For 11 days we’re presenting 11 artists and BSA readers and their wishes for the new year, 2011, in no particular order. Together, they are a tiny snapshot of the people who are creators and fans of street art. Individually, each has added their expression of the creative spirit to the year now ending.
Today’s wish comes from BSA reader Rusty Rehl, who is a painter and a student in Idaho. He was one of the five winners of the BSA Holiday Giveaway, and Rusty sent us this wish;
I wish that BSA would put me up on their site because I once flew 2,500 miles to see a C215 piece. Also, if I were some how able to pay for my college tuition, that would be cool too.
For 11 days we’re presenting 11 artists and BSA readers and their wishes for the new year, 2011, in no particular order. Together, they are a tiny snapshot of the people who are creators and fans of street art. Individually, each has added their expression of the creative spirit to the year now ending.
Today’s wish comes from Kimberly Brooks, a California-based artist and recent founder/editor of the Huffington Post Arts Page;
I wish for less precision and more spontaneity; less virtuality and more meals with people I care about; less talking heads and more artists exposing their work; less email and more kissing.
For 11 days we’re presenting 11 artists and BSA readers and their wishes for the new year, 2011, in no particular order. Together, they are a tiny snapshot of the people who are creators and fans of street art. Individually, each has added their expression of the creative spirit to the year now ending.
Today’s wish comes from BSA reader and photographer Vasco Mucci from Pennsylvania, who shares with us one of his images along with a wish;
For 11 days we’re presenting 11 artists and BSA readers and their wishes for the new year, 2011, in no particular order. Together, they are a tiny snapshot of the people who are creators and fans of street art. Individually, each has added their expression of the creative spirit to the year now ending.
Today’s wish comes from Los Angeles based photographer, videographer and BSA contributor Todd Mazer, who sends this image of Saber, the artist;
I wish for us to all remember, no matter how unbearable the load we find upon our shoulders, weightlessness can always be sparked by a moment of inspiration.
For 11 days we’re presenting 11 artists and BSA readers and their wishes for the new year, 2011, in no particular order. Together, they are a tiny snapshot of the people who are creators and fans of street art. Individually, each has added their expression of the creative spirit to the year now ending.
Today’s wish comes from BSA reader and Brooklyn based street artist Gilf;
If I had one wish for 2011 it would be this:
That the people of the world look not through the keyhole of religion, but rather the universal lens of humanity to understand that governments and religions do not define us nor should they cloud our minds with hostility for those who are different.
For 11 days we’re presenting 11 artists and BSA readers and their wishes for the new year, 2011, in no particular order. Together, they are a tiny snapshot of the people who are creators and fans of street art. Individually, each has added their expression of the creative spirit to the year now ending.
Today’s wish comes from Canadian stencil artist and Street Artist Indigo, who includes a photograph she took in Solingen, Germany;
My wish is that we can all find ways to set (and reach) new milestones, discover the lessons to be learned in every challenge and appreciate the small moments that often go overlooked.
For 11 days we’re presenting 11 artists and BSA readers and their wishes for the new year, 2011, in no particular order. Together, they are a tiny snapshot of the people who are creators and fans of street art. Individually, each has added their expression of the creative spirit to the year now ending.
Today’s wish comes from London based, Irish Street Artist and fine artist Conor Harrington.
Conor frames his wish as advice that he would like to give his younger brother:
We’re very grateful for a wildly prolific year of Street Art as it continued to explode all over New York (and a lot of other places too). For one full year we’ve been granted the gift of seeing art on the streets and countless moments of inspiration. Whether you are rich or poor in your pocket, the creative spirit on the street in New York makes you rich in your heart and mind.
To the New York City artists that make this city a lot more alive every day we say thank you.
To the artists from all over world that passed through we say thank you.
To our colleagues and peers for their support and enthusiasm we say thank you.
To the gallery owners and curators for providing the artists a place to show their stuff and for providing all of us a safe place to gather, talk, share art, laugh, enjoy great music and free booze we say thank you.
To our project collaborators for sharing your talents and insights and opinions and for keeping the flame alive we say thank you.
And finally to our friends, readers and fans; Our hearts go out to you for lighting the way and for cheering us on. Thank you.
Each Sunday we featured Images of the Week, and we painfully narrowed that field to about 100 pieces in this quick video. It’s not an encyclopedia, it’s collage of our own. We remember the moment of discovery, the mood, the light and the day when we photographed them. For us it’s inspiration in this whacked out city that is always on the move.
The following artists are featured in the video and are listed here in alphabetical order:
Aakash Nihalani,Bansky, Barry McGee, Bask ,Bast, Beau, MBW, Bishop ,Boxi, Cake, The Dude Company, Chris RWK, Chris Stain, Dain, Dan Witz ,Dolk ,El Mac, El Sol 25, Elbow Toe, Faile, Feral, Overunder, Gaia, General Howe, Hellbent, Hush, Imminent Disaster, Jeff Aerosol, Jeff Soto, JMR ,Judith Supine ,K-Guy ,Labrona, Lister, Lucy McLauchlan, Ludo, Armsrock, MCity, Miso, Momo, Nick Walker, Nina Pandolfo, NohjColey, Nosm, Ariz, How, Tats Cru, Os Gemeos, Futura, Pisa 73, Poster Boy, QRST, Remi Rough, Stormie Mills, Retna, Roa, Ron English, Sever, She 155, Shepard Fairey ,Specter, Sten & Lex, Samson, Surge I, Sweet Toof, Swoon, Tes One, Tip Toe, Tristan Eaton, Trusto Corp, Typo, Various and Gould, Veng RWK, ECB, White Cocoa, Wing, WK Interact, Yote.
Mint & Serf (Mirf), the New York City based Street Art Collective give a nod to the era of mega clubs as they proudly unveil an ambitious new nightlife project with the opening of District 36.
Since this summer the duo have been creating three site-specific permanent art installations inside the newly opened nightclub in the garment district.
No strangers to indoor walls Mirf collaborated recently on the interiors of rooms in the Ace Hotel, giving visitors very individual experiences according to their location. When Mirf heard of a new club being planned in a former garment warehouse in Manhattan, memories of their own wild fun times as teenagers in Gotham’s mega-clubs came rushing back. The artists jumped on the offer to help in the planning of the club as it was being built and what has resulted from Mirf’s concepting is a visual experience evocative of today’s richness and yesterday’s rawness.
For the epic staircase of District 36 Mirf’s inspiration was the iconic New York big clubs that drew crowds of students and creatives and freaks in the mid 1980s and 90s, a time when the city seemed to have a more robustly participatory artistic nightlife – and a feeling that they would like to bring back. Says Mint, “We both grew up in the nightlife in the 90s so when we met the owners they told us that we should reference the vibe of The Tunnel and Limelight.”
“Those days it wasn’t about bottle service – It used to be more about dancing and losing yourself for about three to four hours. So we wanted to create a piece that was site specific to this place and that referenced the NYC nightlife of clubs like Area, Danceteria, Palladium, The Tunnel and Twilo,” says Mint.
The two poured over press clippings for research and Lucien Samaha a friend, gave the guys photos from his days as a DJ in The Tunnel and Limelight and Osvaldo Chance Jimenez a friend as well, gave them photos from today’s nightlife. The resulting hallway staircase is a collage of vintage photographs and graffiti that merges the city’s nightlife over a few decades into one.
“The Tunnel was such a great inspiration to me. I started going there when I was 16 or 17 and you just would walk in, paid your $20 and lose yourself. It was fun. It was entertaining. The clubs now days are very bland. Getting in and enjoying is not just for rich people,” says Mint.
Brooklyn Street Art:Tell me about this middle wall. What was the process and inspiration?
Mint: Since the early 2000’s we started with the idea of mixing genres. We both have backgrounds in graphic design and we always wanted to combine the sensibility of graffiti and graphic design and mash it up. We wanted to create something very surreal and visually stimulating where people can look at it and say, “this is a beautiful thing” regardless of whether or not they know what it is. To me the nightlife then (1990s) was about seeing so many interesting things including the decorations like the Kenny Scharf room (The Lava Lounge) at The Tunnel. That room was also the inspiration for this wall.
Brooklyn Street Art:Did you get inspiration from the ocean/underwater landscape also?
Mint: This wall is not so much about aquatics as it is about plants. We went on trips and took photographs of individual plants and began processing them in Photoshop, creating these original compositions. I really didn’t think about the design being too aquatic until we put it on the wall and took a picture and we went “Wow it looks almost like a fish tank!”
Brooklyn Street Art:Yeah in certain spots it looks like you are underwater and the sunlight is coming through.
Mint: It is a surreal landscape with elements of graffiti. I draw a lot inspiration from nature. I like the translucency of light.
Brooklyn Street Art:And the Lounge; Is this a place for people to drink and have conversation?
Mint: The sound system in this place is amazing and it is loud so if you are spending three or four hours in this place you might want to get away from the sound, sit down and maybe have a conversation. That’s why is set up as a lounge.
Brooklyn Street Art: Can you talk about the images on this wall? It seems like some of these images were ever-present in the city this summer.
Mint: The original concept for the image was Mirf, which is Mint and Serf put together. When we used to write on roofs and there wasn’t enough room for both our names we would combine our names into Mirf. So back in April I designed the original Mirf poster and put a bunch of them in Russia. It was one of the first times I’ve seen graffiti being put up on the street but with wheat paste.
Back from their trip Mirf decided that they were going to grab their posters and go through the city over everything. Says Mint: “It wasn’t about beef it was creative because the conversation with Street Art a lot of times is how ephemeral it is, but the funniest thing is, once someone goes over someone it’s like ‘Oh my God I can’t believe someone went over a Swoon piece.’ But it is like if you are putting stuff on the street you have to realize that it is either going to be buffed or someone is going to go over it and you just can’t have these feelings about it.”
“If you say it’s ephemeral then you say is ephemeral that’s it. So we wanted to make that point present and we started going over everything to make sure people don’t take that seriously,” says Mint unapologetically.
Taking that message more formally into the gallery, Mirf’s show at Lyons Wier in Manhattan this summer shook some street art fans when they saw framed pieces by artists like Shepard Fairey and Gaia gratuitously tagged over by Mirf. “Collabo”, as Street Art term, instantly became muddied.
For his part, Mirf found the whole experience with their peers to be positive, despite some of the negative responses. “The response was great. This conversation needs to happen more often. When people think, “Oh Mirf went over us”, it is not going over you at all. We are kind of opening up people’s minds. So that’s what the whole idea behind what this Mirf thing is”
At the gallery show they also created fresh black and white posters using some of their graffiti friend’s tags and stylized them in the Mirf style – now reprised for the back wall of the new lounge.
Mirf (photo @ Jaime Rojo)
“When we saw this round wall we knew the posters would be perfect. We wanted to pay an homage to all our friends we did graffiti with over the years. So these are a series that will probably be an ongoing project and we’ll add more people to it”
To put you in the right spirit for your holiday shopping and spray painting, BSA reader Jodi has alerted us to this charming holiday classic, remade by two of today’s singing sensations! Grab your cardigan and pipe!
Luca Barcellona really impresses with his command and his almost choreographic hand style at calligraphy. Sit back and enjoy on this fun friday.
New SWOON “Walki” Print
As she readies to return to Haiti (interview next week), Swoon is offering a new print to support The Konbit Shelter Project.
“The Walki print is an immediately touching portrait by Swoon of a boy named Walki who lives in the village of Bigones and spent time with the Konbit Shelter team at the community center building site this last summer. The print is made of a three-layer screenprint on handmade Indian jute paper measuring 13″ x 21″ and is limited at an edition of 300 – all proceeds from the sale will go towards support of the Konbit Shelter Project.
The Konbit Shelter Project was created with the idea that a group of artists, engineers, architects and builders could pool their individual knowledge, resources and time to make a lasting difference in post-earthquake Haiti”
BSA Technology and Art UPDATE: This weekend the newTronmovie comes out to thrill and chill techno geeks everywhere. Apparently they took 28 years off of Jeff Bridges with new developments in CGI. I’ve pre-ordered the personal CGI device coming out this spring by Apple – the iDigress personal age reducer should enable me to jump fences and run through empty lots with more agility. Speaking of Hi-Tech wizardry, take a look at the new LoopTaggr, which really cuts down on your stenciling time.
Street art welcomes all manner of materials and methods, typically deployed without permission and without apology. This hand-formed wire piece …Read More »
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
