All posts tagged: Kenny Scharf

Red Hot and Street: “Art in the Streets” Brings Fire to MOCA

April 15, 2011 Artists, California, Events, Little Tokyo, Los Angeles, Museum, Opening

Banksy’s Reliquary (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Yes, Banksy is here. The giant “Art in the Streets” show opening this weekend at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles gives a patch of real estate to the international man of mystery who has contributed greatly to the worldwide profile of this soon to be, maybe already, mainstream phenomenon known as street art. A smattering of his pranksterism is an absolute must for any show staking claim to the mantle of comprehensive survey and an excellent way to garner attention. But “Streets” gets it’s momentum by presenting a multi-torch colorful and explosive people’s history that began way before Banksy was born and likely will continue for a while after.

Os Gemeos Untitled. Detail (photo © Jaime Rojo)

To continue reading about this exhibition go to The Huffington Post ARTS by clicking on the link after the image below.

Direct link to article on HuffPost Arts

FUN FRIDAY 04.08.11

April 8, 2011 Arizona, Artists, California, Culver City, Events, Gallery, Opening, Washington DC

This weekend brings a Spring bounty of delicious Street Art related openings in many cities across this great country of ours. But FIRST, this OLD SKOOL Romanic Boogie Down Production …

Pump Up the Sculpture Jam from SAM3

Sticker Phiends in AZ

Tempeh is a soy product and meat substitute originally from Indonesia. Tempe is a city in Arizona that is hosting the 4th giant Sticker Phiends show tonight. Stickers continue to grow in influence in Street Art and in private collections in black books and refrigerator doors and this is a cool show that gives them away and sells them. They have limited edition “Sticker Phiends” tee-shirts designed by Brooklyn street art collective Robots Will Kill. Also cold beer. Possibly tempeh too because Chris RWK is a good veggie.

FREE HANDOUTS provided by our sponsors
ALL ART for $ale!
Limited Merch for $ale!
Drinks with ID – 21+

Opens at 8pm April 8th!
Cartel Coffee Lab
25 w. University Dr.
Tempe, AZ.
480-225-3899

Some of the names include:

Abcnt, Age, Dolla, DumperFoo, Dissizit/Slick, 123 Klan,Griffin One, Clown Soldier, Mad One, Mat Curran, MBW, 20 MG, Obey, Pez One (U.K.), Sike’, U.W.P., Seizer One

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Martha Cooper Remixed

How & Nosm interpret Martha Cooper’s original photo from the 1970s (both photos © Martha Cooper)

The Carmichael Gallery will be throwing a memorable opening party for Martha Cooper’s REMIX show and, lazy hyperbole aside, this one is one NOT to miss.

Photographs by Martha Cooper

with

Original remixes of these photographs in a range of media by Aeon, John Ahearn, Aiko, Bio, Nicer & B-Gee, Blade, Blanco, Mark Bode, Burning Candy, Victor Castillo, Cey, Cekis, Claw, Cosbe, Crash, Dabs & Myla, Anton van Dalen, Daze, Dearraindrop, Jane Dickson, Dr. Revolt, Shepard Fairey, Faust, Flying Fortress, Freedom, Fumakaka, Futura, Gaia, Grotesk, Logan Hicks, How & Nosm, LA II, Lady Pink, Anthony Lister, The London Police, Mare 139, Barry McGee, Nazza Stencil, Nunca, José Parlá, Quik, Lee Quinones, Kenny Scharf, Sharp, Skewville, Chris Stain, Subway Art History, Swoon, T-Kid, Terror161 and more.

Carmichael Gallery

5795 Washington Blvd
Culver City, CA 90232

April 9 – May 7, 2011

Opening Reception: Saturday, April 9, 6-8pm

Click on the link below for more information regarding this show:

http://www.brooklynstreetart.com/theblog/?p=19900

Cern YMI in Greenpoint by Gandja Monteiro

ROA at White Walls in SF

Image of ROA in Salton City (© and courtesy of White Walls)

In San Francisco ROA will have his opening at the White Walls Gallery with his iconic paintings of nature’s marginalized animals in large scale. Ever the hard worker, ROA paints non stop year round all over the globe on surfaces that are challenging, like this one on the side of a mobile home. If you have only seen his art on line and if you are in San Francisco this Saturday, it’s your turn!

For more information about this show contact the gallery.

White Walls Gallery

835 LARKIN ST.
SAN FRANCISCO, CA. 94109

Phone: 415.931.1500

Chor Boogie in Washington DC

While the Rich Man Party of NO! brings the country to a halt in the Capitol, Chor Boogie will be bringing much needed healing color to Washington DC at The Fridge Gallery.

The Fridge Gallery Presents: Chor Boogie “This Aint No Place For No Hero” (Washington, DC)

For more information about this show click on the link below:

http://www.brooklynstreetart.com/theblog/?p=19952

Chor Boogie is an artist, a conceptual genius, a street romantic, a master of illusion and technique, Chor Boogie is an original. His works can be described as having healing effects by his unique and unmatched use of color, which brings greater meaning and understanding to his works. Every vibrant piece has a story attached to it. Chor Boogie’s colorful paintings are attracting A-list celebrities, art galleries and museums. Originally from San Diego, the artist known as Chor Boogie currently resides in San Francisco but is an internationally known artist and has traveled extensively to exhibit his work around the world.

The Fridge is located at

516 8th Street, SE

REAR ALLEY

Washington, DC 20003

David Ellis and Blu in a collaboration of a loop video from 2009

Yo Son the Boyz from Queens are Comin out With New Jams Next Month!

Carmichael Gallery Presents: Martha Cooper “Remix” (Culver City, CA)

April 3, 2011 Artists, California, Culver City, Events, Gallery, L.A., Los Angeles, Opening

Martha Cooper

Photographs by Martha Cooper

with

Carmichael Gallery

5795 Washington Blvd

Culver City, CA 90232

April 9 – May 7, 2011

Opening Reception: Saturday, April 9, 6-8pm

For Immediate Release:

Carmichael Gallery is pleased to announce Martha Cooper: Remix, an expansive group show featuring highlights from Martha Cooper’s photographic archive and works by over 50 artists who have created their own unique interpretations of her iconic, historically significant imagery. There will be an opening reception for the exhibition on Saturday, April 9 from 6 to 8pm with Martha Cooper and several of the participating artists in attendance. The exhibition will run through May 7, 2011.

Martha Cooper, Photographer of Art on the Streets for Six Decades

Written by Steven P. Harrington, this article is featured in tasj vol ii – issue v.

The daughter of a Baltimore camera store owner, Martha Cooper’s romance with photography began in the 1940s when bobby-soxers and penny loafers were the sign of edgy youth culture. Her dad, an amateur photographer himself, gave his small girl a camera and together they hit the streets in search of adventure. “Yeah, my father used to take me out and we would take pictures. That’s what I thought photography was…we were just looking for pictures,” she recalls. Six decades later, Cooper is still looking for pictures; meanwhile, many works from her archive are cited as pivotal recordings of the birth of hip-hop culture and its plastic art form, graffiti.

During the cultural upheavals of the 1960s, Cooper earned a Bachelors of Art degree in Iowa, taught English for the Peace Corps in Thailand and rode a motorcycle from Bangkok to obtain a graduate degree at Oxford. As a freelancer and staff photographer in Japan, Maryland and Rhode Island in the early 1970s she moved to the media and art center of New York City to catch bigger fish. Landing a job on the staff of The New York Post in 1977, she discovered that the resistant and competitive boys club of photographers there were reluctant to countenance this scrappy young woman shooting hard news stories and Studio 54 celebrities.

Hungry for discovery, Cooper would spend her time to and from assignments in bombed-out neighborhoods, where she took pictures of kids entertaining themselves with games they devised on the street, often with the humblest of materials. It was during one of those trips that she stumbled on graffiti and the members of its community. She met a young boy who suggested she photograph the work she was seeing, then showed her a stylized drawing of his name, or piece, in his notebook.

Then he asked her if she wanted to meet “The King”.

Following this lead to Brooklyn, Cooper met Dondi, the citywide-famous graffiti writer who kept a published photo of hers in his black book because its background contained one of his graffiti throw-ups. Cooper quickly realized that she had stumbled into a lively street culture and became an avid student of the teen writers she befriended. By the time she took her last news picture for the New York Post in 1980, her primary desire was to capture as many pieces, tags, and trains as she possibly could find. Today, she remarks on her near-obsessive devotion to documenting New York’s graffiti: waking before dawn to hit the street, waiting five hours for a freshly painted #2 train to pass with the sun at her back and countless secret adventures with vandals in train yards, evading transit police in order to pursue a shot.

Joining efforts with fellow graffiti photographer, Henry Chalfant, Cooper proposed putting together a book of their documentation. The pair endured multiple rejections from publishers while lugging around a big “dummy” book with their pictures glued to the pages. Eventually, however, they landed a deal and Subway Art was published in 1984. Although not an immediate success, it came to sell half a million copies and established itself as a holy book for fans, aspiring artists and art historians worldwide. By the time the 25^th anniversary edition was published in 2009, generations of graffiti and street artists had been influenced by it and the hip-hop culture Cooper and Chalfant had captured had gone global.

In the intervening years, Martha Cooper never stopped shooting. Her love of serendipity on the street and the exploration of cultures led her to publish thousands of photos in books such as R.I.P.: Memorial Wall Art, Hip Hop Files 1979-1984, We B*Girlz, Street Play, New York State of Mind, Tag Town, Going Postal, and Name Tagging. Her work has been exhibited in museums and galleries worldwide and published in numerous magazines including National Geographic, Natural History, and Vibe. While she is still shooting graffiti, street art and the occasional break dance competition today, Cooper’s current project involves documenting people and events in Sowebo, a drug-riddled neighborhood in her birthplace of Baltimore.

Steven P. Harrington is editor-in-chief of BrooklynStreetArt.com and co-author (with Jaime Rojo) of Brooklyn Street Art and Street Art New York, both by Prestel Publishing. He and Jaime Rojo are also contributing writers on street art for The Huffington Post.

About Carmichael Gallery:

Founded in 2007 by husband and wife team Seth and Elisa Carmichael, Carmichael Gallery focuses on a select group of artists breaking ground in painting, mixed media, photography and sculpture. Their annual program consists of a series of solo and group exhibitions that document the progress of these artists.

For information on current, past and upcoming shows, visit www.carmichaelgallery.com. For additional information and press materials on this show, please contact the gallery at art@carmichaelgallery.com and

+1 323 939 0600 and Andi Baker at andi@carmichaelgallery.com.

Martha Cooper, Photographer of Art on the Streets for Six Decades

April 2, 2011 Artists

Martha Cooper landed in LA yesterday and will spend the next week installing her photos and their remixed new versions beside them, even flanking hers like stereo speakers. Since the press release has gone out we thought we’d share with you the bio written by Steven P. Harrington and the promo photo by Jaime Rojo which will appear in a special issue of The Art Street Journal dedicated entirely to her to come out this week.

Martha and Pablo at home, with a portrait of her sitting on a train car with camera in hand painted by Os Gemeos overlooking the scene. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Martha Cooper, Photographer of Art on the Streets for Six Decades

Written by Steven P. Harrington, this article is featured in The Art Street Journal vol ii – issue v.

During the cultural upheavals of the 1960s, Cooper earned a Bachelors of Art degree in Iowa, taught English for the Peace Corps in Thailand and rode a motorcycle from Bangkok to obtain a graduate degree at Oxford. As a freelancer and staff photographer in Japan, Maryland and Rhode Island in the early 1970s she moved to the media and art center of New York City to catch bigger fish. Landing a job on the staff of The New York Post in 1977, she discovered that the resistant and competitive boys club of photographers there were reluctant to countenance this scrappy young woman shooting hard news stories and Studio 54 celebrities.

Then he asked her if she wanted to meet “The King”.

Following this lead to Brooklyn, Cooper met Dondi, the citywide-famous graffiti writer who kept a published photo of hers in his black book because its background contained one of his graffiti throw-ups. Cooper quickly realized that she had stumbled into a lively street culture and became an avid student of the teen writers she befriended. By the time she took her last news picture for the New York Post in 1980, her primary desire was to capture as many pieces, tags, and trains as she possibly could find. Today, she remarks on her near-obsessive devotion to documenting New York’s graffiti: waking before dawn to hit the street, waiting five hours for a freshly painted #2 train to pass with the sun at her back and countless secret adventures with vandals in train yards, evading transit police in order to pursue a shot.

Joining efforts with fellow graffiti photographer, Henry Chalfant, Cooper proposed putting together a book of their documentation. The pair endured multiple rejections from publishers while lugging around a big “dummy” book with their pictures glued to the pages. Eventually, however, they landed a deal and Subway Art was published in 1984. Although not an immediate success, it came to sell half a million copies and established itself as a holy book for fans, aspiring artists and art historians worldwide.

By the time the 25^th anniversary edition was published in 2009, generations of graffiti and street artists had been influenced by it and the hip-hop culture Cooper and Chalfant had captured had gone global.

In the intervening years, Martha Cooper never stopped shooting. Her love of serendipity on the street and the exploration of cultures led her to publish thousands of photos in books such as R.I.P.: Memorial Wall Art, Hip Hop Files 1979-1984, We B*Girlz, Street Play, New York State of Mind, Tag Town, Going Postal, and Name Tagging. Her work has been exhibited in museums and galleries worldwide and published in numerous magazines including National Geographic, Natural History, and Vibe. While she is still shooting graffiti, street art and the occasional break dance competition today, Cooper’s current project involves documenting people and events in Sowebo, a drug-riddled neighborhood in her birthplace of Baltimore.

********************

Steven P. Harrington is editor-in-chief of BrooklynStreetArt.com and co-author (with Jaime Rojo) of Brooklyn Street Art and Street Art New York, both by Prestel Publishing. He and Jaime Rojo are also contributing writers on street art for The Huffington Post.

********************

Photographs by Martha Cooper

Martha Cooper ; Remix

with

Click on the link below to read BSA interview with Martha Cooper:

http://www.brooklynstreetart.com/theblog/?p=19366

Carmichael Gallery

5795 Washington Blvd

Culver City, CA 90232

April 9 – May 7, 2011

Opening Reception: Saturday, April 9, 6-8pm

Martha Cooper Remixed by Chris Stain and Billy Mode

March 17, 2011 Artists

More pictures and an interview here with Martha Cooper, Chris Stain, and Billy Mode about their new mural in Brooklyn and her new show next month. An inspiration to many graffiti and street artists, her photos are the basis for the Martha Cooper: Remix show at Carmichael and why she and Street Artist Aiko are wheat pasting 170 of them on a wall at the MOCA Art in the Streets exhibition opening the following Saturday.

When we were thinking of Martha’s work and and the concept of remix, it easily tapped into the span of her career; both the hip-hop analog dj technique of vinyl sampling as well as the digital cut-and-paste practice of modern mashup artists who are running the streets at the moment. While it is true that Ms. Cooper has captured a vast archive of history, it’s the high regard she has earned and the relationships she has engendered that are the reason that many of these Remix pieces are so powerful. An ethnographer by training and one of the most important photographers of street and street art culture for the last four decades, Ms. Cooper remains amazingly approachable and outright enthused about her photographs and the people in them, as if she had snapped them just yesterday. And she’s pleased to meet you.

Brooklyn Street Art: Of course the city has changed a lot in the last 35 years, and you probably have also. Can you share some insight with us about what the city was like for young photographers at that time?
Martha Cooper: I first came to NY in 1975 and for me the city was a place of opportunity. Although it was the center of publishing at the time, there weren’t that many photographers. You could call up an editor and he (usually he) would pick up the phone. I loved roaming around neighborhoods looking for pictures. Graffiti was very much underground and few people even realized that what kids were writing on walls and trains was their name. My fascination with graffiti and b-boying grew out of photographing the unknown, of being allowed entry into a world that most adults didn’t know existed. The city was going bankrupt, very few security systems were in place, and both photographers and graffiti writers could get away with a lot.

This original photo taken on Houston Street in NYC in 1978 from which Chris Stain borrowed the boy on the right. (photo courtesy of Ms. Cooper © Martha Cooper)

Brooklyn Street Art: You used to get up before dawn to catch a picture of a train, and sometimes wait 5 hours for the right shot. How did you pass the time when you had to wait for hours? Crossword puzzles?
Martha Cooper: There was no down time. Trains were constantly going by in both directions. I had to stay alert watching for just the right painted car. All of the trains in my photos were moving.

Brooklyn Street Art: So how did you get this idea for the theme for the show?
Martha Cooper: From you! (laughs) Over the years I’ve seen a lot of people using my photographs, authorized and unauthorized. The Carmichaels had asked me to do a solo show. After considering a number of options, I thought about what we had done, what you had done in that blog post. We talked about how artists had used my work and I thought, ‘Why don’t I do that?’ So that’s how it happened.

Brooklyn Street Art: Way before this show, Street Artists like Chris Stain and Shepard Fairey interpreted a number of your photographs in their work.
Martha Cooper: Some photographers don’t want their photos to be used as a basis for someone else’s art but mostly I don’t mind. Both Chris and Shepard asked permission and in both cases the collaboration has had unexpected positive results, one of which was connecting with BSA.

Chris Stain and Billy Mode (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Brooklyn Street Art: And what have the responses been like so far?
Martha Cooper: I got a lot of really heart-warming responses from people I’ve been in touch with over the years. A lot of old-school and new-school artists and that made me feel good.

Brooklyn Street Art: Was it surprising to see the response?
Martha Cooper: I didn’t know what kind of response I was going to get. It was a little scary to write to people. I decided right in the beginning that I was going to write personal notes to everybody. So you guys and I talked about it and we made a list.

Chris Stain and Billy Mode (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Brooklyn Street Art: Well, we tried to include old-school people you were very familiar with and a number of the new people that we were familiar with.
Martha Cooper: Yes, many of whom I had met. As it turns out, Miami was really a hotbed of street artists for me in the two years I went down there to shoot at Wynwood during Art Basel. And I would not have known some of them had it not been for Basel, so I have to thank Tony Goldman for that.

Chris Stain and Billy Mode (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Brooklyn Street Art: We’ve worked with Chris Stain before and we’ve been talking to him about doing another wall together. When we told him about this show he said “Why don’t I do a Martha piece?”
Martha Cooper: I didn’t know who Chris Stain was. He contacted me a couple of years ago by email and just said that he had done work using my photographs. And a little dialogue developed and I went over to his studio in Brooklyn and I met him and it all worked out. He had already seen my books – he doesn’t take the exact picture, he takes parts of it.

Brooklyn Street Art: Yeah, he takes elements from your photographs and puts them in a different context. And that’s okay with you, it doesn’t offend you that he takes a portion of it?
Martha Cooper: No! It flatters me. You know, just the idea that people are looking at these pictures and liking them enough to base their own art on them, to me is flattering. Maybe not to everybody, but to me, I like it. Especially if you asked permission and at least you are acknowledging that you are borrowing work from me. Then it is fine.

Chris and Bill take a break from the cold winds to talk about the piece (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Brooklyn Street Art: So tell me about this piece and the boy in the picture. Do you remember when you first saw that picture?
Chris Stain: The first time I saw that picture was in Martha’s book, “Street Play” because she gave me that book. The image is from her photograph. I had been working from other images of hers and I felt bad working from all these photographers work. I thought, “Maybe I should just try to contact them and seeing if it’s okay if I work from them.” Because some of this stuff was going into paintings and I’m selling them and some of them are going into the streets, which doesn’t really matter.

So she was the first photographer I contacted. I was like, “Dear Ms. Cooper, I’m a big fan of yours, have been for a long time….” I talked about Subway Art, this and that. “…and I’m making paintings from some of your photographs and I was just wondering how you felt about it.” She wrote me back and she was really into it and she was really cool with me using the images and we just kept going. She said, “I want a painting” and we met up one day and I gave her a painting and she gave me her book “New York State of Mind”. It went from there.

…..This whole wall, Billy and I did it in Miami but we’ve changed it up.

Chris Stain and Billy Mode. The second day in the late afternoon begins (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Chris Stain and Billy Mode (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Brooklyn Street Art: You did it for Wynwood? Primary Flight?
Chris: Yeah Primary Flight like three years ago. The train behind the boy says “Cries of the Ghetto” and I was told that it was originally a piece done by Dezz and Ski, and somebody else told me it was Shane. So I’m not sure who originally did it. But I’ve always liked that train a lot and I liked the words a lot so we just incorporated the whole thing together.

And tonight Bill re-did the lettering to bring it up to date a little bit and to add our own kind of twist to it and that’s what we got.

Brooklyn Street Art: So really it’s a collage of a few images.
Chris Stain: Actually it’s a collage of a photo that I took, a photo of Martha Coopers’, and I don’t know who originally photographed that “Cries of the Ghetto” train – I’m not really sure exactly who did it – whether it was Martha or Henry or somebody else but I’ve always liked it.

Chris Stain and Billy Mode (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Brooklyn Street Art: But thematically it is a good way to tie together her history ..
Chris: Yeah because it has the kids, which she was always photographing, together with the graffiti aspect that she’s really well known for.

Brooklyn Street Art: And then as a technique that you use, it brings the whole into the Street Art thing that is going on today.
Chris Stain: Yeah it’s bringing it up to what people are doing with street art now.

Brooklyn Street Art: How many pieces of hers have you done?
Chris Stain: I’ve probably done six or seven, with one that’s unfinished. I’ve done the one with Lady Pink holding the spray paint cans, the one with boy taking the tire off (or putting it on, I can’t tell), the one on the roof, the “Cries of the Ghetto”.

Billy Mode: You did that one with the kid holding the dove on the roof.

Chris Stain: Yeah the kid holding up the pigeon on the roof with one hand and there’s another one with the same boy where he’s holding two pigeons close together.

A Chris Stain piece from a couple of years ago is based on a photograph by Martha Cooper (© Chris Stain)

Brooklyn Street Art: Oh yeah! Gaia is doing that one for this show!
Chris Stain: He is? Cool, that’s cool.
Brooklyn Street Art: Well he loves doing birds, and feathers, and animals.
Chris Stain: Well Gaia’s a bird brain, that kid, so it makes sense.

Chris Stain’s reference screenprint for the wall (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Billy Mode updated the letter style for this new piece. Here’s his sketch. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Brooklyn Street Art: So Billy you changed the style of the lettering for “Cries of the Ghetto”. How would you characterize this new style?

Billy Mode: Windy style! It’s loose, I don’t know. The original style in some ways it’s fitting to the imagery in that it is classic but I kind of see the “Cries of the Ghetto” as being more victorious now. I want those letters to be more celebratory and have more energy to them. A lot of my letter styles are, not necessarily flamboyant, but they have a lot of flair, a lot of motion. I’m really just bringing in my own take on it. There’s some influence from other people’s style, and I think that’s what happens in graffiti art is you get motivated by what other people are doing.

Chris Stain and Billy Mode (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Brooklyn Street Art: Martha, your blog for 12oz Prophet is followed quite heavily. What is your favorite part about writing a blog?
Martha Cooper: My favorite part is not the writing part! For me the best thing about blogging is that I get to make use of photos immediately instead of just archiving them for possible future use as I formerly did.

Chris Stain and Billy Mode (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Brooklyn Street Art: Stickers are a really popular medium for expression on the street today and you point to Twist, Cost, and Revs as some of the first to use them. What makes stickers so interesting?
Martha Cooper: Stickers are everywhere and yet they’re invisible to the uninitiated. Keeping your eyes peeled for stickers turns a walk down any street into a treasure hunt. It’s a fun way to navigate a city.

Chris Stain and Billy Mode (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Brooklyn Street Art: After years of searching for perfect shots, what’s the Holy Grail now?
Martha Cooper: Now I’m more worried about archiving my photos than taking them. I have enough pictures to last several lifetimes but I need to be able to find and access them.

Chris Stain and Billy Mode (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Brooklyn Street Art: Your photographs of New York City youth and their art inspired the art of the next generations. What do you think is your legacy as a photographer of this pivotal period?
Martha Cooper: In the pre-digital era, culture was disseminated by newspapers, magazines and books. I was part of a small corps of mostly freelance photographers, filmmakers, and journalists who documented early hip hop. By paying attention to subjects that might have been overlooked by mainstream media, we helped start and spread the art, dance, and music movements, now called hip hop, worldwide.

Martha with her beloved 21 year old cat Pancho (photo © Jaime Rojo)

BSA…………..BSA…………..BSA……………

Martha Cooper : Remix
Featuring original photography from Martha Cooper and original remixes from Aeon, Anton van Dalen, Aiko, Barry McGee, Bio, Nicer, B-Gee, Blade, Blanco, BurningCandy Crew, Cey, Cekis, Chris Stain, Claw, Cosbe, Crash, Dabs & Myla, Daze, DEARRAINDROP, FAUST, Flying Fortress, Freedom, Fumakaka World Dominator, Futura, Gaia, How & Nosm, Jane Dickson, John Ahearn, Jose Parla, Kenny Scharf, LA II, Lady Pink, Lee Quinones, Anthony Lister, Logan Hicks, The London Police, Mark Bode, Nazzareno Stencil, Nunca, Mare, Quik, Evil Dr. Revolt, Shepard Fairey, Skewville, Subway Art History, Swoon, T-Kid, Terror161 and Victor Castillo.

Coming to Carmichael Gallery April 9.

Chris Stain and Billy Mode “For Martha”

March 14, 2011 Artists, Brooklyn, NYC, On the Street

This weekend for BSA was a little bit of street art and graffiti history alchemy, transmuted by the presence of the lady we were all doing it for, Martha Cooper. To celebrate her birthday and the soon to be unveiled “Martha Cooper: Remix” show at Carmichael Gallery in Culver City, CA, Street Artists Chris Stain and Billy Mode sprayed aerosol into gold using imagery from her photography as base inspiration.

Chris Stain and Billy Mode (photo © Jaime Rojo)

On this bitterly cold and windy Brooklyn night, the good humored boys were blowing through cans on tops of shaking ladders, continuously working against the elements for what Chris called “some xtreme painting”. While taking a break to warm up inside, everybody had some chocolate birthday cake and Martha flipped through Subway Art with Chris and Billy, answering questions and relating stories about what it was like for her to capture graffiti on trains in New York in the 1970s and what it’s like to see Street Artists like Chris Stain interpreting her photographs today.

Chris Stain and Billy Mode in the reflection of rainwater pooled (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Our first conversations in September ’09 with Martha for a posting on BSA that discussed art inspired by her work evolved into a 50-artist “remix” show featuring old-school graff writers and new guard street artists next month.

“I thought about what we had done, what you had done in that blog post. We talked about how artists had used my work and I thought, ‘Why don’t I do that?’ ,” Martha remarks on the formation of her show plan.

It has been a genuine honor to be a part of the process and to see the pieces coming in to Ms. Cooper’s studio for the show. It’s also been intoxicating to imagine the relationships and personal paths that have intersected in the pursuit of artistic expression. Each invited artist has a very personal take on the influence of her photographs from a 40 year span, and the directions they take the work are myriad. Watching Chris and Billy create this large scale wall tribute in Brooklyn reminds us of the interconnected worlds of Graffiti Art and Street Art and how Ms. Coopers’ photography has contributed to the history and artistry of both.

Here are a few shots by Jaime Rojo of the installation for a sneak peek of this great experience – with a full length feature interview with Martha and commentary about the nature of the image from Chris and many more images coming this week.

Chris Stain and Billy Mode (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Photo © Jaime Rojo

BSA…………..BSA…………..BSA……………

Coming to Carmichael Gallery April 9.

Images of the Week 12.05.10

December 5, 2010 Artists, Brooklyn, BSA Images Of The Week, Manhattan, new york, NYC, On the Street, Week in Images

Our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: Alec, El Celso, Faile, Kenny Scharf, Kouk, Robots, and UFO

The finished Kenny Scharf Houston Street wall has brought a jolt of flamboyant color to New York just as all the leaves have finally been beaten off the trees and we transition to grays. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

This dead bird sticker has been on this spot in the Meat Packing District of Manhattan since 2007. Some street art is made to last! (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Kouk’s paintings of American Indians have been appearing in New York City – maybe they are a reference to this land that once was theirs before all the European illegal immigrants swarmed in? (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Images of the Week 11.28.10

November 28, 2010 Artists, Brooklyn, Manhattan, new york, NYC, On the Street

Our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring; Clown Soldier, K-Guy, Kenny Scharf, Shin Shin, Skewville, TipToe, and Wing

First NYC celebrated downtown artist, Street Artist, and Brooklyn resident Kenny Scharf. We have his first installed roll-down pieces in Chelsea that are part of his city wide project “The Street Gallery” with Anonymous Gallery and we have him in progress doing his large-scale mural on the Houston Street wall.

British Street Artist K-Guy was recently in NYC for a show at the new Chelsea spot Indica Gallery, which is named after the original Indica Gallery in Mason’s Yard, London. His new piece for Amnesty International is called “Blood on your Hands”, pointedly incriminating the masters of industry who profit from child labor and other inhumanity.

Next it’s a brand new collaboration between Shin Shin and Wing. Both artists create a fantastic version of the natural world, insinuating themselves into Street Art milieus with still life compositions of flowers and animals.

Finally TipToe pulled out a new colorful Minotaur and Brooklyn’s own Skewville got some glittery competition on the old wires.

The 25 Year War: WK Interact in New York, Part 1

September 9, 2009 Artists, Interview

A quarter of a century since falling in love with New York, WK looks at his route.

WK Interact was 8 years old, spending hours drawing on old floor plans. On the job with his father, even then he buried himself in his work while Dad rushed around giving orders at his interior design worksites in the south of France. A few years later, his drawings came alive with movement as he hung out all day in dance schools watching young bodies fly across the floor. Once more his style catapulted forward the day he discovered how to stretch and animate a figure just by dragging it across the glass of a photocopier. Action. Captured.

Without question, his love of the street, of art, and wild motion fully materialized and went on steroids when WK first laid eyes on monstrous, convulsing New York City. He was 16. He was blown away, frightened, and excited. Two years later, he gave into the magnetic pull of New York’s raw power.

“I remember I went downstairs and I said to my parents, ‘You know what, I am going to New York’, and my parents said ‘But why, what for? Are you going to be able to get a good job? Why do you have to go to a place where you don’t even speak English?’,” he remembers. A great struggle took place but he left for the United States anyway, alone for the first time. That’s when WK’s war began, almost a quarter of a century ago, on these streets. And he won.

(image WK Interact)

If his work on the street is an indication, it has been a constant state of war. Look at these images and themes that reappear in WK’s work since he first came to New York; Ever-present fear, violence, anxiety, overheated sex-play, fishnets & firearms, contorted figures racing, martial arts kicks to the head, hand-to-hand combat, boxers swinging, prisoners tied and bound, hooded figures snapping heads of bound businessmen, terrifying escapes in progress, maniacal twined and twisted forms and faces, propaganda, undercover spies, official seals, gun assembly diagrams, digitized labels, ID fingerprints, cameras, surveillance, camouflage, radioactive symbols, streaming codes and bureaucratic text passages, black military choppers hovering overhead, contorted soldiers screaming “bring me back”, a permanent state of survivalism… All of these hellacious visions collide and collapse and expand in continuous motion and interaction almost exclusively in black and white in wheat pastes, paintings, screen prints, photographs, sculpture, and performance installations on the street.

(image WK Interact)

You may think that some of this work is vaguely autobiographical, but for WK, all of this work is simply a reflection of the city he chose and the atmosphere here. “New York is extremely demanding and challenging”, he says, “If you do something sexy in the street in New York you are in trouble. If you do something violent, people will give you the thumbs up!”

In other words, he’s playing to the audience in this particular city and unfortunately it may give an inaccurate impression of WK, the person, “I’ll just say this; My work, the people always see one thing – fear, attack, violence. They have absolutely no clue of the other side. I don’t think they are ignorant. My work is very black, it’s very bold, it’s very graphic, it’s very strong. There is nothing really friendly like a little bird flying around or a pink piglet… it’s totally not that. But I live in New York City and I am responding to that kind of contrast. The weather is very strong, very hot and very cold. All the traffic is heavy, the structure of this city is almost like a double bladed knife. I wanted to adapt myself as a New Yorker and adapt my mind as an artist. I’m always fascinated by this fear, and the people who want to ignore it.”

It was the mid-1980’s and there was not such a thing as “Street Art” yet, but “Low-brow” was in full effect, with graffiti as a new darling in the booming art market. The City had just pulled out of a deep recession, Wall Street wall was flush, newly minted “Yuppies” were ordering sushi and flashing their Swatches, Run DMC was rocking a tricky rhyme, and graffiti had been nearly scrubbed from all the subway cars. Kenny Scharf took his cartoons into the Tunnel, Richard Hambleton was doing shadows on the street walls in the Village, Keith Haring was doing his thing in the subways, and Warhol was fixating on Basquiat.

Image of Richard Hambleton shadow work by photographer Allan Molho

WK Interact knew very little about all of this activity, but he gradually learned. 18 year old WK looked for work as a graphic artist but because he spoke little English and had few connections, doors slammed in his face quickly one after another. Eventually he got work as a carpenter and painter, living in a tiny room on Houston in Alphabet City.

The Lower East Side was his first real school; “I was like a student. I was not that good in school, and all of that work, work, work to get a diploma! That diploma was absolutely no help to me. My own diploma was my own dream, it was my own need. It was not proving anything to anybody, just me.” What followed was the “School of Hard Knocks”; occasional opportunities, a lot of drawing and time alone observing city life and street life, experimenting with his work on the street, and missteps that included a period actually living on the street in a box. Socially, he wasn’t able to connect with other artists and couldn’t really understand how to navigate the city and street culture world he had thrust himself into. He spent a lot of time feeling a deep sense of alienation.

A younger WK on the Williamsburg Bridge (image WK Interact)

“When I started to do my stuff I was so ‘not there’. I was so different and without an understanding of the art, the graffiti, the branding. Nobody really understood me; I was a bit early to be put in this category so I created myself just to be “this guy”. There were groups there, but I was on my own. And it was very, very difficult to believe in myself. It was so difficult not to be a part of a group. It was so difficult not to be able to speak English. I used go seek artists because I liked their work, and they never replied, or never wrote back.”

While WK still values those hard years because his inner strength and knowledge of humanity and inhumanity was greatly broadened, not to mention his development as an artist, he wouldn’t recommend them to you as a friend, as those years haunt him today. Coupled with feelings of rejection from his parents, this sense of alienation made him a lone wolf in a hostile town.

Prince and Lafette (image WK Interact)

A turning point for WK may have been the literal turning point of the corner of Prince and Lafayette streets in Soho, a garage and mechanics business. WK liked the multiple surfaces and angles of the lot, as well as their industrial rawness and he inquired about who owned it. After cajoling the owner of the garage to allow him do a piece on the wall, he eventually went on to “run” that whole corner that was a mechanic’s garage for a number of years. He likes to say no one noticed the racing, leaping, landing, crashing, chasing, panicked people in black and white on that block for many years, but in fact many New Yorkers around at that time still remember the sudden surprise of those images on the buildings and began to look forward to checking them out in when they passed through Soho.

Alek and WK (image WK Interact)

A piece on it’s larger overhead walls one time featured model Alek Well – a bicephalous blur portrait of gut-busting joy and ebullience as one head is tossed back to the left and one slightly forward to the right, anchored by solid shoulders. The scenes and players changed but usually the entire space was a spooked by hair-raising scenarios which you may or may not want to understand more clearly.

Similarly many people remember as “classic” the view of WK’s iconic 2-story speeding rollerblader racing along a building on the southwest side of Houston street to jump across Broadway. To hit one of his spots in it’s context is to experience a sudden pick-up in pulse, or skip in the beat, and a little bit of confusion that sharply torques the wild energy of the urban environment. No one else endeavors to shake you like this. It’s safe to say that you admire the mind of the artist who brought you this jolt.

(image WK Interact)

He lived frugally in a tiny studio and brought home left-over paint from his day jobs. It was pretty early in his career that he decided black and white paint was the best way to portray New York and it’s brutal contrasts. “If I go back to my country I will begin to paint blue and pink,” he explains.

Suffice to say, it’s been a long, arduous climb and not one he likes to speak about for a long time, understandably, but eventually WK Interact found his way in New York, and London, and Paris, and Italy, and Sydney, and Japan…. With labor, persistence and luck one opportunity turned another. He doesn’t appear unduly proud that his work today is in demand. He is thankful that he shows in respected galleries, is featured in articles, videos, and he is continuously on the move.

(image WK Interact)

When looking at the rough times, he says, “Those limitations created what I did. That made me want to reverse it, to upgrade it – so I made myself do more. You can see the force in my work, that constant motion, the face. It is on the move, you can see the actual thing vibrating, and this has been my position, and it has been like this for the last 23 years. As far as what happened to me coming to the States, I don’t wish this for anybody. I think this was painful, and it will always be painful.”

WK Interact (photo Jaime Rojo)

Part 2 of this inteview continues here

1980’s New York Street Life (the MTV version) with Run DMC in “It’s Tricky”

WK Interact Site

JOY RIDE Group Show at Anonymous Gallery

May 24, 2009 Artists, Events, Gallery, NYC, Opening

JOY RIDE

Opening Reception: June 18^th – 6 – 10PM /
6PM PERFORMANCE BY HUNGRY MARCH BAND at CHRYSTIE ST. and BROOME ST.

Kenny Scharf, Jonas Mekas, Martha Cooper, Agathe Snow, Kelsey Brookes, Cheryl Dunn, Maya Hayuk, Ryan Humphrey, Kenzo Minami, James Jean, Graffiti Research Lab, Scott Campbell, Erik Foss, Peter Sutherland, Mike Giant, Leo Fitzpatrick, Chiara Clemente, Julia Chiang, Takuya Sakamoto, AIKO, Ellis Gallagher, Gaia, Ji Lee, Chris Stain, Chris Uphues, Falcon Duran, Aakash Nihalani, Paolo Bertocchi, Taliah Lempert, Alfredo Bovel and Shane Bovel, Nesta Mayo, Stewert Semple, Benedict Radcliffe, Ashira Siegel, Steve MacDonald, Brian Vernor, Artus De Lavilléon, James Newman, Kevin Foxworth, Joe Stakun, Andrew McClintock, Marco Mucig, Yatika Starr Fields, Daniele De Lonti, Lisa Romans, Amy Bolger, Wonka,Jacques Ferrand, Marc Sich, Herman Mao, David Komurek, Silver Warner, Patrick Trefz, Made in Queens, Greg Ugalde, Camilla Candida Donzella, Fast Eddie Williams, Tristan Eaton, Robert S.L. Waltzer and Gordon Stevenson, Jud Turner, Suzette Lee, Wiilliam Robbins and Jeffrey Robbins, I LOVE DUST, Maripol and Lino, Dana Goldstein, Rajan Mehta, Nathaniel Freeman, Giftcycle, Amelia Shaw, Jessica Findley, Lauren Silberman, Alessandro Zuek Simonetti, Daniel Leeb, Matteo Di Nisio , Ed Glazar, Bradley Baker, Cecily Upton, Rich Jacobs, Chris Thormann, Massan Fluker

Hungry March Band kicks off opening night at 6 PM with a performance in “the pit” at Sara D. Roosevelt Park on Chrystie Street and Broome Street. Joy Ride maps will be available at each location.

For available artwork and more information about Joy Ride in NYC please visit www.anonymousgallery.com

or contact info@anonymousgallery.com
For more information about the Bicycle Film Festival, please visit

www.bicyclefilmfestival.com or contact jill@bicyclefilmfestival.com

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Banksy’s Reliquary (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Os Gemeos Untitled. Detail (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Pump Up the Sculpture Jam from SAM3

Sticker Phiends in AZ

*********************************************************************

Martha Cooper Remixed

How & Nosm interpret Martha Cooper’s original photo from the 1970s (both photos © Martha Cooper)

Cern YMI in Greenpoint by Gandja Monteiro

ROA at White Walls in SF

Image of ROA in Salton City (© and courtesy of White Walls)

White Walls Gallery

Chor Boogie in Washington DC

David Ellis and Blu in a collaboration of a loop video from 2009

Yo Son the Boyz from Queens are Comin out With New Jams Next Month!

This original photo taken on Houston Street in NYC in 1978 from which Chris Stain borrowed the boy on the right. (photo courtesy of Ms. Cooper © Martha Cooper)

Chris Stain and Billy Mode (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Chris Stain and Billy Mode (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Chris Stain and Billy Mode (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Chris and Bill take a break from the cold winds to talk about the piece (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Chris Stain and Billy Mode. The second day in the late afternoon begins (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Chris Stain and Billy Mode (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Chris Stain and Billy Mode (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Chris Stain and Billy Mode (photo © Jaime Rojo)

A Chris Stain piece from a couple of years ago is based on a photograph by Martha Cooper (© Chris Stain)

Chris Stain’s reference screenprint for the wall (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Billy Mode updated the letter style for this new piece. Here’s his sketch. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Chris Stain and Billy Mode (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Chris Stain and Billy Mode (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Chris Stain and Billy Mode (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Chris Stain and Billy Mode (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Martha with her beloved 21 year old cat Pancho (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Chris Stain and Billy Mode (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Chris Stain and Billy Mode in the reflection of rainwater pooled (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Chris Stain and Billy Mode (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Chris Stain and Billy Mode (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Chris Stain and Billy Mode (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Chris Stain and Billy Mode (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Chris Stain and Billy Mode (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Chris Stain and Billy Mode (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Photo © Jaime Rojo

The finished Kenny Scharf Houston Street wall has brought a jolt of flamboyant color to New York just as all the leaves have finally been beaten off the trees and we transition to grays. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

A gentle revelation: Mother Mary appeared on the streets of Brooklyn (photo © Jaime Rojo)

This dead bird sticker has been on this spot in the Meat Packing District of Manhattan since 2007. Some street art is made to last! (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Some pointed modular street talk. Hell Yes! (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Alec stuffs this AK with peace and a flag (© Jaime Rojo)

El Celso’s own interpretation of those ubiquitous Peruvian posters (photo © Jaime Rojo)

El Celso (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Faile (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Robots at night (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Kouk’s paintings of American Indians have been appearing in New York City – maybe they are a reference to this land that once was theirs before all the European illegal immigrants swarmed in? (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Kouk (photo © Jaime Rojo)

A dead mouse next to a UFO. New York, New York! (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Kenny Scharf (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Kenny Scharf (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Kenny Scharf (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Kenny Scharf at work on the Houston Street mural. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Kenny Scharf (photo © Jaime Rojo)

K-Guy (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Shin Shin, Wing and Clown Soldier (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Shin Shin and Wing detail (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Shin Shin and Wing (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Shin Shin and Wing detail (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Tip Toe (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Skewville and Unknown Artist (photo © Jaime Rojo)

A quarter of a century since falling in love with New York, WK looks at his route.

1980’s New York Street Life (the MTV version) with Run DMC in “It’s Tricky”

Featured Video | Martin Wong’s “Houston Street”

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