Global Graphica

We’re on Twitter! Check us out at www.twitter.com/globalgraphica/ and follow us! We’ll be tweeting often with pix and on daily life in NYC and the world.

We’ve decamped from New York City to spend a few days in Los Angeles during the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday period. Below is the view from B’s car of the Century City skyline in West LA.

Global Graphica has been settling back into NYC after an excellent, fun and incredibly productive trip to Berlin. We met a lot of awesome people, went to a lot great places and saw tons of cool things while we were staying in the German capital. (We also had some remarkably good coffee and a few beers along the way.)

Our trip and the Global Graphica Berlin Project would not have been possible without the local knowledge, logistical support, and creative advice of a lot of great folks. So Global Graphica gives a big, mighty shout-out and “THANK YOU!” to Imre, Gero, Yui, Angelo, Adam, Sandra, Umbom, Carlo, Cory, Yasmindo, Claude, Claire, Ben, Damian and Haydee, Eric, and the folks at Keyser Soze, Casa Camper, and Bonanza Coffee Heroes. Danke!

We’ll be continuing to post images to the site from the Berlin Project in the coming weeks and months, so stay tuned.

Tschüss!

Van

Global Graphica is heading to Berlin for a couple of weeks to work on some projects. We’re really looking forward to exploring the city and its rich visual culture – Its landmarks, street art, galleries, museums, design, architecture, shops, creative urban spaces and much more. We’ll be posting pix from the German capital daily and chronicling our trip on the site.

Our fearless leader on location at the site of the Ginger Ale graffiti ad project. (If you see him walking around and slinging a camera in downtown NYC, say “Hi!” and he’ll take your picture.)

Global Graphica is on a surfing trip in Costa Rica this week, so the posts may be fewer and farther between as we take a much needed vacay and struggle to find a reliable WiFi connection during our journey. You’ll be seeing some pix of the visual culture we find interesting or striking in this amazing Central American country.

Below is some graffiti art we found on a vacant billboard in the Pacific coast surf town of Jaco. The outdoor advertising space proclaims “Your Business Must be Here!” But some graffiti writers gave it some spray-can touches that make the board aesthetically striking and fun.

Surf’s up. Gotta run.

The incredible, terrible destruction stemming from the 9.0 magnitude Tohoku earthquake that struck Japan on March 11, and the subsequent tsunami and nuclear-reactor disasters, has focused much of the our attention on a nation that is arguably one of the most globally influential and sophisticated when it comes to aesthetics and creative culture.

We are devoting many blog posts on Global Graphica for the next week or so to the visual culture of Japan. We’ll be posting about street art, design, photography, video, creators — in short, all facets of the country’s rich visual culture and creative output.

Below is one of the many famous and iconic Hokusai wood-block print images of symbolic Mount Fuji near Tokyo, Japan.

Our Global Graphica Q-Code. Have fun.

Happy New Year!

We’ve been kicking off the new year in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and having a great time, finding all sort of super-dope stuff.

So, after a couple of weeks off for the winter break and new year celebration, here come our first posts of the year – pix from Holland and one of Europe’s most creative, inspiring cities.

2011 is going to be awesome!

Hey Kidzzz,

A brief announcement and status update from us here at Global Graphica in New York City …

As regular visitors to this website have noticed, we haven’t updated or posted to the site in two months. We suddenly and without explanation went on a hiatus in early May due to a major family life-event that had been unfolding for months and required our immediate attention. We had to temporarily suspend work on the blog, as we devoted our energy and time to dealing with the unfortunate developments in our personal lives.

We’re back now and ready to resume updates to the site. But in doing so, we are also shifting gears.

Regular readers may have also noticed a change  in the focus of the site earlier this year. We broadened the scope of Global Graphica from “street art” to what we like to call “visual culture,” the wider aesthetic world and experiences that inspire us, warrant our consideration and provoke us.

We will continue to document street art (or ephemeral art) forms and this will remain a big part of what we blog about. But in widening our  subject area and redefining what Global Graphica is about, we will cover a lot more of the creativity and culture we  encounter all around us here in New York and in our travels near and far. And in doing so, we are going to personalize our reportage more and share a little  more of our lives with readers.

As part of this shift, we’re also going to produce and sponsor art projects of our own. So stay tuned.

Finally, the recent events in our private lives required a lot of travel and unfolded while we were on the road and in the air. This only added to the disruption to Global Graphica. That said, we took our camera wherever and whenever we could and took pictures every chance we got. If there’s a silver lining, it’s that we’ve returned with a ton of fresh images from  around the world. In the coming weeks, you’ll be seeing a lot of the pix snapped during these past two months..

Thanks for your support and feedback.

Ivan “Van” Corsa

July 11, 2010 - New York Fuckin’ City

An ad for the new Massive Attack album has been banned by the London Underground authorities on the grounds that is looks too much like street art. The advert is for the Brtistol group latest CD “Heligoland” and was to have been displayed in “tube” (subway) stations throughout the British capital. But because the album’s cover art looks too much like the “graffiti” art of popular street artists such as Banksy, it has been deemed unacceptable. The art work in question was created by one of the band’s members, Robert “3D” Del Naja.

Comics Superhero Drawing – Originally posted on February 6, 2010.
Grad Van – Originally posted on January 31, 2010.

Goodbye, 2009. Hello, 2010!

Global Graphica is on Twitter. In fact, we have been providing regular updates via our tweets for  many months now. Check out our  Twitter page now and become a follower!

http://twitter.com/globalgraphica/

Global Graphica was a little quiet for the better part of a couple of weeks while we were in Greece for vacation and “field research.” We had an awesome time in the Greek islands and Athens. We took in the culture, history, architecture and art. We enjoyed the beaches, food and drink. We were pleasantly surprised at how much street art there was in the capital (and beyond) and the quality of scene, which is attracting well-known artists (like Os Gemeos) from around the world to put up major artwork in Gazi / Technopolis and Kerameikos. We came back with tons of images, many of which we’ll be posting here on Global Graphica in the coming weeks and months ahead.

Supercore is taking a well-earned and long-awaited vacation in the coming week, and in doing so will be stepping away from the laptop and turning the Global Graphica website duties to guest blogger Akemi Fujiwara in Japan. Akemi is an interactive creative director for a hot, young Japanese advertising agency in Harajuku, in Tokyo. She’s got a keen eye for everything aesthetically wondrous in the visual streetscape, and beyond. So you’ll be in good hands and get a dose of street art from Japan. Supercore will be back in a couple of weeks.

“Mural Art: Murals on huge public surfaces around the world” is new book from Greek publishers Carpe Diem focused on large-scale street art and massive commissioned public murals across the globe. It’s an awesome coffee table tome. The presentation and quality of photography is first rate. The book represents a fresh take on an aspect of street art that hasn’t been covered so well by the recent explosion of publications on street art and graffiti. Among the many artists whose work is shown is Brazilian stars Os Gemeos, The London Police and Blu. The book is in English and Greek. Some images from the book follow in the next series of posts. More details on the book at the publisher’s website. Pictured above, in the post, is the cover image of “Mural Art.”

We’re loving this UK street art website aptly called UK Street Art (www.ukstreetart.co.uk/). Lots of good, juicy street art images from the United Kingdom in a well-designed website. Check it.

One of our 2009 New Year’s resolutions here at Global Graphica is to do a better job of reading and replying to incoming email from our readers. We’ve been overwhelmed with inquiries and submissions these past few months. We’re still working our way through the backlog of messages. We will be implementing a new system for reviewing and responding to emails in the next few weeks. Thanks for your patience. Happy New Year!

New York street art: Image of 2009 sharpie tag drawing in “IC’s” Moleskin sketchbook. Happy New Year!


© Ivan Corsa Photo – Street Art Images