…Exploring the role of the prankster as artist, activist and social observer and the significance of the prank in society.
Don’t dilly-dally in the crosswalk!
North Adams seeks artists to transform city crosswalks into public art, by John Budenas, WWLP, March 17, 2025.
NORTH ADAMS, Mass. (WWLP) – The city of North Adams is calling on local artists to bring creativity to the streets.
A new public initiative will transform eight downtown crosswalks into vibrant works of art and aims to continue beautifying the city while enhancing the downtown experience for both residents and visitors.
Peace on Earth? Not everywhere. 56 years later, and there’s still no merry Christmas in war.
Emma Cieslik covers artists’ renditions of the Nativity throughout history for Hyperallergic in “Nativity Scenes Have Never Been Neutral,” including Joey Skaggs’ “Vietnamese Christmas Nativity Burning” in 1968.
Thomas Dambo’s is trolling…
He makes giant trolls out of trash, hides them in woods for people to find, by Cathy Free, Washington Post, July 9, 2024
“My ultimate goal is to have trolls surprising people in every state,” said Thomas Dambo, whose latest project is in Detroit Lakes, Minn.
Thomas Dambo was rummaging through a city dump in Minnesota when he stumbled on perfection: large yellow plastic bins that had been tossed by a tool manufacturing company.
“They were perfect for the rabbit,” said Dambo, a Danish artist, who reached out to the company to request the rest of their discarded bins.
Dambo gathered the trash and hauled in about 25 tons of scrap wood, then brought together 300 volunteers in Detroit Lakes, Minn., to make gargantuan outdoor public art.
Working together, they built five enormous trolls and a looming golden rabbit that was accented with salvaged wiper-blade whiskers and motorcycle helmets for eyes. The supersize artworks — ranging in height from 16 to 42 feet — were then hidden in forested parks around the city. Read more here.
A new bold and evocative public work of art from Banksy
Banksy Scaled the Prison That Once Jailed Oscar Wilde to Paint His Latest Mural, by Sarah Rose Sharp, Hyperalleric.com, March 5, 2021
Banksy confirmed the artwork in a clever video stitched together with a Bob Ross tutorial.
Blockbuster street artist Banksy has laid claim to his latest work of public art — an olde tyme prison escape stenciled on the wall of the defunct HM Reading Prison in Reading, Berkshire, England. The prison, also known as Reading Gaol, was built in 1844 and operated until early 2014. Until this week, it was perhaps most famous for housing writer Oscar Wilde during a two-year imprisonment (1895-1897) after a conviction for “gross indecency.” Following his release, Wilde published The Ballad of Reading Gaol, a poem that narrates the 1896 hanging of Charles Thomas Woodridge, convicted of murdering his wife.
The Banksy mural features a figure in prison stripes and a cap. He appears to be climbing down the exterior brick wall on a rope ladder instead of a ream of paper, anchored by a typewriter. The image is likely an allusion to Wilde as Reading’s famous inmate and his subsequent poetic work that both documents Woodridge’s hanging while also identifying with him as a fellow prisoner.
The artist left his work open to speculation for a few days before taking to Instagram with a video documenting the mural’s clandestine application, with narration supplemented by overlay from Bob Ross’s famous public access painting program, The Joy of Painting with Bob Ross. The audio selections first seem to merely narrate the creation of the mural, details of which are captured in the tight halo of the artist’s headlamp, but once we cut to shots of the mural in full view the following day, the audio clips telegraph the artist’s statement on the work. Read the whole article here.
I love telling success stories about my former SVA students. I now have the opportunity to boast about Michael De Feo. His book, “Michael De Feo: Flowers“, was just released by Abrams Books.
Michael De Feo’s dedication and singularity in the use of his iconic flower image has taken him on a creative adventure of self-discovery in a very public arena.
Michael paints flowers on walls and other public spaces. He has also appropriated advertisements, transforming them, much like billboard liberators, taggers, and graffiti artists do, to dramatically change one message to another. His choice to violate these public spaces with his decorative flowers has great irony. It’s non-threatening. One could paint bullet holes. Michael paints flowers. Bullet holes are obvious. You don’t have to think much about the message. But a flower…
The greater irony is that Michael’s work has now been appropriated by the advertisers whose campaigns he altered because of the positive attention he brings to their work. From my perspective, Michael has created a new meaning to the phrase “flower power.”
