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A Preview Of “Mapping The City” at Somerset House (LONDON)

January 15, 2015 Artists

Until you get lost in a city, you really do not know its true nature. And possibly your own.

Only at the moment of realization that you really have lost your way, your bearings, your inner compass, however temporarily, do you get a genuine sense of a place and your place in it. What are these buildings, who are these people, what is that smell, why is that horn honking, is there a bathroom nearby, do I have any money, what do I do? Perhaps even “who am I?”. No, you’re too confident and self assured for that.

MOMO “Tag Manhattan” (photo © courtesy of A(by)P)

We’ve trekked through New York City thousands of miles by now, worn out many shoes, taken countless wrong turns, and been lost numerous times. It’s part of the adventure really. Especially in the 80s when it was all new to us; cacophonic and crazy and perplexing, unnerving, and seemingly neverending. Now, even with GPS on the phone it is completely possible to get lost. And if you are not lost, you know it is your responsibility to keep your eyes open for someone who is. It’ll happen.

This week we’re excited for London folks who get to look at a map, fifty of them actually. Curated by Rafael Schacter and his collaborative arts organization named A(by)P, Mapping the City is an ingenious little bit of inspiration and conceptualizing of our sense of place.

Augustine Kofie “Overcast Angeles” (photo © courtesy of A(by)P)

Who are these maps created by? Street Artists of course, as well as others from the graffiti art scene.

And these wildcats have taken many liberties with the assignment of “please make a map”. So many in fact that some of these maps would get you lost even further if you were to consult them. But there is plenty to be learned from them nonetheless. These maps may provide valuable insights into the highways and byways of some of these artist’s brains, now that you think of it, you beguiling detective.

The inaugural exhibition opens the New Wing of Somerset House – a wing that has been closed to the public for a century and a half, or roughly the time you have to wait for a cable repair person to come to your apartment. Rafael and his team are busy installing maps right now for the January 22^nd opening, and we will have great “install” images and an interview with him next week for you to enjoy. But for right now, have a look at these examples of cartographic excellence from an international array of established and emerging artists for Mapping the City.

(full list of artists at the end of this posting)

CHU “Buenos Aires” (photo © courtesy of A(by)P)

Will Sweeney “Cabott Square” (photo © courtesy of A(by)P)

Brad Downey. Face (photo © courtesy of A(by)P)

Caleb Neelon “Pickerville” (photo © courtesy of A(by)P)

Shepard Fairey “Berlin Tower” (photo © courtesy of A(by)P)

Jurne “Covalence” (photo © courtesy of A(by)P)

Mike Ballard “The Ultra Poet” (photo © courtesy of A(by)P)

Goldpeg “London is Burning” (photo © courtesy of A(by)P)

Cleon Peterson “The Return” (photo © courtesy of A(by)P)

Aryz “Map” (photo © courtesy of A(by)P)

OX “Paris” (photo © courtesy of A(by)P)

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS

108 (Italy)	Aryz (Spain)
Augustine Kofie (USA)	Boris Tellegen (The Netherlands)
Caleb Neelon (USA)	Cali Thornhill Dewitt (USA)
Chu (Argentina)	Cleon Peterson (USA)
Daniel K. Sparkes (UK)	Egs (Finland)
Ekta [Daniel Götesson] (Sweden)	Eltono (France)
Erosie (The Netherlands)	Filippo Minelli (Italy)
Gold Peg (UK)	Graphic Surgery (The Netherlands)
Herbert Baglione (Brazil)	Honet (France)
Horfee (France)	HuskMitNavn (Denmark)
Ian Strange [Kid Zoom] (Australia)	Interesni Kazki (Ukraine)
Isauro Huizar (Mexico)	Isaac Tin Wei Lin (USA)
James Jarvis (UK)	Jurne (USA)
Ken Sortais [Cony] (France)	Les Frères Ripoulain (France)
Lucas Cantu (Mexico)	Lush (Australia)
Malarko (UK)	Martin Tibabuzo (Argentina)
Mike Ballard (UK)	MOMO (USA)
Nano4814 (Spain)	Nug (Sweden)
OX (France)	Pablo Limon (Spain)
Petro (UK)	Remed (France)
Remio (USA)	Roids (UK)
Ron English (USA)	Russell Maurice (UK
Shantell Martin (UK)	Shepard Fairey (USA)
Sixe Paredes (Spain)	Susumu Mukai (Japan)
Swoon (USA)	Tim Head (UK)
Vova Vorotniov (Ukraine)	Will Sweeney (UK)

Mapping the City
22 January – 15 February 2015
Somerset House, New Wing
Admission: Free

Contemporary cartographic art by international street and graffiti artists to be the first exhibition in Somerset House’s recently opened New Wing

YZ and Her “Amazone” Women Warriors on Senegalese Walls

January 14, 2015 Artists

According to historical accounts of the First Franco-Dahomean War, in the 1890s it was the highly trained military women who were chopping off the heads of the French. Sometimes while they slept.

French Street Artist YZ Yseult has begun her own campaign to pay tribute to the fierce female fighters of the 19^th Century West African country of Dahomey, who are more commonly referred to as Amazons. A startling narrative of female power not often heard today for some, but as YZ is researching her own history as a descendent from slaves, her portraits reflect a personal impetus to tell these stories with a new force. She has named this series of strong warriors on the street “Amazone”.

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YZ “Amazone” Senegal. West Africa (photo © YZ)

Back in her former Senegal now to do research for the project, she says there are many female figures who we may not know of in current times, but who may provide crucial inspiration, possibly bolstering the confidence of women in 2015 to advocate for their positions and opinions. “I want to show warriors from ancient times; revolutionists, anti-colonialists, intellectual women who have written the story of Africa. We need figures to be proud of our roots, to keep fighting for our rights, and to write the story of tomorrow.”

YZ “Amazone” Senegal. West Africa (photo © YZ)

Wheat pasted on walls in a few cities on the west coast of Senegal, south of Dakar, these proud figures project images of strength and determination even when placed on the corrugated metal of small humble structures. “Many times these small handmade metal shops are owned by women for selling breakfast or bread,” she says of the hut-like edifices. “While doing research on women in Africa, I have been compiling a photographic archive,” she says.

“I’ve been searching for the places that could come into resonance with the subject. I’m looking for locations that communicate the historic perspective of the project as well as those that may draw a parallel with present issues.”

YZ “Amazone” Senegal. West Africa (photo © YZ)

The campaign is only a few months old, but it is a work in progress and YZ is sure to discover more as she continues to research over the next two, possibly three years. She says she is strongly moved by what she has learned about women who emerged as slaves and from slavery and she feels a connection to that history.

“Many women have fought for their rights and the rights of their people, yet few of them have been recognized for their achievements and many stayed unknown,” she says. “To know where we are going we need to know where we have been, and these stories are important to educate the next generation, especially women.”

YZ “Amazone” Senegal. West Africa (photo © YZ)

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YZ “Amazone” Senegal. West Africa (photo © YZ)

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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!

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This article is also published on The Huffington Post

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D Young V and Eddie Colla in Thailand

January 13, 2015 Artists

New images today from Thailand as California artists and frequent collaborators Eddie Colla and D Young V marked the end of ’14.

D Young V creates fearful images of a violent militarized society where people are trapped and distressed, the child-like expressions pinched, the color/bw compositions littered with navigational and directional symbols from software applications, heads swimming in digits, mouths gagged with graphics. Colla’s female figures are rendered perhaps more realistically, but equally spent spiritually, sexually idealized, defiant, and at war.

Eddie Colla. Thailand. 2014. (photo © Eddie Colla)

In the descriptive text accompanying these images about their year-end excursion and touristing, they paint an apocalyptic scene – references to sex and prostitution and corruption and citywide celebrations at temples as they say they spread their large format wheat-pastes across Bangkok, Pattaya and Koh Samet. Here are the images they contributed to the Thai streetscape and various abandoned lots. One can only imagine what the children and workers and families walking in these neighborhoods think when they see these images. For their part, the artists returned to their homes and studios in Oakland and San Francisco to create more work.

Eddie Colla. Thailand. 2014. (photo © Eddie Colla)

Eddie Colla and we think we can spot a Kora Lee in the background. Thailand. 2014. (photo © Eddie Colla)

D Young V . Eddie Colla. Thailand. 2014. (photo © Eddie Colla)

D Young V. Thailand. 2014. (photo © Eddie Colla)

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Dustin Yellin Suspends Dance in Glass for New NYC Ballet/Art Series

January 12, 2015 Artists

First it was the Street Art duo Faile. Then the photographer/scene maker JR. This spring it’s back to Brooklyn for ballet inspiration and cross-discipline-generation-pollination as Dustin Yellin will bring his sculptural paintings to the New York City Ballet and its Manhattan winter performances.

We’ve been right behind each one of these choices as a powerful partnership between the D.I.Y. street influenced art scene of New York today and the time honored expression of the ballet art form. This particular pairing isolates a dream most people have when witnessing the power and grace of dance – the ironic desire to suspend the dancers in movement – even if just for a minute – to more fully appreciate them.

With Dustin Yellin you may have that just that sort of opportunity because his detailed imagery and three dimensional collage will be available for anyone to see as he exhibit 15 new works created as part of an ongoing project of large-scale glass and mixed-media sculptures, each weighing more than 3,000 pounds. His multi-dimensional humans, or “psychogeographies”, will map out people in suspended animation.

“I make window sandwiches,” says Yellin as a simple distillation of his creation method and his project, which will eventually grow to 100 works in the next half-decade. To hear him speak of the layers of complexity captured at once, you hear that it is a way to capture many concepts as well – cellular memory, the atomization of our physicality, the human as the sum of all our experiences and history. Yellin would like to give you an opportunity to see through and within these humans, possibly grasping dreams, aspirations, humanity.

Starting January 20 the new works will be unveiled and on view throughout the 2015 Winter Season until March 1 – with special hours open to the public (below). As was the case with Faile and JR, 3 selected performances in February are prices within reach of most students and art fans of a number of income levels – and you get to bring something home with you as well.

Tickets go on sale today, January 12 at noon for the three special art series performances taking place February 12, 19 and 27

Single tickets for the NYCB Art Series performances are priced at $29 and will go on sale at noon on Monday, January 12, at nycballet.com, or by calling 212-496-0600. All audience members attending these three performances will also receive a special limited-edition takeaway created by Dustin Yellin to commemorate the NYCB Art Series collaboration.

NYCB will also host free, open hours for the general public to view the exhibition on the following dates: Thursday, February 12 through Sunday, February 22 – Mondays through Fridays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Saturdays from 10 a.m. to noon; and Sundays from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.

BSA Images Of The Week: 01.11.15

January 11, 2015 Artists, BSA Images Of The Week

Hey Bro and Sis! It’s Sunday! Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Adam Dare, Curly, D. Hollier, Damien Mitchell, El Ray, JVC Quard, Lotits, Noodle Cat, Old Broads, QRST, and Stikman.

Top Image >> QRST (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Old Broads (Philadelphia) (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Damien Mitchell (photo © Jaime Rojo)

An exotic flower that you would think couldn’t blossom in this winter cold! Lotits (photo © Jaime Rojo)

El Ray truckside detail (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Stikman (photo © Jaime Rojo)

D. Hollier (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Curly (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Artist Unknown (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Noodle Cat (photo © Jaime Rojo)

JVC Quard (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Rorof Rose (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Saint Kitty (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Adam Dare (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Artist Unknown (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. Brooklyn, NYC. January 2015 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Damon Johnson and Jewels in the Gallery After Years In the Wild

January 10, 2015 Artists

Street Artist Damon Johnson says he loves Dick Tracy and has collected stacks of comic books starring the smart and square-jawed, hard-hitting, fast-shooting, detective who pieces together the clues.

When you find one of Damon’s painted cartoon scenes on a wire fence in an abandoned toxic lot your thoughts may turn to femme fatales, villains, and the gritty and dangerous world of the underground. They are real, and then some. Now all we need is a hero.

Damon. “Radiant Jewels” (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Celebrating the opening of his solo show in Chinatown last night, the New Yorker tells us that the themes of anguish and despair recur in his street pieces because he has fought inner demons himself, and naturally there is a little autobiography in every artists work.

Even though his chosen color palette is often bright, he sees the line work and subject matter as more serious and maybe not in parallel to the more cheerful side of Street Art he sees around him today. “I guess they all are happy, and I’m the only one that it isn’t, but I don’t see much happiness in the world today,” he says as he peruses the new pieces at Gallery Sensei. Seen through the visual style and vocabulary of comics, cartoons, and 80’s era graffiti, the complexities of daily urban existence does actually appear somehow simpler and more manageable.

Damon. The Rose in the wild. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

One recurring image is the undulating rose that is illustrated with movement, alive and bright as it is wretched. It was one of the first of his flowers “in the wild” of Gowanus, Brooklyn that we discovered a few years ago in an empty lot, oddly out of place. Raw, possibly poisonous– need we mention thorny – Damon’s rose pushes upward out of the putridity with frank glamour, surrounded by flies and mosquitoes.

“The flowers represent the beauty and fragility of life, I wanted to make something seen as beautiful and turn it into something dangerous, the flowers almost look like weapons with sharp leaves and radiant energy,” he says in the press release for this show. Given the skater culture and tattoo art influence of most of his work, it is no surprise that this rose is also inked onto a friend’s skin. “Paint the rose as if it is germinating up from the gritty sidewalks of The Bronx,” were the directions he followed.

Damon. “Radiant Jewels” (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Damon will freely tell you that his art is a personal therapy and his work on the street has possibly saved his life in one way or another. Reading into the various domestic and romantic scenes depicted with comic book drama, or even poking around the rose leaves, you may see the artist has found hope amid the wreckage. Possibly “Radiant Jewels” is a physical manifestation of that hope.

Damon. “Radiant Jewels” (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Damon. Monster in the wild. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Damon. “Radiant Jewels” (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Damon. A version of the above piece in the wild on the streets of NYC. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Damon. “Radiant Jewels” (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“Radiant Jewels’ Is open for the general public at Gallery Sensei. Click HERE for further information and details.

BSA Film Friday: 01.09.15

January 9, 2015 Artists

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

Now screening :

1. ROME in the Street and the Gallery by Dioniso Punk
2. Hendrik Beikirch (ECB): East Harbor in the Netherlands
3. Michael Beerens – “Master”
4. “Art As A Weapon” Trailer

BSA Special Feature: ROME in the Street and the Gallery by Dioniso Punk

The punk rock connection to graffiti is as strong as any subculture’s – or of any people who feel marginalized in effect or practice by the dominant culture preventing their voice. The narrative that graffiti belongs exclusively to Hip Hop has been posited and disproved over time; as Jesus said, “Graffitti belongs to everyone.” *

Modern French academics and intellectuals have celebrated graffiti and Street Art by way of political protest at least since the late 1960s and early 70s, first with the Situationists and later with the aesthetics and artistry of people like Ernest Pignon-Ernest and Gérard Zlotykamien.

In “Street & Gallery” we see that the need for expression, illegal and otherwise, is as urgent as ever in the Street Art scene in Rome today and for many it is a means to express opinions and philosophies that they hope will in turn push greater society forward in some way. For others it is simply to fight the stagnation.

Billed as an “unofficial video” by Dioniso Punk, the short documentary takes you into the kitchen and studio and gallery and street as a variety of artists, academics, vegetable vendors and philosophers narrate the pragmatic and the existential. Call it activism, call it a yearning for freedom, call it being generally pissed off at institutional inertia – the spirit of graffiti and it’s multiple urban art corollaries will not die. Either will arena rock and roll, despite early punk’s best wishes.

Interesting to note that the globalization of capital has not globalized all banks accounts and has thrust the xenophobia of the Italian middle class into a harsh light here, as it has elsewhere in so-called developed countries. Here we see a modern Italy struggling with ideological self-beliefs about justice and equality and wondering how they apply to a new immigrant class who has no interest in their cogitations. Moving from the educated class studio environment, the trained artist suddenly finds a social/political role, and for the first time perhaps contemplates it. Meanwhile, many in the street have never seen the inside of a studio and have a slightly different take on the state of things. Let the conversation continue.

Support was also provided by Maam – Museo dell’Altro e dell’Altrove di Metropoliz, Dorothy Circus Gallery, M.U.Ro. – Museo Urban di Roma, Sacripante Gallery, SMAC – Segni Mutanti.

A nod to the artists whose work is shown in the video, including Nicola “Nic” Alessandrini, Jim Avignon, Gary Baseman, Mister Thoms, Eduardo Kobra, David “Diavù” Vecchiato, Veronica Montanino, Stefania Fabrizi, Danilo Bucchi, Mauro Maugliani, Ron English, Beau Stanton, Mr. Klevra, Finbarr “Fin” DAC, Omino71, David Pompili, Ray Caesar, Afarin Sajedi, Kathie Olivas, Pablo Mesa Capella e Gonzalo Orquìn, Massimo Attardi, Gian Maria Tosatti, Malo Farfan, Franco Losvizzero, Davide Dormino, Alessandro Ferraro, Mauro Cuppone, Leonardo “Leo” Morichetti, Mauro Sgarbi, Gio Pistone, Zelda Bomba, Micaela Lattanzio, HOPNN, Massimo Iezzi, Sabrina Dan, Jago, Giovanna Ranaldi, Santino Drago, Alessandro Sardella, Fabio Mariani, Marco Casolino, Veks Van Hillik, Hogre, Dilkabear, Lucamaleonte, Diamond, Alice Pasquini, Paolo Petrangeli.

Hendrik Beikirch: East Harbor in the Netherlands

Hendrik Beikirch traveled to Heerlen in the Netherlands to paint a new mural over three and a half days. Organized by Heerlen Murals, the wizened, troubled subject adds to the series of images ECB has been creating across many walls in the last handful of years.

Michael Beerens – “Master”

Last summer the Frenchman Beerens took a trip out into the mountains and created a piece on a a small abandoned building. Ah, summer, come thou near…

“Art As A Weapon” Trailer

From Breadtruck Films, the new documentary focuses on a school in Myanmar (Burma) that teaches street art as a form of non-violent struggle. Street Artists Shepard Fairey and JR figure into the story, as does the military, art as a weapon, and art as a tool for revolution.

* Quote from Jesus Cordero, aerosol sales associate at Near Miss Hardware store in Bushwick, Brooklyn.

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Street Art Sancocho : “ArteSano Project” Brings Dominican Flavor (VIDEO)

January 8, 2015 Artists

New Year, new mural festival!

Truthfully, the appearance of new mural festivals today is faster than annual – it’s more like quarterly – but this one in the Dominican Republic was inaugurated three weeks ago and brings a certain hand crafted authenticity that holds promise for its future.

Jade. ArteSano Project. Rio San Juan, Dominican Republic. December, 2014. (photo © Mario E Ramirez/TostFilms.com)

“ArteSano Project” gives you an indication of the personal nature of the art you are likely to see from the 25 local and international artists invited to Rio San Juan from December 11-22. It could be the name influencing our perception, but in one way or another it looks like these artists are chosen for their down-to-earth hand hewn approach. Sometimes decorative, sometimes storytelling, there are familiar themes and motifs that play well to their local audience as well as the virtual gawker.

Even with two dozen artists, it isn’t bloated: no logos or product tie-ins or DJs or high flying scissor lifts scaling massive multi-story walls with abstract surrealism, hyper photo-realism or dark pop human/animal/robot hybrids here – yet. Well, we take that back on the surrealism score; Pixel Pancho is here with a brood of chickens bobbing their industrial mesh necks atop fired tile bodices, hunting and pecking their way toward the beach, and Miami artist duo 2alas & Hox created a portrait of a boy with a partial mask overlay that calls to mind cyborgs (and Sten & Lex). But here in the loungey bare-foot tropical DR coastal area, even Pixel Pancho mutes the hues toward sun-bleached pastels, more easily complimenting their surroundings.

Jade. ArteSano Project. Rio San Juan, Dominican Republic. December, 2014. (photo © Mario E Ramirez/TostFilms.com)

Free-running fowl overtook a few artists thematically, including another international artist who usually paints hybrid forms with dimension and almost mythic metaphor, but who this time tried his hand at something much more folkloric. “Importacion Cultural”, the flatly bright piece by Buenos Aires born Franco “Jaz” Fasoli, presents an entire wall with hand cut and paper collage, adding to the general feeling of approachability, and introducing a form of craft-inspired art-making more common to DIY Street Art of the 2000s than recent aerosol-infused mural festivals.

“The community was transformed during those days and over two weeks they began to see these great artists’ work and create specific pieces in different places around the town,” says Mario E. Ramirez, a Puerto Rican artist who has been documenting and capturing the burgeoning graffiti/Street Art scene in his country and places like DR with his partners at Tost Films. He says that an event like this that connects with a community yields a greater dialogue than some of the more commercial Street Art and graffiti enterprises, because the artists get to interact with neighbors closely. “At the completion of the ArteSano each artist felt like a distinguished guest of Rio San Juan. They made us feel at home, it was one of the best experiences of 2014.”

Jade. ArteSano Project. Rio San Juan, Dominican Republic. December, 2014. (photo © Mario E Ramirez/TostFilms.com)

One of the organizers, Dominican born artist Evoca1, has experience working as a Street Artist as well as bringing actual physical sustenance and support to a community. For about four years the Miami based artist has delivered many meals to folks living on the street with his wife and friends through an organization he began called “Sketches For Mankind.”

With Evoca1 hosting the ArteSano project it became another form of community outreach and the curatorial responsibilities for the public art initiative was offered by the folks at the Vienna based INOPERAbLE Gallery, who have represented a mix of urban artists work including some in this show and others that are range into pop, dark pop, graphic irony, and more “traditional” contemporary Street Art.

Vero Rivera. ArteSano Project. Rio San Juan, Dominican Republic. December, 2014. (photo © Mario E Ramirez/TostFilms.com)

Organizers say they hope that ArteSano gains traction and that people get to know the Dominican Republic as a good place for urban arts and muralism. There is not much transgressive here; With its mix of mainly latin name-brand and local homegrown talent, it looks like ArteSano makes a respectable entry into the international mural festival mileu with what may be the emerging alchemy of the decorative and the pleasing – peppered with some more challenging themes and muted socio-political messages.

Overall no one will argue that Rio San Juan is a great location for a painter or street artist from the northern hemisphere in December. Among the invited artists were BIKISMO, JADE, 2ALAS, HOXXOH, PASTEL, JAZ, EVER, ELIAN, LEO, VERO RIVERA, MODAFOCA, ENTES, FAITH47, AXEL VOID, PIXEL PANCHO, FILIO, ANGURRIA, 3TAMAROOTS, GABZ, POTELECHE, BAD6, SHAK, RUBEN, JOHANN,SEBAS, and PAOLA.

Bikismo. ArteSano Project. Rio San Juan, Dominican Republic. December, 2014. (photo © Mario E Ramirez/TostFilms.com)

Entes. ArteSano Project. Rio San Juan, Dominican Republic. December, 2014. (photo © Mario E Ramirez/TostFilms.com)

IO. ArteSano Project. Rio San Juan, Dominican Republic. December, 2014. (photo © Mario E Ramirez/TostFilms.com)

JAZ. ArteSano Project. Rio San Juan, Dominican Republic. December, 2014. (photo © Mario E Ramirez/TostFilms.com)

Elian. ArteSano Project. Rio San Juan, Dominican Republic. December, 2014. (photo © Mario E Ramirez/TostFilms.com)

BAD6 . SHAK. ArteSano Project. Rio San Juan, Dominican Republic. December, 2014. (photo © Mario E Ramirez/TostFilms.com)

Fili . 2alas . Hox. ArteSano Project. Rio San Juan, Dominican Republic. December, 2014. (photo © Mario E Ramirez/TostFilms.com)

HOXXOH. ArteSano Project. Rio San Juan, Dominican Republic. December, 2014. (photo © Mario E Ramirez/TostFilms.com)

Gabz. ArteSano Project. Rio San Juan, Dominican Republic. December, 2014. (photo © Mario E Ramirez/TostFilms.com)

Pixel Pancho. ArteSano Project. Rio San Juan, Dominican Republic. December, 2014. (photo © Mario E Ramirez/TostFilms.com)

Pastel . Pixel Pancho. ArteSano Project. Rio San Juan, Dominican Republic. December, 2014. (photo © Mario E Ramirez/TostFilms.com)

Axel . Faith47. ArteSano Project. Rio San Juan, Dominican Republic. December, 2014. (photo © Mario E Ramirez/TostFilms.com)

Thank you to Mario E Ramirez for his invaluable help to make this article possible for BSA readers.

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Skount, Skullduggery, and a Faceless Spanish Conquistador

January 7, 2015 Artists

“This historical character is a clear example of how a human being in search of better life, new experiences and knowledge, can become corrupted by power and greed, causing death – and even attract own death,” says Skount of this faceless conquistador now painted in Almagro, Spain.

Certainly Diego de Almagro was not without valor and bravery – conquesting Peru, “discovering” Chile, and one of the first Europeans to have a child with a native Indian. But all that plundering of wealth and land and treasure eventually let to a number of enemies who wanted him skewed like a martini olive.

Our thanks to Skount for this history lesson and possibly life lesson, depending on your interpretation.

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Cane Morto Spray and Roll for 60 Days In Lisbon

January 6, 2015 Artists

It’s very hard to see love as a force, as a power, but it is a reality.

For some it may be difficult to see art, much less unsanctioned public art, as a force for love and unmitigated passion. However it can be that as well.

We are not sure if those are the exact aims of Cane Morto over the course of 60 days (and nights) in Lisbon. But how else can you explain this force that drives and accompanies them? Working on something they call a secret project, this series of photos shows the sometimes grueling, sometimes langorous pace and profile of this always-experimenting troupe of Italian troubadors.

As ever it is Cane Morto’s misshapen figures, monstrous mugs, and obliquely Picassoesque references to longing and fear and God that roll themselves across surfaces in this Portuguese capital that full of museums and, increasingly, Street Artists inside as well as outside of them. The coarse work is rough-hewn and unwinding, unraveling, reforming; at times an energy hardly contained, perhaps because to do so would be a sacrilege – better to barely capture it here by camera than with a cage, this dead dog.

Thank you to Tanguy Bombonera for sharing these images with BSA readers.

Tellas and G Loois Popping Off in Rome (VIDEO)

January 5, 2015 Artists

From the folks at Tost Films we have today a new abstract mural on the facade of a home of social and political activism in Italy’s capitale. With rollers and brushes of impressionist layers of thin tints followed by purposeful patterning and drippy detailing TELLAS x GLOOIS daub and doodle their illustration as it rotates and busts apart across the entryway of the atelier. It’s a levitating metaphor with infinite energy, but we can’t say for sure what it all means. Sorry. Looks good though.

BSA thanks Lorenzo and Giorgio at BlindEyeFactory.com for their support and collaboration throughout 2014. We expect to bring more of their outstanding work for your pleasure in 2015.

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BSA Images Of The Week: 01.04.15

January 4, 2015 Artists, BSA Images Of The Week

It’s our first Images of the Week of the new year and we’ve missed you! The city is recovering from disasters and triumphs and heartbreaks and infatuations as normal. The police union is attacking the Mayor in the sky and elsewhere, the NY Times is questioning their tactics, the city is grieving violence against two police with a memorial in the street, the protestors spurred by police brutality continue to demonstrate, the mayor marks his first year, a Staten Island congressman resigns in disgrace, a million people were in Times Square three days ago, the minimum wage is going up a little, and liberal lion and 3 time governor Mr. Cuomo passed away New Years Day.

Here’s to you and your family and a great tumultuous spectacular 2015 that is in store for all of us on the street, in boardrooms, behind cash registers, on walls, in galleries, museums – wherever you are. We’re celebrating the creative spirit wherever we find it and when it comes to Street Art and graffiti and public art you can be sure there will be plenty of new things to see.

Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring $howta, Clint Mario, Crummy Gummy, Dame Edna, Damien Mitchell, Don’t Fret, Eurotrash040, Fred63, Gordo Pelota, Jerkface, Jon Burgerman, Kashink, Korn, Myth, Smartcrew, Specter, Sweet Toof, and Yenta

Untitled. A mourner takes a photo at the site of the street memorial in Brooklyn to honor police officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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