All posts tagged: Early Riser NYC

BSA Images Of The Week: 04.02.23

April 2, 2023 Artists, BSA Images Of The Week

64% of Americans are living paycheck-to-paycheck, China and Russia are buddying up, BRICs countries are looking for new members, and the Bankers in your life are again looking toward their gilded escape bunkers.

We are transfixed by the first indicted US president, and gloating about having a system of democracy and justice. Now he is positioning himself as an “outsider,” a martyr. A billionaire outsider. We’re just waiting for these crowds outside Trump Tower to materialize. Where are they? Honestly, Fifth Avenue is more interested in the Easter Bonnet Parade that is coming.

But it’s a circus on the national tabloid news, which is unfortunately all of the news now. Our best minds are being entertained by 24 hour sports channels, Netflix and Tic Toc, and it’s not an accident. People are chided into fighting each other over trans-woke-snowflake-abortion-race-laptop-AR15-centered-drag-readings. Look! A squirrel!

Meanwhile, the daffodils are blooming everywhere in anticipation of Easter Week. People were cramming subways, buses, and sidewalks yesterday because of the warm sunny spring weather – and Smorgasborg opened this weekend in Brooklyn. NYTimes calls it “the Woodstock of eating,” due to its variety of incredible food choices – but of course, you can have just as much fun with a bag of chips or a slice of pizza sitting on a stoop watching the parade of New Yorkers march/sashay/stride by.

We had a great time at the Bronx Museum yesterday, catching the John Ahearn/ Rigoberto Torres retrospective and seeing both the artists in person during a panel discussion with artist Abigail DeVille – with fans rushing the stage for an autographed exhibition book afterward. These guys have championed everyday New Yorkers through their painted sculptures for four decades. It is revelatory and heartwarming to see this very large collection of works never shown together before. Make sure to check out “Swagger and Tenderness: The South Bronx Portraits” until April 30.

Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: Stikman, Zimer, Subway Doodle, A Lucky Rabbit, Qzar, Optimo NYC, Sekt, AMMO, CEYNYC, Toeflop, Early Riser NYC, Julia Cocuzza, and Miki Mu.

Miki Mu for Underhill Walls. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Unidentified artist (photo © Jaime Rojo)

This might be the work of A Lucky Rabbit…not sure. We’re also not sure if the work has been completed. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

LL Cool J is Bad forever. Zimer NYC (photo © Jime Rojo)

CEYNYC lying down…not sure who did the buble…but sure it burns. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. Memorial bench in Manhattan. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

BSA Images Of The Week: 11.14.21

November 14, 2021 Artists, BSA Images Of The Week

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Welcome to BSA Images of the Week! We’re thrilled to see you – you look marvelous!

The blustery cold snap outside today follows the mercurial mashup of winds, rains, thunder, and hail that shook our streets and darkened our skies yesterday – denting some cars, pummelling leaves downward. Ah fall; it feels like you are a couch and someone is taking out your stuffing.

The art of the street is indicative of the surreality of our times – a compression of days that also stretch like pumpkin taffy, wrapping around street lamps and fresh new Christmas light displays in Brooklyn. Everything, it would appear, is a dreamland of crisis; the economy, the environment, the bond crisis, the supply chain crisis, growing inflation, an impending food crisis, our faltering belief in institutions, our increasing distrust of each other, the police, the government, corporations, our currency, the medical profession, the church, and certainly our banks, the stock market, and Wall Street – these all define our times. Thankfully we have each other, friends.

Thank God for street art – the tea leaves of our time. Here’s a jolly mix-up of recent work found on the streets of two of our favorite cities – New York and Berlin.

Our interview with the street today includes Chris Jarosz, David Flores, Early Riser NYC, El Toro 215, Kiez Mie, Niko, ONI, Praxis VGZ, Rabea Senftenberg, RAMBO, Sara Lynne Leo, T.B.O.N.S., and Tianoo the Cat.

Unidentified artist in Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dan Flores for Goldman Global Arts- Houston/Bowery Wall. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Rabea Senftenber tribute to David Bowie for Urban Nation Museum in Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Kiez Mie in Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Tianooo The Cat in Berlin (photo © Jaime Rojo)

T.B.O.N.S. in Berlin (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. LES, NYC. November 2021. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

BSA Images Of The Week: 09.12.21

September 12, 2021 Artists, BSA Images Of The Week

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.

Chris RWK in collaboration with Naito Oru. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Bat, Manik, Pope, Chupa… (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. Manhattan, NYC. September 2021. (photo © Steven P. Harrington)

Mid-Summer Discovery: Burgeoning Magnet Wall in Manhattan Boasts Bounty

August 16, 2021 Artists

We like findings spots that feature walls slammed with street art in a most organic way, the aesthetic signature of a current ecosystem mid-evolution. These spots are often a magnet for street artists to get up in NYC, L.A., Berlin, Lisbon, Madrid, Paris, Barcelona, Mexico City, Miami, Boston, London, and beyond. Usually illegal, they allow the artists a quick way to safely leave their imprint on the chaos of the city, a welcome to international artists on their spraycation as well as locals who relish the feeling of standing among peers. The art is usually limited to small original pieces, stickers, and posters, wheat pastes.

We call them “magnet walls” – and NYC has had its share of them. Now, however, they are increasingly endangered because of Gentrification and the voracious real estate market in the city with its apparent never-ending appetite for building new soaring soul-free glass towers. One spot is still welcoming artists to its walls: Freeman Alley. This favorite enclave, composed of two long walls along a narrow corridor in the Lower East Side, is constantly updated in an organic way with contributions by local and international artists. We have surveyed it for years, often publishing our findings in the popular “BSA Images Of The Week.”

Last week we rolled by the alley again and to our surprise, we discovered a gate ajar; one that leads the lobby of a relatively new hotel. Usually locked with a code, this secret Bowery spot instructs guests to enter through the alley. Once inside, they’re greeted with a nicely landscaped, small-scale courtyard leading to a lobby. Surprisingly, it is now bursting with new stickers, posters, stencils, paintings, collages, wild imaginings. Technically, this is a legal magnet wall – but most of the artists whose work is on display here can also be found illegally on the walls of the alley.
Here’s a fresh selection just for you:

Unidentified artist (the fire hydrant is real) (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Poor Mike. Probably feeling sad about labor conditions in sweatshops. Unidentified artist (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Make Art!
**Savior Elmundo** (photo © Jaime Rojo)

BSA Images Of The Week: 06.13.21

June 13, 2021 Artists, BSA Images Of The Week

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.

Adrian Wilson with The L.I.S.A. Project NYC. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Lunge Box and 7 Souls Deep on the right. This isn’t a collab. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Ghaston Art with Mort Art (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Outer Source, Night Owl, Below Key (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Outer Source, Night Owl, Below Key, Turtle Caps (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Outer Source, Night Owl, Turtle Caps (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. Punk New Yorker. Spring 2021. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

BSA Images Of The Week: 01.17.21

January 17, 2021 Artists, BSA Images Of The Week

Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring Chupa, Elsie the Cowww, Gane, Gemma Gene, Kai, Li-Hill, Mr. Babby, Panic, Peachee Blue, Pork, Skewville, Sydney G. James, and Zexor.

Mr Babby for The Bushwick Collective (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Peachee Blue for The Bushwick Collective. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Elsie The Cowww for The Bushwick Collective. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Gemma Gene for The Bushwick Collective. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. East River, NYC. January 2021. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

BSA Images Of The Week: 08.16.20

August 16, 2020 Artists, BSA Images Of The Week

Welcome to BSA Images of the Week. Kamala and identity politics are IN, workers are OUT, and the US Postal Service is being dissembled before our eyes. Are we supposed to find a light-hearted rejoinder to this news?

Let’s see what the streets are telling us.

Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring Almost Over Keep Smiling, Billy Barnacles, Gianni Lee, City Kitty, CRKSHNK, Early Riser NYC, Seven Line Arts Studio, M*Code, Ori Carino, Sticker Maul, Turtle Caps, Urban Russian Doll NYC, and You Go Girl!

Almost Over Keep Smiling (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Ori Carino. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Early Riser NYC for East Village Walls (photo © Jaime Rojo)

City Kitty in collaboration with Turtle Caps. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

City Kitty . Turtle Caps (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Urban Russian Doll NYC (photo © Jaime Rojo)

M*Code in collaboration with crkshnk. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. Williamsburg, Brooklyn. August 2020. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dispatch From Isolation # 2 : Pugilistic Kangaroo With a Facemask

March 24, 2020 Artists

The Street Artist named Early Riser reminds us that Kangaroos can be formidible boxers when it comes to dwindling resources, like canned tuna. And toilet paper.

Barcelona Tributes for The Amazing SKE
April 18, 2024
Today, we pay tribute to an iconic figure from the Puerto Rican graffiti scene, Eliezer “SKE” Pagán Torres. Born on …Read More »
Elfo Declares “I’m a Figurative Painter”… and I’m the Queen of England!
April 16, 2024
Elfo, the ever-witty Italian street artist, strikes again with his latest work scrawled across an abandoned building in Italy. Known …Read More »
BSA Images Of The Week: 04.14.24 / “Return2Burn” in Hunts Point, Bronx
April 14, 2024
Welcome to BSA’s Images of the Week. We decided to dedicate this weekly survey to the artists of “Return 2 …Read More »
Martha Cooper and Seth in Kibera. Kenya: Part 2 / “We Are One”
April 11, 2024
Nestled within the bustling city of Nairobi, Kenya, Kibera is a testament to its inhabitants’ challenges and its collective indomitable …Read More »
“Tiempos Muertos”. Idle Time With Isaac Cordal in Madrid
April 9, 2024
“Idle Time has become that free moment we have between one task and another in the production process. Productive inertia …Read More »
BSA Images Of The Week: 07.07.24
April 7, 2024
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week! To BSA’s Muslim brothers and sisters, we hope your Ramadan has been fulfilling …Read More »
Murals, Art, Childhood, and Community in Lwala: Martha Cooper and Seth in Kenya: Part 1
April 4, 2024
In the heart of Lwala, Kenya, a place where the warmth of the sun is matched only by the warmth …Read More »