Here is a new way of appreciating gum on the sidewalk - it is a potential work of art!
It started with hair. Donning a pair of rubber gloves, Heather Dewey-Hagborg
collected hairs from a public bathroom at Penn Station and placed them
in plastic baggies for safe keeping. Then, her search expanded to
include other types of forensic evidence. As the artist traverses her
usual routes through New York City from her home in Brooklyn, down
sidewalks onto city buses and subway cars—even into art museums—she
gathers fingernails, cigarette butts and wads of discarded chewing gum.
Dewey-Hagborg’s odd habit has a larger purpose. The 30-year-old PhD
student, studying electronic arts at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in
Troy, New York, extracts DNA from each piece of evidence she collects
and enters this data into a computer program, which churns out a model
of the face of the person who left the hair, fingernail, cigarette or
gum behind.
From those facial models, she then produces actual sculptures using a 3D printer. When she shows the series, called “Stranger Visions,”
she hangs the life-sized portraits, like life masks, on gallery walls.
Oftentimes, beside a portrait, is a Victorian-style wooden box with
various compartments holding the original sample, data about it and a
photograph of where it was found.
Artist Jay Shells pays tribute to the Big Apple's music culture with a series of placards peppered across the city. The art project posts rap lyrics on the relevant corners of NYC.
Maybe this can be a trend for other cities? Great idea.
Some art stinks but this art piece really has an odor!
This from Cool news: Amsterdam artists Lernert & Sander took "a tiny sample of each little scent and spinoff
fragrance that was new in 2012 and that they could obtain" and "poured
it into one large 1.5-liter bottle." Naturally, they named their
creation Everything perfume So,
what does Everything smell like? According to Eric, "It smelled, at
first whiff, of strawberries mixed with salt, along with hints of
baseball mitt and hair spray. And tuberose, yes. And licorice and fresh
paint. And musk and rotten peaches and honeysuckle and basil and soap."
Others compared it to Chanel or Shalimar, suggesting that "many
fragrances today use the most historically successful ones as reference
points."
The point, says Lernert, is "why do you need 1,400 new
scents a year?" Indeed, as Eric notes, "the number of fragrances
introduced annually ... is increasing at a startling pace, as
manufacturers seek to tempt shoppers with blends engineered for daytime
or nighttime or bedtime, or summer or fall, or just to suit whatever
music is playing on your iPod. Nearly four new scents are born every
day." For the person who has everything, a bottle of Everything sells
for about $39,000. ~ Tim Manners, editor.
Here’s
our weekly interview of the street, this week featuring Ai WeiWei, B.D.
White, Billy Mode, Bishop 203, BR1, Chris Stain, Duke A. Barnstable,
Free Humanity, Ice & Sot, Indigo, JM, Mataruda, Meres, Billy Mode,
NARD, ND’A, Os Gemeos, Palladino, PTV, Ryan McGinley, Shai Dahan, Shin
Shin, and Specter.
Top image > French Street Artist BR1 [...]
Skewville are amusing themselves in the gallery today. Amused, bemused. Bee-schmoozed.
Even though we haven’t seen much cryptic sarcasm or wooden sneakers
from these wiseguys on the streets lately, you can be sure that the
wonder wheels have been turning inside their heads, and in the studio.
Here’s proof. “Amusement” is their second solo show at White [...]
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening: “Spray Masters” and “Tunnel Stories” Sunday in
Brooklyn, Simon Silaidis Calligraphy-Graffiti “Skyfall”, Cern is
becoming a Balloonatic, and Jim Vision and The Blue Walls of Buenos
Aires.
BSA Special Feature:
“Spray Masters” and “Tunnel Stories”
Above is a still from the “Spray [...]
From
“Latido Americano” in Lima, Peru comes Part Two of our photo survey of a
Street Art / Graffiti event that blasts vibrant color all over your
keyboard and onto your desk. No amount of pollution and traffic
congestion in this crowded city can get these Street Artists and their
color palettes down, even as the [...]
The
mid-career survey of artist Barry McGee opened last week at the
Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston and the whole is in fact greater
than the sum of its parts.
Looking at his productive timeline from the 80s as
anti-establishment graffiti writer/tagger to art school student on
residency to San Francisco “Mission School” originator to celebrated New
[...]
Gutteral
grunts of smeared color across lumpen or attenuated limbs akimbo, eye
balls bulging and staring with body language and gestures happily
inclusive, the Canemorto trio are grotesquely entertaining many a wall
across Italy these days. Neneboy, Zenop, and Azz the One are three
Italian Street Artists “who paint together as a single person” using
[...]
Far
from her hometown of Rondebosch in Cape Town, South Africa, Street
Artist Nard Star (or simply Nard) just completed this fox in the
Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn. With references that include cubism,
graffiti, and street art, she often includes characters and animals
along with text treatments, always in a defined and precise line style
[...]
DUDE! We’re on Instagram! http://instagram.com/bkstreetart#. @BKStreetArt E’rbody Holla! and Follow! Now we can stop this whole wack blog thing, right?
Here’s our weekly interview of the street, this week featuring Billy
Kid, Don John, Iced Coffee, ND’A, NYCe, Poster Boy (or some variant),
RONE, Trek Matthews, and some slight alterations Al Pacino, Helen
Mirren, and Tom [...]
Blog Spotting from “Underground Paris”
Periodically we like to highlight another blog post that has caught
our eye and here is a story about a billboard re-purposer named OX who
likes to claim in the name of art, and humor.
“French artist, OX’s, latest ad takeover at Villeneuve-Saint-Georges, in the southeastern suburbs of Paris, is a site [...]
A new photography show that captures the street in the borough you love organized by Jim Kiernan and Aakash Nihalani.
Opening tonight at 17 Frost Gallery in Williamsburg, “The Brooklyn”
features photography by Barry Yanowitz, Chris Arnade, Jaime Rojo, Jake
Dobkin, Jamel Shabazz, Jim Kiernan, Lucas McGowen, Luna Park, Mario
Brotha, Matt Weber, Sam Horine, and Timothy Schenck.
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening: ROA in Cambodia, MOMO and El Tono Snap Your Attention
in France, Conor Harrington in Norway, and Shepard Fairey in London for
“Sound and Vision”
BSA Special Feature:
ROA: A Trip to Cambodia
Street Art and Skateboarding – What’s not to like?
Presented [...]
“Tap
on it with your teeth, that’s how you know if it’s real solid gold,”
says Pernell on 47th street in the diamond district as he holds out a
handful of necklaces. In the Chelsea art gallery district, it’s harder
to tell what is the real solid thing and what’s just for show –
especially [...]
Just
checked out this long wall by two graffiti/Street Art buddies from
Baltimore who have made many a collaborative piece over the years. Seems
like Chris Stain and Billy Mode team up 3 to 5 times a year on
expansive installations that utilize Chris’s everyday folk before a city
skyline and Billy’s reatment of text [...]
“Go Ask Alice When She’s Ten Feet Tall” (on a ladder).
If you are wondering what cans to use on the side of a German
elementary school, Alice Pasquini can tell you. Readying for a show at
local 44309 Gallery in Dortmund last week, the Italian Street Artist
took some time to paint a mural for [...]
In
this weeks news, COST is on the cover of the Village Voice and Jay
Shells is making street signs with geographically pin-pointed rap lyrics
(see video below).
Meanwhile here’s our weekly interview of the street, this week
featuring Arturo Vega, Bast, Be Super, Billy Mode, Bologna, El Celso, El
Sol 25, Faust, Gilf!, Mint & [...]
Los
Angeles based Street and Fine Artist Greg Craola Simkins is prepping
for a solo show entitled “Stop Haunting Me”. He was “raised on cartoons,
well written stories, animal planet, graffiti, tattoos and mind numbing
trips to grandma’s house,” says he on his Facebook page, and you can
verify his penchant for escapism in his [...]
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening: Vexta in Kochi, India, “Crimes of Minds” video for the new book, and Yok, Sheryo and Fecks in Mexico
BSA Special Feature:
Vexta in Kochi, India.
Australian born Brooklyn-based Street Artist Vexta was in Kochi for the first Biennale on 12/12/12 and [...]
With
much respect to the Jazz Age and the musical heritage of New York that
still boasts a huge number of jazz musicians, events and venues, artist
Sir Shadow plays alongside the aerosol tags with his one-liners in the
East Village. Using a technique known to many a graffiti writer, the
artist makes the piece [...]
From
the 4th to the 15th of March in Lima “Latido Americano” took place
courtesy of organizers and home-town artists Entes y Pesimo.
Successfully putting it together for a second year, E&P are well
respected among their peers as artists and social activists and they
placed an international assortment of invited graff and Street Art [...]
Street Art Campaign With Amnesty International
“In many countries people are imprisoned simply because of their
political views,” begins the video just released by Dan Witz and Amnesty
international.
Screenshot
from “Wailing Walls”, a video about the Dan Witz “Prisoners” campaign
that raises awareness and engages passersby to immediately take action
for human rights. (screenshot from video [...]
It
is always a surprise to find a one-off piece that evidently took hours
of work to create, wheat pasted into the public sphere and ready to face
the ravages of rain and sun and wind and time on the street. It can be
compounded when you discover there is meaningful story behind the piece.
“La [...]
March
21 hit us this week and that means Spring and that means more birds,
flowers, sidewalk sales, thigh-high shorts, and Street Art and graffiti
are on their way! Great to find this new brick wall falling apart by
Aakash Nahalini in the subway this week, and then to learn that it is a
sketch [...]
Spring
started on Thursday and The Rockin Robin is not singing yet in Brooklyn
but when she does it might be due to getting herself a nice new house
in DUMBO from XAM. We spotted these new pieces while on bike through the
former industrial neighborhood and noticed they look a little different
from the [...]
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening: The Yok & Sheryo in Australia, Sixe and Okuda in Peru, and Mammutt in Mexico City
BSA Special Feature:
The Yok and Sheryo in “Fish & Chips”
The Yok and Sheryo have been working as a collaborative aerosol duo for a handful [...]
Brooklyn
based artist Kenny Scharf has fabricated one of his amorphous painted
classic characters and put it on display at The Plaza of the Standard
High Line Hotel in Manhattan’s Meat Packing District. A hot number from
the 80s downtown scene, Mr. Scharf has continued to add dimension to his
work over time, sometimes taking [...]
He
first wrote “Crash” on New York streets and trains in 1974 but he still
finds ways to entertain and challenge himself artistically. Now
managing a successful gallery career that has him globe trotting much of
the year, John Matos considers himself a closet pop artist, and the
similarities to Lichtenstein and Rosenquist are always [...]
Here
are a few moodily lit cellphone photos from inside a warehouse in Milan
today courtesy of Street Artist Gaia, who has been working on
collaborations with Baskik and Never 2501. He says the new pieces were
done in conjunction with a demonstration in support of “Dax Vive” that
just took place. We don’t know [...]
Street
Artist Blanco grabbed his camera while visiting Bangkok, Thailand this
month and discovered walls full of color, character, and even some graff
names he’s familiar with in New York. “Utah and Ether are all over the
city, crushing it,” he remarks.
His timing for visiting the city was good too because it coincided with the [...]
A
new mobile website for artist opinion was quietly launched last week in Maine.
The site, www.shypocket.com, invites professional artists to publish daily
commentary on topics that are hot or top of mind for them. With an edgy look
and simple interface, shypocket.com is designed to display bold and provocative
insight on a real-time basis.
“The
mobile platform is finicky, challenging, and oh so very cool,” said
shypocket.com creator, Cara Fox. A longtime writer and creative director in the
design communications field, Fox dreamed up her mobile forum while out west in
Taos, NM.
Artists
are encouraged to contributed mini-essays in a more raw and everyday voice than
they are accustomed to providing for galleries and artist statements. The
mini-essays on shypocket.com are 90 words and supported by a single image.
Fox
does not intend to make shypocket.com bigger that it is now, visually. The site
is designed for the small, smartphone screen and for swiping and tapping. It
can also be viewed on a tablet device, but it not accessible from a desktop
computer. The goal is for the forum to be as dynamic and in motion as the
artists who publish opinion on it.
Visit
www.shypocket.com on a smartphone or tablet device. For more information, write
contact@shypocket.com.
I have to admit that I am always hesitant to embrace graffiti-linked mainstream movies because I am concerned about too much mainstreaming. But this movie looks like it has promise. It certainly has the research to back it. Titled "What's Not To Love About Graffiti" the movie Gimme the Loot
was reviewed in the NYT. Indeed, what is not to love?
Over the past five years Adam Leon has gone from working for film
festivals to being honored by them. After a stint on the payroll of the New York Film Festival
he eventually took his love for film behind the camera, writing and
directing a feature debut that got festival audiences buzzing and
distributors calling. That movie is “Gimme the Loot,”
about two young graffiti writers from the Bronx whose quest to tag the
New York Mets home-run apple takes them on a lively adventure throughout
New York City. It includes encounters with drug dealers, a little petty
theft and walking shoeless through the city streets.
“We were in 50 locations,” Mr. Leon, 31, said of the production. “We kind of wanted it to be this low-budget epic.”
The film had its premiere at last year’s South by Southwest
festival, where it won the narrative jury prize and was acquired by
Sundance Selects. Then, like its neighborhood-hopping teenagers, the
movie began popping up at festivals all over, including Cannes. It lands
in theaters on Friday.
Mr. Leon spoke with Mekado Murphy in Austin, Tex., last year at South by
Southwest, then again this month in New York, where Mr. Leon lives.
These are excerpts from those conversations.
Q. What were some of your narrative goals for “Gimme the Loot”?
A. I wanted to do something about the joys of youth set in a grittier,
urban environment. I was really interested in telling a story about kids
who come from vivid lives and tough, working-class backgrounds but
aren’t necessarily miserable people, though I never wanted to sell out
their existence.
What inspired you to make your lead characters graffiti writers?
I grew up in the city. I had a lot friends who were graffiti writers, so
I was aware of the culture to a degree. But then I co-wrote and
co-directed a short film a few years ago, and we cast a couple of
graffiti writers in it. And getting to know them, I found that they take
it so seriously, and they are very passionate about it. I saw them as
these real-life action heroes, where they’re climbing buildings, scaling
walls and jumping rooftops. I thought that would be a great jumping-off
point for a fun adventure.
How did you aim to portray the graffiti world accurately?
We brought on this guy called SP1, who’s kind of a legendary graffiti
writer from the ’80s, and he was our adviser. We did graffiti class for
months, where we would learn to write and learn about the culture, the
history and the language, so we could turn our cast into writers. It was
absolutely essential to us to be as authentic and real as possible,
because movies have treated graffiti very poorly.
Many of the locations aren’t the ones we usually see in New York movies, like bodegas in the Bronx.
We wanted to do hits, B-sides and rarities, in terms of New York. We do
have a scene in Washington Square Park and certain iconic shots. But we
really wanted to show a New York that was a bit unexplored.
How did working at film festivals help you make your own movie?
I got to know a lot of people who really care about movies and work with
movies, from filmmakers to programmers to sales agents to distributors.
You get to see behind the scenes of how the machine operates if you
ever have a product for that machine. I highly recommend it to people
trying to make a small independent film.
What was it like taking your movie to Cannes?
It was sort of beyond our dreams to go there. Because the movie is
basically a comedy, and it’s light in tone, we never expected that to
happen. We went into that experience saying: “We’re really blessed to
have this opportunity. Let’s make the best of it and have a fun time.”
Take an abandoned ocean liner, add some amazing graffiti artists and what do you have? "It's got the potential to be the biggest open-air art project in the world" says Paul Williams, Duke of Lancaster manager.
Three monkeys dressed in suits crouch on bulging sacks of money,
striking the symbolic pose of "hear no evil, see no evil, speak no
evil."At more than 10-meters
tall, the imposing chimps are the size of a three-storey building,
dwarfing onlookers gazing up at their grim, spray-painted faces.
The menacing monkeys are
joined on all sides by similarly fantastical and macabre creatures --
from skeleton divers to slobbering pigs -- and you get the feeling that
out here, in the desolate British marshlands, no one would hear you
scream were they to come alive.
The 'Council of Monkeys'
Welcome to the Duke of Lancaster.
A hulking, rusting, abandoned ship on the Dee Estuary in north Wales,
which has become a canvas for some of the most renowned graffiti artists
from across Europe.
At a whopping 137-meters
long, seven storeys tall, and weighing 4,500-tons, the former cruise
liner is an awe-inspiring sight in the deserted countryside.
It was this remarkable setting which prompted graffiti collective DuDug
-- a word play on the Welsh for "black duke" -- to approach the ship's
owners with the innovative idea of turning the abandoned vessel into a
thriving arts destination.
With the owners'
approval, artists from across Europe began spray painting the decrepit
ship, using cherry pickers -- a type of hydraulic aerial work platform
-- to reach its towering walls.
They are now campaigning to have the site reopened to the public as the centerpiece of an arts festival.
"When the pieces first started appearing, we had some people say 'that's no way to treat the ship.'" Williams said.
"But there's no doubt
that what they're doing is art -- the key definition between art and
graffiti is graffiti is done illegally. This, however, is done with the
owner's knowledge and accommodation.
"And if it's the catalyst for regeneration, it's got to be a good thing," added Williams.
In
the Mexico City neighborhood of Condesa a new mural from Lesuperdemon
appears on a long wall of a historic house. The act of adding a mural to
a wall is part of tradition in Mexican culture, so any new developments
like this, even as they intersect with the relatively new graffiti or
Street Art [...]
Tidal
waves of fertility and good luck are stenciled across the walls inside
the Japan Society right now by Street Artist Aiko as part of the Edo Pop
show that is examining the impact of Japanese prints on the work of
contemporary artists. Using motifs like the rabbit and butterfly, two
of Aiko’s favorites that [...]
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening: Aiko “Edo Pop”, ART POLLUTION with: Overunder, Jilly Ballistic and The Yok & Sheryo
BSA Special Feature:
Aiko: “Sunrise” for The Japan Society exhibition “Edo Pop”
In this new video released by The Japan Society, Street Artist [...]
Ithaca,
near the geographical center of New York State, is a socially
progressive town that has experimented with its own currency (“Ithaca
Hours”), was one of the first cities in the US to confer rights to
same-sex partners (1986), and is the home of two universities (Cornell
University and Ithaca College). At the southern end [...]
“If
his work on the street is an indication, it has been a constant state
of war. Look at these images and themes that reappear in WK’s work since
he first came to New York; Ever-present fear, violence, anxiety,
overheated sex-play, fishnets & firearms, contorted figures racing,
martial arts kicks to the head, hand-to-hand combat, [...]
London
Street Artist Stik has breathed a relaxed at-ease quality into the
familiar stick man of your childhood and expanded his reach across
walls, boarded windows, doorways, and buildings. Working on the street
(and sometimes living on it) for the last ten years, the former live
art-school model has grown in stature on the scene [...]
Street
Artist LNY was in the Fountain Art fair this weekend and is on the
street 24/7 right now in lower Manhattan as part of a Fourth Arts Block
public arts project directed by Keith Schweitzer.
The sweeping careening necks of the long billed birds are wrapped around a malfeasant from below, wrestling in a [...]
“I can’t believe it. I never expected this, ever.”
The Houston Street Wall was the site of a sidewalk surprise birthday
party Saturday for photographer Martha Cooper, who was planning to
stop by for what she thought would be a new mural shoot. The world
famous graffiti photographer had no idea that artists How and Nosm [...]
The
Fountain fair raised the Street Art to the rafters this year with an
installation curated by Mighty Tanaka Gallery and Robots Will Kill. The
canvasses wave above the exhibit floor in this historic Armory space
while below thousands of people milled through the booths of a varied
collection of this years offerings. Here are [...]
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening: Drones and Street Artist Essam.
BSA Special Feature:
Drones, Rand Paul, and Street Artist Essam
Street Artists use their medium of message on the street sometimes
to entertain, engage, or educate the passerby. Whether it’s a personal,
cultural, [...]
Armory
Week is back in New York for the 2o13 Edition. Millions will be traded,
thousands sold, and probably more will go unsold. Works by artists who
are identified as Street Artists are on target for more exposure in
these more formalized settings than five years ago thanks to the
globalization of the phenomenon, but [...]
For
those who follow this sort of thing Street Artist Olek has monopolized
the category for pink and purple camouflage crochet sculpture on the
street.
It wouldn’t be a stretch to say she actually invented the category,
owing as much to the D.I.Y. and hand-crafting movements as to public
artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude, whose work also [...]
So,
what does Everything smell like? According to Eric, "It smelled, at
first whiff, of strawberries mixed with salt, along with hints of
baseball mitt and hair spray. And tuberose, yes. And licorice and fresh
paint. And musk and rotten peaches and honeysuckle and basil and soap."
Others compared it to Chanel or Shalimar, suggesting that "many
fragrances today use the most historically successful ones as reference
points." 
was reviewed in the NYT. Indeed, what is not to love?
The 'Council of Monkeys'
