Brooklyn Street Art | …loves you more every day.

BSA Film Friday: 07.04.14

July 4, 2014 Artists

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

Now screening :

1. Tengu: God of Mischief – Subway Skating
2. Ein Wandblatt aus Wien: Handcrafted Graffiti Magazine
3. Mateo – Argentina Street Art
4. Narcélio Grud and Binho Ribeiro help open “A Panorama of Graffiti”
5. Alexis Diaz for Wall/Therapy 2014

BSA Special Feature: Tengu: God of Mischief – Subway Skating

“This gets me beyond hyped for living in NYC next year,” says someone named Josh in the comments on YouTube after viewing this outtake from a film by Colin Read. Okay, true story, this doesn’t occur very much and we recommend you look at a few videos of skateboarding FAILS before you get all hyped about jumping the 3rd rail for fun. But what the hell, its Independence Day in New York so this has LIBERTY written all over it.

Ein Wandblatt aus Wien: Handcrafted Graffiti Magazine

And while we’re on the topic of adolescent male humor, here’s a pastiche that we can’t quite figure out intended to promote a hand crafted graffiti magazine. NSFW (or school for that matter), but you probably don’t have a job if you make it that far into this video anyway.

Mateo – Argentina Street Art

Painted during his trip to Argentina this year, Mateo takes a relaxed and colorful and interactive approach. The first wall is in the city of Cordoba and the other in Buenos Aires with the help of his Argentinian friends Ever and Jaz.

Narcélio Grud and Binho Ribeiro help open “A Panorama of Graffiti”

Urban artists Narcélio Grud and Binho Ribeiro participated in the “A Panorama of Graffiti in Brazil.” in the beginning of June. Not much of a story here, but good to see the artists facing the camera for a minute. The project is to draw attention to the O Porto Iracema das Artes, a training school and cultural center for artists who work in film, television, animation, game design, multimedia, dance, music, and all sorts of studies for the creative sorts. The new piece by Binho looks almost effortless as this master of the can blesses the spirit of the Dragão do Mar Center.

Alexis Diaz for Wall/Therapy 2014

A quick look at a wall born during a storm in Rochester by Alexis Diaz.

Happy July 4th Everybody!

This is the kind of show there will be in the skies in Brooklyn tonight. Head for the roof!

4TH OF JULY from Andrei Severny on Vimeo.

Lady Liberty and New Immigrants on the Street

July 3, 2014 Artists

Statue of Liberty Inspires Street Artists in New York

The colossal creamy green neoclassical sculpture named Lady Liberty (Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi) has been greeting visitors and welcoming immigrants since it was erected in the middle of New York Harbor in the late 1800s and when Brooklyn was still a separate city from Manhattan.

As we approach Independence Day in the US (July 4^th) we look at this beacon of liberty and freedom – and we’d like to add “hope” for those that seek a better life. In a country and a city of immigrants, New York is the true melting pot and it is on these streets that we all walk upon where it all still begins. “While there is no precise count, some experts believe New York is home to as many as 800 languages,” said the New York Times in an article about our native tongues, and 175 or so of those languages are what new immigrant children bring to our schools and play grounds and streets every day.

LMNOPI (photo © Jaime Rojo)

While the president speaks again this week about making this country a fair place for immigrants who have added to our collective wealth as a diverse people, we look again to the words on the statue’s plaque that have welcomed the many for 120 years.

“Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

In New York at least, it is no surprise that Street Artists continue to draw inspiration from Lady Liberty and we mark this holiday week and weekend by sharing with you a few that have brought their interpretation to the streets.

Tristan Eaton for The L.I.S.A. Project. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Ever comedic Street Artist Dont Fret takes a current twist on the theme. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Damien Mitchell holds an aerosol can where the torch usually is. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Pí̱gasos merges Marilyn Monroe with Lady Liberty (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Zed1 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Miss Me speaks here of the historical Americans, to whom the new arrivals looked like immigrants. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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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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ROA Photo Diary : Taking a Wild Kingdom to Global Streets

July 2, 2014 Artists

New Images from Brazil, The Gambia, Australia, New Zealand, Spain, Rome

We check in today with the ever evolving itinerary of the singularly nomadic Street Art urban naturalist named ROA. The well known and respected aerosol painter hails from Ghent in Belgium but he is rarely there these days, so busy is he introducing his monochromatic pictorials of the marginalized animal world. Despite the immense variety of his subjects that are reflective of the local population, ROA’s style is unmistakeable, as is his choice of difficult and imperfect surfaces on which to paint. Some times his subject is playful or alert, other times they are in a struggle, still others are dead or dessicated; paying full respect to the cycle of life and death.

As if to remind us of our own sorry impact, once in a while they are ensnared and suffering in our unthinking detritus. Not surprisingly, a number of the animals are endangered and his painting can often take on an environmental advocacy as a result.

Here we travel with ROA through six countries to see where he has been painting and to learn a little about the environment that these new stars of the street have debuted upon.

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ROA. The Gambia. (photo © Roa)

The Gambia, Africa

On his third visit to The Gambia for the WOW festival, ROA had the opportunity to paint a yellow caterpillar, a flying serpent, the Pinned Scarabée and some pangolins in the villages of Kembujeh and Galloya. He says, “I will be back, it’s amazing” and would like to thank all the folks who live in those villages as well as the organizer of WOW, Lawrence.

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ROA. The Gambia. (photo © Roa)

“I’ve painted a pangolin before in The Gambia but being back there and having read so much during the past year about the illegal trafficking of pangolins – to be served as exotic food or mostly as a ‘medicine’, I needed to paint them again. Firstly, the so-called medical qualities of the ground-up scales are disputed and “the animals are currently on the list of endangered species because of the trafficking and the loss of habitat by deforestation in Africa,” explains ROA. He notes that one of their attempts to protect themselves is to reconfigure their appearance. “They can roll up into a ball to defend themselves,” he says.

ROA. The Gambia. (photo © Roa)

ROA. The Gambia. (photo © Roa)

ROA. A yellow caterpillar in The Gambia. (photo © Roa)

ROA plays with your eye in this two room installation of a skeletal remains in Brazil. (photo © Roa)

Brazil, South America

In the past few months ROA has been to Brazil twice, and neither time to see the World Cup. Instead he has been backpacking around and doing “many small interventions in between beautiful beaches.” While the insects in some of these paintings are originally small, their final scale on the walls are definitely not.

ROA. Brazil. (photo © Roa)

ROA. Brazil. (photo © Roa)

ROA. Brazil. (photo © Roa)

ROA. Brazil. (photo © Roa)

A rare near-optical piece by ROA, this microscopic milieu will be familiar to any kid who attended Biology class. Aside from the factual and the metaphorical, these fellas have a dropped shadow, giving the scene added dimension in Brazil. (photo © Roa)

ROA. Brazil. (photo © Roa)

ROA. Brazil. (photo © Roa)

ROA. Brazil. (photo © Roa)

ROA. Brazil. (photo © Roa)

ROA. Brazil. (photo © Roa)

ROA. Perth. (photo © Roa)

Perth, Australia

While participating in Form’s PUBLIC festival, ROA painted a serpent eating his own tail; a design that refers to ouroboros, an ancient mythological symbol. He says that Australian aboriginal people believe “the serpent has a great symbolic value as ‘The Rainbow Serpent.’ “.

“Also for PUBLIC in Wolf Lane I painted an Australian possum,” says ROA of this piece in Perth. (photo © Roa)

ROA. Christchurch, New Zealand. (photo © Roa)

Christchurch, New Zealand

While painting the facade of the Canterbury Museum in Christchurch for the RISE festival, ROA decided to mix the dead with the living – “It’s a MOA skeleton with a kiwi!” he says. He explains that the moa was native to New Zealand, and flightless (like the kiwi), but the moa died out after humans settled the region.

In fact the Canterbury museum has a large collection of moa bones and skeletons and ROA understands that the museum is said to swap bones with other natural history museums to enlarge their own varied and large collection. One legend, according to the artist, “goes that they swapped some moa bones for the mummy they exhibit.

The site of the painting here has particular significance to the people of Christchurch as only a few years ago in 2010 and 2011 the city suffered serious and damaging earthquakes and almost 200 people died near here. The actual museum was well protected, but many buildings were heavily damaged and survivors still speak “about post-eartquake times, characterized by change and more social awareness,” he says, making this museum, “a very special place to be.”

Inside the Canterbury Museum in Christchurch Roa painted this penguin on the ceiling. (photo © Roa)

ROA. Nelson, New Zealand. (photo © Roa)

ROA. Nelson, New Zealand. (photo © Roa)

Nelson, New Zealand

Roa would like to extend his thanks to Eelco and Ali from The Free House, as well as George and Shannon for his time in Nelson.

ROA. Nelson, New Zealand. (photo © Roa)

ROA. Dunedin, New Zealand. (photo © Roa)

Dunedin, New Zealand

“I painted a tuatara in Dunedin,” he says, of the indigenous reptile.

ROA would like to say thanks to Justin and Luke for their hospitality.

ROA. Tenerife, Spain. (photo © Roa)

Tenerife, Spain

“At the invitation of the MUECA festival in Puerto de La Cruz, I painted my first large scale insect wall!” exclaims ROA, who looks for ways to keep challenging himself. He says that this was a composition that included, “Lots of different little creatures to paint,” which was rather demanding, but he didn’t mind too much because, “it was a beautiful environment and atmosphere.”

ROA. Riga. (photo © Roa)

Riga, Spain

There was a lot of bad weather in Riga during the Blank Canvas festival that ROA participated in, but “I got to paint the hedgehog and hopefully I will be back there soon to paint more,” he remarks.

ROA. Rome. (photo © Roa)

ROME, Italy

Finally, we end our tour with ROA in the famous city of Rome, where he visited for the very first time. He says that it is a “wonderful city” and he painted this wolf “referencing the legend of the founding of the city.”

Roa extends his thanks to Stefano and Francesca of 999 in Rome.

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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

Human-Animal Hybrids Courtesy Kaff-Eine and Lil-Hill in Bushwick

July 1, 2014 Artists

Kaff-Eine hails from Melbourne, Australia and has spent two weeks in Brooklyn in June doing her first paintings here ever. The dryly warm days have provided a perfect opportunity to bask in the sun and paint her slender and sexy animal/human hybrids in repose.

Toronto born and based Li-Hill samples a larger swath of the graffiti/street art style continuum but overlapped Kaff-Eine in the animal world when they collaborated as a crew in the BK last week.

Kaffeine & Li-Hill Collaboration for The Bushwick Collective. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Their Fantasy-Figurative Vs. Abstracted Vs. NeoRealism styles could not be more disanalogous, but this is the age of the mashup-transformer-cyborg so this sweet pair of walls at the Bushwick Collective served as an open laboratory of skin grafting and limb planting for Kaff-Eine and Lil-Hill and all to witness and behold. The resulting futuristic energy field envelopes a darkly quiet otherworldly scene that plays either side of a steer barred window beneath a coiled razor wire.

Kaffeine & Li-Hill Collaboration for The Bushwick Collective. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Kaffeine & Li-Hill Collaboration for The Bushwick Collective. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Kaffeine & Li-Hill Collaboration for The Bushwick Collective. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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GAIA : New Mural Work in Greenville, Atlanta, Detroit

June 30, 2014 Artists

The traveling Street Artist and historian / student / observer / critic of urban planning, anthropology, people’s movements who goes by the moniker GAIA shares with us today some of the back stories for recent murals he has authored.

When he posts on his Facebook page that he is looking for recommendations for reading about a certain city or culture where he will be soon visiting, you can have a degree of certainty that GAIA will soon be depicting what he learns with portraiture and dioramic imagery that illustrates what he has found. This fascination for self-education and public education through public artworks has roots in mural history that has persisted for decades in cities and neighborhoods around the world.

Gaia “City of Altruism”. Detail. Greenville, NC. June, 2014. (photo © Gaia)

Typically public murals are stories told from a formal city or town historical perspective or come about from the distilled sentiment of a community to address or commemorate pivotal people and events that formed and molded the direction or DNA of a population. With Gaia’s personal study, criterion for selection, and style of storytelling one wonders if there is not a GAIA school of mural making that has been evolving over these last five years – one that already appears to have adherents and enthusiastic co-creators – and which reflects his focus on social movements, political machinations, industry, economic drivers, and anthropology.

Here are recent examples of work by Gaia and collaborators in three American cities (although his work is not limited to just this continent) along with some explanatory text from the artist to help contextualize the stories and players evoked within them.

“City of Altruism” – Greenville, North Carolina

Part of #yearofaltruism, the mural features the warped images of four mills that have been repurposed or are slated for renovation and that flow through the Reedy River falls. Previously sites of industry and working class employment that are now used for shopping, upper-income lofts, and entertainment culture, these mills are part of a local heritage that GAIA wanted to preserve.

“Global competition restructures the lives of working class and white collar communities as the South meets the 21st century,” he explains as he describes the new piece. “The calla lilies are a nod to the Bible-minded nature of Greenville; the flowers represent purity yet are also poisonous. These are paired with the tumbling red brick of change and destruction. A single story brick duplex emerges out of the top left of the composition with the phrases “Webster Street” and “Phillis Wheatley” as a memorial to the African American neighborhood that has been erased from this area.”

Gaia would like to thank The Year Of Altruism Foundation for including him in their programming and for inviting him to Greenville, with special thanks to Steve Cohen and Don Kliburg for orchestrating the project.

Gaia “City of Altruism” Greenville, NC. June, 2014. (photo © Gaia)

“Boundary” – Atlanta, Georgia

GAIA in collaboration with artists Nanook, Ozmo and Matt Cogdil created these three warped Bierstadt paintings that fade into images of Mayor Hartsfield and of H. Rap Brown in the bottom corner. The project was completed for Living Walls, the City Speaks in the city’s West End, which GAIA describes as “an industrial neighborhood that is used as a buffer with the construction of Interstate 20 to prevent Mechanicsville and Pittsburgh from encroaching further north into the downtown and the Mosley Park areas.”

Gaia, Nanook, Ozmo and Matt Cogdil collaboration. “Boundary”. Process shot. Atlanta, Georgia. Living Walls Atlanta 2014 (photo © Gaia)

Gaia, Nanook, Ozmo and Matt Cogdil collaboration. “Boundary”. Detail. Atlanta, Georgia. Living Walls Atlanta 2014 (photo © Gaia)

Gaia, Nanook, Ozmo and Matt Cogdil collaboration. “Boundary”. Atlanta, Georgia. Living Walls Atlanta 2014 (photo © Gaia)

The Murder of Vincent Chin in Detroit, Michigan

The primary focus of the elongated piece is a memorial to #VincentChin who, observes GAIA, “passed in 1982 in an altercation that possessed attributes of a hate crime and whose perpetrators who were given lenient sentencing in a plea bargain.”

With that image as the central one, GAIA combines images of leaders whose careers directly or indirectly could be tied to that event, he says. He describes the mural like this: “Painting post war economic miracles as a portrait of global competition that led to layoffs in Detroit and fueled the frustration and xenophobia behind Vincent Chin’s murder”.

Gaia. Memorial to Vincent Chin. Process shot. Detroit. June, 2014. (photo © Gaia)

Here are the other players in the mural, as described by GAIA;

“Wirtschaftswunder” Ludwig Erhard was a German politician notable for his role in Germany’s robust post war recovery.

Gaia. Memorial to Vincent Chin. Process shot. Detroit. June, 2014. (photo © Gaia)

Sun Yun-suan (Chinese: 孫運璿; pinyin: Sūn Yùnxuán; November 11, 1913 – February 15, 2006) was a Chinese engineer and politician. As minister of economic affairs from 1969 to 1978 and Premier of the Republic of China from 1978 to 1984, he was credited for overseeing the transformation of Taiwan from being a mainly agricultural economy to an export powerhouse.

Hayato Ikeda (池田勇人 Ikeda Hayato?, 3 December 1899 – 13 August 1965) was a Japanese politician and the 58th, 59th and 60th Prime Minister of Japan from 19 July 1960 to 9 November 1964. Takafusa Nakamura, a leading economic historian, described Ikeda as “the single most important figure in Japan’s rapid growth. He should long be remembered as the man who pulled together a national consensus for economic growth.”

Gaia. Memorial to Vincent Chin. Detroit. June, 2014. (photo © Gaia)

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BSA Images Of The Week: 06.29.14

June 29, 2014 Artists, BSA Images Of The Week

Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Alice Pasquini, Boy Kong, El Topo, Flood, Foxx Face, GSC, Kaffeine, Li-Hil, LMNOPI, Myth, NTC Cru, Olek, Ozmo, Texas, Gane, TV With Cheese, and Versus.

Top Image >> Snowden at 5Pointz. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

OLEK “Believe the Magic” (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Kaffeine for The Bushwick Collective (photo © Jaime Rojo)

LMNOPI (photo © Jaime Rojo)

MYTH (photo © Jaime Rojo)

OZMO for The L.I.S.A. Project (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Texas & Gane are names you’ll usually see in Philly. Interesting incorporation of the attenuated lettering you may associate with extinguishers here rendered solid and with a drop shadow. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Li-Hill (photo © Jaime Rojo)

TV With Cheese (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Versus does Saddam Hussein (photo © Jaime Rojo)

And Versus paints Yasser Arafat (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Foxx Face. One of his 17 plates installed in Little Italy for The L.I.S.A. Project. The artist took his inspiration from photographs of Italian immigrants whom he researched at the Italian American Museum in Little Italy. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Foxx Face. One more plate for The L.I.S.A. Project. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

El Topo (photo © Jaime Rojo)

NTC Cru (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Flood (photo © Jaime Rojo)

In NYC the streets are paved with gold…yup. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Boy Kong (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Alice Pasquini for The L.I.S.A. Project. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. Brooklyn, NYC. June 2014. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Anthony Lister is Power Tripping In NYC

June 28, 2014 Artists

Street Art A-Lister Mr. Anthony Lister is up and around the hood this past week or so with some fresh aerosol and automatic madness. The Brooklyn-Brisbane based contemporary artist is also opening at Jonathan Levine Gallery tonight for “Power Tripping”, a serpentine slicing of the status quo.

Using techniques of so-called adventure painting has been de rigueur in the street art practice for it’s history, and Lister has been incorporating new elements as they occur throughout his processes as well. For “Power Tripping” he’s making a more deliberate charge at it and promises to impale some of the dark spirits alive in our age of ascending raw capitalism, free of law and in love with might. We’re guessing there will be a superhero or two.

Check out these new adventures spotted around town recently as shot by Jaime Rojo.

Anthony Lister (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Anthony Lister’s solo show “Power Tripping” opens today at the Jonathan LeVine Gallery. Click HERE for more details.

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BSA Film Friday: 06.27.14

June 27, 2014 Artists

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

Now screening :

1. Miss Van, Glamorous Darkness
2. Andaluz The Artist re-works “Nah I’m Talkin Bout”- G-Unit
3. Urban Calligraphy “Lucid Dream,” by Simon Silaidis
4. JR & José Parlá: Wrinkles of the City

BSA Special Feature: Miss Van, Glamorous Darkness

“I like it a little disturbing. As long as they are wearing masks I think it gives them the necessary strength I want them to express. I don’t necessarily need to dress them,” so explains Miss Van in studio in this rose colored atelier of the feminine form. For years the Street Artist has put forward a new definition of the female and the fantasy, and her newer works only invite. Lest you become too confident, Miss Van makes it clear that they also may bite. “I’m not coy in my paintings.”

One tasty bit of irony revealed here is that her own visual research of photography and the female form from a century ago alerted her to her own perceptions of what idealized feminine beauty is.

Andaluz The Artist re-works “Nah I’m Talkin Bout”- G-Unit

Andaluz tells you what it is all about, son, in this new painting/music video. While he looks suspiciously over his shoulder at you he continues with his aerosol portrait tributes to one of his favorite recently re-united Hip-Hop groups, G-Unit.

The real surprise is that mid-way through the jam the artist takes off his mask and starts laying down the lyrics himself which are witty and autobiographical.

Ed note: Wish people didn’t have to say n*****, hoe, and b****h. Otherwise it’s a great piece of creativity and ingenuity we can respect.

Urban Calligraphy “Lucid Dream,” by Simon Silaidis

“Simon Silaidis is a designer, a thinker, a vision-er, a pioneer,” says his autobiography that accompanies this video. He also loves calligraphy, part of a growing number of graffitti / Street Art based adherents to the gestural and decorative lettering of traditional language arts. Sit here with him in his reverie…

JR & José Parlá: Wrinkles of the City

A teaser for the full length piece, here is a gentle and rich introduction to “Wrinkles of the City”, the dual project in Havana, Cuba, completed by JR & José Parlá a couple of years ago.

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Tehran To NYC / NYC To Tehran, Curated by Icy & Sot

June 26, 2014 Artists, Interview

Iranian Brothers Generate Cultural Exchange Between Two Homes

Icy & Sot, the Iranian Street Artists who have been making their mark on the New York scene for just two years are again making news by curating a gallery show that introduces Iran and the US to one another through the visual vernacular of Street Art.

With two shows running concurrently in Tehran and Brooklyn, the stencil loving spray painters have successfully exposed fans of this genre to the artists in another country with actual examples of art in a gallery setting rather than simply through the Internet. During the South Williamsburg opening on June 13^th guests at the TBA temporary space were treated to works by 10 Iranian artists as well as a video projection on the wall of their counterparts viewing the US artists show at Seyhoun Art gallery, which was recorded only hours earlier.

Iran’s CK1 in “Tehran to New York” (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Without diplomatic relations between the two countries, it is a wonder that this exchange could be cultivated, let alone executed. Given the restrictions imposed upon music, film, literature, and art since the revolution of 35 years ago, it added a layer of incredulity for gallery goers to measure the implications while viewing the works by a youth culture that has as its DNA a certain strain of rebellion.

New York sent the work of 35 artists, an impressively sized roster of participants who were each given size restrictions to keep shipping simpler and costs lower. While the brothers were clearly elated to bring new work to both cities, one might have surmised that the more excited feelings were directed toward their recently departed home where about 55% of the population is estimated to be under 30 years old and a youthful cultural evolution is said to be happening in the artist underground.

Iran’s CK1 in “Tehran to New York” (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Work from the Iranians reveals an accurately studious affinity for the pop of Warhol and irony of Banksy alongside polished versions of wildstyle and more modern graffiti lettering and loose splattering. The larger cross section of New Yorkers sampled from that pot as well as the myriad influences on the streets today including illustration, photography, geometric patterning, cartoon, and collage.

BSA spoke with the brothers as they were installing the New York show:

Brooklyn Street Art: So would you say this is primarily about cultural exchange?
Sot: Yeah, I mean the fact that there hasn’t been any relationship between Iran and the US, but this is totally about the relationship between the artists.

Iran’s Ill in “Tehran to New York” (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Brooklyn Street Art: What do you think that a viewer at the New York show is going to realize when seeing these works?
Icy: First of all they are going to get to know the artists because they are not familiar with their work and haven’t had a chance to know them before. Also they will realize the fact that there are people in Iran doing this kind of art. It is underground, it is just a small scene, but still.
Sot: It’s a good chance for these artists to show their work.

Brooklyn Street Art: Would you say that these artists are taking real risks by showing their work like this?
Icy: I mean, for the street artists there everything is risky, putting works in the street… like having the show is stressful but luckily the people there have gotten their permits and stuff.

Iran’s Cave 2 in “Tehran to New York” (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Brooklyn Street Art: Who did they have to ask for permission and what did they need to see?
Sot: It’s hard to translate the name but it’s an official organization
Icy: They have to check out the work and see it and they have to approve it.
Sot: Yes they have to do that for everything – for music performance or for art exhibits or anything, they have to go through this – but for this show it is at one of the oldest galleries in Iran so.

The guys related some of the exigencies of putting a show like this together and Sot talks about one of the artists who is an old classmate of his who doesn’t use the tools of communication that so many of his peers in the west would. “He doesn’t have a website for his art and he’s not on Facebook,” says Sot, “so I was like Facebook messaging another friend to ask him to call this guy for me and ask him to be in the show, and then to ask him for the status of shipping of his piece or information about the piece.”

Iran’s Hoshvar in “Tehran to New York”(photo © Jaime Rojo)

Brooklyn Street Art: So with the Superman and the Warholian Marilyn, I like this idea where there is a mixing of the two cultures together quite literally.
Sot: Yeah, for these shows there wasn’t really a theme but some artists, because they knew where they were going to be displayed made specific choices to communicate something. Like Gilf! wanted to write something in farsi so she picked the words “I am You” in farsi.
Icy: And El Sol 25 did the words “Iran So Far Away”, which is inspired by the song. (by Flock of Seagulls)

Iran’s MAD in “Tehran to New York” (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Brooklyn Street Art: What is one of your favorite pieces here, or rather, which one would you like to talk about?
Icy: I like them when they talk about social issues.
Sot: Like this one with CK1 – it has all these pictures from newspaper with the Shah

Brooklyn Street Art: They look like they may have been around ’81 or ’82…
Icy: Yeah, then the hijab came after the revolution and then the women had to wear the hijab.
Brooklyn Street Art: So before then they didn’t have to wear it?
Sot: No, before that they could choose.
Icy: Then they had no choice.
Sot: And this one with Superman and on his chest it says “love” in farsi and there is Tehran in the background and there is the freedom tower in the background?

Brooklyn Street Art: Is that called “Freedom Tower”?
Sot: Yeah, or Liberty Tower, it’s like the symbol of Tehran. It’s like you have the Statue of Liberty here and that’s the freedom tower in Iran.

Iran’s CK1 in “Tehran to New York” (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Iran’s FRZ in “Tehran to New York” (photo © Jaime Rojo)

A more traditional piece by sh’b varies from the Street Art theme and displays the artistic influence of distinctly Persian origins. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“NYC TO TEHRAN”

Tony De Pew, Sonni, Hellbent and Bishop203 (photo © Rana Ahmadi)

Gilf! on the wall with Joe Iurato on the pedestal. (photo © Rana Ahmadi)

The Exhibition NYC to Tehran is currently on view at Seyhoun Art Gallery in Tehran, Iran. Click HERE for more details. The sister exhibition from Tehran to NYC is now closed.

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“Welling Court” 2014, a Grassroots Mural Event Turns 5 in Queens

June 25, 2014 Artists

When the revered graffiti holy place named 5Pointz in Queens, New York was buffed and slated officially for demolition last fall the collective response of the graffiti / Street Art fan base and community was horror and lament. Nonetheless, community persists, and art in the streets is stronger than ever in many cities, including right here in Queens which has played host to an ever growing grassroots exhibition on the walls for five years called Welling Court.

Imagined and produced by two advocates of creativity in the public sphere and run on a shoe-string budget, Welling Court is a series of 100+ walls throughout this largely working class neighborhood that feels like it perhaps has been overlooked by the rest of the city. With a mix of some of New York’s newest immigrants and families, the modest residential/light manufacturing neighborhood has had a eye-jolting injection of spirit and free art every summer since 2009.

We look forward to this annual event for a number of reasons, among them: the unpretentious spirit of community creativity at work as tens of artist straddle ladders and stepstools side by side painting walls, the friendly inquisitive neighbors who hang out and discuss the art and prepare a variety of foods to share on folding tables in the middle of the street, and the unbridled enthusiasm of the kids who race through the neighborhood on foot, bicycle, scooter, even grocery cart.

Unsponsored by brands and run by community elbow grease, Welling Court brings lots of Street Art / graffiti / public art enthusiasts and almost no police presence or crime for that matter. Breaking their own record this June at 127 painted walls, organizers Garrison and Alison Buxton help hook up the opportunity and artists are happy to take advantage of it. Here is just a relatively small selection of images taken by photographer Jaime Rojo at Welling Court 2014.

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This article was also published on The Huffington Post

Opiatic Overunder Gives You Poppies in Cleveland

June 24, 2014 Artists

As we enter into the languid sweaty city summer of your dreams and the cloud of concrete dust and carbon dioxide kicked up by passing cars settles onto your dewey skin, it’s time to spend a few hours with aerosol cans on a wall.

“It’s been busy lately,” says Overunder, who is relishing an extended tour through select cities this summer and he’s already on his way now to Baton Rouge at the Museum of Public Art for a mural program with young adults.

But here we bring you his latest interactions with fluid geometric forms, pulldown gates, planes and poppies. Yes, bright red poppies. May they provide an opiatic reverie to thee in your lawn chair and your bare feet as you mop your brow and enjoy an icy can of cola.

“Summer Sketch” by Chet Baker – a fitting accompaniment to your reverie…

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Adam Void, Graffiti, a Decade, and 1000 Polaroids

June 23, 2014 Artists

“This is why we can’t have pretty things.” That’s the thought that runs through your head walking through your average punk rock squat, with all its scattered art installations (including on the ceiling), hand made concert posters, curious clumps of clothes on the floor, a cigarette butt smashed into a beer cap on the windowsill, left over signs of impromptu all-nighters, ever shifting sleeping arrangements, and one creaky cracked bottom refrigerator drawer that is stuck and nobody can open it and probably they shouldn’t.

Adam Void probably has a poloroid of that. In fact during his 20s he spent lots of time ambling between his home state of North Carolina and points west and north, hopping freight trains, hitch hiking, sleeping in briar patches, pissing downhill, investigating the underside and inside and backside and countryside and cityside – and happily documenting with a poloroid camera that now feels as outdated as a cassette tape.

Hard to comprehend in the age of everybody-everywhere-everyminute cell phones, but a bad shot in this case is deleted by physically placing it in an actual garbage can. However Mr Void probably kept it anyway, such a fan of the blurry and splattered and textural is he. Cool thing is, you don’t have to apply a “poloroid” filter to the image.

The expanse of 1000+ shots he collected over eleven years is a good diary of liberty in the 2000s at a time when the hysteria of war had mind-locked the middle; polarizing and frightening and deliberately muddling the perceptions of the everyday. While people were alertly seeing things and saying things and buying duct tape, Void was blithely walking through their back yard taking shots and committing them to imperfectly perfect film.

It’s also a visual diary of a young man looking at the detritus, flipping things over and inspecting the belly, testing the limits, and reveling in the process of discovery. “These photographs serve as documents of the beginnings of the Carolina’s graffiti scene, 2006-10 era Brooklyn Street Art/Weirdo Graffiti underground, Baltimore and Philly’s warehouse squat culture of the early 2010’s, and hundreds of pictures from America’s back roads,” says Mr. Void.

Today he shares with BSA readers a handful of favorites and a couple of shots of his new installation of 800 in Asheville, NC entitled “Adam Void / Instant Photography: 2003-2014”

“Adam Void / Instant Photography: 2003-2014” is currently open to the general public at Castell Photography located at 2C Wilson Alley in Asheville, NC.

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