All posts tagged: Northside Open Studios

Skewville Completes Mural, Jon Burgerman Flashes People

June 20, 2011 Artists

Saturday was a magnificent day for creativity and Street Art in North Brooklyn – The Northside Music Festival and Northside Open Studios and Crest Fest all conspired to bring thousands of music and art fans to trounce and march and maraud through the streets and parks and abandoned lots to discover why the axis of culture has been shifting away from Manhattan these last few years. For many important and evident reasons, it is immensely easier to make stuff happen in Brooklyn for artists and the people who love them to aid and abet them in the creative spirit. We were immensely fortunate to be around to assist talents like near legendary Street Artists Skewville and Championship Doodler Jon Burgerman to make cool work this week and we’re happy as hell about it.

Skewville. And on the Seventh Day the other half shows up (for a photo op) (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Skewville. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The foot traffic was heavy beneath the scissor lift as Street Art duo Skewville was finishing up a weeklong engagement with a wall across from the Brooklyn Brewery – a Grand Finale of a cityscape called “Last Exit to Skewville” that evolved over the 7 days to become a sweeping playland of sharp abstract shapes and poppy color. In many ways it is the culmination of a direction Skewville has been taking further away from representational and closer to abstract, less text heavy and literal – more implied.

Yeah, like a regular movie star or something. Ad Deville poses with Jeremy and friend. (photo © Steven P. Harrington)

The steady stream of inquisitors on this street and the unsolicited advice and comments brought a smile to Ads’ face and a wisecrack to his lips often. In particular he liked the observation that a guy had about the two crossed boxes he tagged in the yellow patch of color in the corner. “I like the eyes you put in the sun,” he told the artist. Others just stopped to take pictures or even get their picture taken with Skewville. At one point it was a family affair as Ad and Droo and his young son were all spraying with the aerosol – as the youngster tried his luck first on a dropcloth with the pros giving advice, and then he hit the wall with two hands clasped around the can. Good to see Father’s Day weekend in full effect and the skillz being passed down to the next generation.

Skewville. The mark of the twins. Their legs are apparently insured for millions by Lloyds of Brooklyn. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Skewville. The new generation of Skewville in training (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Future Painters of America meeting in progress. Skewville. Dad and Uncle cheer on the talented boy. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Skewville. After his little practice on the drop cloth he is ready for the wall. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Sneak Peek of Hardware Inspired Crest Fest, Opening Today

June 18, 2011 Artists

No you haven’t.

Wayne Heller and Ceder Mannan (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Seen this before.

Joe Franquinha is creating an operetta of hardware-inspired art by 150 artists in his store before your eyes, and even the jaded cannot claim to have experience such a rich, relevant and comedic art show. “Joe, did you see the cat in the middle of the plants?” his mom asks about a sculpture during the last rush of installations that has run late into the wee hours every night this week.

In a Wiliamsburg hardware store opened by Joe’s dad and his uncle in 1962, even the curating of a 200-piece art show is a family affair. A light opera of jazz and syncopated rhythms and even burlesque, as you roll through the aisles the mostly local art sings arias and raps rhymes of the working people from every hook and particle board, dangled from the ceiling, and, in the case of Street Artist Olek, crocheted entirely around a shopping cart and hand truck.

Olek (photo © Jaime Rojo)

For a decade Manny and his young son Joe, now in his late twenties, have thrown open the doors of the store to invite the artistic newcomers in this neighborhood to bring their creativity inside. What may be seen as a sly marketing maneuver to court a changing demographic actually morphed into a celebration of community, and comedy, with little tragedy. Cast on this leveling stage, Joe’s own passion for the arts enables a rare harmonic volley, where new talents never shown in a gallery before are hanging in the same aisle as more established performers with a global audience. As a participant in this real time interactive play, it’s up to you to discover them among the flat latex paint and gardening gloves.

BSA gives our thanks to Joe as a partner in provoking and invoking the creative spirit, and with this little sneak preview, encourages you to hop on the L train to Lorimer today and check it out. Follow the sound of bands and DJs and the smell of food vendors and walk past Jon Burgerman doodling all over a car on the sidewalk and you’ll be at the front door of Brooklyn’s own curious ode to hardware.

Aakash Nihalani (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Bert Shuck (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Erwin Sanchez (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Chris Stain (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Street Artist General Howe has been manufacturing arms to sell on the open market. What you do with them is your business. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Mike Graves creates this horny monk-like flasher installed on the aerosol cage. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Mike Graves (photo © Jaime Rojo)

A hardware tiara by Josh Cote (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Rachel Farmer (photo © Jaime Rojo)

New on the scene Street Artist Radical! gets his hand in the cookie jar. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

A depiction of the historic first space buff by Steve Browning (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Street Artist Veng of RWK has a lot on his head these days (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Street Artist XAM hangs one of his sophisticated birdhouses on a sign in Crest. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Click on the link below for more details about CrestFest and The Crest Hardware Art Show:

http://www.brooklynstreetart.com/theblog/?p=21765

Fun Friday 06.17.11

June 17, 2011 Artists, Brooklyn, California, Events, Los Angeles, NYC, On the Street, Opening, Performance

How YOU Doin’ ?

North of Grand Street – that’s how you know it’s NORTHSIDE. Shooting for SXSW status soon, Northside Festival already has tons of live free music in bars, clubs, and on the street – including ticketed gigs like BEIRUT tonight in McCarren Park. Did we mention there will be approximately 270 bands?

Now L Magazine is extending the offerings with a huge visual art component, replete with open studios and panel discussions and, this is where we come in, art in the streets.

This weekend the streets of Williamsburg will be alive and buzzing with an array of all sorts of visual and musical exhibitions and shows to mark NorthSide Open Studios and the very popular annual event CrestFest which includes the famous Crest Hardware Art Show, now pushing a decade.

This festival includes 175 events and participating galleries and artists’ studios. For additional information regarding the complete list of events, schedules and locations click on the link below:

http://www.northsideopenstudios.org/

“Sick” photographer Jim Kiernan Solo Show at 17 Frost Tonight

A combination of Brooklyn Street Art and Brooklyn Street photography, Jim is having his first show tonight. Stop by and say hi and have some refreshments.

17 Frost Gallery Here

“Last Exit to Skewville”

Skewville, the revered Street Art duo, are going LARGE this weekend on a 100′ long wall across from the Brooklyn Brewery and around the corner from the Brooklyn Bowl. Can’t get more Brooklyn than that, baby. The progress all week has been promising.

Skewville will be painting live on Saturday beginning at Noon to complete the 100 feet long mural on the corner of N. 11 and Wythe Streets. Special thanks to Crest Hardware and Montana Colors for their generous help. Read more about the project here.

Skewville mural in progress (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Crest Fest 2011

A neighborhood favorite, this art show in a hardware store has grown into a festival of it’s own, with bands and food and crafts. You have to see it to believe it, so put it on your list. Street Artists are well represented in the collection too with Olek crocheting covers for some garden equipment and Aakash doing some installations in the actual garden out back. Our short list includes Skewville, Jon Burgerman, Olek, Aakash Nilhalani, Haze, General Howe, Royce Bannon, Celso, and Laura Lee Guilledge.

For more a complete list of events and schedules click on the link below:

http://cresthardwareartshow.com/wordpress/

“Racing Lines” : Jon Burgerman Scrawls on a Car (Which is Usually Not Allowed)

CrestFest and BSA invited internationally renowned artist Jon Burgerman to do his trade mark doodling and drawing on a ZipCar right in front of Crest on the sidewalk, and with arms full of Posca markers at the ready, he’s going to be out there doodling LIVE!. A little more about it here.

Brooklyn Street Art and Crest Fest invite you to attend the Launch Party for NorthSide Open Studios

After Jon mucks up the car, we’re piling a bunch of monkeys in it and taking it for a drive around the hood, probably fighting over who gets to control the radio. We’re hoping to entice people on the street to go to the afterparty we’re co-hosting with Crest for the Northside Open Studios Launch party. We’ll drink a toast to Skewville and Jon and all the artists who make this gorgeously ugly borough a hotbed of creative activity. All sales benefit Northside Open Studios.

BOX HOCKEY at Pandemic Saturday

Pandemic Gallery invites you to come and play BOXHOCKEY!!!
The greatest game you probably haven’t played yet! We’ve been lucky enough to play it, and nearly poked an eye out, but that’s just because we have very little athletic skill. You’ll probably ace it like a pro.

Plus it has custom art based on the Box Hockey game by some of the kool kids on the Street Art scene among the list of participating artists;

AV
Dirty Deeks
Don Pablo Pedro
Keely
Matt Siren
Scott Chasse
Stikman
Tony Bones
Vor138
Wrona

Los Angeles based visual artist Patrick Martinez and his dialogue with the Streets of Los Angeles.

“Last Exit to Skewville” Emerges on a Brooklyn Wall

June 15, 2011 Artists, Brooklyn, NYC, On the Street

Brooklyn Street Artist Skewville, one of this city’s original sons, has been coaxing from his imagination a cityscape of intrigue and sly humor. With a bluntly cockeyed optimism tempered by the reality of kooks and freaks and madmen who run the streets and boardrooms in this city, over the past four days Ad Deville has been climbing and spraying and blocking out the giant chess game that is always at play.

After weeks of talking about where to take this piece called “Last Exit to Skewville”, the dude shows up with a piece of paper folded in half and a loose line sketch of the span of a bridge, chewing on the end of a pen. An amalgam of the bridges spanning the glittering and stormy East River, the pylons are two opposing chess players using the buildings of New York as chess pieces. As perspective is clarified above the river, a clunky cityscape emerges; a color punched rumbling blinking playground that calls you to jump across it’s rooftops and avoid falling.

Skewville; Saturday. At the begining there was a big red empty wall, a pen, and a folded piece of paper with the span of a bridge drawn on it. This photo literally captures the instant Ad Deville stepped off the curb to begin marking out the piece. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Skewville. Saturday. The first line gets rolled out. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

With his hands and arms and buckets and and rollers and cans he paces the length, climbing up and down ladders, blocking out the sound of traffic cacophony behind him and stepping aside for rain bouts; hour by hour the shape of the cubist and blocky abstractions that make a vibrant and shadowed city start to pop from this bricked Brooklyn wall.

Skewville. Sunday. The blueprint emerges with Brooklyn’s iconic water towers above. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Skewville. Sunday (photo © Jaime Rojo)

At this rate, Skewvilles’ finer graphic elements will arrive right on time as the week ends. Coming soon – marauding crowds of cleverly dressed, smart and sinuous music and art fans will swarm like honey bees in the streets of Brooklyn’s Northside. With maps and photo snapping cellphones in hand, they’ll see the installations in the streets, the artists in their studios, and Beirut in McCarren Park.

Northside Open Studios, The Crest Fest 2011, and the Northside Music Festival – This is the new Brooklyn, much like the old Brooklyn, where neighbors coalesce and celebrate and intermingle and where Saturday Adam Deville of Skewville will commander a scissor lift lofted high above heads to put the finishing touches on this ode to Brooklyn and New York and (dare we say it) his masterpiece.

Skewville. Like any artist who knows that stretching is necessary for growth, Tuesday is the day Skewville extends his vocabulary with new untried color – an unusual addition carefully approached. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Skewville scales bricks in this neighborhood now jolted with scaffolding and high-rising blocks of glass (photo © Jaime Rojo)

With the generous support from local family owned Crest Hardware Store (home of Crest Fest 2011) and Montana Colors, this project is possible.

Please come to the launch party too – BSA AND CREST FEST host the Northside Open Studios Launch Party Saturday Night

at The END in Greenpoint! Bands, Installations, and a Bikini Reading Series on the Roof.

Date: 18 Jun 2011
Time: 6:00 PM – 11:00 PM
Where: The End, Brooklyn
Event Details:
Co-celebrated with Crest Fest and Brooklyn Street Art, NOS Launch Party brings together an art exhibition of participating artists including a confessional box by Eva Navon, Rooftop Bikini Reading Series by Boomslang, video screening curated by Sasha Summer, and an interactive rocking chair video & sound installation by Sara Sun. Music performances include Snowmine, Balun, Merrikans, Dinowalrus and Walrus Ghost.

MORE INFO AND MAP TO LAUNCH PARTY HERE
All proceeds benefit Northside Open Studios.

More info on “Last Exit to Skewville” HERE

Brooklyn Street Art and CrestFest Invite you to the Launch Party for NorthSide Open Studios (Brooklyn, NY)

June 9, 2011 Art Fair, Artists, Brooklyn, Events, NYC, On the Street, Opening, Performance

NorthSide Open Studios

For more information about BSA “Last Exit to Skewville” for NorthSide Open Studios click on the link below”

http://www.brooklynstreetart.com/theblog/?p=21707

For more NorthSide Open Studios information on events, schedules and participating studios click on the link below:

http://www.brooklynstreetart.com/theblog/?p=21754

For more information about CrestFest and Crest Hardware Art Show click on the link below:

http://www.brooklynstreetart.com/theblog/?p=21765

GOS Presents: NorthSide Open Studios (Brooklyn, NY)

June 9, 2011 Art Fair, Artists, Brooklyn, Events, Gallery, NYC, On the Street, Opening

NorthSide Open Studios
Greenpoint Open Studios is teaming up with L magazine this year to bring you NORTHSIDE OPEN STUDIOS, a four day event celebrating a burgeoning art scene in Greenpoint and Williamsburg, Brooklyn. NOS is a collaborative effort between artists, organizations, businesses and volunteers to build a creative platform in which all members of the community can foster and contribute to a support system that encourages the sharing of ideas and relationships. As artists’ studios and exhibition spaces continue to emerge in the neighborhood, we hope to facilitate the growth of a thriving art community.

Click on the link below for a full list of events, participants, schedules and locations:

http://www.northsideopenstudios.org/

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Skewville. And on the Seventh Day the other half shows up (for a photo op) (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Skewville. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Yeah, like a regular movie star or something. Ad Deville poses with Jeremy and friend. (photo © Steven P. Harrington)

Skewville. The mark of the twins. Their legs are apparently insured for millions by Lloyds of Brooklyn. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Skewville. The new generation of Skewville in training (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Skewville. The new generation of Skewville in training (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Future Painters of America meeting in progress. Skewville. Dad and Uncle cheer on the talented boy. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Skewville. After his little practice on the drop cloth he is ready for the wall. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Olek (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Aakash Nihalani (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Bert Shuck (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Erwin Sanchez (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Chris Stain (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Street Artist General Howe has been manufacturing arms to sell on the open market. What you do with them is your business. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Mike Graves creates this horny monk-like flasher installed on the aerosol cage. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Mike Graves (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Mike Graves (photo © Jaime Rojo)

A hardware tiara by Josh Cote (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Rachel Farmer (photo © Jaime Rojo)

New on the scene Street Artist Radical! gets his hand in the cookie jar. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

A depiction of the historic first space buff by Steve Browning (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Street Artist Veng of RWK has a lot on his head these days (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Street Artist XAM hangs one of his sophisticated birdhouses on a sign in Crest. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

How YOU Doin’ ?

“Sick” photographer Jim Kiernan Solo Show at 17 Frost Tonight

“Last Exit to Skewville”

Skewville mural in progress (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Crest Fest 2011

“Racing Lines” : Jon Burgerman Scrawls on a Car (Which is Usually Not Allowed)

Brooklyn Street Art and Crest Fest invite you to attend the Launch Party for NorthSide Open Studios

BOX HOCKEY at Pandemic Saturday

Los Angeles based visual artist Patrick Martinez and his dialogue with the Streets of Los Angeles.

Skewville; Saturday. At the begining there was a big red empty wall, a pen, and a folded piece of paper with the span of a bridge drawn on it. This photo literally captures the instant Ad Deville stepped off the curb to begin marking out the piece. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Skewville. Saturday. The first line gets rolled out. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Skewville. Sunday. The blueprint emerges with Brooklyn’s iconic water towers above. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Skewville. Sunday (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Skewville. Monday (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Skewville. Monday (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Skewville. Monday (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Skewville. Tuesday (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Skewville. Tuesday is for color (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Skewville. Like any artist who knows that stretching is necessary for growth, Tuesday is the day Skewville extends his vocabulary with new untried color – an unusual addition carefully approached. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Skewville. Blue Tuesday (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Skewville scales bricks in this neighborhood now jolted with scaffolding and high-rising blocks of glass (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Skewville. Uniform waves lapping up the East River can easily be mistaken as the fins of sharks. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“Last Exit to Skewville” (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Skewville. Tuesday is for color (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Skewville. The city pops. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Featured Video | “Bronxlandia” Emerges

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