All posts tagged: Jaime Rojo

REVOK AND POSE and the Transformation of The Houston Wall

July 3, 2013 Artists, Interview

It took 80 hours and 7 humid sticky days and nights to complete, longer than it took God to make Heaven and Earth, according to scriptures. But the powerful transformation of the famed Houston Street Wall that took place last week had as profound an effect on many New York fans of Street Art and Graffiti as the melting of the North and South poles. And that was probably intentional.

Revok and Pose. Houston/Bowery Wall. June 2013, NYC. (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

The resulting flash flooding of emotions and summer storms washed over LA’s Revok and Chicago’s Pose as they joined each other with other MSK brothers to create a feast of popping color, styles, texture, tribute, and pure character – each climbing and gripping tightly to one another on a 90 degree diagonal grid that pushed it all together in one riotous composition.

Ultimately, the visually cacophonic mural, born amidst endless honking, screeching, sirens and a parade of curious passersby who pummeled the painters with a fusillade of questions and requests, is a joyous compilation for many, a perplexing mix of influences for others. With layers of tributes to fallen graffiti writers, shout-outs to friends and family, and heartfelt thanks to the host city that sparked a global graffiti scene decades earlier (including this very spot), the visiting thirty something graffiti brothers couldn’t quite quantify the depth of feeling they were experiencing as they slowly smashed a big wall in the heart of Manhattan.

Revok and Pose. Houston/Bowery Wall. June 2013, NYC. (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

For New York fans of a wall made famous by a long list of Street Artists including Haring, Scharf, Fairey, Faile, and others, most on the street hadn’t heard the names of these new guys but, like true New Yorkers, welcomed them nonetheless, usually emphatically. If there were worries about a strict adherence to rules of graffiti culture or whether the work borrows some conventions from pop, advertising, graphic design, or even Street Art, not many appeared to care about those distinctions. If anything, this wall is the apt expression of today’s’ blurred lines, where a throwie, a Lichtenstein, a sharply abstract pattern, and a hungry gorilla salivating over a police cruiser can all coexist harmoniously.

Revok and Pose. Houston/Bowery Wall. June 2013, NYC. (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

In fact it appears that Revok and Pose are metaphorically and technically casting aside once and for all the artificial divisions on the streets when it comes to styles and methods. Whether its the joint gallery shows, collaborative outdoor art festivals, or institutional venues like the sweeping “Art in the Streets” exhibit at MoCA a couple of years ago, it looks like graffiti and Street Art have been put into a room and encouraged to work out their differences. Now of course they’re copying off each others exam paper in the back row of class, but at least they’re not fighting so much. Okay, true, that announcement is still premature, but you can see the horizon ahead. Naturally in a city like New York that often typifies global diversity and routinely gives wide latitude for freedom of expression, the creative spirit as expressed with such technical skill and this kind of whole-hearted passion is invariably afforded a welcome. At least for a minute.

Revok and Pose. Houston/Bowery Wall. June 2013, NYC. (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

But that didn’t mean that Pose wasn’t feeling the pressure of doing this wall well, a pressure level that he estimated at ten times more than he would feel on a typical wall, even though both guys have been graff writers for more than two decades. “We’ve all painted a million walls. This is something that is sort of a landmark and for our culture it means a lot,” he said of the involvement of contemporary graffiti artists right here, right now. “The history is very daunting because you want to honor it, you want to pay tribute, but you also want to push the boundaries by really doing your best. It’s a really insane kind of platform.”

Revok and Pose. Houston/Bowery Wall. June 2013, NYC. (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

For Revok, the LA based writer who also is spending a lot of time in Detroit these days, the opportunity brings him back to a holy place he revered growing up, and he’s not going to miss it or take it for granted. Speaking about the profound impact that New York’s’ subway artists of the 1970s and 1980s had on the imaginations of countless youth in cities around the world, Revok envisions a booming audio tower emanating concentric circles in waves traveling to all who would hear.

“I imagine it as this kind of ring that just exploded and a ripple was sent out everywhere as far as it could go – and I’m one of those receivers, I’m one of those people who felt that,” he says as he describes weaving references into the mural by including names like Dondi and Iz The Wiz and even the letter “T” from the Beat Street movie poster. “You know all of those names in there – not all of them, but a lot of them – they were New Yorkers, they were a part of that movement at that time, they were people that created this world, this idea, this language that I’ve connected to and that is so dear and important and powerful to me. And now they’re not here, they are gone.”

Revok and Pose. Houston/Bowery Wall. June 2013, NYC. (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

“But what they created and what they gave to the world will live on forever. And coming here to New York, it’s a culmination – this wall right here, there is a tremendous amount of history right here, everybody that’s done it is important in their own right. For us to be fortunate enough to be given the opportunity to do this as outsiders I feel there is a responsibility to acknowledge the people and the culture that created me and my friends and now as it is coming back home, I’m paying tribute to New York graffiti, I’m paying tribute just to the general movement as a whole,” says Revok.

Revok and Pose. Houston/Bowery Wall. June 2013, NYC. (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

Of the many references are three call outs to their recently and painfully departed MSK brother Nekst, who a handful of crew members had joined together to eulogize on smaller walls in Brooklyn the previous weekend. Among the other names included are Ayer, Vizie, Cheech Wizard, Omenz, Sace, Case 2, Semz, Tie One, Rammellzee, and “All You See is Crime in the City” – a phrase associated with a famous train car work by Skeme from the 1980s documentary “Style Wars”. The guys even did shout outs to their kids.

Aside from the art category labels and the odes to community, both Revok and Pose are doubled up on this wall because of their common regard for sampling – that is, the combining of a variety of disparate elements and re-contextualizing them. As a basis for their fine art show that just opened at Jonathan Levine Gallery while they were in the city, the two have found that they both have a fairly active studio practice that they can collaborate on also.

Revok and Pose. Houston/Bowery Wall. June 2013, NYC. (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

Both say they sample from their environment, but how they go about it is unique to each. “I sample from all the years of being on the street and climbing around. After a while you start really having an appreciation for the environment,” Revok says as he describes his affinity for textures, details, and the underlying history of the built environment.

For Pose, it may be more of an atmospheric and emotional sampling where he takes “everything from everywhere. There are no rules. It’s like “Oh that sign is gold with a white outline and that is really impressive, like that is fucking beautiful – so I should do my name that way because I’ll catch as much attention as that sign does. It’s really those rudimentary kinds of things that I feel validated by and that are where I go with my art, it’s just that basic. That’s what was powerful for me – just taking from things around you and using them to express yourself, to create a dialogue, to create a narrative.”

Revok and Pose invited Rime as a guest artists, shown here at work. Houston/Bowery Wall. June 2013, NYC. (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

A closer examination of how some of the more commercial elements in the mural were achieved by Pose shows how he used a cut and paste process in the re-purposing of old signage. Drawing from a stash of “pounce patterns” that were given to him by a buddy while he was a professional sign painter in Chicago for a decade, Pose says his method of choice is pretty randomized, and he is sometimes as surprised as anyone about what he’ll pull out. “I’ve got all these old pieces of signage rolls from this guy – these are already a slice of history. My wife hates it; my whole garage is filled with his old pounce and all this stuff. And we started bringing them to walls – almost like rolling the dice and finding this kind of completely unforeseen elements to the wall.”

With all these plans and all these cans, the guys made sure that this transformation was a collaborative effort and they had some solid support help from other MSK members, the occasional volunteer, and the well known RIME, who Revok reflexively calls, “The best graffiti writer in the world.”

Revok and Pose. Houston/Bowery Wall. June 2013, NYC. (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

As each guy reflects on the team, the same topic of the importance of collaboration arises – a sort of progressive vision where crew members alternately work as assistants on each others projects. “We’re all really close and we play a significant role in one another’s lives and what we paint – it’s really natural for us to collaborate. I think that one of our strengths is how we feed off one another and how we motivate, influence and learn from one another. In the actual act of painting often times we work together with one kind of common goal,” explains Revok.

“We will all work together and it is all kind of a community effort to make things happen. It’s much more fun that way. I’ve been painting graffiti for 23 years now. After a certain point, just like going and painting your name all the time – it gets redundant, it gets boring. You know, you want to have fun, you want to experiment, you want to do different things. My friends and I over the last 10 years or so have really had a lot of fun experimenting and painting on a collaborative level, which is probably not that common for traditional graffiti guys. It’s a lot of fun.”

Revok and Pose. Houston/Bowery Wall. June 2013, NYC. (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

Pose agrees that collaboration was crucial in creating the new piece on the Houston Street Wall, and for him the goals were pretty clear from the beginning. “All I care about is reaching people,” he says earnestly at 4 a.m. on the fourth consecutive overnight session while sanitation trucks gather garbage from the curb. “I believe in the power of art, especially artwork that is on the street,” says the more philosophical of the duo.

“What I care about is the therapy, the unexplainable, and the powerful, and everybody in my crew, and everybody on this wall will say – ‘Graffiti saved my life’. It’s so cliché but it’s profound and it’s true. Because it is something that is really universal and it crosses so many socio-economic divides and racial divides.”

Pose pauses a beat, “Guess what, the rest of the world would be a lot better fucking place if people caught on that we are all connected.”

Revok and Pose. Houston/Bowery Wall. June 2013, NYC. (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

Revok and Pose. BSA is in the house. Houston/Bowery Wall. June 2013, NYC. (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

Revok and Pose. Houston/Bowery Wall. June 2013, NYC. (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

The talented crew. From left to right Pose with his assistant Mike, Revok with his assistant Travis. Props to Travis and Mike for unflinchingly supporting the artists. Houston/Bowery Wall. June 2013, NYC. (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

Revok and Pose. Houston/Bowery Wall. June 2013, NYC. (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

You can check out the Revok and Pose transformation for free all summer in NYC at the corner of Houston and Bowery.

Special thanks to Travis and Mike, Meghan Coleman, Martha Cooper, Jonathan Levine, Alix Frey, Maléna Seldin, Roger Gastman, and all the great New Yorkers we met on the streets last week.

Check out the REVOK and POSE exhibition “Uphill Both Ways” at the Jonathan Levine Gallery.

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This posting also appears on The Huffington Post

HDL “American Gothic” and “Walden” on Michigan Barns

July 2, 2013 Artists

The corporate art project known as hygienic dress league (HDL) has discovered the great rural iconic barn side as billboard and has started to mess with it. For years the providence of Big Tobacco, Big Oil, Jesus, and Dr. Pierce’s liver pills, the big red barn on the side of the road has been a place for country folk to receive large scale entreaties as they amble by. The Detroit-based artists who comprise HDL don’t as much twist this traditional mode of advertising as meld it into an artwork that aims to claim new mindshare in the dawning age of Big Data.

Hygienic Dress League. Port Austin, Michigan 2013. (photo © Hygienic Dress League)

In this newly completed installation among the waving grasses of rural Michigan, one of the most familiar images in 20th-century American art is repositioned as ironic Street Art blending pop culture, consumerism, and a hand painted insidious advertising slickness. Is it appropriate or contextual for the audience or germane to their daily existence? Is that really the point?

Ultimately, this barnside gothic may be sticking a pitchfork into the globalist high speed lust for bling, even as we witness the ever yawning chasm between winners and losers, the poisoning of air and water, and the rapid consolidation of all methods of food production. Neighbor, forget about barn raising, how about hair raising?

Hygienic Dress League. Port Austin, Michigan 2013. (photo © Hygienic Dress League)

Stripping the manipulative nature of advertising from the actual connection to selling a product, the cow country billboard here merely grabs your attention and you reflexively look for your instruction to purchase. But it doesn’t come. HDL doesn’t manufacture any product or service and there are no wars to sell at the moment.

Says Steve Coy, one half of the duo, “HDL is inspired by commercialism and corporatism, and its relationship to pop-culture, identity, and fashion,” while discussing this newest interpretation of Grant Wood’s American Gothic. “Inherently, questions of value, social status, consumption, corporate values, and post-industrialism often arise,” he reflects.

Hygienic Dress League. Port Austin, Michigan 2013. (photo © Hygienic Dress League)

A second barnside piece by HDL here is more poetic, more reverie, more leaves of grass. Or rather, “Walden” by the writer, transcendentalist, and philosopher Henry David Thoreau. The accompanying video made during the production of this piece quotes an excerpt from that book, creating a meditation for the installation.

Hygienic Dress League. Port Austin, Michigan 2013. (photo © Hygienic Dress League)

HDL would like to thank the Boyle family and Ziel family for lending their barns to this project.

DETROIT PORT AUSTIN

“A poetic short film featuring Detroit artists Hygienic Dress League as they install work in Port Austin, Michigan.”

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This was also published on The Huffington Post

Nard in Capetown, South Africa. A Concrete Flower.

July 1, 2013 Artists

New Video Illuminates an Articulate Student of Graffiti and Street Art

As our thoughts turn to Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, the revolutionary leader of South Africa and Nobel Peace Prize winner who turns 95 this month and who remains seriously ill under the watchful eye of everyone, we send good vibrations and wishes to him and his family.

On a hopeful note we are glad to bring you this story about a young Street Artist from Capetown who is creating a legacy of her own with aerosol cans. An articulate student of graffiti, Nard is now pursuing a colorfully geometric, often character based street art route on walls around her city and has also begun to travel internationally – recently even to Brooklyn, where she posed for BSA in this photo for Jaime Rojo.

Nard in Brooklyn late winter 2013 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“Graffiti here started in Apartheid when people were writing “Free Mandela” and political messages,” Nard relates in this brand new mini-documentary by Ry George. “They didn’t even know about graffiti as a pop element so they just used to paint those things until they got exposed to hip-hop,” she explains as she describes the stories she has learned about how early graffiti writers actually learned about style through mailing letters, sketches, and photos back and forth with other graffiti writers elsewhere in the world.

Now she is a part of “the biggest art movement in the world,” she says of the global Street Art scene. “That’s because of the freedom that comes with it.”

Screenshot from “Concrete Flower” ( © Nard and Ry George)

“I think when people speak about graffiti they usually mean how it started with letterforms and tags. When they speak about Street Art it is anything else besides letters. Like the traditional sense of graffiti isn’t exactly how it is because everybody is sticking to that rule of ‘a tag and a throwup and a piece and bombing and ‘getting up’ – the same thing that people did back in the 70s or 80s, and sometimes letters can be Street Art.” – Nard from “Concrete Flower”.

A neighbor steps up to get a close look at Nard’s work. Screenshot from “Concrete Flower” ( © Nard and Ry George)

Screenshot from “Concrete Flower” ( © Nard and Ry George)

‘Concrete Flower” was shot and edited by Ryan George @ry_george, featuring interviews with local graffiti artist FERS @fersyndicate and street art photographer Klaus Warschkow @klauswarschkow. Thanks also to Jamie Litt.

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Canemorto Stares Madly at London and Bristol

June 29, 2013 Artists

Canemorto have just galloped around Bristol and London for a few weeks and have left a number of these somberly bewildered guys in their wake. You remember in our last visit with the trio whose name means “dead dog” the stretched out horizontal is a particular favorite, and it it occurs to you that they may have something of a predilection for Picasso-esque portraits as they return to these sort of deranged dudes again and again.

(photo © Canemorto)

These gesticulating and grimacing sitters seem to have a lot on their mind, and who can blame them given the downward chugging economy, tiny apartments, longer working hours, government austerity and what not. Even so, these perplexed posers are not troublesome, rather than troubled. Either way, the energy of the lines and the clattering of the strokes as they bang into one another keeps these new pieces by Canemorto stealing the scene.

(photo © Canemorto)

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DROID 907 says “I Love Amanda Wong” and “Fags Love Me”

June 27, 2013 Artists

Looking at a Modern Graff Travelogue Zine from the Rail Rider

You can’t get more personal than a zine – a hardcopy collection of stories, photos, drawings, writings, observations, screeds, poetry, meanderings all in one. The conventions vary from saddle stitched or creatively folded to the extreme of origamic configuration. It could be all fluorescent paper or have screened oaktag covers or be handmade paper with chunks of stuff floating around inside. Usually printed and photocopied, it may be off your home computer or it may studiously avoid modern convenience and the dulling effects of automative production methods, perhaps with highly individualized pieces of art or detailing.

Detail of the cover from Droid (photo © Jaime Rojo)

We like the vehicle of the zine for its Luddite qualities, it’s air of hard won endeavor, hand manufactured and imperfect, and the graffiti zine as a category feels analog and authentic, even when it comes from a liar. If you want high-gloss and fancy concepts, go to the magazine store and marvel at the exotic/erotic spreads that have been art-directed into a sort of histrionic fun-house version of the world, but imagined by people with no roots and who can’t talk about anything. Pick up a graff zine and if you are lucky you’ll be challenged by it’s raw discontent and ravaging deconstruction of convention, possibly a bit of posing, and invariably enough rage to burn off a layer of conventional illusion. This is a generalization drunkly romantic, but we must aim high.

The New York graff writer Droid 907 has just released his new hand-held graff portfolio, Sex or Suicide: (you’re fucked either way) , a mainly black and white zine alternately jammed together (or carefully cobbled together, if you like) with shots from nice cameras, distorted phone shots, and others that were stored at the bottom of the sock drawer next to a tub of vaseline. Part of the 907 crew, this publisher and author gives you a romp through 20 pages that is earnest, disjointed and hard running, and you have an opportunity to balance on the handlebars while he drives, but he may take you into an oncoming truck.

Droid (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Something about the verbal and visual distortions, the roughshod collages, the on-the-run docushots of graff works made in hidden places underground and on tracks and roofs, the rambling and audacious text stung and burned with emotion and a vain attempt at ordering the chaos – is endearing. Despite his copping a feral stance and outlaw bravado, the zine writer/ graff writer gives S.O.S. the feeling of a good-humored graff travelogue with occasional special guest stars, but in reality he stays home a lot because he feels like nesting right now. It has skipping verbal shots and paeans to pop culture and drugs and sexual curiousity all slapped together with graff walls – splicing the prose and laundry lists and spilling them into a typewriter, his thoughts truncated and distrustful, jolting and jokering, ultimately swallowed by a swoon.

(Photo courtesy and © Droid)

BSA had the opportunity to speak with the circumspect Droid, who says he is currently on the road and in homes, lurking the East Coast from Maine to the deep south this summer. He gave us some insight into this new zine venture, but only enough to keep you wondering. We a pretty good idea who he is in love with, and he asserts that homosexuals find him very attractive.

Brooklyn Street Art: Is this like a blog, except on paper? And does that question make you wretch?
Droid 907: I don’t consider the two to have much in common at all, no. At times they are both composed of words and images, but the analog vs. digital nature of the two make for a very different form of archiving/narrative experience, for both the author and reader.

Droid (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Brooklyn Street Art: Can you talk about the process for creating text and how it is treated as commodity or object? One can see a comparison sometimes to automatic writing and the cut-up methods of William Burroughs.
Droid 907: Most of the text came directly from unedited journal entries I produced on a typewriter I found in Detroit last summer. The “lists” came from documenting each “one liner” on every sticker I wrote. Literally, I have hundreds of pages documenting thousands of stickers from the last year or so. I Xeroxed the lists to cut up and make a bunch of collages, composing the cover of the book as well as some of the interior images.

I don’t create work with the idea of selling it. I make work with the intention of making art and archiving my work/ experience(s). In the past I have had friends pull off rack jobs at their schools or print shops and created all my previous zines for free. On this endeavor, I had to sell some copies to make back the initial cost of production. That didn’t change my approach, but it potentially raised the production value. That said, I’d just as easily go back to doing it on the cheap and/or free.

Droid (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Brooklyn Street Art: How would you describe the intersection between zines and graffiti documentation traditionally?
Droid 907: I’ve referred to this work specifically as a “brag-mag” of sorts. In past zines I have collaborated or tried to archive other writer’s graff with the intention of telling a broader story. With “Sex or Suicide” I wanted to focus on a more intimate relationship I have with writing. I think zines usually focus on an individual’s idea without compromising to an editor’s or publishing house’s agenda. By hook or by crook, graffiti doesn’t compromise too much of anything.

An oddly photoshopped representation that appears in Sex or Suicide (image courtesy and © of Droid)

Brooklyn Street Art: As an artwork, Suicide or Sex is a compelling cavalcade of freewheeling handmade graphics, low-res photographic documentation, randomly styled powerful and mundane text intermingled, and deliberately anti-design design work. As a diary, it may be a cry for help. Discuss.
Droid 907: There are both romantic interests as well as some dark aspects in my life that were deliberately revealed in the work. I’d say most graff zines concentrate on transgressive behaviors and illicit activities that are admittedly entertaining, but rarely do they try and reveal more humanistic qualities. I wanted to challenge the traditional approach to graffiti story telling by revealing some of my more vulnerable traits.

Droid (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Brooklyn Street Art: Are you in love with Amanda Wong?
Droid 907: The answer to that question is on the cover of the work.

Brooklyn Street Art: Do fags love you?
Droid 907: The answer to that question is also on the cover of the work.

You see, told ya. (photo courtesy and © Droid)

To find out more about the zine Sex or Suicide: (you’re fucked either way), please click HERE. It is also available in Williamsburg Brooklyn at Desert Island Books, at Reed Space on the Lower East Side in Manhattan and Atomic Books in Baltimore.

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Looking at 5Pointz Now, Extolling a Graffiti Holy Place

June 26, 2013 Artists

While famed LA/Chicago/Detroit graffiti artists Revok and Pose are in town getting up on the Houston Street wall this week and many members of the MSK crew were in Bushwick doing tributes to Nekst over the weekend, New Yorkers have had the opportunity to talk with a lot of visiting friends who are in town in advance of the Revok/Pose dual show at Jonathan Levine this Saturday. As graffiti culture continues to assert its place in modern art history even while expanding and redefining itself on the street and in homes, galleries, and museums along a storied continuum, we are reminded again about the foundational role that graffiti has played in our aesthetic, helping to define urban culture and at least partially fueling the evolution of what we call a Street Art scene today.

MERES. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

As with most subcultures in a capitalist society, there are a fair amount of commercial influences swimming around and through the graffiti world too, the products and motifs employed to sell them somehow simplifying graffitis complex nature and diluting its emotional resonance for many. This is the water we’re all swimming in, however, and you could drown trying to fight it. Despite commercial pressures and their mutations, it is evident that the graffiti style is alive and well and building upon itself in new ways. For some, graffiti is analogous to the early punk scene for some others it could be inextricably tied to hip hop. But as it continues to morph into multiple subgenres it still seems perfectly clear that it is born from a scream, a helluva celebratory and defiant yell ; very individual, often powerful, it is tied to an agonizing drive to be heard and to be seen, to capture by hand something that is channeling by its own volition through your mind and from your gut. Probably. That incisive wisdom from BSA and $2.50 will get you a ride on the subway.

Zimer (photo © Jaime Rojo)

BSA will never be versed enough to speak authoritatively about graffiti culture, nor do we pretend to – it is so vast and storied and sort of outside our wheelhouse. But seeing all this graff action this week brings our minds to a place like 5Pointz in Long Island City, Queens. Begun as Phun Factory and eventually changing its name, this 200,000 sf factory building cannot be overestimated in its impact visually over two decades as well as for the community service it has provided for many artists, young and older, to practice, experiment, and even hit a level of mastery of their craft. We won’t call it a Mecca, as we’ve been schooled that some of our brothers and sisters think that’s disrespectful – So we’ll just call it a Holy Place for many here and around the world. An ever evolving canvas viewable from the street and passing trains, many a tourist has made the pilgrimage to check it out; a touchstone for the true New York, and perhaps one that is disappearing.

Sen2 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

As the fevered pitch of cries from fans and community for the preservation of 5 Pointz runs up against the dual realities of a crumbling infrastructure and an increasingly desirable location for real estate development, we all reluctantly cede that the writing is probably on the wall (pardon the pun). Absent a deep-pocketed philanthropist who wants to preserve it (Jay-Z?) or a groundswell of citizenry demanding public seizing of private property (torches and pitchforks anyone?), you have to know that this can’t last forever despite what many see as its importance and relevance to this culture, history, and this time. But really, just take a look around this spot. If you are here now, or are planning to come soon, you know that 5Pointz has the power of a beacon for many; a living thriving vessel for the creative spirit to be expressed in myriad ways, many personal. All hail 5Pointz and those who have made it successful all these years.

Here is a small collection of more recent images of 5Pointz.

Shiro (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Mr. Blob (photo © Jaime Rojo)

See TF (photo © Jaime Rojo)

ZMOGK . Shiro on top. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Never (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Toofly (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Bishop203 . Bisco203 . Leais203 Detail (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The Yok . Sheryo (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Onur . Semor . Wes21 . KKade (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Onur . Semor . Wes21 . KKade Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Pablo Mustafa (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Monsieur Plume . Raid Crew (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Spidertag (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Kram (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Spud (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Help (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Grafik (photo © Jaime Rojo)

el Seed . Jaye (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Color at 5Pointz (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Much respect to Meres and to all the writers on this epic wall and whole compound. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Welling Court 2013 Is a Blast, Was the Last

June 25, 2013 Artists

This was the last edition of Welling Court.

Or it will be if you don’t help.

Garrison and Alison Buxton have spent countless hours, elbow grease and their own money to make this huge non-commercial Welling Court Mural Project happen 4 years in a row – giving free walls to a few hundred artist during that time.

Cost to us: Zilch, Zero, Nada

Cultural workers extraordinaire with a Rolodex list as long as the banquet table at an Italian wedding, these two have given more Street Artists artists more free opportunities than a block full of GO-GO bars. Wait, that didn’t sound right. But you get our point.

If not, here’s the point: Go pledge 10 bucks or a hundred bucks to their fundraiser for all the fun and true community spirit they have brought people for the last four years.

And this means all the artists who have been helped too. Should we start naming names?

After you pledge some money to their Indiegogo come back here and enjoy brand new images of the 4th Annual Welling Court installation. It may be the last time. And then all we will have left are logo-smothered festivals sponsored by cool “urban” lifestyle brands, real estate agents, energy drinks, and/or the Chamber of Commerce and The Daughters of the Revolution. Jeez that’ll be fun, won’t it?

Welling Court Mural Project

El Kamino (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Skewville (photo © Jaime Rojo)

John Fekner . Don Leicht. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Welling Court Mural Project

John Fekner. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

ND’A . Mataruda (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Please Donate to the Welling Court Mural Project

Foxx Face (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Hellbent (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Toofly (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Please Donate to the Welling Court Mural Project

Vexta at work. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Vexta (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The Cupcake Guy (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Please Donate to the Welling Court Mural Project

Icy & Sot at work. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Icy & Sot. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Please TELL YOUR FRIENDS by:

Tweeting this:

Please Support #WellingCourtMuralProject on IndieGoGo http://bit.ly/1aNJXrH @AdHocArt

Pasting this on your FaceBook Wall:

Please Support #WellingCourtMuralProject on IndieGoGo http://bit.ly/1aNJXrH @AdHocArt

Sinned (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Please Donate to the Welling Court Mural Project

Ryan Seslow (photo © Jaime Rojo)

R. Robots (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Please Donate to the Welling Court Mural Project

Mike Fitzimmons at work. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Mike Fitzimmons (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Mr. Kiji (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Please Donate to the Welling Court Mural Project

Queen Andrea (photo © Jaime Rojo)

LMNOP (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Welling Court Mural Project

Chris . Veng . RWK (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Rusell King . Matt Siren (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Please Donate to the Welling Court Mural Project

Cern (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Cosbe (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Please Donate to the Welling Court Mural Project

Magda Love (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Roycer says, “You giving 10 bucks?” Abe Lincoln Jr. says, “WERD!” Royce Bannon . Abe Lincoln Jr. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

JC (photo © Jaime Rojo)

For other images please see Images of the Week 6/06/13.

Please Donate to the Welling Court Mural Project

Previous 3 years on BSA:

Welling Court: A New York Mural Block Party Like No Other

Posted on June 27, 2012

Buxtons Bring “Welling Court 2″ to Queens, Artists and Scooters in Tow

Posted on June 28, 2011

Welling Up a Little? That’s the Street Art “Community” Feeling

Posted on May 24, 2010

Please TELL YOUR FRIENDS by:

Tweeting this:

Please Support #WellingCourtMuralProject on IndieGoGo http://bit.ly/1aNJXrH @AdHocArt

Pasting this on your FaceBook Wall:

Please Support #WellingCourtMuralProject on IndieGoGo http://bit.ly/1aNJXrH @AdHocArt

Thank you very much.

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Joe Iurato Minimizes the Figures, Maximizes the Adventures

June 24, 2013 Artists

New Smaller Works Open Opportunities for Installation

Street Artist Joe Iurato is a creator, thinker, feeler, explorer. He is inspired and challenged by the world he lives in and with his work he often aims to inspire others with his observations and insights. For the last few years his stencil work has touched on themes relating to personal economics, a search for spirituality, and looking at life through the eyes of his little sons and their sense of discovery, enthusiasm and wonder. Existential questions are Joe’s normal bailiwick, and he uses his figures to review the evidence gathered, sharing his conundrums openly with a public he won’t meet.

If one’s art practice is autobiographical, Joe’s is a series of life lessons. Recently the skater / climber / photographer / sommelier / philosopher began to take the large figures he once painted on walls and vastly reduced their size to make them mobile. The resulting display-like sculptures have led to many experiments including taking them with him into the woods, the park, atop tree stumps, in creeks, jumping fire hydrants, perched on roof ledges and fences. In the same way his boys imagine themselves inside the trucks and other toys they play with, Joe’s action figures allow him to go on adventures with scale, his imagination, and memories along his path to adulthood. For those lucky to stumble on one, the adventure can be shared.

We asked Joe if he could talk to BSA readers about his new experiments on the street and how he sees the experience. We thank him for sharing so openly and thoroughly.

The pieces I’ve been making are small, spray painted wood cutouts. No bigger than 15” in size. The subjects vary, but they’re all very personal – they sort of tell the story of my life in stages. From break dancing to skateboarding to rock climbing to becoming a father, all of these things have helped define my character. For me, it’s just about revisiting those moments in a way that’s familiar. I’ve always appreciated seeing architecture and nature in a different light. As a skater, the tar banks behind a local supermarket, a flight of stairs, a parking block, a drainage ditch, a handrail, a wall – they all present possibilities for interaction and fun in ways they weren’t intended to be used. Skaters see things differently, I think.

With a little creativity, the world becomes a playground. Same thing when I got into climbing. A rock isn’t placed there with a set of holds and a sign that says “climb me”. But to someone who loves to climb, movement shows itself in the face of that rock. You see a line – a way to get from down here to up there – and you begin to sequence the movements in your head. Suddenly it seems as though the rock was placed there for you. It’s an amazing feeling to unlock a sequence and climb. The mindset has also trickled down to the streets for some climbers, where buildings and other structures take place of rocks. Urban climbing.

I was the editor of a magazine that placed emphasis on this discipline. So I approach these tiny street pieces with the same pair of glasses as I did skating and as I do climbing. I try to see the possibilities for a larger picture within a smaller space: a puddle can become a lake, a small crack in a cement wall can become a magnificent climb, a curb or window ledge can fall away into a desperate void, a planter box can become a place for a child to play, and a shadow might be a tangible space for a few seconds a day. There’s no limit to the possibilities and I find myself more and more looking at the environment for ways to interact. The small pieces rely heavily on their surroundings to tell the story, and so I take a picture with my phone or camera from the vantage point I think works best.

I guess what I hear most is that the pieces won’t last. Unlike a painting on a wall, or even wheat-pastes and stickers, these just don’t have much longevity. Secured either by a dab of glue, maybe even a piece of tape, and if there’s writing involved, oftentimes it’s done with chalk – they might last a few hours, a few days, and in the rare exception I place them out of reach, maybe a few weeks. They’re taken by time or a passerby, without so much as leaving a mark. And then it’s gone. I’m not under any false impressions that these could be landmark pieces or anything.

It doesn’t bother me that they’re fleeting. I got to do what I wanted to do, carried out my vision for the space, said what I wanted to say, and for the few that might have stumbled upon it during its life, maybe they had an experience they won’t forget. One of the elements that I love about doing these smaller pieces is the surprise factor. You might see it. You might not. If you do, though, it’s not something that grabbed you from across the street like a massive 40’ mural would. Chances are you caught it from the corner of your eye just a few feet away, and the connection made is intimate.

I’ve taken a little step back from doing large-scale pieces for time being. I have many reasons, but maybe mostly because this is where my heart’s at right now, and how I feel like expressing myself. I don’t feel like I should do massive sanctioned walls just to keep my name out there or because the opportunity’s presents itself. In a way, that’d be selfish. I always feel like I need to have a damn good reason, something to say, if I’m going to create a dialog with the street and the community. They deserve the honesty. And if I can’t give it to them on that scale, I’ll pass.

~ Joe Iurato

Images of The Week: 06.23.13

June 23, 2013 Artists

Here’s our weekly interview of the street, this week featuring Creepy, Chris RWK, David Smith, Enzo & Nio, How & Nosm, JR, Pennygaff, Shai Dahan, This is Awkward, Veng RWK, and Werds.

Pennygaff did this tribute as gravestone on the last remaining chunk of Monster Island, a very lively and engaging artists performance space/ gallery / hangout in Williamsburg, Brooklyn – now demolished to make way for glass and steel highrises. Median rental cost of a 1 bedroom apartment in Williamsburg is $3,150, compared to about $1,500 10 years ago. That’s progress. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Specter in Vladivostok, Nahodka and Tokyo

June 22, 2013 Artists

Street Artist and fine artist Specter hails from Brooklyn but has been traveling a lot and has been creating some interesting work in Russia and Tokyo, two places not typically mentioned during Western discussions of the street art scene – but we’d be remiss to miss.

“I was invited to Russia from my friend Pasha Shugurov who runs the artist collective 33plus1,” he says as he discusses the new piece called “Chromatin Structure”.

For the artists in our audience who were doodling in the margins of their science textbook during class, the chromatins are the combination of DNA and proteins that make up the contents of the nucleus of a cell. The work is installed in Sister City Park. Also in the town of Nahodka, a port city in Primorsky Krai, he painted a geodesic dome with art students from the university there.

While in Tokyo Specter returned to some of the faux realism that we have become familiar with in his work in the last few years, recreating a façade that blends seamlessly, yet attracts your attention. The “Bodega Window” here is in the Harajuku Fashion District known for the chic shops and slick shoppers.

Specter’s project in Vladivostok was made possible from a grant from the US Consulate in Vladivostok and curator Kendal Henry.

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BSA Film Friday 06.21.13

June 21, 2013 Artists

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

Now screening: Sofles is Infinite, How & Nosm do a Times Square Gig, and DMJC Crew en Pura Calle in Lima Peru.

BSA Special Feature:
SOFLES – Infinite

Shooter/Editor Selina Miles takes the time-lapse genre up a level in this bubonic bass and drums slammed trip through an abandoned warehouse. Experimenting with camera perspectives and simple but effective editing tricks, the urban exploring graff talent Sofles takes on a few ninja qualities thanks to this deft presentation. Of course the style of shooting/editing wouldn’t matter if he wasn’t killing it on almost every wall with various styles and degrees of difficulty until he splits in two and competes with himself! And all this leads us to, of course, the grand crescendo – a darkly sinister piece de resistance. If your boy can’t tell you he is blown away by this little show, he’s just tryin’ to mask jealousy. Give it up.

How & Nosm in Times Square

Brooklyn’s H&N just did this gig for a clothing brand in Times Square and here’s the promo.

DMJC Crew en Pura Calle in Lima, Peru

Good to see Entes y Pesimo among this crew at the Pura Calle this month.

And for a little more context, here’s an omnibus collection promoting the Pura Calle festival which happened at the beginning of June in Lima and brought about 150,000 people to a 3-day festival of break-dancers, rappers, graffiti artists, BMXers, and skaters.

And couldn’t resist this home made recording of breakers on the street just doing it on their own in a somewhat surrealistic way. Straight up!

What’s Up in San Francisco. New From Aryz, Polka, Slow, Esk, and Gossel

June 20, 2013 Artists

Today we check in with some recent work in San Francisco, including new stuff from Aryz, David Polka, Ben Slow, Esk, and Greg Gossel.

We start off with the large mural of an apple cheeked farm girl by Aryz that went up over the course of a week in a tough part of the Tenderloin over a chain chicken shack. “But Aryz’s street art.. has already transformed the atmosphere of this high-traffic corner, and Aryz (pronounced “Areez”) is grateful, knowing that his gargantuan five-story farm girl — and her gargantuan bushel of apples — will look over the intersection for the foreseeable future.” Read more of Jonathan Curiel‘s great account in the San Francisco Weekly.

The stencilled collages are by Greg Gossel, who just finished a show with White Walls, and they are followed by images of a new mural by David Polka, Ben Slow, and Esk.

Special thanks to photographer and contributor Brock Brake for sharing these images with BSA readers.

Here is a time lapse video of Aryz completing his mural in the Tenderloin District of San Francisco. The mural was jointly organized by Chris Shaher of WallspaceSF, Upper Playground and Fifty24SF Gallery. Our thanks to the people at Smash House Collective who published the following video because with it BSA readers can have an idea how much time and talent it takes to get such a piece up.

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