It’s always a fun week when The New York Times quotes Brooklyn Street Art, like today’s riveting analyses of one New York celebrity outlaw everyone can agree upon, Flaco the Owl. So this week, we will not insult the corporate legacy press because we are in league with them, obviously.
Here is our weekly interview with the street: this week featuring Faile, Homesick, Below Key, Degrupo, UNO, Dirty Bandits, Pear, MeresOne, Qzar, BG183, NYC Hooker, Tats Crew, Albertus Joseph, Rari Grafix, Notice, Toney, Fear, Horn, Lare, and OTM Crew.
Jaime Rojo has built an impressive collection of photographs of these, capturing the essence of New York’s streets through his lens with an array of box trucks that weave and jolt their way through traffic, often seen opening their gates to load and unload amidst the noise of city life. These trucks, adorned with cryptic and crazily painted graffiti, have become pivotal platforms for urban expression, succeeding subway cars as the canvas of choice after the MTA’s crackdown on trains. Rojo’s vast archive features hundreds, perhaps thousands, of these nomadic art pieces, transforming ordinary vehicles into a main showcase for artists’ narratives and tributes to urban royalty, with eclectic themes and styles that span all five boroughs.
These mobile galleries, nestled on private property and often commissioned by the owners, navigate a legal grey zone, untouched by state or city regulations. They offer a transient exhibition space, constantly in flux, moving across bridges, navigating the FDR, or idly sitting in traffic, right beside you. Each truck is a fleeting installation, a snapshot of the city’s dynamic art scene that you may know or not.
Back in the wild days of 2014, we published a small survey of the ubiquitous box trucks roaring through the streets of NYC. Most commonly used by movers helping residents move in or out of their homes, these trucks obviously serve a more lofty purpose. You can see HERE our article from 2014.
As we present a new installation of this collection once more, we delve into the latest series of box truck artworks that continue to serenade New York’s streets. This ever-evolving display captures the spirit of the city, revealing stories and visions that are as mobile as they are momentary, reflecting the vibrant, shifting nature of urban life through the eyes of famed photographer Jaime Rojo. Step outside and enjoy a moving art fest on the street just for you.
How are feeling? Did you have a good Thanksgiving day, and did you see the crowds and balloons and marching bands along the parade route and the still intact orange and yellow leaves on the trees on Central Park West? Did you see Dolly Parton dressed as a Dallas Cowboy cheerleader singing at the halftime game, and did you see your girl Ava from up the block with her vintage vest and platform boots when grandma sent you out for a can of whipped cream for the pumpkin pies?
“Have you kept pace with the latest revelation in the art world? A remarkable BBC interview with Banksy, dating back two decades, has recently surfaced, sparking renewed excitement. These are indeed vibrant times for art enthusiasts and creators alike. Take, for instance, the Brooklyn Museum’s current showcase. It features an engaging Spike Lee exhibition alongside the innovative ‘Copy Machine Manifesto.’ This zine exhibition is a deep dive into five or six decades of subcultural and counter-cultural movements. It highlights a diverse range of self-published works, including gossip magazines, graffiti newspapers (a nod to David Schmidlapp and Phase 2), and expressions from queercore to hardcore. The exhibit is an eclectic mix of self-aware conceptual art, original fashion, explorations of sexual desire and confusion, comix, handmade collage, and expressions of nihilism, ennui, satire, humor, and lamentation. It’s a vivid reflection of art and expression – and inspirational to any artist who wants to have a voice.
We’re going back for a second helping.
Here is our weekly interview with the street: this week featuring Stikman, Cosbe, Below Key, No Sleep, Huetek, Optimo NYC, Jay Shells, Tatyana Fazlalizadeh, OH!, Muebon, Humble, Jappy Agoncillo, Jeff Roseking, Hu, Manual Alejando, Deter, Jason Shelowitz, and KIR.
It’s a new collection of works found on the street here in New York as we head into Thanksgiving week. The boisterous and celebratory party at Skewville in Bushwick last night to celebrate the new Stikman sign show was well attended and full of fans of the artist. The old fans and new donned Stikman masks and wore name stickers saying, “Hello, I’m Stikman.” The long-time imaginative artist is a fixture on New York streets as new generations of artists come and go. Completely anonymous, he never seeks the limelight, preferring to let his copious ideas on lampposts, doorways, mailboxes, and street signs talk for him. In an age of personal influencers and attention seeking, it is refreshing to see his new works quietly capturing attention and imagination on the streets in his way. Bushwick on a Saturday night is teaming with so many crowds of people you may think you are in Wynwood, Miami, complete with food trucks and neon and thigh-high patent leather boots. But the crowds are far more diverse, and the occasional rat is scurrying across the sidewalk before you.
Here is our weekly interview with the street: this week featuring City Kitty, Adam Fujita, Below Key, Eternal Possessions, Hektag, Hops Art, Aidz, Ali Six, Tkid170, Tracy 168, Hydrane, Otam1, Abloker, Nos Ck One, Madison Storm, Melissa Schainker, Wally, J$T, FatJay, Sens-Sational, Aaron Wrinkle, and 5inck.
The 66th Annual Puerto Rican Parade will loudly, buoyantly, exuberantly traverse and sway along the iconic 5th Avenue in Manhattan today. Subsequently, numerous Brooklyn neighborhoods will burst into a party with lively street festivities and impromptu fiestas adorning sidewalks, sitting on stoops, and hanging out on window ledges. A collective joy and relief are in our hearts across the city this weekend, stemming from the restoration of clear air in the city; after a disheartening episode of a Dystopian Orange haze that tainted our skies for days this week.
Forest fires in Canada had blown smoke down the Hudson River to surprise everyone, and flummox many. The consequences forced people to illuminate their homes during daylight hours and drive their car with headlights on. This extraordinary event posed a threat to both the well-being and livelihoods of countless individuals, with people working outside at great danger. However, for those who turned to our local National Public Radio (NPR) station for insight, rather than talking about construction workers, municipal employees, or street food vendors, their primary concerns were remote work arrangements, ordering from Doordash, and worrying about the smoke’s effect on dogs during their daily walks. The poor and working class are routinely erased from public discourse, which is why unmediated street art often does the work.
Currently, the cityscape is adorned with captivating street art and mesmerizing murals, offering a wide array of entertainment, education, and aesthetic gratification. We hope you take pleasure in exploring photographer Jaime Rojo’s compilation.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: Maya Hayuk, Below Key, Little Ricky, Mint & Serf, Billy Barnacles, Homesick, David Puck, Panic, IMK, Aidz, Robert Vargas, Salo Panto. Artistcjg89, Herman, Gabe, Tank, FLWR, and Sasha Colby.
Here’s to New York, which we love more than ever – Especially when yahoos come to our fair city and try to trash us and spread lazy untruths about crime and smear us in a hundred ways. Look, my cousin Harold may pick on his younger sister Jicama because of her braids or her attempt to dance with her dumb friends on TikTok, but if you say an unkind word about her he will smack you right into next week. That’s how we feel about New York.
Oddly inarticulate dumbos like Margerine Blather Green and Mike “Mother” Pence might better stay back in Walmart, or wherever they were born. Do they have schools out there? Or were those burned down when they were burning books? When you are ready to tell the truth about our crime rate and quit dog-whistling about all the Jews and blacks and queers we have here, maybe we’ll give you tickets to see “Wicked”. Right after that you can hit the Olive Garden and the M&Ms store – and then you have to leave.
“In the Spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love,” said Tennyson. You’re welcome. Also, his fancy turns to thoughts of sex. The same applies to young women, of course, but Tennyson was obviously sexist. This also applies to pigeons, two of whom are currently making awkward, chaotic, scuffling, fluttering overtures toward one another and cooing softly on the scaffolding outside my apartment window right now.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: CRKSHNK, Below Key, Degrupo, Homesick, Calicho Art, Habibi, Le Crue, Lasak, Cloudy is Here, Gina Minichino, They It Forward, Channin Fulton, Dragon Fly, Gert Robijns, Jozzy Camacho, Nandos, Mini Mantis Art, and Pablo West.
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week! Happy Fathers Day to all the fathers and those filling that role for families. We know it’s not easy work. We’re thankful to all the guys who are there to raise our kids, to provide guidance and love, and to model love and respect for their partners and wives.
Also today is Juneteenth, one of our country’s newest official holidays, recognizing the foundational earthquake of African emancipation from slavery in the US. Institutional slavery and all its effects – events in our history that continue to impact our laws, institutions, education, civil and economic justice, our relationships with one another – are yet to be addressed in many ways. For Juneteenth, this is a sweet and joyful celebration that is also deeply needed.
It doesn’t get any better with the weather than at this time of the summer in New York – and street art and graffiti are enjoying a very prolific crop this season. The politics of this moment are also showing up the street, with abortion and gun rights and vaccines surfacing as themes alongside what seems like ever-present LGBTQ+ rights. We keep seeing the graffiti/street art spots enlarge, contract, and scatter like a sneeze from one neighborhood to another, largely do to the rampant gentrification rate in some areas and the tendency for people to kill off the very arts culture that attracted them to the neighborhood in the first place. Right now street art in Manhattan is concentrated on the Lower East Side and Chinatown – Chelsea has a few remaining pockets left but it could be gone soon, and a little still remains in Soho and Noho. In Brooklyn, the neighborhoods Bushwick of going strong, Williamsburg Industrial park Williamsburg and Dumbo not so much. In Queens there is Welling Court, maybe Ridgewood, and of course Mott Haven and South Bronx are still popping
But let’s not get distracted by the city topography – lets look at some new stuff Jaime Rojo caught this week.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: Sipros, Adam Fu, CRKSHNK, Below Key, Modomatic, Hijack, Homesick, BK Ackler, Sally Rumble, Real Art Daddy, Yosnier, JG, The Eyeknow, Fear Arte, and Natalie Robinson.
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week. The streets are reflecting this moment in New York this week as artists are showing their colors. Or Ukraine’s colors, rather. Hard to sleep through the night when you know that Gotham is on the hit list if this Russian invasion turns nuclear, hard to process the idea that a cold war is never far from a hot one, despite activists best efforts for all these decades. Hard to believe that sanctions won’t damage many more people than the intended targets. Hard to believe that money-printing is never discussed in the news as THE creator of this inflation and much more inflation to come.
Let’s do everything we can to de-escalate this war, this perpetual specter.
And thank you to the street artists who are keeping the conversations alive. Also this week, new works from F**kin REVS !
Remember to Set Your Clocks Ahead One Hour Today.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: Adam Fujita, Fuckin REVS, Below Key, Sticker Maul, Sara Lynne-Leo, Hek Tad, Gold Loxe, Mike Raz, Smetsky Art, Hear Eye Am, Equalist, Liagam, and Mitya Pisliak.
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week, where New York keeps pushing forward through this stormy winter – although the amount of new street art and graffiti dissipates this time of year as artists stay in their creative caves, waiting for spring. Hang in there peeps.
Great news for New York artists this week: artists can now apply for a monthly stipend of $1,000. This is big news because unlike a lot of Europe, the US and its institutions do not support artists or cultural workers.
Speaking of exemplary New Yorkers, Jeffery Epstein’s friend Jean-Luc Brunel has been found dead in his prison cell, mysteriously. One of Epstein’s other friends, Prince Andrew, reportedly settled out of court this week. “Prince Andrew reportedly agreed to never again deny raping Virginia Giuffre”, says the New York Post, The Independent, and The Sun. The Times says: “A new nursery rhyme is doing the rounds at the Palace:
‘The grand old Duke of York, he had 12 million quid. He gave it to someone he’d never met, for something he never did’”.
Jesus, let’s go out for a walk and see if we discover some new street art.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: Skewville, Specter, City Kitty, Adam Fujita, Pork, Jason Naylor, Below Key, Lexi Bella, Jowl, Nimek, Klonism, Harvey Ball, Eloy Bida, Kat Blouch, Timmy Ache, and Eyedao.
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week. Our hearts and minds are heavy and quiet this weekend as we contemplate the two decades and lost lives and liberties since September 11, 2001.
It’s impossible to know what the world would have looked like had those fateful events not taken place twenty years ago, and only a handful would have predicted that it would have been used as a springboard for more wars that cost more lives. As the country pulls out of Afghanistan so badly and obviously, a real examination of the soul is taking place. There is no real purpose served by trying to extricate the pain of loss locally from those sufferred globally as a result of the events of September 11th, except for us New Yorkers to reflect on how our city is forever changed. Thankfully, New Yorkers prove time and again that we are also forever determined to overcome and to come together.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring BAT, Below Key, BK Foxx, Chris RWK, Chupa, De Grupo, Early Riser NYC, Fumero, Futura, Hand Up, Manik, Modomatic, Naito Oru, Pope, Rezo, and Toofly.
Last week we brought you the first annual Jersey City Mural Festival with generously scaled murals and unbridled color. Muralism isn’t new but mural festivals are now a dominant vehicle or platform of expression on the streets where artists get up and create community. We have always championed the cause of the artist and cheer when they are given the opportunity to work – better even if they get properly paid for the work that they do.
That said, we still admire the small, uncommissioned, one-off pieces, and we’ve always documented that in whatever city we go to: In a way, that is what we actually consider to be street art. Unsanctioned and undercover, you’ll discover the most curious missives as you hike from mural to mural. Don’t miss them! Enjoy.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring 7 Souls Deep, Adrian Wilson, Below Key, Drecks, Early Riser NYC, Ghaston Art, Hiss, Lunge Box, Miyok, Modomatic, Mort Art, Night Owl, Outer Source, Timothy Goodman, Tyler Ives, and Turtle Caps.
A few weeks ago we saw a populist uprising invade one of this culture’s most sacrosanct public institutions out of anger and disillusionment, among other factors; generally a repudiation of what was perceived as a corrupt cabal who ignores the will of the people. Within days the news was full of stories of the State tracking down and cracking down on the dangerous insurgents and tracing their words and actions. Alliances were suddenly severed, fingers were wildly pointed, threats were issued, straw men swiftly collapsed. An historic quake, the tremulous ground is still shifting.
This week we witnessed another social-media-fueled populist uprising that is shaking the opaquely vexing market of stock trading. Again we hear that this is an unwelcome ambush – one that is fanning the class rift between self-styled ivy-league “elites” and everyday workers (or out-of-workers) who radically barge into a space they are not welcomed in. With access to the wheel, seemingly moments later, Robin Hood puts on the brakes for traders, stemming a hemorrhage for the wealthy. Wall Street warriors are at once calling for regulations on an industry they have steadily de-regulated for decades. The financial and rhetorical upheavals apply great strain to the very foundations again. Everyone is incredulous.
We’re don’t intend to oversimplify here, but you have to admit there appear to be parallels in these stories.
In the end, we see the ripples through street art. Actually, sometimes we see the antecedents to events like these as well – but we may not recognize them as such until later. One cryptic prophet and cultural critic from the street art world, Don Leicht, passed away this week after a very trying illness. His original use of the digitalized Invader predates the high profile street artist of the same name; his comic/cutting assessments of modern hypocrisy echoed across walls of New York as early as the inception of the video game itself. A long time trusted friend and creative collaborator with street artist John Fekner, Leicht was quickly memorialized with this new installation on the street (below).
Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring 1UP Crew, Bastard Bot, Below Key, CRKSHNK, De Grupo, Don Leicht, Duke A. Barnstable, Ethan Minsker, Freedom, John Fekner, Maks Art World, Nick Walker, No Sleep, and Young Samo.
“Don Leicht (October 12th, 1946-January 22nd, 2021)Don was my fierce older Libra brother, colleague and collaborator throughout almost fifty years of friendship. Don was a passionate and devout painter who played by his own Bronx cool rules; whether as a teacher in the public school system in the South Bronx, or in his hand-written personal writings or hand-cut metal, plastic or cardboard sculptural works, all visually charged with a deep meaning and social purpose. His imagery could spark a laugh or a smile; but were intended to cause a reaction within a viewer’s heart, mind and soul.
Don was a steadfast bridge to carry me through my sometimes unwieldy behavior. He would provide answers with care, understanding and positivity; whether it was in person or through a 10-minute or hour phone call. Within our conversation (and with many of his friends), he would always repeat the message as to be sure that you ‘got the message’ and would act accordingly. Don always had a simple soothing solution: ‘Get one thing done by the end of the day.’
Don was preceded in death by his wife Annie; and he will be deeply missed by his two sons, Anthony and Nicky, who helped their father throughout his overwhelming health issues, especially in this past year.
Walk on dear friend. We celebrate your life work!”
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
