All posts tagged: Yote

Fun Friday 07.02.10

Fun-Friday

It’s Only Street Art When It’s On the Street

So you might as well move the furniture out on the sidewalk for your 4th of July Bar-B-Que this weekend and enjoy the best of both worlds.  Look, some guests have already arrived!  Pictured below on the Brooklyn street are Veng (RWK), Imminent Disaster, El Sol 25, Yote, and Andrew Michael Ford. Is the beer cold yet?

Andrew-MIchael-Ford-yote-imminent disaster-el-sol- 25-veng-rwk-web

(image © Jaime Rojo)

Let Jimi Put You In the Mood for a Patriotic Weekend

In Manhattan – Street Artist Dennis McNett’s Wild Kingdom Runs 50 Feet of Barney’s Windows

Brooklyn-Street-Art-Dennis_McNett-Barneys-July2010

Brooklyn based artist Dennis McNett totally smashed the windows at Barneys with his imagination. “Passerby’s can see over sized wolf, owl, and skull masks paired with mannequins dressed in evening wear with a backdrop of psychodelic starbursts and swooping wolfbats. Dennis’s woodcut blocks, prints, masks and paper mache sculptures adorn the mannequins and window interiors. His imagery from nature, folklore, mythology, and story telling mixed with the graphic carved wood patterns from wood block prints sets a very unique stage for the store and this part of town.”

Barneys NY Madison Ave. between 60th and 61st through July 12th
They are best seen at night as they have been professionally lit.  Check out Dennis at www.wolfbat.com

Biggie on the Street at 17 – Where Brooklyn At?

You’ll Hear This One At Least ONCE This Weekend

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Images of The Week 06.13.10

Images of The Week 06.13.10

Our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Gaia, Ludo, Liv, MBW, Beau, Yote, Clown Soldier, Faile, Man Standing, Roa, Sweet Toof, Headhoods, and Holy Family

Gaia
Gaia (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Ludo
Ludo (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Man Standing
Man Standing (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The Holy Family
The Holy Family (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Liv
Liv (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Clown Soldier and Yote
Clown Soldier and Yote (photo © Jaime Rojo)

MBW and Beau
MBW and Beau (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Yote
Yote and Clown Soldier (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Roa
Roa (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Sweet Toof
Sweet Toof (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Gaia
Gaia (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Headhoods, Ludo and Sweet Toof
Headhoods, Ludo and Sweet Toof (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Faile
Faile (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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New York is a Zoo! Street Art and the Animal Kingdom

This Spring New York City had a few wild coyotes running in Central Park looking for prey.

Unfortunately the only flesh that could be hunted was one of the Lehman Brothers hiding in a cave in the Brambles since the crash and a couple of lost social x-rays looking for the old Tavern on the Green. More plastic than meat.

In fact New York has it’s share of wildlife, and I don’t just mean the Annual Zombie Crawl or Amanda LaPore, or even Macy’s One Day Sale. Since the early 2000’s the D.I.Y. kids fascination with putting lifelike animals on every available surface has continued unabated, and street artists have similarly loosed plenty of birds, frogs, cats, snakes, rabbits, wolves, squirrels, bees and multiple other species onto our streets. The occurrence of lifelike and fictional animals has been frightening, adorable, educational, and enjoyable.

One theory for the reappearance of the natural world in such numbers on our street walls (yes, there are theories) is rooted in native people prophecies that the animals are spirits coming to reclaim what once was theirs. Looking at how humans are rapaciously mucking up the natural world, I don’t know why they haven’t started diving at our necks already.

So, perhaps all of these street art animals are here to remind us how vital it is for us to to re-connect with them and live in harmony with each other. For instance, I give the squirrels and pigeons of our city much credit for making it here; Tough, resilient, and cranky, they may be the original New Yorkers. I’ve learned so much from them. When a pigeon refuses to move from the spot on the sidewalk where she is waddling I smile and walk around. New York is hers as much as it is mine, dammit.

The images below, some previously published on BSA and some brand new, are a tribute to both the artists and their subjects.

Pigeons (Photo © Jaime Rojo)
Actual New York pigeons (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

Yote Love
Yote (photo © Jaime Rojo)

QRST is king only he needs a kiss.
QRST is actually Prince Charming. Kiss him and you’ll see. (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

Elbow Toe
Elbow Toe (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

Roa
Roa (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

Hellbent
Hellbent (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

Gaia (Photo © Jaime Rojo)
Gaia (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

Pork, Mint and Serf (Detail) (Photo © Jaime Rojo)
Pork, Mint and Serf (Detail) (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

Mother Wolf (Photo © Jaime Rojo)
Mother Wolf (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

Shin Shin
Shin Shin (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

Veng is a Walrus
Veng  (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Yote
Yote (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

Gaia
Gaia (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Yote
Yote: A Star is Born (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Images of the Week 06.06.10

Our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Dain, Bast, Bortusk Leer, Ludo, Elbow-toe, Shin Shin, Shin Shin, Tazmat, Fumero, Bast, Gaia, Yote, Lucy McLauchan, Shepard Fairey, and Mr DiMaggio

Dain
Dain (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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BortusK Leer (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dain and Ludo (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dain and Ludo (photo © Jaime Rojo)

j
Elbow Toe with Shin Shin, Tazmat, Fumero (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Bast
Bast (photo © Jaime Rojo)

j

Summer Sweet Corn by Yote (photo © Jaime Rojo)

h
Dain (photo © Jaime Rojo)

BortusK Leer (photo © Jaime Rojo)

BortusK Leer (photo © Jaime Rojo)

g
Gaia (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Lucy McLauchan
Lucy McLauchan (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Shepard Fairey
Shepard Fairey (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Mr DiMaggio (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Mr DiMaggio (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Gaia: A New Original at Mid-Semester: Part II

Gaia: A New Original at Mid-Semester: Part II

This is the second half of a two part article and interview with street artist Gaia.
Click here for Part I

Plastic is keeping the clay damp on this new sculpture Gaia is working on (photo Steven P. Harrington)

Plastic is keeping the clay damp on this new sculpture Gaia is working on (photo Steven P. Harrington)

Somehow the real commitment to the topic of animals as metaphor seems more tangible when you can touch and see the sculptures, hits and misses, and it also made me look back at the rest of the Gaia body of work collected in these short years.

The host is excited as we make our way out the back of the sculpture building into the sunny gold autumn, and we meet and greet friends and classmates all along the walk from the sculpture building to a small efficiency apartment live/work space that Gaia hangs out in.

A bicycle rim can be recycled as a halo, for those of you who were wondering what to do with them. (Gaia) (photo Steven P. Harrington)

A bicycle rim can be recycled as a halo, for those of you who were wondering what to do with them. (Gaia) (photo Steven P. Harrington)

A bicycle rim can be recycled as a halo, for those of you who were wondering what to do with them. (Gaia) (photo Steven P. Harrington)

A 2oo square feet kitchen/dining/office/bedroom all in one, it’s an unmitigated mess with high ceilings. One must kick a path through the scattered debris – an unmade futon, random strips of linoleum on the once white carpeted floor, a wooden kitchen table that doubles as a desk for homework, a tilting bookshelf, and a large 3’ x 5’ painted canvas by street artist friend Armsrock slung loosely on the wall, affixed with thumbtacks like a varsity flag for the anti-imperialist team. Okay, it’s a college student room, and it’s welcoming. Didn’t see any bongs – I know that’s what you were going to ask.

An oldie but a goodie by Gaia (photo Steven P. Harrington)

An oldie but a goodie by Gaia (photo Steven P. Harrington)

There was only time for a short interview because the easy conversation travels far from street art – family, parents, college life, divorce, growing up in New York, drugs, religion, how to roast an organic chicken, gender studies, Wall Street, cornrows in high school, art parties, Dan Deacon, and why the hell there are so many rows of houses abandoned and bricked up in the neighborhood near by.

Gaia is unceasingly introspective and verbally expressive in a way that tells you many theories and philosophies are simultaneously being examined and put into play at all times.  It’s an experimental season and eventually one or two of these philosophical approaches will be settled upon, but there’s no imperative just yet. The dialogue never lags, and the amiable host will gladly broach almost any topic with you, even if you both lose track of the conversations original route.

(photo Steven P. Harrington)

(photo Steven P. Harrington)

Eventually the topic does return back to street art and some new works in progress. Gaia shows some strangely conjoined animal heads made in Photoshop recently that will hopefully be a new direction of darker themes that the lino-prints will be taking.

Then Gaia jumps on the floor and starts to sketch a long-billed bird directly from an image just found on the laptop onto two slabs of linoleum and the drawing talents manifests. Smooth sure lines and deft shading quickly bring the form forward. Within a short time, the image begins to clarify, and the animal lifts from the surface, alive.

(photo Steven P. Harrington)

(photo Steven P. Harrington)

There was time for a short interview before it was back to class:

Brooklyn Street Art: So what’s the best part about making street art?
Gaia:
So this is obviously a question that I’ve tried to investigate throughout my entire process, beginning at an extremely basic place when I first started, and I have to constantly revisit it.

What’s the best part of making street work? I always have to investigate my motive and if there is a process from conceptualizing to composing to drawing to putting it up to viewing the reception, .. If, in any of those steps I’m not really deriving a sense of fulfillment, that can be problematic.

I have to always come back to these different steps and say “what’s going on here?” Honestly sometimes I consider my process kind of arduous. Sometimes it’s a real struggle for me. It’s cathartic but it’s not perfect or pure, it’s not what I enjoy. It’s a constant fight with the medium, with myself, with my concept, my intuition.

But once it is on the street I feel really good about it. And when people are coming up to me and saying that they’ve seen it, and drawing these different corollaries between these different spots that they’ve seen, creating a new sort of sense of the city – that’s the best.

 

Gaia in the hall outside of class (photo Steven P. Harrington)

Gaia in the hall outside of class (photo Steven P. Harrington)

Brooklyn Street Art: Do you put up your work for your friends?
Gaia:
Absolutely. I love to do that. That’s one of the most enjoyable things about going to school. I don’t want to publish myself as someone who is Gaia, but all of my close friends know that. It’s intrinsic to my life. I can’t possibly make this work and not share it, but at the same time I don’t want to totally “ego trip” it.

Admittedly, people know who I am, and people come up to me all of the time with suspicions, “Are you Gaia”? I don’t deny it. Maybe on the street I would, or at a gallery. At school I’m amongst my peers and I think it is important to share these things.

So that is a dilemma of being anonymous. There is a paradox between wanting to share so much, wanting to be generous with my work on the street and generous with my process while simultaneously trying to shed this ego, disrobe the identity, build a new one.

So yeah, I definitely make work for my friends, because it is super dope at the end of the day to have the people come up to me and say, “I saw your stuff on the street.”

 

"Deny Me Three Times", by Gaia (photo Steven P. Harrington)

“Deny Me Three Times”, by Gaia (photo Steven P. Harrington)

Brooklyn Street Art: When you are working on the animals and you are relating to them. Do you relate to them on an intellectual level, spiritual level, a heart level?
Gaia:
I’m really trying to do it from a spiritual level. I really am trying to think of a way of evolving a body of mythologies that are really autonomous of me, so they become these beings that destabilize the idea of institutionalized religion.

I want to develop my own body of these spirits that I’m the genesis of but I don’t have full agency of. They are things that filter through me and this is what I produce. I’m interested in the function of them being beyond me. So, I’m trying to get to that place on a spiritual level.

But on an intellectual level they are generally allegorical, whether it’s an actual narrative, whether it’s like a parable from the Bible – like this rooster is called “Deny Me Three Times”(above), because it’s about Jesus being denied by St. Peter on the day of his death, and three times of the crow of the rooster.

Referring back to these age-old stories that become invisible in our lives and become part of the canon… but at the same time I try to utilize these figures to express something emotionally. I use them mechanically, I use them conceptually. I’m also interested in them when considering the topic of domination and man’s relationship with animals. I try to use them from the Western understanding of the animal; the cow, the dove, the chicken; domestic Northern American themes.

 

Nice to meet you too. (Gaia) (photo Steven P. Harrington)

Nice to meet you too. (Gaia) (photo Steven P. Harrington)

>>>>>

And with that, Gaia’s phone bleeped with a newly arrived text. A classmate was waiting in the sculpture building, and we had to split. No time to try the lentil soup Gaia had made.

Today a casual street art observer will make connections between the work of Gaia and other street artists whose art preceded it, and it’s natural to make comparisons. Who knows if Gaia can develop the body of mythologies that the artist is currently aiming for? But with the tenacity, curiosity, and energy that Gaia displays when creating new subjects and exploring new mediums, there is very good reason to believe that Gaia’s work will continue to distinguish itself from the crowd and become a standard that others are compared to.

And when the newcomers arrive, there will be plenty of room for them also.

>>>>>

This is the second half of a two part article and interview with street artist Gaia.
Click here for Part I

Read Gaia’s Blog at Juxtapoz

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Gaia: A New Original at Mid-Semester: Part I

Gaia: A New Original at Mid-Semester: Part I

"Cash Cow" (Gaia) (photo Jaime Rojo)

“Cash Cow” (Gaia) (photo Jaime Rojo)

Gaia’s work looks like Swoon’s, Dennis McNett’s, a little bit like Elbowtoe’s, and now Yote.

Looking through Gaia’s sketchbook you might also find that the work has aspects of Albrect Durer , Raimondi, Lucas Van Leyden, Hendrik Goltzius, zoological prints, the Farmer’s Almanac, and some of the flat files at Kentler International Drawing Space in Red Hook. I bring this up because sometimes devoted fans of one street artist fall into spasmodic revulsion when they discover a similarity in style in a newly arrived one.

It reminds me of the David Bowie fans who were furious when hordes of musical New Romantics, abetted by the arrival of MTV came on the scene in the early 1980’s, seemingly stealing the alien-androgyny aesthetic and asymmetry of sounds that Bowie had trailblazed in the 1970’s. Oh the outrage of the devoted, defending their Glam-God from the arrivistes!

As if David Bowie needed anyone to defend him. Check your iPod for the long list of Spandau Ballet songs you’ve been listening to? How about ABC? Tears for Fears? Kajagoogoo? Duran Duran for that matter? Meanwhile David Bowie is still God.

Luckily for Gaia, the hunger to learn and expand creatively also runs unbridled, and it’s not likely to be hindered in the near future. It’s mid semester at art school and Gaia cuts across campus and through a maze of hallways, staircases and backdoors like a rabbit on the loose in a field of clover.

The excited street artist has a visitor from Gotham, where the Gaia domestic animal kingdom has been stampeding periodically on the streets, and the chatty artist is eager to show new work that incorporates the metaphor: sculpture.

A muse takes on an added dimension (Gaia) (photo Steven P. Harrington)

A muse takes on an added dimension (Gaia) (photo Steven P. Harrington)

The rooster is the top of a boxed container, fired to a dark glistening finish, with a couple mistakes in glaze that may have dripped from a classmate’s project in the kiln. Nonetheless the rooster is going to be traveling to Brooklyn soon to be in a group show. It’s enthralling to see this third dimension added to the lino-printed black and white images that are normally associated with Gaia.

He had two tablets, but dropped one, so there will be only 5 commandments now. (Gaia) (photo Steven P. Harrington)

He had two tablets, but he dropped one. So there will be only 5 commandments now. (Gaia) (photo Steven P. Harrington)

Then we look at another project, a small columnar statuette with animal head and human limbs with a glaze that is more like lumpy oatmeal than the originally intended porcelain finish. Mistakes of glaze don’t faze Gaia for some reason and while we talk the other students are working in the lab on bowls, urns, vases.

Gaia’s also making a cast from parts of a milking machine, the apparatus that is affixed to the teats of a cow to extract the days’ production of dairy. It’s from a class about symmetry and mass-production, or some similarly post-modern topic. Have you seen a cow with those milk-sucking tubes attached?

I have!

Milking Creative Commons License photo credit: smoodysarah

 

This is the first half of a two part article and interview with street artist Gaia.
Click here for Part II

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Images of the Week 09.27.09

Images of the Week 09.27.09

Our Weekly Interview with the Street

Caper (Caper) (photo Jaime Rojo)

Celso
A sale on melons at Met Supermaket this week? (Celso) (photo Jaime Rojo)

dark clouds
A melange of soot, chain links, and dark clouds (Dark Clouds) (photo Jaime Rojo)

Elbow Toe
Elbow Toe (photo Jaime Rojo)

Elbow Toe
“That’s funny, we’ve had a bumper crop of tomatoes this year. We’ve been canning them, freezing them, Arlene even made chutney!  Maybe you should have the soil tested,” offered Farmer Bob at the Union Square green market. (Elbow Toe) (photo Jaime Rojo)

Skewville and Elbow Toe
Skewville lending words of support to Elbow Toe (photo Jaime Rojo)

Gaia
Going through life as a lone wolf may not be as romantic as it sounds. (Yote) (photo Jaime Rojo)

Gaia
I’m a male 9 year old adventurous intuitive Libra, medium-sized with brown eyes and no ear-tufts. I like squirrels and woodrats and occasional truffles. I’m looking for a lady soulmate who likes flying across the park on sunny days and enjoys long stretches of sitting on a branch just observing and talking about the mysteries of life. (Yote) (photo Jaime Rojo)

Infirm Society
The healthcare debate is inspiration for commentary on the streets these days (Infirm Society) (photo Jaime Rojo)

Keely
Keely and the bridge (photo Jaime Rojo)

Michael Defeo Smart Crew
Michael Defeo, Smart Crew, and a tall glass building jutting through space (photo Jaime Rojo)

QRST
You two are just a couple of lovebirds, anybody every tell you that? (QRST) (photo Jaime Rojo)

SHIN SHIN
Looking forward to that applebee honey! (Shin Shin) (photo Jaime Rojo)

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