21 years since the Twin Towers came down here in New York City. We remember today in our hearts.
Reliably, street art plays a role in bringing up the socio-political topics that are in the public realm. This week we see artists addressing gun violence, the ongoing battle for/against legal abortion, and LGBT rights. Also, there are just a lot of fun, colorful exhortations that we may or may not understand but which tell us all that the streets of New York are alive and well.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: Stikman, City Kitty, Praxis, Sinned, Miyok, Trap, Spite, Tea, Goomba, John Domine, WoWi, and Helaenable.
The rain hasn’t been coming around much this summer, so we begin the postings with a dreamy sequence from Dan Kitchener and his muse walking with an umbrella. Good to see so much quality art in the streets this summer. Things may be difficult in many ways when it comes to life in this city, but the vibe on the streets is still rockin’ it.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: SacSix, Degrupo, Sara Lynne-Leo, Dan Kitchener, Doves, IMK, @2easae, GanoWon, Your Camera is a Weapon, and Habibi.
Jesus it’s rough out there! Throwing a frisbee could cause a heart attack in this heat wave. This situation is like the polar opposite of a winter snowstorm that forces everyone to stay inside their apartments. Believe it or not, in this city we have such extremes. We gave you Trump and we also gave you Bernie Sanders, for example.
Trying to think happy thoughts on the street despite the crushing debilitating heat and we are greeted by a mopey Gen Z guy carrying a sign that says “this is the coolest summer of the rest of your life”. Thanks, Senor Killjoy.
The good thing, and we insist on concentrating on these good things, is that New York is positively swimming with gorgeous young things who are traipsing through the streets in barely there gear and you don’t even need to buy pot to get high now because the streets are swirling with it. Also, you can buy pot anywhere; in a curbside truck, on a brownstone stoop, from a Nigerian guy out of a suitcase on the sidewalk on Canal street, even at your grandma’s Saturday canasta match.
$100 two years ago is worth only $85, but our parks are still free and full of leafy trees and concerts and theater and city pools are staying open extra hours to cool off. Burning Spear, UB40, Animal Collective, Sharon Van Etten, The Decemberists, Khruangbin, Erykah Badu, Shakespeare in the Park, anybody? We always sit on a blanket outside the gate and enjoy the music nonetheless – you can too. Also, as a reminder, we are not at war with each other – all us different races and religions. That’s all a huge lie on the TV machine. New Yorkers actually like each other.
Our street art as usual is off the hook. This week it seems a little bit cuddly, to tell the truth.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: Rambo,Hiss, Dirty Bandits, Modomatic, Neon Savage, Muckrock, You Are Not Alone, Third Rail Art, Rari Grafix, OH!, Drama, and Banksy Hates Me.
Just for fun, here’s a list of the artists we brought to that first auction in April 2008 – any of them sound familiar? Anera, Armsrock, Borf, Celso, C.Damage, DAIN, Dark Clouds, Deeks, DiRQuo, Elbowtoe, ELC, Fauxreel, Flower Face Killah, Gaia, GoreB, Haculla, Infinity, Judith Supine, Jp, McMutt, MOMO, Noah Sparkes, Royce Bannon, Skewville, Swoon, Dan Witz, and WK Interact.
How many of these names are still in the game? Some have faded, some have accelerated, and there are many new names bandied about on New York streets; It’s a constantly changing tableau.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: Matt Siren, City Kitty, Hijack, Li-Hill, Raddington Falls, Rose Cory, HOACS, Voxx Romana, Jet, Nite Owl, HEFS, and HAVOC.
“Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.” … The Raven. Edgar Allan Poe
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.
Happy New Year of the Tiger! We found some on the street this week in New York, no surprise perhaps.
In other news, OG train writer Chris “Daze” Ellis captured the attention of The New York Times this Friday with his new contemporary art show “Give it All You Got” at P·P·O·W Gallery, and in a related story, according to the New York Daily News, there were 120 graffiti-related incidents on subway trains in January 2021, a 21% increase compared to the same period last year.
In his curatorial incarnation, Carlo has been organizing an enormous new exhibition about New York’s ‘downtown’ scene that he’s curating with Peter Eleey to open this July at UCCA Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing featuring “several defining works of this generation, such as paintings and drawings by Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring.” McCormick, you will remember, originated the concept and title for his book Trespass : a History of Uncommissioned Urban Art, which made the direct connection between fine art, the avant-garde, and the various street/public art practices of serious radical art movements like those popularized in the 1960’s by Guy Debord and the Situationistes Intérnationales. With these movements and arguments informing our view, it’s simplistic to be so polarized when assessing the value given/damage done by illegal graffiti writers and street artists.
Today our public/private debates about whether someone’s aerosol creation is vandalism or art are far more complex, more palpable than before. Thanks to the validation of graffiti and street art as a cultural force by fashion designers, toy manufacturers, home goods stores, clothing chains, commercial brands, film directors, art collectors, auction houses, artists, writers, professors, and respected education and art institutions, these practices of art-making on the street are enmeshed in the culture, fully a part of it.
One of these days a train car covered with graffiti will head to the yards for buffing… and reappear at an art fair, a Sotheby’s auction, or in the back yard of an avid collector. Our thoughts turn to the “Fun Gallery” refrigerator covered with graffiti tags in that is currently on display at the Phillips “Graffiti” show on Park Avenue right now.
And so we turn to our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: Billye Merrill, BK Foxx, Crash, DrewOne, Elle, Eraquario, Eskae, Jenkins2D, Lamour Supreme, MAD, Manuel Alejandro, Osiris Rain, Praxis, REDS, Sipros, The Creator, The DRIF, and Twice.
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week, where we are keeping our minds expanded and eyes wide open as the transformation of society and its fabric is happening right before us. We’re living in a bubble, or on one – an everything bubble at the end of a boomer age that will pop. Institutions compromised, media compromised, social net torn, leaders purchased and adrift. Late spring romanticism buoys us, as does the removal of masks out doors and sometimes inside them. New York is back, but its not sure.
And Jerome Powell finally announced that the dollar is in the gallows – or will rather be once he has successfully inflated to its ultimate death. No, we have no advice – No one is listening anyway.
So here’s our weekly interview with the street, this time featuring: Aaron Hauck, Bastard Bot, Goog, Matt Siren, Mel, Mort Art, Neckface, Royce Bannon, Sac Sic, Samantha French, Stay Busy, Stikman, TNAW, and Winston Tseng.
You are not alone. It’s a simple phrase that offers a lot of comfort in difficult times.
For one long, horrible year we’ve been bound to each other by one single catastrophic event: Covid-19. The Pandemic brought so much pain, despair, loss, urgency, clarity, and fear. It forced the invincible to their knees. It didn’t discriminate by class, social status, ethnic groups, skin color, or wealth. A Pandemic that crossed borders and forced us to withdraw almost completely from normality.
Throughout all of this, many of us, millions of us, never felt alone – and that kept us hoping for the ray of light. Hope for the day when we won’t be hearing the sound of sirens from emergency vehicles. Hope for the day when we’d be able to reunite with our loved ones. Hope for a day when going outside wouldn’t feel like risking death. Hope for the simplest of pleasures.
The Pandemic also exposed all of us to see the immense disparity between rich countries and poor ones. A vast and deep fissure in our humanity was exposed to the whole world when we saw images of people being left to die on the sidewalks, alone in nursing homes or their own homes, due to negligence, incompetence, or lack of resources. It may be years before we realize the damage of the Pandemic. At the least, we hope we have learned that we are not alone.
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week! Ramadan Kareem to Muslim brothers and sisters in New York and around the world. May you have an easy fast.
We’re bowled over by the beauty in the streets and parks and rooftops right now, with performances and painting and the blossoming of flowers underfoot and on branches overhead. Fires are alit in hearts everywhere.
“All the roofs are wet and underneath smoke that piles softly in streets, tongues are on top of each other mulling over the night.”
from Gamin ~ Frank O’Hara
Yes, there is a sort of battered nervousness in conversations on the streets and as we go about our quotidian duties; a discerned increase in agitation due to economic instability, surges of new Covid strains in our hospitals, and ongoing examples of police brutality toward black and brown people is met with resistance and sometimes violence as well.
Still, consider the robin. In your heart, may hope spring eternal. Also, we learn today that summer may be returning at least one exceedingly creative and participatory public art event as the Gothamist reports that “Coney Island’s Mermaid Parade May Return In The Flesh This Summer.”
And yo! Don’t sleep on the street artists who are putting up new work right now. They are addressing our ills, regaling us with visual puns, poking at our foibles, recontextualizing and performing feats of wonder under cover of night, or while heads are turned in broad daylight. Entertaining, bragging, dreaming… onward they go.
So here’s our weekly interview with the street, this time featuring: Absconded Project, Atakbf, Bastard Bot, City Kitty, Clown Soldier, Degrupo, George Collagi, Lexi Bella, Manik, Marka27, Matt Siren, Peachee Blue, Royce Bannon, Sonni, Teens for Press Freedom, Vexta, and Zaver.
Happy Easter to all the Christians! Happy end of Passover to the Jews! – and welcome to a new spring of spiking daffodiles and spiking Covid cases in New York City even while the age for vaccinations drops to 16 this week. The graffiti and Street Art is blossoming under bridges and in empty lots, as are the much needed $1400 checks and PPP loans are blossoming as well. They are meant to keep us all barely above water, which is where many New Yorkers are financially.
Maybe the trillions that Biden and Yellen and the banksters are suddenly printing will lift us, or maybe instead they’ll just trigger hyperinflation so your savings will be worth ever less? Perhaps we could require corporations and the rich to pay their fair share of taxes – or any at all? Secular heresy to suggest such a thing!
Ahhhh, but the streets! They are still alive and well, and budding with small hand-made one-off pieces, multiples, and murals. Not quite a renaissance, but we are seeing a sincere march forward by all many of artistry in the shadows and in the broad daylight, even as Rome appears to languish.
So here’s our weekly interview with the street, this time featuring: Bastard Bot, Billy Barnacles, Captain Eyeliner, Cucker Tarlson, Jesse Kreuzer, Kiki the Fox, Lunge Box, Mort Art, Nicholai Kahn, Nite Owl, NY State of Mind, Praxis VGZ, Puke Punk, SacSix, Trades Only Bro, and Urban Russian Doll NYC.
On a day where we are all reeling from a public display of violence this week toward a 65-year-old Asian New Yorker on her way to church, we reiterate what the street artists are telling us – “Stop Asian Hate.” More upsetting than the violence was the seeming apathy of some toward it – and they should feel ashamed for not helping.
We know that our individual actions speak louder than words. Don’t stand by and feel helpless when you see someone being abused! You can help! It’s everyone’s responsibility to do whatever we can to stop the hate.
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week as we head into Passover and Easter. If street art reflects society, and we know that it does, Governor Cuomo is in hot water and may not keep his job. But then, we thought the same about the war criminal George Bush and the grifter Trump, so never mind.
Thank you to reporter Jim O’Grady for interviewing us for a story on WNYC radio this week – along with our colleague Sean Corcoran who is the Curator of Prints and Photographs and a graffiti historian from the Museum of the City of New York.
“As Covid Ravaged New York, Street Artists Fought Back” is the name of Jim’s eight-minute exposition – and his storytelling adds so much to our appreciation of the city and the environment that gives life to our street art and graffiti scene here. Thanks for including us Jim.
So here’s our weekly interview with the street, this time featuring: Chris RWK, CRKSHNK, Dwei, Hope Hummingbird, I Heart Graffiti, Little Ricky, Peachee Blue, Raddington Falls, Rambo, SacSix, Sara Lynne-Leo, Sticker Maul, and Technodrome.
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
