Context and placement are key to the success of Street Art. Jay Shells’s project, “The Rap Quotes” more than meets those standards. Indeed his project might be one of the most relevant examples of street art responding to a specific time and place in history that you’ll ever see.
Jay Shells: The Rap Quotes Coast To Coast. Dokument Press. Sweden, 2019.
We’ve been repping Jay Shells (Jason Shelowitz) for years since we first found his text-based signage on Brooklyn streets in the oddest of locations. Within a short time they began to make sense, and then brilliant sense – since they acted as a GPS for some of your favorite rap lyrics.
“What if somehow these lyrics existed
visually, in the exact location mentioned?” he says to illustrate his original
idea.
Since that time the artist has taken
his Rap Quotes across the country (Philadelphia, Atlanta, Houston, Los Angeles),
faithfully hunting down streets and neighborhoods and corners and businesses
referenced by a host of recordings from classic rap era and a few of the new
kids on the block as well.
“I’ve always had a serious passion for
lyricism, partly because I’ve always been envious of people who are gifted with
words,” he says in his new hardcover book that documents the 5 year campaign.
It is gratifying to see him out scaling the telephone poles and climbing
ladders with drill in hand to post these signs. They are a semi-permanent claim
to public space and people’s history at the same time; a recognition of an art
form of writing that rarely gets such laudatory treatment.
See the video at the end documenting the process – which Shelowitz credits as being the force that encouraged him the most. “My friend Bucky (Turco) ran a magazine and website called Animal New York, and when I told him about the project, he wanted to be involved. He introduced me to his newly hired photographer and videographer, Aymann Ismail at a party on a Friday night in early March 2013. We hit the streets early the next morning to get the 30 signs up, with Aymann document the process. About a week later, they posted the video and photos with a short write-up, and the rest is history.”
Check out some photos of the book in
the mean time.
Springtime makes you do spontaneous acts of nature – like running to the local plant store or corner deli to buy a plant for your mom, or your grandma, or that colorful guy who runs the laundromat on the corner.
There is something very gratifying in the act of giving a living thing to another person that makes you feel grounded to the earth, connected to the family of humanity.
For the next five days Street Art brothers Icy & Sot are giving us all an opportunity to give plants to people who live in refugee camps, while they wait for a better future.
Icy & Sot “Giving Plant” (photo courtesy of Icy & Sot)
With the goal of improving quality of life and fortifying the dignity of the refugee population in Greece, Icy & Sot will be in Lesvos in person next month to hand out plants to the people there together with the foundation Movement On The Ground .
For the next five days, until April 22nd at midnight (EST) you can help by purchasing their new print, “Giving Plant”.
“The Idea is to give hope and joy to the people in the refugee camps while they are waiting for a better future,” says Sot.
Girl with flowers at the Olive Grove. (photo courtesy of Icy & Sot)
“Basically with buying a print you are buying plants for the refugees,” explains Icy.
Please Click on the link below to purchase the print:
Please forward this link to friends and family as well – It’s an excellent way to give and show support in a place where nature will be welcomed.
Family at the Olive Grove. (photo courtesy of Icy & Sot)
From Movement On The Ground Website: Movement On The Ground, is a group of independent business people responding to a humanitarian crisis affecting the innocent men, women, and children forced from their homes by climate change, poverty, and war. Movement On The Ground sets a new blueprint for humanitarian help worldwide.
The organization aims to maintain a fixed presence on the island of Lesvos. They work as much as possible with the local community in the attempt to connect locals with refugees. Their projects are all based on the goal of improving dignity for the refugee population.
Sophie Sandberg says she founded Cat Calls of NYC a handful of years ago, but word spread. “It’s not until recently that it’s become a collective,” she says of the network of largely college age people who are using public art to raise awareness about street harassment and the importance of words and their effect on women and our society at large.
The practice of publicly commenting on a strangers’ appearance or other characteristics has marred the daily experience for many women and some men for decades and it doesn’t take a social scientist to interpret the motivations. Thanks to public art campaigns from people like Street Artist Tatyana Fazlalizadeh and others like this collective, public space can feel safe and free to enjoy without the annoyance and in some cases, fear of simply traversing their city.
Cat Calls of NYC uses chalk on the streets to quote actual “commentary” that people report on their hotline, often at the same spot it took place. Shining a light on the veiled or explicit threats of aggression that many women face daily on the streets of our cities and towns around the world, the practice shames the harasser and opens the public conversation. If you ask people about the harassment they are subjected to, they will tell you that most likely they don’t know one woman who hasn’t been harassed one way or another on the streets.
Today
we bring you some recent images from Cat Calls Of NYC, which has inspired
numerous other women (and some men) to start their own chapters in different
cities in the USA and around the world.
The Italian textual conceptualist and urban/suburban public space instigator
ELFO has lodged his complaint on a wall against the misinformation that forms
our perceptions. The humorous one-off screed caught our attention so we asked
him about this low-fi textwork that seems decidedly Duchampian, with a nod to
Magritte’s pipe.
BSA:Duchamp challenged conceptions of the art world with his “readymade” pieces and many a critic called him a fake. Your commentary references the “fake news” meme favored by the right wing news and politicians. How did you make the connection?
ELFO: Currently my work is returning to this message. I want to speak of the world and the history of art in ironic and contemporary way using contemporary terms. I chose Duchamp because his artwork changed the world of art. Duchamp is perfect because he played with fake identity and the critic system rendered him as a fake. He changed the rules of art, for me and many artists.
BSA:What role should art play in this world of “fake news”?
ELFO: In this world of fake news, art probably is a big fake – if it does not reflect society as a mirror.
BSA: Do you think art should always reflect our society like a mirror?
ELFO: The problem is not fake news in this world – it’s the human brain. Art must speak about serious issues like pollution for example. This is the next subject I’ll address since I have been looking at it for a long time.
Thanks for stopping by to survey with us some of the most arresting new images we found in the last days of art and artists making work in the public sphere – this weekly mainly NYC.
So here’s our weekly interview with the street, this time featuring Captain Eyeliner, CIty Kitty, De Lys, Hiss, LMNOPI, Lunge Box, ESPO, Street Beans, Vizie, and #HighLinerResist.
Yes, it is Saturday. It’s also#Caturdayif you are a fan of the felines and you want to contribute to or simply scroll through the roughly 7.5 million photos with that hashtag onInstagram.
This Spanish cat named Tommy looks like he could have belonged to Matisse, due to the overlapping abstract collage method, but British artist Christina Lina says he was her grandmother’s cat – so we guessed wrong. The artist and educator often creates props, temporary sculpture, and installations for kids and places they frequent, and finds her work easily moves from public to private space and back again.
“My
work as artist and my work as educator are not easily or tidily separated,” she
says of her work. “Mostly I work within a sort of collapse between the two.”
This mural part of a public art program done in concert with local Ferran Sunyer school (so-named after the mathematician) in a neighborhood of Barcelona and students had the opportunity to create puppets during the final phase of the program.
With special thanks to the 12 + 1 walls program by Contorno Urbano.
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening : 1. David Shillinglaw: Alive In The Human Hive 2. Flavita Banana in Barcelona for 12+1 Project 3. JR at the Louvre 4. A NYC Subway Train in Queretaro, Mexico
BSA Special Feature: David Shillinglaw: Alive In The Human Hive
“The artworks I make are an absurd visual taxonomy listed in no particular order the ingredients that we all consume and produce,” explains the British painter and Street Artist David Shillinglaw. Clearly, he’ll have enough to paint until his dying day, as we cannot stop producing.
Another
gem here: “We are funky little space monkeys orbiting a ball of hot gas”
David Shillinglaw: Alive In The Human Hive
Flavita Banana in Barcelona for 12+1 Project
“With a nod to La Danse by Henri Matisseand many human tribes’ rites of Spring, artist Falvita Banana creates her new “Juntes sumem” (add together) here on the façade of Cotxeres Borrell in Barcelona,” we wrote a few weeks ago when she first finished her mural. Today we have video of the event. See the original article here: Flavita Banana & Women in a Springtime Dance
JR at the Louvre
This time-lapse movie shows the installation of street artist JR’s paper trompe l’oeil at the Louvre Pyramid in Paris, France.
“On the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the Louvre Pyramid, JR
created a collaborative piece of art on the scale of the Napoleon Court.
Three years after having made the Pyramid disappear, the artist brought
a new light to the famed monument by realizing a gigantic collage,
thanks to the help of 400 volunteers !
Each day hundreds of volunteers came to help cut and paste the 2000 strips of paper, making it the biggest pasting ever done by the artist.”
A NYC Subway Train in Queretaro, Mexico
When local graff writers in Queretaro, Mexico heard that New York’s famous photographer Martha Cooper was going to be in their town for a new exhibition they decided to welcome her in the best way they knew how: A graffiti jam on a train.
Sometimes as an artist you go away to the city to chase opportunity, to pursue new paths, to develop your repertoire. Sometimes you return home to give your city a gift.
Known more recently for her works on the street and on street walls in Barcelona, Street Artist and sculptor Elbi Elem continues to develop her geometric reach, even as it leads her to alleys, roofs, and houses in her hometown of Cordoba, Spain.
Taking inspiration from the large scale installations in cities like Rio where Dutch artistsJeroen Koolhaas and Dre Urhahntransformed the Santa Marta Favela, Elbi began to work with the multiple textures and angles and surfaces that occur in a grouping of building.
She says it was a big challenge creating anomorphic images within different planes upon adjacent buildings, but, “After a long period of waiting, some demanding walls, using a large dose of patience, a lot of hard work and negotiations with the expected rain, I finally finished this work in my beautiful and dear Córdoba,” she says. Appropriately, she’s calling it “Home”.
When local graff writers in Queretaro, Mexico heard that New York’s famous photographer Martha Cooper was going to be in their town for a new exhibition they decided to welcome her in the best way they knew how: A graffiti jam on a train.
With the help of the organizers at Nueve Arte Urbano, the local kings and queens scored a long wall on a busy major avenue that they could paint subway cars on and convert to an NYC train. They hoped Martha would feel at home seeing this and it looked like she definitely did.
It’s a fast-growing major city without a subway, even though it could definitely use a more inclusive and efficient public transportation system since its quick growth has swelled to a million inhabitants. Scores of multi-national corporations left the US and set up shop here since they wrote the NAFTA trade deal and now employ this highly educated population. Many universities, lower wages, and an easier regulatory environment have brought the big companies here as well as the fact that the city boasts an attractive protected historical area that was declared a World UNESCO zone. Now they have a subway, at least a temporary painted one.
The neighborhood where the wall is located is called “San Francisquito” or Little San Francisco – a sort of sister city for many of the folks who have family in that US city as well. Rich in character and history, the neighborhood retains a distinct connection to indigenous culture: For example this is the home of Los Concheros, a group of native indigenous people in Mexico who have roots in the Chichimecas, Aztecs and, Mexicas who perform traditional dances dating back to the early colonial period.
Mostly residential, with narrow cobblestone streets and family-owned small business and grocery stores, we saw many locals who appeared pleased for the industry of local youth in a mural that stirred some excitement and pride.
They stopped by and commented on the new works and wondered where the action was coming from as aerosol lettering and characters began to populate the train sides.
It
was an interlude of serendipity that the visiting New Yorkers were not
expecting – a sunny day full of love and art. Martha happily obliged to
requests for photos, to write tags in black books and thanked each of them for
their gifts of t shirts, stickers and even a miniature portrait of her drawn in
pencil.
“I’ve
always been fascinated by the idea of including vegetation in my artwork,” says
Italian painter Greg Jager. “This way the work will never be the same. Every
day you will notice differences due to the natural life cycle of the trees in
front of it”.
A mural for all seasons it is; A natural collaboration between the Roman graffuturist and the branch spread of this city tree. Usually you can see the reflections, refractions of architecture in the work of this graffiti writer turned commercial/fine artist. Here in Turin the geometry will frame the organic as the tree continues to go through its life cycle.
Through an international open call, three artists were selected: Greg Jager (ITA), Geometric Bang (ITA) and Himed & Reyben (USA / MEX). Each artist was invited to create an urban art painting and to direct a workshop in collaboration with Collegno schools and citizens of Turin.
Anyone born after 1960, and that includes most sticker artists on the street today, has a positive association with the humble sticker. From “smiley” and “gold star” rewards stuck to the top of your grade-school class papers to scratch-n-sniff or puffy stickers to MAD magazine product parodies for Quacker Oats and Minute Lice, a lot of kids grew up with good feelings about slaps.
Over the past two decades a serious community of sticker designers, traders,
artists, exhibitors and collectors has emerged – virtually assuring that public
bathrooms in heavy metal/ punk / hip hop/ alternative music clubs will be covered
top to bottom or ‘smashed’ with stickers. Adhesive equivalents of a business
card or portfolio sample for many artists, musicians, philosophers, anarchists,
and wise guys/gals, stickers are a quick and relatively inexpensive way to get
your message out to the world.
The sticker artist and curator named “I Will Not” has rallied together
thousands, even hundreds of thousands of stickers by artists from all over the
world during the last few years to mount sticker shows inside of the gallery
space – taking the concept of a group show into near infinity. A solo practice
intended for public campaigns, the global interconnectedness of this scene is
irrefutable, enabling entire galleries to showcase a massive amount of work at
once, including these from the DC Street Sticker Expo.
Like most subcultures, this one has a semi-tight set of rules and conventions and customs. For example, it is common to share your stickers in packs with other artists, but you are expected to put theirs up in your city. As in graffiti and Street Art, it is also verboten to obscure another artists sticker with yours on the street and any violation of this rule may result in “beef”, or a street grudge and public rivalry.
A book like “Smashed” can only come about with the complete passion of an author like IWillNot, who shares his infectious enthusiasm for the sticker game in this softcover volume. Here are some images from the book, as well as a link to learn more about it.
iwillnot. SMASHED: The Art of the Sticker Combo. DC Street Sticker EXPO. 2018
Many images this week are from our short visit to Querétaro, Mexico this week – where, among other things, we saw first hand many of the murals mounted by the festival Nueve Arte Urbano over the past few years. Each festival around the world is unique to its local culture – with the possible exception of the highly commercial ones that are self-styling as a franchise of cool McArt dipped in tangy “Street” flavored sauce. We had a good survey of this mural/street art/graffiti scene in the context of Mexico’s historic mural masters, and a true sense of how counterculture can be embraced by so-called “mainstream” culture for the betterment of both.
In
short, the DNA of this festival is not about self-promotion but engaging
community in meaningful dialogue, respecting tradition of indigenous culture,
and embracing the modern day rebels who have brought art to the streets in
myriad ways. Combined with an unprecedented 101 photo exhibition of graffiti,
Street Art, and urban culture mounted on the streets that was too meta for our
brains, we saw people walking the walk, not just talking the talk. We only wish
we had more time, and a drone!
Additionally this week we have a few more favorite shots from a quick trip to Berlin last week. Berlin is basically Brooklyn’s sister city and it was also in the full throes of Spring, with long lines at the all-night dance clubs way after the sun came up. This weekend it looks like Brooklyn is warming up too – almost beer garden time!
Until then, let’s head over to Bamonte’s for a vodka martini with the fine men and women of what’s left of Italian American Williamsburg here in Brooklyn. This is an institution that’s 119 years old lined with framed photos of famous Italian Americans and celebrities who ate there like Telly Savalas and that guy from the Sopranos!
No music, only the clinking of glasses and animated storytelling and some people who may have been dining here when the Dodgers were still in Brooklyn – all eating lobster tails, shrimp cocktail, clams oreganata, iceberg lettuce salads, pastas, meat balls, fish, sautéed porkchops, scalloped potatoes, green beans, chicken parmesan, and blueberry pie or tiramisu. Okay it’s not five star, you big hotshot, but it’s at least as good as your Aunt Rosa’s kitchen, amiright? Bamontes not good enough for you now, you big Broccolini?
And the portions, my god, you won’t need to eat again
until Good Friday.
So here’s our weekly interview with the street, this time featuring 007, 1UP Crew, Calladitos, City Kitty, Clown Soldier, CS SZYMAN, Deih XLF, drsc0, Ger-Man, La Madriguera Grafica, Mantra, Nespoon, Paola Delfin, Santiago Savi, Victor Lopez, and Voxx Romana.
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
