12ozProphet

On Thursday, Shepard Fairey launched his Levi’s clothing colab with a live installation
in Times Square (which I unfortunately missed) and a signing of a 4 poster suite printed
with both front and back images. The posters were free with a T-Shirt purchase—a great
deal. The 50’s era “Stay Up Girl” with spray can is the best!

I’d heard a buzz about an up and coming arts district in Miami so when a friend invited me for a visit,
I jumped at the chance to check it out. Wynwood, an area in downtown Miami, is full of warehouses
formerly used by shoe importers that have recently been turned into galleries. There are dozens of
galleries in a 15 block radius. The two story warehouses have windowless, flat walls—perfect for murals.

In 2007 BOOKSIIII founded an organization called Primary Flight with the idea of bringing street artists
to Wynwood during Art Basel to paint on these walls. Last year around 100 artists showed up to paint.
The concept caught on and developers, gallery owners and artists are collaborating to foster a creative
community.

Last weekend was lucky to have BOOKSIIII and his partner TYPOE as my guides in Wynwood. They drove
me around and in a very short time I got to see an tons of legal and illegal art. Some of the commisssioned
walls are amazing but I was particularly taken with the pieces painted in an abandoned building where
squatters lived surrounded by walls full of graffiti. As of now, Wynwood lacks the kind of vibrant urban street
life I love to photograph in New York and Baltimore. It should be interesting to watch the arts district evolve.

Photographer Luz Martin is visiting NYC from Valencia, Spain celebrating her new book, Textura: Valencia Street Art.
It’s due out any minute. Yesterday we headed up to the Bronx to visit TATS Cru at The Point and check out some graff
in the area. Bio, Nicer,  BGee 183, and twins How and Nosm are completing a humongous banner mural for the Hong Kong
shoe company, Hogan. A block away was an even larger, freshly painted TATS wall full of original characters and intricate
details. If you’re planning a visit to NYC, Hunts Point in the Bronx is a great place to start.

For nearly four years, I’ve been taking the bus from NYC to Baltimore every other weekend. I’m trying to
document SoWeBo,  a fascinating, if beleaguered, southwest neighborhood.  I haven’t seen a lot of graffiti
there probably because the cops are overly vigilant due to excessive drug dealing in the area. Yesterday
I met some graf heads who kindly took me on a little tour.

SoWeBo boasts the first mile of public railroad track ever laid in the entire US. We walked along that track
for more than a mile passing some nifty hobo monikers on a laid up freight train. Then we slid down an
embankment to another set of tracks which passed under some bridges. Turns out that’s where writers go
to piece.  Thanks guys for guiding me!

Photographers came out in force yesterday for the opening of the Bronx Museum show,
Urban Archives: That was Then, This is Now. The curators had mined our files for photos
and artifacts from the years when the Bronx looked like a war zone. They paired this
material with some amazing, large scale, present day photos of the Grand Concourse by
Jeff Chien-Hsing Liao.

Rokafella and Kwikstep performed with Roka’s students from The Door in the West Village.
Check out Mare 139’s photos of the exhibit up over on his blog. I’ll put some of the dancers here.

Younity, the women’s art collective founded by TooFly and Alice Mizrachi opened its third annual show
last night at the Clemente Soto Velez Cultural & Educational Center on 107 Suffolk Street in Manhattan.
To quote from their press release: Running until October 23, 2009, the exhibit is not the average “white-wall”
art show; the all-female collective will transform the art space into an eco-funhouse of raw materials and
street art. Elements such as graffiti, photography, design and construction are used to connect ideas about
consumerism, environmentalism, health, and renewable energy.

My contribution to the show were a few black and white photos that I took on the Lower Eastside in the late ‘70’s
showing kids being creative with found materials. I’m delighted that these photos are still relevant in today’s
electronic world. Younity cleverly displayed these photos on cardboard -perfect! I couldn’t resist buying a bold
stencil image by NIZ of the three pioneering B-Girlz, Asia One, Lady Champ and Aiko. I am happy to see women
in the arts, and in hip hop in particular, claiming and documenting their own place in history.

Rain threatened but ultimately did not dampen the mood at yesterday’s Urban Arts Fest in Bushwick, an event
presented by Mark Batty Publishers. The venue was Castle Braid, a brand new apartment complex in the heart
of what used to be one of the most desolate neighborhoods in the city.  Street and graff artists decorated exterior
walls and hung their work in the freshly painted but still empty apartments.

Bushwick has become one of the last affordable hoods for artists to live and work in New York City. Although I
participated in the festival and am always glad to see street art promoted, I did wonder who was promoting whom.
I can only hope that the present and future developers of Bushwick repay the creative people who brought them
there by designing buildings where artists and others of modest means can afford to live.
















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Alex Hornest, one of Sao Paulo’s earliest and best known street artists, has been painting since 1992.
Onesto is just one of 72 names he writes, all in different styles. The number is significant because
of his birth year:1972. While he was in Bogotá for the Memoria Canalla project, the lucky students
at ASAB (Academia Superior de Artes de Bogotá) were able to watch him create a piece using the
characters associated with his street name Onesto. For many years Alex resisted showing in galleries
as he felt that his work was more suited to the streets. However recently he’s decided to take the
plunge and is now in demand worldwide. He was off to an exhibit in LA right after Bogotá.

The MDC (Mientras Duermen Crew) painted a series of beautiful, sophisticated and incredibly
detailed wild style pieces as a tribute to IZ the WIZ. The pieces were painted on a long wall
surrounding an apartment complex. Apparently cops tried to stop the productions but the residents
protested so the artists were allowed to continue.

On Saturday we headed to Barrio Los Laches, a town perched on a steep hillside. The days’ activities
included graffiti painting, street dance workshops and performances and a parkour demonstration and
workshop. The kids weren’t required to wear helmets and there didn’t seem to be any fear of lawsuits
resulting from possible injuries. No way could this happen in the over-litigious US of A. The event was
organized and sponsored by the Bogotá Philharmonic which is funded by the Columbian Government.
Big up to the planners for an awesome day in a picturesque setting!