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.
It’s no joke, this feeling of connectedness across cities and time zones that the street art and graffiti scene encourages – and often, it all overlaps in NYC, yo! This week, we have Martin Whatson and Hama Woods from Norway on the wall in New York, and it was a pleasure to see them both. It’s another honor to see Niels “Shoe” Meulman in the hood for only a minute, but long enough to see his new wall in Bushwick go up! We’ve been very lucky over these last 15 years to meet so many great people and talents worldwide, making streets in new cities seem like home because we see the work of friends and acquaintances wherever we are exploring. This week we have shots of New York and LA mixed together – enjoy the show!
Here is our weekly interview with the street: this week featuring Adam Fujita, Martin Whatson, Adam Fu, Niels ‘Shoe’ Meulman, Solus, Danielle Mastrion, Optimo NYC, Hama Woods, Cody James, BK Sckler, Toe Flop, Hiero Veiga, Hydrane, Notice, Jayo V, Alexali Gonzales, TBanbox, and Fenji93.
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week! And how beautiful this city is, even when the heat is on. The amount of talent on our streets is so overwhelming, thank you New York.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: Homesick, Mort Art, Optimo NYC, Savior El Mundo, Neckface, Lungebox, DEK2DX, Hektad, Paolo Tolentino, Jappy Agoncillo, SMURFO, Mike King, Mat Lakas, Lasak Art, Snith Node, Big808, Talia Lempert, Individual Activist.
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week! These are our longest days of the year. Savor them, luxuriate in them, celebrate the light. The trees, the grass, the plants, all richly green. The breezes are smooth against your cheek, the sound of kids screaming as they play in the park is like music.
The ebb and flow of humanity washes across the pavement daily here in our gritty city – forlorn, inquisitive, raucous, opinionated, gentle, buoyant, clever, blunt, wonderous, rarely neutral. Our murals are mighty, our styles can be wild, illustrative, fantastic, inertly corporate, romantically impressionist, electric and eclectic. Unlike many downtowns, this collection is organic and unmediated – perfectly imperfect. As inhospitable as this city can feel to a newcomer, remember this; You are welcome. Do your thing.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: Faile, Joe Iurato, Queen Andrea, Dasic Fernandez, Optimo NYC, CES, Hef, Spot, KMS Crew, Ange, Bekah Bad, Logan Hicks, Hiraku, Agud, Lexi bella, and Jeff Hernandez.
Style Wars! A new interpretation of it is blazoned across the Houston Wall thanks to Optimo NYC, who is rather owning it recently. This free-wheeling ever changing magnet for attention in a very gentrified Manhattan cheers the fans of true graffiti almost daily right now, buffeted by the roar of traffic and the occasional rock band playing in front of it.
The many flavors of New York street art and graffiti are everywhere – in community murals speaking about mental health, aerosol tags in doorways, in wheatpasted poems on subway columns, in soldiered sculptures on the sides of parking signs. New Yorkers love to be expressive, and in general, indulge one another’s imperfect ways of doing it. There is usually someone who is crowing about the golden age of New York, and who can deny one person’s perspective. Ever the optimists, we see the changes, the losses, the gains, and the free-wheeling spirit alive on the streets, and we think New York is having a golden age right now.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: EVOL, Cey Adams, Giani NYC, No Sleep, Mort Art, JDL, Optimo NYC, Chris RWK, SEIMR, RUTHE, Scott McDonald, Sawr, Tymon De Laat, Amill Onair, Sherwin Banfield, and David H. Wagner.
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week! Happy Easter! Happy Passover! Merry Arrestmas!
This is an excellent time to be in New York because everything is in bloom, and for a moment, there is love in the air everywhere you look. Or is that just the legal weed they sell from the truck in front of your apartment the way they used to sell falafel?
This is s beautiful time
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: Louis Masai, Jason Naylor, Voxx Romana, HOXXOH, Voxx, Optimo NYC, Vers, Jesus, Lasak, D.Z.L.T., Envio, MENY X, Krave, and Abuse.
64% of Americans are living paycheck-to-paycheck, China and Russia are buddying up, BRICs countries are looking for new members, and the Bankers in your life are again looking toward their gilded escape bunkers.
We are transfixed by the first indicted US president, and gloating about having a system of democracy and justice. Now he is positioning himself as an “outsider,” a martyr. A billionaire outsider. We’re just waiting for these crowds outside Trump Tower to materialize. Where are they? Honestly, Fifth Avenue is more interested in the Easter Bonnet Parade that is coming.
But it’s a circus on the national tabloid news, which is unfortunately all of the news now. Our best minds are being entertained by 24 hour sports channels, Netflix and Tic Toc, and it’s not an accident. People are chided into fighting each other over trans-woke-snowflake-abortion-race-laptop-AR15-centered-drag-readings. Look! A squirrel!
Meanwhile, the daffodils are blooming everywhere in anticipation of Easter Week. People were cramming subways, buses, and sidewalks yesterday because of the warm sunny spring weather – and Smorgasborg opened this weekend in Brooklyn. NYTimes calls it “the Woodstock of eating,” due to its variety of incredible food choices – but of course, you can have just as much fun with a bag of chips or a slice of pizza sitting on a stoop watching the parade of New Yorkers march/sashay/stride by.
We had a great time at the Bronx Museum yesterday, catching the John Ahearn/ Rigoberto Torres retrospective and seeing both the artists in person during a panel discussion with artist Abigail DeVille – with fans rushing the stage for an autographed exhibition book afterward. These guys have championed everyday New Yorkers through their painted sculptures for four decades. It is revelatory and heartwarming to see this very large collection of works never shown together before. Make sure to check out “Swagger and Tenderness: The South Bronx Portraits” until April 30.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: Stikman, Zimer, Subway Doodle, A Lucky Rabbit, Qzar, Optimo NYC, Sekt, AMMO, CEYNYC, Toeflop, Early Riser NYC, Julia Cocuzza, and Miki Mu.
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week! Optimo NYC on the Houston wall yo! Born and bred, a true New Yorker, and deserving of this wall after paying dues for years. Why does this wall sometimes look better when curated by the street? The holy chaos that reigns here is the pure DNA of the city, unbossed and unbought.
This week the street art is fresh! Never mind the proxy wars, the exploding trains, the 30% YOY drop in 401Ks, the transitory inflation that wasn’t, the Chinese spy balloons that weren’t, the Nordstream 2, the effort to privatize Social Security, the polarization that is encouraged by the media, and the increasing difficulty of New Yorkers to pay the bills… we still have a lot of extraordinary artists, and they are profligate! Also, we have Flaco, the Central Park owl fugitive, and his adorable ear tufts.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: Shepard Fairey, Sticker Maul, Modomatic, Bad Brains, NYC Kush Co, Optimo NYC, Pest AC, Valentin Vewer, Holly Sims, Eternal Possessions, Cloudy is Here, and Gosup.
This time of the year, many people become nostalgic, remembering earlier times that seemed simpler, bathed in sepia tones. Walking into the Pop International Gallery a couple of weekends ago – fresh from a Swoon talk with Jeffrey Deitch and on the way to the opening of Graffiti Kings at HOWL – it was a surprise trip to the mid-2000s of New York streets when the graffiti scene was adjusting to a fleet of new street art kids on the block.
Fernando “SKI” Romero was one half of a graphic team called UR New York at the time with co-writer 2Easae, and they were making their own transition from the street to the studio. In the new show at Pop called WON FOR ALL!, Mr. Romero takes us back to see a cluster of youth who were in his orbit, and if you were walking on the streets of Brooklyn and Manhattan, probably yours.
“I’ve known these artists for years,” he says, “Many of us came up together in the art world. They are my friends and family.”
Born and raised in New York, Romero is very familiar with the graffiti scene that made the city famous, even recently curating a show of some graffiti-writers-turned-artists who originally inspired him, like CRASH, DAZE and Tats Cru. After attending Parsons School of Design and selling his own stuff on the street in SoHo for six years, he took a decade to dedicate himself to developing his own deconstructed letter style for the gallery.
Now SKI is reflecting on a golden age for his own development as an artist with WON FOR ALL and shows solidarity with a small cluster of talents who have pursued their professional careers that were supercharged by their experiences on the street and around the culture. Here’s Dark Clouds with his patterned and swooping pockets of rain, alongside the graphic output of Matt Siren that hints at superheroes and graphic novels.
Elsewhere the bright font-centric Queen Andrea evokes 1980s teen mag optimism, while Gigi Chen’s formal painting techniques venture into fantasy and photo-realism. In the main window on the Bowery is perhaps the most recognizable top-hatted character, Optimo, another true born and bred New Yorker whose love for the culture is evidenced by a prodigious mass of street stickers incorporated into one of his canvasses. Partnered perhaps in their historical reverence for graffiti writers are SKI, with his sideways blown layers of bright letterforms and gritty graphic cityscapes, and Cerns’ omnivorous forays across realities – anchored by colorful characters that may remind some of the train writers during the 1970s.
“I chose these people because of talent, skills, and dedication,” he says. “During the pandemic, these artists were the ones who kept me sane and motivated during a time when I felt alone. This show is a way to bring them all together to say ‘Thank You”.
WON FOR ALLI FEATURED ARTISTS include Queen Andrea Dark Cloud Gigi Chen Matt Siren Optimo NYC Victor Ving Emilio Martinez Cern Chris Boss
G. James Daichendt. Robbie Conal: Streetwise: 35 Years of Politically Charged Guerrilla Art. Schiffer, 2020. Reprinted from the original review. …Read More »
A vast aquatic landscape painted on the pavement becomes a collective artwork and an open-air playground.Artistic direction by Andrea Conte …Read More »
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
