Hunting for new stikman work in Philadelphia

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Fishtown, March 31st

Note from the editor: Today we have a guest post from Damon Landry, a photographer and urbanite who has been documenting street art in Philadelphia for many years. It’s warming up in Philadelphia, which means there are new stikman pieces to be found, and Damon is on the lookout. Damon has contributed to Vandalog a couple of times before, and I hope he’ll continue to update us on what’s going on in Philadelphia. – RJ

stikman often shows up around my house on the edge of Fishtown in some form or another over the years. This week a few installs popped up after I noticed new work in center city, oddly enough both are pink!

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Fishtown, March 31st

I work as a photographer for a company in an office overlooking Mid-town Village aka The Gayborhood so am in and out of this area on a daily basis. It has not been a normal area where stikman installs anything over the past 5-6 years or so. So it was a surprise to find a fresh install of maybe 6-7 pieces up last week. I quickly walked around for a bit covering quite a few streets but it seemed as though this was pretty much it. stikman seems over the years to come to Philly to install new works often based on major shows at the PMA so I ? have been keeping an eye out for something Korean inspired but nothing to date. (Come to think of it no Flower Show inspired works this year either) This latest batch all appear to  be inspired by old electrical circuits and/or diagrams. Very cool. After 21+ years on the streets stikman still keeps it fresh and he never seems to have gone away which is pretty  amazing when you think about it.

The Gayborhood / Midtown Village, March 24th
The Gayborhood / Midtown Village, March 24th
The Gayborhood / Midtown Village, March 24th
The Gayborhood / Midtown Village, March 24th
The Gayborhood / Midtown Village, March 24th
The Gayborhood / Midtown Village, March 24th
The Gayborhood / Midtown Village, March 24th
The Gayborhood / Midtown Village, March 24th
The Gayborhood / Midtown Village, March 24th
The Gayborhood / Midtown Village, March 24th

Photos by Damon Landry

Damon Landry checks out Open Air Philly

A note from RJ: This is a guest post by Damon Landry, probably Philadelphia’s foremost street art photographer right now. Damon is writing about Open Air Philly, who a sponsor of Vandalog this month, which is why I figured it would be better to have Damon write about the event than me. The color photos were shot with a Nikon D7000 and a 17-55 f2.8 ED DX lens. For the black and white photos, Damon used an Olympus EPL2 Pen camera using a 20mm Panasonic pancake lens.

At first I was not “sold” on the concept of this project by aPA and Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, as I am used to seeing these types of Xenon lights used mainly to draw attention to used car lots and nightclubs and so had that association in mind. However seeing the project being tested from out my home’s 3rd floor windows my curiosity was tapped, especially on humid nights as the air carried the beams in a very defined manner on those nights. I went down the night before the opening and was literally laughing as it was fairly amazing to be under what appeared to be a crystal castle of sorts… “I got it” at that moment! Opening night was great however the crush of people on the parkway took away from what I thought needed to be a more intimate experience insomuch as you can have in the environment of the parkway. Nonetheless I was again amazed and like a lot of people were doing I just laid down on my back in the middle of the parkway and stared at the sky and was taken away by the show. For public art, this was pretty interesting stuff and for all the news about the very few “dark sky advocates” who were going to be there in protest I did not see any nor did anyone I know pay them any mind. I brought along a variety of camera gear to get images but in the end I just wanted to watch and not bother with setting all that up. This was good stuff… go see it if you have the chance!

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