I’m not one to follow gossip, but there have been whispers that these Banksy’s may not be by Banksy – and it would be just shocking to imagine that a surrogate is putting up his work. Regardless, the placement looks genuine, and the wry humor is clearly intact. A particular detail that just makes me bark out loud (BOL) is the Jeff Koons pink dog with the officer.
Also extra points for the soundtrack – helpful hints for attracting and retaining the opposite sex.
American designers Charles and Ray Eames worked and made major contributions to modern architecture and furniture during their life together, which stretched 4 decades or so in the last century. During that time they created many classics – like this, this, and this. So celebrated are their designs that the postal service even issued a collection of stamps a couple of years ago featuring their designs.
As with most things that become classic, they also can use an update periodically – even though I know that statement causes a shudder to go down the spines of those who consider the designs “timeless”.
And so it came to be that Mr. Kid and Ms. Park summoned 20 of the current crop of rebels on the street to reface one of the Eames classics for a fundraiser auction benefitting Operation Design, which puts architects, artists and related professionals in mentorship programs with NYC public school students. The whole enterprise, which includes a film crew an on-line auction and a few parties ultimately involves a number of players.
But the aesthetically gratifying and thrilling part of this show to me is that it is freely available by walking down the street – specifically walking by the Barney’s windows starting May 11th – June 1st.
The MOMA has the original in it’s permanent collection, and TIME magazine named their dining chair the best design of the 20th century, but for us the real deal is in these 2010 versions that erupt with new life and the D.I.Y. spirit that is alive and well on the streets.
The chairs have been rocked! I think NohJ even set his on fire… Here are a few examples.
Eames classic by Billi Kid
PUBLIC WORKS DEPARTMENT PRESENTS
“EAMES INSPIRATION”
CURATED BY BILLI KID AND LUNA PARK
ON VIEW AT BARNEYS WINDOWS FROM MAY 11th THROUGH JUNE 1st
See the whole collection of chairs HERE
PUBLIC WORKS DEPARTMENT
presents
EAMES INSPIRATION
A unique collection of iconic Eames Molded Plywood Lounge Chairs, as re-imagined by some of today’s most celebrated graffiti and street artists, will be auctioned online
to benefit OPERATION DESIGN.
Operation Design organizes architects, graphic artists, design, construction and related professionals to work with public school students to create motivating and inspiring spaces and projects.
Featured in BARNEYS NEW YORK windows on Madison Avenue at 61st Street
May 11th through June 1st.
Bidding begins May 11th at opdesign.org and ends June 1st.
Curated by Billi Kid and Luna Park.
Artist List
Aakash Nihalani, Billi Kid, Blanco, Cake, Celso, Cern, Damon Ginandes, Darkcloud, David Cooper, Elbow-Toe, James and Karla Murray, Joe Iurato, Matt Siren, NohJColey, Peru Ana Ana Peru, Skewville, Sofia Maldonado, Stikman, UR®New York and Veng.
His new multi-layer stencilled canvasses are a healthy 3 feet by 4 feet in size, and feature some of the cleanest lines he has created – sometimes giving them a liquid effect, like big reflecting pools in a monochromatic subterranean tableau.
In these two pieces from the show, Logan continues his romance with underground tunnels and structural symmetry – but this time with more gleam and finesse than ever.
Brooklyn Street Art asked him how the show is going:
Logan Hicks: I feel great about the show. This is the first large gallery show that I have done since 2008 and I feel like I have really evolved since then. I will have 12 new pieces for the show and it marks a new style for me. The pieces are a bit more refined, edges are cleaner – which I think works for ‘reading’ the piece.
They are larger pieces too, which really works for feeling like you can walk into the piece. My work has always had this contemplative, reflective kind of feel and the larger the work, the more that feeling comes through.
OPERA GALLERY NEW YORK
115, Spring Street NY NY 10012 – USA
Tel (1) (212) 966 66 75
Fax.(1) (212) 966 42 95
Email : nyc@operagallery.com
It’s the month of May and this weekend you couldn’t bear to be on the streets of NYC –
Even though we managed to see new stuff INDOORS by Swoon, Matt Siren, Royce Bannon, Michael DeFeo, Stikman, Celso, DarkCloud, LAII, Deekers, M-City, and Dolk – The cold, high winds made street walking quite uninviting and threatened to blow the top off of Swoons’ Konbit shelter installation along the East River while she signed copies of her new book inside Urban Arts Projects.
Along Williamsburgs’ fabled Bedford Ave. yesterday you would have expected hipsters and the college kids who emulate them to be slavishly completing their brunches and slumpingly parading to a stylized dodgeball game at McCarren Park. There they would be chugging from giant styrofoam cups of beer purchased from The Turkey’s Nest and texting friends about their TOTES crazy life.
Instead all that could be found were hearty Polish ladies with corsages pinned on their heavy woolen coats from the Mother’s Day Services at church, a few of the regular lumpy neighborhood drunks slouched and drooping off the park benches, and some miserable young families forced out of their apartments by sheer child-driven insanity.
That’s why this newly discovered sign by TrustoCorp almost seemed like a cheery promise of warm weather, asymmetric haircuts, neckbeards, and hand-rolled cigarettes just around the corner.
Dark Clouds at Woodward (photo © Steven P. Harrington)
Matt Siren at Woodward (photo © Steven P. Harrington)
Stikman at Woodward (photo © Steven P. Harrington)
In BedStuy, Brooklynite the crowd was pumpin' to the sounds of DJ Evil EE in the backyard and looking at new work from M-City and Dolk,while this fellow and his boyz were banging out a street rhythm on the sidewalk in front of the gallery. (photo © Steven P. Harrington)
Dolk and M-City at Brooklynite (photo © Steven P. Harrington)
In the backyard gallery at Brooklynite this Dolk was lit from below quite effectively (photo © Steven P. Harrington)
M-City and Dolk at Brooklynite (photo © Steven P. Harrington)
Our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring:Urban Arts Projects, Swoon, REVS, Dolk, General Howe, QRST, Shepard Fairey, Nomade
Swoon’s “Konbit Shelter” sculpture in the East River Park in Williamsburg, Brooklyn to raise awareness for her building project in Haiti. The installation was presented in conjunction with the Urban Arts Projects.
Nomade (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Gallery Heist is pleased to present The Reinvention of Nature, the San Francisco debut exhibition for Brooklyn/Baltimore based street artist GAIA. The Reinvention of Nature – Opening reception: Saturday, May 15, 2010, 7-11pm MAY 15 – MAY 31, 2010 Gaia is a Brooklyn and Baltimore based street artist with a background in Printmaking and Sculpture. He is currently enrolled in his final year at MICA (Maryland Institute of Art) with a major in interdisciplinary sculpture. At the age of 21 Gaia has built an impressive resume having exhibited in art fairs and galleries through out Brooklyn, London, D.C, Miami and Los Angeles. His work has appeared along side street art contemporary geniuses such as Blek Le Rat, Shepard Farey, Swoon, Matt Small, D*face, Sweettoof, Brian Adam Douglas, Lucas Price, Nick Walker, Slinkachu, Imminent Disaster, EVOL, Pisa 73, Oliver Vernon, and Dalek just to name a few.
Marrying the animal and the human form, Gaia conjures mysterious figures that carry a heavy sense of mythology and recall a past when man and nature were once united. These romantic creatures stand in relief to the urban environment as they lurk and beckon in the city’s forgotten and neglected spaces. The conveyance of their story relies on the chance coincidence with a passerby, and even in that intimate moment, their narrative is precarious and delicate. Gaia works with linocut prints and painted images applied to paper and then mounted as paste ups on the street or on panels for finished works.
ABOUT THE GALLERY Art is an extension of our culture and our communities and in many ways art defines our times. Art is not a luxury it is a necessity. My mission is to foster innovative artistic expression and provide sanctuary for the creative process while stressing the importance of it. The walls of Heist will house work that is representational to this generation offering a contemporary program of artists who challenge and analyze our social and cultural responsibility, traditions, and behaviors; artists who are on the forefront of a conscious art movement. To encourage and support this conscious art movement, I have opened Heist and hope that you will choose to be a part of it. Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Saturday 12:00-8:00pm Mondays by appointment. Gallery Heist is located at 679 Geary Street near the corner of Leavenworth, southeast of the intersection.
Swoon’s got a book, as you know – and she’s going to be signing it Saturday in Brooklyn.
Jake Dobkin at the Gothamist just published a delicious interview with the paper-slicing queen on the street. They talk about “Swimming Cities”, the Gowanus neighborhood of Brooklyn, MOCA, Jeffrey Deitch, and her trip to Zambia.
From the interview:
Looking through the pictures, we were struck by how much artistic ground you’ve covered in just ten or eleven years. What do you see as the essential themes that bring all of your work together?
Workaholism. Um, just kidding. Themes? How about the hands on creation of our world—that’s tops. And the creation of moments of pause, human connection, empathy, surprise, wonder and ridiculousness. Bringing what you make to people in places where they are not expecting it. The belief that loving attention can and will be transformative. Democratized public spaces. The tying together of classical mediums and modern contexts. An obsession with looking deeply into the faces of other human beings. Also, never wait, and never let the bastards get you down. Are those themes? They should be.
Break out the Prada sunglasses kids, the ever-clever and fun folks at Brooklynite Gallery have produced a show with two European Artists: DOLK and M-City, entitled “Eurotrash”
But these artists are far from trash, although they are pretty Euro. Rae just liked that term because it is funny and because some correspondents in some neighborhoods are reporting that they are immersed in a sloshing sea of it. Pure hyperbole, I’m sure.
Dolk goes old school with this stencil subject and deliberately mucks it up for effect.
And now, back to me. “Eurotrash” makes me think of the 1980’s, when the term first stuck and wealthy young Europeans living in New York were chronicled in a column titled “Eurotrash” by Taki Theodoracopulos in the now defunct The East Side Express. Ahhhh, visions of Lacroix pouf skirts and slick men in ponytails with big long thick cigars swell to mind.
And NOW, back to me. And then came TECHNO and TRANCE and it was all over the big Euro-club, exalting Eurotrash to an international lifestyle embraced by a sh*tload of people. What do you need to make a good ET dance song, you ask?
1. Powerful synth riffs that create the hook of the song, and hi-energeee massive arena-style walls of sound, 2. Rapping in a military and/or ganga fashion, preferably by a strapping black German with a gap between his front teeth, 3. A soaring wailing female vocal about sexual availability, preferably with a German accent or in a Nordic language emitting electronically from a distant chilly erotica planet 4. A galloping baseline and some sirens and a solid two minutes of intro and outro beats for mixing purposes.
M-CITY, despite the heavy monocromatic industrial quality of his stencils, is a funny guy. Here the Manchurian Helena II plowing through a sea of beach umbrellas. I think.
To bone up on whom we speak you can read all about the society scum characters in Irvine Welsh’s short story “Eurotrash” included in his book “The Acid House”
Zeromancer have a song called “Eurotrash” where they sing: We are nothing but Eurotrash,
We take Plastic we take Cash! Get the ringtone here!
"The Boxer" - a pretty stunning canvas by DOLK tomorrow at Brooklynite.
Tell you what. Why not hop on the L train headed toward Brooklyn and ride just a few stops past Bedford Ave and go to BedStuy and see the show for yourself? It’s not as good as Mr. Brainwash of course but there will be cameras to capture your look – even a live video feed! Sorry no bottle service.
Special thanks to Jaime Rojo for background research on this important topic.
OPENING RECEPTION:
Saturday, May 8, 7-10PM
Special Musical Guest:
DJ EVIL DEE (Da Beatminerz)
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Can’t make it to the show? Check out our
STREAMING LIVE COVERAGE of the opening
on our website: BrooklyniteGallery.com
Brooklynite Gallery is located at 334 Malcolm X Blvd., Brooklyn, New York 11233
You won’t find too many eggheads in the circles I run in. Well maybe, but I’m too dim to realize it.
It is pretty evident when you meet street artists “infinity” and Avoid Pi that you may need some footnotes to follow if you want to really understand what direction they are going. Don’t worry, I’m not completely snowed – just watch their feet, right?
A collabo called "The Treachery of Words" by infinity and Avoid Pi
The upcoming dual show by these somewhat mad scientists on the 21st at Mighty Tenaka should be a jolting trip of symbolism and secret languages and DNA strands – and a developing visual vocabulary that reliably is improving.
Avoid Pi "All One"
These are a few behind the scenes images of prep for the show,
An "infinity" 2 sided collabo.
as well as a sparky new video piece they made to promote it, which makes the hairs stand up on my arm. Fun times!
(even though it says May 20 in the video, it’s the 21st)
More about this show and these artists to come.
Click to see large
Web: www.mightytanaka.com
Today we continue with our coverage of ROA’s arrival into New York and his second piece this week, a stunning long-necked Ibis on a tattered and weathered former rope factory in Brooklyn.
We all took turns on the cherry picker (hooked up by our buddy Joe F. ) which was a blast to operate and after we scraped the wall free of ivy and managed to not smash any windows, ROA hopped inside and put on his safety harness and drove that bucket smoothly, like your grandpa on a Sunday drive through the countryside.
Using only his eye, his spray can, and a confident hand, ROA mapped out the shape of the feathered creature with no false lines, and no chance of erasing. Periodically he brought the mechanical bird to the ground to step way back and assess his progress and make adjustments: the wild animals’ belly got a little fatter, the feathers more shading for depth. As the sun receded and the lights came on, the painting of the Ibis felt more like an “event”, a performance onstage in the floodlights by one of Street Arts’ rising talents who can command a stage and keep it real.
ROA (photo © Jaime Rojo)
In Part 2 of ROA’s interview, he talked to BSA about his roots in graffiti, his transition to Street Art, and a few words about our move to the second wave of the street art movement. (see Part I here)
Brooklyn Street Art: How long have you been making animals?
ROA: I think I had a big period when I did all kinds of stuff – from letters to whatever when I was younger. Then I started doing characters. Then for myself I really changed my way of painting and I found out that I really wanted to paint animals. This is a couple of years ago. But then when I look back to the stuff I did when I was younger, there were some earlier tags that were, at that point, not important for myself but when I look at them now I realize that they were already there. In the last few years I think I really know what I am doing. There were signs that told what I might become.
ROA (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Brooklyn Street Art: So you were writing graffiti first, lettering, tags?
ROA: Yeah, I started when I was like 13 so we copied things out of Spray Can Art and Subway Art – these things were for us like The Bible or something. So if we had a vision of how a piece should be it was like things we saw in these books — colors and a black outline and a white highlight. So for a long time that was what we did.
ROA (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Brooklyn Street Art: These books were like textbooks for the school of graffiti.
ROA: In a way, definitely. When I started doing that I started skating and listening to Public Enemy. As a Belgian kid growing up in the late 80’s – early 90’s that was the strong influence, these kinds of things – so graffiti was one of these things. So in our minds, it should be done like that. So I think at that point nobody was doing anything else, there was just old-school graffiti..
Brooklyn Street Art: It had become globalized at that point…
ROA: And it is still there. It’s still being repeated now.
ROA (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Brooklyn Street Art: When did you first see that there began to be a little divide in the graffiti/street art evolution? When did you first get an inkling that things were changing?
ROA: I think because I started to do different stuff, I started to see that there was different stuff. It was not really obvious. People were doing things that were more “characters” like a hip-hop MC with a cute female with a big butt and a chain around (the neck) and a big ghetto blaster. Then at certain points people started painting less of the MC styles – they started to paint extra old-school and “crappy “– in a deliberate way because they wanted “crappy”. A few years ago this was the first “unconventional” graffiti that I started to see – they tried to look crappy. That was for me the first moment that I started to notice a change. And that was the moment when I started to say “you have new styles”. It shouldn’t just be just the old style. You have new styles.
Brooklyn Street Art: So perhaps you had exhausted that vocabulary. You had done everything that you wanted to do and you wanted to discover something different.
ROA: I realized that I wanted to do something different. I had been drawing all my life and I sketched a lot. Most often my sketches were way more powerful than the finished pieces on the wall. So the moment I started to “sketch” with a can, that was the moment when I started to see for myself the change. When I stopped doing surfaces and I started doing lines… It is just a way of painting or drawing. You have a certain kind of culture where it came from but aside from that – it’s just paint and a surface to paint on so at that point I realized that there are so many things you can do and ways you can try to do it with spray paint.
ROA (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Brooklyn Street Art: So now the proverbial horse is out of the barn and there is no use closing the door..
ROA: Yeah, I think so. It’s too late, that’s for sure. Of course you don’t know what the future will bring and I’m not saying I’m going to do forever what I am doing now. I try to keep on pushing it farther and sometimes I take two steps back and re-examine. It is not always clear, that’s the nice thing.
Brooklyn Street Art: So, for you it is like an evolution.
ROA: Yeah, I think so. It’s an endless evolution. That’s what is so nice about drawing or making stuff. It’s like a piece – when is it finished? Never. You can work on it for hours and hours more and then “Is it finished?” – you never know, eh? It’s like with drawing, too..… when are you a skilled artist? When you die probably, then. Then you are at the end of your journey, then you know what you know. Then you can not know more. Until then you can learn every day. With drawing it is not like a game you can complete. There is always a new level. Even if you get to the next level, then you have ten new levels. That is a nice thing about it, there is no ending.
ROA (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Regarding the first wave of Street Art:
ROA: …everybody found a style and repeated it over and over and it was all around and people saw it and it was crazy what you could do with one small logo. Then at a certain point, it gets boring too. If you have the same logo over and over — I’m not the guy who says what other people should do, though. I want to do what I want to do.
Brooklyn Street Art: So you feel like now we can identify some of those practices as being a part of the “first wave” of street art?
ROA: I think that made a big difference. Then people made logos and t-shirts and toys and calendars and condoms and whatever, which is ,in a way, really funny. You can do it with stuff like that and you can be all over. But at this point I think we are at a new level and people can do stuff like that but it is more interesting if somebody does stuff with it and it continues and it grows and it lives and you can be surprised by most of the new work. It is not like this symbol repeated again and again with a different color and a little slight twist. In the end, it’s been done. Sometimes it is time to move. When DuChamp put his urinal in the museum it was really one of the biggest statements of the last century. Definitely. But the next guy who did something similar was less interesting. If you see what was done later in the same tracks, it’s really boring. It’s good that things get knocked down and rebuilt and knocked down.
The finished Ibis by ROA in Brooklyn, NYC (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Don’t miss ROA in his first New York Solo Show at Factory Fresh May 14.
It’s striking how the British Newspaper “The Sun” is presenting their endorsement for conservative candidate David Cameron. Turning a campaign visual theme from the 2008 US presidential candidacy of winner Barack Obama on it’s head, the design choice for tomorrow’s cover is a move variously cited as bold or bereft. We’re just wondering if Shep will smell a lawsuit in there somewhere.
The cover of tomorrow's Sun newspaper features a Fairey'd treatment of conservative Cameron.
The eagerly anticipated arrival of one of Street Arts’ spray can naturalists in New York was begun with a marathon 15 hours of painting of two walls in Brooklyn that in the early morning hours of today.
Energetic and excited to be here fresh from a successful show in London at Pure Evil Gallery, where he sparked great interest with his loud-speaking silent animals inside and outside the box, the down-to-earth realist ROA began his NYC tour with two incredible gifts to his host city. With days to go before his first New York solo show at Factory Fresh gallery in Brooklyn, it only seemed natural to ROA to get up strong on BK walls before heading inside to knock out new pieces.
ROA (photo © Jaime Rojo)
“Brooklyn Free Style” was the word ROA decided to describe the approach he had yesterday to his work – a nod to the hip-hop culture of creating on-the-fly as well as the sometimes chaotic path a day in Brooklyn can take for a jet-lagged Belgium who didn’t really know where his new walls were, let alone what they would look like. Just like you might expect from a former graffiti/skater kid who still listens to Public Enemy and Suicidal Tendencies to keep balanced, this guy only wants to hit higher more difficult walls than the last time, and he does.
ROA (photo © Jaime Rojo)
As we saw throughout the day, a bit of chaos is a natural environment for ROA and one he relishes creating within – embrace the imperfect world. He likes to take what comes flying at him and deal with it with dexterity and an intuitive flow. Our day included rented cars, roaring trucks, ladders, chairs, bricks, soil, plants, trees, a monstrous cherry picker (thanks Joe), pleasant sun/punishing sun, high winds, dark skies, blowing rain, flying garbage, old vines, utility lights, fat caps and thin, good paint and bad, rollers, a harness, utility lights, hand-rolled cigarettes, and some of Brooklyn’s best family biz food.
ROA (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Like a wild willow sprouted from a patch of SuperFund soil in an abandoned industrial city lot, ROA bends and twists and re-configures effortlessly, ultimately standing strong no matter what flies his way. His credo is to find inspiration in adversity and yesterday he made obstacles seem effortless – welcoming the challenge, incorporating design issues and moving forward. It makes sense that his chosen subjects are the animals that get overlooked, are many times missed, yet persevere despite man’s dreadful determination to destroy.
ROA (photo © Jaime Rojo)
In this first of a two-part interview, ROA talks to BSA about his approach to his work and his animals.
ROA: I’m not really prepared, but I have a lot of things with me. I have a lot of cans, caps, things with me so I can decide what I want to do at the point at whatever point I am in the piece.
Brooklyn Street Art: A little Brooklyn Freestyle
ROA: Yeah a little Brooklyn Freestyle.
Brooklyn Street Art: How did you decide on this particular bird today?
ROA: I think because of the shape of the wall and with the stuff that is in front of it, it makes sense. It is really important when you enter a place that the animal looks at you. If not, it would not the same dynamic. Also it is not necessary to fill up the whole wall – it is filled but it is not filled.
ROA (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Brooklyn Street Art: It genuinely occupies the rest of the wall without really being there.
ROA: Yeah. That is not always possible, sometimes you have a ladder, sometimes you do not have a ladder to reach, some times you have a pole, some times you do not. What you make all depends on what you have and how high the wall is.
ROA (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Brooklyn Street Art: So that is one of the first things that art students learn about : how to recognize and deal with positive space and negative space compositionally. A lot of your work definitely utilizes the negative space surrounding it.
ROA: Yeah, I think it grew by doing so many walls. In the end you begin to feel how something should be on a wall. It’s logical when you are a little kid and you begin painting graffiti and you have six cans and a wall and you just start right there. As you paint more and you paint bigger you begin to see the thing in its totality. I think placement is kind of important for the piece. But it is also the possibilities that exist that tell you what you can and cannot do. It’s always depending on the possibilities. You can see immediately what it should be, and you see what is actually possible. If the two come together then you’ve got the perfect situation.
ROA (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Brooklyn Street Art: So you do what you can with what you have.
ROA: Yes, I think that is the main rule. And the wall is part of that. In a way, the wall tells you what you should make.
Brooklyn Street Art: You do tend to favor more difficult surfaces instead of smooth flat pristine surfaces.
ROA: Yeah, I like texture: I like when a wall, or an area, or a building tells a little bit of a story. It is sometimes really boring to paint on a wall that is just one color. It is always better to start from something that is interesting. That is probably the same reason why I don’t paint normal canvasses. There is not a lot of inspiration. But if you’ve got some dirty materials, it’s got a little bit of the story already. In that way it is like the walls… The shape and the textures tell you immediately what the possibilities are. There’s always more than one way.
ROA (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Brooklyn Street Art: Do you have any animals at home?
ROA: Yes I have a cat and a turtle. The turtle was a gift from a really good friend of ours and the cat chose our home as its home so that’s how the cat came. At a certain point she was there and she didn’t want to leave so she stayed. We had moved to a new house with a basement and we were there for a month and I decided to check out the basement and I left the door open. At night we were watching TV and the came in. I thought it belonged to one of the neighbors so I put it outside and the next day she was back in the basement. So probably she was living there for a long time before us. We moved to 3 different houses and she moved with us and 10 years later she is still our cat.
ROA (photo © Jaime Rojo)
ROA (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Brooklyn Street Art: Did you ever do a portrait of her?
ROA: No. That’s not true I did some sketches of her – her form, a study of a cat. But I never painted her on a wall or something like that. I think animals like cats, even though they are powerful and beautiful, when you draw them you you can end up really easily with something that is a clichéd image of them. I have done an image of a cat with its skeleton inside but I’m always a little bit scared of doing cats, dogs, tigers – you know what I mean?
ROA (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Brooklyn Street Art: Have you seen the cats that C215 does? He does those pretty successfully while avoiding “cute”.
ROA:Yeah, it’s true. The way he does it is not like a postcard or a cheesy album cover from the 80’s, you know what I mean? Anyway I like to paint unpopular animals. In a certain way I think it’s nice to paint animals that people expect.
Brooklyn Street Art: You also like rats…
ROA: I like rodents. Birds and rodents. Without having made a choice, I feel really good painting birds and rodents.
ROA (Photo©Jaime Rojo)
Brooklyn Street Art: Do you feel like you are telling their story?
ROA: I’m definitely representing for them. That’s for sure. Regarding their “story”; I don’t know what they want to be told. If you could ask a bird what they are thinking about what I’m doing…. Definitely people eat chickens, pigs, and cows but they are not so familiar with the animal itself. They know it as food and these animals are more useful animals in a “product” sort of way so I think it’s good to confront people with what they are eating or what they are not familiar with. But I leave it more for people to see what they want in the animal. There is not a message – maybe for myself but it should not be seen that way. It’s just nice to do animals that are not typical. A lot of people hate pigeons and rats but I like them a lot. I think it is fascinating that certain animals really did not die out because of humanity but instead they use humanity to survive. I think it is interesting to see birds making nests in old buildings.
Brooklyn Street Art: They persevere..
ROA: in spite of our total f*ckups and global destruction. So I think it’s really fascinating – more than our cats and dogs that are totally domesticated as pets.
One of ROA’s two new Brooklyn birds (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Tune in tomorrow for PART 2: Amazing images of ROA’s giant second Brooklyn piece and we talk about his start as a graffiti kid, how he transitioned to street art, and why we may be entering the “second wave” of street art.
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY