Whimsy

Red Hook & Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Swoon on Cortland

Cortland Alley, Manhattan

A little Swoon before I left NYC. This was my first trip to Cortland Alley near Tribeca. Glad I finally made it out there. The building owners seem to be in the process of re-painting all of the exterior walls, so who knows how long this stuff is going to stay up.

I am in Miami this week -- possibly longer -- for work. And I may be extremely busy. If I have time, I will try to post, but I may not even have time to take photographs of this interesting city.

I spent three months here last winter and was always seeing great stuff -- unfortunately I didn't have a still camera with me and not much time to do much else but work and sleep. So we'll see how this week goes.

West Side

Chelsea, Manhattan

My walk took me from 8th avenue and 30th street to the river and back again across the avenues and down the streets til I was below 14th street. The strees were full of the life of New York industry: cabs were being repainted, sanitation trucks were being cleaned, storage units were being filled. Fenders crashed in scrap yards. Thick necked men with sandpaper tongues took lunch breaks on the corner and laughed with snorts.

They could never afford to go to the night clubs that seem to be on every other block. The clubs that lose their mystique that can only be believed after midnight, if believed at all. The sun shows their rumpled exterior still garish after a long night with no sleep and too much makeup.

In the mid-20s, the neighborhood shifted suddenly to building after building devoted to gallery spaces. Fine featured older women in black surveyed collections of black paintings, of magical photos, of disturbing psycho-sexual collages and wondered if 72 inches was too much for above the mantle.

Stencil Stories

Gowanus & Dumbo, Brooklyn

Stop

Red Hook, Brooklyn

Warm up

Red Hook, Brooklyn

To see Swoon at work, check this out.

Three Clogs in Five Minutes

Red Hook, Brooklyn

Two Icons

South Park Slope, Brooklyn

Slashed

Gowanus, Brooklyn

Swoon Love

Cobble Hill, Brooklyn

Revisit

Gowanus, Brooklyn

See photos when the cutout was fresh.

Faces

From Gowanus, Park Slope, Dumbo, & LIC

Around

Some stuck. Some peel. Some spray. Some stamp. Some rust. Some stay.
Around the neighborhood.

Here there be...

These images reminded me of a book I loved as a child: Three Billy Goats Gruff. I liked the goats, but really I was into the troll.

Actually, I have a secret desire to be a monster that lurks under the Gowanus canal. Maybe hidden by the Carroll Street bridge to gobble up all the maniacs that tear over the fragile wooden planks. Or by the Union Street bridge to protect the Swoon cutouts from ugly bubble tags.

I could guide the drudgers along and help the ducks if they get stuck on something sticky. I could fan nasty odors at cheap developers with poor architectural taste and eat mean manufacturers who dump toxins in the already nasty water.

Maybe if things don't work out in life, I'll grow myself some scales, a couple of fins (or even tentacles - now those could be useful!), and a high tolerance for raw sewage and give it a go.

Until then I will have to be content with paper monsters standing guard.

Fresh Paste

Union Street, Gowanus

It's a jungle

Bombed

I had read about Five Pointz, a building famed for its graffiti, a few weeks ago and was excited to run into it after going to the Noguchi museum and the Socrates Sculpture Garden.

It is basically a building as canvas for an eclectic collection of graffiti writers and painters. There are simple tags. There are crude icons. There are fantasy scenes. There are portraits. There are incredibly complicated inventions of wild typography. Some have aged poorly with cracked plaster leaving a vivid trail on the sidewalk. Others are obviously recent additions -- their fumes are showing.

This is a legal space, which is interesting to me. How does it change the way that people see the art considering there was permission granted by the owners? Do people who typically see graffiti as vandalism see it here as art because there is no actual defacement?

I prefer the kind of graffiti/street art where the artist contributes to the urban environment in an unexpected way. I also enjoy the fact that they obviously took some risk to express themselves (why do I enjoy this? Probably the wanna-be subversive in me). There is nothing like rounding a corner on your daily walk to the train or the store and looking up and seeing some glorious new creation breaking the mundane minute to minute.

Five Pointz is an awesome spectacle of color and form. Even if you are not a fan of this art form, it is worth a visit just because of its sheer monumental quality.

Five Pointz is located on Jackson Avenue in Long Island City, Queens. It is across the street from the PS1 Art space.

Word on the Street

I enjoy a lot of the street art throughout the neighborhoods of South Brooklyn. While I especially enjoy works that incorporate mixed mediums (cut-outs) or inovative processes (stencils), every once in a while a monster of simple one-color spray can creep around the corner and make your day.