A Concept for a gallery show inspires one street artist to try an on-the-street experiment.
Billi Kid recently completed his version of a shoe-shine box to contribute to the unusual show that Bed-Stuy gallery Brooklynite opens next week, and he decided to take his box a step further.
The 100 artists, mostly street artists, have created their own version of a shoe-shine box, a metaphor for the entrepreneurial spirit. “Having been born in a third world country, Colombia, I have seen many a kid making a living shining shoes,” says Billi. “They hustle a modest living out of their shoeshine boxes. It is a testament to the human will to survive that these kids stretch their craft day and night to simply put food on their table. That is, if they even have a table.”
Billi Kid is a bit of an entrepreneur himself so he used his shine box on the street to sell some of his artwork. In New York City, as a result of street artists winning a fight with the Giuliani administration in the late 1990’s to sell their art on the streets, you are allowed set up a table and sell your own artwork without fear of reprisal.
“I took Brooklynite’s challenge to heart and set out to see if I could actually put food on the table working out of my “SHINEBOX,” says the artist. Taking into account overhead costs for creating his postcards, “I figured that I would need to sell at least 16 postcards per hour @ a $1.00 each to make $8.00 dollars in profit an hour.”
Traffic was pretty good on his spot near the park, and a number of people stopped to look at his signature political-personality postcards featuring the likes of George Bush, Sara Palin, and Michelle Obama. Within a couple of hours, 20 postcards of Billi Kid’s had sold, and the short-lived experiment ended up with Billi and his cameraman in a nearby pizza joint eating the profits. Luckily, there was money left for the subway home.
AND HE MADE A PROMOTIONAL VIDEO WITH THE EXPERIENCE
More on Billi’s experiment Here
Other Articles You May Like from BSA:
1UP . Graffiti Prints. (photo © Jaime Rojo) It was May, there were birds singing in the trees, the smell of aerosol spray in the air, and steady traffic on the Bülowstrasse as we walked past the Ur...
Venezuelan-born, Munich-based SatOne has graffiti-writing credentials dating back to the early 90s. Over time his letters went post-graffiti to imaginary worlds and science-fiction-inspired abstracti...
Ah, the women of Paris! Street artists have many interpretations of the female form, visage, and image. We have been thinking of female street artists in particular for the last few days because ...
Karl Marx had his 200th birthday this year, proudly rocking a “Black Lives Matter” t-shirt. Vince. Tunnel , Avenida 8 de October. Montevideo, Uruguay. September 2018. (photo © Various & Gould) ...
It's hard to even comment on this bellicose war-loving president and his military industry profiteers all ginning up a war against Iran - except to say, "Fool me once...". Wait, how does that go...