Many people say that Street Art by its nature is necessarily ethereal because it is often damaged by the elements or destroyed by others.  Your expectation for it’s brief lifetime is tempered with the realities on the street. On some occasions, indoor artwork has a similar fate.

A few new pieces here for you from Street Artist/muralist/fine artist Rubin 415 today that you probably haven’t seen – mostly because they are behind lock and key and will remain so until they are torn down. In a common New York real estate story; artists communities make a neighborhood vibrant and then they are kicked out of it when there is a profit to be made from the cultural capital they created.

Rubin 415 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The old Williamsburg factory building where Rubin 415 had his art studio was just sold for 25 million dollars, according to the artist, and is soon to be gutted. Artists tried to mount a legal battle to stay, but eventually lost.

Rubin 415 moved there about three years ago when his long-term art studio in Greenpoint raised rents exorbitantly suddenly to force out the artists who had brought life to that industrial sector when no one else wanted to be there.

Rubin 415 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

This is the fourth time he’s been uprooted while working as an artist in New York.

An optimistic fellow, he’s left a parting gift before the buildings’ destruction on the ill-fated walls and we caught them here for you and for posterity. Following those images is a recent mural outside he’s done that we haven’t published previously.

Rubin 415 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Rubin 415 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

A recent outside mural by Rubin 415 (photo © Jaime Rojo)