All posts tagged: Project Super Friends

QUICK LOOK – MID WAY THRU A RAINY MBP URBAN ARTS FEST

7 pm

In to each festival a little rain must fall.  Drat!

That’s okay, a loose posse of people pulled off some work before the deluge.  And now the rain is over and the air is clean and crisp and the darkness falls and the dancefloor is being created before our eyes and hung with lights so the dance party can start in earnest!

A lot of Bushwick artists only awakened 3 hours ago and are on their second cup of coffee anyway, so by 9 p.m. there should be a steady throng of beer-guzzling peeps streaming in for the fresh smell of aerosol and Quicksilver. Organizers estimated 800 people have come through the doors and bobbed in and out of the multiple galleries, store spaces and checked out the bands, DJs and painters, stencilers, wheatpasters. Not bad for the first time MBP!

A BRIEF insight from camera phone, phone camera thing that I can barely figure out …

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Bushwick Pride is all over these t-shirts by J. Mikal Davis and Salome
Typical party attendees, no? (Celso, Royce Bannon, and Veng from Robots Will Kill) (photo Steven P. Harrington)

Typical party attendees, no? (Celso, Royce Bannon, and Veng from Robots Will Kill) (photo Steven P. Harrington)

Is this Damian from the Omen? (photo Steven P. Harrington)

Is this Damian from the Omen? (Remo Camerota) (photo Steven P. Harrington)

Destroy & Rebuild with Project Super Friends (photo Steven P. Harrington)

Destroy & Rebuild with Project Super Friends (photo Steven P. Harrington)

Hellbent is such a charmer (photo Steven P. Harrington)

Hellbent is such a charmer (photo Steven P. Harrington)

In this economy I guess everyone is!  I know I've been saving all my returnable bottles. They are only a nickel but that stuff adds up! (photo Steven P. Harrington)

In this economy I guess everyone is! I know I've been saving all my returnable bottles. They are only a nickel but that stuff adds up! (photo Steven P. Harrington)

The loaves and the fishes - this is one of the stencils Mania was putting up (photo Steven P. Harrington)

The loaves and the fishes - this is one of the stencils Mania (from Indigo and Mania) was putting up (photo Steven P. Harrington)

Speaking of stencils, Remo Camerota did this naughty nurse fantasy with the fly-away hair do stencil (photo Steven P. Harrington)

Speaking of stencils, Remo Camerota did this naughty nurse fantasy with the fly-away hair do stencil (photo Steven P. Harrington)

Beards are the new moustache, which was the new fauxhawk, which was the new truckers cap. (Chris from Robots Will Kill) (photo Steven P. Harrington)

Chris from Robots Will Kill proves that beards are the new moustache, which was the new faux-hawk, which was the new trucker's cap. (Chris from Robots Will Kill) (photo Steven P. Harrington)

These hastily snapped pics are just a quick look. Stay tooned in the next couple of days for an insightful photo essay that will just send chills down your spine.

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Graff to Graphic: Destroy and Rebuild

Graff to Graphic: Destroy and Rebuild

Artist collective Destroy & Rebuild blasts past obstacles and finds opportunity through persistence on the street.

(photo Steven P. Harrington)

(photo Steven P. Harrington)

True New York City is in the streets and in the hard-won winning grit of these three young urban artists; NYC is in their every utterance, every step.  It’s also all over their bombastic color-infused artwork; the man-made urban symbols and signposts of this great city are the superstructure that forms each sentence and drips down every canvas….

The Building Print 2 by Destroy & Rebuild (courtesy the artists)

The Building Print 2 by Destroy & Rebuild (courtesy the artists)

These are the readily recognizable elements that make up New York: The Brooklyn and The Williamsburg, The Empire State, Twin Towers, factories, brownstones, tenements, chain links topped by razorwire, NYPD cars and taxis, graffiti trucks, the Coney Island Wonder Wheel and parachute jump, choppers in the sky, maples and oaks, the brass-balled bull of Wall Street, the New York Times, the stars and stripes stretched across the stock exchange, water towers, rolling grids of windows, colorful bloated throwies and a big-ass Revs tag.  All of this vaunted big-city imagery is splashed and layered into their work, and in their words.  It’s the language of destruction, and of rebuilding.

The Twin Towers by Destroy & Rebuild (courtesy the artists)

The Twin Towers by Destroy & Rebuild (courtesy the artists)

Destroy & Rebuild is a three-man Brooklyn-based artist collective whose art is structured and splattered, pieced and sprayed, screened and collaged, photographed and markered. More often than ever, it’s balanced.  All three guys got their start doing illegal graffiti on the streets and subways of New York City.  Eventually they decided to form Destroy & Rebuild on the premise that they used to destroy the city with their graffiti and now they are rebuilding it with their art.

(photo Steven P. Harrington)

(photo Steven P. Harrington)

“I feel like we are almost the definition of street art. Because we’re all bombers that come from the street, shelters, f*cked up childhoods, parents dying, drug addiction, and all that. But instead of falling victim to that and letting that take over our lives we just took it and kept on doing this.  Maybe it was going to jail and all that that made us have to do this but we’re doing it now,” explains Mike as he watches people stop by the table to look at their work.  The words don’t fly out in a bitter way, but with the confidence and authority of a personal truth.

Street art by Destroy & Rebuild (photo Steven P. Harrington)

Street art by Destroy & Rebuild (photo Steven P. Harrington)

Positioned on a street spot in Soho for going on three winters, Anthony (aka Avone), Mike (aka 2esae), and Ski all have the same position; artist and salesman.  On most days you’ll find them there with with canvasses stacked, displayed, and leaning on the front and sides of a collapsible table.  Each offering is a collaboration piece that mixes their personal styles and employs every new thing they are learning about their craft. The selection continuously evolves.

Today Ski isn’t here because he’s representing them in a show at a gallery in Austria, so Anthony and Mike tell BSA what their street art gig is about.

Anthony: Everything is by hand – we do everything ourselves – stretch our canvasses, burn our own screens, take our own photos, print our own photos,

Mike: A lot of these elements have meaning to us; from the graffiti trucks that we paint to the buildings that we stand in front of every day.  We even have pictures of our storage building, where we store everything.

 

(photo Steven P. Harrington)

(photo Steven P. Harrington)

While they talk there are frequent interruptions from potential buyers and curious inquisitors, to homies that roll by to give a shout out.

Anthony: I had a studio but I moved out. Right now I’m working out of my home, Mike is working out of his home.  We have designated studio space – like right now we are working in my living room, and I have the extra bedroom, which together I use for a space to paint in.  And Mike has a big apartment with extra space to paint in. So it’s kind of convenient in a way – we are spoiled in that manner.

Mike: We don’t stop. We take some breaks but we’re always working.  It’s always non-stop.

Brooklyn Street Art: It sounds like a thousand canvasses a year.

Mike: Yeah probably. We have a lot of pieces that we sell and that we have in different places. We send it out a lot, to galleries, stores. We have a lot of work out there right now. We have some work right now in Austria, in Italy, some of it just went to Australia with Ski.  We have some in the Greene Space at 112 Greene Street.  We actually lend out our art to some people – they just use it to decorate their office.  A lot of connections we get through here.  We always take down all of our emails from people on the street and go home and email them all back.  We find them, invite them to our shows, like to keep communication with all of them.

 

(photo Steven P. Harrington)

Destroy & Rebuild (photo Steven P. Harrington)

Brooklyn Street Art: It’s like you’ve got a whole business going, like you are businessmen, entrepreneurs.

Anthony: You know, a lot of people see you on the street, and they think you are low class; It’s New York. You have to forget about it.  I try to encourage others to do this, but I guess it’s kind of a blessing that they don’t. You got these kids who wanna say you are “commercial”, or that you are this and that.

A satisfied customer (photo courtesy Destroy & Rebuild)

A satisfied customer (photo courtesy Destroy & Rebuild)

Brooklyn Street Art: Isn’t that a typical criticism across the board that everybody gets no matter what you are doing if you are creative?

Anthony: Yeah, if you are creative – if you are working on a website at a company then you are “commercial”, if you are selling your art you are “commercial”… I’ve heard it all.  We just came out; it’s baby steps. But still we’re not in the door. We’re not anyone special. We don’t have an art rep, we don’t have an agent, we don’t have a gallery – we’re doing it ourselves. And we come from nothin’. You know what I mean? His mom’s not rich. We come from public assistance, housing projects… So for us this is an accomplishment.

The accomplishments are propagating, as is the quality and variety of the work.  Over the past three years the work of Destroy & Rebuild has shown growth and maturity, and the guys emphasize that it came from continued practice, studying the game, and saying “yes” to many projects that stretched their minds and challenged their abilities.  They continue to make custom work for private clients and paint murals in peoples’ homes, as long as they can keep their personal style intact.  Keeping the lines of communication open with opportunity has also meant they get invited to participate in group shows and solo shows abroad, create art for videos for 50-Cent, Grafh, and Busta Rhymes, design art and posters for Playstation,  paint semi-nude women with Ron English for the art-based social networking site Planet Illogica, have a show up this month at Destination Art Space in the Meatpacking District, and paint live at the MBP Urban Arts Fest in Brooklyn on October 3rd.

Stenciling up a mural in a private home (photo Steven P. Harrington)

Stenciling a mural in a private home (photo Steven P. Harrington)

BSA: Because you’ve been working so much you can produce good work fast. Being able to produce very quickly is a skill in itself.

Anthony: Definitely, that’s the power of silkscreening as well.

BSA: And the way you apply it, the way you place it. You’re eye has to be getting better with each successive round.

Mike: Yeah your eye, the color, the composition. Like if you look at our stuff in the beginning we were just taking it and screening anything anywhere.  Now we just keep stepping up and going higher.

Anthony: Yeah like getting our perspectives down.

Mike: Trying different things, you know.

BSA: So this is your education.

Mike: Yeah basically – experience.

Anthony: You know school is good for that, the experience of it. And the networking part, which is good too.  I learn more from you or Mike than I do from sitting down and doing a class or something.  So I would take the networking aspect of school and give that to people.  Being around other people who are trying to upgrade themselves is a good thing.

 

Gallery goers (photo Steven P. Harrington)

Gallery goers at a Destroy & Rebuild show (photo Steven P. Harrington)

BSA: What is Destroy and Rebuild?

Mike: It was just a saying for us for a while. We didn’t even dub ourselves with that name for a while.

Anthony: It was always like a “love and hate”, “yin-yang”, “boy-girl” thing. Can’t have peace without war, those kind of little sayings.  So we are building when we are working together, like right now, building means we’re adding on.  And we are destroying negativity,  we’re destroying stereotypes.

It also went great with our personal history. We had our time. We know vandalism is vandalism. At the end of the day we don’t go home and get arrested and say “Oh we were doing our art in the street”.  So we have that element – so that is destruction to a certain degree. And now we’re rebuilding. We’re rebuilding our lives, ourselves, our city – we make this city look good.

 

gallery favorite (photo Steven P. Harrington)

Silkscreen and the comics meet in this Destroy & Rebuild piece at Destination Art Space  (photo Steven P. Harrington)

Brooklyn Street Art: So many artists give up  – they give up when they hit a couple of obstacles because they don’t have the fire burning in them.

Mike: We keep on moving forward, no matter what.  We’re out here in the winter. We got customers bringing us hot chocolate. We’re the only artists that really come out here in the winter. We’ve been here for two winters.  People respect that.  No one would ever dare set up in this spot.

 

Twin towers on the table by Destroy & Rebuild (photo Steven P. Harrington)

Twin towers on the table by Destroy & Rebuild (photo Steven P. Harrington)

Brooklyn Street Art: It’s a huge accomplishment, and the fact that you have the fortitude to continue is an accomplishment.

Anthony: And it’s hard because you get obstacles. It’s harder for us. Yeah, Obama is president, blah blah blah, but it’s like “This kid has an afro and tattoos all over him and a swagger about him” so regardless of what he does, he’s judged.  He’s got a show going on in Austria right now, he just got back from working with PlayStation – all this stuff. But you still got people who say “He’s just a street kid, or a street artist or graffiti artist.”

Mike: Yeah, my upbringing was f*cked up. But instead of using that as an excuse to not do anything, I used it as a reason to knock out school. Nobody ever did college in my family.  I got my degree in graphic design, my little associates. But that totally opened my mind.  That sh*t opened my mind to this. We don’t have any recognition yet. We’re basically kind of the underdogs, you know. But we’re kind of like the rookies on the team, but we’re really talented rookies.

Anthony: Time itself sometimes destroys stereotypes you know.  You know people are biased for some reason.  You don’t have to address it, you can just go on your own accord and that in itself is good.

Mike: No, you just gotta keep doing what your doing, you know? Hopefully somebody’ll pick it up.

You can go see the rookies Destroy & Rebuild at the MBP Urban Arts Fest, where they’ll be killing a huge wall with other artists like Chris Stain, Royce Bannon, El Celso,  Abe Lincoln Jr., Indigo, Mania, Project Super Friends, infinity, and Ellis G.

"The Queens Perspective" by Destroy & Rebuild (courtesy the artists)

“The Queens Perspective” by Destroy & Rebuild (courtesy the artists)

“Sky is the limit and you know that you keep on, just keep on pressin’ on”  – Biggie Smalls

Destroy & Rebuild Website

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MBP Urban Arts Fest at Castle Braid

BrooklynStreetArt.com Blog is proud to be the Official Blog of the first MBP Urban Arts Fest!

The 2 PART, 1 DAY Urban Arts Festival goes from 1PM-2AM. Come celebrate and participate in the thriving urban art community MBP has advocated since it’s inception. With LIVE PAINTING, skateboard demos and contests, music and DJs, photography and art installations and plenty of art and books for sale, there will be something for everyone!

We will be taking over and transforming the entire lower-half of Castle Braid (114 Troutman Street, Myrtle Ave/Bwy JMZ Train) in Bushwick, Brooklyn.

PART 1

The day’s first part runs from 1PM-9PM and is open to all ages.

PART 2

9PM-2AM is 21 and over, featuring free beer and a dance party.

Art for Progress is the Non-Profit you gotta know;
an organization dedicated to supporting rising multi-discipline arts in New York City.

What to expect:

• Gallery-style art installations
• Live graffiti exhibitions & public graffiti wall sponsored by Montana Colors
• Live entertainment, DJs, dance & musical performances
• Skate park & sponsored game of S.K.A.T.E hosted by Substance Skateboards
• First 500 guests receive a FREE in-person signed copy of Talk Balk: The Bubble Project by Ji Lee
• Special Guest Signings
• All Ages Arts & Crafts: postal sticker tagging how-to; design your own “Umberto” character from Dutch artisit/illustrator Tijn Snoodijk; make-your-own recycled material tote bags with Bags for the People, design your own canvas laptop case from AIAIAI and more!
• Local & International Artist Showcases & Tables
• Unveiling of exclusive OBEY x PEEL poster by Shephard Fairey for Peel Magazine (authors of MBP’s PEEL: The Art of the Sticker)
• Shopping (MBP bookstore & Local Artists’ offerings)
• Food & Drinks (Brooklyn Brewery, Hoegaarden, Food Trucks)
• Gift Bags & Prizes – with bags from Bags for the People, goodies from Mimobots, Cafe Bustelo, Zoo York, AIAIAI and more!

ARTISTS/SPECIAL GUESTS
• Martha Cooper, Going Postal
• Remo Camerota, Graffiti Japan
• Ji Lee, Talk Back: The Bubble Project
• Luz A. Martín, Textura: Valencia Street Art
• Artists from ORBIT Gallery (featured in upcoming EdgyCute book: Joe Scarano, Angie Mason, Michael Caines, Chris Uminga, Motomich Nakamura, BECCA, Emma Overman, Robbie Busch; and Frank Sheehan)
• Special Guest Curator Mighty Tanaka (with art from: avone, JMR, Hellbent, Alexandra Pacula, Peter Halasz, Mike Schreiber, AVOID PI, FARO, Royce Bannon, BLOKE, Mari Keeler, John Breiner, Skewville)
Tijn Snoodijk of Shop Around – Netherlands
• RobotsWillKill (featured in Going Postal & PEEL: The Art of the Sticker)
• Project Super Friends
• Royce Bannon (featured in Going Postal)
• Chris Stain (featured in Going Postal)
• Destroy & Rebuild
• Cosbe (featured in Going Postal)
• CR
• Abe Lincoln Jr.
• Indigo & Mania
• El Celso
• Chalk drawings by Ellis Gallagher

PERFORMANCES
Hosted by: iLLspokinN
Termanology
Cormega
DJ Statik Selektah
DJ GSUS187
Krts (Powerstrip Circus)
Hot 97’s DJ Juanyto
Guest DJ Jason Mizell (son of Jam Master Jay)
Outabodies
Michael Brian
True2Life
Ad Lawless
Goodomens
Greenberet Team
Quan
Spokinn Movement
William B. Johnson’s Drumadics

SHOWCASES/VENDORS (list in progress)
Sabrina Beram
Abztract
Fresthetic
Owen Jones & Billy Hahn
Peter Moschel Johnson
Jemmanimals & John Bent
Natasha Quam/L’Ange Atelier
Dawn of Man Productions
Katie Jean Hopkins
Stephanie Paz
Alessandro Echevarria
Spost Love
iinex grafik
Andrea Grannum-Mosley
Gully Klassics

ADMISSION: $15 cash at the door, $10 in advance – come & go the whole day. Buy your tickets here!

A GIGANTIC thank you goes out to Kevy Paige Catering, who will be feeding our artists and performers gourmet-style as they work throughout the day!

OFFICIAL BLOG: BrooklynStreetArt.com

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