ to mask  jealousy. Give it up.

How & Nosm in Times Square

Brooklyn’s H&N just did this gig for a clothing brand in Times Square and here’s the promo.

DMJC Crew en Pura Calle in Lima, Peru

Good to see Entes y Pesimo among this crew at the Pura Calle this month.

And for a little more context, here’s an omnibus collection promoting the Pura Calle festival which happened at the beginning of June in Lima and brought about 150,000 people to a 3-day festival of break-dancers, rappers, graffiti artists, BMXers, and skaters.

And couldn’t resist this home made recording of breakers on the street just doing it on their own in a somewhat surrealistic way. Straight up!

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“Self Destruction” and How & Nosm in San Francisco

In San Francisco right now are How & Nosm, the Brooklyn based artists doing some work in a neighborhood known for serious drug related problems and violence. Tova Lobatz and Lauren Napolitano have invited the artists to participate in B.I.G. Projects, and the gents share these photos of their installation with us and with BSA readers.

The twins have said in the past that graffiti and their dedication to their art probably saved them from drugs, so they’re not passing judgement on people who have been caught up in the harmful cycles of addiction. The mural, entitled “Self Destruction”, is dedicated to the Tenderloin and was completed over the course of four days.

How & Nosm “Self Destruction” (photo © How & Nosm)

How & Nosm “Self Destruction”. Detail. (photo © How & Nosm)

How & Nosm “Self Destruction”. Detail. (photo © How & Nosm)

How & Nosm “Self Destruction” (photo © How & Nosm)

Learn more about B.I.G. Projects here

 

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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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Learn more about B.I.G. Projects here.

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Sneak Peek: How & Nosm “Late Confessions”

Twin Street Artists How and Nosms’ new solo show titled “Late Confessions” with the Jonathan Levine Gallery opens tomorrow at a pop-up show in Manhattan. This exhibition, painstakingly executed in their now iconic style is a watershed moment in their transformation into contemporary artists with stellar street DNA.

How & Nosm (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The temporary Chelsea venue was under five feet of water in November because of Hurricane Sandy, and it is a fitting metaphor as the murky storm waters had to be laboriously pumped out and damaged walls replaced before the brothers could reveal this confessional journey through interconnecting storylines of personal history, subconscious, and memory.

A visitor is free to travel through four unique installations; A white chapel with shelved books and three dimensional walls, a red memorabilia room that includes framed stencils used on myriad walls, a spare dark alley with a glowing light box at the end, and an expansive room showcasing a glistening contemporary rococo sculpture lacquered in black paint. Compartmentalized and open, the show invites you to be intimate and stand back with graphically sharp, cheerful and dark, canvases and objects of varying size and complexity.

Self-constrained by a palette of red, white and black, the brothers show their athleticism and abundant confidence here, pushing themselves and their fans to expand and explore together. Give them space and they know how to go big across a wall or a gallery; give them a quiet minute and they’ll tell you a couple of secrets you would not have guessed.

See our studio interview as they prepared for this show “How & Nosm Studio Confessions”

How & Nosm (photo © Jaime Rojo)

How & Nosm (photo © Jaime Rojo)

How & Nosm (photo © Jaime Rojo)

How & Nosm (photo © Jaime Rojo)

How & Nosm (photo © Jaime Rojo)

How & Nosm (photo © Jaime Rojo)

How & Nosm (photo © Jaime Rojo)

How & Nosm (photo © Jaime Rojo)

How & Nosm (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Click here to read our studio visit for more confessions.

How & Nosm’s pop-up exhibition “Late Confessions” with the Jonathan Levine Gallery opens on February 1st.  at 557 West 23rd Street, New York, NY 10011. Click here for more details.

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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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Images of the Week: 01.27.13

Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring 4 Burners Crew, Bast, Billi Kid, Bunny M, Doug Nox aka the Harlequinade, El Sol 25, Entes y Pesimo, How & Nosm, JMR, Kobra, Rubin, and Stikman.

Top image > KOBRA (photo © Jaime Rojo)

KOBRA. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Rubin . 4 Burners Crew (photo © Jaime Rojo)

JMR in Dallas ( yes that Dallas). (photo © JMR)

How & Nosm covered the windows for their big pop-up show opening this week with Jonathan Levine Gallery. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Click here to read How & Nosm Confessions.

 Stikman continues to flirts with dangerous dames. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

El Sol 25 has a new batch of off-kilter kollage. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Intro at Buswhwick Five Points (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Intro at Bushwick Five Points (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Doug Nox AKA The Harlequinade (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Bast (photo © Jaime Rojo)

bunny M (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Billi Kid goes over himself with his own promotional beer. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Entes in Lima, Peru. (photo © Entes)

Entes y Pesimo at the Museum of  Contemporary Art in Lima, Peru. (photo © Entes)

Untitled. Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. January 2013 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

 

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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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How & Nosm Studio Confessions

How & Nosm Studio Confessions

It is an age of self-discovery, and the twins continue to be surprised by what they find as they attack huge walls with zeal and precision in New York, LA, Miami, Stavanger, Prague, Las Vegas, Rochester, Philadelphia, Rio – all in the last 12 months. Now while they prepare for their new pop-up show, “Late Confessions”, to open in Manhattan in a couple of weeks, the combined subconscious of How & Nosm is at work, and on display are the personal storylines they will reveal if you are paying close attention.

How & Nosm. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

It’s a crisp sunny Saturday in Queens and we’re in the studio of a secured elevator building with cameras and clean floors and air thick with aerosol. Davide (or is it Raoul?) is on his knees with a tub of pink plastering goo, applying and smoothing and sanding this large oddly-shaped structure. When it is painted it will debut in the newly renovated Chelsea space whose walls were destroyed during the flooding of falls’ super storm “Sandy”. The gallery space of Jonathan Levine wasn’t large enough for the scale the brothers have grown accustomed to working with, so this more cavernous temporary location will take on a feeling of being part exhibition, part theme park.

How & Nosm. At work on a sculpture. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The impermanent sculpture of pressed cardboard is rocking between his knees as he straddles the beast and chides his dog Niko for jumping up on it. Rather than a sculpture, you may think it’s a prop for a high school play at this phase, but soon it will become a shiny black beacon of psychological/historical symbolism culled from the collection of objects they gather in travel. Born from the imagination of the brothers and affixed with bird decoys, clock faces, large plastic blossoms, and a rotary dial telephone, these rolling clean lines and saw-toothed edges of these sculptures will glisten under a heavy coating of midnight lacquer soon.

How & Nosm. Detail from a sculpture. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Like so much of the work HowNosm choose for their sweeping street murals, these new pieces may be read as undercover confessions of artists on display, but you’ll need to figure that out on your own.

How & Nosm. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

As you walk through the high-ceilinged studio, the excited twins talk continuously in their deep baritones at the same time at you around you and in German to each other. The barrage of stories are spilling out and trampling and crashing like cars off rails; An energetic parlay of authoritative statements and direct questions about work, walls, gallerists, graffers, cops, trains, toys, techniques. All topics are welcomed and examined, sometimes intensely. Sincere spikes of laughter and sharp swoops of fury act in concert: clarifying, praising, and dissing as they swirl in a rolling volley of goodness, pleasantly spliced with a caustic grit.

How & Nosm. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Looking at the precise lines and vibrant patterns at play in their work today, there is a certain cheerfulness and high regard for design in the compositions and sense of balance. Both of them site influences as wide as early graffiti, later wild style, cubism, and the abstractionists in their work. Fans are attracted to the confident and attractive illustrative depictions of scenes and characters, appreciating the ever strengthening free-hand command of the aerosol can and stencil techniques that HowNosm have demonstrated in their machine-like march through the streets of world over the last decade plus.

How & Nosm. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Though they estimate they have visited over 70 countries, they still love New York and both call Brooklyn their home right now.  And while the work they do hits a pleasure center for many viewers, time with both reveals that the stories within can be anything but cheerful. Raoul characterizes their work as dark and negative, born from their shared past, the adversity of their childhood.

“Negative sounds… I don’t know if that’s the right word for it,” says Davide, “but it’s not the bright side of life.”

How & Nosm. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

And so goes the duality you’ll find everywhere – a study of opposites intertwined. One paints a skull in the half circle, the other paints it’s reflection alive with flesh. You’ll see this split throughout, unified.

“We came from one sperm. We split in half,” says Raoul. “Life, death, good, bad. We’re one, you know. We used to do pieces by ourselves with graff – you know I would do “How” and he would do “Nosm” – then with the background we would connect.  Now we would just do pieces with our name “HowNosm” together as one word. I never do a How anymore, really.”

Their early roots in graffiti are always there, even as they became labeled as Street Artists, and more recently, contemporary artists. But it’s a continuum and the line may undulate but it never leaves the surface.  Davide describes their auto-reflexive manner of moving from one icon or scenario to another seamlessly across a wall and he likens it to a graffiti technique of painting one continuous stream of aerosol to form a letter or word.

How & Nosm. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“It’s like a ‘one-liner’,” he says, referring to the graffiti writer parlance for completing a piece with one long line of spray. “That’s kind of far from what we are doing right now but it is all kind of one piece. The line stops but it kind of continues somewhere. We are refining and refining, and it takes time to develop.”

Blurring your eyes and following the visual stories, it may appear that a spiral motion reoccurs throughout the red, black, and white paintings of HowNosm. Frequently the pattern draws the viewers eye into the center and then swirls it back out to connect to another small tightening of action. While we talk about it Raoul traces in the air with his index finger a series of interconnected spiral systems, little tornadoes of interrelated activity.

How & Nosm. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

This technique of creating inter-connected storylines is a way of intentional communication and storytelling, and how they describe events and relationships. It is an approach that feels sort of automatic to the brothers. “Our pieces make you think. You look and look and you find more images and you try to understand the whole concept,” says Davide. “I think you can spend quite some time just looking at one piece. You start somewhere and you can develop a story around it but you go somewhere else in the piece and you may do the opposite.”

Would you care to make a comparison to those other well known Street Art twins, Os Gemeos? They are used to it, but aside from being brothers of roughly the same age who began in graffiti and work on the streets with cans, they don’t find many similarities.

“Our stuff is more depressing,” says Raoul, “and way more critical. We talk about the negative aspects and experiences in life.” How much is autobiographical? As it turns out, it is so autobiographical that both brothers refer to their painting historically as a therapy, a cathartic savior that kept them out of jail and even away from drugs growing up.

“We kind of had a very disturbed childhood,” explains Raoul, “Welfare too, so…. I smile a lot and shit but in my paintings I think it is more important to express myself with what most people want to suppress and not show, you know? There’s a lot of love stuff, too. Like heartbroken stuff, financial situations – about myself or other people.”

How & Nosm. The sun goes through a hand cut stencil. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Davide agrees and expands the critical thinking they display in these open diaries to include larger themes they address; deceptively rotten people, corporate capitalism, familial dissension, hypocrisy in society, corruption in government.  It’s all related, and it is all right here in black and white. And red.

“Ours are continuing lines,” Davide says as he traces the canvas with his fingers, “Like this knife here is going to turn into a diamond.”

Niko provides security and inspiration at the studio. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

How & Nosm. Detail of a completed sculpture. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

How & Nosm. Detail of a completed sculpture. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

How & Nosm (photo © Jaime Rojo)

How & Nosm’s pop-up exhibition “Late Confessions” with the Jonathan Levine Gallery opens on February 1st.  at 557 West 23rd Street, New York, NY 10011. Click here for more details.

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FIRST LOOK at Miami 2012: Walls, Street Art, Action!

Street Art is already smacking up Miami walls – an aerosol advance committee of art in the streets to welcome the bacchanal of collectors, performers, artists, fans, galleries, hoodlums, charlatans, thumping beats, and very famous and important celebrities you have never heard of are all here for Art Basel and related fairs.

Just for you, we have some of the first images of the walls as they are going up…

..from Martha Cooper, who is on the ground documenting all the walls going up for Wynwood Walls as she has done officially for them for a few years now, and she talks about the new OBEY tribute to Wynwood Walls founder Tony Goldman who passed away this autumn, and shows us DAZE in action.

We also have on-the-beat stuff from photographer and BSA contributor Geoff Hargadon – who has an insatiable thirst for clever spots and a keen eye for capturing them. We’ll be bringing more from him to you later this week too.

Finally the ever clever twins How & Nosm offer you images of their just completed Wynwood Wall mural, a collabo with VHILS.

Herakut. Wynwood Arts District. Miami 2012. This seven story tall mural is part of Herakut’s Giant Story Book Project. The German Duo will be creating large scale murals across several cites to introduce characters from the children’s book the artists are in the process of creating. (photo © Geoff Hargadon)

Shepard Fairey/OBEY. Wynwood Walls. Wynwood Arts District, Mimai 2012. “This Wall was a tribute to Tony Goldman with a central figure of him surrounded by people he admired and was inspired by -MLK, Warhol etc…” (photo and text © Martha Cooper)

Shepard Fairey/OBEY. Detail. (photo © Martha Cooper)

“The biggest and maybe most interesting wall this year is the one by OBEY. They completely re-did their first Wynwood wall from 2009. That one was all wheat pasted. This time they used a technique similar to that of Sten & Lex. They lightly pasted pre-printed sheets on the wall and then cut out the black parts with X-Acto knives, making a stencil. After spraying, the paper was peeled away, leaving the paint” – Martha Cooper

Shepard Fairey/OBEY. Detail. (photo © Martha Cooper)

MOMO gives it a modernist splash at Wynwood Walls. Wynwood Arts District, Miami 2012. (photo © Martha Cooper)

Oh, wait, this may be the real splash; Krink at Wynwood Walls. Wynwood Arts District, Miami 2012. (photo © Martha Cooper)

Krink . Nemel. Wynwood Walls. Wynwood Arts District, Miami 2012. (photo © Martha Cooper)

In an epic DAZE at Wynwood Walls. Wynwood Arts District, Miami 2012. (photo © Martha Cooper)

DAZE. Wynwood Walls. Wynwood Arts District, Miami 2012. (photo © Martha Cooper)

Faith 47 throws on a head scarf and drapes herself across a Wynwood wall. Wynwood Arts District, Miami 2012. (photo © Martha Cooper)

DALeast. Wynwood Walls. Wynwood Arts District, Miami 2012. (photo © Martha Cooper)

How & Nosm . VHILS. “Cut Out For You”  Wynwood Walls. Wynwood Arts District, Miami 2012. (photo © Martha Cooper)

How & Nosm . VHILS. “Cut Out For You” Detail.  Wynwood Walls. Wynwood Arts District, Miami 2012. (photo © How & Nosm)

How & Nosm . VHILS. “Cut Out For You” Detail.  Wynwood Walls. Wynwood Arts District, Miami 2012. (photo © How & Nosm)

How & Nosm . VHILS. “Cut Out For You” Detail.  Wynwood Walls. Wynwood Arts District, Miami 2012. (photo © How & Nosm)

How & Nosm . VHILS. “Cut Out For You” Detail.  Wynwood Walls. Wynwood Arts District, Miami 2012. (photo © How & Nosm)

How & Nosm . VHILS. “Cut Out For You” Detail.  Wynwood Walls. Wynwood Arts District, Miami 2012. (photo © How & Nosm)

 

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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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How & Nosm and “The Day After” on the Houston Wall

New Mural Pays Tribute to Wall’s Owner, His Family, and New Yorkers

The newly painted Goldman Wall is here on Bowery and Houston Street for you to pour over; a dense and storied depiction of the trials and tribulations that no one escapes, deftly rendered with cans and brushes in precise and purposeful strokes. A huge NYC tattoo of life lessons and metaphors by How and Nosm, the new mural is their tribute to a city recovering from a crippling storm and to the memory of the neighborhood guy who turned this wall into an institution, Tony Goldman.

How & Nosm (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“It wasn’t premeditated, but we painted this wall during a very tough time for New York City, and at a very tough time for those who loved Tony and who admired his dedication to art in the streets. Our work always depicts life; with both its dark and bright side.”

No strangers to hard times, the twins know the street. With their work they study and pull apart and reconstruct the duality of daily existence, swinging on the pendulum of extremes, looking for balance somewhere in between, trying to avoid getting caught in the storm. Partners and brothers, philosophers and students, How and Nosm mark this wall with a stylized “X” at the intersection of Houston and Bowery, where a wind battered and flooded Manhattan sat this autumn for days in darkness while it’s northern half was still illuminated; our beloved city fumbling for it’s footing, unbalanced and off-kilter. The “X” locates Tony Goldman’s gift like a pin dropped on your aerial GPS map, but it also marks a central location of the 1970s/80s raging “Downtown” art scene where it began; a signpost for myriad interlocking lifelines and a genesis for one of New Yorks’ longest-running Street Art exhibitions.

How & Nosm (photo © Jaime Rojo)

With an auto reflexive line drawing style that leads one story into the next, the circular spinning of tales and small universes invite you to look into the drama and observe; tight winding info-graphics of an undulating life, glorious and dreadful in it’s functional dysfunction. A perfect storm contained in one large canvas, this one sometimes bubbles over. Each vignette is instructive, playfully honoring and negating while the twins interrupt each other to give you a running commentary on society, the environment, politics, psychology, family, and maybe a bit of spirituality.

How & Nosm (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Plain-talking gents in the rough, How and Nosm have been rising steadily for two decades to a now global stature on the graffiti/Street Art/fine art stage. Born in the Basque country, raised in Germany, the firey twins who are known in the Bronx as graffiti kings with the Tats Cru are living all-Brooklyn now. Bringing their lunch to Manhattan every day while painting because no businesses were open, working only in the day because there were no working streetlights, the mural itself becomes yet one more New York tale of determination. “People kept stopping on the sidewalk to tell us how much they appreciated that we came out at such a tough time to beautify and to bring some color to the city. Most thought it was very uplifting and we felt we did the right thing by coming out, ” say the artists.

From Haring to Scharf, Fairey and Faile, the many New York stories spawned by and sprayed onto this wall have given it a pivotal place in Street Art history while Houston Street’s boisterous traffic and Manhattan’s lust for reinvention have rushed past it for three decades. Now as we rebuild from the storm, How and Nosm remind you that there is “The Day After”, a compelling invitation and unabashed encouragement to those battered brothers and sisters who had their doubts. “There will always be a day after and it will get better for sure,” the brothers say.

How & Nosm (photo © Jaime Rojo)

How & Nosm (photo © Jaime Rojo)

From the sidewalk you can look up at a rotating solar system of vignettes and stories as they cluster and revolve around an invisible central power source. How and Nosm walk with you on the sidewalk looking upward, describing their tales and metaphors, sometimes dark and harrowing, sometimes comforting, never pandering. Painted in their signature black, white, and red, these tightly coiled inner stories are tied to their biographies as much as the timeless trials and joys that are more universal – the ones that bind us one to the other.

“On the right hand side you find a black half circle with a face depicting the approach of something bad about to happen, like the storm. On the left you see the red half circle rise up again,” explains one, but you are not sure whom.

“On the very top left side you can see a person holding a black heart trying to pass it on while riding on a bull. You have to be very strong to be able to ride a bull – which means you have to be strong during these challenging times and find a way to support those in need.”

How & Nosm (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Every life is full with stories, like this wall is. Here is a boat that has broken apart, there a crowd protecting birds from attack, and over there an entire scene balancing on the back of a whale. One central image is described as a group hug of a family bound together during adversity. Perhaps this one is How and Nosms’ nod to the City and to the Goldman family itself, who are still weathering their personal storm of grief even as they continue this, their commitment to the city.

For the brothers, it is all part of the larger piece. “So basically the wall reflects the selfishness of humans but at the same time the beauty of interaction and a commitment to love for each other in good and bad times.” In these times of loss and stress and insecurity, it’s hard to think of a better gift to New York.

How & Nosm (photo © Jaime Rojo)

How & Nosm (photo © Jaime Rojo)

How & Nosm (photo © Jaime Rojo)

How & Nosm (photo © Jaime Rojo)

How & Nosm (photo © Jaime Rojo)

How & Nosm (photo © Jaime Rojo)

How & Nosm (photo © Jaime Rojo)

How & Nosm (photo © Jaime Rojo)

How & Nosm (photo © Jaime Rojo)

How & Nosm (photo © Jaime Rojo)

How & Nosm (photo © Jaime Rojo)

How & Nosm (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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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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