Constant rain for days, but the street art is blooming, baby! As are the riotous news waves about the Supreme Court, abortion laws, the efficacy of the vaccine, the ridiculous/tone deaf Met Ball, the new electric bikes just released by Citi, a rise in anti-semitism in New York, the legalization of weed, the 60 Collective 3 show in Dumbo, Swoon’s new “Sanctuary” Project, Elon Musk buying Twitter, a virtual unknown winning the Kentucky Derby, and Meghan McCain selling only 244 copies of her new book. Who is she again?
Nevermind, we’re back on the streets where we belong, tracking the exciting new directions it is taking us.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: Jason Naylor, INSA, Sticker Maul, Stikman, Degrupo, Diva Dogla, Mike Raz, Corn Queen, Jorit, Eric John Eigner, Smet Sky Art, Bad Boi, O. Grey, Steven Paul Judd, Katie Merz, and Delphinoto.
“Ramadan Kareem” to everyone celebrating it this month. Also in April the Jews will be celebrating Passover and the Christians will be celebrating Easter and the Hindus are celebrating Chaitra Navratri. New York has the most diverse assembly of amazing and beautiful neighbors and we are all richer as a result.
In Hollywood and elsewhere people are celebrating/mourning the events surrounding Will Smith. In street art style, his infamous act shows up on a wall this week already (below).
It’s been cold in NYC this week! Fingers are cold, noses are cold, and migrating geese are humming the Clash’s “Should I Stay or Should I Go”. The Cyclone at Luna Park in Coney Island, opened yesterday and assures New Yorkers that Spring is already here even if you don’t feel it yet.
We’re excited to see the new exhibition Jean-Michel Basquiat: King Pleasure opens here this week. Congratulations to his family for bringing this enormous undertaking to fruition, especially Jean-Michel’s sisters Lisane Basquiat and Jeanine Heriveaux and his stepmother Nora Fitzpatrick.
Also, don’t sleep on the Whitney Biennial, opening Wednesday! Curators David Breslin and Adrienne Edwards say they have had a guiding principle; “It’s got to be buck wild.” That’s enough for us. Hopefully, some people will be buck naked at the show. A special shout-out to Biennial artist Jane Dixon. Her paintings and photographs of New York in the 80s captured its electricity and unpolished promise – during the time when she lived with filmmaker Charlie Ahearn in an apartment overlooking the tawdry excitement of Times Square. She say the city was, “burning, broke, and dangerous.”
Gentle people, start your stopwatch! Let’s see how long it takes for news items and pundits to begin likening our new Staten Island Amazon warehouse union workers to terrorists.
We’ve allowed companies to become richer than nations, so you can imagine what resources they can summon; the most comprehensive campaign to malign, discredit, impugn the character of workers, and thugs to intimidate them. This is the biggest victory for organized labor in a generation, born in a time of unprecedented income disparity across the city and country. Most citizens would be pleased if corporate behemoths simply paid their fair share of taxes.
The street is still one of the best exhibition spaces, never to be recreated fully.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: AJ LaVilla, Clown Soldier, Little Ricky, Sticker Maul, Michael Alan, Dragon76, Diva Dogla, CP Won, Savior El Mundo, Acro, Jennifer Pod is Dead, and Masnah.
A pause. It’s unusual to feel this sense in this city – but it’s there – on a sunny day where the sky is clear of clouds and a flock of geese still waddles and honks in the tall weeds and garbage by the Wallabout Channel. Is it a pause of satisfaction at the end of a summer full of fun, or perhaps a calm resignation before a storm as businesses are staying closed or operating at reduced staff. And while the Federal Reserve and ECB and World Bank insist there is just a smidgen of temporary, transitory inflation, tell us why a pound of butter is $6.00 at the local deli, the average price of a used car is $25K, and shipping container prices have soared to $20K?
There is a steady number of new street art pieces going up on doorways, power boxes, and concrete walls, but they are competing all of the triumphal purple and blue and pink Morning Glories flooding fences and walls and garden gates in neighborhoods throughout Brooklyn – a most generous overflow that summer gives as a parting gift.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Cssh4, Cheak, Clown Soldier, Diva Dogla, Drecks, ERRE, Fat Jak, Font 147, Goblin, Goog, JerkFace, Little Ricky, Mort Art, Praxis, Rambo, Seibot, Sinclair the Vandal, and Smetsky.
Street art in the last five years has been lit on fire with politically themed illustrations, installations, slogans, opinions, and insights that implore passersby to take action and to be engaged in the direction that society is leading.
The once-consolidated TV-print media system has had many challengers in social media and websites, though those now too are being censored, demonetized, and throttled by the corporations and certain state actors who have infiltrated and hampered the free-flow of opinions and political discourse under various “honorable” guises.
Because major political machines and the corporate media don’t typically use the streets as a communication platform in US cities, aside from the occasional poster campaign for a candidate, the rather unfiltered collection of views and voices come through.
The inheritor of the historically revered “soapbox”, a physical and metaphorical location in a public square where people put forward their opinions, beliefs, philosophies, and ideologies in an impassioned voice, street art currently thrills, perplexes, informs, and annoys. It reaches the tech-savvy and the greater majority of our neighbors who are not on social media.
Given that these opinions could be easily buffed or blighted by any passerby yet are permitted to stay, there is an argument that art on the street is the present Vox Populi, a truer representation of the voice of the people.
In the city that knew him first, Donald Trump is given special scrutiny and particular invective for his actions, inactions, behaviors in the role he has occupied as president of the country since 2016. His official opponent in the race is a career politician, an historically right-wing version of a left-wing party, is somehow positioned as a better alternative for an electorate who is desperate for something, anything better than what they have.
By night’s end (or week end, or year end) we will know who is the winner of today’s election; Trump or Anti-Trump. No matter who prevails, street art will undoubtedly weigh in with its opinion.
The turning point may have occurred Friday when Trump capitulated to the two other branches of government, released his hostages (federal workers), and allowed the US government to fully open – and planes to land at airports. This continuous attack on institutions is wearing down the wall between the wolves and the chickens. Guess which one we are?
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this time featuring Antennae, Art Dog NYC, City Kitty, Diva Dogla, Ken Hiratsuka, Pop Artoons, PostMan Art, Resa, Skewville.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this time featuring Abe Lincoln Jr., Alexis Diaz, Brian Alfred, Celso, City Kitty, Cranio, Deih XLF, Diva Dogla, Dog Byste, Fales, Gane, Jenna Morello, MTO, Pleks, Raf Urban, Slomo29, Spaint, Uriginal.
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
