A basketball court in summertime is a proving ground for skill, a place to kill time with friends, and sometimes a launchpad for dreams of going “professional”. Here in Fermo City in Northern Italy, it’s a place for Street Artist Giulio Vesprini to expand his abstract practice to the field of sport.
“The shapes, colors and unique elements of botany characterize my work,” he says, and you can see that his palette is carefully chosen, and sophisticated. His new work is in concert with the Fermo Urban Museum (FUM) and took an organic route to completion, with the help of a handful of assistance. It’s many steps away from the inner city work you might normally associate with innercity graffiti; the sound and fury transmuted. Primitive, graphic, and crisply illustrative, this freshly painted court provides a new field of art and nature for players he’ll never meet.
Graffiti writer, Street Artist, and muralist Steve Powers (aka ESPO) has created cryptic poetry in bold, nostalgia formed fonts on city walls including Brooklyn, Dublin, and his hometown Philadelphia.
In Syracuse, a city in mid-New York State, he has left his inside-joke humor outside on many bridges. We just happened to driving through this weekend and caught a few of his pieces from the last few years that suddenly cross your path – often as you are descending through an underpass.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this time featuring BRCEDU, Captain Eyeliner, Damon, Dark Clouds,Fhake, Ghake, Jerk Face, Mad Villian, Mattew Hyte, MurOne, Praxis, R Burns Wilder, Shepard Fairey, Sinned, Stikman, Tatyana Fazlalizadeh, Thomas Allen, and Vy.
A quick shout out to the new collaged gender fuckery Judith Supine uses that openly plays with the man. The Marlboro man that is; the ubiquitous cowboy that appeared in advertisements for thirty-five years, thanks to Philip Morris and Leo Burnett. Enveloped in mythology and archetypes of masculinity, countless men died of cancer emulating this hunky wind-whipped hero of the imaginary west, including at least four of the original actors who portrayed the fictional character, according to the LA Times.
Not
to get sidetracked from Supine’s intensely playful machinations with the knife
and magazine. The Street Artist has successfully redirected his studio and
street practice in recent years, stripping back the fluorescence many of his
2000s-2010’s pieces were known for. Here he is choosing to focus instead on his
unexpected recombinants of limbs, features, and proportions to present
otherworldly figures who are just human enough to disturb your subconscious,
and make you laugh.
By
playing with the same magnetic images that drew millions to the messages in
glossy magazines of the 60s-90s, Judith winks flirtatiously at you with clever
bait and switching. Pulling apart our instincts and letting them lay next to,
or sit upon, or lick, or pop out of one another, Supine daily plays with
fantasy and fiction, and very possibly fear.
Muddguts in
Williamsburg hosts Manlbdro right now, where they say “The Cowboy
series is a continuation of the artist’s pursuit of placing art between the
worlds of abstraction and representation.”
The collages featured on the show are the original images that were used for the posters on his bus shelters ad take over around NYC city streets. We have published the ad take over installations HERE and HERE
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening : 1. Facing The Giant: Three Decades of Dissent Part Two – Shepard Fairey 2. Stephanie Boyce: If You Know Me Is To Love Me. 3. Dotmasters: Why Is That Shovel There?
BSA Special Feature: Facing The Giant: Three Decades of Dissent Part Two – Shepard Fairey
The sky is on fire! And it’s not just because of the gorgeous sunset.
Shepard Fairey has been respectfully smacking us in the head for 30 years with his earnestly alarmist art in the streets. Challenging a narrative pushed by the corporate state via smiling blond newsreaders fronting a well funded armature of skullduggery, this perpetual dissenter has found ways to deliver the poison pill with ever-more sophisticated graphic design and plain spoken diatribe.
“I
was trying to encourage people to just be more analytical and to come to their
own conclusions,” he says as he describes his work during the steady hail of
disinformation called “The War on Terror”. Bless his heart.
He
says he was looking for a more honest manifestation of his work and how he
represented the observations and opinions he had based on his own research.
“I felt like I had the courage to become myself what I had emulated in a lot of my heroes.” Faced with a hostile political environment from the corporatized media machine and the dazed inertia response from a significant portion of his intended audience, it is surely maddening at times. Regardless, as an artist, catalyzer and a citizen, Fairey continues to challenge himself, and us.
Stephanie Boyce: If You Know Me Is To Love Me.
Brooklyn
Artist Stephanie Boyce has been drawing all her life and takes you on a tour of
her neighborhood and the Muddguts Gallery that represents her.
“It’s
difficult to tell my story in a ten minute movie,” she says, but you get a good
idea of the ups and downs that she has faced through her art, their symbolisms,
and of course her own words.
Special
props go out to Director Nicolas Heller for this insightful and well-balanced
storytelling.
Dotmasters: Why Is That Shovel There? Nuart Aberdeen. By MZM Projects
Dotmasters
also takes you on a tour in his new video, and even instructs you how his
technique is done. Mostly, it’s a relaxed conversation about his history and
his approach.
“Oh
that’s just a silkscreen process with a spraycan,” he said of his initial
realization of how certain pieces on the street were done when seeing
stencillists like Blek Le Rat in the 80s. “And I thought, ‘Wow, that’s a good
way of invading public space’.”
The Turin-based illustrator Guerrilla Spam has interpreted the “Quarantana” as a stylized toy extended from the arm of an elegant, almost Egyptian figure in a tall fez. Alessandria-born Street Artist 108 depicts the traditional doll as a unique abstraction merged within a form, not specifically figurative, rather primitive perhaps.
Guerrilla Spam x 108. Premio Antonio Giordano Festival. Santa Croce di Magliano, Italy. July 2019. (photo courtesy of the festival)
Both
are interpreting a pagan/Christian traditional ritual next to each other here
in Santa Croce di Magliano.
Guerrilla Spam x 108. Premio Antonio Giordano Festival. Santa Croce di Magliano, Italy. July 2019. (photo courtesy of the festival)
“ ‘Quarantana‘ is a doll made of fabric and straw, having the appearance of an old woman; the doll, usually hanged to a rope between the balconies or in front of the windows, stands on a potato with seven feathers attached,” say organizers at the Antonio Giordano Street Art festival. “The ritual, fusing Christian and pagan cultures, expresses the importance of living a life of sobriety and peace.”
Guerrilla Spam x 108. Premio Antonio Giordano Festival. Santa Croce di Magliano, Italy. July 2019. (photo courtesy of the festival)Guerrilla Spam x 108. Premio Antonio Giordano Festival. Santa Croce di Magliano, Italy. July 2019. (photo courtesy of the festival)Guerrilla Spam x 108. Premio Antonio Giordano Festival. Santa Croce di Magliano, Italy. July 2019. (photo courtesy of the festival)Guerrilla Spam x 108. Premio Antonio Giordano Festival. Santa Croce di Magliano, Italy. July 2019. (photo courtesy of the festival)
Street Artists have a natural affinity for abandoned places.
Sometimes they wander through them to find the right spot to create a piece.
Other times they wonder who used to live here. Who used to work here. Where are
they now. You may never learn the truth, but you can rely upon your observation
skills – and the stories of others. Sometimes you meet someone who used to
inhabit it.
This one room school house was built in the 1930s, according
to artist Chip Thomas, and was used until 1959. More than six decades later,
the Street Artist/Installation artist interviewed people here in the community
of La Isla in southern Colorado to learn about their heritage. Many are
descendants of the Spanish who passed through during the last few centuries, commandeering,
trading with, and enslaving Native Americans.
Chip says he installed images of people who attended this
one room schoolhouse, some of them wheatpasted, others fluttering in breezes
over the dirt floor. A simple structure, it is still full of many memories for some
who live in the area.
“It’s a gorgeous spot,” he says of the San Luis Valley. “It’s
at about 7,800 feet above sea level and the valley is 122 miles long and 74
miles wide.” In the images are old and new portaits of students who went there.
He calls it the “La Isla Memory Project.”
“Olor a Azucenas el Perfume del Barrio” (The smell of Lilies is the Perfume of the Neighborhood) is the new mural by Don Rimx for this Brooklyn wall on Grand Street.
He lived here for a while, an energetic and exciting part of the borough full of sights, sounds, smells, and tastes that may remind many of New York’s deep ties to Puerto Rico.
A figure holding an armful of flowers, the image is inspired by a flower seller in San Juan, says the artist. A fragrant reminder of the sweetness of the island, the Azucena’s in his embrace are an emotional bridge between the NY-PR divide, a symbol of the love that many people have for both.
For Don Rimx, there is an additional element that assures him when he travels. “The feeling that no matter where I paint, I will always feel at home.”
Part
of a residency that she is doing with the
LuXor
Factory in Le Locle, this project has enabled the Polish Street Artist/fine
artist/muralist to study the local lace motifs that are identified with this
part of Switzerland historically. She has included the heritage in this
veritable wrapping of lace, custom made for this town of 10,000 especially.
Robert Muller testified before Congress this week and no one seems happy. The spin-masters distort his words and his findings to accommodate their own personal narrative…and to continue to distract us from the thieve’s hands in our cupboards across the country.
Corporate Democrats and Corporate Republicans won’t get rid of this guy, but at least it will distract us from the lowest tax rates on the rich in our lifetimes, global warming, gun violence, increased poverty, racist immigrant-bashing policies, increased homeless populations, and a corrupted medical insurance system. So far, these distractions are working splendidly.
Sorry, that’s an unhappy way of welcoming you to BSA Images of the Week! You deserve better!
The news is that summer is in full swing and people are on the streets cooling off in public fountains, dancing, watching outdoor movies on roofs and in parks, seeing theater and music performances, and hopefully hitting Coney Island for a beach splash or a thrill ride.
The streets are being plastered with art. Some with political and social messages, some with a sense of humor, others with an acute sense of popular culture. A few are just plain pretty to look at. Whatever the style, the intention or the placement, what’s important is the fact that it’s happening again with gusto. Artists are out as well, sharing their ideas and their experiments with us, all for free and with permission to touch and photograph.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this time featuring Almost Over Keep Smiling, Frederic Edwin Church, Judith Supine, Mattew Hyte, Shepard Fairey, The Postman Art, and Winston Tseng.
“You must have rocks in your head if you think that you are going out with your friends dressed like that!” says your mom as you add more gel to your hair while pouring over every detail of your magnificence in the mirror. Honestly, your parents are so square.
“Rocks in your head” is an idiom meant to infer that someone
is thoroughly stupid, crazy, absurd — and with world news combined
with a firehose of entertainment and disinformation flooding you from every
direction today, sometimes you wonder about the thoughts, emotions, and
memories that you have to process inside your head just to remain “balanced”
That’s what artist Cristina Daura was thinking about when she created her new public art mural for the Contorno Urbano community mural program called 12+1 in Barcelona. She went to MICA in Baltimore for illustration, and spent a few years working in dead-end, unfulfilling jobs until she struck out on her own drawing comics and illustrating about things that interest her most for music and publishing clients.
“Her artwork plays
with the mind, using primary colors in harsh, punk and somehow macabre
illustrations, where decapitated or faceless people are often protagonists,”
says Contorno Urbano in a recent email.
“As if it were
an x-ray, the artist has represented a head full of things, thoughts, and emotions.
On the one hand, the flowers symbolize the illusion and the deepest dreams of
human beings. On the other, the rocks are destructive and cause a
transformation.”
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening : 1. ShowZart – Man One / A Street Art Story 2. “Opening Lines” with Pat Perry 3. Kids Dancing it out on the streets with murals …because it’s summer baby! 4. The “Go Back to Your Country” Singers
BSA Special Feature: ShowZart – Man One / A Street Art Story
Artists helping artists – yes it actually happens. Here in downtown Los Angeles, where Street Art has been a large part of the scene for quite a while, a residency in an old abandoned hotel gives artists an opportunity to live and create. One artist curated a brother artist who was homeless into his own residency, and the results are inspiring.
ShowZart – Man One / A Street Art Story / Film by Vonjako
“Opening Lines” with Pat Perry
Michigan Street Artist/muralist/commercial artist Pat Perry lives in Detroit but created this sister city mural duo that bridges the gap between countries and cultures. With children as messengers, this video illustrates universal truths and the power of art to break down barriers, build bridges between people in Biddeford, Maine and Slemani, Iraq. Also, its cheaper than bombs – although less profitable for the war industry.
Kids Dancing it out on the streets with murals …because it’s summer baby!
Summer’s here and the time is right for dancing in the streets! Where better to shoot a video of these kids doing their stuff than in front of Welling Court murals in Queens. Students from Arya Dance Academy, these Bollywood beauties act like tough stuff as they incorporate South Asian dance techniques with the latest global youth culture moves, making New Yorkers proud.
The “Go Back to Your Country” Singers
Breaking down the ignorance in the most glamorous way.
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
