Global Graphica

Classic “Yours Truly” posting by artist duo ASVP  in the Chelsea art galleries district.

A wonderful use of graffiti scrawl as signage and marketing on a roller shutter: “Not just another nail salon” references the small business behind the metal gate, which might be inferred is a nail salon, but is in fact an art gallery (and not just another nail salon). Clever.

Snapped in the Meat Packing District of New York City, we saw this dude with a dope tee. We hate this fella’s overall style (it’s just not to our taste), but we love the orange tank top with the leaf graphics on the back. It would be a good after-surf shirt, worn nicely while cupping an icy tumbler filled with a caipirinha near the beach in, say, Leblon, Rio de Janeiro. We’ll take one of those, please.

From our City Life file … Pic of the beautiful, lush garden behind a couple of of old tenement apartment buildings in East Williamsburg, in Brooklyn, where friends of Global Graphica hosted a recent BBQ party. No graffiti or street art here in the garden, but in the front of the building  there’s a lot. It’s like two different worlds.

The beautifully distressed logo-sign at the entrance to influential culture hub Halcyon in DUMBO, in Brooklyn.

Classic graffiti truck parked on Ninth Avenue across from Chelsea Market near New York City’s Meat Packing District.

A production van for the acclaimed Milk Studios on the border of the Meat Packing District and Chelsea in downtown New York City. In a clever design flourish, the Milk logotype has been rendered backwards on the side of the van.

Recent sexed-up, summery window display at the New York City flagship store of fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg ( DVF ), famous for her bright colorful wrap dresses and chic style. The store is in the building that is also her company headquarters.

A giant sculpture by the artist (and infamous former graffiti writer) Kaws of his famous, iconic cartoon character sits, head in hands, crying in the small plaza in front of the Standard Hotel in the Meat Packing District, in downtown New York City.

Below is New York Magazine photo with computer-generated rendering of the building that will be the new home to the Whitney Museum. The influential Upper East Side art institution is moving downtown to the Meat Packing District and closer to one of Manhattan’s newer, grander hubs of creative influence and culture. The NY Mag article was a critical and harsh review of the building’s architecture.

Stumbled upon this poster in Providence, R.I.,  for the film Blank City, a recent documentary by Céline Danhier about the 1970s “No Wave” cinema scene in New York City that that spawned a generation of well-known indie directors, actors, artists and musicians.

Torn wheat-paste street-art poster with black-and-white photographic image of acclaimed American painter-photographer Richard Prince, in the Meat Packing District of downtown New York City.

The fourth installment in our photo project series “What’s Outside the Window?”

Here we have a view of the East River and Brooklyn Naval Yard as seen through the window of a New York City taxi speeding across the Williamsburg Bridge en route from lower Manhattan to South Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

Four5 wheat-paste poster in deep TriBeCa Nolita, in downtown New York City. The image is striking in its high-contrast black white image of a woman disturbingly holding an open pair of scissors to her face.

This awesome-since-Day-One “Down to Earth” wheat-paste poster by artists A.S.V.P. is on Greene Street in SoHo, downtown New York City. The retro-80s People’s Republic of China imagery of a baby astronaut is defaced by an SWLF  heart sticker.

A classic Shepard Fairey “Obey” (“Giant has a Posse”) sticker on the back of a speed-limit sign in the otherwise staid, clean and gleaming downtown of Providence, Rhode Island. The other side of the sign has been mini-sticker-bombed, evidence, perhaps, that the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) is a couple of blocks away.

A recent road trip to Boston took us through Providence, Rhode Island, where we visited the Rhode Island School of Design, often referred to by its acronym RISD (pronounced RIZ-DEE). The campus dominates a big, leafy chunk of historic downtown real estate where, naturally, there are many examples of good design, as these bus stop signs testify.

Photographer Major Deegan (a.k.a., Daniel Puissant) proudly shows off  his awesomely faded Built by Wendy graphic t-shirt by Wendy Mullins. The illustration on the shirt is of actresses Tatum O’Neal and Kristy McNichol and based on imagery from the 1980s teen-exploitation film Little Darlings, in which they appeared. The shirt was blue when MD bought it, but has since faded to white after years of wearing and washing.

The awesome logo-fied tile floor at Keihl’s new Meat Packing District shop in New York.

Kiehl’s, the storied beauty brand, recently opened a shop in the the Meat Packing District of downtown New York City. The store’s interior design is beautiful and features a large wall of neon-signs, words related to their products.