BSA Images Of The Week: 05.24.15

May 24, 2015 Artists, BSA Images Of The Week

New York is bittersweet as we are welcoming summer this weekend and remembering those who served and who were lost in war as well (Memorial Day); amidst a changing political atmosphere where the country is tentatively beginning to seriously debate whether the US should have gone to Iraq and Afghanistan.

So it’s also Fleet Week in New York, which means a lot of sailors and marines and Coast Guard personnel are carousing the tourist spots and bars – sort of a military spring break and a chance for the local girls and boys to yell out “Hey Sailor!” – and flash some flirty eyes. It’s also big weekend for movies, barbecues, beers, burping, suntans, rummage sales, bike rides, and of course spray painting empty trailers in cluttered lots. That’s why we start this weeks pack with a new stallion just sprayed on a trailer in Williamsburg by Cern. He’s running wild with a great view of the cityscape behind him.

Also, Kiss Me I’m Irish!

So here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Cern, Christos Voutichtis, David De La Mano, Din din, Dont Fret, DourOne, Iraq Veterens Against the War, Kuma, Mata Ruda, Miishab, Musketon, Pablog H Harymbat, Rebel, Smells, Sweet Toof, Temo & Miel, and Urma.

Top image above by Cern (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Cern (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Iraq Veterans Against The War (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Mata Ruda in Jersey City, NJ for Savage Habbit. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Mata Ruda in Jersey City, NJ for Savage Habbit. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Telmo & Miel new mural in Dortmund, Germany for 44309//Street Art Gallery. (photo © Courtesy of 44309 // Street Art Gallery)

Smells . Sweet Toof (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Musketon. It’s in the cloud… (photo © Jaime Rojo)

DourOne new wall in Los Angeles, CA. (photo © Phil Sanchez)

Artist Unknown. This has got to be one of the more elaborate ways we have seen to throw an insult. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Miishab (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dont Fret (photo © Jaime Rojo)

David De La Mano and Pablo H Harymbat in Montevideo, Uruguay. (photo © Harymbat)

KUMA (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Din Din (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Rebel (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Urma. New installation in Milan. (photo © Christos Voutichtis)

In case you thought that your uncle Ernie was the only one full of hot air, public artist creates this installation that attempts to capture the breath of the city. He tells us that in the end he decided his experiment was a good mix of architecture, Art, and postmodern French literature.

“I applied simple means to build parametric and temporary installations;

It is an open system, varying with steadily modifying environmental processes, but without completely changing its own structure.”

Urma. New installation in Milan. Interior. (photo © Domenico Laterza)

Untitled. Manhattan fly over. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

<<>>><><<>BSA<<>>><<<>><><BSA<<>>><><<>BSA<<>>><<<>><><BSA

Please note: All content including images and text are © BrooklynStreetArt.com, unless otherwise noted. We like sharing BSA content for non-commercial purposes as long as you credit the photographer(s) and BSA, include a link to the original article URL and do not remove the photographer’s name from the .jpg file. Otherwise, please refrain from re-posting. Thanks!

<<>>><><<>BSA<<>>><<<>><><BSA<<>>><><<>BSA<<>>><<<>><><BSA

Coney Art Walls: First 3 Completed and Summer Begins

May 23, 2015 Artists

Summer Just Got More Fun in NYC as Coney Reinvents Itself Again

You know the scene: Cotton candy, blasting music, bold fonted signs, city beach, sticky fingers, tattoos, carnival barkers, rollercoaster barfing, stolen kisses under the boardwalk, big bellied men with their shirts off, giggling girls in flipflops smelling like coconut sunscreen, garbage on the sand, mermaids, porta potties, stuffed animals, concrete, cigars, hot dogs, butts, boobs, lipstick, screaming, flashing old-timey light bulbs, kids passed out in strollers, boozy Romeos, sketchy snake oil salesmen, aerosol painted walls by New York’s old skool graff writers. That last part is now in effect, actually.

How & Nosm (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Instead of being hunted down for catching a tag or bubble lettered throw up, a couple dozen graffiti/street art painters are invited to hit up Coney Island this summer and since today is the inaugural Saturday of the first unofficial weekend of summer in New York, we’re bringing you the first three freshly completed pieces. Part of “Coney Art Walls”, the muralists began taking the train out to this seaside paved paradise that is re-inventing itself once again, this time courtesy of art curator Jeffrey Deitch.

How & Nosm (photo © Jaime Rojo)

This week while the sun was still struggling to get a handle on Summer, we captured the early crew hitting up the temporary two sided walls outside and inside the compound that will share space with food vendors, picnic tables and a stage for music performances. Some brought family while they worked and a few even took a ride on the Cyclone with Martha Cooper just to scream their heads off. The artist lineup is looking stellar, with golden names predominantly associated with New York’s 70s-80s graff heyday sprinkled with a few of the current street art contenders, but you never know what is popping up next, or who. It’s Coney Island after all.

Here are the first three completed murals with the Tats Cru twins How & Nosm leading the pace, followed by Crash and Daze.

How & Nosm (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The one and only Martha Cooper shooting How & Nosm at work. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

How & Nosm (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Daze (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Crash (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Crash. The inspiration. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Crash. The sketch. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Crash (photo © Jaime Rojo)

This article is also published on The Huffington Post

<<>>><><<>BSA<<>>><<<>><><BSA<<>>><><<>BSA<<>>><<<>><><BSA

BSA Film Friday: 05.22.15

May 22, 2015 Artists

Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.

Now screening :

1. Rap Quotes ATL: Dirty South Edition
2. Narcelio Grud – Cinetic Graffiti
3. DourOne in South Park LA by Phil Sanchez
4. Haeler Keeping Detroit Alive

Rap Quotes ATL: Dirty South Edition

We’re here in the Waffle House in the dirty south talking about putting up site-specific rap lyrics all around Atlanta. Pass the syrup please. This Rap Quotes project has taken you from New York to LA and Philly and now to the gateway. It’s a treasure hunt, it’s educational, it’s musical, historical, geographical, features strip clubs, – fun for the whole dysfunctional family! Big ups to Jay Shells and Animal New York for keeping this flame high!

Narcelio Grud – Cinetic Graffiti

The latest project incorporating hand made creations and artistic vision, Grud may have perplexed more participants than titilated with this one; a hand-powered sound installation.

DourOne in South Park LA by Phil Sanchez

The neighborhood of South Park hired DourOne to paint this mural in Los Angeles through their business improvement initiative. The commercial artist from Madrid has done a number of jobs with alcohol brands so his chops are smooth and this multi-sliced portrait is meant to evoke the character of various neighborhoods in LA.

Haeler Keeping Detroit Alive

Another entry from Animal New York this week – the graffiti artist Haeler in Detroit, where all things are running wild right now as entrepreneurs, artists, prospectors, and snake oil salesmen are laying claim to the bones that the banks left. Sidenote: why do people sound like Darth Vader in these videos?

“We are the people!”, Xenophobia, and Penises for Rallitox in Berlin (NSFW)

May 21, 2015 Artists

“Wir sind das Volk!” and Dildos from the “Confusionist”

Continuing his human sticker campaign, street artist Rallitox has gathered a nice crowd in front of this portion of the Berlin Wall, otherwise known popularly as the East Side Gallery, many of whom are happily snapping photos as he sticks a couple of friends to it. The installation is a bag of mixed messages, perhaps the biggest is “look at me”, but we’ll help you unpack a couple of others here while we all stare at the spectacle of duct tape and dildos.

RallitoX. East Side Gallery AKA Berlin Wall. Berlin. May 2015. (photo © courtesy of RallitoX)

Wir sind das Volk! (We are the people!) is a phrase associated with a populist movement of reunification that erupted during the fall of the Berlin Wall that separated West from East twenty five years ago, but strangely, according to Rallitox, has been recently commandeered by xenophobes who want to get rid of certain immigrants. “Now the movement called Pegida, who are against the “Islamification” of Germany, are using this slogan for their own profit,” he says, and he is unhappy with this perversion of the original meaning in a campaign that is swaying opinions.

RallitoX. East Side Gallery AKA Berlin Wall. Berlin. May 2015. (photo © courtesy of RallitoX)

“Since I was a child I was fascinated with how advertising was conditioning our behaviors, the way we act and how are we supposed to be. I guess that at the end, everything is created in our brains. If you can control people’s minds you can dominate them. If you want to manipulate people you have to control in the best way the languages and symbols that affect us as humans,” he explains.

He admits that this new message of his may not be entirely clear. “This is my psycho-confused response to all those who are trying to claim that there are people who deserve to be ‘the people’ and others who are not good enough to be part of it, depending on what they believe.” That seems pretty clear from here – Rallitox wants to seize the slogan and reclaim it in some way.

RallitoX. East Side Gallery AKA Berlin Wall. Berlin. May 2015. (photo © courtesy of RallitoX)

Now, about the fleshy pink appendages pointed rather parallel to the pavement and attached to this installation: that meaning is slightly less obvious, even while being completely obvious.

“For me the penis is an icon that reflect perfectly the human state of mind,” he explains. “The hypocrisy toward part of the human body that is considered ugly and tasteless even when more or less half of humanity have one between their legs is interesting. On the other hand, drawing and working with penises gives me a lot of trouble in terms of selling my art and it closes doors in some mainstream street art circles where this ¨bad taste¨ is normally not so well received, with the exception of some more open minded blogs or magazines.”

Dang! That compliment was obvious too. Sure glad we are open minded, and since you, dear reader, are reading this, you clearly must be as well

RallitoX. East Side Gallery AKA Berlin Wall. Berlin. May 2015. (photo © courtesy of RallitoX)

Yes under a patriarchal construct you may associate these duct-taped dildos as symbols of power and dominion, or as possible weapons and open provocation, or the implication of a virile conceptual idea. Or we may see these as a criticism of boner headed thinking. Mainly we just keep in mind that dick jokes are often funny and when placed on the street at roughly eye-level, present a great number of entertaining photo opportunities.

“Some viewers don’t understand what the relationship between penises and politics is,” Rallitox says as he sounds like he is about to explain. “I aim to be a confusionist and to use Street Art to spread confusion, awareness, and chaos in some organized way.”

You may agree that the confusion aspect of the work is quite successful here.

<<>>><><<>BSA<<>>><<<>><><BSA<<>>><><<>BSA<<>>><<<>><><BSA

Skulls, Death and “Memento Mori” on the Street Art Scene

May 20, 2015 Artists

Oh death, the world simply brims with it.

Naturally so do the streets.

We’ve been able to cheat it, cavort and dance with it, even bargain with it but so far we have been unable to win the fight. Everyone succumbs.

“Remember you shall die”, or Memento mori, is the medieval Latin theory that we come face to face with, or skull to skull.

Olek (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Artists have been doing the danse macabre for centuries and one cerebral motif appears throughout every medium: the skull. From traditional African masks with skull faces to Shakespeare’s exhumed Yorick in Hamlet to 16th and 17th century European paintings featuring the skull as a motif in portraiture. The Mexicans make sugar candy with skulls, Warhol did multiples with them, Bowie sang to one, Tattoo culture covers skins with them, Damien Hirst encrusts them with diamonds, Game of Thrones has the Lord of Bones, they’re featured at the Museum of Morbid Anatomy, and Korean rapper Jay Park is styled as one on his video.

Even current Street Artists have a fascination with skulls, with Swoon in a show called Memento Mori and the Italian Street Artist Borondo’s named his new book after it. Today we wander out into the street with your hand in ours to look at death, as interpreted by artists of the street right now.

Sweet Toof (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Vexta (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Nick Walker (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Mr. Toll (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Zach Meyer (photo © Jaime Rojo)

QRST (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dee Dee (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Daek (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Alexis Diaz (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Katsu (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dennis McNett (photo © Jaime Rojo)

El Niño de las Pinturas (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Eurotrash (photo © Jaime Rojo)

bunny M (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Buff Monster (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Balu (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Code (photo © Jaime Rojo)

El Sol 25 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Damon (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Mr. Toll (photo © Jaime Rojo)

<<>>><><<>BSA<<>>><<<>><><BSA<<>>><><<>BSA<<>>><<<>><><BSA

This article is also published on The Huffington Post.

Hot Tea Creates a Swimming “Asylum” on Roosevelt Island

May 19, 2015 Artists

Street Artist and installation artist Hot Tea is back in New York and getting ready for summer by blending his color palette into concrete rather than suspending it strand-by-strand in the air.

Hot Tea (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The Minneapolis based yarn artist very possibly has some Mexican blood because this private pool commission is strikingly washed in color that plays with the structural geometry in a way reminiscent of work by the architect Luis Barragan and his disciple Ricardo Legorreta. The Spanish conquerors were reportedly impressed with the colorfully painted buildings as well as the advanced architecture they found when they invaded the Aztec City of Tenochtitlan, now known as Mexico City and here on Roosevelt Island Hot Tea embraces jubilant color with the same passion that the two Mexican Masters did in their public and private projects.

Hot Tea (photo © Jaime Rojo)

In his large scale yarn installations the gradient fade from one color to another in three dimensional circumstances can evoke deeper emotional/psychological responses than one may expect: likely because of the gradual shifts and bending light waves and your own associations that are triggered by color. Now using paint instead of yarn, Hot Tea says that the desired effect is the same.

“This piece is inspired by my color field installations that take up both private and public spaces. I love introducing color to spaces that seem neglected or forgotten.”

Once the home of an asylum, the island is still a quasi secret getaway that just happens to lie in the plain view of Manhattan and Queens. Because of its location and its history, the artist says he has felt that the pool project has summoned both associations of a place to escape to and a place where mental states are out of balance.

Hot Tea (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“I entitled this piece “Asylum” because the act of creating it pushed my mental and physical endurance so far that I wasn’t sure I could complete the task,” he says of the challenge. Painting by himself such a large expanse in only a few days may have been more difficult than he had estimated, but he is satisfied with the otherworldly effect the result is summoning.

“When people experience my installations I hope that they will remember the experience far after the moment is gone. My goal for people who are viewing my work is to evoke subconscious feelings one may have forgotten.”

Hot Tea (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Hot Tea, perfectly framed by his own creation, takes a lap in your imagination. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Hot Tea (photo © Jaime Rojo)

<<>>><><<>BSA<<>>><<<>><><BSA<<>>><><<>BSA<<>>><<<>><><BSA

The Adventures Of Anthony Lister

May 18, 2015 Artists

Superhero and Street Artist/painter/contemporary artist Anthony Lister still crushes walls thank you very much. He never left the street actually – he just opened the door to the studio as well. And he lit things on fire in both.

Anthony Lister “Adventure Painter” Gingko Press. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Formally trained, he is one of the few of those much maligned art school kids painting on the street whom some graff heads allow themselves to admire, mostly because he doesn’t seem to give a good f**k. Don’t be mislead – he is a superhero as well as a villain, aesthete as much as vandal, respectful of convention even while shredding it. Anyone watching him work over the last decade will tell you that he cares very much and he is willing to do the heavy intellectual/emotional/physical labor to bring it to another level.

Anthony Lister “Adventure Painter” Gingko Press. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Not-quite “mid-career” this collection none-the-less sets him up for it and a smart museum would be reading these pages carefully, pouring over the tags, Lister family tour stickers, inflateables, masks, installations, performances, – as well as the more formal canvasses and supercharged murals – and considering where this child/adult paradox fits into the record of art history.

It’s the poetic movement of Degas ballerinas as much as the busty cellulite-free duct taped anti-heroines that captivate and denigrate. His slouching insouciance belies a rabid unglued ferocity that will mock mass consumer culture and then smother you in pink frosting and rainbows, stubbing his cigarette in the mountain of sugar and Crisco like it is the final candied cherry.

Anthony Lister “Adventure Painter” Gingko Press. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Adventure Painter, the mid-sized Lister tome released last year on Gingko, lets you see the rage and the release all at once. He’s furious because he’s paying attention – well thank God somebody is.

With figures that are alive, gestural, stylish and taunting, these beauties will save, lay, or kill you – perhaps all three. The portraits are full of quixotic personality, angst and revulsion. We imagine Listers’ people lustily self-mocking and fantastic while jumping off dangerous cliffs and sleekly folding into a roll out of it without suffering the crash. From their perch below they look up to you standing on the ledge and beckon, “Okay, your turn!”

Anthony Lister “Adventure Painter” Gingko Press. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Anthony Lister “Adventure Painter” is published by Gingko Press and available at book stores worldwide.

<<>>><><<>BSA<<>>><<<>><><BSA<<>>><><<>BSA<<>>><<<>><><BSA

BSA Images Of The Week: 05.17.15

May 17, 2015 Artists, BSA Images Of The Week

Shout out to all the great Swoon fans we met last night during the artists talk with her. All the seats were filled so it was standing room only in the back but yet it felt so intimate. Ya’ll are stupendous and smart and handsome and beautiful and we were honored to be with you.

Shout out to the family of American blues institution BB King who passed on this week. His music and talent influenced so many. Sending love and condolences to his family and friends.

Let’s see what Jeffery Deitch has in store for Smorgasburg Coney Island starting this week in preparation for the Memorial Day weekend opening – published reports have the roster of street artists at 15 but we’re hearing closer to 25 will be hitting up temporary concrete walls in this outdoor gallery he is doing in partnership with a large real estate firm to promote the new Coney Island. Some names you’ll recognize are old skool 70s-80s train writers like Lee Quinones, Crash, Daze, Lady Pink, Futura, and new people he has been reaching out to from the 2000s and 2010s scene who we bring you regularly like How & Nosm, Skewville, Steve Powers, possibly even ROA . This list will surely grow as word gets out and artists besiege Mr. Deitch to participate. The full installation is to last a month and will be surely caught on film and timelapse video.

Meanwhile, here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Alexis Diaz, Alka Murat, Appleton, Marco Berta, Blaqk Blaqk, City Kitty, Creepy Creep, Dain, Dasic Fernandez, Duke A. Barnstable, Elsa Sauguet, Eva & Adele, Ever, Goldman Rats, Ines Maas, JR, Penny Gaff, Robert Janz, Sebastian Reinoso Salinas, Seikon Stav6, and Swoon.

Top Image: Alexis Diaz (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dasic for Welling Court in LIC. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Appleton (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Swoon (photo © Jaime Rojo)

An unknown artist created this installation of a suspension bridge in Chelsea and we dig it! (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Front view of the suspension bridge in Chelsea by an unknown artist. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

A scene from Nicolas Romero AKA Ever in Buenos Aires, Argentina in collaboration with performers Elsa Sauguet, Sebastian Reinoso Salinas y Ines Maas and sculptor Marcos Berta (photo © Ever)

About the show, from Ever:

” ‘头部 (The Head)’ is an art installation based on the analysis of Chinese Communist posters. When the posters represent the ‘idea’, people are always down the picture and the Mao Tse Tung portrait always floating in heaven, protecting that theory founded in the Russian winters. When they want to describe the pragmatics, Mao is cultivating flowers, going to visit schools, etc.

The idea with ‘The Head’ is to think why the “communist theory” fails in its application to reality, and this is because many times the idea has to be corresponded o taken through a body, a body that exercises the idea, that exercises power. That’s why, part of the installation that we present here, invites people to get into the head, so we all can have the feeling that we are not loyal to the theory; the idealization is as dangerous as it is obsessive.”

Artist Unknown (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dain (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Stav6 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Creepy Creep (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Blaqk Blaqk in collaboration with Seikon in Greece. (photo © Alka Murat)

JR from his Walking New York series. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Penny Gaff must be warming up for the Faile arcade show coming to Brooklyn Museum in July. War games…lethal. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Robert Janz (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Goldman Rats already has selected the next president. You may now return to your regular scheduled programming. Enjoy! (photo © Jaime Rojo)

It’s lilac season! Duke A Barnstable is feeling poetic (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Artist Unknown (photo © Jaime Rojo)

City Kitty (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. Art in the streets as Berlin based performance artists and fine artists Eva & Adele are seen here “performing” some last minute ensemble adjustments before hitting the art fairs – as is their wont. Chelsea, New York City. May 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Swoon “The Road By Walking” and Artist Talk with BSA

May 16, 2015 Artists

An Inside Look at The Imagination and Energy of Swoon and “The Road By Walking”

This is how the road is made. Swoon invites you to take another step with her.

It’s been an enormous success this week for Street Artist Swoon as she launches her Heliotrope Foundation to bring the values and vision of her long-term community-based projects under one roof. Beginning with a packed private opening Wednesday with enthusiastic guests clamoring for a new print and to see a large selection of drawings, visitors also poked their heads around intricate small scale models of her centerpiece projects and into selfies with Swoon and Heliotrope board member Swizz Beatz.

Swoon. The Road By Walking. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Since the earliest days of seeing Swoon’s wheat-pasted cutouts on New York streets passersby could tell that these waters run deep and are full of stories and a committed sense of our collective inherent responsibility to uphold our neighbor and to seek to re-balance.

The Road By Walking show allows you to personally contemplate the baseline commitment the artist is making to the fate of others whose lives have been struck by disaster – whether natural, as in the case of the earthquake in Haiti or the hurricane in New Orleans, or the man made economic disasters that leave communities worldwide suffering in their wake, as in the de-industrialized town of Braddock, Pennsylvania.

Without lecturing or preening, Swoon consistently demonstrates how using your talents, whatever they are, can transform – first through imagination, then through boots on the ground. With very dedicated teams of volunteers and talents alongside, in front of and behind her, Swoon keeps making new roads.

The Road By Walking, which is again open today and free to the public, allows fans of street art and social activism an opportunity to come face to face with how small scale artistic interventions can plant and nurture seeds of lasting change.

BSA is proud to invite you to meet the artist today as The Road By Walking culminates in an Artists Talk with BSA and Swoon at a special reception tonight, where we’ll be learning about her plans for Heliotrope Foundation and specifically about Braddock Tiles, The Music Box, and Konbit Shelter.

We can’t wait to meet you! It is a free event and space is very limited so please RSVP so we’ll know you are coming.

(Please see all the links at the end of this post, including the RSVP button and online bidding)

Online bidding is still open! PADDLE8.COM/AUCTIONS/HELIOTROPE

Please consider Donating to The Heliotrope Foundation

The Road By Walking
Benefit Gallery Show for the Heliotrope Foundation

May 13-16
287 Gallery
287 Tenth Avenue between 26th and 27th , NYC

BSA Film Friday: 05.15.15

May 15, 2015 Artists

Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.

Now screening :

1. Miss Van, Victor Castillo, Easo Andrews in LA
2. Rallitox Invites You to Walk Over Immigrants for Free.
3. Kinetoscope: Angelina Christina x Ease One
4. Cranio in Breda, Netherlands for Graphic Design Festival
5. Michael Beerens: Captivity and Freedom
6. ICY & SOT Interview in Berlin for Vantage Point

BSA Special Feature: Miss Van, Victor Castillo, Easo Andrews in LA

This costume shop in Los Angeles got very lucky this spring when Barcelona based Miss Van visited and asked them if they would like their facade freshly painted. Along with local talents Victor Castillo and Easo Andrews, Miss Van created a bit of costumed magic that will undoubtedly increase sales.

The video is directed, shot, and edited by “Birdman”.

Rallitox Invites You to Walk Over Immigrants for Free.

A social experiment in Berlin this March by Street Artist Rallitox invited passersby to walk on top of Immigrants. A politically and socially charged topic in many countries today, Germany is struggling to strike a balance about where it stands on immigration. It is surprising how many people were willing to try it out, and how many nervously smiled as an upswelling of conflicting emotions were undoubtedly released in all participants, including those who watched.

Kinetoscope: Angelina Christina x Ease One

Slab City is sometimes billed as an isolated desolated off-the-grid sort of place in California so it was an adventure for Christina Angelina and Ease One discovered the remains of this abandoned water tank and transformed it into a circular mural. They call it The Kinetoscope.

Cranio in Breda, Netherlands for Graphic Design Festival

Sort of odd for a festival with this kind of name on our site but we clearly acknowledge the continuum of creativity extends beyond labels today. Brazilian street artist Cranio here provides a look at his technique with cans for creating his instantly recognizable figures.

Michael Beerens: Captivity and Freedom

Icy & Sot Interviewed on Vantage Point in Berlin

In March we were in Icy & Sots’ room in Berlin for the recording of this interview and it was great to watch. Check out the full interview below and go to their main site to hear more interviews as well (including one with BSA)

https://soundcloud.com/vantagepointradio/ep-037-icy-and-sot

BIFIDO’s Surrealist Fairy Tale on a Wall in Bologna

May 14, 2015 Artists

Children inhabit a world full of possibilities that inexplicably contains winged animals, adults, ghosts, candy, race cars, dancing in circles, Angela Merkel, Prince Charming, spiderwebs, sidewalk chalk, Beyonce, and the ability to fly without a plane – all coexisting together in harmony in the same story.

Bifido understands.

brooklyn-street-art-bifido-bologna-italy-web-2

Bifido with young fans. (photo © Courtesy of Bifido)

The Italian Street Artist may need a little more explanation to describe his new installation of photographic characters and elements on the wall of this children’s school for the CHEAP festival in Bologna, but you are welcome to interpret his wheat-pastes in any many you like. “It’s my tribute to a child’s world,” he explains.

With shots taken by him and scenarios drawn from imagination and some current events, his surreal disregard for proportion, singularity of symbol and how they seem to levitate in air – may make you think of Magritte as you walk past this brick façade.

What is most striking about the composition could be that the addition of empty space between the characters effectively creates a dialog between them as if they are rationally related. Because they are realistically rendered, it is becomes difficult to separate the real from the imagined – with the exception of the headless adults, which of course are real.

Click HERE to learn more about Cheap Festival. Bologna, Italy.

<<>>><><<>BSA<<>>><<<>><><BSA<<>>><><<>BSA<<>>><<<>><><BSA

The Trades: Hendrik Beikirch (ECB) Traces Moroccan Faces

May 13, 2015 Artists

Street Artist ECB is introducing you to the trades of Morocco by painting the faces of current practitioners whom he has met on the street. By now we are familiar with the storytelling role that artists can fulfill with their portraits of individuals who live in a region, town, or neighborhood and Street Artists such as the Parisian C215, Canadian Fauxreel, and the American desert dweller Jetsonorama come to mind as well as more recent Brooklyn social activists like LMNOPI and Tatiana Fazlilazadeh.

We have been introducing and recounting Street Art stories for years online and in front of audiences and we find that it never fails to intrigue people to learn that many faces on the street are those of a community.

Hendrik ecb Beikirch. “Trades” Portrait of Oulad-Bouzid-III, a street barber. The streets of Brooklyn. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

German Street Artist Hendrik Beikirch aka ECB has been known on the scene in recent years for his massive portraits of people – sometimes subjects known to the artist and other times from his imagination. For his new project in Morroco ECB returns to a social/anthropolical ethos – a route he says has energized his work by focusing on occupations and trades of his subjects. In doing so he hopes to preserve something more about their professions and culture; street barbers, shepherds, even the guy who writes a letter for you.

“I am seeking to capture their ‘aura’ in this work series,” he tells us, “with the goal of making these people immortal in the process.” Calling his series “Trades – Tracing Morocco” he explains that he has made the trip 10 times or more from his home in Koblenz, Germany to this one in the Maghreb region of North Africa to meet locals and speak with them. As he captures their image and shares it on streets he says he hopes to preserve and elevate the stories of a people in trades that are disappearing.

“I want to transform people from the anonymous to the iconic, while paying tribute to trades that might be gone in the near future.”

Hendrik ecb Beikirch. “Trades” Portrait of Oulad-Bouzid-III on the streets of Brooklyn. ECB documenting his work. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

During his initial visit to Jardin Rouge/Marrakech in the summer of 2014, “I was immediately fascinated by the diversity of this country, its rich history and the contrasts in peoples faces that are somehow created by the environment they live in.”

Supported by the Foundation Montresso/ Jardin Rouge, Hendrik says that he strives to impart a humanity of the people he has met that passerby can connect to through his paintings. “It is a country with hard working people, many of whom are living a tough life, but with so much pride and happiness.”

Right now ECB is working on creating an exhibition in October with the foundation and he will be publishing a book focusing on the “Trades” series on Éditions Eyrolles.

Hendrik ecb Beikirch. “Trades” Portrait of Oulad-Bouzid-III at the studio in Jardin Rouge/Marrakesh. (photo © Nils-Muller)

Hendrik ecb Beikirch. “Trades” Portrait of Fadma Tafza a traditional tattooist for women faces. The streets of Arce, Italy. (photo © Hendrik Beikirch)

Hendrik ecb Beikirch. “Trades” Portrait of Fadma Tafza at the studio in Jardin Rouge/Marrakesh. (photo © Hendrik Beikirch)

Hendrik ecb Beikirch. “Trades” Portrait of Ahmed-Kartawa a shepherd. The studio in Jardin Rouge/Marrakesh. (photo © Hendrik Beikirch)

Hendrik ecb Beikirch. “Trades” Detail of Ahmed-Kartawa’s portrait at the studio in Jardin Rouge/Marrakesh. (photo © Hendrik Beikirch)

Hendrik ecb Beikirch. “Trades” Portrait of Mohamed-Bouhir. A writer/reader for those who are not literate. The studio in Jardin Rouge/Marrakesh. (photo © Hendrik Beikirch)

Hendrik ecb Beikirch. “Trades” Portrait of Elhachemi-Kartawa a pushcart trucker. Studio in Jardin Rouge. Marrakesh (photo © Hendrik Beikirch)

Hendrik ecb Beikirch. “Trades” working on Oulad-Bouzid-III portrait at the studio in Jardin Rouge/Marrakesh. (photo © Nils-Muller)

Hendrik ecb Beikirch. “Trades” Portrait of Rakouch-Timallizene, a traditional potter workshop. Germany. (photo © Hendrik Beikirch)

<<>>><><<>BSA<<>>><<<>><><BSA<<>>><><<>BSA<<>>><<<>><><BSA

This article is also published on The Huffington Post

Merry Christmas 2025 From BSA
December 25, 2025
We’re celebrating the end of one year and the beginning of the next by thanking BSA Readers, Friends, and Family …Read More »
Photos of BSA 2025 # 10
December 24, 2025
We’re celebrating the end of one year and the beginning of the next by thanking BSA Readers, Friends, and Family …Read More »
Photos of BSA 2025 # 11
December 23, 2025
We’re celebrating the end of one year and the beginning of the next by thanking BSA Readers, Friends, and Family …Read More »
Photos of BSA 2025 # 12
December 22, 2025
We’re celebrating the end of one year and the beginning of the next by thanking BSA Readers, Friends, and Family …Read More »
Photos of BSA 2025 # 13
December 21, 2025
We’re celebrating the end of one year and the beginning of the next by thanking BSA Readers, Friends, and Family …Read More »
Photos of BSA 2025 # 14
December 20, 2025
We’re celebrating the end of one year and the beginning of the next by thanking BSA Readers, Friends, and Family …Read More »
Photos of BSA 2025 # 15
December 19, 2025
We’re celebrating the end of one year and the beginning of the next by thanking BSA Readers, Friends, and Family …Read More »