Global Graphica

Once again, the street artist Momo strikes the building at 11 Spring St., in Nolita, New York City. This wheat-paste is a sweet tongue-in-cheek poster. The black-and-white work is of a fictional New Yorker magazine cover depicting Momo in the act of pasting up his (her?) work. Brilliant, fresh stuff.

Ivan Corsa Photo

Detail of the new Momo paste-up at 11 Spring St. in downtown Manhattan.

Background Note
Once again, the street artist Momo strikes the building at 11 Spring St., in Nolita, New York City. This wheat-paste is a sweet tongue-in-cheek poster. The black-and-white work is of a fictional New Yorker magazine cover depicting Momo in the act of pasting up his (her?) work. Brilliant, fresh stuff.

Ivan Corsa Photo

CORRECTION: The artist who created this sticker was misidentified in our original post below. The work featured in the detail image above is Twerps! “Lobster Roll” sticker. We apologize to the artist and our readers for the error. (Props to Mikhail in NYC for setting us straight.)

2006-04-24

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A detail of a recent Neckface sticker in Soho, NYC.

Background Note
The work of Neckface is among the most familiar array of street-art images in lower Manhattan and Brooklyn, New York City. Neckface works in several mediums and is known for stickers and wall pieces featuring creepy characters who have little if any neck (hence the apt name “Neckface”). Neckface also often simply scrawls his name in large child-like lettering on the sides of buildings and other urban surfaces. But it is for his stickers that he is probably best known. These can be found in many major cities, including NYC, San Francisco and Tokyo. The Brooklyn-based artist is oringally from California. He has exhibited his work in galleries throughout the world and has had his art (and himself) featured in magazines and newspapers.

Gear: Nikon Coolpix 3600 Digital Camera

Ivan Corsa Photo

CORRECTION: The artist who created this sticker was misidentified in our original post below. The work featured in the image above is a “Lobster Roll” sticker by “Twerps!” We apologize to the artist and our readers for the error. (Props to Mikhail in NYC for setting us straight.)

2006-04-24

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Here’s the wider, contextual shot of a recent Neckface sticker in Soho, NYC.

Background Note
The work of Neckface is among the most familiar array of street-art images in lower Manhattan and Brooklyn, New York City. Neckface works in several mediums and is known for stickers and wall pieces featuring creepy characters who have little if any neck (hence the apt name “Neckface”). Neckface also often simply scrawls his name in large child-like lettering on the sides of buildings and other urban surfaces. But it is for his stickers that he is probably best known. These can be found in many major cities, including NYC, San Francisco and Tokyo. The Brooklyn-based artist is originally from California. He has exhibited his work in galleries throughout the world and has had his art (and himself) featured in magazines and newspapers.

Gear: Nikon Coolpix 3600 Digital Camera

Ivan Corsa Photo

Here’s a color image of the new Rivington St. work by street artist Swoon. The photo was shot at night, hence the yellow-orange tint to the image.

Background Note
There’s some fresh work by the artist Swoon on Rivington St., between Bowery and Chrystie, in that interzone between Nolita/Soho and the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The Brooklyn-based Swoon is our favorite New York street artist. This work, which depicts an African-American boy with first pumped, continues Swoon’s series of life-size cut-out wheat-paste images of people engaged in everyday activities on the streets of the city.

Ivan Corsa Photo

There’s some fresh work by the artist Swoon on Rivington St., between Bowery and Chrystie, in that interzone between Nolita/Soho and the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The Brooklyn-based Swoon is our favorite New York street artist. This work, which depicts an African-American boy with first pumped, continues Swoon’s series of life-size cut-out wheat-paste images of people engaged in everyday activities on the streets of the city.

Ivan Corsa Photo

Above is the closer-up detail photo of the some Lower East Side street art.

Background Note
Ludlow St., that increasingly high-rent and noisy tenement canyon in the booming Lower East Side of New York City, is home to lots of graf and street art. Pictured here is an acrylic painting on wood affixed to a light post on Ludlow between Stanton and Rivington streets. The image is a profile portrait of a man whose face in made of metal or steel like some kind of comic book cyborg hipster. “Curls” is signed twice on the image. We don’t know if that’s the signature of the artist or the scrawl of some third-party passersby. In the rapidly gentrifying LES, where talk these days is sometimes as much about condos, apartment sales and real estate than it is art and music, it’s great to see that street art is still alive and well in the nabe.

Ivan Corsa Photo

Ludlow St., that increasingly high-rent and noisy tenement canyon in the booming Lower East Side of New York City, is home to lots of graf and street art. Pictured here is an acrylic painting on wood affixed to a light post on Ludlow between Stanton and Rivington streets. The image is a profile portrait of a man whose face in made of metal or steel like some kind of comic book cyborg hipster. “Curls” is signed twice on the image. We don’t know if that’s the signature of the artist or the scrawl of some third-party passersby. In the rapidly gentrifying LES, where talk these days is sometimes as much about condos, apartment sales and real estate than it is art and music, it’s great to see that street art is still alive and well in the nabe.

Ivan Corsa Photo

Richard Gregg is an Englishman living and working near Tokyo, Japan. He took this photo in Havana, Cuba, which is just one of many cities and countries he has visited while on an incredible around-the-world cycling journey that he’s undertaken off and on for over a decade. Along the way, Gregg has taken tens of thousands of photos and has exhibited and published his photos along his cycling odyssey. Here is the first in a series of Gregg’s photos of street art and urban culture that we will be posting from time to time on Global Graphica. In this image, a huge stencil-like portrait of the late Latin American politcal icon Che Guevara beams above a Lada, an East European car make from the Communist era.

Richard Gregg Photo

Here’s a detail shot of the winter version of the ubiquitous “Peg Leg” sticker in downtown NYC. (To view the context photo, see the image below or on the next page.)

Background Note
We’ve noticed “Peg Leg” stickers appearing in lower Manhattan and Williamsburg, Brooklyn, since last summer. Usually the lettering of the moniker comes in warm orange and yellow hues. But last week we found this snowflaked winter version of the “Peg Leg” sticker on a lamp post on Varick St. in Soho, New York City.

By the way, we’ve got the Nikon Coolpix digital camera workng again, so we snapped this image with a proper hi-res cam insteading of using the lower resolution built-in cam on our Palm Treo 650 cell phone.

Ivan Corsa Photo

We’ve noticed “Peg Leg” stickers appearing in lower Manhattan and Williamsburg, Brooklyn, since last summer. Usually the lettering of the moniker comes in warm orange and yellow hues. But last week we found this snowflaked winter version of the “Peg Leg” sticker on a lamp post on Varick St. in Soho, New York City. Pictured here is the context shot. To view the sticker up close, see the detail shot above (or on the next page).

By the way, we’ve got the Nikon Coolpix digital camera workng again, so we snapped this image with a proper hi-res cam insteading of using the lower resolution built-in cam on our Palm Treo 650 cell phone.

Ivan Corsa Photo

More in our Brooklyn graphica series. Here is a tag toward the lower-rent end of the Park Slope neighborhood, now the center of an anguished New Yorker real-estate condo- and apartment-buying frenzy. It’s increasingly rare to see graff in Park Slope these days with all the gentrification that has swept the nabe during the past decade.

Ivan Corsa Photo

Above is a rotated close-up shot of graf by “Tetris” in downtown Manhattan.

Background Entry
We’ve walked along the stretch of Charlton St. between Varick and Greenwich in Soho, NYC, at least a dozen times during the past year. Yet it was only yesterday that we notcied one of coolest tags we’ve ever seen in the west Soho neighborhood known as Hudson Square. The tag is that of “Tetris,” which, of course, is also the name of one of the most popular old-school arcade-style video games of all time. The tag is on the wall of a warehouse between a pair of truck bays.

Ivan Corsa Photo

Here’s the wider context shot of the “Tetris” tag in west Soho, New York York City.

Background Entry
We’ve walked along the stretch of Charlton St. between Varick and Greenwich in Soho, NYC, at least a dozen times during the past year. Yet it was only yesterday that we notcied one of coolest tags we’ve ever seen in the west Soho neighborhood known as Hudson Square. The tag is that of “Tetris,” which, of course, is also the name of one of the most popular old-school arcade-style video games of all time. The tag is on the wall of a warehouse between a pair of truck bays.

Ivan Corsa Photo

We’ve walked along the stretch of Charlton St. between Varick and Greenwich in Soho, NYC, at least a dozen times during the past year. Yet it was only yesterday that we notcied one of coolest tags we’ve ever seen in the west Soho neighborhood known as Hudson Square. The tag is that of “Tetris,” which, of course, is also the name of one of the most popular old-school arcade-style video games of all time. The tag is on the wall of a warehouse between a pair of truck bays.

Ivan Corsa Photo

Here’s the detail shot.

Background note: The artist had his tongue firmly in cheek when he put up this wheat-paste poster on a U.S. Postal Service mailbox on Houston St. in Soho, in New York City. The do-it-yourself cut and fold paper mailbox diagram is clever, cheeky, ironic and funny. Good stuff.

Ivan Corsa Photo

And here’s the context shot.

Background note: The artist had his tongue firmly in cheek when he put up this wheat-paste poster on a U.S. Postal Service mailbox on Houston St. in Soho, in New York City. The do-it-yourself cut and fold paper mailbox diagram is clever, cheeky, ironic and funny. Good stuff.

Ivan Corsa Photo

Here’s the close-up shot.

We’ve been seeing a lot of these “Beautiful Decay” stickers around lower Manhattan recently. This one was found on a lamp post at the corner of West Broadway and Prince Street in Soho.

Ivan Corsa Photo

We’ve been seeing a lot of these “Beautiful Decay” stickers around lower Manhattan recently. This one was found on a lamp post at the corner of West Broadway and Prince Street in Soho. Here’s the context shot.

Ivan Corsa Photo

Here’s another shot, from another angle, of the shark stencils near the 7th Ave. subway stop in Park Slope, Brooklyn, NYC

Background
The well-groomed and excessively gentrified (and real estate crazy) Brooklyn neighborhood of Park Slope isn’t full of the street art and graf so common in other parts of New York’s largest borough, such as Williamsburg. But the street art is there, tucked between apartments and brownstones, especially the further down the slope and away Prospect Park one heads. Such is the case of these wonderful stencilled silhouettes of sharks near the 7th Avenue F-Train subway station.

Ivan Corsa Photo