In the week before Bonham’s NY auctioned off his work, British stencil artist Nick Walker was busy painting a number of legal walls around lower Manhattan and Williamsburg. He painted a radio controlled giraffe on Roebling Tea House, some suited umbrella holders on Thunder Jackson and Restaurant PT, and a pair of sparring splashers on Nike iD Design Boutique. For the enjoyment of queued up club-goers, Walker stenciled a pin-striped rat killer on Cielo in the Meatpacking District. And inside the club’s smoker’s garden, Walker painted a few smaller pieces, which we photographed below. It’s hard to say what effect, if any, these pieces had on auction results but many of Walker’s pieces were sold off for triple the estimated price at Wednesday’s Contemporary Art auction.
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The Real World, MTV’s reality series about self-absorbed, drunken twenty-somethings having sex with each other, is filming the next season here in Brooklyn. No word on what neighborhood the network will stick them in, but we’ll be surprised if it’s anywhere besides Williamsburg. We’d like to suggest they relocate to Governors Island. It’s only a quarter mile from Brooklyn and offers the cast and locals a little more protection from one another. [Gothamist] (Mugshot is of a former Real World star arrested for assaulting a horse.)
While focused on MORAL’s fire extinguisher tag on Lafayette Street, we forgot to mention the giant spray painted cock underneath. AUTO GANG declares, “If we got something, we got the balls,” in case it was unclear.
Update: From a commenter, another photo of an AUTO GANG cock.
Artist Steve MacDonald, who we once had the pleasure of interviewing, has teamed up with Matthew Davis to start a new company called Little Zero. They’ve already designed a rad t-shirt for the San Francisco track bike collective, MASH, and now have a summer line out. Since it’severy month is bike month here in NYC, we’re thinking this bike shirt is most appropriate but would honestly like them all, especially “Create & Burrow“.
If you happen to be in Milwaukee in May, you can check out Steve’s embroidered art at Paper Boat Boutique, where he’s exhibiting with Rachel Budde of Brooklyn.
Photo by Dancing Weapon of Mass Destruction from Bicycle Fetish Day 2008.
Artist Tom Sanford opened an exhibit at Leo Koenig Gallery (545 West 23rd Street, NY, NY) on Friday, titled “Mr. Hangover,” which features “and painted posters depicting pop cultural obsessions like: disposable items, celebrities, athletes, cult leaders, and expensively hyped art objects.” Sounds like fun. ANIMAL has images and a profile of Sanford. [ANIMAL]
In the future, graffiti will be painted by radio controlled animals.
Photo by RFullerRD.
Street artist Shepard Fairey was in New York last week and hit the streets, pasting up an Obama poster on the corner of Houston and Bowery, among other spots. Unfortunately, he sacrilegiously pasted right over the work of graffiti writer MARTY, who has been holding down that corner for years. We expected he would take it back, but were surprised he’d do it in broad daylight. Razor Apple reader, Vincent Ng from the LES, caught some photos as MARTY of Smart Crew painted a fill-in over the Obama poster on Saturday afternoon, cleverly using orange paint to match the new Keith Haring mural next to it. Reached for comment by email, Shepard was apologetic for pasting over MARTY, saying, “I don’t like to go over people ever, however, I feel Obama being elected is very important to everyone’s future including MARTY’s. It was not intended to be disrespectful of him, but if he chooses to be that small minded and petty about it I can’t control that. I certainly would expect him to justly re-claim the spot after the election.”
Oddly enough, just a few hours after MARTY finished painting, a trio of Obama-loving graffiti-haters was cleaning off the poster that they mistakenly believed was legal. Who was this pro-Obama buff squad? Shepard doesn’t know, but guesses that, “people [just] feel strongly about Obama.” Obama is certainly hoping people feel strongly in support during the West Virginia primary today.
Below are some photos of MARTY in action, and the the pro-Obama buff squad at work.
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Alchemy Demo - 15′H x 50′W wall on 55 Pearl St, Brooklyn, NY 11201 [map]. The artists will demonstrate their work on this wall from May 14th to May 16th through live painting sessions.
Opening Party - the tour will officially open on May 16th, 2008 with celebration from 8pm to midnight in TenEleven located on 171 Avenue C, New York, NY 10009 [map] with the exhibition of the work on canvases. The event is free.
http://albuscav.us/concretealchemy/nyc.html
