September 15, 2006
Seen On The Streets of Valencia
Artists: Only and Escif
Posted by marc at 8:28 AM in Graffiti | Recommend this! (37) |
| RONE's You Thought We Wouldn't Notice
From time to time we've highlight instances of brands biting (ie ripping off) the illustrations and designs of various artists, some street artists, some not. It's an important subject, but a difficult one to cover on the Wooster site because it's almost a full time job managing all of the different sides to the story. It's a tricky subject. Do street artists lose copyright and control of a work when they put it up on the street? Is everything fair game (In our minds, no)
So...
we're really pleased that RONE from Stencil Revolution has started a website called You Thought We Wouldn't Notice as a way to expose all the stealing that goes on from the street to the design community.
Check the site out because as it grows you will be shocked to see how many times blatant rip-offs happen.
Posted by marc at 8:08 AM in Marketing | Recommend this! (15) |
UK's Space Hijackers
SpaceHijackers.org is a terrific archive of UK based culture jams. If you're interested in Culture Jamming, check it out for sure.
Posted by marc at 3:43 AM in Culture Jamming | Recommend this! (6) |
September 14, 2006
Tanks Crossing in Melbourne
Artist: Happy
Posted by marc at 8:12 AM in Wheatpastes | Recommend this! (8) |
Seen On The Streets of Ghent, Belgium
Posted by marc at 7:06 AM in Stencils | Recommend this! (33) |
Banksy's Barely Legal - The First Image
Unfortunately we can't make it out to LA this week, but the photo above (showing a live elephant) should give you a hint of whats to come at Banksy's warehouse show later this week.
Am
(Photo nicked from the BBC)
Posted by marc at 6:58 AM in Los Angeles | Recommend this! (15) |
Hide and Seek
We're big fans of artists who make their work on the street interactive. One project that we quite like is Hide and Seek.
Posted by marc at 6:46 AM in Wheatpastes | Recommend this! (5) |
Deitch's Art Parade
We unfortunately couldn't make it over the the Deitch sponsored Art Parade in Soho last week. By all accounts it was a blast. Our friend Nick Georgiou made a short video of it above.
Posted by marc at 1:31 AM in Video | Recommend this! (7) |
Other in Paris
From Other:
"I have been working on an upcoming show over the last three months in Paris At a quite unique studio that offers residencies to street artists giving them the opportunity to live at a space with like minds that create both on the streets and in the galleries of Paris…the space has a bedroom, full kitchen, painting studio, darkroom, screenprint press, and tons of space for giant projects…anyways the summer has been amazing"
Posted by marc at 1:20 AM in Paris | Recommend this! (6) |
September 13, 2006
Seen on the Streets of Butte, Montana
Posted by marc at 7:32 AM in Wheatpastes | Recommend this! (5) |
Thank You Mr. Bush For Creating Jobs For Everybody
Here's an example of the type of political culture jamming that we absolutely love:
Art the start of the Iraq war, the artist sweza, who at the time was studying in Bologna, Italy, manipulated over 50 "attention roadworks" signs in the neighborhood making the workers into undertakers using a very simple stencil. He added the words "grazie bush lavoro per tutti" which can be translated in "Thank you Mr. Bush for creating Jobs for everybody"
Posted by marc at 7:10 AM in Culture Jamming | Recommend this! (12) |
Seen In Holland
Artist: Humeux.
Posted by marc at 1:17 AM in Wheatpastes | Recommend this! (4) |
September 12, 2006
Walking Man in Norway
We love this piece, done a year ago by a bunch of friends in Bergen, Norway. For us, it represents what street art is all about.
Posted by marc at 10:24 PM in 3D | Recommend this! (26) |
Medium.... of course.
In the last couple of days we've received a ton of emails asking us who created this week's Masthead. (It seems that the "artist credit" isn't working on the right sidebar)
The mast head above was created by not only one of our favorite artists, but one of our favorite people. Nicholas Di Genova is an insanely talented guy out of Canada who sometimes goes by the moniker "Medium" Everything this guy does fuckin' blows us away. Sara and I are huge fans.
So... as luck should have it, Nicholas is having an opening this Thursday night, September 14th, at the Fredericks Freiser Gallery in Chelsea.
Here's the info:
536 W 24th Street
New York City
Thursday September 14th
6 - 8pm
212.633.6555
So you there!
Posted by marc at 10:09 PM in New York | Recommend this! (9) |
9/11 Street Art in San Fran
From Will:
"I was walking home from work yesterday, and I saw a bunch of small stencils on the sidewalk on Montgomery St in the Financial District (the commercial center of San Francisco, obviously). There were only two variations, but they were all over the place - sometimes 3 or 4 per block, stretching for 7 blocks or more. This morning, I took shots of several of them, some of which are above. They're obviously commemorative of 9/11, and must have been done either late last weekend or very early yesterday morning. I think they're fantastic."
Posted by marc at 10:01 PM in Stencils | Recommend this! (5) |
September 11, 2006
Masthead by Nicholas Di Genova
Posted by marc at 2:50 PM in Masthead | Recommend this! (2) |
Our Story
Sara and I are often asked the question - "So, when did the Wooster Collective begin? How did it start?"
Usually we say "In January of 2003" as it's the date when we uploaded the first article to the Wooster website. But the real answer to this question is a bit more complicated and hard to tell someone in just a sentence or two.
So on this 5th Anniversary of September 11th, when all of us are remembering that day like it was just yesterday, here's our story of what lead up to the creation of the Wooster Collective website:
Five years ago today, Sara and I were living on Morton Street in the West Village of New York. We had not yet married, and had recently moved in together. Hudson, our Weimeraner, was still a puppy.
On September 11th, Sara had left early for work. She had just begun a new job and was commuting to White Plains each workday. I had stayed at home that morning because I had a meeting in New Jersey in the mid-afternoon and it was easiest or me to work from home. I had recently purchased a new digital camera during a trip to Tokyo and was taking a ton of photos around the house.
After Sara left, I turned on the news. The local station had just broken in to say that a small plane (perhaps a Cessna or something) had crashed into one of the top floors of one of the World Trade towers. It was a strange thing to see, because what the television was showing, I could actually see by myself just outside my living room window. The Towers were only a mile or two away.
Seeing the fire on the television, I went outside to see it for myself. As others will tell you, that morning was one of the most "picture postcard" days of the year. The sky was bluer and the colors were more vivid than all Summer.
It was standing out on the street with a handful my neighbors that I watched as the second plane came across the Manhattan skyline and slammed into the the second of the two Towers.
It's impossible to compare that moment to any other in my life, as it was something beyond comprehension.
After seeing the second plane hit the tower, I tried calling Sara on her mobile phone but I couldn't get through. People were now coming out of their apartments and shops crying and looking around for someone to speak or hold onto. Sirens began blaring and I watched as the firetrucks from our local station all left to head downtown.
We all stood there together, watching, until the the first of the two towers began falling to the ground.
People now started running. A thick white shoot began billowing up the street. We were far enough away to know that the building would not effect where we were, but suddenly 7th Avenue became filled with people walking and running uptown towards safety.
When the second tower fell a few minutes later, it became clear to me that an event had occurred that would change not only the course of my life, but millions of others.
It would be another eight hours or so until I would speak with Sara on the phone. For the next two days, she was not allowed back into Manhattan. The streets in our neighborhood would be closed for weeks.
For many days weeks after the attacks, nobody wanted to be in their apartments. All of us were outside trying to understand and comprehend what had happened and what we were to do. Hudson and I (and Sara when she was finally allowed back into Manhattan) began walking all of the streets in our neighborhood. We met and talked with everyone. Everyone had a story to tell.
And it was at this time, in the days immediately after September 11, that we discovered ephemeral art. Until then we had no idea what street art was. But the attacks of September 11th had made us hyper-aware of our surroundings. We began exploring Lower Manhattan like never before. We were now seeing the city in a completely different way, with new eyes and a new heart. Everything, and everyone, around us was now suddenly important. And it was in these days immediately after September 11th that we began noticing street art everywhere we went. On every block, and on every corner. Stickers, posters, stencils, tags, graffiti. I took pictures of everything I saw in the days after September 11th. People were putting up lots of different things. Some of it extremely political. Some of extremely emotional and sad.
But a lot of it made you smile.
In the initial months after September 11th, Sara and I took over 3,000 photos of street art in our neighborhood.
We moved to Wooster Street about eight months later, not too far from our flat on Morton. Over time there were so many photographs that my hard drive became full and my computer began to crash every time I would start it. I was almost ready to delete the photos altogether when Sara suggested that I get them off my computer by uploading them to a web page.
I did. And what was amazing to see was what a year of street art in the four mile radius of where I lived looked like. It was a fantastic archive. So I emailed about 20 people who I knew who I thought would be inspired by the photos. They emailed their friends. And their friends emailed even more friends. And after two weeks, over 20,000 people a day were now looking at the photos.
What September 11th did for us was to force us to be outside and to see our city in a completely different light. We became aware. Hyper aware. And as we became more aware of what was around us, we began discovering more of what was always there but had never noticed. And as we discovered more, we became more obsessed with what we were discovering. And as our obsession grew, we became compelled to share it with others.
It was the desire to share what we were seeing and feeling with others that lead to the Wooster website launching as a blog on January 13th of 2003.... a little more than a year or so after the attacks of September 11th.
Not a single day has gone by in five years that we haven't thought about September 11th, 2001 at least once. While it was an absolutely horrific event, the days and months after the attacks were also the most powerful days ever to be in New York.
There's not a place in the world that we would have rather have been than in New York city.
(The photo above is from the WTC Outline Project. You can learn more about it here.)
Posted by marc at 12:41 PM in New York | Recommend this! (19) |
New Feature: "Most Recommended"
One of the new features we added to the Wooster site last week is a "Most Recommended" page that ranks the most popular stories on the site based on how many people have "recommended it.
At the bottom of each article you will see that we've added a new link that says "Recommend this!" When you click on the link your vote is tallied along with everyone elses.
A new page on the site (which we'll add to the side bar in a day or two) lists and ranks all of the most recommended stories each week.
So, wanna know what stories have been most recommended? Click here.
Posted by marc at 8:19 AM in Site Announcements | Recommend this! (8) |
Little People: A Tiny Street Art Project
"Little hand-painted people, left in London to fend for themselves."
More here.
(Thanks, Rich!)
Posted by marc at 7:41 AM in 3D | Recommend this! (8) |
Alto-Contraste on Paulo Maluf
From Alto-Contraste in Sao Paulo:
"The ex São Paulo´s Mayor, Paulo Maluf, that was arrested less than one year ago, for public money deviation, corruption and many other political crimes, is back to the politic spots, competing for a public job in the coming elections.It´s not enough to him to be a kind of Brazilian Berlusconi and a unpunished simbol. Now, in the usual propaganda (ilegal, we have to say) that invades the walls, he become to scramble the city graffitis. We prefer to break him down personally, but he´s that untouchable kind of people. So, we are happy to leave this "post it" at the same wall. We´re trully shamed to use our paint with this bastard´s face, but, in spite of that, it was fun. And the better thing is that we´re noting some mobilization of other graffiters in the same direction. God damned politics! be satisfied with invanding the tv (that´s already full of shit) and leave the walls for us!
Cheers for all!
A*C
Posted by marc at 7:27 AM in Stencils | Recommend this! (3) |
No Buts For Boxi in Berlin
5 layer belton greyscale lifesize stencil
Posted by marc at 7:18 AM in Stencils | Recommend this! (1) |
Seen On The Streets of Trier, Germany
Posted by marc at 2:23 AM in Graffiti | Recommend this! (9) |