All posts tagged: The DRiF

BSA Images Of The Week: 02.06.22

BSA Images Of The Week: 02.06.22

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Happy New Year of the Tiger! We found some on the street this week in New York, no surprise perhaps.

In other news, OG train writer Chris “Daze” Ellis captured the attention of The New York Times this Friday with his new contemporary art show “Give it All You Got” at P·P·O·W Gallery, and in a related story, according to the New York Daily News, there were 120 graffiti-related incidents on subway trains in January 2021, a 21% increase compared to the same period last year.

The differences between the 1970s/80s and today, as it pertains to graffiti and street art, are vast; Phillips auction house has an exhibition of graffiti artists that we estimate to be valued well into the millions, author/critic Carol Diehl is on a tour promoting her book “Banksy Completed” (MIT Press) which argues that we all complete his works, BSA has officially opened a new library with Martha Cooper at Urban Nation (Berlin) dedicated to being the penultimate resource for academic research and literature related to graffiti and street art around the world, street artist Shepard Fairey just sold out a 7,400 piece generative NFT art project on OpenSea, and 1970s/80s artists/graffiti writers like Futura and Zephr are being interviewed by iconic cultural critic Carlo McCormick at the Wexner Museum.

In his curatorial incarnation, Carlo has been organizing an enormous new exhibition about New York’s ‘downtown’ scene that he’s curating with Peter Eleey to open this July at UCCA Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing featuring “several defining works of this generation, such as paintings and drawings by Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring.”  McCormick, you will remember, originated the concept and title for his book Trespass : a History of Uncommissioned Urban Art, which made the direct connection between fine art, the avant-garde, and the various street/public art practices of serious radical art movements like those popularized in the 1960’s by Guy Debord and the Situationistes Intérnationales. With these movements and arguments informing our view, it’s simplistic to be so polarized when assessing the value given/damage done by illegal graffiti writers and street artists.

Today our public/private debates about whether someone’s aerosol creation is vandalism or art are far more complex, more palpable than before. Thanks to the validation of graffiti and street art as a cultural force by fashion designers, toy manufacturers, home goods stores, clothing chains, commercial brands, film directors, art collectors, auction houses, artists, writers, professors, and respected education and art institutions, these practices of art-making on the street are enmeshed in the culture, fully a part of it.

One of these days a train car covered with graffiti will head to the yards for buffing… and reappear at an art fair, a Sotheby’s auction, or in the back yard of an avid collector. Our thoughts turn to the “Fun Gallery” refrigerator covered with graffiti tags in that is currently on display at the Phillips “Graffiti” show on Park Avenue right now.

And so we turn to our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: Billye Merrill, BK Foxx, Crash, DrewOne, Elle, Eraquario, Eskae, Jenkins2D, Lamour Supreme, MAD, Manuel Alejandro, Osiris Rain, Praxis, REDS, Sipros, The Creator, The DRIF, and Twice.

Manuel Alejandro, The Creator. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Billye Merrill with East Village Walls. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
BK Foxx with East Village Walls. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
BK Foxx with East Village Walls. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Praxis (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Crash and The Drif with The L.I.S.A. Project NYC (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Crash in Wynwood, Miami. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Eraquario (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Individual Activist (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Ben Keller with East Village Walls. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Elle and REDS in Miami (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Elle and REDS in Miami. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
LAmour Supreme in Miami is tagged by Twice and Eskae. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
LAmour Supreme in Miami is tagged by Crons, Fume, Mad, Twice, and Eskae. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Osiris Rain in Miami. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Jenkins2D with East Vialle Walls. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Sipros and DrewOne in Miami. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Untitled. Wallabout Channel. Brooklyn, NYC. January 2022. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
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BSA Images Of The Week: 06.16.19

BSA Images Of The Week: 06.16.19

Its an exciting time for art in the public sphere right now in NYC as Roger Gastman and his huge team are seriously preparing 100,000 sf of space in Williamsburg to completely blow away graffiti and Street Art fans alike this week with Beyond The Streets. Meanwhile the city is pumping full of at least 50 sanctioned and unsanctioned World Pride murals, Garrison Buxton pulled off the 9th Welling Court grassroots mural festival in Queens, Joe Ficalora brought Rick Ross and a host of Street Artists to Bushwick for a block party, MadC was in town hanging with Crash, Joe Caslin and Tatyana Fazlalizadeh were putting up new pieces with L.I.S.A. Project yesterday, Queen Andrea finished her commercial Houston Wall gig, and a lot of ad hoc illegal and legal graffiti and Street Art is in full effect in all five boroughs. When it comes to art in the streets, New York says ‘Bring it!’

yeliner, Jason Naylor, John Ahearn, JPO, MadC, MeresOne, Misshab, Outer Source, Queen Andrea, Ramiro Davaro-Comas, SacSix, Sonni, Tonk Hawaii and The Drif.

Adrian Wilson commemorates the struggle that was Tiananmen Square 30 years ago. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Adrian Wilson (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Meres One. WorldPride Mural Project Initiative. The L.I.S.A. Project NYC. Brooklyn, NY (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Sonni for St. ART NOW. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Jason Naylor (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Jason Naylor (photo © Jaime Rojo)
JPO. WorldPride Mural Project Initiative. The L.I.S.A. Project NYC. Brooklyn, NY (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Captain Eyeliner (photo © Jaime Rojo)
John Ahearn (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Sac Six (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Tonk Hawaii (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Tonk Hawaii (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Below Key . Ramiro Davaro-Comas . Outer Source (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Appleton Pictures (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Appleton Pictures (photo © Jaime Rojo)
The Drif . Miishab. WorldPride Mural Project Initiative. The L.I.S.A. Project NYC. Brooklyn, NY (photo © Jaime Rojo)
MadC (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Queen Andrea at the Houston/Bowery Wall for Goldman Global Arts (and a certain banking institution) (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Queen Andrea at the Houston/Bowery Wall for Goldman Global Arts (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Queen Andrea at the Houston/Bowery Wall for Goldman Global Arts (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Queen Andrea at the Houston/Bowery Wall for Goldman Global Arts (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Queen Andrea at the Houston/Bowery Wall for Goldman Global Arts (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Untitled. The Last Picture. NYC Subway. June 2019 (photo © Jaime Rojo)
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BSA Images Of The Week: 07.17.16

BSA Images Of The Week: 07.17.16

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Welcome!

Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring American Puppet, Ant Carver, CDRE, Consumer Art, Crisp, Dain, David Hollier, Dee Dee, El Sol 25, Jules Muck, Myth, Ron English, The DRIF, and VJZ .

Our top image: Dee Dee (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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JR from his Ellis Island Series. Sorry we don’t know the name of the original artist. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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JR from his Ellis Island Series. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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American Puppet (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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David Hollier (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Text on  the illustration from Steppenwolf’s  “Monster/Suicide/America”, written in 1969

“America where are you now?
Don’t you care about your sons and daughters?
Don’t you know we need you now
We can’t fight alone against the monster”

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Speaking of monsters…Donald Trump as re-imagined by Ron English. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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…and by Consumer Art. This is a takeoff of a Banksy piece (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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…and by an unidentified artist. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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But Jules Muck has hope and so do we… (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Ant Carver (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Ant Carver (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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CRISP (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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CRISP does “Bling Vader” (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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The Drif for The L.I.S.A. Project NYC. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

And let’s pay tribute to all the ballerinas out there who train so hard for years and years and days and days and hours and hours and go on the stages big and small all over the world who rapture us with their grace and artistry. We salute you!

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CDRE (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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CDRE (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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El Sol 25 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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VJZ (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Okay, okay! No shampoo. We get it. Myth (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Myth (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Dain (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Untitled. China Town, NYC. July 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

 

Please note: All content including images and text are © BrooklynStreetArt.com, unless otherwise noted. We like sharing BSA content for non-commercial purposes as long as you credit the photographer(s) and BSA, include a link to the original article URL and do not remove the photographer’s name from the .jpg file. Otherwise, please refrain from re-posting. Thanks!

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LoMan Art Festival Launches Its First Blast in NYC

LoMan Art Festival Launches Its First Blast in NYC

In a Street Art story rich with irony, Lower Manhattan has just hosted its first official mural festival.

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Space Invader (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

It’s not that the island has been bereft of murals of late – the Los Muros Hablan festival in Harlem has been through a couple of iterations way uptown, Brooklyn has the Bushwick Collective, and Queens has been hosting the Welling Court Project.

The irony lies in the fact that this Lower Manhattan Arts Festival (LoMan) is really the first codified effort to highlight the work of graffiti and Street Art creators in a section of NYC known from the 1970s-90s for the free-range street stylings of artists like Jean Michel Basquiat, Al Diaz, Keith Haring, Dan Witz, Jenny Holzer, Richard Hambleton, John Fekner, WK Interact, REVS/Cost, and artist collectives like AVANT, among many others.

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A major coup of sorts, LoMan exhibited the sculpture of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden that mysteriously showed up in a New York park this spring by Andrew Tider and Jeff Greenspan (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

In other words, on this baked concrete slab of downtown New York that was once a creative cesspool and Petri dish for on-the-street experimentation calling upon all manner of art making, today’s newly arriving young artists have no dream of moving in. In fact, most have fled in search of affordable rent.

Now the entrepreneurial spirit of a couple of guys, Wayne Rada and Rey Rosa, is luring artists back into Lower Manhattan, if only to paint a mural and help the tourist trade in Little Italy. That is how the L.I.S.A. Project (Little Italy Street Art) began three years ago, bringing in about 40 artists – a list that includes big names and small with varying degrees of influence on the current scene.

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Dain and Stikki Peaches (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

Despite the historically inhospitable demeanor of hard-bitten and often bureaucratic old New York greeting him at many junctures, Rada has had some measured and great successes along the way, convincing local wall owners to give a  mural a try and raising funding from local businesses and art fans to help artists go larger.

So LoMan Fest’s first edition has finished this year, and along with a few volunteers, a smattering of helpful partners, and nearly continuous negotiations with local building owners, art supply companies, cherry picker rentals, and a collection of local and international artists, Rada and Rosa have pulled off a new event. Impressively it included large murals, smaller street installations, a couple of panel discussions, some live music performances, outdoor film screenings, a sticker battle, a live painting battle, live podcasts, a graffiti zine table, and a sculpture garden in an emptied parking lot on Mulberry Street.

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Damien Mitchell (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

“Struggle would be a good word. But like anything else when you are starting something for the first time you are spending a lot of time putting systems in place,” says Rada of the process. “There have been interesting challenges with the building owners and with the artists but when it is all said and done it has been all worth it.”

For a scene that was initiated by autonomous un-permissioned art-making on private property, the process of organizing graffiti and Street Artists to do approved pieces on legal walls may try the patience of the rebels who look on mural festivals as lacking ‘street cred’. But Rada sees it differently.

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Tatyana Fazlalizadeh expands on her campaign with brand new portraits for “Stop Telling Women to Smile.” (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

“You know there are people in this world that don’t appreciate this and I just want people to enjoy the pieces as long as they can. Isn’t the fun part of street art that moment when you turn the corner and discover it? That’s really what we are trying to do here. For me it’s a collaborative process of trying to find them a spot – which is also normally something bigger where they can take their time and really think it out. In turn, when that work is complete their existing fans enjoy it, and also it helps them get new fans.”

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Tatyana Fazlalizadeh (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

A final irony is that LoMan is joining a long list of Street Art-inspired mural festivals worldwide that you might have thought New York would have been near the front of.

Brooklyn Street Art: I imagine you’ve seen the rise of Street Art festivals and you’ve seen the character perhaps of specific festivals in different parts of the world. Do you think there is something specific about New York’s current Street Art scene that has a personality or specific voice?
Wayne Rada: First of all I studied every single festival out there from Pow! Wow! to Nuart, every single one. I’ve also had conversations with people who coordinate those festivals so that I could do a better job with this. I just feel like New York is, and this is grandiose to say, the nexus of the universe for the art world. It just seemed there was something missing and it made sense to have something here.”

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Tatyana Fazlalizadeh (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

Given the history and the populations of NYC, maybe the strength is the diversity of styles and international artists who are drawn to this particular city to drop a piece throughout the year on rooftops, under bridges, on abandoned lots and doorways. After a minute, Rada decides that this may be what makes a festival like this distinctly New York.

“So in the art world there are so many artists and there are so many Street Artists – and Lower Manhattan especially is represented by something like 126 different cultures and many different races and languages that make up downtown,” he says, “so it makes sense to try to be as diverse as possible and have as many of those voices represented as we could – men and women, all ages, and all walks of life.”

Here’s your first look at LoMan, but it won’t be your last. Rada and Rosa tell us they already have 2016 all planned.

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Art Is Trash typically uses actual trash found on the street to create impromptu dioramas (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Art Is Trash (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Ron English added a pink “Temper Tot” shortly before LoMan commenced. (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Nicolas Holiber uses found wood to create a new “Venus” (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Nicolas Holiber. “Mars” (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Hanksy (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Sonni (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

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The DRiF pimping a statue of David. (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

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As in “The Lower East Side” by Russell Murphy (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Faith47 (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Buff Monster (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Buff Monster (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

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BD White and JP Art (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Gilf! (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Ori Carino (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

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A new sculpture by Leon Reid IV (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Tats Cru in monochrome (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

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J Morello (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

 

At press time the works of ASVP, Beau Stanton, Crash, Solus and Ludo were either not completed or had just begun. We’ll bring you these pieces on a later article.

To learn more about the LoManArt Fest click HERE

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Please note: All content including images and text are © BrooklynStreetArt.com, unless otherwise noted. We like sharing BSA content for non-commercial purposes as long as you credit the photographer(s) and BSA, include a link to the original article URL and do not remove the photographer’s name from the .jpg file. Otherwise, please refrain from re-posting. Thanks!
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This article is also published on The Huffington Post

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