December 14, 2006

The End of Street Art at 11 Spring St., SoHo, NYC

The New York Times has run a story about the final days of street art at the 11 Srping Street building in downtown New York City. During the past four weeks or so the new owners of the building, who will turn the building into a condos, have allowed artists to legally put up art work on the inside of the building, as well as the outside, in an effort to stage one last exhibition this weekend before construction crews start their work. Much of the art on the interior will be concealed behind drywall after this weekend. The building is open to the public Dec. 15 - 17, from 11:00 AM to 5:00 PM. (Tip of the hat to Jess E. for the tip.)

Posted by icorsa at 02:33 AM

November 16, 2006

Video: Massive Attack of Street Art at 11 Spring St. Building in New York City

Here's a another, longer video clip showing the massive attack of fresh new street art at 11 Spring St. in Nolita, new York City. This video shows the full breadth of the new work on along Elizabeth Street side of the building and the around the entrance on Spring Street. The work shown include pieces by Faile, Bast, WK Interact, The London Police, Flower Guy, Above, Fake, Cheeky and many more. This clip shows the state of the building onthe evening of Wednesday November 15, 2006.

Posted by icorsa at 11:04 PM

November 14, 2006

Video: Cheeky Signs Piece + Panorama of 11 Spring St., NYC

Here's a clip showing "Cheeky" and crew sign a fresh piece at the building at 11 Spring St. (a.k.a. the "candle building") in Nolita, New York City. The new piece was put up on Tuesday (Nov. 14, 2006) evening a couple of days after several of downtown New York's most active street artists put up a ton of new work on the building. The video shows the breadth of these artists fresh work on the Elizabeth St. side of the buidling.
(Video footage by Supercore via YouTube)

Posted by icorsa at 11:37 PM

No. 4: Street Art All-Stars Stage Massive Attack at 11 Spring Street, NYC

And in this image is another part of the strip of street art works (including pieces by Faile, Bast, and Cheeky) that stretch along the Elizabeth Street side of the building at 11 Spring Street in downtown Manhattan, New York City. The work by Faile is epic in scale, cut along the building arches.

BACKGROUND

At some time this past weekend, several of the best-known and most active street artists in downtown New York City put up fresh work, some of it in the form of massive wheat-paste-ups, on the building at 11 Spring Street in the Nolita neighbrhood of downtown Manhattan. Among the works are pieces by WK Interact, Faile, Bast and Cheeky. Within the past two weeks new work by Flower Guy, Swoon, Above and The London Police has also gone up on the structure.

The building has been empty and seemingly uninhabited for years despite changes of ownership in recent years. For many years, each window of the tenement-style structure had a light in the form of a fake candle, hence the informal name "candle building." Eleven Spring St. has been a bit of mystery until recently when the property was purchased for residential use. What appeared to be early renovation work began last week.

Some fear that the redevelopment of the building for actual habitation might spell the end of street art at the site. Over the years, 11 Spring has become a landmark of street art and a canvas and mecca for artists and lovers of street art. This massive attack of new work on the building almost seems like a way of saying "street art is here to stay no mattter what the future of the building."

Ivan Corsa Photo

Photo gear: Canon PowerShot SD 630 ELPH digital camera
On the iPod: Lady Sovereign - "Random"
Kicks on our feet: Puma Double-Lace "R-System" RS100 sneakers

Posted by icorsa at 01:28 AM

No. 3: Street Art All-Stars Stage Massive Attack at 11 Spring Street, NYC

The picture above shows another part of the strip of street art works (including pieces by Faile, Bast, and Cheeky) that stretch along the Elizabeth Street side of the building at 11 Spring Street, in Nolita, NYC.

BACKGROUND

At some time this past weekend, several of the best-known and most active street artists in downtown New York City put up fresh work, some of it in the form of massive wheat-paste-ups, on the building at 11 Spring Street in the Nolita neighbrhood of downtown Manhattan. Among the works are pieces by WK Interact, Faile, Bast and Cheeky. Within the past two weeks new work by Flower Guy, Swoon, Above and The London Police has also gone up on the structure.

The building has been empty and seemingly uninhabited for years despite changes of ownership in recent years. For many years, each window of the tenement-style structure had a light in the form of a fake candle, hence the informal name "candle building." Eleven Spring St. has been a bit of mystery until recently when the property was purchased for residential use. What appeared to be early renovation work began last week.

Some fear that the redevelopment of the building for actual habitation might spell the end of street art at the site. Over the years, 11 Spring has become a landmark of street art and a canvas and mecca for artists and lovers of street art. This massive attack of new work on the building almost seems like a way of saying "street art is here to stay no mattter what the future of the building."

Ivan Corsa Photo

Photo gear: Canon PowerShot SD 630 ELPH digital camera
On the iPod: Lady Sovereign - "Random"
Kicks on our feet: Puma Double-Lace "R-System" RS100 sneakers

Posted by icorsa at 01:18 AM

No. 2: Street Art All-Stars Stage Massive Attack at 11 Spring Street, NYC

The picture above shows the northern end of the epic new work by Faile that stretches along the Elizabeth Street side of the building at 11 Spring Street, in Nolita, NYC.

BACKGROUND

At some time this past weekend, several of the best-known and most active street artists in downtown New York City put up fresh work, some of it in the form of massive wheat-paste-ups, on the building at 11 Spring Street in the Nolita neighbrhood of downtown Manhattan. Among the works are pieces by WK Interact, Faile, Bast and Cheeky. Within the past two weeks new work by Flower Guy, Swoon, Above and The London Police has also gone up on the structure.

The building has been empty and seemingly uninhabited for years despite changes of ownership in recent years. For many years, each window of the tenement-style structure had a light in the form of a fake candle, hence the informal name "candle building." Eleven Spring St. has been a bit of mystery until recently when the property was purchased for residential use. What appeared to be early renovation work began last week.

Some fear that the redevelopment of the building for actual habitation might spell the end of street art at the site. Over the years, 11 Spring has become a landmark of street art and a canvas and mecca for artists and lovers of street art. This massive attack of new work on the building almost seems like a way of saying "street art is here to stay no mattter what the future of the building."

Ivan Corsa Photo

Photo gear: Canon PowerShot SD 630 ELPH digital camera
On the iPod: Lady Sovereign - "Random"
Kicks on our feet: Puma Double-Lace "R-System" RS100 sneakers

Posted by icorsa at 01:12 AM

No. 1: Street Art All-Stars Stage Massive Attack at 11 Spring Street, NYC

At some time this past weekend, several of the best-known and most active street artists in downtown New York City put up fresh work, some of it in the form of massive wheat-paste-ups, on the building at 11 Spring Street in the Nolita neighbrhood of downtown Manhattan. Among the works are pieces by WK Interact, Faile, Bast and Cheeky. Within the past two weeks new work by Flower Guy, Swoon, Above and The London Police has also gone up on the structure.

The building has been empty and seemingly uninhabited for years despite changes of ownership in recent years. For many years, each window of the tenement-style structure had a light in the form of a fake candle, hence the informal name "candle building." Eleven Spring St. has been a bit of mystery until recently when the property was purchased for residential use. What appeared to be early renovation work began last week.

Some fear that the redevelopment of the building for actual habitation might spell the end of street art at the site. Over the years, 11 Spring has become a landmark of street art and a canvas and mecca for artists and lovers of street art. This massive attack of new work on the building almost seems like a way of saying "street art is here to stay no mattter what the future of the building."

The picture above shows the northeast corner of the building at Spring and Elizabeth streets, where you can see the life-size black-and-white works depicting graf-writers by WK Interact.

Ivan Corsa Photo

Photo gear: Canon PowerShot SD 630 ELPH digital camera
On the iPod: Lady Sovereign - "Random"
Kicks on our feet: Puma Double-Lace "R-System" RS100 sneakers

Posted by icorsa at 01:09 AM

September 20, 2006

Detail 3: Pan Am Kojak Paste-Up by Bast, NYC

A wheat-paste-up in SoHo, New York City, by the Brooklyn artist Bast. Love the cut-and-paste mashup of the old Pan Am airlines logotype and the images of actor Telly Savalas as the character Kojak, from American television detective drama of the 1970's.

Ivan Corsa Photo

Photo gear: Canon PowerShot SD 630 ELPH digital camera
On the iPod: Fela Kuti - "Monkey Banana"
Kicks on our feet: Puma Double-Lace "R-System" RS100 sneakers

Posted by icorsa at 04:51 AM

Detail 2: Pan Am Kojak Paste-Up by Bast, NYC

Ivan Corsa Photo

Photo gear: Canon PowerShot SD 630 ELPH digital camera
On the iPod: Fela Kuti - "Monkey Banana"
Kicks on our feet: Puma Double-Lace "R-System" RS100 sneakers

Posted by icorsa at 04:49 AM

Detail 1: Pan Am Kojak Paste-Up by Bast, NYC

Ivan Corsa Photo

Photo gear: Canon PowerShot SD 630 ELPH digital camera
On the iPod: Fela Kuti - "Monkey Banana"
Kicks on our feet: Puma Double-Lace "R-System" RS100 sneakers

Posted by icorsa at 04:47 AM

Pan Am Kojak Paste-Up by Bast, NYC

Ivan Corsa Photo

Photo gear: Canon PowerShot SD 630 ELPH digital camera
On the iPod: Fela Kuti - "Monkey Banana"
Kicks on our feet: Puma Double-Lace "R-System" RS100 sneakers

Posted by icorsa at 04:44 AM

June 02, 2006

Bäst Werewolf Paste-up, NYC

Here's a series of images showing fresh paste-up work by one of our favorite hands in the New York street art landscape, the Brooklyn-based artist Bäst. This old-school werewolf movie image is on the Elizabeth Street side of the corner tenement known as 11 Spring (the building faces Spring Street), in Nolita, downtown Manhattan.

Ivan Corsa Photo

Posted by icorsa at 01:12 AM

February 12, 2006

"Teflon Don" Gotti Paste-up by Bast - No. 1

Here's a close-up of an awesome color paste-up by the artist Bast (or Bäst) in Chinatown, New York City. The subject of this wheat-paste work is John Gotti, the late, convicted NYC crime boss who was dubbed the "Teflon Don" by the media. This black-and-white version of this artwork appears in Nolita, a few blocks to the north of C-town and Little Italy, where Gotti managed his business out of a storefront "social club."

Ivan Corsa Photo

Posted by icorsa at 10:57 PM

"Teflon Don" Gotti Paste-up by Bast - No. 2 Context

Here's the wider shot of the "Teflon Don" Gotti wheat-paste by the street artist Bast in Chinatown, NYC.

Ivan Corsa Photo

Posted by icorsa at 10:56 PM

"Teflon Don" Gotti Paste-up by Bast - No. 3 Detail

The artist's signature moniker, Bast," is detailed here in the same font he uses in all his work and with the "a" in Bast rendered with an umlaut.

Ivan Corsa Photo

Posted by icorsa at 10:55 PM

"Teflon Don" Gotti Paste-up by Bast - No. 4 Detail

We love details like this "TEFLON" tag and the New York Yankees logo in the lower-right corner of this Chinatown street artwork by Bast. The poster is a portrait of John Gotti.

Ivan Corsa Photo

Posted by icorsa at 10:52 PM

January 24, 2005

Bäst on Prince St., SoHo

One of our favorite New York City street artists is Bäst, whose work has been featured here before and will likely appear again in the future. We snapped this recent work by Bäst on Prince Street in Soho, about a block from the Apple Store. This black-and-white wheat-pasted poster uses images of a man who looks a lot like 20th century British writer George Orwell and an anthropamorphic cartoon wolf.

Ivan G. Corsa Photo

Posted by icorsa at 09:31 PM

August 05, 2004

Hello! My Name Is Michael Caine

Michael Caine played secret agent Harry Palmer in a series of 1960's spy movies, and in doing so created the image of the "thinking man's James Bond." Here the renowned New York street artist Bäst has used Caine's image from the movies to create a quartet of posters, in effect an homage to the brainy spy, in the East Village. Bäst often appropriates images from pop culture and the news media and, as gallery directors and curators like to say, re-contextualizes these images within the urban landscape. The artist has also used images of Burt Lancaster, Saddam Hussein, and Peter Sellars in his collection of posters, which are usually black-and-white and repeated in a series along walls. According to U.K.-based designer Tristan Manco in his excellent book "Street Logos," Bäst started "bombing" with a graffiti crew in Brooklyn during the early 1980's. In the late 90's he re-surfaced in the street art scene with his iconic posters.

Ivan Corsa Photo

Posted by icorsa at 11:51 PM