Hanging tough is what New York does, and the art in the street is 10X more potent than six months ago. It’s almost cliche to say that Street Art and graffiti are about a conversation on the street, but the words and sentiments being expressed right now on monuments, edifices, and in doorways are a direct reflection of the high-emotion, high-stakes conversations that we must have about the true state of race, freedom and social mobility in 2020 US.
Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring Art 2 Heart Art, Calicho Art, Chris RWK, Col Walnuts, Eortica, Irena Kenny, Jilly Ballistic, John Ahearn, Know Justice, Sac Six, Scratch, Shiro, Top Bun Artist, Zachary Ginsberg, and Zero Productivity.
Street Artist Jilly Ballistic has long favored face-masks on her black and white photo figures of yesteryear, so it interesting to see this vintage kid incognito in the current context of Coronavirus on the streets of New York. At the very least the mask prevents transmission to some degree, but no one seems to know how much. And what about children?
“If your child is healthy, there is no need for them to wear a facemask,” says the website Center for Disease Control and Prevention. “Only people who have symptoms of illness or who are providing care to those who are ill should wear masks.”
In Street Art and graffiti news, New York has had some “whole car” pieces on the subway line recently, including one that looked like a whole train! Old timers were rubbing their eyes. According to a local media outlet, legendary graffiti artist Chris “Freedom” Pape gave his assessment; “..based on the artist’s philosophy, he gives it an “A” but based on the quality of the graffiti on old subways, he gives it a “C”. Also a new film about New York octogenarian Street Artist Robert Janz opened this week at the Anthology Film Archives. Janz in the Moment is the passion project of Filmmaker Joanna Kiernan that features many corners and crazy details of New York’s streets that are familiar to us – and probably to you.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week from Miami, and this time featuring Add Fuel, Atomik, Bisco Smith, CRKSHNK, Dal East, Feik, Hysterical Men, Jilly Ballistic, Kai, Mr. June, Pure Genius, Rick Azevedo, WCKT, What Will You Leave Behind, Will Power, and Winston Tseng.
We’re in the thick sticky summer of it now -with Street Artists flooding the walls with many new unpermissioned illegal works. From small scale and new kids on the block to large legal/commercial murals by more established names- the public space in New York is teeming again with new ideas.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street (or boardwalk), this time featuring Adreian Wilson, Bert MTA, Bia Ferrer, Blaze, Captain Eyeliner, El Sol 25, Faust, Gatos a Gatas, H Lucatelli, Homoriot, Jason Naylor, Jilly Ballistic, Libranos, Movimiento Petrushaus, My 2 Cents, Nomad Clan, Novy, Pork, Shin Shin, Subdude, and Tatyana Fazlilazadeh.
Street Artist and activist Abe Lincoln Jr. is one of the growing ranks of subvertising executives on the streets today who are flipping the script on public messaging. Phone booths on city streets were meant as a public accommodation but eventually they were commandeered for private advertising and endless campaigns of commercial speech.
With his new #keepfighting ad takeover campaign of art by himself and other artists, the self proclaimed agitator says we should continue fighting for what we believe in. What do you want to raise awareness about? That is up to you.
What a week! The New York Post cover says that Friday was a “Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day” for Trump, but who among us is surprised about #Individual1 ? No one in Brooklyn, or his hometown Queens, or the City of New York, for that matter.
Now this national disaster opera is a 24 hour a day rolling dumpster fire that sells ads for TV and media companies – with no desire by them to make it end. Or as Leslie Moonves said famously about this institution-eroding tragedy: “It May Not Be Good for America, but It’s Damn Good for CBS”.
And on that cheerful note, Happy Holidays to you! Sincerely. Best wishes to our Jewish friends now completing Hanukkah, to our African diaspora friends readying for Kwanzaa, to our Christian friends already in the Christmas spirit, to our pagan friends getting ready for Solstice, and to our atheist friends who are thinking positive about the New Year. We collectively are incredible and full or promise, if we can seize upon it and fulfill it.
And welcome to our last BSA Images of the Week for 2018! We can’t tell you how excited we are every week to share the new images of Street Art, graffiti, murals, and art in the streets that we find – mostly because their existence confirms the ever-present creative spirit that is flowing through the air like radio waves, waiting for us all to tune in to it and let it course through our minds and hearts. Next Sunday we present our Images of the Year and during this week will begin our year-end lists of top books, murals, postings of the year.
Then, as is our tradition, BSA readers will take over the site for the last couple of weeks of December to reflect on the year and tell us their Wishes and Hopes for 2019!
And here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring $smell$907, Adrian Wilson, Blake2018, Bond TruLuv, City Kitty, Dee Dee, Ever Siempre, Gnome Surf, Jilly Ballistic, Kobra, Raf Urban, SicKid, and Vinny.
“It’s surreal to be on the south side of the US border,” we said last week about being in Mexico. Sorry to report that it may be even more surreal on this side.
Of the thousands of images he took this year in places like New York, Berlin, Dresden, Moscow, Marrakesh, Detroit and Miami, photographer Jaime Rojo found that the figurative image still stands prominently in the Street Art scene – along with text-based, abstract and animal world themes.
Surprisingly the scene does not appear to be addressing the troubled and contentious matters of the political and social realms in a large way, but the D.I.Y. scene keeps alive and defies the forces of homogeneity with one-of-a-kind small wheat-pastes, stencils, sculptures, and aerosol sprayed pieces alongside the enormous and detailed paintings that take days to complete.
Every Sunday on BrooklynStreetArt.com, we present “Images Of The Week”, our regular interview with the street. Primarily New York based, BSA interviewed, shot, and displayed images from Street Artists from more than 100 cities over the last year, making the site a truly global resource for artists, fans, collectors, gallerists, museums, curators, academics, and others in the creative ecosystem. We are proud of the help we have given and thankful to the community for what you give back to us and we hope you enjoy this collection – some of the best from 2016.
Brooklyn Street Art 2016 Images of the Year by Jaime Rojo includes the following artists;
1Up, Above, Adele Renault, Alaniz, Amy Smalls, George Vidas, GEN2, Apexer, BordaloII, Buff Monster, C215, Collin Van Der Sluijs, Super A, David Choe, D*Face, Duke Riley, El Sol 25, Sean 9 Lugo, EQC, Faile, Faith47, Faust, Shantell Martin, Felipe Pantone, Hueman, Droid907, Icy & Sot, InDecline, Invader, JJ Veronis, Jilly Ballistic, John Ahearn, JR, London Kaye, Louis Masai, MadC, Marshal Arts, Mongolz, MSK, Rime, Myth, Nina Chanel, Optic Ninja, Otto Osch Schade, Panmela Castro, Plastic Jesus, QRST, Reed b More, Remi Rough, REVS, Self Made, Sharon Dela Cruz, Maripussy, Specter, Stikman, Strok, Swoon, Ted Pim, Thievin’ Stephen, Farin Purth, Thomas Allen, Tobo, Uriginal, Vermibus, Vhils, Wing, Yes Two, Zola.
The artist featured on the main graphic is D*Face as shot by Jaime Rojo in New York.
It’s beginning to look a lot like an arms race, every where you turn. At least that is what comes to mind when seeing the silhouetted tree at the center of Otto Schade’s new holiday piece in London above. In other news – New York hate crimes have spiked as well as across the country (along with hate graffiti), the country is increasingly dismayed over the military-style defense of an oil pipeline against indigenous people and protestors during Thanksgiving week in the #NoDAPL demonstrations, and there is movement to re-count of general election ballots because of unusual results in key states being questioned by a scientist group. Aside from that everything is going fantastic. Miami is hosting a ton of Street Artists this week for Art Basel – and today is #NoAdDay.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Alanis, Amberellaxo, Aquarela, Axer, BE Zany, Below Key, Cuke, Himbad, Jilly Ballistic, Jorit Agoch, June, Lunge Box, Osch, Otto Schade, Queen Andrea, Ralp, RX Skulls, Thiago Gomez, and V Ballentine.
Any New Yorker on the street can tell you that Donald Trump has always been this way – he hasn’t made a “secret” of it. We just called this stuff “tabloid news”, and tabloids were an exception. Now they nearly rule all public discourse.
Lowest-common-denominator “News” has produced a lowest-common-denominator candidate. He almost clinched the highest elected office. There is a trail of polarized destruction in the wake.
For over a year this profit-driven entertainment media actually created a cancerous candidate who gives them daily “clickable content” while they hold their noses and count the dollars. These people aren’t serving you, or democracy. We are all collectively debased – men and women, black and white, Mexican and Muslim, rich and poor, families, children, teachers, workers, nurses, doctors, cashiers, church people, atheists – as a result.
The GOP’s flirtation with starting and fanning racist bonfires over the past decade or so has finally swallowed it in flames, leaving it in smoking embers, their leaders completely covered with fecal matter, quieted and stunned. The reputation of the US around the world took a battering thanks to this tabloid news candidate as well. Traveling to Street Art events outside the US this year, invariably someone would shake us by the lapels and ask us what the hell was going on with this Trump guy?!.
In recognition of the woman-hating man who came dangerously close to the White House, here are a number of different women and girls by Street Artists creating in the public sphere at the moment, covering a range of styles, backgrounds, techniques and points of view.
So, here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Beast, Danielle Mastrion, Faile, finDAC, Jilly Ballistic, Kevin Lyons, Leticia Mondragora, LMNOPI, Marina Capdevila, Myth, Never Crew, Ouch, Shepard Fairey, Sipros, Slick, Spaik, Stray Ones, Taker, Who’s Dirk, and Zimer.
How are things with you? Did you survive the snow/slush/sludge? Did you check out the launch of SOLD magazine this week? It’s made by artists for artists, and straight out of Brooklyn – check out their Instagram here. Proceeds from the show will help keep it going. We start this weeks images with a few from Nick Walker’s show at the Quin hotel. See Nick in February in person with Daze and KET at the Museum of the City of New York.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Col Wallnuts, Jilly Ballistic, Kai, Nick Walker, RAE, REVS, and Tuco Wallach.
A lot of people thought so, and the rise of commercial festivals and commissioned public/private mural programs probably brought more artists to more walls than in recent history. Judging from the In Box, 2016 is going to break more records. Enormous, polished, fully realized and presented, murals can hold a special role in a community and transform a neighborhood, even a city.
But they are not the “organic” Street Art that draws us into the dark in-between places in a city, or at its margins.
We keep our eyes open for the small, one-off, idiosyncratic, uncommissioned, weirdo work as well, as it can carry clues about the culture and reveal a sage or silly solo voice. It also just reinforces the feeling that the street is still home to an autonomous free-for-all of ideas and opinions and wandering passions. For us it is still fascinating to seek out and discover the one-of-a-kind small wheatpastes, stencils, sculptures, ad takeovers, collages, and aerosol sprayed pieces alongside the enormous and detailed paintings that take days to complete.
The main image above is from a vinyl subway advertisement that was high-jacked and we published it in February of this year on our Images of the Week posting. It’s small, personal, and very effective as you can see someone suspiciously similar to Batman is jumping out of the mouth of someone looking awfully similar to Hedwig of “Angry Inch” fame.
Of the 10,000 or so images photographer Jaime Rojo took in 2015, here are a selection 140+ of the best images from his travels through streets looking for unpermissioned and sanctioned art.
Brooklyn Street Art 2015 Images of the Year by Jaime Rojo
Brooklyn Street Art 2015 Images of the Year by Jaime Rojo includes the following artists;
365xlos43, Amanda Marie, Andreas Englund, Augustine Kofie, Bisser, Boijeot, Renauld, Bordaloli, Brittany, BunnyM, Case Maclaim, Casg, Cash4, CDRE, Clet, Cost, Curve, Dain, Dal East, Dan Budnik, Dan Witz, David Walker, DeeDee, Dennis McNett, Don Rimx, Ricardo Cabret, LNY, Alex Seel, Mata Ruda, Don’t Fret, Dot Dot Dot, ECB, El Mac, El Sol25, Ella & Pitr, Eric Simmons, Enest Zacharevic, Martha Cooper, Martin Whatson, Ever, Faile, Faith47, Findac, Futura, Gaia, Gilf!, Hanksy, Hellbent, Hot Tea, How & Nosm, Icy and Sot, Inti, Invader, Isaac Cordal, James Bullough, Janet Dickson, Jef Aerosol, Jilly Ballistic, Joe Iurato, John Fekner, Le Diamantaire, Li Hill, LMNOPI, London Kaye, Low Brow, Marina Capdevilla, Miss Van, Mr. Prvrt, Mr. Toll, Myth, Nafir, Nemos, Never Crew, Nick Walker, Nina Pandolofo, Old Broads, Oldy, Ollio, Os Gemeos, Owen Dippie, Paper Skaters, Pet Bird, Kashink, Smells, Cash4, PichiAvo, Pixel Pancho, QRST, ROA, Ron English, Rubin415, Saner, Sean 9 Lugo, Shai Dahan, Shepard Fairey, Sheryo & The Yok, Sinned, Sipros, Skewville, Slikor, Smells, Sweet Toof, Snowden, Edward Snowden, Andrew Tider, Jeff Greenspan, Specter, Stray Ones, Sweet Toof, Swil, Willow, Swoon, The Outings Project, Toney De Pew, Tristan Eaton, Various & Gould, Vermibus, Wane, Wk Interact
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
