We remember walking down the street somewhere in Los Angeles with Shepard Fairey and a gaggle of other artists after a panel discussion we led at LA MOCA back in the day…Shepard was enthusiastically sharing stories about one thing or another and as he walked, and talked he discreetly and nonchalantly would reach into his back pocket grab a sticker and slap it – sometimes leaping into the air.
Quick. Fast. Done. Noone was the wiser. And that’s how it works. Instantly.
If the artist is a wordsmith he or she can deliver a zinger or a joke. A distilled sentiment can be just as effective as a sermon. A powerful graphic sticker can deliver a cogent idea to the masses.
Legendary photographer and collector, Martha Cooper wrote and published two books about stickers; “Name Tagging”, which shed light on the practice of graffiti writers writing their tag on the ubiquitous “Hello My Name Is” sticker usually displayed at conferences to identify oneself. The second book, “Going Postal” takes its name from the US post office sticker originally intended to address parcels. Graffiti and street art practitioners use them as a platform to deliver artworks and messages to the public on the streets.
Recently during a walk through the streets in Wynwood, Miami we found a set of wooden panels specifically created to be covered with stickers by the multitude of artists visiting the city. Below we share our finds with you. How many artists can you identify?
The pronounced disparities and hypocrisies of society are now on display and on parade in our politics, on our multiple screens, in our bank accounts, our hospitals, our music, our schools, our neighborhoods, and in our Street Art — which again proves an apt and reliable reflection of society, despite the fog.
While our politicians and political machines and corporate media and cultural institutions are now being questioned more openly and often for their alliances, their entrenched classism, and exploitation of the rank-and-file, you can see those dynamics reflected in the messages and alliances that are occurring in Street Art as well – and questioned more often as well.
Will a torrent of populism be unleashed? Will our institutions fall or further erode? Who knows. As ever, one must be vigilant to spot the colorful wolf in populist clothes, often right in front of you in black and white.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street featuring Adam Fu, Albertus Joseph, Anthony Lister, Captain Eyeliner, COSBE, CRKSHNK, JR, Poet Was Taken, Praxis, Sara Lynne Leo, Vivid Trash, Will Power, Wing, and WK Interact.
Crossroads, the new monograph from Alice Pasquini is full of the young daring and confident girls and women whom have been traveling with her since she began painting walls around the world two decades ago.
Alice Pasquini “Crossroads” Drago Publisher. Rome, Italy, 2019
Rendered in aqua and goldenrod and midnight, withstanding winds and rains, these figures are willing to be there as a testament to the daily walk through your life. A survey and diary of her works and experiences, her style is more human than international in its everyday appeal, advocacy gently advanced through the depiction of intimate personal dynamics and internal reflection.
Perhaps this quality alludes to the invitation of interaction, the ease of integration with the public space in a way that the cultural norms of her Italian roots influenced her.
“In Rome, where I grew up, everything is urban art. Any little fountain or corner was made by an artist. And there were always a lot of expressions of freedom in this city,” she says in an interview here with writer Stephen Heyman.
Alice Pasquini “Crossroads” Drago Publisher. Rome, Italy, 2019
Alternating between aerosol rendering, ink sketches on
paper, and the sharpened portraiture of street stencils in hidden places,
Pasquini can distill a moment that is perhaps remarkable, perhaps everyday
noblesse.
“I have discovered that art is a universal language,” she
says. Working in the streets I have found myself in countless situations,
whether exhilarating, educational, or expected. I receive immediate feedback,
whether it be surprise, joy or curiosity of the passerby, irrespective of age
or culture.”
Alice Pasquini “Crossroads” Drago Publisher. Rome, Italy, 2019
Elsewhere in an essay addressing the still-current imbalance of representation of males and females in the Street Art scene internationally, she speaks of a social aspect to her practice, a fulfillment of her desire to engage and encourage women to be themselves and be present, fully immersed in public life.
“Maybe women are presented with a behavioral model that limits our liberty to be ourselves. They tell us how we should be. By painting the women I see, I try to show to them – like a mirror – what they could be but what they repress. It is an incitement for women to do what they wish to do.”
Alice Pasquini “Crossroads” Drago Publisher. Rome, Italy, 2019
With page after page of images in these Crossroads, the artist presents many people, not unlike herself, and undoubtedly extensions of her. Tender, confessional, timidly hiding in plain view, these figures are public expressions for introverts, observers and dreamers who must confront the harsh chaos of the metropolis, but who are happier without the tumult and able to conjure beauty without the drama.
Alice Pasquini “Crossroads” Drago Publisher. Rome, Italy, 2019
Longtime stalwart friend, advisor, and manager Jessica Stewart gives readers a warm and close view of the artist and her practice, adding a timbre needed to fully appreciate the work.
“I’ve often remarked to Alice that she’s lucky that she knew what she wanted to do since she was a child. I sometimes think that she doesn’t realize just how rare it is to not only have that calling but to be fearless enough to follow your heart. Through her example, who knows how many others will be brave enough to also take the leap.”
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening : 1. 1Up X Hand Mixed – “Love is Love” 2. WK Interact x Kobe Bryant 3. Bordalo II in Studio
BSA Special Feature: 1Up X Hand Mixed – “Love is Love”
Many old school original graff dudes kicked gay guys onto the tracks in the 1970s and 80s and 90s and 00s and…. They may have been rebels against oppression, but they could still use their own power and prejudice to keep people down.
Somewhere during that time LGBTQ people began to vociferate for social and legal equality in Western democracies, and their braver straight allies also began to fight alongside of them, and begrudgingly the graff scene began to let these folks into the mix. But homophobia, like racism, is still present in places where the dominant culture embraces homo/transphobia and has held tight to its exclusionary claims to privilege and power – including in the subcultures of graffiti, hip-hop, tattoo, punk, skateboarding, and street art.
So it’s still remarkable when a graffiti crew stands in the face of all of it and says “Love is Love” and uses its One United Power to recognize the rights of everyone, regardless of their particular crush or kink. Granted, 1UP and Hand Mixed employee rebellion and vandalism to make the point, and no one is going to hire any of these guys/gals to work on the UN Security Council because of their diplomacy, but life is messy, yo. And viewer comments on this video on Instagram and Youtube prove that change is still incremental.
WK Interact x Kobe Bryant
In the wake of the unfortunate death of basketball star Kobe Bryant, we’re reminded of that campaign Street Artist WK Interact did with him for a brand a few years ago. It was a very good merging of styles, with their intersection at the corner of movement and strategically employed power. Our condolences to his family and extended network of friends.
Bordalo II in Studio
A full interview with street sculptor Bordalo II last fall on Camões TV. Also a great opportunity for you to practice Portuguese.
The three-dimensional figures cavort with the thickened and filigreed waves of memory and emotion. They emerge from the wall, flicker across the screen, mesmerizing.
The hand-drawn lines and patterned shadings are familiar to fans of street art over the last two decades, but this goddess seems so real, so haunted. Swoons’ Cicada installations at Deitch Gallery on 76 Grand Street are in movement, fluttering in your periphery, stories from her past melting into motifs and fragments of her memories, and quite possibly yours.
Cicada is a life cycle, and it glimmers in the darkness as you turn. In this collection of drawings, installations, and film you finally reach the pain, the trauma, the escapist desire for divinity to save us. Swoon introduces the fluttering mystic figures into her new stop motion film, again your memories are triggered, but it’s hers that are on display – while they continue to hide before us.
Even though she’s not here with you, it feels like Swoon’s never been so close and so theatrical, even when she sailed the Switchback Seas with this same journeyman Deitch. Her own odyssey continues to be rebirthed in so many surprising ways; often at the center of the stage, and still behind the wings.
Void Projects. “Homeless” Miami, 2019. (photo still from the video by Doug Gillen/FWTV)
“The aim is to create quality shows outside of the conventional art scene, cutting the middlemen, galleries or institutions,” says Axel Void’s mission statement for “Homeless.”
When his Instagram following gets big enough, will he add art websites and magazines to that list of superfluous middlemen/women?
Void Projects. “Homeless” Miami, 2019. (photo still from the video by Doug Gillen/FWTV)
In the meantime, here’s London based filmmaker/vlogger and Radio Juxtapoz co-host Doug Gillen with his take on the “residency” that Void (Alejandro Dorda) hosted this year in Miami during Art Basel. As his craft evolves, more of his subjects are emerging; his languorous takes are fulsome, his pacing creating space.
It’s
a meditation on what “home” means for 15 or so artists who are in Void’s house “to
eat, sleep and create together”. The construction of that phrase suddenly makes
this residency sound a LOT more interesting.
Void Projects. “Homeless” Miami, 2019. (photo still from the video by Doug Gillen/FWTV)
For Axel Voids’ project, the location is North Miami and the temperature is 75 degrees Fahrenheit and the architectural era in the 1920s. From the looks on the face of this crew of international painters, “home” has a lovely barefoot-in-the-grass quality, a sun-drenched smokey Arkestra of soul and silliness.
When you look at these paintings and these people and think of this environment you may ask yourself, “What is home?”
American muralist James Bullough continuously ups his game on canvasses as well, his realism and figurative work slid through the slicer and rearranged with little emotion, a lot of languid style, exquisitely.
James Bullough. “Parallel Truths”. Detail. (photo courtesy of the artist)
He tell us he’s been developing distinctly different styles of painting for the last eighteen months in his Berlin studio and here we share new shots of the works as he prepares for his new show on Leap Day (Feb 29) at Thinkspace in Los Angeles.
We’re pleased that James is sharing these first images with BSA readers – along with a teaser video of the new works in progress.
James Bullough. “Parallel Truths”. Detail. (photo courtesy of the artist)James Bullough. “Parallel Truths”. Detail. (photo courtesy of the artist)James Bullough. “Parallel Truths”. Detail. (photo courtesy of the artist)James Bullough. “Parallel Truths”. Detail. (photo courtesy of the artist)James Bullough. “Parallel Truths”. Detail. (photo courtesy of the artist)James Bullough. “Parallel Truths”. Detail. (photo courtesy of the artist)
New brandalism campaign commands attention across 3 Australian Cities at bus stops. They call it #BushfireBrandalism
“We’re not a real group.
There’s no back story, no history, no narrative – it’s a reaction to what’s
just happened,” an anonymous brandalism activist tells us as they describe the
sudden swelling of artists who joined together to take over those outdoor big
illuminated ad kiosks that pepper your walk through public space.
#BushfireBrandalism Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane. Australia. January 2020. (photo still from the video)
“Sell the water. Dry the
Land. Watch it Burn. Blame Drought,” says one of the boldface headlines on one
bus-stop ad controlled by the ubiquitous street ad purveyor JCDecaux.
“Despite Australia being the driest inhabited continent on earth, the Australian Government continues to sell water to mining companies, large irrigators and foreign corporations. This must not go on. Act now,” says the remainder of the black and white poster before providing a QR code for you to scan in the lower right-hand corner.
BushfireBrandalism Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane. Australia. January 2020. (photo still from the video)
“It’s an awareness project. It’s just trying to raise money for a charity but its so much bigger than that,” says one of the organizers. “It’s about having a conversation, changing our habits, becoming more interested in politics, participating.”
With a very loosely organized 41 artists making brand new works that were installed in the last week with the help of about 20 volunteers across three large Australian cities, Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, the new messages in these ad spaces are in direct opposition to the coal industry that the current Prime Minister often promotes. There are a number of solutions proposed, and the tenor of urgency varies –but none seem to use particularly offensive imagery.
BushfireBrandalism Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane. Australia. January 2020. (photo still from the video)
“Most of these artists have
never had a political bent to their work,” says one person involved in the
video released here today. “So this campaign can be an exercise in new
territory for the artists as well. These are artists who have huge followings
and people look to them as leaders, cultural leaders.”
Indeed, the group says that they have “a combined 700,000 social media following,” and they hope to raise awareness of the underlying causes of the recent unprecedented fires in Australia.
BushfireBrandalism Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane. Australia. January 2020. (photo still from the video)
“We do not accept that this
situation is ‘business as usual’, says a statement by the artists. “We are
making these issues visible in our public spaces and in our media; areas monopolized
by entities maintaining conservative climate denial agendas.”
“I think there is something
cool about taking over the bus stop advertising because we’re the home of
Rupert Murdoch and so much of our media and advertising is controlled by News
Corp,” one activist tells us, “and they are not really interested in having
conversations about climate change so it’s a way to put that conversation out
there in public.”
BushfireBrandalism Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane. Australia. January 2020. (photo still from the video)BushfireBrandalism Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane. Australia. January 2020. (photo still from the video)BushfireBrandalism Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane. Australia. January 2020. (photo still from the video)BushfireBrandalism Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane. Australia. January 2020. (photo still from the video)BushfireBrandalism Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane. Australia. January 2020. (photo still from the video)BushfireBrandalism Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane. Australia. January 2020. (photo still from the video)BushfireBrandalism Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane. Australia. January 2020. (photo still from the video)
Artists include: Georgia Hill, Tom Gerrard, Sarah McCloskey, Amok Island, Andrew J Steel, Blends, Callum Preston, Cam Scale, Damien Mitchell, Dani Hair, DVATE, E.L.K, Ed Whitfield, FIKARIS, Fintan Magee, HEESCO, JESWRI, Ghostpatrol, Leans, Lluis fuzzhound, Lotte Smith, Lucy Lucy, Makatron, Michael Langenegger, Peter Breen, The Workers Art Collective, Stanislava Pinchuk, The Lazy Edwin, Thomas Bell, Tom Civil, WordPlay Studio, Peter Breen.
Thanks to the many participating artists and creative professionals who chose to remain anonymous, 20 volunteers, MilkBar Print, Brandalism UK , Bill Posters, Sasha Bogojev, Ian Cox, KGB Crew, Public Access, Nicole Reed, Luke Shirlaw, Jordan Seiler, After Midnight Film Co, Everfresh Crew, The Culprit Club, The Peep Tempel, Wing Sing Records, Waste, Adam Scarf, NCCP, Gabby Dadgostar, James Straker, Partier Bresson and Charlotte Pyatt
The ebullient brilliance of the street is what lifts us up in this time of disarray and misdirection. Our collective cognitive dissonance, fed by hired mercenary disinformationists of the oligarchy and their corporate armies, tells us that truth is foggy, or even a lie. No wonder the preponderance of surrealists who are spraying the streets these days. They are merely a reflection of this war on our minds, a war by the way, that you and we are not winning.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week from Miami, and this time featuring A Lucky Rabbit, Bunny M, Caratoes, City Kitty, CRKSHNK, Insomniak Crew, Koalas of NYC, Lauren YS, The London Police, W3r3on3, and Zio Ziegler.
From Bosch to Beckmann to Bacon the multi-paneled presentation of the barnacled and beatific has commanded the attention of art fans for centuries. Here on a backlot in the swampy section of Miami that’s now known for public painting, we find a trio of uniquely stylized female sitters, one slightly more robotic than her flanks. In a darkly storied and neglected neighborhood now painfully clamoring for attention, it was this partially obscured wall that adroitly captured ours.
Commanding your eyes, and then your
heart, these three hold court in the scruffy sod with complementary hues,
blinkered by a tree that blocks and reveals according to the breeze and the
sun. Calling to mind altar paintings from the Middle Ages as well as pensively
poetic video panels at the Venice
Biennale, this maximizing of an easily overlooked opportunity skillfully attracts
the discerning art fan, leaving you satiated, slightly stirred.
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening : 1. How Art Saved Swoon’s Life 2. The Masters: Futura 2000
BSA Special Feature: How Art Saved Swoon’s Life / The C Files with Maria Brito
In 2011 we had a show in Los Angeles called “Street Art Saved My Life”. It sounded like some humorous hyperbole but in reality, it was a sentiment we had heard many times in graffiti as well – including from tough-guy and tough-girl types who have told us with tears in their eyes that graffiti saved their lives. So the transformative power of art is not merely anecdotal at this juncture, and we patiently await the fields of science embracing it as well.
Witnessing the evolution of Street Artist/fine artist Swoon has been moving, and she’s generously opened the trip to you over the last decade. Because of this bravery, her painful growth and their accompanying revelations have enabled others to examine their own path. Certainly, you can relate to her when she says she realized, “There was damage. It was psychological and emotional… and it could be healed.”
“The thing about art-making for me is that it’s kind of like
this pole that is in the center of your world and that the wind is blowing and
your feet are off the ground and you feel like you are getting sucked away, but
there is one thing that you can hold on to.”
Dude, whatever it takes for any of us to be healed, let it
be.
The Masters: Futura 2000
Essentially a tour through Futura’s creative and personal life, here you can see the fluid linearity of the creative spirit as it’s channeled through art, music, fashion, branding, the street and merchandising. We’re just thankful he shares the ride and gives us insights and observations along the way with his disarming humor and canny pronouncements.
“Sociologist,
psychiatrist, and anthropologist – probably in that order – DONT FRET is more
invested than you may appreciate at first, and the underside of American
division and inequality bubbles quickly to the surface when he is asked if the
country is beyond class.
“Whoever is saying that clearly has the luxury to do so.
Look at our cities,” he says.
~ Steven P. Harrington in the introduction to DONT FRET’s monograph, “Life Thus Far”
His Brooklyn residency has been a blur full of old buds from college, new bars in Bedstuy, and of course, sausage makers. He stands in the middle of an artist’s hazard zone of crumpled paper, opened pots of paint, and discarded laundry with brush poised in hand describing his recent quandary about finding a meat mecca in Bushwick and realizing that he couldn’t buy everything he saw once he spoke to the owner.
“She just started her own sausage company and we
definitely want to do collaborations,” he says. “There were so many sausages at
her place that I wanted to buy.” So you know he’s feeling comfortable here,
surrounded by fine meats.
His characters are all here, wondering aloud about physical
insecurities and decoding social navigation; cryptically critiquing the
absurdities of our class system and the underlying savagery of corporate
capital and the perverting power of cloying advertising across the culture. In
so many words.
Some hand-painted posters are still wet, some boards for future magazine covers (Thrasher, Sportsball Weekly, The New Yorker) have backgrounds prepared for him to paint featured personalities, a scattered pile of painted lottery players are grinning gamely from shiny Lotto cards, and larger new canvasses are built up with dense color and swarming symbols that dance around the heads of his imagined sitters.
“In this kind of stuff I wouldn’t say it’s autobiographical but they are definitely my generation of people navigating the city, looking at life and nightlife,” he says as you look into the rolling eyes of figures that have transformed into slot machines, perhaps hoping to win the jackpot. He points to his enthrallment with “The Simpsons” as he grew up and sees the bewildered savviness of the players in himself and in most of his peers as they navigate “adulting”. It’s chaos, but an entertaining one.
“There are clips of the Simpsons that go around in my head
again and again,” he says. “There is one with Bart and Millhouse find twenty
dollars and they get a Super Squishy, which is basically a crack squishy, and
they go on this bender,” which makes him laugh. He turns to the blottoed bloke
on his new canvas and describes the scene.
“It’s like a song and dance. They’re singing (and he breaks
into singing) Springfield! Springfield! It’s a helluva town! – and there is
this scene of them wandering Springfield,” he says.
You can see this is a stand-in for this month in the BK in this case and DONT FRET’s active imagination about the lore of this dirty metropolis. “You see this neon popping up, and the animation just swirls. And then it just wakes up to Bart, hungover in bed.”
“I don’t know, I always just like those images. For me, these are like Brooklyn and Manhattan,” he says with glassy star-struck dizziness in his eyes.
Catch DONT FRET tonight at his opening at the Bedstuy
Artists Residency, and you can swirl around colorfully with other symbols of
this time, and this electrified city full of promise. BSA co-founder will be there to sign his
introduction essay inside fresh copies of “Life Thus Far”, DONT FRET’s giant
new monograph.
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
