German Street Artist ECB recently finished painting this elongated white guys head on a 150 year old building in the heart of Bushwick, Brooklyn. ECB says he likes painting wrinkles and ends up painting men because they have more. Additionally, stretching them out of proportion is a favorite technique, pushing the features and proportions like silly putty to cover as much space as possible. If you have been in Bushwick much over the past two years you’ve seen many of them wrapping around old warehouses and factory buildings.
ECB (photo © Jaime Rojo)
While inspecting the latest ECB, we got to meet the owner of the building, Franz, a senior gentleman who actually was so engaging that he gave an entire tour of it, such is the nature of some friendly people. As you walk from floor to floor seeing how the building is used, it might strike you that Franz could easily be a sitter for one of ECB’s pieces. He explains that this building used to be a family farmhouse an stable and a resting station for horses. Travelers on a long trip from the North would replace their tired team of horses with a new fresh team and continue their journey. On their way back home they picked their own team up and headed back home.
Franz, an emigrant from Austria and a Master cabinet maker, has been working with wood and making custom furniture for over 50 years. He purchased the Bushwick farmhouse 35 years ago for $85,000 once the seller agreed to put on a new roof. Ask him why he still works so hard everyday and he looks at you like you’re crazy. He can build anything you ask, loves what he does, and has a staff of six assistants, one apprentice and an artist for faux wood finishing.
And what about the artists on the street? He said he likes to help out the young artists and is very happy to allow them to paint on the building’s front and sidewalls. He said he enjoys the murals, likes the crumbling paint on the bricks and wants things to stay as they are.
ECB (photo © Jaime Rojo)
ECB (photo © Jaime Rojo)
ECB (photo © Jaime Rojo)
ECB (photo © Jaime Rojo)
ECB (photo © Jaime Rojo)
ECB (photo © Jaime Rojo)
ECB (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Other Articles You May Like from BSA:
'Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.' ~Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. That’s the quote Seattle’s Christopher Derek Bruno...
Bill Posters knows his street art and activism history. From Beuys' practice of ‘social sculpture’ and John Fekner’s blunt upbraiding of urban planning hypocrisies to AIDS activists using street a...
“It's like performance art,” says film director Michael Maxxis, as he watches street artist Okuda painting a scene from Maxxis’ new film here in Oldenburg, Germany. It’s unusual for this city to have...
Our final posting from Montreal's MURAL festival gives you a sense of the the size, variety, and quality of the expanse of works on display over four days. With any luck, most of these will be up mu...
MYTH is a perfect name for a street artist, right? The practice can allow one to be the subject of mythology, or to make stories about other mythological creatures or super/anti heroes. You may wish ...