Bue in Berlin

Bue never fails to put a smile on my face. Here’s some of his most recent pieces, including collaborations with Mazuprozak, Squid, Sheryo and Jamz.

Squid and Bue in Ghent

Mazuprozak and Bue in Ghent

Mazuprozak, Bue, Sheryo and Jamz

Photos by Bue

Other and Labrona at Haverford College. Photo by RJ Rushmore

Earlier this month, Labrona and Troy Lovegates aka Other came down from Canada for a few days. Their first stop was Haverford, the small Philadelphia suburb where I go to college. At Haverford College, they painted a mural on the same building that Gaia painted last year. Then, they spent less than 24 hours in Baltimore, but took advantage of every second for painting and getting up. In Baltimore, Martha Cooper invited them to paint in SoWeBo, a part of town where she has been photographing the residents.

Other and Labrona in Baltimore. Photo by Martha Cooper

Check out more photos from Haverford and Baltimore after the jump… Read the rest of this article »

Faif understands public self-expression vs. the law

This is my running hypothesis: Sarcasm is how self-aware, suburban youth make sense of urban culture. Faif understands. Do you?

Faif understands necklace symbolism

Faif understands the quality of the buff

Faif understands the directions that hats are worn

"Graffiti is not graffiti without a big moustache." Faif, Magik, and Menor understand the graffiti aesthetic.

Photos by Faif

Erica il Cane recently painted three sides of an artists’ studio space, Het vogelnest vzw, in the Belgian city of Ghent. He will also be showing his work inside the space on the 19th-20th of May and there is a “street art night” on the 19th with lectures by Sarah Rombouts, Peter Bosschaert, Harlan Levey and Javier Abarca, and a screening of Exit Through the Gift Shop. For more info on those events, check out the studio’s website. You can see all Erica il Cane’s murals after the jump… Read the rest of this article »

Remi/Rough met up with TwoOne and Hendo and collaborated on this wall in downtown Melbourne.

Photos by Remi/Rough

LNY in Baltimore

Caroline and I were in Baltimore this week checking out Open Walls Baltimore. If you have the chance, definitely make a trip over there. Full posts about Baltimore coming soon. Point is, between Baltimore and moving this weekend, I’ve been lax this week. Things should return to normal on Wednesday or Thursday, but in the mean time, here’s what I’ve been meaning to post about:

• An update on the Kidult/Marc Jacobs situation: Marc Jacobs have turned a photo of the vandalism (or maybe commissioned tag) into a t-shirt that they are selling for $689, and at least one has sold already.
• Barry McGee’s show at Prism (his second, if you include his 2-man show with Phil Frost) has opened and is of course a must-see.
• Okay yes, it’s another Shepard Fairey show with images we’ve seen before, but there are a few gems in there. Specifically, the painted printing plates.
• A Basquiat painting went for over $16 million at a Phillips de Pury auction.
• This piece by Phlegm is one of my favorites from him in a while.
• Tes One and Bask collaborated on this dinosaur-themed mural in Florida.
• This group show at Opera Gallery’s NYC location looks like a top-tier show for being a group show. Anthony Lister, Interesni Kazki, Roa, Mark Jenkins, Bast, Swoon, Faile, so many more…
• Nychos and his crew paint some crazy stuff.
• Afeura, a mural festival in Peru, is using Kickstarter to raise funds for the project. So far, Escif, Bastardilla, Desertor and Jade have signed on to painting at the festival.
• In a move of crass commercialism reminding us that perhaps street art is dead, some artist made a really beautiful mural for the sole purpose of releasing a print of the same image.
• Sonni (the guy who did that crazy boom box in Miami) has a show opening this month in New York.
• Faile released some new prints on their website this week (sold out already of course), and intend to do so much more often from now on.
• The DMV and 1984 crews pulled the crazy stunt of putting on a one-day illegal show in Paris on the day of the French elections.
• Depoe is part of a two-man show opening on Saturday evening in New York. He has preview photos here.

Photo by RJ Rushmore

Photo by HookedBlog

Just after the closing of their first major UK exhibition Crazy Eye Hotel at the Old Truman Brewery, the Broken Fingaz crew let loose on the streets of East London. The Israeli crew, consisting of Tant, Unga, Kip and Deso, was able to put on the indoor display of their comic-strip-acid-trip-illustrations through support from the British Israeli Arts Training Scheme; a program built from a bilateral agreement between the British and Israeli governments that enables a creative exchange between the nations’ artists.

Photo courtesy of Broken Fingaz

Photo courtesy of Broken Fingaz

What better way to say “thank you” to the political effort funding your first major solo show in England, than to further-exhibit your art illegally? On one hand, London is without a doubt one of best cities for street art, so can you blame them for getting up while there? On the other hand, if the British Council, the Government of Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, or the Ministry of Culture and Sport, all of whom provide funding for this program, believed that perhaps they were actually funding some no good vandal punks to get up abroad, would it jeopardize the program?

The fact that they were putting up work was no secret, in fact it seemed advertised almost as much as the show itself. …But on that first hand, Broken Fingaz crew is phenomenal. What do you think?

Photo by HookedBlog

Photo courtesy of Broken Fingaz

Photo by HookedBlog

Photo courtesy of Broken Fingaz

Photos by Hookedblog and courtesy of Broken Fingaz Crew

About four years ago, I began noticing Cake’s women wheatpasted onto the walls of  Williamsburg and Chelsea.  Their poignant elegance transfixed me.  Even in various stages of decay, they never lost their heart-rending beauty.  Thanks to Keith Schweitzer and MaNY, in collaboration with FabNYC, three of Cake’s women have now found a home off the Bowery in Lower Manhattan.  Here are some scenes from today’s installation:

And a wonderful full view of the installation can be seen on Cake’s page.

Photos by Lenny Collado and Lois Stavsky

It looks like Kidult hit a Marc Jacobs store in New York, but rather than panic, buff and pretend it didn’t happen like most other stores that Kidult has hit, Marc Jacobs’ Twitter has claimed the work. Of course, they still buffed the piece. The New York Observer has more, and as they point out, maybe Kidult was commissioned to do the piece, as has often been speculated about his work. After all, it’s well-known that KAWS was approached by companies to do ad disruptions for him (which he eventually sort of did, in that he has designed work for use on billboards, but without the illegal look).

Via Street Art News

Photo courtesy of MarcJacobsIntl

LNY was in Baltimore recently to check out Open Walls Baltimore (exactly what Caroline and I are doing right now actually). He had quite a time while there and put up a couple of very Baltimore-specific pieces. Here’s what he has to say:

So I got a story to tell you and some pics to share, see I ended up making these drawings in Baltimore by randomly running into this group of urban horseback riders galloping down an East Baltimore neighborhood while visiting Gaia and Nanook. It was Sunday so what would be better than to go on a horse ride right? So I took some pictures and then made some work to later find out that they are part of this old Baltimore tradition of Huckstering, basically going around in a horse drawn cart selling vegetables. These guys are also called Arabs, which comes from the term “street Arab” as in an abandoned kid who roams the slums, and I was lucky enough to find a stable in South West Baltimore where horses are bred and taken care of by the community. All of which blows my mind because these guys were so happy and excited about my posters as I was about meeting them and discovering this otherwise invisible history of a city I am completely alien to. As I was putting the work up I got a lot of feedback from the neighborhood and they read the images in so many different ways that I had never even considered; we talked about resilience, beauty, vision, excellence, dead space, gold, bling and the efforts of Sowebo to rejuvenate the neighborhood from the inside. I feel totally overwhelmed by the way the work was able to engage and be fulfilled by having this conversation with the neighborhood. All of this thanks to Martha Cooper who introduced me to Sowebo and has been constantly engaging and documenting the area, these are her pictures and a lil clip I took of the spot.

Photos by Martha Cooper