Welcome to the first BSA Images of the Week of 2021 !
We start our collection this week with an image of Christ crucified on a Facebook logo. If this is the level of subtlety that we can expect from the new year…gurl, we in trubble.
In fact, we have found that much of the organic street art that we find today has become increasingly strident in opinions expressed, especially around themes of social justice and political skullduggery. It’s all mixed in with favorites like pop figures, sports figures, cats. In a way, the artists are ahead of us, so we consider these images as the tea leaves for what is coming.
How will you interpret these messages from the street? Will you become emboldened? Scared? Or will they not have any impact on passersby?
Here is our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring 7 Line Arts Studio, Bastard Bot, Calicho Art, Captain Eyeliner, Calisi Maultra, City Kity, CRKSHNK, David F Barthold, Degrupo, Elle, Jeff Roseking, Joseph Grazi, NohJColey, Poi Everywhere, Sickid, Sticker Maul, and Stikman.
And the
newsreaders are revving you up for the big election, right? Which millionaire
will you vote for to save us? Meanwhile,
millions are already suffering without jobs, without food, without sleep.
Meanwhile in beautiful New York we are seeing splendid new art on the streets, skooling us again as we go back to school. We’re particularly interested in a trend toward using recycled products in the making of art. Welcome to October; and Mercury is still in retrograde for about 4 weeks so hang on brothers and sisters. It’s gonna be bumpy.!
Here is our weekly interview with the streets, this week including Blaze, Catch a Fire, CRKSHNK, David Barthold, De Grupo, Downtown DaVinci, Eye Sticker, J131, Rae, and Stikman.
RAE constructed this site-specific piece on the street by molding plastic supermarket bags into the desired design and using staples to keep them in place. Each panel was individually created to fit the existing panels on the existing door. That’s why we are calling it site-specific. We know that placement is a key element of any successful street art piece.
They are not staying quiet. If you had doubted the inclination of street artists to join the socio-political fray in 2020, don’t. Among the cute and decorative pieces out there, we are steadily discovering that artists are using the public sphere to take risks, addressing issues that are thorny and puzzling. As ever, the streets are a reflection of our society and all its fabulous dysfunction – a refreshing take on free speech that often makes much more sense than the disinformation war raging hourly right now on corporate media.
Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring Adam Fu, Blood and Soul, Clint Mario, Faust, Gazoo to the Moon, Jarus, Maia Lorian, Pure Genius, Raddington Falls, Sticker Maul, Stikman, TV Head ATX, Will Pay, and Winston Tseng.
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week. Shana Tova to our Jewish brothers and sisters, even as we mourn the Friday passing of one of Brooklyn’s own, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She was born here on East 9th Street in Midwood to Russian immigrant parents in 1933 and the governor says we’ll have a statue honoring her here too.
Meanwhile in our strained semi-democracy, daily anti-ICE protests continue in Times Square amidst accusations of heavy handed practices of the police, exotic animal complaints this year are up 77 percent possibly because people want to quarantine with roosters and monkeys to stay sane, and in-person school classes are again being delayed due to lack of preparedness and generalized fears of Covid-19 outbreaks among students and teachers.
Compared to all these news, the scene with Street Art appears tame. But from Red Hook to Soho to LES to Bushwick to Ridgewood, it is definitely not lame.
Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring BK Foxx, Chris Tuorto, City Kitty, CRKSHNK, De Grupo, Downtown DaVinci, Freakotrophic, Half, Joe Iurato, Kesta, Logan Hicks, Mish, Ouch, Praxis VGZ, Sac Six, Sean Lugo 9, Stikman, and You Go Girl!
Anarchists and lawlessness on the streets of New York? Where are you looking exactly? This is a narrative that charlatans like to slander our fair city with, where we spent 8 hours hanging out on blankets on the grass yesterday in Prospect Park, performing anarchist acts like eating sandwiches, reading books, taking naps, going for walks with thousands of our neighbors. So far this is one of the most beautiful Labor Day Weekends we’ve seen in ages and there was no army present.
Every time the fearmonger’s from outside of NYC try to scare people into voting for something, you have to be amused by their ignorance and obvious disinformation – and wonder if it isn’t a generalized fear of black and brown people that drives their critiques. Maybe they are fearful that New Yorkers are the most ethnically diverse population in the country and we are always getting along just fine with each other, even liking and loving each other on a daily basis and we have been doing so for years. Gorgeous and expansively green Prospect Park in the middle of Brooklyn is a fine example of it this weekend – you’ll see people of many backgrounds hanging out happily and civilly, barbecuing meats and vegetables, playing volleyball with the youth group, tossing the frisbee with their girlfriend, sitting on blankets and playing board games with their kids and neighbors, helping babies take their first steps, helping grandpa into a folding chair.
We didn’t see one fight or argument Saturday, and the park was completely teeming with people, and we saw maybe one or two police officers throughout all day – because apparently tens of thousands of us co-New Yorkers know how to enjoy a sunny day in the park with each other and without invoking chaos. On blankets, in lawn chairs, on picnic tables – there we all were; Indians, Africans, Mexicans, Germans, Italians, Jews, Conservatives, Liberals, Koreans, Chinese, Europeans, Buddists, LGBTQI, singles, couples, families, church groups – too many to list here. You could see all kinds of different foods if you walked around and heard music being played – some of it live and spontaneous, like the Dixieland jazz band, the violin quartet, the guy on the flute. We love New York and we love New Yorkers more than ever before.
So, no, Mike Huckleberry or the Foxes or the Divider in Chief, we don’t fall for it because we know the great people of our city. Scare people in the middle of the country with stories about lawlessness in our city, but you don’t fool us for a second. For the record, 93% of the Black Lives Matter marches across the country this year have been peaceful. We’re all capable of having the hard conversations, despite what you and your networks want people to believe – New York has been proving that for years. Sorry, society is moving on – or in many cases already has moved on – from the cultural hegemony phase. It ain’t perfect, but Jesus sometimes it can feel like it.
And now some street art images recently shot – our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Almost Over Keep Smiling, Antennae, Damon NYC, JKos Art, Little Ricky, Raw, Stikman, and Urban Russian Doll NYC.
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week and Happy Pride NYC.
No pride parade today, not that New York needs a special day for LGBTQI parades – that’s simply called walking on the catwalk, err, sidewalk.
The US is officially a pariah on the world stage – banned to travel to Europe. Because, you know, masks. But dude, we’re like in totally good company with other countries like Brazil and Russia. It’s a race to be number 1.
A special shout-out and respect today goes to the creater of the I (heart) NY logo and campaign, Milton Glaser, who passed away this week at 91. Many artists on the street today are aware of his other contributions to graphic design and illustration in the last fifty years or so. Rest in Peace.
In street art news, downtown Manhattan is still largely boarded up, so artists are taking advantage of the new canvasses. You see, there is a silver lining to everything if you look for it. Or a plywood one.
Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring Daze, DPF Studio, Dragon 77, Hek Tad, Sara Lynne Leo, and Stikman.
It’s good to see that Stikman is still lucidly dreaming himself into a world of mid-century superheroes and gorgeous dames even while in lock-down for this never-ending quarantine.
A charmingly witty self-insinuator into all manner of Americana from yesteryear, the mysterious Street Artist who started simply as a man made of matchsticks regularly utilizes a sophisticated array of printing methods to place himself in pop and pulp settings.
And he shape-shifts into the background easily, sometimes assuming a character or using himself as a billboard, or in a couple of these, a reminder to wash your hands and stay home.
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week, where we are dedicated to showing the news kids on the block in addition to the more established names. It’s a simple inclusive philosophy that in some way is ensuring a more level playing field for the voices on the street, and so far you tell us that is exactly what you like. Street Art isn’t about legal murals, its about people taking their voice and their talent to the streets, sometimes by any means possible.
If you were to look at the works on the street in New York you could get a good representation of the sentiment of its people; worried, confused, proud, playful, defiant, angry, comedic. Shout out to this years’ Art in Odd Places, a reliably eclectic program of artists and performers who take to the streets to engage with the public – and if you think that is easy, I’ve got a Bridge in Brooklyn I’d like to sell you.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this time featuring Angela Muriel, Anthony Lister, Appleton Pictures, Billy X Curmano, Carmen Rodriquez, Coco Cobre, Connie Perry, El Sol 25, Knozko, Lik, Lister, Lunge Box, Matthew Burcow, Paul Richard, Sheryo and The Yok, Stikman, Texas & Gane.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this time featuring BRCEDU, Captain Eyeliner, Damon, Dark Clouds,Fhake, Ghake, Jerk Face, Mad Villian, Mattew Hyte, MurOne, Praxis, R Burns Wilder, Shepard Fairey, Sinned, Stikman, Tatyana Fazlalizadeh, Thomas Allen, and Vy.
Happy Halloween Ya’ll! More than your average number of freeks, misfits, and naughty school girls with fangs on the subway this week, did you notice?
As if any of us need to conjure more scary scenarios than the daily horrors we face – bomb threats, traffic on the FDR, Meghan Kelly.
Anyway, stay safe out their this week peeps.
So here is our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring 1UP Crew, A Cool55, Bla Bla Meow, Clint Mario, El Cekis, Harlem Picasso, Javier Barriga, Kobra, Lin Logic, Phoebe NY, Stikman, and XO Homeless.
New York, New York, in the thick of summer. The heat is heavy with humidity, smells of hotdogs, marijuana, perfume, piss. The flat screen sunglasses now on every sweet face hide the glances and stares of the voracious, the vacuous, the visionary, the vexed, and those voluntarily enraptured by romance. Again we take refuge under a tree, on a bench, in the grass with our dog, in the frozen food section with our kids, on the sunbaked and garbage strewn sand in Coney Island, on the fire escape with our swollen-lipped and rosy cheeked lover. And everywhere is art and architecture and stoop sales and thumping music and jackhammers and the swooping yell of “gooooooooaaaaaaaalllll!” from a nearby sports bar during this month of the World Cup.
Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring Alex Proba, Arkane, Blanco, City Kitty, David Hollier, Invader, Irak, Jason Naylor, LMNOPI, Mowcka, Phoebe New York, Renee Caoulette, Rubin 415, Staino, and Stikman.
Absent worries that the banks and oligarchs are poised to crash our economy into the ground and that the privatized profiteering war machine wants Trump to start WWIII its been a fantastic and sunny and crisp warm week in New York. Of course the city is a little more somber since the Yankees missed their chance at the World Series last night. In the spirit of sportspersonship we wish the best to the Astros.
Speaking of Pantone, the two walls he did this week were strong and optically dizzying/thrilling as you would expect – while the subtley more sophisticated walls were inside for Planned Iridescence near by at the GR Gallery on Bowery. The big wall done with The L.I.S.A. Project presented several technical and material difficulties which the artist eventually solved but not without having to spend a whole lot more of time on it than originally estimated: a remarkable feat, even if the wall itself isn’t a large one compared to many others he’s executed around the world. Sure enough it got the New York welcome from a graffiti artist who took the liberty to vandalize it under the cover of darkness and on the very same night of the opening party for his show.
We have grown accustomed to see the artworks by Street Artists and muralists in public vandalized, disrespected and gone over. We don’t know what justification or reasons a graffiti writer has when tagging a well executed wall and the so-called “rules” on the street depend on who’s telling them. It is interesting that the color fits right into the palette, almost as if the tagger found an unspent can that had been left on the sidewalk nearby.
Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring Arrex Skulls, Bunny M, City Kitty, D7606, Dain, Felipe Pantone, Fintan Magee, Gods in Love, Megzany, RUN, Stikman, Stray Ones, and Thrashbird.
The Street Artist who goes by the name Gods in Love did this mural in the San Samuele district of Cerignola, Italy last month. He says that this part of the city is called “Fort Apache” by the locals – an indirect reference to the 1981 movie (and 1976 book) about a crime-ridden neighborhood in the Bronx during the 1960s-70s. The Native American tribe named The Apache that preceded the European’s arrival who lived/live in the mid-western part of this continent were known for being fierce warriors – thus the connotation with a violent proud, yet financially destitute, neighborhood in The Bronx, New York.
“A totem is a natural or supernatural entity that has a particular symbolic meaning for a person or tribe, and to whom it feels bound throughout life,” explains the artist. The term derives from the word ototeman used by the Native American people Ojibway. My choice of working on this figure arises from the need to create an image that can be symbolic of belonging to a neighborhood to a group, a symbol of belonging to the protection of the offspring and therefore of the future, a need for legality and correctness to fight or understand, integrating and accepting it, the illness stemmed from the discomfort of life in a changing neighborhood, willing to redeem. Mine is a metaphor, a symbol in which the neighborhood can fully recognize.”
“We’re back!” Announces URVANITY, the organization that has celebrated a distinctly street-influenced flavor of New Contemporary art in Madrid for …Read More »
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
