An international roster of street artists has descended on Richmond, Virginia. The G40 event, organized by Shane Pomajambo, is giving a face lift to an emerging arts district. For me spray paint is synonymous with street art so I was surprised to see that the medium of choice was ordinary house paint applied with rollers attached to poles, some as long as 26 feet. Although this appeared cumbersome and tiring, requiring strength and patience, the artists were able to cover huge spaces, paint delicate lines and fill in with subtle color blends.  Montana watch out!

JR and Liu Bolin pulled off a complex collaboration today at 11 Spring Street. This same building, just before a total renovation, was the site of a massive street art extravaganza organized by Marc and Sara Schiller of Wooster Collective in 2006.

Liu Bolin aka The Invisible Man usually has himself painted head to toe to blend in with his surroundings. Today, however, Bolin directed his assistants to paint JR into a background of a wheat pasted photo. The photo was one JR had taken earlier of Bolin. The disappearing act took place in full view of hundreds of fans, photographers and passersby amidst the sunny, springlike streets of Soho.

For more of Liu Bolin’s work, check out   Eli Klein Fine Art at 462 West Broadway.

The Brooklyn Museum celebrated their big, new Keith Haring show with a gala opening on Wednesday. Many fellow artists, friends, celebrities and art world peeps were in attendance. The exhibit focuses on Keith’s early career 1978-1982 and includes all kinds of large and small works seldom seen before. There’s an entire room of chalk drawings peeled from subway signboards and charming, early videos of Keith at work. Personally I felt that LA2 deserved more recognition than just a mention on one panel and, I admit, I was disappointed not to see Subway Art among all the graffiti and street art books in the museum shop. But the show, which will be up until July 8, is a must-see.

A serious street art project is happening in my hometown of Baltimore and I’m excited to be part of it. Open Walls Baltimore, aka OWB, kicked off last week with a standing-room only press conference in the WindUp Space, an appropriately funky venue. Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake was in the house and delivered an enthusiastic speech opening with the line, “I love art.”

The lucky neighborhood designated to receive the murals is the Station North Arts and Entertainment District. It’s adjacent to the train station and the Bolt bus stop if you’re traveling from NYC. Gaia helped write the grant for the project, select the walls and curate the lineup of international and local artists.

Baltimore is an old and beautiful city that, sadly, has fallen on hard times. Architecturally significant buildings and ordinary rowhouses, abandoned and boarded up, line the streets.  The underlying agenda for murals of course, is to stimulate real estate investment and this can be a double edged sword.  However responsible plans are in place to continue to provide reasonably priced housing in the area. PNC Bank, the primary funding source for OWB has a community development program focusing on investments to low and moderate income people.

I personally would love to see Baltimore become an international arts destination. This venerable city deserves some love.

A fabulous installation of Ramellzee’s Letter Racer sculptures, each representing a letter of the alphabet mounted on a skateboard, opened at The   Suzanne Geiss Company gallery on 76 Grand Street last night. The opening turned into a nostalgic 80’s reunion with many of Ramellzee’s contemporaries, some of whom flew in for the occasion including Patti Astor from LA and Kool Koor from Brussels. Henry Chalfant, Fab 5 Freddy, Lee, Jane Dixon & Charlie Ahearn, Mare139, Jason, Riff, Revolt, Sharp and Bill Blast and many more were in the house as well as Ram’s lovely wife Carmela.

From the   Coolhunting website: Created over the course of 14 years, “The Letter Racers” sculptures are on view in NYC for the first time. They represent the artist’s manifestos “Iconoclast Panzerism” and “Gothic Futurism,” two works written in Rammellzee’s idiosyncratic language. The written and visual works explore the slavery and corruption of language and its liberation through the artist’s own work.
The complex theory behind “The Letter Racers” has to do with the freedom of language from its historical fetters. As Rammellzee writes, “In the 14th century the monks ornamented and illustrated the manuscripts of letters. In the 21st and 22nd century the letters of the alphabet through competition are now armamented for letter racing and galactic battles. This was made possible by a secret equation know as THE RAMMELLZEE.”

This is the first time these sculptures have been shown in NYC . The exhibit will be up until April 21.

Retna completed his Houston Bowery wall today after a 3-day painting marathon. The finished wall, covered in Retna’s unique script, contains a universal message and also personal tributes to friends and writers in LA and New York. The main body of text reads:
“All the great ones are conscious of universal truths
Watch the heartbeat in your wrist- a precise pulsing beat of life’s drum with loss of timing if you are ill
The power of the world always works in circles.”

The Houston/Bowery wall is undergoing another transformation.  L.A. based Retna, painting freehand with brushes,  is covering the wall with his unique alphabet.  I haven’t learned to read Retna yet but plan to work on it. Meanwile he’s promised to de-code his universal message when the wall is finished in the next couple of days.

We’ve had a mild winter this year but if you want to be reminded of some serious past storms, come to the opening tonight of Snowblind. The group show   at Klughaus, a sweet new little gallery in Chinatown, was curated by Carnage and Making Deals. I was happy to get a chance to dig into my files for some non-graffiti related flicks. The black and whites are mostly from New York 1978 and the color ones shot nearly 30 years later during the Baltimore blizzard of 2009. Snow photos are pretty but tricky to take. It’s difficult to retain detail in the bright whites and nearly impossible to keep driving snow off the lens.

I’ve been meaning to blog about this great wall ever since Art Basel—sorry it took me so long. Few & Far is a women’s collective with members from across the USA and plans to go global soon. For Art Basel, Primary Flight hooked them up with a very long wall in Wynwood. With artists flying to Miami from East and West coasts to paint together, a lot of pre-planning of colors and concepts was necessary to pull off what turned into a superbly unified effort.

Here’s the scoop on how they did it from L.A.‘s Erin Yoshi, “The mural came about through a collective process. Since native Honey Bees are moving towards extinction in the United States, we understand that this will have a huge impact on our domestic food supply in the future.  We wanted to highlight this through our appreciation for Bees. Ksra suggested the honey comb theme, Meme evolved that into a Queen Bees wall for the women’s collective and Mags and Yoshi supported with the color scheme and background concept. 

We were excited to have Ironlak as our sponsor.  They support FnF with all the paint needed, came by multiple times to check on our progress and sent their media team to capture the moment. 

I flew out to Chicago on Friday for DB Burkeman’s art sticker show and book signing just in time for the first big snow of the year. DB has amassed an enormous collection of printed and hand-drawn stickers and thousands are on display at Maxwell Colette Gallery including super-rare ones from Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, Banksy, Barry McGee and other legends.

If you can’t make it to the show be sure to check out DB’s book published by Rizzoli: “Stickers- from Punk Rock to Contemporary Art” AKA Stuck-Up Piece Of Crap featuring the over 4000 stickers by more than 1300 artists.

I received a wonderful surprise package in the mail last week—a Bobbleheaded Blade that looked exactly like the king himself. Since Blade recently relocated to Florida, the bobbling replica in my studio will insure that he will be remembered daily.

You can get one too at Toy Tokyo or Tuff City or order on line at   G.A.G. Golden Age of Graffiti. Blade is planning to make a few guest appearances at selected venues in NYC in March so get your bobble on!

Since 2006 I’ve been documenting a Southwest Baltimore neighborhood called SoWeBo known more for its portrayal in the TV program The Wire than for its art. But some of Baltimore’s earliest graffiti writers such as Shaken began their careers here and are still going strong.

Street art is a novelty here although there are plenty of very inviting walls. Recently Stefan Ways organized a major makeover of   Carroll Skate Park. Last weekend I watched Gaia wheat paste a pigeon drawing in an alley that, in fact, has a lot of pigeons. Hopefully other artists will make their way west into this relatively virgin territory. I’ll be keeping my camera ready.