Nick Walker braved the punishing heat today, and conquered it, to work on the streets of Brooklyn for the second day in a row. BSA was with him all day. Here is the final product called “Amerikarma”. Not much of a talker, Nick prefers to let you determine the meaning of the piece. BSA will bring you tomorrow a documentation of the process Nick used to create this loaded stencil.
Nick Walker "Amerikarma"
Nick Walker. Detail. (Photo © Jaime Rojo)
Nick Walker. (Photo © Jaime Rojo)
British stencil artist Nick Walker has brought a thick wooden crate of fresh new stencils with him, and after pacing and eyeing the tubular entrance to an old Brooklyn horse stable, he decides on just the right stencil to be placed near the street entrance to welcome travelers– a pudgy Mariachi player with a Mona Lisa face.
In New York for one week, the world class street artist provokes and beguiles right from the start. No surprise from a man who has just caused a bit of a stir in Paris streets with his Le Curancan, a high-kicking line-dancing gaggle of Moulin Rouge girls showing their panties and hiding their faces behind burkas.
In his trademark style, the new stencil is photographic, raw, and funny. People poking their heads in to peruse the bootlegged mashup crack a smile, some shaking their heads slowly. A quiet unassuming Mariachi has a sudden impact.
Nick’s carefully spraying the layers of the Mariachi Mona Lisa with his trusty mate Stuart, who, in between maniacally checking messages on his two iPhones (one for each continent), holds the layers steady and proffers suggestions or jokes. Just a couple of blokes wisecracking and eyeballing the sidewalk scene as the hot dirty breeze rolls down Metropolitan Avenue, coating every creature in a thick sweaty glaze.
Mariachi Mona Lisa completed, pictures taken, we slog through the burning streets 4 blocks away to the entrance of a metal fabrication warehouse. For this piece to be framed by two doors, Nick selects the newly minted snake handler.
With his smooth undetectable merging of sources, the image combines elements from a snake handler photo, a posing assistant in a lab coat, and the artist himself wearing a towel over his face and a familiar looking hat. Familiarity of elements and attention to detail also enable a moment of escapism as you wonder who this figure is and what they’re doing. Is it pictoral? Metaphorical?
As each stencil layer is unpacked and unfolded onto the sidewalk, an amused audience of metal workers, motor cycle enthusiasts, and photocopier salespeople stop to discuss and ask questions. Once again, the street feels alive with creativity and activity, folding chairs are offered, and bottles of water.
Incredibly the story does not end there, as only blocks later a snake handler appears on the sidewalk before us and drapes Nick with the reptile so he can finally try his hand. This is his first time actually handling a snake. He said the spotted serpent was smoother than he thought, and strong, and he felt at one moment like it was tightening around his throat.
Tomorrow Nick will hit New York streets again. The clock is ticking after all, and there are more fresh unseen stencils to be unveiled. We’ll be there to catch his sly grin and wonder what he’ll pull out next.
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French Street Artist Monsieur Invader, a favorite of New Yorkers and Jonathan LeVine Gallery, has created a 21 stop Invader Tour in the streets of San Diego for visitors to the new show “Viva la Revolucion: A Dialogue with the Urban Landscape” opening at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCASD).
The show features 21 artists from 8 countries including Akay (Sweden), Banksy (U.K.), Blu (Italy), Mark Bradford (U.S.), William Cordova (U.S.), Date Farmers (U.S.), Stephan Doitschinoff [CALMA] (Brazil), Dr. Lakra (Mexico), Dzine (U.S.), David Ellis (U.S.), FAILE (U.S.), Shepard Fairey (U.S.), Invader (France), JR (France), Barry McGee (U.S.), Ryan McGinness (U.S.), Moris (Mexico), Os Gemeos (Brazil), Swoon (U.S.), and Vhils (Portugal).
A Tight and Irreverent Collage Show Curated by Carlo McCormick
In this piece for “Shred”, Street Artist Judith Supine clearly enunciates the radical psycho-sexual non-sequiturs that make Supine’s collage a powerful voice in New York Street Art at the moment. In addition to the signature acid bright template are the cigarette, the nudity, and the reference to childhood that occur often in pieces by the artist. The paper collage is scattered with raised green metallic pieces that look like broken fingernails forming smooth lumps under the resin. The artist confirmed in fact that the “finger nails” are glass jewel beetles. Judith Supine “Patrice ” 2010 (Photo © Jaime Rojo)
To curate any show well requires a finely balanced hand that can go unappreciated. If the gentle and deliberate directing of artists and their contributions is not thoughtful and focused, a show may feel off-kilter, unkempt, even ruinous. Although he denies it with humility in equal proportion to his expertise, curator Carlo McCormick displays his adept hand at collage (or assemblage) in “Shred”, the new collage show he curates for the Perry Rubenstein Gallery in New York’s Chelsea district.
In talking about the genesis of “Shred”, McCormick describes a downtown East Village scene and the concurrent Graffiti scene of the 70s and 80s that imploded messily at the end of a hyper-excited zenith. An author, editor, and speaker who is considered expert on the topic of NYC’s downtown scene at the time, McCormick knows well what the signs of our fickle obsessions can look like, “And yes everyone gets kind of famous for a bit and a bunch of money flows through it and it is over”.
Drawing a few connections, he explained he’d like to avoid the “the kind of phenomenology of that moment” that Street Art could find itself precariously hanging on the edge of. So it is with purpose that he extends the span of this collection to broaden the dialogue about the practice of collage.
“The main thing I thought was about street art – involving the wheat pasting and it’s stenciling and it’s silk screening – is that it has inherently a lot of collage effects”. In addition to today’s adventurous street artists who are represented here by Faile, Swoon, Elbow Toe, Shepard Fairey, and Judith Supine, McCormick also includes some of their predecessors and peers, like Jess, Erik Foss, and Gee Vaucher. For final balance, he called upon three film makers who are “really ripping shit apart”.
Recognizing that “collage was not exactly invented yesterday”, McCormick stipulates that he was crafting his own message by selecting these artists. The great common denominator? “Well obviously surrealism had a great part in it. I’m looking for the more outré elements of it. I’d say it’s an attitude; there is a certain irreverence in it, and caring about the materials working with it”. Talking with a few of the artists and guests Thursday night at the opening, those elements are present in this show and were very well received.
An elongated mutant pop pretty boy by Mark Flood, “Twilight Feelings” 2010 (Photo © Jaime Rojo)
Using photographs taken of himself by his lover Robert Mapplethorpe, Jack Walls creates optical vibrations in these recent collage pieces that span and unite both the Downtown and the Street Art explosions. (Three of Installation of Five). 2008 Photo © Jaime Rojo )
Street Art Duo Faile reprise imagery from one of their recent street art stencils in this large acrylic and silkscreened piece that welcomes guests at “Shred”. “Never Enough” 2010. Detail (Photo © Jaime Rojo)
An early example of collage at “Shred”. Jess “Untitled” (Konrad Lorenz) 1955. Detail. (Photo © Jaime Rojo)
In attendance at the opening was the Street Artist known as Elbow Toe, who created one of the more mystifying images, both in it’s content and it’s thousands of hand-cut pieces that are applied in such a painterly fashion that standing a few feet away from the piece can lead a viewer to believe it was done with oil and brush.Speaking about a new series of collages based on psychological and possibly autobiographical themes that he’s exploring, Elbow Toe said, “It was the first one I’ve done….all the collage stuff is heading in a more narrative direction. And this is the first of many that are all getting much more weird, I guess.”
A grouping of collages by Leo Fitzpatrick. Untitled. 2010 (Photo © Jaime Rojo)
A seriously dog-eared commercial landscape (signed MORAN) from a 1966 suburban living room, long since faded and liberated from its frame and stained by water drops, artist Erik Foss turns it into a surreal other planetary world with clusters of owls, floating moons, and robed faceless wizards and witches dressed by the House of Stevie Nicks. Erik Foss “Look Out” 2010 Detail. (Photo © Jaime Rojo)
BSA….BSA….BSA….BSA….BSA….BSA….BSA….BSA….BSA….BSA….BSA….BSA….BSA….BSA….BSA….BSA….BSA….BSA….
Perry Rubenstein Gallery
527 West 23rd Street
New York, NY 10001
NYC in summer is always about abundance. Lots of cheap or free fun available for everybody. For music lovers there is the multitude of free concerts. For theater there is free Shakespeare in the Park and free outdoor movies in many parks. Foodies have the many street fairs with a cornucopia of deliciously exotic food from everywhere in the world. The sporting sort can play free in the many parks – baseball, volleyball, soccer, Frisbee, tag, hide and seek. This weekend brings parades and fireworks and block parties and hotdog eating contests…
For those that love all sorts of arts and street art in particular the city’s streets are also abundant and are talking loudly and singing beautifully, like the mockingbirds at night in the Brooklyn trees. Recently Swoon and Imminent Disaster are giving us tons of eye candy and food for thought. Over Under is trying his free hand at painting and presenting his nudes, as is Celso. And Chelsea just got a new Jeff Soto. Well known, well weathered, or well underappreciated, artists continue to call the streets of New York their gallery.
You’ve been seeing a new direction for Brooklyn Street Artist JMR recently. Instead of huge multi-colored abstracts that sometimes contain a portrait within, we have seen a number of smaller black and white wheat-paste portraits. We’d heard that JMR was a doing a new series about white men and their consternation. Understandably that seems like a timely topic. BSA wanted to ask JMR what’s driving this change in direction.
Jim Rizzi (Photo © Jaime Rojo)
It took a little bit, but we found JMR. As it turns out, he’s abandoned NYC for the moment and is in a frigid underground vault in Texas, to hear him tell it.
“I am held prisoner to my air conditioning, as the sun burns all vegetation around me to a light umber. No one wanders aimlessly in this climate. It is as if the outside were contaminated by nuclear fallout and my neighbors are holed up in their backyard bunkers.”
Jim Rizzi (Photo © Jaime Rojo)
BSA: So what is going on with these white guys? And why has the human form become clarified and less abstract?
JMR: I haven’t written a cohesive description of what I am doing in ages, and have begun to wonder exactly what that is. Not what to write, but what I am doing. In the push to stay relevant as an artist, there is a fine line between putting your name out, and putting out something relevant.
In a nutshell, ultimately, and I use that word loosely, my goal is to express some sort of emotion in these portraits. I’ve spent much of my artistic career in the dark shadows of abstraction, but to put abstract work out to the general masses seems less affective. A black and white paste-up seems more relatable than an abstract one. Not that I am trying to get people to recognize the humanity around them, because I am not. I am trying to portray some humanity in my art.
Jim Rizzi (Photo © Jaime Rojo)
While that explanation was clear enough, you can’t say with certitude that this is where he’ll stay. It may in fact be a transition stage to where JMR is going. He gave a funny sort of series of observations that reveal a funny sort of self-reflective artist who may be at a turning point. He even gave this startlingly clear analogy that sounds a lot like the race for recognition among artists in a city full of artists, everyone following a source of light in hopes of sustenance or recognition.
“I take my daughter to feed these giant carp at the lake nearby and there are hundreds of them (carp, not lakes). When you throw whatever it is you’ve brought to feed them, they frenzy; thrusting their open mouths to the surface in hopes that something falls in. It’s violent. Some fish actually get pushed to the point where their whole bodies are out the water. I can’t help but equate that to all of us, regardless of craft or profession, and what we are aiming to do; Trying to stay at the top of the pile. Just to get those pieces of bread, cereal, stale pretzels, bagels, hotdog buns.”
Jim Rizzi (Photo © Jaime Rojo)
Take that for what you may. I’m taking it with an icy cold six-pack of PBR out on the lake. Have a nice Saturday everybody.
One of JMR’s murals from a more colorful abstract period way back last year. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
So you might as well move the furniture out on the sidewalk for your 4th of July Bar-B-Que this weekend and enjoy the best of both worlds. Look, some guests have already arrived! Pictured below on the Brooklyn street are Veng (RWK), Imminent Disaster, El Sol 25, Yote, and Andrew Michael Ford. Is the beer cold yet?
(image © Jaime Rojo)
Brooklyn based artist Dennis McNett totally smashed the windows at Barneys with his imagination. “Passerby’s can see over sized wolf, owl, and skull masks paired with mannequins dressed in evening wear with a backdrop of psychodelic starbursts and swooping wolfbats. Dennis’s woodcut blocks, prints, masks and paper mache sculptures adorn the mannequins and window interiors. His imagery from nature, folklore, mythology, and story telling mixed with the graphic carved wood patterns from wood block prints sets a very unique stage for the store and this part of town.”
Barneys NY Madison Ave. between 60th and 61st through July 12th
They are best seen at night as they have been professionally lit. Check out Dennis at www.wolfbat.com
Heat waves shimmering
one or two inches
above the pavement.
This is New York right now. Blistering smells of bubbling soot from the street. Like no other time of the year most of these summer streets are a haven for life and freedom. School’s finally out, few summer jobs are available, and there are more service cuts on the bus and subways. But in this time of lowered expectations the parks are still open and the free concerts and block parties and parades hint very little at the stress that so many are under.
Elbow Toe (Photo © Jaime Rojo)
The Brooklyn artist and poet of the streets whose moniker is Elbow Toe gets up early to “go to work” on the subway, where he rides and draws portraits of his fellow riders in a sketchbook before returning to his studio. It’s there, in the air-conditioned underground, that he wakes up and re-connects to his city, loosening up the lines so that they can wend and bend freely, and jotting a little text as it manifests.
His impressive body of work continues to grow and develop both on the streets and, in the last couple of years, into galleries on both coasts and across the pond. Recently kicked out of his studio (another New York artist story), he has settled in to working at home on a new collage series using ripped and shredded paper to create quite detailed pieces that from a distance look like paintings.
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BSA: How’s the new studio? Have you done any work in it yet?
Elbow Toe: The new studio is suitable. I lost the last space when the landlord got in a dispute with the owner and forced us all out. I have been in the new space for a couple of months at this point and it has seen it’s fair share of work. I am primarily working on collages.
At this point I have converted part of my residence to a studio. It is a weird mix because we don’t have any walls in our place per se. And I don’t want to ruin the floors so I had to build a wall that could balance on the floor to provide privacy yet let in some light. I have done well over a half dozen collages at this point so the space is pretty broken in. If I had one complaint it would be that I wish I was in a studio building again so that I could just shut the door at the end of the night. As it is, the pieces sort of nag away at me. Who knows, it might make them just that more intimate with my psyche.
BSA: What’s informing your art right now? What’s inspiring you?
Elbow Toe: I have to hold the cards for what is informing me pretty close to my chest, as I am still engrossed in working out the imagery for the show. But I can say that I spent the better part of a year working out the boundaries and technical hurdles in my approach to collage. Though I am doing some portraits still, the new works are exploring narrative frameworks. I would say that I am creating fictions with a little bit of truth. I do my best to let my imagination play with the hopes that it know intuitively what stories I want to tell.
Elbow Toe (Photo © Jaime Rojo)
BSA: You touch on political and social themes in your art. Are you a news junkie?
Elbow Toe: I am a news junkie. It certainly doesn’t help that I get into bouts of listening to NPR for 8 – 10 hours a day. It really makes for great light small talk in social situations, let me tell you.
BSA: What’s your best way to get news right now? Radio, TV, or internet?
Elbow Toe: I primarily stream NPR in on my computer.
BSA: What’s the environment that you like to create in your studio while you work?
Elbow Toe: When I start a piece I like the studio to be pristine. By the time I have completed the piece there is very little space to stance, and it is quite visually painful as there is basically a storm of color all over the floor. I generally get so pulled into the process that the chaos works to my advantage as I tend to know where every piece of paper is amidst the chaos. The real problem that arises is when I set my keys down in the studio by accident.
Elbow Toe (Photo © Jaime Rojo)
BSA: You’ve referred to classic and modern art masters in your work. Is there anybody in the current crop of contemporary artists who do you admire and with whom you would like to collaborate on a piece with?
Elbow Toe: There are a lot of artists out there that I really admire. I am always looking. Cutting up Art Forum magazines for my collages keeps introducing new artists to me. As much as I like their work, I am really not that interested in collaborating with any of them. I prefer honing my own vision.
BSA: You are known to write a bit of poetry – what brings it forth? People on the street? Books you read? Music?
Elbow Toe: The quotes that I write around town… They tend to just well up from somewhere inside me. I go draw (in my sketchbook) on the subway in the mornings to warm up, and when I really drop into the work, they just sort of present themselves.
Elbow Toe (Photo © Jaime Rojo)
BSA: Who is your favorite poet? What resonates about their work?
Elbow Toe: I like the Haiku masters Basho, Buson and Issa. There is such a compactness to the form. And the work is so humble.
I have been a fan of Sharon Olds for some time. There is such a vocal quality to her work. The rhythm is so strong that it completes the ideas perfectly that she is conveying. A particular favorite book of hers is The Father. Amazing.
Elbow Toe (Photo © Jaime Rojo)
Elbow Toe (Photo © Jaime Rojo)
You can see Elbow Toe’s newest piece tonight at the Perry Rubenstein Gallery in a collage based group show, “Shred”. See the press release and his piece HERE.
Dan Witz is a 30+ year veteran of New York City street life, beginning in the late 70’s as an art student in the bombed out East Village, inspired simultaneously by the punk rock explosion and an analogous expression of the discontent that graffiti contained.
Since then he has explored a great deal about how we relate to art on the street, bringing a skilled analyst mind to play with perception, feeling, and our peripheral intake of information. In recent years his studio work has finely combined new digital possibilities with the more traditional oil based tools, producing startling realism and an auric glow that calms and unsettles.
Witz’s hyper-real street installations have become known for being missed by the busy passerby because of his uncanny and witty ability to integrate them into the urban environment below our perceptual radar. More recently his pieces have grown thematically darker and evermore perfect in their placement, daring you to overlook them. 
With the release of this 30 year collection of work, Witz can clearly stake his claim as one of the forerunners of the current explosion of street art and it’s various discontents. Even in his controlled approach to study, practice, and implementation, the underlying punk rocker rips through the fabric of any bourgeois malaise you may be tempted to slip into.
Spoonbill and Sugartown
218 Bedford Ave
Brooklyn, NY 11211
718/387-7322
www.spoonbillbooks.com
Dan Witz, born 1957, Chicago, IL, attended Cooper Union in New York City’s East Village. In 1982 he received a NEA grant and in 1992 and 2000 fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts. His first book, “The Birds of Manhattan” was published in 1983 by Skinny Books. Solo exhibitions include Semaphore Gallery NY (1985,1986), Clementine Gallery (1996), StolenSpace, London (2007); DFN Gallery NY (2003-5, 6, 7, 8, 10) and Carmichael Gallery, LA (2009). Group exhibitions include: Buying Time: Nourishing Excellence, Sotheby’s NY(2001); and Fifteen, NYFA Fellows at Deutsche Bank, NY (1999). Submission (curated by Juxtapoz) Fuse Gallery NY (2005); From The Streets of Brooklyn, Think space Art Gallery, LA (2009) and Beach Blanket Bingo, Jonathan Levine Gallery NY(2009). Dan lives and works in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.
Edgeware Gallery
For Immediate Release Contacts Joshua Bellfy (San Diego ) 619-788-9665
David Gillerman (Los Angeles,) 818-625-7872
Edgeware Gallery Hits the Street (Art )
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San Diego Gallery to debut Street Art Exhibition July 24, 2010
San Diego’s Museum of Contemporary Art is having the first major International Street Art Exhibition, Viva La Revolucion, which opens on July 18, 2010 and features works by artists from 8 countries, including Banksy, Shepard Fairey, and Invader.
To coincide with this show and capitalize on the media attention and public awareness, Edgeware Gallery in San Diego will also be having a street art/modern pop show, Out from Underground, which will open July 24, 2010 and run through early September.
Edgeware will boast its own A-list of artists at the exhibition including Shepard Fairey, Chor Boogie, Brett Amory, Acamonchi, Michael Cuffe, Mark Rimland, Frank Vicino, Bryan Snyder, Caryn Southward, SkEm oNe, Eric Wixon, Jaime Rojo and artists to be named later.
Media ranges from canvas to posters to photos of Banksy’s April San Francisco bombing, to a live painting by spraymaster Chor Boogie, who is in the permanent collection at the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego.
Edgeware Gallery is run under the auspices of the Autism Research Institute. 100% of the net profits from art sales go to fund autism research. At Edgeware, talented West Coast artists are exhibited alongside Mark Rimland, Edgeware’s gifted resident artist with autism.
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Out From Underground: Opening: July 24, 2010 5:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.
Regular Hours: Wed, Fri : 5:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.
Sat, Sun : 1:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.
Runs: July 24 to September 17, 2010
Edgeware Gallery: 4186 Adams Ave, San Diego, CA 92116 (619) 534-8120
Our weekly interview with the street: this week featuring street art by Bast, Billi Kid, Bishop203, ,Brummel, El Sol 25, Faile, Grimus, Girl With Bikini, Homosapien Erectus, Kosbe, Mike Graves, Monkey, Over Under, WDZ, and ZHE155
Billi Kid (photo © Jaime Rojo)
El Sol 25 (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Billi Kid tribute to Buz Blurr from the Road to Colossus (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Zhe 155 (photo © Jaime Rojo)
That’s where the modern day Gay Liberation movement was born. Instead of getting punched and kicked, intimidated and humiliated by the police as usual, people pushed and punched back into the street. In the small riots and demonstrations in the streets of New York over the following days, people who once were hidden now marched out in the streets – a tradition that grew and continues to expand across the globe. Today that march for equality includes what is known as the GLBT (Gay, Lesbian, Bi-sexual, Transgendered) community.
The streets of NYC will have a GLBT parade with roughly 1 million spectators and with 18 year old Mississippi native Constance McMillen as The Grand Marshall because she stood up to the administration of her high school who cancelled the prom this year rather than permitting her to bring her date. The public message, delivered on the streets, remains a potent and powerful force.
This month of June we also began seeing new pieces on the street by the Brooklyn street art duo Faile, who have frequented the social and political spheres with their stenciled messages numerous times over the last decade. Among the pop and pulp inspired images were a couple of GLBT themed pieces, not usual in the Street Art or graffiti world. BSA had the opportunity to ask Faile about these new pieces and their significance to the artists.
“The wording inspired from an old church pamphlet. Given the controversy of Gay Marriage and Equal Rights swirling around, this new image and wording seemed a perfect symbol to embrace this and be open to love in all it’s forms.” Faile (Photo © Jaime Rojo)
BSA: You still see and hear words like “faggot” and “homo” thrown around in graff and street art community occasionally. How would you describe the attitudes you see in the street art culture, and before that, graffiti culture, toward people in the GLBT community?
Faile: I don’t think we’re around this that often. At least not among the people we hang with. These words are thrown around casually by some, unfortunately, though this is not specific to street art. Either way, this isn’t a place we really dwell. We’re a little more lone wolf than pack hunters, on the street anyway.
BSA: What drew you to the topic of equality for gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered people?
Faile: We didn’t specifically set out to make work about this topic. Many times, and especially recently, our image-making process is loose and experimental. We’ve been having fun with that again, really just playing. As some of the new images have come together we found something very provocative about an image of two girls locked in a passionate kiss. It was only later that in passing the image back and forth we placed this type from an old church pamphlet I found in my Grandma’s house. “No change my heart shall fear” seemed to speak so honestly, when paired with this image, to this crossroad in our culture. Where there is a group of people that are unfairly singled out and not given the same rights, especially with regard to marriage equality. It was this change that we spoke to, though in the image’s openness it can be interpreted in many ways.
The image-making is like this at times. You’ll create an image or collage something and it will just sit like that for some time. At times, it doesn’t need anything more and it’s better left open-ended and other times it really helps complete the idea; coming alive when there is type or a message paired to it.
The Gender Bender image of the “girl” at the urinal was again coming from a place of rawness and just the fun of making imagery. Sometimes it’s not until later that these have a power once they are out in the world, independent of our intentions. The work really invites the viewer in this way to bring their own interpretation to what’s there. The Bunny Boy image is a great example of that, it’s enticing and visceral in its mystery. Images speak to people in a variety ways.
Faile (Photo © Jaime Rojo)
BSA: Recently, a piece on the street by Faile expressed support for single moms and you’ve talked about war profiteering. How important is advocacy of social or political opinion in your street work?
Faile: Well if we are trying to say something or place a message in our work then it’s there for a reason. We were really raised by our Mom’s as products of divorced parents, despite having great Dad’s, but we can relate to that.
War profiteering was a response to an intense time in the world and an ongoing issue that related to a series we were exploring at that time centered around oil and the war in Lebanon.
But I think our work is more emotional. It’s more about the wonder and the mystery than it is meant to be so literal. You have to see some fantasy in the world; a place for the imagination to run and have room for daydreaming. Often, our work lives here. The product of overly-stimulated and media-saturated people living in a city that never sleeps. If you still can’t find the quiet spaces and those tiny moments where everything just lines up you’re in trouble. We hope to create those moments in the work and on the street.
BSA: From a broader perspective, what role do you think Street Art can or should play to affect social or political change?
Faile: It’s a form of communication for the people. Meaning it’s direct and aims straight to the masses. In it’s most sincere form it’s there for anyone and not wrapped up in a hidden agenda. In this way, it has great power and people respond to that. I think it has saturation points and has been co-opted by some along the way, but I also believe there is a huge energy there and when struck in the right way can move mountains.
Image of Jesus projected on the Manhattan Bridge during BSA’s “Projekt Projektor” in Dumbo, Brooklyn in September 2008 (photo and projected image © Jaime Rojo)
BSA: Punk posters in the 70’s and 80’s used assemblage of text and images to create messages that struck at the heart of a system people considered hypocritical or sick. How much of your work feels like punk to you today?
Faile: Our process has always resembled this loose and fast critique on society, whether it be literal or figurative. Our image-making has at times been very methodical and researched, other times it’s been experimental and dirty. Street art at it’s roots is “punk.” It set out to critique and comment on a world it felt outside of. I don’t know if it’s for us to decide really. We are just doing what feels right to us. If people see this as that, then so be it.
Detail (Photo © Jaime Rojo)
Banner image from Stonewall: The Riots That Sparked the Gay Revolution, by David Carter
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY