Tennessee and Texas Sample a Certain Street Savoir Faire
Look out for Le Rat!
He’s getting up in places down south that you wouldn’t normally associate with a French Street Artist, much less the one who started stenciling in a style and manner unusual on Paris walls in ’81 – an antecedent for much of what we later would call ‘Street Art”.
Thanks to gallerist and collector Brian Greif, Blek Le Rat made a run for it through Texas in cities like Waco, Austin, and Houston – after spending a week teaching students at Montgomery Bell Academy in Nashville how to create stencils in his distinct style.
It was a unique experience for the artist roughly 40 years after he first began doing these same activities illegally and under cover of night – and Greif tells us that the artist was so moved by the large audiences and appreciation by new fans that he is even encouraged to return.
“I think its time now to go back to the real sources of street art by painting real walls in real cities and not just the major cities around the world,” says Blek in an interview with Greif. “We need to touch people by painting walls in cities that have not experienced this movement.”
Other Articles You May Like from BSA:
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities. Now screening : 1. We Don't Need More Rats: The Clandestine White-washing of 5Pointz 2. DISTORT by Element Tree ...
Located in one of France’s youngest and poorest regions, the city of Roubaix also is called home by a mix of immigrant populations from the global south who integrated into a vastly different culture...
We’re celebrating the end of one year and the beginning of the next by thanking BSA Readers, Friends, and Family for your support in 2021. We have selected some of our favorite shots from the yea...
Join the party today in Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where the street art festival Kin Graff 4 brought many to celebrate the murals, the artists, and the festival itself with mus...
What visit to Berlin is complete without a train adorned with a 1UP piece? 1UP Crew in Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo) Chased since 2003, this anonymous amorphous and acrobatic aerosol crew has a...