If you want to go see the mural for yourself, it’s on Mulberry Street between Canal and Hester in New York’s Little Italy. Or, stop by on Saturday at noon for The Art of Comedy‘s art crawl and we’ll be walking by all of the murals that Ron, Hanksy and gilf! have painted in Little Italy.
PS, thanks to Montana Cans for all the paint that made this wall possible.
Photo by Wayne RadaPhoto by Lois Stavsky. Click to view large.Photo by Wayne RadaPhoto by Wayne Rada
Hanksy’s piece on Mulberry Street inspired by Jim Gaffigan
Since The New York Comedy Festival is behind The Art of Comedy, the series of indoor and outdoor art installations that Wayne Rada and have been organizing recently in NYC with Hanksy, gilf!, and Ron English, Vandalog has three pairs of tickets to give away to New York Comedy Festival shows.
We have two pairs of tickets to see Marlon and Shawn Wayans at Carolines on Broadway on Thursday November 8th, Friday November 9th or Sunday November 10th. On Thursday and Sunday, they have shows at 7:30pm and 10:00pm. On Friday they have shows at 8:00pm and 10:30pm. The Wayans Brothers have starred in a number of films including Scary Movie, White Chicks, and Little Man.
To enter our contest to win any one of these pairs of tickets, just leave a comment on this post or tweet @vandalog with the reason that you should win tickets to one of these shows. The winners will be my favorite three responses out of those received before midnight on the east coat on Wednesday November 7th and I’ll get in touch with the winners soon after that to sort out the details.
Hanksy’s piece on Mulberry Street inspired by Jim Gaffigan
As many of you have either heard or experienced, Hurricane Sandy left a trail of destruction in the Caribbean and along the East Coast of the USA. While some of us in New York were fortunately unscathed, there are some true horror stories coming out of this. Logan Hicks has decided to be proactive and in a benevolent effort will be selling the print “SoHo Illuminated by a food cart” until November 10th to raise funds for the Red Cross. 100% of the profits raised will be donated directly to the Red Cross. This is an opportunity for us to give back and to own nice art for doing so.
Logan’s words:
Hurricane Sandy has destroyed entire towns and families in the tri-state New York area. While my own family and belongings escaped any real damage, many were not as fortunate. As we came through the hurricane, I thought ‘that wasn’t so bad’ – and in my neighborhood, it wasn’t. Then the news channels started to parade the misery of communities like Staten Island and Breezy Point across the screen. They were decimated. Entire houses washed away, lives lost, and cherished possessions destroyed.
My good friend John Lee from @emehtagency made a suggestion that I sell one of the photos taken of downtown Manhattan during the power loss to help raise money for those in need. It sounded like the perfect way for me to assist. The conditions which produced amazing photographs for me were also the same conditions that have displaced families. It’s the obligation of those that have, to help those who do not. So I am helping the way I am best suited for – through my art.
Here are the details:
Title: “SoHo Illuminated by a food cart”
Medium: Digital C-print on Metallic paper
Size: 24 x 18 inches (61 x 46 cm) (image size 23 x 17 with quarter inch border)
Signed; Yes
Edition: Open
Price: $100.00 (shipping included)
Limit one print per household.
Payment via Paypal address: logan@workhorsevisuals.com
Jetsonorama recently put this piece in downtown Flagstaff, Arizona to protest the state’s strict anti-immigration law, which went into full effect recently. Back in September, we posted about work that Yote did to protest the same law. Jetsonorama’s piece asks “Parezco ilegal?”, which translates to “Do I look illegal?”
While Bushwick did not take the bulk of the damage in Hurricane Sandy, the area’s reliance on underground subways into parts of the city that are now without electricity left many artists trapped in Brooklyn. National and international flights, trains and busses were all canceled for days, leaving artists Pixel Pancho and 2501 with some time on their hands.
Pixel PanchoPixel Pancho
By way of Martha Cooper’s hospitality and driving skills, the pair made their way through the borough’s paint stores searching for the right colors before landing at Bushwick 5 Points. Enduring the smells emanating from the live poultry establishment on the corner, Pixel Pancho incorporated his style of rusted robots into the building’s gritty razor-wire and concrete exterior.
25012501
Meanwhile, 2501 added his geometric forms to the area of Bushwick 5 Points that is slowly housing the abstract work of fellow artists such as See One and Hellbent. Leaving town the following day, the artist put time to the test when creating his latest optical illusion.
2501See One and Hellbent in Progress
As 2501 wrapped up his wall, See One and Hellbent continued working across the street on their massive collaborative wall. Through slowly building up layers weekend after weekend, the pair near the completion of their largest wall date. With jobs and trains canceled into next week, weeks of bending color and form could come to a close soon.
Originally, I submitted this essay for publication in the We Own the Night, the official book of The Underbelly Project. It was not published in the book, but today, the two-year anniversary of the public announcement of The Underbelly Project, seems like a good time to finally get this piece out into the world. – RJ
There’s a certain group of street artists, a group whom I tend to admire, who make art to give a gift to the rest of the world. These artists create spectacles. These artists attempt to make the world a better place by putting their art into it. These artists increase the amount of wonder in our everyday lives. This group includes artists like Swoon, Mark Jenkins and the performers in Improv Everywhere.
While not all street artists are trying to do what Swoon and Mark Jenkins are doing, there’s certainly an element of that in the vast majority of street art. At the very least, interacting with society in some way seems to be so much of what street art is about. Like Banksy said “even if you don’t come up with a picture to cure world poverty, you can make somebody smile while they’re having a piss.”
So what does that mean for The Underbelly Project? If I’ve just described the most pure and ethical goal of street art, The Underbelly Project fails miserably. It is inaccessible to the public and will remain so for the foreseeable future. Only a few people besides the artists themselves ever saw any of the project in the flesh, and most of the artists did not have a chance to wander around the space and experience see more than just their wall. And yet, this is not something I even considered during my visitto The Underbelly Project. The idea that The Underbelly Project might be failure as street art is something I only really considered after the project went public and people were disappointed that they had not seen it in the flesh. Why did I experience that disconnect? Is it simply that I was one of the few non-artists to see the station in-progress, so I am speaking from a privileged position? Maybe, but I didn’t go down to The Underbelly Project’s installation in Paris and I still enjoy those photos.
Numerous artists at The Underbelly Project
Yes, it could be argued that The Underbelly Project, as a street art project, failed very clearly. But I don’t think that’s the case.
First of all, street art in this decade is, for better or worse, mostly viewed online or in books. Yes, I experienced The Underbelly Project in person and it was a unique and unforgettable experience, but that was an experience of the space more than an experience of the art. To fully appreciate the art, I had to look at photographs. Cameras depict the station better than the human eye possibly could in that darkness. As valuable an experience as it was to get down into The Underbelly Project and wander around, there’s just as much value, in a different way, in looking at good photographs of it.
Maybe the angle of Underbelly as a “street art” project is all wrong. The Underbelly Project is not really a street art project or a mural project. Workhorse and PAC know how to organize mural projects. They know what large street art mural projects look like: lots of artists painting in daylight in very public spaces, usually over the course of a few days, and interacting with curious members of the public. The Underbelly Project is something else. If it’s something else, it should be held to a different (but not necessarily higher or lower) standard.
The Underbelly Project should be compared to the work of the street artists and graffiti writers who paint in abandoned factories. Very few people will ever see those murals in the flesh, but that does not make them any less impressive. Murals in abandoned factories are not gifts to the world in the same way that it is a gift when Swoon commands a flotilla down the Mississippi, but there’s still something valuable about them.
Rone and Meggs at The Underbelly Project
Aren’t artists allowed to enjoy themselves? It is selfish on the part of fans to say that street artists can only paint outdoors in spaces where lots of people will see the work. The Underbelly Project, like murals in abandoned spaces, was a space for artists to experiment and be free. That’s where the project was an astounding success: In a culture where artists are constantly under pressure to perform and sell and promote, The Underbelly Project stripped all that away and brought the artists back to making art for the sake of making art, which is just as much a part of the street art spirit as giving gifts to the public. Street art is about anybody being able to make art and just getting out and doing it for the love of making, rather than for the sake of a paycheck.
Going into The Underbelly Project, it seems that artists didn’t know if their contributions would ever be seen, how images might be distributed, who else was involved or if spending a night painting would “pay off” in a monetary sense. When I accepted the invitation to go see the project, about all I was really told was that I should get to NYC at a certain time of year because it would be worth my while and I’d see something cool. I learned a little bit more about what I was in for before going down, but not much. I thought it would be fun or terrible or interesting or, at least, memorable. I would have accepted the invitation even if I had been forever sworn to secrecy about the existence of the project.
Numerous artists at The Underbelly Project
The Underbelly Project is not a gift to the public; it is something for the artists.
Of course, The Underbelly Project will not remain inaccessible forever. People made it into the station for a few days after news of the project broke, but then it sounds like the MTA sealed off the entrance more thoroughly. Some day though, that entrance will be unsealed. Maybe it already has been. Some day, daredevils will risk their safety to visit the station. Maybe they will know about The Underbelly Project or maybe they won’t. Maybe some of the artwork will still be intact or maybe it will all be destroyed. Whatever the case may be, at that point, The Underbelly Project will be a gift. Not to the rest of a world, but to a select few.
