All posts tagged: Jaime Rojo

Poesia and Kwest Pay Tribute to Persue In San Francisco

May 15, 2014 Artists

“It is an amazing hybrid piece,” says Brock Brake as he describes the letter structure and color combinations of this new piece in San Francisco.

With Poesia bringing the wildstyle flames that evoke the firestorms that race across the western region of the US every summer, the graffuturist continues to tighten the angles here with Toronto’s accomplished and hi-definition Kwest in this new wall in San Francisco.

Poesia, Kwest, and “Persue”. (photo © Brock Brake)

The wall is a tribute to their friend, the San Diego graffiti writer/graphic designer/ entrepreneur Persue, who is very much alive, says photographer Brock Brake, so don’t mistake it for a memorial wall but rather a “you’re rad, dude, we like your style” wall. Nice.

Poesia, Kwest, and “Persue”. (photo © Brock Brake)

Special thanks to photographer Brock Brake for sharing these photos with BSA readers. For more about Brock please click HERE.

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Please note: All content including images and text are © BrooklynStreetArt.com, unless otherwise noted. We like sharing BSA content for non-commercial purposes as long as you credit the photographer(s) and BSA, include a link to the original article URL and do not remove the photographer’s name from the .jpg file. Otherwise, please refrain from re-posting. Thanks!

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“Coachella Walls”: Date Farmers Raise Profile of “Anonymous Worker”

May 14, 2014 Artists

Seriously, like Coachella is NOT even like in Coachella. It’s like in Indio. True story.

The annual concert festival that brings legions of middle class to somewhat affluent feathered fringed bikini babes and awesome face-painted dudes dropping acid while texting and buying merch? – and which apparently features big-name indie music at some point over two weekends in April? That’s not here. That town is called Indio.

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Coachella Walls Poster at a local farm. (photo © Medvin Sobio)

Here in Coachella, the “City of Eternal Sunshine,” no one shoots YouTube videos about “How to Survive Coachella” with hints about SPF 55 sunscreen sticks and personal sized hand sanitizer. Here you will find a mostly rural, agricultural, family oriented community which struggles with poverty regularly. They also pick a lot of your food.

That’s why Armando Lerma and Carlos Ramirez, artistically joined as The Date Farmers, began an “arts-driven community revitalization project” on March 31st, recognized in California as Cesar Chavez Day.

Armando Lerma of The Date Farmers keeps and eye on the rambunctious fans. (photo © Medvin Sobio)

Inviting solidly remarkable street art and mural-painting talents to show some camaraderie with the working men and women in this community, the first annual Coachella Walls has now made its mark in the Historic Pueblo Viejo District of downtown. Here also is the recently opened Date Farmers Art Studios, which they hope will serve as the city’s first art gallery and artist residency.

Thematically joined to honor Chavez and the Anonymous Farm Worker, the festival invited a group of muralists and contemporary artists with Latin American cultural influences in their work, including artists like El Mac (Arizona), Nunca (Brazil), Saner (Mexico), Andrew Hem (Cambodia), Liqen (Spain), Albert Reyes (Los Angeles), Vyal Reyes (Los Angeles), Sego (Mexico), The Phantom (Los Angeles), Jim Darling (Texas), and more.

According to the organizers, “Despite supplying the region with close to half a million dollars a year in vegetable crops, many of the farm workers in the Eastern Coachella Valley continue to live in unsafe and unhealthy conditions.” With murals, luck and a whole burlap sack of talent like this, Coachella Walls aims to bring awareness to these issues and others related to the life of the worker here.

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The Date Farmers (photo © Medvin Sobio)

Medvin Sobio was contacted by the Date Farmers to help produce and curate the public art project, and he shows us some of the images that came out of this very first annual event. Coachella Walls is funded by the city of Coachella’s public arts fund and is curated by Sobio, the director of The Academy of Street Art in Los Angeles. Our thanks to Medvin and the Date Farmers for sharing these images with us.

The Date Farmers at work on “Casa de Trabajador”(photo © Medvin Sobio)

The Date Farmers (photo © Medvin Sobio)

Armando and Carlos assessing the progress. The Date Farmers (photo © Medvin Sobio)

The Date Farmers (photo © Medvin Sobio)

Albert Reyes (photo © Medvin Sobio)

Andrew Hem (photo © Medvin Sobio)

Andrew Hem with Carlos Ramirez of The Date Farmers (photo © Medvin Sobio)

Andrew Hem (photo © Medvin Sobio)

El Mac (photo © Medvin Sobio)

El Mac chats with Andrew Hem. (photo © Medvin Sobio)

El Mac. Carlos Ramirez of The Date Farmers snaps a shot. (photo © Medvin Sobio)

Says El Mac about this painting on his blog, “It’s not intended to represent any one specific person, but rather many people, especially the “anonymous farm worker”. Farm workers in this country have been marginalized despite producing the very food we all need for survival. The Coachella valley is an important region for farming, and has been the setting for many of the struggles by the UFW to to improve workers’ rights since the 60s..and you can feel this history there.”

El Mac (photo © Medvin Sobio)

Nunca (photo © Medvin Sobio)

Nunca “The Band” (photo © Medvin Sobio)

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“Done!” Murals from Rubin, Aakash, & Hellbent : Domino Walls Part II

May 13, 2014 Artists, Interview

“Done!” comes the text from Rubin, who is floating on his scissor lift six feet above the line of people down Kent Avenue that is cued along Aakash Nihalani’s new wall for the public opening of Kara Walker’s exhibit in the Domino factory warehouse.

Swear to the Sugar Gods: Not 10 minutes later “Done” arrives again on our phone screens, this time from Hellbent, signaling that his ginormous 476 foot mural is complete as well – three weeks, several rainstorms, and a five borough bike tour elapsing since he and his team started.

Hellbent. Process shot taken during the Five-Borough Bike tour. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Our Domino Walls project hit this finish line this weekend, and although there is at least one more wall to be revealed a little later in this phase, we thought we’d get these shots out to BSA readers so you’d have closure on our progress post last week.

It’s been a dope project and each one of the artists has told us some good information about the thinking and inspiration behind their pieces, their links to geometric forms and futurism – so we’ll share some of that for you too. Also we want to give a shout out to the Walentas family, who funded this project and who we’ve known since we worked as artists, volunteers, fundraisers, exhibitors in DUMBO during the 90s and 00s. They have always provided platforms for creative types to get their stuff out there into the community. Here’s another.

Hellbent. Process shot. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“I like how you can trick the eye using geometric shapes, shadows, and patterns and color in my newer paintings. I think what Poesia has been talking about and organizing around with Graffuturism is something that I feel aligned with in street work and mural work and in the urban contemporary setting. It is a kind of return to abstract art. Graff has gone through lettering, to characters, to pictoral, and now we are coming into abstraction and that’s the stuff that I’m into right now,” says Hellbent.

“So I’m seeing a lot of work that is coming out of eastern Europe, in Poland, and a scattering of these guys in America and central Europe and it is work that I’m drawn to and influenced by. I think Graffuturism is a kind of good term for what is going on right now – it’s a subset of all these other different things that are going on in the streets.”

Hellbent. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Brooklyn Street Art: Can you tell us anything about the neighbors taking great interest in the paintings. We’ve heard you have some new fans.

Hellbent: Yes, I’m really happy to say that the Hasidic community has been really behind what’s going on here. I’ve had some really great conversations with them while we’ve been painting. It’s been really nice to hear that and I like to see my audience broadening a bit like that. I think a lot of people are just happy to see something besides this green wall, actually.

Hellbent. Tools of the trade. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Hellbent. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Hellbent. North View. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Hellbent. North view. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Hellbent. South view. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Aakash Nihalani. Shot taken during the Five-Borough Bike tour. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Aakash Nihalani. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Brooklyn Street Art: You’ve always been interested in sort of pulling geometry out of spaces and revealing it. Is that right?
Aakash Nihalani: Kind of. I mean I think more often than not it is highlighting the space that is already there. So it’s not necessarily creating a new space its more about highlighting the space that already exists, I guess.

Brooklyn Street Art: As you have gone bigger, has it been a difficult transition?
Aakash Nihalani: I wouldn’t say difficult, but I work with tape and I don’t work with paint and this is all paint, so in that sense it is out of my medium realm. Having tried spray paint now – I’m really not interested in murals and painting. Yeah, I definitely prefer tape over paint for sure.

Aakash Nihalani. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Brooklyn Street Art: I would think so – when I’ve seen you working with it (tape) it just seems to flow out of your thumb.
Aakash Nihalani: Yeah.

Brooklyn Street Art: So it feels like you are “painting” with tape.
Aakash Nihalani: Yeah exactly. I mean this is too, it’s fun. It’s a good challenge to try to figure out a process that fits and will work for the clean lines that I’m going for.

Brooklyn Street Art: Do you think of this as a mural?
Aakash Nihalani: I don’t think so. I don’t know what I would call it. I would say it is still an installation.

The long lines for Kara Walker past Aakash Nihalani. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Aakash Nihalani (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Rubin. Shot taken during the Five-Borough Bike tour. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Rubin at work on his wall. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Rubin. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Rubin: I try not to look back but in the mid-nineties I was one of the most active writers in Sweden and I have my photo collection with me here and I’ve been working on it for years, trying to scan the images and I realize that a lot of the stuff I’m doing now, without really thinking and knowing it, started in the mid nineties. So I did a lot of abstract. The geometrics has always been there, the craftsmanship – being able to do straight lines, – a lot of the stuff. So I like to sample myself I guess. I also try to think of it in terms of music a lot.

Brooklyn Street Art: Really? What music is influencing this wall?
Rubin: It may sound weird but two of my influences have been Kraftwerk, which may seem obvious, but also Nina Simone. I’ve been listening to her music a lot. I’ve been listening to her while creating a lot of my sketches.

Rubin at work on his wall. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Brooklyn Street Art: It makes a lot of sense. The composition of the whole wall is like a music diagram.
Rubin: Like the rhythm in a piece, it has to start with the intro, getting into the verse, then in the middle it gets busy with the chorus, then you get a bridge, the song gets to breathe a little bit, and then you have the outtro so its all the same between music and art. It’s different tools to express – some ideas work better as paint and some as audio.

Brooklyn Street Art: I can see Kraftwerk in this epic minimalist cleanly structured classical approach – so that is the overall sweep, and the scale. But in addition there are the more organic forms, the color, warmth, the gentleness and strength – that part comes from Nina Simone?
Rubin: Yeah and the melancholy, her lyrics – she dealt with a lot of hard stuff and yeah, she has affected me a lot.

Rubin’s epic mural effectively mimicing the city view on both sides of the East River. North View. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Brooklyn Street Art: So it is like you’ve been discovering your own past.
Rubin: Yeah, and it also relates to when I started deconstructing my work

Brooklyn Street Art: When you were doing graffiti?
Rubin: Yeah, and then moving to working more large scale I had to adapt my work so that I can still work fast. It suits me so well. It is also is about balance, it can’t be too geometric so it’s always a struggle so that is why I try to keep my work free hand – so I don’t use projectors and stencils. I started using the chalk line more because it’s a time saver, but also I try to keep it analog and organic and physical. It can’t be too sharp – there has to be a more human element.

Rubin (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Brooklyn Street Art: Yes, well you have some more organic forms in this also.
Rubin: Yeah but at the same time there is no right or wrong so you have to be true to yourself, whatever feels right for you.

Brooklyn Street Art: Did you like the Italian Futurists show at the Guggenheim?
Rubin: Yeah! I was very very emotional. It was very overwhelming. There was also another side of it, a political aspect, that was very radical.

Rubin. A southern view as visitors to the Kara Walker exhibit “Subtlety” cut in just before his wall begins . (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Domino Walls is a project supported by Two Trees Management, the firm that is developing the Domino Sugar Factory site, and under the guidance of Lisa Kim, Cultural Affairs Director. BSA is acting as the curatorial advisor on this project.

Read Part I of this posting here:

Hellbent, Rubin, and Aakash Nihalani In Progress on Domino Walls in BK

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Images Of The Week: 05.11.14

May 11, 2014 Artists, BSA Images Of The Week

Happy Mothers Day to all the moms, mommies, mama, mas, mutters, madres, and variations on loving female caregivers out there. Thank you sincerely from the bottom of our hearts.

Been a huge week for New York with yet another round of art fairs that no one has ever heard of and a few that you are familiar with, all crammed and crawling with buyers, collectors, fans, surveyors, looky-loos. Also it looks like the action on the street, both commissioned and uncommissioned, is coming on fast and furious. You try to catch it while it happens, and yet somehow in a city like New York, you know that there are hundreds of new pieces that you missed because everything is blooming seemingly overnight and April showers have brought May murals, tags, throwies, wheatpastes, stencils, street art, graffiti, stickers and cellphones hoisted into the air to capture it all!

Here our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Billi Kid, Billy Mode, Chris Stain, Chris Uphues, Cristian Sonda, COL Wallnuts, Cre8tive YouTH*ink, Dailey Crafton, Faluja, Grosseling, Joseph Bottari, Kazy, Lillewenn, Manuel Huth, Martha Cooper, Mender, Mover, Olek, Pork, Sober, Zola, and Zura.

Top Image >> Chris Stain and Billy Mode new mural in Brooklyn in collaboration with Cre8tive YouTHink. The image is based on Martha Cooper’s photograph from her series Street Play, 1978. To learn more about Cre8tive YouTHink click HERE. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Sober . Mover (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Kazy (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Faluja (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Cristian Sonda in Milan,. Italy. (photo © Cristian Sonda)

“The greatest gift a father can give his children is to love and respect their mother” ~author unknown. OLEK suggests a similar sentiment here. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Zura (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dailey Crafton (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Joseph Bottari (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Pork. Grosseling (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Zola (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Mender (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Liliwenn in Berlin. (photo © Liliwenn)

Chris Uphues (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Billi Kid (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Manuel Huth (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Col Wallnuts for The Bushwick Collective. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. Brooklyn. Spring 2014. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Zio Ziegler: Primitive, Bizaare, Theatrically Punchy in San Francisco

May 10, 2014 Artists

Californian artist Zio Ziegler has a number of murals throughout San Francisco and Los Angeles – anthropomorphic figures and animals full of pattern, caught mid-action and almost exclusively in black and white. Primitive, bizaare, and theatrically punchy, the illustrative work by this RISD grad has been translated across all sorts of surfaces like hats, sweatshirts, tee-shirts, sneakers, corporate offices and luxury cars over the last decade, and his fine art work is landing in many collections. Currently enjoying his first European solo exhibit at Antonio Colombo Arte Contemporanea Via Solferino in Milan, he is still doing big murals back home like this new one in the Hayes Valley district of San Francisco.

Thanks to Gareth Gooch, who organized this wall for Ziegler and who shares with BSA readers his photos of the installation.

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Zio Ziegler. (photo © Gareth Gooch Photography)

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BSA Film Friday: 05.09.14

May 9, 2014 Artists

Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.

Now screening :

1. ECB and ANPU in Delhi, India with Ghandi
2. “If I Live I’ll See you Tuesday” By Gary Gardner
3. René Almanza: Gloves, drawing project
4. Martin Whatson at Memorie Urbane Festival 2014

BSA Special Feature: Hendrick ECB Beikirch x ANPU in Delhi, India

A few years ago in Bushwick, Brooklyn, the German street artist named ECB was painting elongated men’s heads on diminished factory facades with pieces of semi-cryptic text passages accompanying them. This spring he was painting India’s largest mural with ANPU in Delhi for what organizers say is that country’s very first Street Art festival. Check out the angles that you can get with a drone camera that capture the installation of this Ghandi portrait. Dude, the future is drones.

“If I Live I’ll See you Tuesday” By Gary Gardner

Skater culture is gliding through Christie’s storage department here, thanks to smart young director Gary Gardner, who also directed their Basquiat piece last year. Showing off individual pieces that will be auctioned this Tuesday throughout the thrillride, the Richard Prince, Jeff Koons, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Ed Ruscha pieces rush by you in one of the slickest branded content videos you’ll see this year. Stuff like this makes the competition drool when it comes to marketing to the ADD demographic with collector genes.

There will be more.

René Almanza: Gloves, drawing project.

Often we talk about gestural painting, that is, strokes and movements that are tied to your movements. Dribbled, slashed, smashed, smeared. Action painting. Artist René Almanza allows you to watch him experimenting with a technique whereby each finger has it’s own writing device. That may sound like you can get great specificity, but in fact it looks like he is a bear scratching on the outside of a jar of honey. Please try this at home.

Martin Whatson at Memorie Urbane Festival 2014

Overunder with Flying Metal Gates in Cleveland for “Zoetic Walls”

May 8, 2014 Artists

OverUnder is swinging through Cleveland with his flying pull down gates, upside downy paper birds, bolts of bending flat energy, and circling blue DNA balls of cytosine. The visual dictionary that OU consults regularly for his street symbols varies and grows but often it pops with these metal gates that you’ll find throughout commercial strip malls and city streets after business closes.

For him they are a magnet – and his dream state must be swirling with these ubiquitous rolling metal gates that seem to invite some artists and writers to hit them up with tags and throwies and scraps of poetry and other little bits of mark-making. Ironically perhaps, the same metal gates have also been used to protect Banksy pieces. By recreating them with their original art or markings, he is preserving them and copying that piece of urban visual language into another neighborhood, even another city.

Overunder at work. Zoetic Walls. Cleveland, Ohio. May 2014. (photo © Pawn Works)

These new walls are part of Zoetic Walls – a project that Pawn Works has been intermittently and quietly facilitating for muralists around forgotten areas of Cleveland for a little over a year. “We have had the honor of curating our own little world of murals free of hype, thus far,” says Nick Marzullo of Pawn Works.

“We have started our 2014 Cleveland work with OverUnder. By leaving the existing brick to be used as the fill for his iconic paper birds, OverUnder created this high concept piece in Cleveland’s Historic Ohio City neighborhood,” he says.

Overunder. Detail. Zoetic Walls. Cleveland, Ohio. May 2014. (photo © Pawn Works)

Overunder. Process shot. Zoetic Walls. Cleveland, Ohio. May 2014. (photo © Pawn Works)

Overunder. Zoetic Walls. Cleveland, Ohio. May 2014. (photo © Pawn Works)

Overunder. Cleveland, Ohio. May 2014. (photo © Pawn Works)

Is this a reference to Naughty by Nature? Overunder. Cleveland, Ohio. May 2014. (photo © Pawn Works)

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Kara Walker and Her Sugar Sphinx at the Old Domino Factory

May 7, 2014 Artists

Refining, as Creative Time’s Chief Curator Nato Thompson reminds us inside this 30,000 square foot former Domino Sugar facility, is a process whereby coarse cane is decolorized, and brown is turned powdery and crystalline white.

Kara Walker. The artist portrait in profile with her sugary sphinx in the background. (photo via iPhone © Jaime Rojo)

Armed with such loaded symbolism, internationally renowned artist Kara E. Walker unveils her Subtlety installation this week, completely commanding this steel girded chamber of the industrial north and jolting you from your sugar haze. Towering over our heads is the resolute and silent face of a kneeling nude polystyrene white woman with African features, posed to resemble a 35 foot sphinx encrusted with sugar and to receive your questions. Subtlety indeed.

Kara Walker (photo via iPhone © Jaime Rojo)

“I’m grateful to Creative Time for inviting me to create work in a place like this that is so loaded with histories and questions,” says Ms. Walker of the nonprofit organization that commissions and presents public arts projects like this one. She describes the turbulent process of creating her new mammoth piece, and all of them really. She says that her work often makes even her uncomfortable, which is somehow comforting.

The left hand gesture of the mysterious sugary Sphinx captures the eye of artist Mike Ming who asks Ms. Walker what it signifies. The artist fingers her necklace and displays the charm hanging from it – a forearm and a hand forming the same fist-like pose.

“It means many things, depending on the source,” she explains, and she lists fertility as one and a protective amulet as another. Our ears perk up when she says that in some cultures it is a signal akin to “fuck you” and she has also heard that it can mean a derogatory four-letter term for a part of the female anatomy. And what does this thumb protruding between the index and middle finger mean here? “You’ll have to ask her,” she says smiling and nodding her head upward to the bandana crowned silent one.

Kara Walker. Detail. (photo via iPhone © Jaime Rojo)

Speaking of female anatomy, Ms. Walker deliberately and remarkably screams silently in the face of sexual stereotypes that prevailed and dehumanized women of African descent for the majority of North American history with this exaggerated caricature and her arching back quarters hoisted to the heavens. We only use past tense in that sentence to reassure ourselves that those stereotypes are distant and not at all connected to us today, but this may require a healthy helping of sunny denial to maintain the perception as we travel throughout the land.

Kara Walker. Detail. (photo via iPhone © Jaime Rojo)

The spectacle here is pushed by the extended pelvis, the protruding nether regions, the amply plump breasts rather pressed together. The presentation may summon pleasant perturbations in some viewers, while setting off murderous riots of horror in others, but we’ll all keep our associations to ourselves, thank you.

This is the giant white sphinx in the living room, sparkling white and sweet. Congratulations to “Subtlety” for at least partially hushing a PC crowd of normally chatty New Yorkers who struggle to make cocktail talk in the shadows of our heritage, and for that matter, our present. We feel lucky that this sphinx does not speak, for she would likely slaughter much with her tongue.

Kara Walker. Detail. (photo via iPhone © Jaime Rojo)

Accompanying the sphinx are more human scale children of molasses coloring, “Sugar Babies” standing before craggled industrial walls that are coated with the thick, dark brown syrup obtained from raw sugar during the refining process. She says the five foot tall figures are based on the trinkets of porcelain once sold widely, featuring adorably cherubic slaves carrying baskets into which you may place colorful hard candies for special guests of some refinement.

On a technical note, she offers special thanks to the fabricating sculptors who struggled with the amber candy material as it reacted to changes in temperature and humidity. The floor itself had to be power-washed to loosen and dispel an inch of thick goo, and as we spoke she pointed to the dripping of a molasses type of liquid from the ceiling onto the sculpture. Asked by the CT team if the sphinx should be whitened each time there was a drip, the artist decided that she likes the dripping effect so they will leave it as is and watch how the piece ages with the history of the building.

Kara Walker. Detail. (photo via iPhone © Jaime Rojo)

For those who will be drawn like bees to honey to this unprecedented monument of site specificity in a place directly welded to Brooklyn’s maritime history, America’s industrialization and its slave economy, Ms. Walker now transforms into a stomping giant before our eyes. To those who prefer the truly subtle, this show will be overlooked as too obvious.

Kudos to Creative Time, its director Anne Pasternak, and Ms. Walker for putting our face in it, even as we bemoan the loss of this soon-to-be demolished building and its connection to our history.

At the behest of Creative Time Kara E. Walker has confected:
Kara Walker – A Subtlety or the Marvelous Sugar Baby an Homage to the unpaid and overworked Artisans who have refined our Sweet tastes from the cane fields to the Kitchens of the New World on the Occasion of the demolition of the Domino Sugar Refining Plant.

The exhibition will be open on May 10 – July 6, 2014. Free and open to the public – check here for more details.

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BSAPlease note: All content including images and text are © BrooklynStreetArt.com, unless otherwise noted. We like sharing BSA content for non-commercial purposes as long as you credit the photographer(s) and BSA, include a link to the original article URL and do not remove the photographer’s name from the .jpg file. Otherwise, please refrain from re-posting. Thanks!

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This article is also published on The Huffington Post

Ernest Zacharevic “Toy Mafia” in Gaeta, Italy

May 6, 2014 Artists

You’ll have to laugh when you first see the new double wall installation just completed by Ernest Zacharevic for the Memorie Urbane Festival. Known for his light hearted hand rendered site-specific illustrations of kids at play, Zacharevic positions two boys around the corner from one another ready to blast each other to pieces with water guns. Hopefully Gaeta appreciates the humor.

The title? Toy Mafia.

Click HERE for more Memorie Urbane Information

New Swoon in Bushwick

May 5, 2014 Artists

During our talk at the Brooklyn Museum the Street Artist Swoon was asked by someone from the audience if she ever felt nervous putting art on the streets. She responded that she did experience a surge of nervous feelings whenever putting work up in public. Swoon added that she felt that she had been neglecting the Borough of Brooklyn…well it looks like she’s has made up for that.

With six new installations for The Bushwick Collective she has been leaving her offerings on the streets of Brooklyn again. Don’t forget that the Brooklyn Museum is running a competition – just record a little Instagram video of your discovery and send it to the them to enter it. Even if you don’t see these new installations you could still record an Instagram video about the first time you saw a Swoon piece on the street and submit your video for the chance to win a mystery, special guest. Click HERE for more details for your submission.

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Images Of The Week: 05.04.14

May 4, 2014 Artists, BSA Images Of The Week

Here our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Cabaio, Cern, Chris Stain, Crummy Gummy, Damon, Dylan Egon, Ebaycs, Ellis G., Hot Boys, Hot Tea, Ives One, JB, Jerk Face, Nathan Sawaya, QRST, Rambo, Serban Ionescu, Tec, and Zimer.

Nathan Sawaya does an installation with multi-colored childrens’ toy blocks for Earth Day in Manhattan. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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BSA Film Friday: 05.02.14

May 2, 2014 Artists

Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.

Now screening :

1. Da Mental Vaporz and ‘The Wall’
2. YZ – Lost in the City
3. NYCHOS: Pen and Paper
4. Stealing Banksy
5. E1000 x Pablo Herrero at Memorie Urbane 2014

BSA Special Feature: Da Mental Vaporz and ‘The Wall’

To mark their new show that opened this week at BC Gallery, the 10 member France-based collective known as “Da Mental Vaporz” release this panoply of inventive and tight wall work and, as it turns out, canvasses. It is reassuring to see original thinking and solid skills still can win the day, and good to see artists sticking together to make great collaborations.

Included are Bom.k, Blo, Brusk, Iso, Dran, Kan, Lek, Gris1, Jaw and Sowat.

“The works of these artists can speak for themselves independently, differentiating from each other mostly in medium as in style and technique that which as soon as they are shown in a common context, creates an extraordinarily interesting and thrilling relationship. As can be deduced from the name ‘Da Mental Vaporz’, which, translated, means “The Vapors of the Psyche” it is for the artists a matter of concern to make the observer aware of the abyss of the personal psyche.” – from the description on Vimeo.

YZ – Lost in the City

YZ takes us on a trip through her city and invites us to get lost with her. For those non-French speakers, it is still a rewarding discovery that comes two thirds of the way through the small film that features jazz rhythms that wend you through the avenues of Paris, the suburban streets and into her studio.

NYCHOS: Pen and Paper

“All of my family – my dad, my grandpa, they all are hunters,” says Nychos at the picnic table as he explains his fascination for slicing apart animals and allowing us to see what organs and systems are arranged within. While listening to heavy metal you learn that Nychos was elated when he discovered his love of depicting dissection in graphic detail. He said, “Okay this is something I can stick to and go crazy on it.” May we all be so fortunate to find that thing too.

Stealing Banksy

“It’s like looking at a collection of hunting trophies severed from their natural environment,” our narrator intones, “stuffed into frames and soon to be seen by the privileged few”. Fair enough, you say, as long as I’m one of them. Wendy Hurrell says in her description of her new documentary “Stealing Banksy”, that she has been following Banksy’s work for a decade or more, and “it has been my privilege to wallow through the moral dilemma that is taking his works from the streets, legally and selling them for charity – never to be seen by the masses again.”

E1000 x Pablo Herrero at Memorie Urbane

The Blind Eye Factory shot this very large mural painted on the wall of a cemetary for the 2014 Memorie Urbane Street Srt festival in Gaeta, Italy

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Poesia, Kwest, and “Persue”. (photo © Brock Brake)

Poesia, Kwest, and “Persue”. (photo © Brock Brake)

Poesia, Kwest, and “Persue”. (photo © Brock Brake)

Poesia, Kwest, and “Persue”. (photo © Brock Brake)

Poesia, Kwest, and “Persue”. (photo © Brock Brake)

Poesia, Kwest, and “Persue”. (photo © Brock Brake)

Coachella Walls Poster at a local farm. (photo © Medvin Sobio)

Armando Lerma of The Date Farmers keeps and eye on the rambunctious fans. (photo © Medvin Sobio)

The Date Farmers (photo © Medvin Sobio)

The Date Farmers at work on “Casa de Trabajador”(photo © Medvin Sobio)

The Date Farmers (photo © Medvin Sobio)

The Date Farmers (photo © Medvin Sobio)

Armando and Carlos assessing the progress. The Date Farmers (photo © Medvin Sobio)

The Date Farmers (photo © Medvin Sobio)

Albert Reyes (photo © Medvin Sobio)

Albert Reyes (photo © Medvin Sobio)

Andrew Hem (photo © Medvin Sobio)

Andrew Hem with Carlos Ramirez of The Date Farmers (photo © Medvin Sobio)

Andrew Hem (photo © Medvin Sobio)

Andrew Hem (photo © Medvin Sobio)

Andrew Hem (photo © Medvin Sobio)

El Mac (photo © Medvin Sobio)

El Mac (photo © Medvin Sobio)

El Mac chats with Andrew Hem. (photo © Medvin Sobio)

El Mac. Carlos Ramirez of The Date Farmers snaps a shot. (photo © Medvin Sobio)

El Mac (photo © Medvin Sobio)

Nunca (photo © Medvin Sobio)

Nunca “The Band” (photo © Medvin Sobio)

Nunca “The Band” (photo © Medvin Sobio)

Nunca “The Band” (photo © Medvin Sobio)

Hellbent. Process shot taken during the Five-Borough Bike tour. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Hellbent. Process shot. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Hellbent. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Hellbent. Tools of the trade. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Hellbent. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Hellbent. North View. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Hellbent. North view. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Hellbent. South view. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Aakash Nihalani. Shot taken during the Five-Borough Bike tour. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Aakash Nihalani. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Aakash Nihalani. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The long lines for Kara Walker past Aakash Nihalani. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Aakash Nihalani (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Rubin. Shot taken during the Five-Borough Bike tour. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Rubin at work on his wall. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Rubin. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Rubin at work on his wall. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Rubin’s epic mural effectively mimicing the city view on both sides of the East River. North View. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Rubin (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Rubin. A southern view as visitors to the Kara Walker exhibit “Subtlety” cut in just before his wall begins . (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Top Image >> Chris Stain and Billy Mode new mural in Brooklyn in collaboration with Cre8tive YouTH*ink. The image is based on Martha Cooper’s photograph from her series Street Play, 1978. To learn more about Cre8tive YouTH*ink click HERE. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Sober . Mover (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Sober . Mover (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Kazy (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Faluja (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Cristian Sonda in Milan,. Italy. (photo © Cristian Sonda)

“The greatest gift a father can give his children is to love and respect their mother” ~author unknown. OLEK suggests a similar sentiment here. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Zura (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dailey Crafton (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dailey Crafton (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Joseph Bottari (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Pork. Grosseling (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Zola (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Mender (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Liliwenn in Berlin. (photo © Liliwenn)

Chris Uphues (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Billi Kid (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Manuel Huth (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Col Wallnuts for The Bushwick Collective. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. Brooklyn. Spring 2014. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Zio Ziegler. (photo © Gareth Gooch Photography)

Zio Ziegler. (photo © Gareth Gooch Photography)

Zio Ziegler. (photo © Gareth Gooch Photography)

Zio Ziegler. (photo © Gareth Gooch Photography)

Zio Ziegler. (photo © Gareth Gooch Photography)

Zio Ziegler. (photo © Gareth Gooch Photography)

Zio Ziegler. (photo © Gareth Gooch Photography)

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René Almanza: Gloves, drawing project.

Top Image >> Chris Stain and Billy Mode new mural in Brooklyn in collaboration with Cre8tive YouTHink. The image is based on Martha Cooper’s photograph from her series Street Play, 1978. To learn more about Cre8tive YouTHink click HERE. (photo © Jaime Rojo)