“We tried this time to organize like really fucking German way,” says one of the 7 anonymous graffiti writers from Kreuzberg. Positions on this massive 10 x 60 meter wall in Wynwood are spread far and wide, and it is astounding that 1UP has accomplished this much in only two days.
Graffiti crews may typically work fast and furious if the painting is illegal, but when Mana Public Arts gives you one of their largest and somewhat infamous walls during Art Week Miami 2021, the level of discipline and planning ratchets up another level.
“The crew worked 14-15 hours a day,” one tells us. “We paint into the night. Actually we have really super good street lights here. We also have some tripod lights, ’ he says as he recounts the list of requirements for materials they submitted to organizers before they could start this moonscape of the future. “Lights, three lifts, paints in organized colors, brushes, ladders.”
The massive letters are rising from the sand (a nod to the beach town locale), and within the next three days those letters will probably be filled with tags and tributes to crews abroad and local – “Like the MSG over there is from Abstrk, for example,” says one of the 1Uppers about the guests who are joining in to bring the full roster to about 13 artists.
“Finok (VLOK), our friend from Brazil, is here,” he starts, “GIZ from New York, Fuzi UV TPK crew from Paris…” Naturally, some of these guys are in town for other events – Fuzi for example is in his own show opening this week at the Museum of Graffiti just a couple of blocks from here entitled “DEFACED” featuring a 360 degree fully painted immersive room with his signature figures and faces.
But right now, all eyes are on 1UPs massive wall in Wynwood.
“So it is kind of a movie planet, we don’t know which planet it is,” says one of the 1UP guys, “But it is a planet of the future – and there are all these Metro’s coming up out of the sand along with pyramids and street signs and figures… It’s growing now. I think that we have three more days to paint.”
Other Articles You May Like from BSA:
The sight of this stylized skull may not have evoked the same reminiscence by Prince Hamlet as Yorick’s did but Street Artist Otto Schade brings it to London streets once again. Otto OSCH Schade. "...
An air-filled rectangular pointillism with motifs of hatchings and symbology borrowed from folk art and African patterning, his portrait subjects are immobile against a sky of repeated rains. The Ita...
Street Art is this enormous moveable and on-the-move feast for the eyes and mind and heart. The players and places change, the songs and the dancing revolves, the color and texture everchanging. Explo...
Our weekly interview with the streets with images shot by street photographer Jaime Rojo - this week featuring Anthony Lister, El Sol 25, Swampy, Free Agentz, EFS, Billi Kid, Russell King,
Bushwick is in the mix this week as the new murals made to augment the collection for this years Bushwick Collective Block Party brought more persons and personality to the streets here. As mura...