Our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Anarkia, Gaia, Sien, Stem, Tats Cru, Woebots, Velma from Scooby Doo and XAM.
Anarkia (photo @ Jaime Rojo)
Gaia (photo @ Jaime Rojo)
This version of Velma looks a little sexified. Mysterious. Artist Unknown (photo @ Jaime Rojo)
Tats Cru (photo @ Jaime Rojo)
Who’s your Daddy? Here is a brand new DNA testing truck coming soon to a corner near you. Tats Cru redefines the use of the taco truck in this work in progress for a commercial company…stay tuned. (photo @ Jaime Rojo)
How’s this for a tag? XAM. (photo @ Jaime Rojo)
The new right wing Republican slogan? Artist Unknown (photo @ Jaime Rojo)
This week many New Yorkers are thinking about where they were on 9/11/2001 when the planes hit the World Trade Center Towers and what the city felt like in the days, weeks, and months that followed. There are many questions that never were answered, and there are many consequences that are still to unveil. An incredibly diverse city in so many ways, our unity was automatic and sincere. We already knew each other and we knew we all had been hurt and we were all changed by those events. While others looked at it as an American attack, New Yorkers felt a wound to the place we had made together, our beloved dirty beautiful hard and scrappy city. Today it is painful to go back and contemplate those days and wonder what happened, why, and at what cost.
World renowned graffiti and Street Art photographer Martha Cooper had been documenting New York as a journalist and ethnographer for a quarter century when the streets of the city were flooded by raw sentiments and visual communications expressed with marker, pencil, paint, – whatever was at hand – in the days that followed 9/11. Those incredibly personal desperate acts of expression were gazed upon and reflected on by neighbors and strangers as we attempted in vain to explain the world to one another. To remember a little of what it was like, she shares with us her photographs from those days.
“9/11 happened to all of us. It was a collective experience that defined the outset of the uneasy, globally interdependent twenty-first century. Nowhere, however, were the raw terror and tragic consequences of 9/11 felt more personally than the metropolitan region of New York City, for which the Twin Towers had functioned as a conspicuous compass setting, hub of work and recreation, and symbol of America’s economic might,” Martha Cooper writes in “Remembering 9/11”
Martha Cooper is a featured panelist at today’s panel discussion in Brooklyn called “Return Remember: Ephemeral Memorials in the Legacy of September 11” At Power House Arena. 37 Main Street Dumbo. 6-8 PM.
Martha Cooper will be signing copies of a new slim volume of images “Remembering 9/11” following the panel discussion. For more information about this event please click on the link below:
HuffPost Arts and The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA) hosted a presentation and panel discussion presented by Brooklyn Street Art founders Steven P. Harrington and Jaime Rojo this past Saturday at the Ahmanson Auditorium with 150 guests. Five days after the closing of the record breaking “Art in the Streets” show at LA MOCA, which was seen by over 200,000 visitors, BSA charted some new ground going forward in the ever evolving graffiti and street art movement.
The panelists, who included HuffPost Arts Editor Kimberly Brooks and Street Art phenom Shepard Fairey, watched a presentation by Harrington and Rojo about a new storytelling direction that artists are bringing to the streets of New York and other cities around the world. With examples of relative newcomers not seen by many in the audience, they pointed to precursors from the last 40 years to this storytelling practice and questioned how its sudden growth may be evolving what we have been calling “Street Art” for the last decade.
After a conversation with panelists Brooks, Fairey, Marsea Goldberg, Ken Harman, and Ethel Seno that covered topics like the paucity of females in the street art scene, the influence of the Internet on “getting up”, and the significance of personal engagement in the work of many of today’s new street artists, Harrington and Rojo opened the discussion up the auditorium. Here topics ranged from LA’s evolving approach to Street Art to include public and permanent art, the influence of money on street artists, and how a show like “Art in the Streets” effectively influences the next generations’ perception of street art.
The packed event was interesting enough to bring many audience members down to the stage after the show to continue the conversation and meet the panelists and LA MOCA Director Jeffrey Deitch, who took great interest in the presentation, talked with a number of people before taking off. Fairey, with his wife Amanda at his side and a healing black eye from his recent trip to Copenhagen (see his account for HuffPost Arts here) gamely took on questions from many and posed for pictures after the event and at the reception which HuffPost hosted afterward.
Brooklyn Street Art Co-founders Jaime Rojo and Steven P. Harrington converse with esteemed panelists at “Street Art Stories”, hosted by HuffPost Arts and LA MOCA.
MONICA ROACHE, JESSICA YOUN, CHRIS RICHMOND, DAVID BRADSHAW, JEFFREY DEITCH, LYN WINTER, PATRICK IACONIS, TANYA PATSAOURUS, TRAVIS KORTE, MELINDA BROCKA, TINA SOIKKELI, EUTH, ANDREW
HOSNER, CARLOS GONZALEZ, KIMBERLY BROOKS, MARSEA GOLDBERG, KEN HARMAN,SHEPARD FAIREY, ETHEL SENO, THE MOCA MUSEUM STAFF AND SECURITY,
THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART, LOS ANGELES (MOCA), BROOKLYNSTREETART.COM, HI-FRUCTOSE, JUXTAPOZ,
IMAGES IN PRESENTATION BY JAIME ROJO WITH ADDITIONAL PHOTOS BY MARTHA COOPER, REVS PHOTO BY BECKI FULLER, and FAUXREEL PHOTOS BY DAN BERGERON
This week Revok was in town and hit up a wall with Tats Cru; a new mural entitled “The Quiet Before the Storm”, providing the Lower East of Manhattan with some much need color. We also re-visited a couple of BSA favorites like the Shepard Fairey’s piece on the Cooper Square Hotel and a few WK Interacts scattered around LES. It’s great to see and photograph these pieces when imbued with February’s cold gray and blue light.
And now our weekly interview with the street, this week including Bio, BG183, GS, How & Nosm, Invader, Revok, Shark Toof, Shepard Fairey, Spazmat, Tats Cru, TMNK and WK Interact. Update. Thank you RJ at Vandalog for sending out the tweet abut the Mel Kadel (on the no loitering sign) sticker and helping our readers with the artist’s name.
As we start a new year, we say thank you for the last one.
And Thank You to the artists who shared their 11 Wishes for 2011 with Brooklyn Street Art; Conor Harrington, Eli Cook, Indigo, Gilf, Todd Mazer, Vasco Mucci, Kimberly Brooks, Rusty Rehl, Tip Toe, Samson, and Ludo. You each contributed a very cool gift to the BSA family, and we’re grateful.
We looked over the last year to take in all the great projects we were in and fascinating people we had the pleasure to work with. It was a helluva year, and please take a look at the highlights to get an idea what a rich cultural explosion we are all a part of at this moment.
The new year already has some amazing new opportunities to celebrate Street Art and artists. We are looking forward to meeting you and playing with you and working with you in 2011.
We’re very grateful for a wildly prolific year of Street Art as it continued to explode all over New York (and a lot of other places too). For one full year we’ve been granted the gift of seeing art on the streets and countless moments of inspiration. Whether you are rich or poor in your pocket, the creative spirit on the street in New York makes you rich in your heart and mind.
To the New York City artists that make this city a lot more alive every day we say thank you.
To the artists from all over world that passed through we say thank you.
To our colleagues and peers for their support and enthusiasm we say thank you.
To the gallery owners and curators for providing the artists a place to show their stuff and for providing all of us a safe place to gather, talk, share art, laugh, enjoy great music and free booze we say thank you.
To our project collaborators for sharing your talents and insights and opinions and for keeping the flame alive we say thank you.
And finally to our friends, readers and fans; Our hearts go out to you for lighting the way and for cheering us on. Thank you.
Each Sunday we featured Images of the Week, and we painfully narrowed that field to about 100 pieces in this quick video. It’s not an encyclopedia, it’s collage of our own. We remember the moment of discovery, the mood, the light and the day when we photographed them. For us it’s inspiration in this whacked out city that is always on the move.
The following artists are featured in the video and are listed here in alphabetical order:
Aakash Nihalani,Bansky, Barry McGee, Bask ,Bast, Beau, MBW, Bishop ,Boxi, Cake, The Dude Company, Chris RWK, Chris Stain, Dain, Dan Witz ,Dolk ,El Mac, El Sol 25, Elbow Toe, Faile, Feral, Overunder, Gaia, General Howe, Hellbent, Hush, Imminent Disaster, Jeff Aerosol, Jeff Soto, JMR ,Judith Supine ,K-Guy ,Labrona, Lister, Lucy McLauchlan, Ludo, Armsrock, MCity, Miso, Momo, Nick Walker, Nina Pandolfo, NohjColey, Nosm, Ariz, How, Tats Cru, Os Gemeos, Futura, Pisa 73, Poster Boy, QRST, Remi Rough, Stormie Mills, Retna, Roa, Ron English, Sever, She 155, Shepard Fairey ,Specter, Sten & Lex, Samson, Surge I, Sweet Toof, Swoon, Tes One, Tip Toe, Tristan Eaton, Trusto Corp, Typo, Various and Gould, Veng RWK, ECB, White Cocoa, Wing, WK Interact, Yote.
Our longest post ever – scarily long. First we start off with a bunch of cool Street Art that is evocative of Halloween.
Then we hear a special Halloween/Election message from Christine O’Donnell, a look at tonights’ events including Unified Love Movement’s installation across from MOMA, Erik Burke’s Closing Party, and Crest Hardware’s Pumpkin Carving Party (tonight). Also, video of Dan Witz’s disturbing WTF Street Art, and the most popular person to dress up as.
Unified Love Movement – Alison and Garrison Buxton in Manhattan Tonight
Garrison and Alison Buxton invite you to come celebrate the unveiling of their Unified Love Movement installation across from the MoMA at 20 West 53rd St. The Buxtons are honored to manifest their latest vision on Halloween weekend via chashama’s “Windows at Donnell” program. The exhibition runs October 29th – November 28th, 2010 and is viewable 24/7. This visual fruit is timely and ripe for viewing. MORE HERE
Bring Your Carved Pumpkins To Crest Tonight
FOR MORE INFORMATION GO TO THE WEBSITE. FOR THE OFFICIAL RULES LOOK UNDER THE HALLOWEEN TAB ON THE MENU BAR http://cresthardwareartshow.com
“This Land is My Land” Closing Party Tonight at 17 Frost
Lady GaGa Costumes Are All the Rage This Year. You can blow 50 bucks on one of these, or just visit your local hardware store and glue-gun stuff to your swimsuit.
New Mural in Williamsburg Pays Tribute to Beatles Just In Time for John’s 70th
The Spanish twins really could have used a Yellow Submarine as the rain was sloshing around their small band during the installation of this one. For four days they set out to paint their new mural, titled “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds”, an updated psychedelic bouquet sprading across a corner building in Williamsburg housing the infamous Rock Star Bar, where many a hair raising band has fought to break the sound barrier.
This year the Autumn weather in New York city has ranged from constant deluge to glorious days of sparkling gold sunlight and the smell of wood burning from the neighbor’s chimney. How and Nosm climbed ladder after ladder with R Robots as soon as the rain would stop. Unfortunately, they had to spend a lot of time standing in the doorway waiting for it to clear. As they told me “As long as the wall is dry we paint, and it’s OK if we get wet”.
Every time I went by to see how they were doing they were scurrying up and down ladders and balancing on scaffoldings. Once in a while each guy had to walk across the street to look back and check on the progress. Everpresent in the shadow of the Williamburg bridge was the roaring of traffic above, the screeching of trains, and the raucous noise of heavy trucks on Kent Ave. Occasional pedestrians stopped to say hello and ask questions, but mostly this part of town is unfettered by interruption. Unless you count the rain.
Bronx Tats Cru muralists How and Nosm Perre hit Brooklyn last week with their buddy Aryz to put up a new piece on the side of a deli while stray cats wandered out from the fence next door to take a look. While BSA watched, the guys climbed up and down ladders and showed solid technique like the pros they are.
The globe trotting twins, born in seaside San Sebastion in the Basque region of Spain, grew up in Dusseldorf and fell in love with the New York style of graffiti in their teens. When they joined the Tats Cru in New York in the late nineties they had already proved their skillz as graff artists and begun to explore Street Art and muralist technique.
With Aryz visiting from Barcelona it was a perfect time to hit the streets of Williamsburg and get a piece up before the skies darkened further. “Death of an Era” appears to pay tribute to some of hiphop and graffiti culture’s early icons and surround them with a rising tide of blood. A critique of the darker powers of commercialism, it may also be homage to a romantic vision of a dirty and dysfunctional city that increasingly looks Disneyfied. While homogeneity threatens the character of some of our neighborhoods, work like this ensures an expression of individuality that keeps the streets alive.
With one eye on an impending summer storm and another on their wall, the guys busily consulted sketches and wielded their cans in a race against time.
Turning his face away from the camera so he could not be identified, writer BLOOMIE catches a tag across a Tats Cru piece. (photo courtesy Tats Cru)
Okay, things are not always what they seem – this was a legal spot peeepull! But it is a funny sort of recognition of the place that graffiti has evolved to. I’m sure this will keep the arts and culture pundits chewing on the implications and ramifications for days. OMG!
Thanks to – and for more on this story see the Tats Cru blog – like they say “Only in New York Baby”!
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
Crotched objects began appearing on the street this year. © Jaime Rojo
