Hollywood starlets and sweethearts from your grandma’s 1943 high school yearbook have been peering at passersby from doorways in Brooklyn and Manhattan for a couple of years now. These black and white portraits, posed formally yet calmly reassuring in their steady gaze, are festooned with flourescent splashes, symbols, overlays, and hand sprayed plumes.

Brooklyn-born DAIN has been updating a bygone period when the “greatest generation” flourished, the modern war machine was birthed, and “middle class” almost became a birthright.  His rowdy re-working of those symbols from a genteel age into a modern street context stays just this side of sentimentality or cute – rather DAIN’s balance keeps off just enough for you to know what a badass he really is.  Here is DAIN’s generous contribution to the Street Art New York Silent Auction Benefit.

We’d recognize those eyes anywhere…