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:
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities. Now screening : 1. "A Message From the Future" Narrated by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Illustrated by Molly C...
Paradigm Shifting and Cave Writings Looking back at the powerful changes in '08, it's not hard to see their reflection on the Brooklyn streets, which may serve as tea leaves revealing the messages sw...
Typically you may expect to be praying the novena and asking God for absolution of your dastardly sins here in this sprawling compound called The Konvent near Barcelona. While no one would stop you t...
Before there were drones, there were bees. They are far more sophisticated still when it comes to their subtleties of collecting pollen on their furry bodies, flying on translucent panels through the...
Brooklyn artist and designer Scott Albrecht usually works with collage or wood for his fine art of geometric patterning that hearken an arts and craft modernism of the 1970s. Now he has just completed...