BSA Images Of The Week: 09.18.16

September 18, 2016 Artists

We debated whether or not to open today’s edition of BSA Images Of The Week on a political note with new Donald Trump related art or with an uplifting image of an almost universally recognized sweet little bird: The Sparrow.

The Sparrow won.

Who hasn’t seen them enjoying a good old dust bath or just happily munching on whatever crumbs fall from the public while eating al fresco. They have natural predators in the city and country and have been featured in songs, poems, books for centuries. More recently Chairman Mao Zedong ordered them to be killed The Kill a Sparrow Campaign in 1958 – where millions of them were killed by citizens, unleashing an environmental disaster of locusts destroying food crops, and people starving.

We prefer to think of these little birds in terms of the gospel hymn “His Eye Is On the Sparrow”

“I sing because I’m happy
I sing because I’m free
For His eye is on the sparrow,
And I know He watches over me.”

This week two street pieces we discovered feature this finely feathered friend by LMNOPI and Elbow-Toe aka Brian Adam Douglas.

So, here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Brian Adam Douglas, Dirty Bandits, Indecline, Joe Caslin, Leon Keer, LMNOPI, MSK, SacSix, Swoon, The Flying Dutchman, Vexta, and WK Interact.

Our top image: LMNOPI. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Brian Adams Douglas. Detail. Speaking of sparrows. They make and appearance on this portrait. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Brian Adams Douglas (photo © Jaime Rojo)

SWOON. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

SWOON (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Indecline. Mana Urban Arts Project (photo © Jaime Rojo)

In New Jersey on a rooftop the passing car traffic is now able to catch a glimpse of a nude statue of Donald Trump. The anonymous artists collective Indecline has done of number of recent installations addressing political topics in the New York area. This one has garnered national coverage in the media. There’s not much that we can say that hasn’t already been addressed elsewhere.

Indecline . Mana Urban Arts Project. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Indecline . Mana Urban Arts Project (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Indecline. MSK . Mana Urban Arts Project (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Indecline . Mana Urban Arts Project (photo © Jaime Rojo)

SacSix (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Leon Keer. Aruba Art Fair. Aruba. (photo © Leon Keer)

Title: ‘Niets aan te geven / Nothing to declare’. The 3D painting depicts the story on the crisis of critical shortages of food and medicine in Venezuela and the effect it has on the nearby island of Aruba. The location were the painting was made is behind the former customs office in San Nicolas. -LK

brooklyn-street-art-dirty-bandits-vexta-jaime-rojo-09-18-2016-web

VEXTA . Dirty Bandits (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Joe Caslin. Waterford Walls International Street Art Festival (photo © Joe Caslin)

A new mural in Waterford, Ireland by artist Joe Caslin speaks to the topic of mental health and our awareness of it. On the façade of an abandoned hotel that overlooks the city, Caslin created this figure, quiet and troubled, as part of a mural festival there. The wheatpasted drawing by Caslin is entitled ‘Ar scáth a chéile a mhaireann na daoine’, which translates as ‘we live protected under each other’s shadow’.