2010

Wish #1: Conor Harrington

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Wish-1

For 11 days we’re presenting 11 artists and BSA readers and their wishes for the new year, 2011, in no particular order.  Together, they are a tiny snapshot of the people who are creators and fans of street art.  Individually, each has added their expression of the creative spirit to the year now ending.

Today’s wish comes from London based, Irish Street Artist and fine artist Conor Harrington.

Conor frames his wish as advice that he would like to give his younger brother:

“Take Your Time.”

brooklyn-street-art-Dec-21-Kev-Conor Harrington-12-10Conor Harrington “Kev” (photo © Conor Harrington)

Visit Conor Harrington’s Web Site

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Brooklyn Street Art: 2010 Year In Images (VIDEO)

We’re very grateful for a wildly prolific year of Street Art as it continued to explode all over New York (and a lot of other places too). For one full year we’ve been granted the gift of seeing art on the streets and countless moments of inspiration. Whether you are rich or poor in your pocket, the creative spirit on the street in New York makes you rich in your heart and mind.

To the New York City artists that make this city a lot more alive every day we say thank you.

To the artists from all over world that passed through we say thank you.

To our colleagues and peers for their support and enthusiasm we say thank you.

To the gallery owners and curators for providing the artists a place to show their stuff and for providing all of us a safe place to gather, talk, share art, laugh, enjoy great music and free booze we say thank you.

To our project collaborators for sharing your talents and insights and opinions and for keeping the flame alive we say thank you.

And finally to our friends, readers and fans; Our hearts go out to you for lighting the way and for cheering us on. Thank you.

Each Sunday we featured Images of the Week, and we painfully narrowed that field to about 100 pieces in this quick video. It’s not an encyclopedia, it’s collage of our own. We remember the moment of discovery, the mood, the light and the day when we photographed them. For us it’s inspiration in this whacked out city that is always on the move.

The following artists are featured in the video and  are listed here in alphabetical order:

Aakash Nihalani,Bansky, Barry McGee, Bask ,Bast, Beau, MBW, Bishop ,Boxi, Cake, The Dude Company, Chris RWK, Chris Stain, Dain, Dan Witz ,Dolk ,El Mac, El Sol 25, Elbow Toe, Faile, Feral,  Overunder, Gaia, General Howe, Hellbent, Hush, Imminent Disaster, Jeff Aerosol, Jeff Soto, JMR ,Judith Supine ,K-Guy ,Labrona, Lister, Lucy McLauchlan, Ludo, Armsrock, MCity, Miso, Momo, Nick Walker, Nina Pandolfo, NohjColey, Nosm, Ariz, How, Tats Cru, Os Gemeos, Futura, Pisa 73, Poster Boy, QRST, Remi Rough, Stormie Mills, Retna, Roa, Ron English, Sever, She 155, Shepard Fairey ,Specter, Sten & Lex, Samson, Surge I, Sweet Toof, Swoon, Tes One, Tip Toe, Tristan Eaton, Trusto Corp, Typo, Various and Gould, Veng RWK, ECB, White Cocoa, Wing, WK Interact, Yote.

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Images Of The Week 12.19.10

Images Of The Week 12.19.10

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Our weekly conversation with the street, this week featuring Alec, C215, Cash4, DestroyRebuild, Egypt, Katsu, Kid Zoom, Kouka, KR, NohJColey, ROA, Samson, and WK Interact.

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ROA had a brief stopover in Brooklyn from LA before returning home, and he had a moment to leave us a gift on the driveway gates at Factory Fresh in Bushwick (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Cash4, Egypt (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Katsu DestroyRebuild (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Alec does Twiggy, Andy, and Graffiti (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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C215 with Monkeys (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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KR at Monster Island (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Kouka (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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NohjColey enters the street as a sculptor for the first time.  (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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A Holidays sentiment, and the case for Collective Consumption. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Here’s a nice lollipop.  (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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This WK Interact piece has been on this wall for a long time. This time I liked the late Autumn light and the play between the climber and the stair case shadows against the white wall. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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The mighty Samson has finished his mural in Bushwick (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Kid Zoom’s Bear and Hands currently on view at the Opera Gallery Pop Up Shop in The Meat Packing District of Manhattan (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Mint & Serf Cover District 36 …and Fairey, Gaia…

Mint & Serf Cover District 36 …and Fairey, Gaia…

Mint & Serf (Mirf), the New York City based Street Art Collective give a nod to the era of mega clubs as they proudly unveil an ambitious new nightlife project with the opening of District 36.

brooklyn-street-art-mint-and-serf-jaime-rojo-district-36-12-10-web-9Mirf Site Specific Installation at The Entrance of District 36 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Since this summer the duo have been creating three site-specific permanent art installations inside the newly opened nightclub in the garment district.

No strangers to indoor walls Mirf collaborated recently on the interiors of rooms in the Ace Hotel, giving visitors very individual experiences according to their location. When Mirf heard of a new club being planned in a former garment warehouse in Manhattan, memories of their own wild fun times as teenagers in Gotham’s mega-clubs came rushing back.  The artists jumped on the offer to help in the planning of the club as it was being built and what has resulted from Mirf’s concepting is a visual experience evocative of today’s richness and yesterday’s rawness.

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Mirf (photo © Jaime Rojo)

For the epic staircase of District 36 Mirf’s inspiration was the iconic New York big clubs that drew crowds of students and creatives and freaks in the mid 1980s and 90s, a time when the city seemed to have a more robustly participatory artistic nightlife – and a feeling that they would like to bring back. Says Mint, “We both grew up in the nightlife in the 90s so when we met the owners they told us that we should reference the vibe of The Tunnel and Limelight.”

“Those days it wasn’t about bottle service – It used to be more about dancing and losing yourself for about three to four hours. So we wanted to create a piece that was site specific to this place and that referenced the NYC nightlife of clubs like Area, Danceteria, Palladium, The Tunnel and Twilo,” says Mint.

The two poured over press clippings for research and Lucien Samaha a friend, gave the guys photos from his days as a DJ in The Tunnel and Limelight and Osvaldo Chance Jimenez a friend as well, gave them photos from today’s nightlife.  The resulting hallway staircase is a collage of vintage photographs and graffiti that merges the city’s nightlife over a few decades into one.

“The Tunnel was such a great inspiration to me. I started going there when I was 16 or 17 and you just would walk in, paid your $20 and lose yourself. It was fun. It was entertaining. The clubs now days are very bland. Getting in and enjoying is not just for rich people,” says Mint.

brooklyn-street-art-mint-and-serf-jaime-rojo-district-36-12-10-web-3The Middle Wall by Mirf at District 36 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Brooklyn Street Art: Tell me about this middle wall. What was the process and inspiration?

Mint: Since the early 2000’s we started with the idea of mixing genres. We both have backgrounds in graphic design and we always wanted to combine the sensibility of graffiti and graphic design and mash it up. We wanted to create something very surreal and visually stimulating where people can look at it and say, “this is a beautiful thing” regardless of whether or not they know what it is. To me the nightlife then (1990s) was about seeing so many interesting things including the decorations like the Kenny Scharf room (The Lava Lounge) at The Tunnel. That room was also the inspiration for this wall.

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Mirf (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Brooklyn Street Art: Did you get inspiration from the ocean/underwater landscape also?

Mint: This wall is not so much about aquatics as it is about plants. We went on trips and took photographs of individual plants and began processing them in Photoshop, creating these original compositions. I really didn’t think about the design being too aquatic until we put it on the wall and took a picture and we went “Wow it looks almost like a fish tank!”

Brooklyn Street Art: Yeah in certain spots it looks like you are underwater and the sunlight is coming through.

Mint: It is a surreal landscape with elements of graffiti. I draw a lot inspiration from nature. I like the translucency of light.

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Mirf Lounge (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Brooklyn Street Art: And the Lounge; Is this a place for people to drink and have conversation?

Mint: The sound system in this place is amazing and it is loud so if you are spending three or four hours in this place you might want to get away from the sound, sit down and maybe have a conversation.  That’s why is set up as a lounge.

Brooklyn Street Art: Can you talk about the images on this wall? It seems like some of these images were ever-present in the city this summer.

Mint: The original concept for the image was Mirf, which is Mint and Serf put together. When we used to write on roofs and there wasn’t enough room for both our names we would combine our names into Mirf. So back in April I designed the original Mirf poster and put a bunch of them in Russia. It was one of the first times I’ve seen graffiti being put up on the street but with wheat paste.

Back from their trip Mirf decided that they were going to grab their posters and go through the city over everything.  Says Mint: “It wasn’t about beef it was creative because the conversation with Street Art a lot of times is how ephemeral it is, but the funniest thing is, once someone goes over someone it’s like ‘Oh my God I can’t believe someone went over a Swoon piece.’ But it is like if you are putting stuff on the street you have to realize that it is either going to be buffed or someone is going to go over it and you just can’t have these feelings about it.”

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Eliciting charges of “Wall Hogs” and worse, Mint and Serf covered walls like this with other street artists on them with their giant wheat-pastes this summer.  (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“If you say it’s ephemeral then you say is ephemeral that’s it. So we wanted to make that point present and we started going over everything to make sure people don’t take that seriously,” says Mint unapologetically.

Taking that message more formally into the gallery, Mirf’s show at Lyons Wier in Manhattan this summer shook some street art fans when they saw framed pieces by artists like Shepard Fairey and Gaia gratuitously tagged over by Mirf. “Collabo”, as Street Art term, instantly became muddied.

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Phone pics at the gallery of Mirf going over Gaia (left) and Shepard Fairey (right) (photos © Steven P. Harrington)

For his part, Mirf found the whole experience with their peers to be positive, despite some of the negative responses. “The response was great. This conversation needs to happen more often. When people think, “Oh Mirf went over us”, it is not going over you at all. We are kind of opening up people’s minds. So that’s what the whole idea behind what this Mirf thing is”

At the gallery show they also created fresh black and white posters using some of their graffiti friend’s tags and stylized them in the Mirf style – now reprised for the back wall of the new lounge.

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Mirf (photo @ Jaime Rojo)

“When we saw this round wall we knew the posters would be perfect. We wanted to pay an homage to all our friends we did graffiti with over the years. So these are a series that will probably be an ongoing project and we’ll add more people to it”

To go to Mint & Serf site click here

For more information about District 36 click here

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Fun Friday 12.17.10

Fun-Friday

Fun Friday

Bing and Bowie Reunion 2010!

To put you in the right spirit for your holiday shopping and spray painting, BSA reader Jodi has alerted us to this charming holiday classic, remade by two of today’s singing sensations!  Grab your cardigan and pipe!

Veng from RWK Flies Solo

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Detail of “Jerome”, by H. Veng Smith (photo © Jaime Rojo)

H. “Veng” Smith “Identifiable Reality”at Pandemic
BSA Interview with H. Veng Smith this week.

Legacy of Letters

Luca Barcellona really impresses with his command and his almost choreographic hand style at calligraphy. Sit back and enjoy on this fun friday.

New SWOON “Walki” Print

As she readies to return to Haiti (interview next week), Swoon is offering a new print to support The Konbit Shelter Project.

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“The Walki print is an immediately touching portrait by Swoon of a boy named Walki who lives in the village of Bigones and spent time with the Konbit Shelter team at the community center building site this last summer. The print is made of a three-layer screenprint on handmade Indian jute paper measuring 13″ x 21″ and is limited at an edition of 300 – all proceeds from the sale will go towards support of the Konbit Shelter Project.

The Konbit Shelter Project was created with the idea that a group of artists, engineers, architects and builders could pool their individual knowledge, resources and time to make a lasting difference in post-earthquake Haiti”

Learn more here at Upper Playground

Looptaggr: Endless tags on the Run

BSA Technology and Art UPDATE: This weekend the new Tron movie comes out to thrill and chill techno geeks everywhere. Apparently they took 28 years off of Jeff Bridges with new developments in CGI. I’ve pre-ordered the personal CGI device coming out this spring by Apple – the iDigress personal age reducer should enable me to jump fences and run through empty lots with more agility.  Speaking of Hi-Tech wizardry, take a look at the new LoopTaggr, which really cuts down on your stenciling time.

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Saratoga Smackdown: General Howe Goes To College

Street Artist Uses Art Installations to Study History, distant and close.

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This scene depicts Jane McCrea, a British loyalist who was engaged to a man in the British army, who was captured by two Native Americans (photo © General Howe)

Street Artist General Howe participated this fall in an art/history show at Skidmore College by doing a site specific installation in Saratoga Springs, New York.  The project; “Saratoga Smackdown: The Expendable Jane McCrea and the Soldiers of Fortune” consisted of a series of installations showcasing the 1777 “Battle of Saratoga” on a farm in the Adirondack Mountain region. According to historical accounts, Jane McCrea, a preachers’ daughter, was killed during a perhaps botched hostage-taking, and her death was used for propaganda purposes to enrage locals to enlist with the Patriots against the British.

brooklyn-stree-art-general-howe-saratoga-smackdown-skidmore-college-web-5As with his street pieces the General’s unusual approach to this outside environment and his choices of materials can call into question an observers feelings and perceptions of historical events, war history, and their relative meaning. Usually warriors are depicted in public space by grand and substantial sculptures of mountainous scale, adding to the perceived heroism of the actor depicted. General Howe miniaturizes the size and sometimes simplifies the rendering to merge with the memory of a child’s imagination and concomitant exaggerations, where many are encouraged to ‘play’ war. The Street Artist frequently refers to his own childhood and the endless hours of play in nearby woods with his multiple war toys.

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“The Death of Jane McCrea,” oil on canvas, by the American artist John Vanderlyn, 1804. Courtesy of the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut.

Below are excerpts from General Howe’s experience and from the project’s statement:

“The Battle of Saratoga occurred in September/October of 1777.  2 battles occurred, the first was a draw and the second was won by the Americans.  The Jane McCrea incident was a Pearl Harbor/9-11 incident of the Revolutionary War.  American media propagated it to increase enlistment into the war.  Though not an explicit point in the project, this incident also illustrates the deceiving treatment of Native Americans by the “white man”, in this case the British.  The terror these Native Americans brought was much scarier then anything we hear about today.

In preparation for the project my research on mercenaries brought me to the company formally known as Blackwater, now Xe Services LLC. According to many news accounts, they were hired by the US Military as contractors to provide various services in Iraq during the war.  One of the main jobs they had was security for important peoples traveling in Iraq.  There are reported incidents where these “security agents” opened fire on innocent people, causing much controversy.  On the flip side there were incidents where members of the organization were caught off guard and were horribly killed.  The multiple incidents eventually led to the Iraq government canceling Blackwater’s contracts to work in Iraq.” ~ General Howe

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Americans in battle with Native Americans (Photo © General Howe)

As is customary and expected for General Howe and other historians, parallels are drawn between those events and the wars the US is currently conducting in The Middle East. It’s one thing to pose historical plastic soldiers around to commemorate a long ago event with people who have long been dead, as well as their loved ones, their politicians, religious leaders, and their captains of industry.  This mornings’ free paper that they hand out at the subway entrance contains a special tourism section on Colonial Williamsburg, Va., featuring a misty glowing snowflake inflected photo of “re-enactors” dressed in uniform with “historically accurate” weapons in hand. When depicting war scenes of contemporary times, this art can be much more difficult to encounter, especially if you didn’t pay to get in. Perhaps because of the scale and it’s direct connection to current events, the installations can even inflame a viewers’ passions.

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General Howe describes this scene as a contemporary middle eastern building with insurgents and military contractor soldiers (photo © General Howe)

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In this piece General Howe refers to news accounts of an event during the Iraq war where military contractors were hung and their bodies were burned publicly. (photo © General Howe)

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An overview of the art installation at one of the galleries on campus (photo © General Howe)

“While I was on this journey I captured images of other interesting things going on at the school, anti-war projects, graffiti, and street art” General Howe

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A wheatpaste of a squirrel carrying a tomahawk. (photo © General Howe)

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A student project on campus questioning war gives a platform for the people to voice their opinion (photo © General Howe)

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Censorship! MOCA Has A BLU Tiger By The Tail

It’s hard to believe that Jeffrey Deitch censors artists.

One quick look into his adventurous past incarnation as the director and owner of Deitch Projects in New York shows a guy who has championed the work of artists outside the mainstream and given them a forum to speak. Hard to see the same guy who mounted a burned-out meth lab by Jonah Freeman and Justin Lowe, (Black Acid Co-op) being queasy about offensive content. Did you ever see the parade he sponsored through the streets of Lower Manhattan for a few years? Don’t remember anyone crying censorship in those very public multi-membered panoplies of costume and conceptual art. The fact is there is a very public record stretching back many years that shows he routinely encouraged his artists to expand intellectually and explore new ideas regardless of how difficult or controversial they might have been.

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The BLU mural as it was completed on the MOCA wall last week. (photo © Brain Forrest/MOCA)

The public controversy of the buffing of a large wall on the side of the Geffen Contemporary Wing of MOCA by internationally known street artist BLU shortly after it’s completion last week feels more like an easy way to pile on him, maybe by those who didn’t like him in the first place. Sometimes people just like to see successful people fall. If you were to listen to the wailing of the Censorship Battalion you would have thought that Mr. Deitch himself had run screaming, bucket in hand, through the streets splashing paint on the mural and all over his pink suit, ranting about the dollar-draped coffins BLU had arranged in formation across the massive wall. But the timeline of how Deitch mismanaged the quickly exploding events after the buffing really points more to being obtuse than obstreperous. He didn’t handle the information communication very well. Looks like he made some rookie mistakes in his new position as the head of a major public institution of art. And?


Only a year ago in October 2009 BLU finished another giant mural on the  Deitch Projects location in Long Island City in Queens that some said was a fun-loving jab at Deitch himself. So it looks like this curator-artist  relationship has some history.

Blu at Deitch Studios LIC
Blu at Deitch Studios in Long Island City, New York, October 2009 (photo @Jaime Rojo)

It just doesn’t add up.


Censorship in this country, especially art censorship, is always a hot spicy topic – Why, did you hear about the Smithsonian? Less obvious is the ongoing sort of cleansing across our increasingly corporate mono-culture and this alien creature politics-as-sports media that exhausts the populace into confusion and conformity. That kind of censorship of the many gray areas simplifies everything to an Us vs Them mentality. Rather than the knee-jerk suggestion of boycotting his upcoming show of Street Art, let’s give the new guy a chance to acclimate to this new position he’s had for six months.

brooklyn-street-art-casey-caplowe-good-MOCA-blu-12-10BLU Mural being buffed. (Photo courtesy of and © Casey Caplowe/Good Culture)

That said, if Deitch was being sensitive to the Veteran Affairs neighbors and cognizant of the history of the Japanese community in the US, his timing was a bit late. And if we are talking about sensitivity and communication, it looks like BLU got left out of the equation altogether. How can this be? A very prolific artist travels to LA to paint a big commissioned wall and there wasn’t a sketch?


We all censor ourselves every day. Sometimes for honorable reasons like not mentioning your co-workers’ deceased wife, or even pragmatic reasons, like rolling down your sleeves to hide your tattoos from your girlfriend’s dad. It’s all about context, and nuance. In the end, this microscopic chapter in Street Art is between BLU and MOCA, and only they know the contracts they have and the inner workings of their relationship. Maybe we can all find something else to speculate about.

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BSA Holiday Giveaway : Banksy, C215, Street Art New York, Beautiful Losers

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Dear BSA Readers: We’ve invited six artists to participate in this year’s “Eleven Wishes for 2011”. That leaves 5 empty spots.  Now we would like to invite five BSA family like you to be a part of it — and win extravagant prizes for your efforts:

All you need to do is send ONE wish and ONE picture or image file to Giveaway@brooklynstreetart.com no later than December 17 and we’ll pick the 5 winners.

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PRIZES

THE DEEEELUXE PLATINUM BUCKET: This prize will go to the first TWO submissions we pick. In addition to being featured on BSA “Eleven wishes for 2011” these two lucky readers will also get:

A copy of Banksy’s “Exit through the gift shop” DVD.
A copy of “Beautiful Losers” DVD.
A copy of C215 new book “Community Service” (release date 01/28/11, but you get yours now!)
A signed copy of our new book “Street Art New York”.

THE GOLD PLATED BUCKET: This prize will go to the next THREE submissions we pick. In addition to being featured on BSA “Eleven Wishes for 2011” these three lucky readers will also get:

A copy of Banksy’s “Exit through the gift shop” DVD.
A copy of “Beautiful Losers” DVD
A signed copy of our new book “Street Art New York”.

RULES: You must write a wish for 2011 that you wish for yourself or others; extra points for personal and respectful. Image can be anything BUT you must hold the copyrights to publish the image. Image must be at least 740 wide, and can be in .jpg, .tif, .png, or similar format.  Submissions must be received no later than December 17, 2010. Please include your postal address to receive the prizes. Final selections are made by the editors and buckets are not included. We can’t wait to hear from you!!!

5 Examples from last year; Martha Cooper, Broken Crow, Jef Aerosol, Hellbent, Cake

SHOUT OUTs: To Beastie Boy Adam Yauch and Joshua Fu at Oscilloscope Laboratories for donating the DVDs. Go to this link to see their full selection of titles.  Also to our editor Jeremy Echard at Critères éditions for the c215 books before they are even published, and to Ali Gitlow at Prestel Publishing for Street Art New York. Thank you all!

PRIZE Descriptions

Exit Through the Gift Shop, Director: Banksy
A chaotic trip through low-level criminality, comradeship, and incompetence. By turns shocking, hilarious and absurd, this is an enthralling modern-day fairytale… with bolt cutters.
Exit Through the Gift Shop DVD

Beautiful Losers, Director: Aaron Rose
In the early 1990’s a loose-knit group of like-minded outsiders found common ground at a little NYC storefront gallery. Rooted in the DIY (do-it-yourself) subcultures of skateboarding, surf, punk, hip-hop, and graffiti, they made art that reflected the lifestyles they led. Featuring, Shepard Fairey, Ed Templeton, Mike Mills, Harmony Korine, Barry McGee, Chris Johanson, Geoff McFetridge, Jo Jackson, Margaret Kilgallen, Stephen Powers, and Thomas Campbell.
Beautiful Losers DVD

Street Art New York, Authors: Steven P. Harrington and Jaime Rojo
with forward by Carolina A Miranda, published by Prestel
Written by the founders of BrooklynStreetArt.com, Street Art New York the authors take you on a fast sprint through the streets, along the waterways, on the rooftops, and up the walls of todays ever-morphing Street Art scene, as only New York can tell it. Featured in this unplugged and dynamic collection of images are works by 100+ artists, some wildly exciting newcomers as well as some of the “old masters”, each one telling their New York story.

C215 Community Service, Author: C215
with introduction and interview by Steven P. Harrington, and preface by Marc & Sara Schiller from Wooster Collective and Thierry Froger, published Jan 2011 by Critères éditions.
World famous globe-trotting French stencil artist C215 as seen through the eyes of 12 of today’s renowned street art photographers, covering ground in New York, London, Tel Aviv, Dakar, Moscow, Vitry, Casablanca, and New Delhi among others. In a style recognizable by Street Art fans everywhere, C215 raises the game to poetry while keeping it very human. Photographers include Vitostreet (FR), Chrixcel (FR), RomanyWG (GBR), Luna Park(US), Jaime Rojo (US), Lois Stavsky (US), Jessica Stewart (IT), Vinny Cornelli (US), Elodie Wilhem (CHE), Lionel Belluteau (FR), Unusualimage (GBR), and Gregory J. Smith(BR).

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H.Veng Smith Solo At Pandemic: Studio Visit And Interview

Aerosol, Arsenic and Squared-Jawed Vikings

Forging Identity in “Identifiable Reality”

brooklyn-street-art-veng-jaime-rojo-12-10-web-1“Visual Thought”, by H. Veng Smith (photo © Jaime Rojo)

A traditional A-frame wooden easel smacked up with street art stickers sits in a tiny pitched roof attic studio. The focused artist sits, poised brush in hand, staring intently at his palette of carefully selected and mixed pigments with linseed oil, deciding how to recreate a spray painted tag by Street Artist Dark Cloud onto the stone walled bridge in his canvas.

“With these pieces I’m more interested in trying to have fun with them. I want to give you a reality, but at the same time an alternate reality,” so explains Veng of Robots Will Kill, now H. Veng Smith.  The name itself indicates his desire to consolidate two extremes in his career so far – “Veng” from his days as a graff/street artist and member of the New York collective Robots Will Kill – and the formal name “H. Smith” under which he first showed his finely rendered oils on canvas.

brooklyn-street-art-veng-jaime-rojo-12-10-web-2Detail from “Visual Thought”, by H. Veng Smith (photo © Jaime Rojo)

As Veng painted canvasses over 3 months for his first solo show as a “Street Artist” on display indoors at Pandemic Gallery this Friday, he found himself again reconciling his two distinct interests – graff culture and the Dutch Masters. Looking at the oil painting of a survey of the expanse of a river alongside a non-descript European town from perhaps a few centuries ago, you see he has included tags from Street Artists circa 2010 like ECB, Chris from RWK, and Dark Cloud on walls in the village.

Brooklyn Street Art: I like the way that you pay homage to street artists and graffiti artists in these formal, painterly, old-world settings

brooklyn-street-art-veng-jaime-rojo-12-10-web-19Veng: That to me is the ideal world. I really enjoy that piece because it mixes the things that I like all in one. It’s got the street art, which I like, it’s got the graffiti, which I like, it’s got some modern conveniences like trucks moving because obviously you need to drive. I don’t want to be sitting around with a horse and buggy or something. Airplanes…. I like my laptop.  At the same time I like the simple quiet old times, and the ideas of them, the old buildings.  You know if you look at the city today I don’t think it looks as nice as it did a hundred years ago or in the 1800’s.  If you go to some of the old Brooklyn or Manhattan buildings, you see that they’re beautiful. And the Manhattan skyline is beautiful too – it’s world-famous obviously. But I’m for classy, rustic, old world aesthetics. And I hope that’s what you get when you look at these pieces.

brooklyn-street-art-veng-jaime-rojo-12-10-web-4“Jerome”, by H. Veng Smith (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“Identifiable Reality”, his first solo show as a Street Artist will showcase his own version of reality, which is to say, fictional.

Brooklyn Street Art: What does the title of the show refer to?
Veng: Just to all the pieces in the show that are realistic – you know what you are looking at, nothing is abstract in the design. But at the same time the ideas are a little abstract. You don’t usually see somebody with a hat made of books on their head with candles.  Even though the candles on the hat is a realistic idea, because in olden days they would put candles on their hats for visibility to paint at night.  Michelangelo and Goya both wore hats with candles when they were painting. A lot of people assume that this is all fantasy but it is not completely fantasy.

Brooklyn-Street-Art-Goya- Self-Portrait in the Workshop, 1795Goya’s ” Self-Portrait in the Workshop”, 1795, shows the artist with candles in his hat. (Courtesy Museo de la Real Academia de Bellas Artes, Madrid)

Out the open hinged window comes the sound of two Black-capped Chickadees calling each other in the branches of the blazing fall yellow trees. The conversation turns to the poker-faced man who appears throughout his giant street pieces and in these smaller canvasses. Veng calls the reappearing ever morphing costume-changing dude his “character”, and his blunt center stage presence is always beguiling with a hint of the comic.  Truthfully, these “characters” are all probably versions of Veng, exhibiting different qualities of his own character, if  only slyly.

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Detail of “Jerome”, by H. Veng Smith (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Brooklyn Street Art: In a lot of your work there is a healthy dose of humor, however subtle.
Veng: Yeah – I wouldn’t consider it too serious. It’s kind of playful.

Brooklyn Street Art: Your character for example; It’s got this expression in this piece. What is that expression? Is he tasting a sour lemon?
Veng: He’s an unhappy Viking. You know, he’s plundering and he’s just not in the best of times I guess.

Brooklyn Street Art: I’ve noticed the shape of the face of the character has now become completely square, even with corners now.
Veng: I started off doing a more circular shape and I like it because it is recognizable and I always want to stick to more simple shapes, and I like them to be unrealistic. So no matter how realistically you paint an eye or a nose, no matter what you ever do to it, it is never going to look real because the shape alone is going to kill that for you totally.  I would never use, say, a triangle or something.  I like the idea of having that clean edge circular or square shape to break up the reality that you might otherwise get.  I think it separates it from other things that are going on.  I could sit here and do all of these with more realistic facial proportions but I feel like, for me, it would take out some of the fun of the character.

Brooklyn Street Art: And in fact, the character is fun.
Veng: Yeah, you look at first and it almost looks “identifiable” but then you realize it’s completely square. You take away the eyes and nose …..

brooklyn-street-art-veng-jaime-rojo-12-10-web-11(image © Jaime Rojo)

For a minute you forget you are talking to a well known aerosol wielding Brooklyn Street Artist in this cozy Staten Island hideaway. It’s stillness is free of clutter and there are neatly stacked glass jars of pigment, oils, a mortar and pestle. Reconciling these two worlds must be work in itself.

Brooklyn Street Art: Recently there was a show at 17 Frost Gallery with Erik Burke & Cahil Muraghu where they married graffiti techniques and vocabulary with the Hudson School of painting.  When I saw some of their pieces I was impressed and I was also thinking of the way that you are marrying two styles are a few centuries apart from one another.
Veng:
You know if you look at the books I have on my shelf, people usually get a kick out of it because there will be a Chuck Close book next to a book on Jan van Eyck, or some Dutch guy. I personally find great interest in all of them and I reference them and I think when you can combine them using creativity it is a great luxury. Technique-wise, we have a lot to learn from the past.

Brooklyn Street Art: I’ve heard you talk before about having within your style these polar opposites and you’ve withstood some criticism from people like your peers for example. When you were doing graff on the street and you started to do Street Art based stuff – let alone Dutch Masters influenced pieces- what were some of the responses you were getting?
Veng: It’s definitely been tougher from the graffiti crowd than the Street Art crowd. But the graffiti crowd, especially here in New York, has loosened up on it’s ideas basically due to a lot of Europeans coming over doing graffiti too.  The graffiti scene was always sort of A-B-C-D.

Brooklyn Street Art: In what way?
Veng: You spray paint, you use your caps, that’s it. You do it illegally, you never get too artsy. Whereas with Street Art, you can kind of get almost as artsy as you want.

Brooklyn Street Art: So you are saying that those people who might have given you a hard time before might not be doing it now.
Veng: Now they don’t do it at all. But at the same time, a lot of people won’t consider it graffiti. They’ll say, “Oh, he uses spray paint to do it but it’s not graffiti”. So I think a lot of the borders have all been cut down.

Brooklyn Street Art: So would you say a certain level of respect exists across all of it?
Veng: Yeah. I mean I’ve always been pretty peaceful and I’m pretty easy going. I’ve never really had any personal problems.  I mean some people give their opinions, which is fine obviously, because not everybody likes everything the same and thank God.

brooklyn-street-art-veng-jaime-rojo-12-10-web-12(image © Jaime Rojo)

Brooklyn Street Art: So you pick all of your paints.
Veng: Yeah, a lot of the paints, about 85% of them, I mix myself from the pigments.  There are certain pigments I don’t use.

Brooklyn Street Art: What do you mix the pigments with
Veng: Oil – linseed oil or possibly walnut oil. – Which you can kind of smell in here. And then I add to them different stuff like resin, which will speed up the drying and give it a glossy hardened feel.

Brooklyn Street Art: Where do you get your pigments and supplies?
Veng: A lot of the supplies I get from a local colorman in Brooklyn, Robert Doak in Dumbo.  His business has been around longer than I’ve been living.  A lot of the pigments and materials I use come from him. It’s really specific, not just to oil paintings but to traditional materials.  Also I get a lot of stuff from a company out in California called Natural Pigments, which specializes in all the hard-to-find pigments. Also I use the more dangerous stuff like lead-based paints and paints that contain arsenic.

Brooklyn Street Art: Really? Arsenic?
Veng: Yes, it’s a color called Opiate. It’s a really gorgeous yellow, but it contains arsenic.

Brooklyn Street Art: So do you have to wear a mask using some of these pigments?
Veng: When I mix the pigments I have little dust mask on for the super dangerous ones.  – Not that I feel like I really need one because I’m dealing with it in very small doses. Obviously I don’t have the window open in front of me or the fan going. But just to be on the safe side I do wear a dust mask. Some are more dangerous if absorbed through the skin.  Like Vermillion – (takes the glass bottle to show) – it’s a really really nice red.  But if you absorb it through your skin it’s dangerous.

Brooklyn Street Art: This is a pestle.
Veng: It’s a grinder for the paints. You put it on here with the oil.  Here are different oils, here is the walnut you can smell if you want.

Brooklyn Street Art: Yeah I think I can smell the linseed. That is really understated.  I think people use linseed oil for furniture.
Veng: Yup, linseed oil – if you would ask people, probably 80% of them use linseed oil for their paints.

brooklyn-street-art-veng-jaime-rojo-12-10-web-13A partial lineup of pieces by H. Veng Smith (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Brooklyn Street Art: How does it feel doing a solo show?
Veng: It feels great. I’m nervous. I hope everyone enjoys the work and likes it and shows up. It’s been good to get a body of work together in this genre because I’ve never really had a full collection of these pieces before that is more influenced by my Street Art. I’ve done a single piece for a commission or a group show here or there. So I’m really excited putting them together and coming up with similar ideas, breaking them down into groups, and having them all come together.

Finally it’s like a family of these street art pieces.  To be honest I’ve never seen so many of these character paintings together in the studio.

Excerpt: Painting Birds

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Veng photo © Jaime Rojo

brooklyn-street-art-veng-jaime-rojo-12-10-web-9A Nuthatch by H. Veng Smith (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“I think they are the neatest things to paint. They give you all sorts of texture, they give you colors. I just think that technically they are great to paint, they give you the details, you can keep them super rendered. I’ve always been a big fan of birds in general – watching them, taking pictures of them. When I lived in Pennsylvania I did a lot of bird watching.  So I just like them in general, and to paint them it’s a lot of fun and so far people have shown a lot of interest in my birds.”

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“Alone in Thought” by H. Veng Smith (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Excerpt: Swedish/Norwegian Architecture

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“Gotland” by H. Veng Smith ( photo © Jaime Rojo)

We had relatives from Sweden here and they gave me this tile, which has a Stave church in it, which I thought was really great. So I looked up these churches and they all have these really good architectural features, so I did my character like them. It’s a church. Instead of saying church building, you would say “stave”

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Norwegian Stave Church (photo © Sue Renault)

“I thought the buildings looked amazing so I automatically thought of  putting it in.  I just like the old wooden buildings like that.  They are fun to paint and not a lot of people reference stuff like this.  It’s not secret, everything I have at home is kind of European, or fantasy based.  But at the same time, this church is an actual architectural design that exists.

brooklyn-street-art-veng-jaime-rojo-12-10-web-8Detail of “Gotland” by H. Veng Smith ( photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-art-veng-jaime-rojo-12-10-web-15Portrait of the Artist by Jaime Rojo ( © Jaime Rojo)

BSA…………………….BSA…………………….BSA…………………….BSA…………………….BSA…………………….BSA…………………….

“Identifiable Reality” at Pandemic Gallery with H. Veng Smith

Friday December 17, 2010, 7-9 pm

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Images of the Week 12.12.10

Images of the Week 12.12.10

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Our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring Burning Candy, Deeker, DsCreet, Earl Greyhound, Goya, Jimmy Snatch, KARMA, Kill, Nineta, Paul Richard,Plasma Slug, Shin Shin, Skewville, Tek33, and UFO

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Burning Candy Tek 33 and Dscreet at Factory Fresh Gallery (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Burning Candy Tek 33 and Dscreet at Factory Fresh Gallery (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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A cluster of original pencil drawn faces by an anonymous artist (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Whatever you say, Paul! Paul Richard (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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A B&W photograph of a boy by an anonymous artist. And by the way, Brooklyn trio Earl Greyhound Rocks! (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Deeks offers this withering assessment: “Good For Nothing”. And there’s a little pink Plasma Slug too. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Skewville sayz: “You are not in Kansas anymore” (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Skewville (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Goya and UFO (photo © Jaime  Rojo)

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A Death Panel of some sort. Kill (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Nineta (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Dashing through the snooooww.  ShinShin (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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KARMA “Be Kind To One Another Because Most Of Us Are Fighting A Hard Battle” Dublin, Ireland (photo © Jimmy Snatch)

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Huichol Art: Transforming A Vintage Beetle in Mexico

Pimping Your Ride Via Indigenous Traditions

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Applying beads to the “Vochol” (Vocho + Huichol) Image from the Facebook page of Museo de Arte Popular.

Mexico’s Indigenous people have been making art from millenia. When the Spanish invaded and conquered what’s now modern Mexico in 1492 they found complex metropolis, their buildings decorated with intricately carved sculptures and brightly colored painting. The painful conquest didn’t annihilate their passion for art making and in modern times their new works of elaborate pieces of art are often displayed in museums’ collections.

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For the opening, some of the artists appeared in traditional garb of The Huichol, an indigenous ethnic group of western central Mexico

For this piece eight members of two Huichol families took the task to create a piece of art, seven months in the making, by using more than two million glass beads and a vintage Volkswagen as a canvas. Inspired by the designs of Francisco Bautista, a patriarch of one of the families, they incorporated their traditional indigenous theologies and cultural symbols with modern vernacular.

The serpents on the the front design represent “rain”, while the the roof is decorated with the sun and four eagles. Birds were thought to be the intermediaries between gods and mortals. The rear part and sides are tributes or “ofrendas” of fruits of the earth to their gods.

The piece will be shown at Museo de Arte Popular for a period of time and then the four wheeled piece will be go on tour in Europe and the in the rest of the Americas. Finally the piece will be sold at auction with the proceeds of the sale to benefit the programs of the museum.

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Fun Friday 12.10.10

Fun-Friday

It’s beginning to look a lot like Kwanzannukah

Roman Klonek & Jim Avignon at Factory Fresh

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An unusual breed of pop art with two oddities that are well jump-suited for each other. Expect the unexpected, including a special appearance by His Doodleness Jon Burgerman.

Speedy Wonderland

Factory Fresh Gallery Presents: Roman Klonek & Jim Avignon “Speedy Wonderland” (Brooklyn, NY)Opening Reception FRIDAY, DECEMBER 10, 7-10pm

ART to be Sold Off the Walls at “12×12”

Hopefully no one will be trampled for the holidays just getting in the door tonight, but you are bound to see something dope here, including a number of street artists you are familiar with at this group show.  Wonder how big the pieces are?

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Opening Reception, Friday, December 10th, 6pm – 9pm!Mighty Tanaka presents:
12×12 -A Group Show for the Holidays

FEATURED ARTISTS
Abe Lincoln Jr., Adam Miller, Alexandra Pacula, Alexis Trice, Anthony Sneed, AVOID, Briar Elyse, Bruno Perillo, Bryan Raughton, Buxtonia, CAM, Chris RWK, Chris Stain, Dark Clouds, Destroy and Rebuild, DOIT, Don Pablo Pedro, DROID, Ed Shawn Herrera, Ellen Stagg, Ellis G, Eric DeFrancesco, Fedele Spadafora, Gary Carlson, Gigi Chen, Gigi Spratley, Hannah Rose Fierman, Hellbent, Hiroshi Kumagai, Infinity, Jac Atkinson, Japa, Jason Grunwald, JMR, John Breiner, John McGarity, John Sunderland, Julia Colavita, Julian Duran, Justin Rymer, Katie Decker, Keely, KOSBE, Lauren Asta, Lee Trice, Lionel Guzman, Mari Keeler, Matt Siren, Max Greis, Melissa Carroll, Mike Schrieber, Nathan Pickett, Nathan Vincent, Nick Chatfield-Taylor, QRST, Quel Beast, Reginald Pean, Rick Midler, Robbie Busch, Royce Bannon, SADU, Skewville, Soosan Joon Silanee, Steven Schreiber, Thomas Cecchi, Tony Bones, Tony DePew, Toofly, UFO, URnewyork, Veng RWK

New Video from Sten & Lex

Street Artist Cake: A Collection of Drawings

Brewer’s Mansion is happy to present A Collection of Drawings, a show by Brooklyn street artist Cake, opening Saturday the 12th at this little known place where artists hang out.

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From the artist, “I use anatomy to describe the intricate relationship structures humans have with themselves and others. I frequently take from the pool of human suffering for subject matter and inspiration. When people disconnect from themselves in any way, it will somehow show up in their faces, bodies and gestures. I prefer to make drawings describing those results.”

Brewer’s Mansion

Cake Opening December 11, 6-9

55 Waterbury between Scholes and Meserole in Bushwick, Brooklyn

Kid Zoom Pop-Up Saturday

“Kid Zoom, Rembrandt with a Spray Can, represents the future of this movement.” – RON ENGLISH

With a Street Art celebrity endorsement like that, you know he’s going to wear a clean shirt to the show, right?  But wait, this is Lo-Brow so maybe just a freshly stained t-shirt.  See our studio visit Here.

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OPENING PARTY – SAT 11th DECEMBER – 7PM till Late – MEATPACKING – NYC

72 Gansevoort St
NEW YORK, NY, 10014
Meatpacking District
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