Welcome to BSA Images of the Week! New York has endured a week of choking smoke from Canadian wildfires, 98-degree (37°C) heat, and pounding summer thunderstorms. Today, the FIFA World Cup Final arrives, briefly transforming the city once again. Bars in Argentine and Spanish neighborhoods are overflowing with fans, an estimated 50,000 people will gather before giant screens in Central Park, and across the Hudson, 83,000 will pack MetLife Stadium. The match has also turned the region into a temporary diplomatic capital, drawing President Trump, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, Spain’s King Felipe VI, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.
Yet New York has a way of absorbing even the grandest spectacles. While the sporting euphoria fills many spaces, someone in Jackson Heights is comparing the price of canned beans and reaching for the store brand, another is watering tomatoes at M’Finda Kalunga Community Garden on the Lower East Side, someone else is doing the week’s laundry at Ludlow Laundromat, while another is stretched out beside a rooftop pool in Williamsburg. As they say on Broadway, come hell or high water, the show must go on.
Here is our weekly interview with the street, this time featuring CRKSHNK, Debt, Hops Art, IMK, JerkFace, Little Ricky, Makatron, Sara Lynne Leo, SOOBEK, and Worst Timer.
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week. The first World Cup match kicked off just across the river in New Jersey yesterday, and last night the hometown champion Knicks took over your rooftop—or at least a giant screen courtesy of your cousin Eddie, who hosted a raucous watch party where fair-weather fans from every corner of the fandom universe yelled at referees, second-guessed coaches, and hugged strangers after every basket. The city is on an exhuberant high because the New York Knicks have won their first NBA championship since 1973, ending a 53-year title drought.
Ah, bread and circuses. The games grow grander as the purse grows lighter.
Congratulations to the world’s first trillionaire, Elon Musk! Rome would be proud. The only thing missing is a senator feeding grapes to a tech CEO on a livestream. That’s probably next week.
Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, featuring: Andaluz the Artist, CARVE, Crash, Fumero, Gusto NYC, Harold Hunter, Jorit, Mike Makatron, Nemezoid, Qrusty, Tone Wash, and V. Ballentine.
It’s a long hot, steamy, jungle-like holiday weekend in New York. The city marked Independence Day with fireworks on the Hudson River, barbecues in the park, speeches to honor the day, and tanning on Brighton Beach and screaming on the rollercoaster at Coney Island. New York, no matter where you go on the street, always feels full of possibilities.
Possible robberies, that is! “New York is back, baby,” says a commenter on Reddit, discussing people getting robbed of luxury watches while sitting outside on the sidewalk and having cocktails in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. At least the New York Times didn’t say ‘eatery’ in their latest article provoking class hatred; we hate it when they do that. It’s called a restaurant.
In addition, Williamsburg did not just suddenly sprout some crime. Ask graffiti writers like KET who grew up there in the 1970s and gangs ran the streets. When the artists moved into Williamsburg at the turn of the century, a serial killer was living under the bridge. Danger may be a matter of one’s perception, we opine. Ask the folks chased out of the neighborhood by the violence of sky-high, unreachable rents, $40 entrees at restaurants, and women in sports bras jogging behind Dior baby strollers. Inquire about feelings of danger to the senior citizens joining the long food line on South 4th Street at Los Sures Food Pantry. It’s about a block away from the new MOXY hotel with the rooftop restaurant and bar and the enormous D*Face mural on the side.
In the category of BEEF, can we please stop the Kendrick/Drake beef? The “They Not Like Us” video dropped on Friday is compelling, true, and Kendrick is one of the best right now but beef is never good, in graffiti or rap or on TikTok or in the Middle East. We need voices of calm and reason and efforts to de-escalate. In other role model news elsewhere on the music spectrum, Ozzy Osborne delivers “Crack Cocaine” in his new video with Paris Jackson, featuring famed graffiti writer Kelly “RISK” Graval prominently wielding the cans on a street wall.
New York graffiti and street art persist and sometimes surprise, and occasionally, they have the last word. As usual, we’re keeping our eyes open.
Here is our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Dain, Toofly, Praxis, Mike Makatron, Eternal Possessions, Qzar, Timothy Goodman, Miki Mu, Warz, Tom Boy NYC, Red Half Tone, and Preacher Art.
It’s Memorial Day Weekend in New York and there are many commemorations, celebrations and family picnics in the parks. In Brooklyn the Memorial Day Parade kicks off in Bay Ridge at 11 am on Monday, from 78th Street and Third Avenue. The springtime fresh weather continues as we enter the unofficial first weekend of Summer, with lifeguards on our beaches and Fleet Week bringing 2,300 U.S. Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard members to New York to see, hear, and taste all that the city has to offer. Also in Brooklyn, you can listen to a concert by high-school musicians of the ISO Symphonic Band at Third Street near Greenwood Cemetary. The musical selections commemorate those who served in the armed forces, and will feature music by some of Green-Wood’s permanent residents, including James Weldon Johnson, Fred Ebb, and Leonard Bernstein. And, of course, there is new Street Art and graffiti to bring commentary and character to many neighborhoods.
Here is our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Modomatic, Mike Makatron, Muebon, Mike King, Frank Ape, Naito Oru. COSA V, Sen1, Cram, Senkoe, Kreau, No Snitch, Ali Baba, GLAD, Merk 26, Snik, and Ron Muralist.
We’re celebrating the end of one year and the beginning of the next by thanking BSA Readers, Friends, and Family for your support in 2023. Picked by our followers, these photos are the heavily circulated and “liked” selections of the year – shot by our Editor of Photography, Jaime Rojo. We’re sharing a new one every day to celebrate all our good times together, our hope for the future, and our love for the street. Happy Holidays Everyone!
“I didn’t feel like a giant. I felt very, very small. Mystery creates wonder and wonder is the basis of man’s desire to understand.”
– First man to walk on the moon, Neil Armstrong, in a speech to Congress, September, 1969. In a speech to Congress (16 Sep 1969).
New York is gripped with anxiety and demonstrations because of the Israeli attacks on Gaza that appear to violate International Law. No one is happy, and accusations fly in this most polarizing of international conflicts that threatens to spread – who knows where next. Friday night, a colossal demonstration overtook Grand Central Station and the streets around it by mostly Jews calling for a ceasefire, followed by an equally thunderous one across the Brooklyn Bridge. No one wants to talk about it, yet everyone is talking about it. May cooler heads prevail, and may children be spared our foolish wars.
The morning glories are still beaming blue and pink over fences on abandoned lots here, even as their tumbled vines and leaves turn yellow. The East Village Halloween Parade takes off at 7 p.m. Tuesday, and people are already in costumes on the subway, in the bar, at the pumpkin stand. Street artists have naturally gravitated toward our cultural icons, real and fantasy, and they continue to bring them to walls and doorways and the occasional box truck or subway car. Hearts were warmed this week when a subway rat was caught on video in the tracks dragging a glazed donut a distance to share with his (girl?)friend. You see, even our rats are generous in spirit.
We reflect on Western society’s preoccupation with youth and what a dead end it is, as we spotted a quote this week from British author Donna Ashwork on social media. It makes sense when you look at the Rolling Stones, who played at Racket NYC with special guest Lady Gaga this week. Also we caught the Ed Ruscha show at MOMA this week. These artists are in their 70s and 80s, as are so many of the icons of the Boomer Generation. Somehow, they can be just as compelling as in their heyday sometimes, and its not because of their physical appearance. Anyway, enjoy this poem/quote:
“Don’t prioritise your looks, my friend, they won’t last the journey. Your sense of humour though, will only get better. Your intuition will grow and expand like a majestic cloak of wisdom. Your ability to choose your battles, will be fine-tuned to perfection. Your capacity for stillness, for living in the moment, will blossom. And your desire to live each and every moment will transcend all other wants. Your instinct for knowing what (and who) is worth your time, will grow and flourish like ivy on a castle wall. Don’t prioritise your looks my friend, they will change forevermore, that pursuit is one of much sadness and disappointment. Prioritise the uniqueness that makes you you,
and the invisible magnet that draws in other like-minded souls to dance in your orbit. These are the things which will only get better.“
Here is our weekly interview with the street: this week featuring Queen Andrea, Solus, Degrupo, Jerkface, Mike Makatron, Miki Mu, Home Sick, TomBoyNYC, Dirk Hiekel, Keon IVGN, Robles 147, Mistake Project, and Carlo Beley.
With 700 languages spoken in these five boroughs, New York is a nerve center with a vast network of connections to the rest of the world. So, if you are feeling it, we’re probably feeling it too. This week, the Middle East conflict, more radioactive than ever, it would seem, is sending people into the streets in Manhattan and Brooklyn – with heightened emotions stoked by a media machine that loves to see us fight. Now, as we see continued bombings by Isreal outside of their country, as surrounding countries begin banging their war drums, and as the US sits in the sea nearby, more than one commentator on the news and in your local deli, laundromat, bookstore or bar are wondering aloud if a hot war can spread across the region, or further.
Closer to home, we see that street art has not reflected the events directly, but somehow, the anxiety that has been raised will be invariably internalized and aerosolized. We’ll keep an eye out for the messages and sentiments, which are far from unanimous.
Here is our weekly interview with the street: this week featuring Shepard Fairey, Mike Makatron, A Lucky Rabbit, Phetus88, Muebon, Ideal, Jurse, Skitl, Thobekk, Go4art, Polar Bear, Mr. ENT, ICU463, and Where’s the Water.
New York is drying out after the most intense storm we can remember just clobbered us on Friday. The loss of life, property, and minds that can happen when two months of rain falls in one day is hard to describe. Because we are such a dirty city, you can imagine the plume of detritus that got flushed out to sea, viewed from above. Our hearts go out to fellow New Yorkers who really suffered as a result of this pounding storm.
Here is our weekly interview with the street: this week featuring Nychos, No Sleep, Optimo NYC, Huetek, Zexor, Mike Makatron, Tempt, Lango, Viva Che Man, Carly Ealy, 2DX, Sucioe, and Colder.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: Winston Tseng, Mike Makatron, Maker, MFK, Ollin, Slue, KEZ5, Big Ash, D30, 2Much, and Sekt.
This is it! The last part of summer when you are still daydreaming, looking at the sky. The trees in all the parks are deep rich green, the city’s swimming pools are still teaming with people, the abandoned lots and railroad tracks are sprouting full-blown bushes and weeds that grow so tall they are over your head. Somewhere in those weeds is a secret hiding place where you’ll find a half pack of cigarettes and a porno magazine stowed by a teenager. Oh, they don’t read porno magazines anymore? It’s all on your phone?
Speaking of that topic, what about the disaster porn across all the corporate news shows every single day? Boy, that stuff sells! Hard to imagine they want to give up that money with all our eyes glued to TV millionaires like Rachel and Shawn and Blondy McBlonderstein and the rows of speaking Barbies and Kens spewing out one more outrageous piece of drivel after another. This presidency is a boon to business in so many fabulous ways! Almost better than war!
Street Art is alive and well and summer has produced a healthy crop of murals, wheat-pastes, stencils, tags, pieces, you name it. New Yorkers have a lot to say in public space – as well as a bounty of visitors, like the Brazilian Eduardo Kobra, who has been painting a new series of socially conscious walls with celebrities carrying the message around New York. On the street it’s always a mixed bag, and we like to see the huge walls as well as the small missives. You’re guaranteed a good crop this summer.
Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring Arkane, Benjie Escobar, Caratoes, CRK, Goodie, Gum Shoe, Key Detail, Kobra, Mike Makatron, Mr. Never Satisfied (Never), Mr. Baby, Primal, R. Heak, and Shaun Bullen.
Wanderer Mike Makatron has been spending his young manhood traveling the globe and painting walls and experimenting with styles of art ranging from fantasy illustration to loose and leafy botanicals, with symbols of indigenous spirits, psychedelic mushrooms and plenty of the time honored ying/yang.
A bit of an untethered dude’s dude, the Australian Makatron hit 10 cities and partied and sported his way through them all over the period of a decade or so, painting voluptuous lips, overflowing ashtrays, lush swamps, and multi-storied death burgers; the latter an allusion to what the intro writer Jeremy Taylor refers to as “a ‘McDonaldized’ world” and “addiction, shitty diets, rampant capitalism, psychadelics, (and) even Aboriginal Sovereignty.”
Naturally there is also the hetero kama sutra burger mural spilling with booty and boobs, layered with unclad couples in cozy positions of coital bliss. Many familiar celestial and vaguely sensual/sexual/reproductive motifs are represented, along with tentacled or winged creatures and skulls piled into scenes of space and barren moonscapes. Makatron goes into the wild and everywhere his heart leads; freewheeling in style and subject matter is his norm.
The tightest work is near the end of this travelogue with the artists fine art canvasses – here suddenly tightened and focused, unreal scenes of serenity are deftly rendered in warm detail. A quieted mind is free to wander here and suddenly these otherworldly scenarios begin to appear as though they may be real.
An important part of the Street Art ecosystem is the mural and right now we are in the midst of a mural revolution in neighborhoods, towns and cities everywhere. These are not your mom’s mural programs; overwrought art-by-committee debates that result in something no one is really in love with. And while they are often born from the community in some way, they do not try to address the same needs that a traditional community mural has filled by touching on the historical, sociological, local topics or lore. Although they could.
These are mural programs fueled often by one or two people who approach landlords and businesses directly and get permission for artists to hit up a wall. The results can be varied and more often than not the good ones survive.
Three forces are at work today contributing to this rise in freelance muralism and mural programs as far as we can discern. First, the rise of Street Art as a recognized grassroots global phenomenon has opened the eyes of moribund neighborhoods (and real estate developers) to the revitalizing effect that art in the streets can have on an area’s desirability and, along with it, has suddenly relaxed the nerves of many a politician and police officer.
Secondly, the rapid proliferation of a global Street Art festival scene that is creating a circuit of relatively young traveling painters “getting fame” with genuine D.I.Y. personal art and parlaying it to their following across digital platforms has certainly sparked the interest of more than a just a few peers.
Finally, now that we are a good ten to fifteen years into the modern Street Art explosion, many of the artists who stuck to their craft have actually developed it, broadened it, deepened it. Consequently we are blessed with a new generation of ever more gifted painters, wheat-pasters, sculptors, knitters, and installation artists who can knock out big pieces in the public space with speed and panache.
Today we take a look at a nascent local mural scene in Jersey City, New Jersey, but we could just as easily have examined nearby Newark – or a growing constellation of towns. Begun just a handful of years ago by a local blog named Savage Habbit, this small mural program showcases local and internationally known Street Artists and co-founder Inez Gradzki has organized many walls in an around an arts community that has been growing in fits and starts.
Using their enthusiasm for the scene and connections to artists, the blog has worked hard in a bricks-and-mortar way to show their love for their community. With an eye on the potential of this town that lies just a few minutes from Manhattan to be a magnet for culture and artists, programs like these are already attracting New York artists. Not surprisingly, a growing number are also deciding to live in these towns, having found friends and given up on trying to live in the expensive city that once drew and retained the creative class by the thousands annually.
So here we are with some recent walls and murals in Jersey City – a template for many more to come.
For decades, graffiti, street art, and contemporary art have spoken with one another, exchanging ideas, aesthetics, techniques, and attitudes along …Read More »
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
