Welcome to BSA Images of the Week. The first World Cup match kicked off just across the river in New Jersey yesterday, and last night the hometown champion Knicks took over your rooftop—or at least a giant screen courtesy of your cousin Eddie, who hosted a raucous watch party where fair-weather fans from every corner of the fandom universe yelled at referees, second-guessed coaches, and hugged strangers after every basket. The city is on an exhuberant high because the New York Knicks have won their first NBA championship since 1973, ending a 53-year title drought.
Ah, bread and circuses. The games grow grander as the purse grows lighter.
Congratulations to the world’s first trillionaire, Elon Musk! Rome would be proud. The only thing missing is a senator feeding grapes to a tech CEO on a livestream. That’s probably next week.
Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, featuring: Andaluz the Artist, CARVE, Crash, Fumero, Gusto NYC, Harold Hunter, Jorit, Mike Makatron, Nemezoid, Qrusty, Tone Wash, and V. Ballentine.
Welcome to BSA’s Images of the Week – our selection of art on the streets that collectively document the evolution of the scene from our perspective.
It’s a rainy Memorial Day weekend in New York and many picnics, war memorial events, camping trips, hikes in the Catskills, shares on Long Island, and strolls to the park are impacted, with the dreary cold weather canceling many plans. We start our collection of photos by Jaime Rojo with a series of heroes and villains on the street – if only real life decoded the world so simply. Commemorations on Memorial Day often present a narrowed definition of loss – focusing primarily on people who fought wars in the military in defense of liberty, god, country, laudable ideals, or a mix of these. We also think of the so-called civilians who get killed during war, including those who are defenseless.
Here is our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: Anna Frants, DARA, EXR, Frankie Botz, Fumero, Georgi Collagi, H Kubed, Ian Cinco, INFOE, Iris Van Harpen, Jeff Beler, Joseph Iroshi, Kams S Art, Katya Goltseva, Laser Cats, Lenna Art, Loretoh, Man in the Box, Manuel Alejandro, Nandos Art, Natural Eyes, Pressto, Sebastion Campnario, Trades Only Bro, and Zimer NYC.
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week. You look amazing in that shirt!
We were running up that hill this week to see the designer currently on view at the Brooklyn Museum, Iris van Herpen, in the exhibition Iris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses. Her work often looks less like traditional couture and more like living systems captured in motion — borrowing from coral formations, jellyfish, skeletons, water currents, insect wings, cellular structures, and fractal geometry. With the breezes blowing the newly arrived green leaves on the trees in front of the museum, we left feeling that the systems of nature merged with art, and that the city was in natural motion on the street.
Brooklyn-born artist Keisha Scarville has transformed the exterior street-facing walls of the Brooklyn Museum with large-scale photographic works that layer fabric, portraiture, memory, and fragmented identity into immersive public images. Like Iris van Herpen’s couture inside the museum, Scarville’s visual language draws from organic structures, repetition, translucency, and flowing forms that dissolve boundaries between materials and atmosphere. Both artists build intricate systems inspired by natural growth patterns and transformation, creating works that feel simultaneously intimate, sculptural, and almost biologically alive.
A few blocks away, the community wall project called Washington Walls is newly refreshed for the season, and many artists are again in touch with nature, or their inner nature anyway.
Here is our survey of the streets, this week featuring Aaron Metzger, Barbtropolis, Ben Keller, Calicho Art, Furmero, Homesick, Jason Naylor, Kams S Art, Keisha Scarville, Lady DJay, Le Crue, Luch, Minhofofa, Phetus, Praxis, Question Marks, Sarkism, Savior El Mundo, and Slut Puppy.
Happy Easter to all our readers who celebrate it, and pray for peace.
This week, we give light to some of the recent panels from a community wall project that consistently refreshes the view for people in the Prospect Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn. Founded in 2015 by artist and curator Jeff Beler, who developed the site after securing permission to transform construction fencing around a fire-damaged, long-abandoned building into an open-air mural space. The project, initially organized with curator Frankie Velez, operates as a recurring, theme-based installation refreshed roughly twice a year, bringing together a mix of established and emerging muralists to produce site-specific work across multiple panels. A community-based initiative, Underhill Walls has grown into a visible neighborhood fixture and a broader hub for mural production, emphasizing collaboration, accessibility, and artist “chemistry” in selection for the rotating roster.
Here is our weekly interview with the street, today featuring Anna Faris, Barbtropolis, BC NBA, Bunny M, Calicho Art, CAMI XVX, DG Millie, Drones, Fumero, Georgia Violett, Kams S Art, LeCrue Eyebrows, Luis Valle, Majo, Margarita Howls, Metamorph, Minhafofa, and Peachee Blue.
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week! New York’s streets are in overdrive—diplomats and protesters jostle around the UN, teens climb a tree outside a storefront to chase FakeMink’s latest haircut on the Bowery, fans mob Cardi B as she perches on an SUV outside a deli in the Bronx, throngs pour through the 99th San Gennaro Festival in Little Italy, and a sudden storm of black-windowed SUVs swarms with cameras at the Soho Grand—just as a double-decker tour bus lumbers onto the block, because of course it does. You skip the spectacle, grab a sour pickle from the Pickle Guys on Grand Street, and pedal home on your e-bike to the cat.
Re: the latest sniper shooting in the US that tears hearts and inflames passions; Fox News says, ‘America is divided and headed for civil war.’ What they should admit is, ‘We’ve spent 25 years programming division—and now we’re congratulating ourselves for the results. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.’
The sun is warm and bright, like that fateful New York day 24 years ago. It’s a shame that a generation of New Yorkers has grown up since then, and there is more war than ever.
At least we still have bodegas open at 3 a.m., subway preachers who bark and yelp, and the Mets breaking our hearts! Aaron Judge and the Yankees are still keeping the World Series on the perennial wish-list.
Oh yes, and Anna Wintour is leaving Vogue. For some, that will feel like the end of an era. Others will ask, “Anna who?”
On our weekly interview with the street, we feature new stuff from De Grupo, Divock Okoth Origi, Eternal Possessions, Faile, Fumero, ICU463, IMK, Neko, Ollin, Turtle Caps, and ZamArt.
“Flow on, river! flow with the flood-tide, and ebb with the ebb-tide! Frolic on, crested and scallop-edg’d waves! Gorgeous clouds of the sunset! drench with your splendor me, or the men and women generations after me! Cross from shore to shore, countless crowds of passengers!” ~ Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, Walt Whitman, 1860
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this time featuring Caryn Cast, Chris (Robots Will Kill), Christian Penn, Fumero, Hugus, IMK, James Vance, Jenna Morello, Joao is Typing, Kosuke James, LeCrue Eyebrows, Luch, Mike Shine, Nandos Art, Ninth Wave Studio, Ottograph, Peachee Blue, Prez Arecta, Renek X, and VEW.
Here in Brooklyn we move through a lush delirium—a rhapsody in blue and green, thick with summer and song, strident prose, a bit of jazz. In certain pockets of creativity the aerosol fumes from many a graff writer and mural painter are landing like a cloud on your sweaty skin and sliding off into the sewer below. The echos of Saturday night stereo is pounding in our memories with the adorable Atlanta hedonism of Bunna Summa and the swooning Puerto Rican charms of suavicito Bad Bunny. Vices and voices lilt through the neighborhood at night; a humidity induced dream that confirms we are all “New Yol” now.
Yes, the world feels upside down—truths twisted, systems slipping, war drums on many fronts—but for now it’s summer in Brooklyn, and we’re still in love. So let’s take our time… dance in the streets, drift across rooftops, wander the train tracks. Let the city hold us a little longer.
Here’s a glimpse of NYC graffiti, street art, and murals captured in this week’s survey, including Below Key, Ed Roth, EXR, Fumero, ICU463, Klepo One, Luch, Never Satisfied, Nick Walker, Sonni, TQRY, and Wizard Skull.
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.
As people across the country mourn George Floyd and mark the anniversary of his killing, many have been joining marches and memorials across the country and city. According to press reports, the nationwide unrest in the streets spawned by his killing a year ago was historic in reach and number coast to coast. That may be why the officer who killed him actually was convicted this spring – a rarity.
We’ve changed, but not enough. Regularly we are re-traumatized by recordings of violence toward citizens in an uneven display of ignorance and fear. We like to say we are better than this, but sometimes it’s hard to prove it.
Until all men and women are free, none of us truly are.
“People came to pay their respects to George Floyd on Tuesday at the site of where he was killed last year, placing flowers, some bowing their heads in reverence and others making the sign of the cross.
Vernon Rowland, a father of two who lives two blocks from George Floyd Square, came at about 9:30 a.m. to pay his respects.
‘Folks have talked about this place being holy ground and the suffering he experienced,’ Mr. Rowland, 43, said. ‘I see it as holy when you go and see the outline of his body.’”
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week. The weather has been beautiful in NYC and the organic art popping up on the streets is still forcefully advocating for social and political solutions amidst great upheaval, even while…
Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring Adam Fujita, Almost Over Keep Smiling, Billie Barnacles, Black Lives Matter, Bosko, Detor, Downtown DaVinci, Eric Haze, Fumero, Insurgo, Marco Santini, Marina Zumi, Praxis VGZ, Sara Lynne Leo, and Who is Dirk.
The New York street artist who works under the moniker “Almost Over Keep Smiling” reinterprets slightly this Boston warning poster telling anybody who was black in a “free” state like Massachusetts or New York to stay away from the police because the federal government had passed a law empowering people to capture them and return them to slavery.
The Act was one of the most controversial elements of the 1850 compromise and heightened Northern fears of a “slave power
conspiracy”. It required that all escaped slaves, upon capture, be
returned to their masters and that officials and citizens of free states
had to cooperate. Abolitionists nicknamed it the “Bloodhound Bill,” for the dogs that were used to track down runaway slaves.[2]
The Act contributed to the growing polarization of the country over the issue of slavery, and is considered one of the causes of the Civil War.
Happy New Year to All! Thank you for inspiring us to do our best and to those of you who continue to support our personal art project / cultural examination, we extend our gratitude more than ever.
Begun as an enthusiastic discovery of what was happening in a few neighborhoods in New York, we continued to expand our view into more cities around the world last year and into the history and future of the scene. We also aimed to provide you with a critical platform for examination of the street art/ graffiti / public art/ contemporary art continuum with interviews with artists, curators, collectors, organizers, observers and thinkers in the street, studio, gallery, and museum – trouble makers and taste makers alike.
In the end, it’s your observations and the conversations on the street that are most important. As we begin the year with over 300K fans, friends, and followers on social media platforms and 225 articles on the Huffington Post (thanks HuffPost team!), we feel like we get a valuable good survey of current opinions heading our way daily.
With in-depth interviews, investigative articles, opinion infused examinations, plain celebratory reverie, occasionally silly non-sequitors, and public appearances where we get to meet you, we get a good analytical look at an ever-evolving movement, glittery polish and warts and all.
As the new year begins we take a look back at the top stories chosen by BSA Readers in the last 12 months. Among them are two takeover pop-up shows in soon-to-be demolished buildings, a story about commercial abuse of artist copyrights and the effort to fight back, a street art community’s response to the sudden death of an activist street artist, a Street Art tourist trip, and a few inspirational women, men, and Mexican muralists. Even though we published at least once a day for the last 365 days, these are the most popular pieces, as chosen by you, Dear BSA Reader.
This year represents a high-water mark for current Street Artists being represented at the New York fairs if what we have just seen over the last couple of days is any indication. For those who have been following the trajectory of the new kids we’ve been talking about for the last decade, the room is rather getting a lot more crowded. Only a handful of years ago names that produced blank stares at your forehead and a little sniff of dismissal are garnering an extra lingering moment near the canvas and snap of the cellphone pic, complimentary champagne flute in hand.
With the gusts of wind provided by a couple of recent auctions, optimism about an up-turning economy, and even the Banksy one-month residency, it is not hard to imagine that we have some “overnight” stars in the midst of this constellation, but it is really anyone’s guess.
While we are certainly aware of it, we don’t dedicate too much ink to the commercial aspect of the Street Art scene, preferring to learn the lingua franca of these artists who have developed their narrative and visual style before our eyes, to celebrate experimentation, the creative spirit, and to give a pedestrian view of the street without being pedestrian.
But just as neighborhoods like Bushwick in Brooklyn, El Raval in Barcelona, LA’s downtown Arts District, and parts of London, Berlin, and Paris have been transforming by gentrification, we would be remiss if we didn’t note the more frequent raising of commercial eyebrows all around us when the topic turns to Street Art. It’s not a fever pitch, but can it be far off? There is already a solid first tier that everyone can name – and the stratification is taking shape below it.
Buffeted by blossoming sales of works by early 2000s Street Artists and the burgeoning of lifestyle companies now appropriating this cultural wealth and transforming it into “content” that helpfully couriers all manner of merch from spirits to soda, sneakers, and electronic smoking devices, we are looking for our seat belts as there a major shift in popular acceptance and critical embracing of 21st century Street Artists up ahead.
As for the streets, the flood is going to continue. Street Art is Dead? Yes, we’ve been hearing this since 2002…
Here’s a brief non-specific and uneven survey of only some work showing this weekend by current or former Street Artists and graffiti writers – perhaps a third of what you can see in the New York fairs and satellite galleries.
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
