Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening :
1.Vegan Flava. Throwing Leaves Against Machines.
2. Andrew Hem “Misty Blue”
3. Laura Llaneli: 12 + 1 in Barcelona 4. Misha Most. Evolution -2. The largest mural in the world. Vyksa, Russia
5. Agnès Varda JR’s Faces Places (Visages, Villages). Trailer.
BSA Special Feature: Vegan Flava. Throwing Leaves Against Machines.
“We are exploring crossroads where different creative paths such as painting, video-making, dancing and music meet,” Vegan Flava tells us about this new collaborative performance he has just completed with his friend Mario Perez Amigo.
They call it “Throwing Leaves Against Machines” and it is the third video chapter of a series named Northern Street Sketches. This painting and dance performance took play at Subtopia in the Botkyrka municipality of Stockholm – the city where both artists hail from.
Taking place the same night that Donald Trump pulled the US out of the Paris agreement on climate change, Vegan Flava tells us that the video is “a climate action performance addressing the costs consumerism today imposes on future generations, and time is limited.”
Andrew Hem “Misty Blue”
Street culture and impressionism filter into the singular form compositions of Los Angeleno Andrew Ham. In this hand painted mural with The Avenue Concept in Providence, he tells the story of a child he met. The artist shoes how he mixes paint and speaks of his practice of going far from the wall to make sure the mural “reads” well from a distance.
Laura Llaneli: 12 + 1 in Barcelona
Back in June we showed you process photos of this wall in Barcelona in a posting entitled Laura Llaneli “OUR ACTIONS BECOMING THE POLICY”. It is an interesting concept of translating a short speech, a tirade actually, of a singer upbraiding audience members for not fitting his image of them -as if his self-image was derived from the audience. True, mom always said, “Show me your friends and I can tell you what kind of person you are.”
Misha Most. Evolution -2. The largest mural in the world. Vyksa, Russia
Periodically you hear a claim of a mural being the largest. This one by Misha Most with the folks from Artmossphere looks pretty close!
They are so sweet faced you would not guess that they are fire starters. French Street Art couple Ella + Pitr have a strong work ethic and a earnest dedication to fanciful flights of the imagination.
With a touch of domesticity that may make you think of home, often they bring a child-like fascination with stories and characters; playful monsters and grouches setting at play inside a number of possible narratives, depending on your interpretation.
Here in Stavanger and Sandnes (Norway), Tor Staale Moen had the opportunity to capture them around the winding stone streets of the two adjoining seaside towns, adding illustrations in public spaces. We thank him for sharing his images here with BSA readers.
The up and coming, soon-to-be-hip Nashville neighborhood christened “The Nations” will undoubtedly presently have an ironically old-timey barbershop with Millenially bearded men wearing pocket watches and tattoos as trendy arts neighborhoods often do at the moment.
“You know I grew up on Pennsylvania Ave,” says local Vickie Gilliam Keeton on a Facebook post that addresses the new massive mural by Australian Street Artist Guido Van Helten. “But I’d never heard this area called ‘the nations’ till just in the past 10 years. It was always just West Nashville.” It may be a case of re-branding a former industrial zone for future development.
“It used to be Gilette grainery,” says the man who is the subject in the new soaring portrait, 91 year old Lee Estes, who has lived in the neighborhood since the 1920s – a time when houses like his didn’t have indoor plumbing. In an interview with Amy Eskind of Nashville Public Radio he continued “And we had another, Purina grainery, that was demolished years ago, but they left this one as a historical part of the Nations.”
It is a stand out for sure, this old silo, raising into the sky above all the others nearby. With the dignified Mr. Estes representing the past history of the area in almost sepia tones, it is a reassuring reminder of the areas character and working class industrial roots. Three Corners Coffee on Centennial Boulevard may already indicate the changing character of the area that the new mural joins. Describing itself as “a homey coffee shop specializing in great brews, friendly baristas, and vintage charm,” it also sells vintage furnishings, baby onesies, and dish towels and provides a retro 1970s domestic warmth for visitors. Nevertheless it appeared to let down one customer writing on Yelp recently who could not give it five stars. “Deducted one star because they were out of brioche breakfast sandwiches at 9am on a Friday morning.” From no indoor plumbing to no $5.95 brioche breakfast sandwiches is a bit of a jump.
This is all part of a mural project called Nashville Walls Project that has brought a number of Street Artists to the city to paint in the last couple of years, including Herakut, Louis Masai, Curiot, Niels “Shoe” Meulman, Rone, and Tavar “Above” Zawacki. Co-founded by Street Art gallerist and art collector Brian Greif, who produced the movie “Saving Banksy” in which he personally recovers an original Banksy from a wall in San Francisco, the Nashville Walls Project is adding a new excitement and character to the area that is approximately bounded by Charlotte Avenue, the Cumberland River, Richland Creek and the CSX railroad tracks.
We’ve contemplated it in our writings, debated it on panels around the world, listened to impassioned conversations about it in bars, this gentrifying cycle and the accusations lobbed at artists; this cycle of gentrification that the creative community unwittingly aids sometimes through its own industry. There appears to be a direct relationship between the positive aspects of reviving a moribund sector of a town or city with murals and the eventual rise in rents and costs of services that invariably push out the poor and working class.
Not surprisingly, the artist who created this beacon of warmth and humanity has the same observations that he has gained from his travels.
“I find the relationship between murals and gentrification conflicting, and in this work there is this conflicting yet harmonious composite of the two sides of social change,” says Van Helton in an interview with the other co-founder of Nashville Walls Project, Éva Boros, published on NashvilleArts.com “There is juxtaposition between a mural that discusses and commemorates the blue-collar demographic while at the same time being a powerful part of the change in the area. This is a dialogue and talking point that I hope this mural can create.”
For the moment, this new looming portrait is a fine example of elevating a local citizen in his community and a focal point for neighborhood pride, and Mr. Estes has enjoyed a great amount of congratulations in person from folks who have known him for years. Mr. Van Helten has also received much praise and thanks from people in the area in postings on social media. The young kids painted on the mural around the corner are also local from the community center nearby, representing the future of the neighborhood that many are hopeful for.
Kelly Evans wrote in a Facebook posting to the artist a sentiment that combines the sentiments of many. “From the bottom of my native Nashvillian heart thank you so much for understanding. Before I even read the commentaries and articles, when I stood outside your unfinished work, I understood some of what you are trying to say. This so strongly moved me. Tears of love for our fathers that built this “big little city” poured. My prayer is that we are not priced out of our homes we so lovingly built and raised our families in.”
Brian Siskind documented on Guido Van Helton painting for 17 days to complete the enormous figures. This is his record the final day. Mr. Siskind says he will be combining all the videos into one complete overview of the project shortly.
For a decade we’ve been saying that art in the streets of the modern city lies along a continuum between illegal, autonomous interventions and those that are officially sanctioned by institutions. In today’s posting from Łódź, Poland, we’re much nearer to the latter end of that continuum.
Part of UNIQA Art Łódź, a public art project that itself has metamorphosed from a multi-year mural program by (primarily) Street Artists on city walls to its current public sculpture program under the direction of Michał Bieżyński, here we have the head of John the Baptist.
Weighted with references to Biblical story of the martyr in spiritual opposition to King Herod and baptism by water, organizers also say that the sculpture commemorates the Jewish victims in Łódź ghettos during a time when their culture and lives were once blossoming, later destroyed by the Occupation of Poland by Nazi Germany. With the decapitated head as a symbol, one also may draw a connection with the highly staged videos circulated in recent years that purport to show hooded ISIS militants beheading people.
Sited on a pedestal in Old Town Park in its central pond, the location is in the part of the city where the Jewish community once settled, and the visual itself may be quite disturbing to viewers as it reflects a mirror image here until the end of the season. The artist Szymon Ryczek is a recent graduate of the Faculty of Graphic Art and Painting, Strzemiński Academy of Art in Łódź and the sculpture is made of epoxy resin dusted with carbon dust.
Previous artists in the sculpture program have included Lump, Etam and Robert Proch, Crystal Wagner, and Mona Tusz. The next project will be a large-scale sculpture by two Warsaw artists Tomasz Górnicki and Chazme at the end of July at the Łódź Fabryczna train station.
The 90s graffiti writer who now often participates in mural festivals says he chose this geometric abstraction to represent the poplar tree because of its historical connection to this host city and because of the undeniable intertwined associations he also has with the architecture that these trees often frame.
Part of the “Without Frontiers’ project that ran June 19-24 and was curated by Simona Gavioli and Giulia Giliberti of Caravan Setup Gallery in Bologna, the mural project includes work by artists Elbi Elem, Panem et Circenses, Zedz, and Corn79.
4th of July weekend here in New York so we are headed to a barbecue and a frisbee game. Maybe to the Jersey shore for some sun. Happy 4th ya’ll! Looks like the country needs to take itself back from the corporate overlords – if we want to declare the US to be independent ever again. Right now we’re in trouble, gurl – and everyone knows it!
So here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring Banksy, Clint Mario, Crash, El Sol 25, Felipe Pantone, FinDAC, Hopare, Hot Tea, Invader, John Ahearn, Logan Hicks, Mark Jenkins, Resistance is Female, SaxSix, and Sonny Sundancer.
Stavanger, Norway may not have throbbing Street Art scene per se, but it does have a lot of cool murals (thanks to Nuart festival) and a few favorite artists who reliably please the crowds (thanks to Nuart Gallery). This week opened a dynamic duo of the contemporary pop art side of the spectrum working in tandem with complimentary styles for a new show called “Junction” in the gallery space.
The line outside stretched down the cobblestoned adorable block and around the adorable cobblestoned corner! Montreals based Sandra Chevrier has been quickly garnering attention since debuting at Reed Projects in 2013 with her masked beauties and Norwegian stencillist Martin Whatson has been touching on the vernacular of pop Street Art and hand-tagged abstractions in a way that has developed into his own style over these past few years. The collaboration is an easy reach for both and the resulting ironic/arresting images that only this mashup can produce.
Here are a few images from the new mural they collaborated on to celebrate Thursday’s opening – the show runs through the 28th of July.
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
