street art - The Art of the Prank

May 3, 2019December 15, 2023

Michael De Feo’s Flowers

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.”

April 16, 2019December 15, 2023

r/Place: Recollections of a Pop-up Online Subculture

r/Place, an incredible 2017 reddit experiment with a simple premise and strict parameters, stands out for the spirit of challenge and community it ignited. It brought the best of collaborative street art into the heart of the digital realm, it earned its place in the annals of internet culture, and it’s worth revisiting and remembering. Here’s how it went down, through the eyes of one very engaged participant.

(If you’re unfamiliar with reddit, here’s a pretty good primer.)

“The story of r/Place. As told by a foot soldier for r/Mexico.”
By Arturo Gutierrez
ART + Marketing
April 3, 2017

I’m sure other historians can tell you who was the first. Others much more knowledgeable than me who can pinpoint where exactly in the vast Canvas did the cursors of hundreds aimed themselves into a singular area, and willed order out of the chaos. But I’m not the one to tell.

Instead, what I saw as a bystander that April 1st was the emergence of life, color, and memes of all sizes and kinds growing almost by magic. And as the hours passed, as I laid a pixel here, waited, and laid another pixel there, the whole Canvas evolved and grew between each of my visits. It was an amazing sight to behold. An inspiring feat of human ingenuity, humor, and improvised politics in slow motion.

Yes, that’s right. For even in these early hours, even before the dedicated subreddits, the forums, Discord channels and massive bot armies of the later days, a silent, wordless body of politics was being established right before our eyes. Read more.

September 17, 2018December 15, 2023

Back-to-School Bulletproof Vests

LA based street artist Plastic Jesus shop-drops back-to-school bullet proof vests.

Artist Infiltrates Back-to-School Shopping Displays with Bulletproof Vests
Zachary Small
Hyperallergic.com
September 4, 2018

Plastic Jesus has replaced a handful of shopping displays with child-sized bulletproof vests as a satirization of Trump’s America.

If you’ve strolled through the clothing sections of a Los Angeles superstore in the past week, then it’s possible that you’ve seen a strange new item on sale. Across the city, the street artist known as Plastic Jesus has planted child-sized bulletproof vests in the displays of popular back-to-school shopping destinations like Target and Macy’s.

“WAKE THE FUCK UP,” remarked the artist in an email correspondence with Hyperallergic. “We all have the power in us to change society and make the world a better place. It’s no one else’s responsibility, only yours.”

Plastic Jesus is probably best-known for his exceptional trolling of President Donald Trump in Hollywood back in July 2016. It was then that Plastic Jesus constructed a tiny concrete wall around Trump’s star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame, which quickly became a site of public defacement after the reality television host’s win in the presidential election. Just two weeks ago, the city of West Hollywood unanimously voted to remove Trump’s star from the Walk of Fame. (The decision ultimately lies in the hands of the Los Angeles City Council and the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, who reportedly have no plans to remove it anytime soon.)

August 18, 2018December 15, 2023

NeSpoon’s Doilies

Doilies writ large.

Street art with a difference: Artist creates spectacular wall-art doilies
by Paulina Alexandra
TheFirstNews.com
August 16, 2018

A Polish woman is taking the street art world by storm with her astonishing murals of doilies.

NeSpoon in Pont-l’Abbe, France, 2016. NeSpoon.

NeSpoon is nine years-old and paints murals. Actually, NeSpoon is in her thirties and has a teenage daughter but after a decade in the corporate world she wanted a clean state.

She changed her hair, took a name from The Matrix (‘there is no spoon’) and embarked on an international career as a fully-fledged street artist.

The Warsaw native is known all over the world now for her intricate doily designs which she renders in ceramic, material and painted form.

Her enormous murals of the delicate lace-work designs have seen her travel to Georgia, Hong Kong and as far away as the remote Western Australian desert.

Read the rest of this article here.

August 18, 2018December 15, 2023

“Indecline” Ups the Ante with Naked Trump on a Billboard

Activists Indecline hoist up naked Trump. Let’s hope this clown doesn’t get away with murder.

Billboard pairs naked Trump clown statue with John Wayne Gacy quote
by Emily Van de Riet
CBS46.com
August 17, 2018

LOS ANGELES, California (Meredith) — A billboard in Los Angeles is stirring up controversy after displaying a statue of President Donald Trump as a naked clown.

The billboard reads, “A clown can get away with murder” in all capital letters. This quote is attributed to serial killer John Wayne Gacy, who infamously dressed up as a clown when he killed his victims.

The American activist group Indecline is responsible for creating the billboard. In a statement to CNN, Indecline said the message of the billboard is that American core values are being lost in the current political climate.

The group also said the use of the John Wayne Gacy quote was inspired by Trump’s own statement at a campaign rally in January 2016. At the Iowa rally, the then-presidential candidate said, “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.”

Indecline said Trump was correct about the loyalty of his base, and that such unconditional support is part of the problem.

Read the rest of this article here.