December 2017

OLEK: Wishes And Hopes For 2018

OLEK: Wishes And Hopes For 2018

December 31, 2017

As we draw closer to the new year we’ve asked a very special guest every day to take a moment to reflect on 2017 and to tell us about one photograph that best captures the year for them. It’s an assortment of treats to surprise you with every day – to enjoy and contemplate as we all reflect on the year that has passed and conjure our hopes and wishes for 2018. This is our way of sharing the sweetness of the season and of saying ‘Thank You’ to each of you for inspiring us throughout the year.

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Poland-born Brooklyn-residing crochet innovator OLEK devises and implicates and eradicates and constructs and executes abstract emotions and socio-politically charged strategies into her public performance pieces and installations in places as far-flung as India and Stockholm and Raleigh, North Carolina. Few fools are suffered, local volunteers are engaged, and heroicism seems always within reach as the crocheted crusader takes on issues of inequality, systemic-institutional bias, alienation, discrimination, immigration, the war machine, the refugees that are created by it, the psychic wounds created by it. Sometimes it feels like each day we get to see a different expression of OLEK’s heart and creativity in the public arena. Today she shares with us a chance encounter she had with two women this year and how it inspired her to have courage and to spread its message.

OLEK

A conversation between Lama and Sarah:

Lama: When I saw them, I was really scared.
Sarah: I started thinking: “How did we do it?  How did we find the courage to do something like that?”
Lama: Do you think one of our vests might be there?
Sarah: I don’t know.
Lama: Can you imagine if one of them is ours?
Sarah: When I first saw them I felt the chills all over my body. I immediately remembered everything and felt that someone is thinking about us.

I met these two brave women while working on an exhibition in the Avesta Museum in Sweden. They have became a huge inspiration for my work and recently I’ve decided to shoot a documentary about their ability to create a new life in a strange country after being forced to flee their home in Syria. On September 18th, 2017 we took a train from Berlin to Stockholm, and this journey became the set for a dialog about their very difficult and dangerous trip. During our 2 hour stopover in Copenhagen, we decided to leave the train station and wander around the city. This is how we coincidently arrived at Ai Weiwei’s installation ‘Soleil Levant,’ created out of 3,500 life jackets.

With this image, I wish everyone in the upcoming year deep, resilient and unlimited courage. Courage to step outside of one’s comfort zone; Courage to start all over again if necessary; Courage to chase your dream; Courage to speak out; Courage to listen to your heart; Courage to succeed.

Olek. Lama and Sarah in front of Ai Weiwei’s installation ‘Soleil Levant’ created out of 3,500 life jackets, Copenhagen, Denmark, September 18th 2017. (photo courtesy of Olek)

 

OLEK

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The Yok & Sheryo: Wishes And Hopes For 2018

The Yok & Sheryo: Wishes And Hopes For 2018

December 30, 2017

As we draw closer to the new year we’ve asked a very special guest every day to take a moment to reflect on 2017 and to tell us about one photograph that best captures the year for them. It’s an assortment of treats to surprise you with every day – to enjoy and contemplate as we all reflect on the year that has passed and conjure our hopes and wishes for 2018. This is our way of sharing the sweetness of the season and of saying ‘Thank You’ to each of you for inspiring us throughout the year.

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The on-the-road nature of this graffiti-illustration-Street Art couple is becoming legend, with the Australian Yok and Singaporean Sheryo professionally spray-cationing across the world regularly, monthly, annually with their own particular hybrid of skater-tattoo-cartoon-rebel-traditional-culture reinventing itself in the moment, in the space. Officially Brooklyn citizens, the two wield aerosol cans as much to entertain themselves as to confound you, with their two aesthetic styles now seamlessly becoming one. Not content to present a pretty world, Yok and Sheryo investigate and analyze darker human impulses and psychological eccentricities with their characters and the trouble they can get into with monsters and pizza. Today Y&S tell us about an improvised piece they did this year in Bombay just for good luck.

THE YOK & SHERYO

We chose this photo because it is a glimpse of us on the road, this was an extra piece we painted while at a festival. A wall opportunity fell through so we made this piece instead.

These spontaneous paintings are what we enjoy most about traveling and we wish for more of these adventures in 2018.

The text translates to “Good Luck Cobra”

We like to leave little good luck charms in places we visit.

The Yok & Sheryo. Bombay, India. November 24, 2017. (photo © The Yok & Sheryo)

The Yok & Sheryo

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M-City: Wishes And Hopes For 2018

M-City: Wishes And Hopes For 2018

December 29, 2017

As we draw closer to the new year we’ve asked a very special guest every day to take a moment to reflect on 2017 and to tell us about one photograph that best captures the year for them. It’s an assortment of treats to surprise you with every day – to enjoy and contemplate as we all reflect on the year that has passed and conjure our hopes and wishes for 2018. This is our way of sharing the sweetness of the season and of saying ‘Thank You’ to each of you for inspiring us throughout the year.

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Gdańsk-based art professor and Street Artist M-City has been stenciling the inner workings of a real and imagined industrial world onto walls, sea vessels, and an aviation control tower among other surfaces for a decade or so. He uses his work as metaphor for larger messages, if you care to interpret them, and a thinking man like M-City rarely leaves a stone unturned in his observations of human foibles and geopolitics today or in history. Today he tells us about typical scene in cities around the globe where Street Artists and other Creatives bring a moribund place to life, only to have it snatched up by developers and culture vultures when the area matures into something profitable.

M-City

A few buildings look like nowhere else.

This one is located in the center of Gdańsk betweeen a shipyard and the old town. The Building has a long story and was built before the second war, becoming known as the biggest “Pumpernickel” bakery.

90% of the city was destroyed during World War II and that’s why in this photo the area is still a bit empty around it. Over 30 artist have spent the last few years creating here; painters, photographers, sculptors, theater people and many more. We did many shows in a gallery here and and in other parts of the building.

These cultural events and the environment we built – everything happened here without any public money, just a bit of private support. My studio is also inside and outside I did a lot of quick murals to comment on public and political life.

Now someone has bought our building and wants to destroy/develop it as soon as possible and to build part of a new town. This place will be gone by the end of the year. It was one of the last independent art places in our region and I don’t think that we will find this  kind of place in the future because the City is eating art spots fast and faster every year.

M-city. Gdańsk, Poland. (photo M-city)

 

M-city

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Case Maclaim: Wishes And Hopes for 2018

Case Maclaim: Wishes And Hopes for 2018

December 28, 2017

As we draw closer to the new year we’ve asked a very special guest every day to take a moment to reflect on 2017 and to tell us about one photograph that best captures the year for them. It’s an assortment of treats to surprise you with every day – to enjoy and contemplate as we all reflect on the year that has passed and conjure our hopes and wishes for 2018. This is our way of sharing the sweetness of the season and of saying ‘Thank You’ to each of you for inspiring us throughout the year.

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Founding member of the East German Ma’Claim Crew in the late 90s, Street Artist Case Maclaim is now subtly shimmering and rotating and blinking through your photorealistic memory, catching the sunlight and reflecting back patterns and surfaces and volume as he moves. His abstracted human gestures on walls internationally capture the attention of passersby who wonder if they are seeing something static or moving, painted or photographed. Here Case tells about a figurative tightrope he found people walking upon in Manitoba this year.

CASE MACLAIM

The Rope |

In June 2017 I was invited by the PangeaSeed Foundation to go to Churchill, Manitoba in Canada. Churchill is well known for being the capital of polar bears.

In fact the population of this species is alarmingly shrinking.

There is also archeological evidence of human presence dating back 4000 years, yet I have never seen a community suffering more from the man-made global warming than here. The melting permafrost is unsuitable for building infrastructure on, such as the railways they depend upon. In addition to this, massive storms and flooding are washing away the railroads making them unable to use for transportation of goods and people.

While taking the pictures of the railroad workers and chatting with them I realized how deeply these people are embedded with their homes. My hope for these hard working women and men is that their voices will be heard and that their government and the railroad company will finally support them and their future generations.

 

Case Maclaim. Churchill, Manitoba, Canada. 2017 (photo © Case Maclaim)

 

Case Maclaim

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1UP Crew: Wishes And Hopes For 2018

1UP Crew: Wishes And Hopes For 2018

December 27, 2017

As we draw closer to the new year we’ve asked a very special guest every day to take a moment to reflect on 2017 and to tell us about one photograph that best captures the year for them. It’s an assortment of treats to surprise you with every day – to enjoy and contemplate as we all reflect on the year that has passed and conjure our hopes and wishes for 2018. This is our way of sharing the sweetness of the season and of saying ‘Thank You’ to each of you for inspiring us throughout the year.

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The ubiquitous graffiti crew 1UP is amorphous and shape-shifting but their work is easily spotted in their hometown of Berlin, one of the graffiti capitals of the Western World. With many members and a variety of handstyles and influences represented on roofs, risers, tunnels, trains, and even legal walls, the overall collection of 1UP tags has wide influence on other writers – with some of the work taking it up a level, two levels. Here they share a photo with BSA readers that represents a highlight of 2017 as they look forward to 2018. We were there that day in May at the UN construction site as well, and the scene will stay in our minds for a long time.

1UP CREW

We chose this photo because we had a very intense, wild, special and heartwarming time with Marty this year. The last summer was full of crazy actions, and doing them together with Marty was just the top of the pie! Only good memories that we will hopefully remember forever! Stay tuned for news of our project together that will be hitting you next year!

Stay healthy everybody and have a colorful 2018!

One Love! One United Power!

1UP CREW

 

1UP Crew. Berlin, Germany. May 2017. (photo © Martha Cooper)

 

1UP Crew

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Various & Gould: Wishes And Hopes For 2018

Various & Gould: Wishes And Hopes For 2018

December 26, 2017

As we draw closer to the new year we’ve asked a very special guest every day to take a moment to reflect on 2017 and to tell us about one photograph that best captures the year for them. It’s an assortment of treats to surprise you with every day – to enjoy and contemplate as we all reflect on the year that has passed and conjure our hopes and wishes for 2018. This is our way of sharing the sweetness of the season and of saying ‘Thank You’ to each of you for inspiring us throughout the year.

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Intellectual adventurers with a penchant for public experimentation, the Berlin-based duo Various & Gould anchor their vivid-hued dada-pop hybrids in study and observation – and a willingness to actively question conventional assumptions. Originally predicated on the language of poster graphics, in periodic forays in public space, V&G become performers, clue-givers, even academic re-skinners of existing sculpture when their new idea takes fullness. Today we learn how their own natural observational practice and innate creative curiosity about art on the streets leads them to new discoveries and sources of inspiration.

VARIOUS & GOULD

When we discovered this work, we thought at first it was a nicely cracked window of an empty storefront.

We were on our bikes and just after we had already passed it and were waiting at the red light, we glanced back: ‘Did you see that window? What was it: broken, scratched, painted? Let‘s have a second look!’

When we turned around we saw these delicate graphic lines. And we understood this was an artwork. Now the detectives in our curious artist minds awoke and we were wondering how this was made.We came to the conclusion it might be the left over borders from stickers, applied to the window stripe by stripe.

We really enjoy the intriguing yet unobtrusive appearance of these works, of which we have discovered more since. It took us a while to find out the artists name: Birgit Hölmer.

We haven’t met her though. It‘s so striking that public art can still appear in new forms and surprise you!

Various & Gould. Art work by Birgit Hölmer. Berlin, Germany. March 8th, 2017. (photo © Various & Gould)

 

Various & Gould

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Merry Christmas! Feliz Natal! Boas Festas! from Your Friends at BSA

Merry Christmas! Feliz Natal! Boas Festas! from Your Friends at BSA

December 25, 2017

To you and yours we wish a very Merry Christmas and Boas Festas from Lisbon from your friends at BSA.

Yesterday Bordalo II treated us all to a brand new piece on the street with his interpretation of the symbol that is old as the pagan Solstice rituals that bring light to long winter nights. Here the prolific son of Lisbon gifted his hometown with a Christmas Tree to celebrate what he calls “Trashy Christmas” – A tree that is like most of his art on the street, made entirely of trash.

At the edge of a large park by a popular farmer market in a neighborhood populated with hard working immigrants in the outskirts of Lisbon this tree rises from the sidewalk, made of recycled discarded consumer products. Bordalo II is obviously in a festive mood – and probably intended to highlight our holiday habits of buying and discarding stuff, a pleasant way to remind us that we are shepherds of the earth and natural resources. Its a good reminder that holidays are not about stuff, they are about family and friends and beautiful traditions.

Merry Christmas y’all, with love from your friends at BSA.

Thanks to a partnership with Berlin’s Urban Nation Museum for Urban Contemporary Art (UN) we are here this week to survey the current Street Art and graffiti scene in this port city with a rich history and a quickly evolving urban contemporary arts scene.

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SANER: Wishes And Hopes For 2018

SANER: Wishes And Hopes For 2018

December 24, 2017

As we draw closer to the new year we’ve asked a very special guest every day to take a moment to reflect on 2017 and to tell us about one photograph that best captures the year for them. It’s an assortment of treats to surprise you with every day – to enjoy and contemplate as we all reflect on the year that has passed and conjure our hopes and wishes for 2018. This is our way of sharing the sweetness of the season and of saying ‘Thank You’ to each of you for inspiring us throughout the year.

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The Mexican SANER has taken many by surprise with his masterful handling of traditional symbols and language of his cultural heritage as well as his deft re-employment of them to tell his own stories. Influenced by those magic surrealists of mural-making from last century, SANER boldly uses the masks, daggers, and the rich palette of folklorico to talk about modern scourges of terror and hypocrisy – as well as poetically addressing fears, fantasy, and deep amorous emotion. Today we hear from him about a hope he has for the future and a beautiful image from a very important day for him and his lady this year.

SANER

This photo reflects our search for re-discovery through years of labor and life: “love”, and I don’t just talk about love with your companion, but self-love. Love for dreaming. Love for fear. Love for solitude. Love of re-discovery. Love for ones roots. Love to our human fellows. Love to the unknown brother. Love for the past and hope for the present.

2017 has left us with wonderful memories. A sea of emotions of all kinds but above all a myriad of reflections.

We leave 2017 behind with friends who are no longer walking along with us but rather will wait for us in a parallel universe. With those close to us left homeless by the earthquake. We move forward with sentiments of support which have united us as a community. We welcome 2018 filled with happiness for the opportunity to be able to write one more year in our history, but most of all for having the good fortune to keep discovering our mission in life.

I wish you all an enlightened 2018. A year of rejoicing in life. Let’s all build bridges with our deeds and dismantle divisive walls.

Welcome 2018.

Saner. Cuernavaca, Mexico. April 18th, 2017. (photo © Leo Vazquez)

 

Photo location: Cuernavaca, México
Date: April 08 2017
Photo by: Leo Vazquez
Art paper: Mojigangas de Felipe y Mika

 

SANER

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NeSPoon: Wishes And Hopes For 2018

NeSPoon: Wishes And Hopes For 2018

December 23, 2017

As we draw closer to the new year we’ve asked a very special guest every day to take a moment to reflect on 2017 and to tell us about one photograph that best captures the year for them. It’s an assortment of treats to surprise you with every day – to enjoy and contemplate as we all reflect on the year that has passed and conjure our hopes and wishes for 2018. This is our way of sharing the sweetness of the season and of saying ‘Thank You’ to each of you for inspiring us throughout the year.

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From the West Bank to Moscow to Chernobl to New York, the Polish NeSpoon adorns the urban scene with an organic lace, a sort of soothing balm or lightweight webbed connective tissue that heals the damaged man-made environment, making it stronger and whole. Decidedly feminine and resolutely decorative, you discover NeSpoon on an old wall or abandoned space in a city and realize that what she brought is exactly what was needed. Today she shares a moment in 2017 that highlighted one of the many ironies of our personal/public identity in the world, depending on where you are and who is looking at you.

NeSPOON

The choice of the picture was not easy, because I feel a strong, personal bond with all my works. Finally, I send you this photo, made during an opening of an exhibition in Warsaw. The jacket ‘Artist’ was designed by me and made by the company producing uniforms for police and public services. That night I met by chance my two friends wearing clothes with a good comment on how I felt often in 2017.

Life is sometimes so ironic.

 

NeSPoon. Warsaw, Poland. November 11th, 2017. (photo © Piotr Rosiński)

 

NesPoon

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Pixel Pancho: Wishes And Hopes For 2018

Pixel Pancho: Wishes And Hopes For 2018

December 22, 2017

  

As we draw closer to the new year we’ve asked a very special guest every day to take a moment to reflect on 2017 and to tell us about one photograph that best captures the year for them. It’s an assortment of treats to surprise you with every day – to enjoy and contemplate as we all reflect on the year that has passed and conjure our hopes and wishes for 2018. This is our way of sharing the sweetness of the season and of saying ‘Thank You’ to each of you for inspiring us throughout the year.

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The retro-futurist Italian Street Artist and sculptor Pixel Pancho sets imaginations running with his robotically romantic stories that weave together elements of dystopian breakdown, steampunk adventure, heartbreak, and good old fashioned man-V-Man-V-Nature-V-Society-V-Self drama. We’ve run into him this year in Hong Kong, New Jersey, Brooklyn and Berlin, and each time his sparkling inventive mind is what hits you first, then his work ethic that is focused like a lazer – with each rusty and surreal-o-botic storyline thoughtfully planned into his compositions on canvasses, on walls, and into sculpture. Today Pixel tells us about a mural he did this year in Texas honoring a special member of his family.

PIXEL PANCHO

When you spend your life travelling, the concept of family and home are relative. But if home is where your heart is, I can be sure that I’ve always carried my family with me.

Before my last trip I lost a member of my ‘family’, the one who was with me since the beginning. Blanco my cat passed away into my arms. I made this wall to remind him that he will always be in my heart.

This is the motivation that defines my job; Painting walls, building sculptures to communicate to people that nothing is forever and we better take care of our beloved – and our planet – as long as we are here.

Wishing you all the best, take care
Pixel Pancho

#weareallimmigrants

Pixel Pancho. HUE Mural Fest. Houston, TX. November 25, 2017. (photo © Pixel Pancho)

 

Pixel Pancho

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Fintan Magee: Wishes And Hopes For 2018

Fintan Magee: Wishes And Hopes For 2018

December 21, 2017

As we draw closer to the new year we’ve asked a very special guest every day to take a moment to reflect on 2017 and to tell us about one photograph that best captures the year for them. It’s an assortment of treats to surprise you with every day – to enjoy and contemplate as we all reflect on the year that has passed and conjure our hopes and wishes for 2018. This is our way of sharing the sweetness of the season and of saying ‘Thank You’ to each of you for inspiring us throughout the year.

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Brisbane-based realist Fintan Magee has been nailing tall walls around the world this year with technical precision and an extraordinary appreciation for our ordinary lives. We had the privilege of seeing him in action in Scotland, Sweden and Tahiti this year and each time we realized that he’s undaunted by the scale of a job, in love with the process of painting. He is also completely dedicated to speaking to the profound issues of our time including global warming, sea levels rising, our refugee crises worldwide, and natural resource preservation and management. Carrying the water theme, Fintan shares with us one of his favorite pieces of the year in Instanbul.

FINTAN MAGEE

I chose this one because it was a new aesthetic for me and Istanbul was easily my favourite city that I have visited this year. I also wanted to thank Mural Istanbul for being amazing hosts and all the locals who looked after me.

Fintan Magee. Istanbul, Turkey. June, 2017. (photo © Fintan Magee)

 

Fintan Magee

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Faith XLVII: Wishes And Hopes For 2018

Faith XLVII: Wishes And Hopes For 2018

December 20, 2017

As we draw closer to the new year we’ve asked a very special guest every day to take a moment to reflect on 2017 and to tell us about one photograph that best captures the year for them. It’s an assortment of treats to surprise you with every day – to enjoy and contemplate as we all reflect on the year that has passed and conjure our hopes and wishes for 2018. This is our way of sharing the sweetness of the season and of saying ‘Thank You’ to each of you for inspiring us throughout the year.

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South African graffiti writer-turned-international-Street Artist Faith XVLII continues to evolve her mural and fine art practices as she grapples with global politics and personal emotion. This year her directorial role in a pop-up multi-media and live performance in Berlin with Inka Kendzia and Manthe Ribane exposed viewers to a full immersion of her deeper convictions about hedonism, race, militarism, and the war industry. As we witness the evolution of an artist born in the urban art scene, Faith XVII reminds us to keep expectations hopeful and wide open – especially if society is going to be able to meet our coming challenges. Today she shares with us her observations on the state of things right now and offers insight about how we might a gain greater understanding of it.

FAITH XLVII 

Recent events in world politics have been very disheartening, setting us back on much important work that has been done in the past to secure woman’s rights, workers rights and movement towards a more equal society.

The human condition seems to perpetually damage itself. The more I meditate on it the more I realize how its the simplest and most fundamental wisdoms that are out of sync. Our alienation is a root cause of our dis-ease. I believe rebuilding our connection to nature, to animals, to other cultures and ultimately to the eco-systems on this planet are an essential part of the healing process.

There is a dire need for new perspectives and new sustainable methods of living on the planet.

This installation with Lyall Sprong in Sweden was a part of this search, an ode to the timekeeper, the ancient Lunar force that silently watches over us.

The image is ultimately a call to a greater connection. A wish and intention of sorts, for a deeper understanding of the unseen forces that effect us.

 

Faith XLVII. Astronmia Nova installation in forests of Sweden. 2017. (photo © Cory Ring of Chop’em Down Films)

 

Faith XLVII

 

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