Welcome to a new series in which we round up the best Instagram photos of the week based on a theme.

We love photo sharing, and now we are sharing our favorites with you. Each week we will pick a theme, and bring you a round up of our favorite Instragram photos under that theme uploaded from users around the world.

This week we are exploring street art. Street art can be sprawled onto a building’s side or squeezed into the unlikeliest of places.  We especially love thoughtful street art that is a little quirky or comes with an inspiring message, but always brings something brighter into our day.

kcole716

lafemme_boheme

mrjohnson612

stephaniepresavoine

ryannworld

dymagate

sergiobang

sgsatd

bonbonlight

trinibad84

heathermariejewell

streetartnyc

paul3057

skevalley

jack_mochan

just1titus

featured image: bigpicturestuff

Have an idea or theme for next week’s Instragram roundup? Tweet to @spadesandsilk

See Also:

Graffiti Art Turns the Museum Inside Out

The Gentrification of Graffiti

The post Best Instagram Photos of the Week: Thoughtful Street Art appeared first on EcoSalon.

Taking art out of the buildings and onto the streets.

Art can be post-modern, conceptual, classic, abstract, or experiential. It can create a narrative, challenge hegemony, or debunk a stereotype. Indeed, art can do all these things, but if it’s stuck behind the walls of an pricey museum entry fee, it can’t do them for everyone.

That is why we love street art. Simultaneously controversial and accessible, rebellious and democratic, street art greets us when we least expect it. It can evoke proletariat angst, urban renewal, or a wicked sense of humor, all while we wait for the bus or walk to work.

Street art is quickly gaining wider recognition as a legitimate art form, much to the distaste of law enforcement and city officials. The first major exhibition of street art appeared last year at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), followed by similar shows organized by Australia’s National Gallery, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, and the UK’s Victoria and Albert Museum.

Marcus White, co-creator of the Brooklyn-based All City Street Art app and website, explains how certain neighborhoods end up becoming hot-beds of graffiti creativity.

“Industrial areas have always been good spots for graffiti as they tend to be rather desolate in the off hours, as there are little to no storefront areas or residential spaces, making them perfect for late night bombing missions,” White told EcoSalon. “[They] become areas for artists to have studios and form communities.”

So, in celebration of all things industrial, street-level and beautiful (if not entirely legal) here’s a list of graffiti and street art hot spots around the world:

Athens: With an youth unemployment rate of more than 50 percent, the young people of Greece have plenty to be aggro about. As austerity measures have become more severe, the street art of Athens has flourished, directly addressing themes of government accountability, greed, and high-level thievery.

Brooklyn: The rich history of New York City’s street art scene is at least partially owed to the subway system, which artists and taggers began using in the 1970s to communicate and spread their work across the city’s five boroughs. However it is in NYC’s most creative borough, Brooklyn, where the modern NYC street art scene is most expressive. Brooklyn’s diverse mix of ethnic backgrounds contributes to this, and the borough’s walls manage to beckon artists from Europe and elsewhere who want to get in on the scene.

London: Thanks to the iconic, elusive, and still anonymous UK artist Banksy, London and street art have become synonymous. There are several neighborhoods to check out, including the Big Smoke’s Brooklyn-equivalent, East London. London is also home to Global Street Art, which is boldly trying to create a “global photographic archive of street art online” and to create more spaces for artists to paint.

Detroit: The newly launched Detroit Beautification Project is using a simple tool to address the chronic problems of what was once America’s most prosperous city: spray paint. In its attempt to revitalize Detroit’s aesthetic through street art, the project has of course gained some critics, but the artists involved insist their intention is simply to create a more beautiful city.

Berlin: Berlin’s street art scene has its roots in the Berlin wall. During its tenure as the dividing line of Europe from 1961 to 1989, the wall’s west side was covered with graffiti conveying messages of politics, revolution, and the state of Germany. When the wall finally came down, Berlin’s street art scene exploded, as artists finally had free reign over an undivided city. Years later, the German city now earned a reputation as “the most bombed city in Europe.”

 

Rio De Janiero: Brazil’s second largest city made the progressive step of legalizing street art in 2009. As the art form has developed there over the last decade, graffiti has become “an agreement between the population and the city,” as one art student put it, and can be spotted throughout the city, from favelas to rich suburbs.

Miami: According to Marcus White of All City Street Art, Miami is home to a fast-emerging and important street art scene. The Wynwood Walls Project, conceived in 2009 by artist Tony Goldman, is an attempt to create a “museum of the streets.” Inviting artists from around the world, Goldman and his co-curators (one of which went on to become the museum director of LA MOCA), see the city’s walls as a giant canvas.

Austin: For a city that’s relatively small, Austin has a particularly vibrant street art scene. Its walls are known to feature the work of famed artist Shephard Fairey (creator of the iconic Obama Hope image and the Obey Giant) from time to time. The city’s Castle Hill neighborhood plays host to both up-and-coming artists and veterans alike.

Images in order: Jaime Rojo via BSA, the euskadi 11, Jaime Rojo via BSA, Global Street Art, Sleazy McCheesy, von_boot, Michelle Young, Wynwood Walls Project, Geoff Hargadon

The post Graffiti Art Turns the Museum Inside Out appeared first on EcoSalon.

The gentrification of graffiti as art.

Does haute graffiti spell liberty or death for street art? There are many layers to that question, which is not to be taken figuratively in the slightest. This week LA-based graffiti darling RETNA became the latest sanctioned artist to take on the famous graffiti wall at Bowery and Houston, replacing a previously sanctioned installation by Brooklyn duo Faile.

Here is a video of RETNA taken during his process:

An interesting 57-seconds of performance art: have you ever seen a more perfect circle? It’s also an unexpected and unintentional piece of historical theater, too. What was once a clandestine, subversive, anti-establishment, “up yours” middle finger to the powers that be – with the added thrill of being where you’re not supposed to be, dodging the law during the most criminal of hours of the night and early morn’ – has become mainstream, lunch hour entertainment on one of the most gentrified corners in the nation.

RETNA, a.k.a. Marquis Lewis, himself seems bemused at his own mainstream success. In an interview with ELLE, he recalls his ascent to becoming one of the most sought after street artists this side of Banksy.

“[I]t wasn’t really called street art at that time, it was just graffiti. When I first saw it I knew that was what I wanted to do I just never really thought that it would turn into a career.”

And quite a career it is. From being arrested as a kid in the name of honing his art, to the Bowery and beyond (i.e., his full scale hieroglyphic installation on a $60 million private jet), he has very much arrived.

Meanwhile, the Bowery’s “arrival” is a bonified “nuh duh” at this point. Obviously. And on today’s Bowery, it would not be a stretch to assume that few passersby know of the history and significance of the Bowery Graffiti Wall – or the many, many layers underneath.

Complex offers a thorough must-read history of the wall. In summary, three decades ago Keith Haring did the wall’s first mural, said to be his first large-scale public work. It was then bombed and pieced (more on that in a minute) by illegal graffiti until curator Jeffrey Deitch and developer (and wall owner) Tony Goldman began sanctioning off murals on the wall to high profile contemporary artists in 2008.

Haring’s wall

The Os Gemeos version of the wall of 2009

May Day by Shepard Fairey

In fitting fashion, the new installations have been targeted over the years by NYC graffiti writers many times, from tagging…

…to out and out destruction revealing the layers underneath.

Bombing and Tagging vs. Mural-izing

The level of street art these days bears little resemblance to the tags of Cool “Disco” Dan, though even he is recognized as an artist in his own right. His work is owned by the Corcoran Gallery of Art and featured in books; he credits his tagging with keeping him alive and out of jail throughout the 80s and 90s during DC’s crack-smoking mayor’s, “murder capital of the world” years.

Decades later, the city government is nurturing future Disco Dans through its MuralsDC program, like the Deitch/Goldman collaboration but on a more civic scale. The intention is to keep kids out of trouble via bombing (spraying or marking a wall with one’s tag, or name, i.e., Che, Sleazy, Stamp, or Moe) and piecing (large scale abstract forms).

This tagging, piecing, mural-izing distinction is interesting to keep in mind when you consider the war raging across the pond between the world’s most famous street artist, Banksy, and the artist with the most street cred, King Robbo.

The two have been battling it out for the past three years after Bansky “improved upon” a piece King Robbo had created in a nearly-impossible-to-reach location twenty four years prior.

Face-slapping, resentments and destruction ensued. Team King Robbo was born.

In another touch of irony, this video captures one neighbor’s dismay at the willful destruction of property, a casualty of the graffiti war. He calls it a “horrific stain,” “a random act of vandalism,” done at the hands of wild, out of control kids.

The addition of red paint certainly changes things, but isn’t this street art?

Images: Wright Wedding; Bowery Boogie; Business Insider; Complex; Cool Disco Dan; The Guardian; BBC News

The post The Gentrification of Graffiti appeared first on EcoSalon.

I’ve rarely been accused of being ‘at a loss for words,’ except when it comes to small talk. Inane chit-chat serves a purpose, I understand, but I’d rather just hear the silence in between. Call me anti-social, aloof or just plain boring, but my shutting up leaves plenty of room for observing, which has made me a better writer. So be it.

Many things are better in black and white than spoken out loud. For one, they last longer. A message worthy of repetition should stay around for a while so it will spread and grow.

Literally.

In this case, the black and white is green as in growing vegetation. The artist, Anna Garforth, creates her messages with moss growing out of concrete walls or leaves constructed together on fences. She’s been called “urban land artist, guerrilla gardener and green graffiti extraordinaire.” All of them seem to fit fabulously.

“My interest in integrating my creative practice with urban ecology and sustainability has led me into a world of moss collecting, wild city foraging and hunting down all the undomesticated areas of our urban forest.”

The new eco-nomics moss art (images above) was commissioned by a magazine to introduce an article about “going green and being more economical.” Garforth often collaborates with other artists or organizations that share her desire to communicate creatively and affect change both environmentally and socially.

“I feel the best place for some of my creations is in the public eye. I aim for my work to spark intrigue and questioning as it melds into our transitory daily landscape. My work needs to make an immediate impact given its ephemeral nature. I don’t wish to preserve it, it lives, it dies, and new growth ensues.”

And then there are her leaves. This typography (image above) was also site specific and completely sustainable. Garforth used thorns and fallen leaves (image below) to construct the words RETHINK and THINK.

“This piece was located in front of two main resources we heavily depend upon, gas and water. The word communicates a need to rethink about what we consume and how we consume it.”

For another outdoor piece, Gartforth created the word CHANGE in leaf typography. And in yet another, she spelled Nourish with moss (image below).

Look up nourish in the diction…I mean, Google “nourish definition” and it reads: “To provide with the substances necessary for growth, health and good condition. From Latin nutrire, ‘feed, cherish’. To provide for, sustain, encourage, nurture, cultivate, strengthen, enrich.”

Nourish, indeed.

Images via artist’s website

The post Moss Talking appeared first on EcoSalon.

My old college bud, Kenny Scharf, is arguably the original green artist – a brilliant guy from L.A. who began his career nabbing trash from the streets of Manhattan and embellishing old appliances with his phantasmagorical, Fifties-inspired, squiggly creatures and symbols.

Working alongside East Village graffiti muralists like Keith Haring and Jean Michel Basquiat, his uproariously spacey icons were quickly embraced by Andy Warhol and other enthusiasts with clout. He quickly rose to the ranks of artist superstar.

Scharf  conveyed his erumpent celeb status to me when I caught up with him back in 1984. I was covering festivals and parades during my first big break as a TV reporter in Central Pennsylvania.

“I’m really big now, Luanne,” he informed me. “I mean really big.”

Oh, yeah? Well, I just downed my 10th funnel cake at another Keystone country shindig, so there!

A few decades later, the prolific, globally-acclaimed pop star is still doing what he does best: painting, scavenging beaches for trash for his sculptures, performing at his recycled Brooklyn live-work space and enjoying the fanfare of a new retrospective book, Kenny Scharf by Rizzoli.

Oh, and another thing he’s still doing – riding his bike instead of driving whenever possible. It’s been his favorite mode of transport for the past 30 years. In fact, he was riding with cell in ear when I caught up with him, yet again, huffing only so slightly. Quite admirable for 51.

“I ride my bike everywhere,” he says. “I live in Brooklyn and ride over the bridge and back, sometimes twice a day. Why drive a few blocks when you can walk or ride?”

His biking is admirable not only for cutting fuel emissions, but also for keeping him as fit as the new crop of young artists who form his entourage in New York. They include Daniel Heidkamp, who encouraged Scharf to lend his magic to one of the many empty commercial storefronts hit by the recession.

Landlords have been luring in artists to keep up appearances in the darkened spaces with that edgy, gallery feel. According to the New York Times, the goal is to deter crime while attracting tenants who can afford the rent. Scharf agreed to be part of a group show in one of these pop-up galleries, finding it exciting to be part of the scene.

“I said I didn’t have work I could donate, but I could do something directly on the wall like a spray painting,” he told me. “I will do that pretty much anywhere. So I did my spray painting and there was a photographer and a reporter from the New York Times waiting for me there.”

The unexpected coverage boosted the opening of the show, entitled ‘Too Big to Fail: Big Paintings’.

“I went and it was nice, like a bunch of 20-something artists,” he says. “I liked the work and to be part of the youngsters [scene].”

I assured him he’s still a youngster, too. After all, I still sense a wide-eyed wonder in his current work that merges organic earth elements with sensual, knobby creatures in the perspective of a damaged Cable Guy way over-exposed to TV Land stimuli. The familiarity of his fantasies make us laugh as we drink in the irony and nostalgia.

,

Today, the high-energy Scharf divides his time between homes in Brazil and NYC.

He enjoyed a recent show of his paintings (above) and sculptures at the Honor Fraser Gallery in Venice, Ca. At home in Brooklyn, he lives in a basement studio called the Cosmic Cavern A-Go-Go, which moonlights as a psychedelic nightclub for parties and performance art.

“I have been working with garbage and refuse for all these years, and the Cavern is made out of found objects from the street that I pull in and decorate,” he explains.

The Cavern attracts a following of young visionaries (like the space Cadette with Kenny, below) eager to talk trash with the painter and celebrate his lighthearted sensibilities.

“We have actual performances when the music stops playing,” Scharf tells me about the club. “People appear as art objects and they go all out. It’s about being inclusive and everyone being allowed to be a part of it.”

The lucky patrons who come unadulterated get a quick Scharfian make-over.

“I just paint their faces,” he says. “Then they sweat it off dancing.”

Guess we can’t really call that sustainable craft, but the artist himself is enduring longer than most of his peers, many of whom passed on years ago from AIDS (like Haring).

“I miss my dead friends very much, but I’m used to not having them around,” Scharf says.

Instead, he surrounds himself with their art (he used to trade his for theirs) and his golden memories, while forging ahead in a brave, new and green world. A world where the resourceful painter is as much at home in Orbit City as George Jetson.

“I’ve been an eco-artist for a long time,” he tells me. “Though I’m not some puritan. I use spray paint; I take airplanes; I make sculptures out of resin when I need to, but I’m very conscious of it.”

I believe you, Kenny. You are really big and you are really conscious. Anyway, it’s not easy to spray paint with vegetable dye and ride a bike to Brazil. But if you could, you would.

Main Image: New York Times

Image One: Kenny Scharf

Image Two: RizzoliUsa

Image Three: Honor Fraser Gallery

Images Three, Four, Five : Kenny Scharf

The post Original Green Artist Kenny Scharf – Still Basking in the Limelight appeared first on EcoSalon.