Photography By Jac Chandross

"One known as Lady Pink, a veteran New York graffiti artist, was applying the last touches to a large, pink supine version of the Statue of Liberty that was being impaled with a cross but seeming somehow to enjoy it." — Last Hurrah for Street Art, as Canvas Goes Condo by Randy Kennedy, New York Times, 14 December 2006

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Rene Gagnon.

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The airbrushing work on this snake lady by MUCK is absolutely phenomenal.

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D*Face (London).

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Until I have a chance to break these down into separate categories by artist this will catch-all category will have to do. No disrespect to the artists who have been lumped together.

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Each floor has a freight elevator, and the doors of the first four are decorated. There was, possibly, a fifth floor in the building, but it wasn't accessible. Or that stairway may just have gone to the roof. In all the excitement, I can't remember if there were four floors or five. But, being as how this is the most powerful art in NYC, it could blow your head clean off...

(The fifth stairway went to the roof, but was off-limits except to the artists who painted it. But knowing the floor count is no reason to ruin a perfectly good Dirty Harry riff...)

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The creative force behind Skewville is two twins, Adam (Ad) and Andrew (Droo). (Names listed alphabetically.) You've likely seen their work, from the negative-space signs to the dogs (sneakers) they cut from plywood and throw over wires and poles around the city. I really dig Skewville's work, considering it to be among the funniest, edgiest, and most hip art being done in the city. Someday I will put up the photos I took at their show last year.

You can see more of their work at WhenDogsFly (projects and photos) and Skewville (Flickr photos).

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"I make a very public body of art using stickers, posters, and stencils. I put these works on the street in order to send some static interference out into the world's sea of images and messages. The images I use include historical propaganda, black power, parodies of authority, and tweaks of popular culture icons. Whatπs the point? Well aside from satisfying my compulsive need to produce art, these posters are designed to start a dialogue about imagery absorption. Powerful and seductive images have historically been used for a variety of reasons, some noble, some sinister, some both, depending on subjective interpretation. My work uses people, symbols, and people as symbols to deconstruct how powerful visuals and emotionally potent phrases can be used to manipulate and indoctrinate. There is no specific political affiliation behind what I do, only the philosophy 'question everything', which is why I can use Jesse Jackson and Joseph Stalin in the same body of work." — Shepard Fairey

Fairey's 13x25 foot indoor piece (yeah, that's BIG) was hard to photograph because there wasn't enough light and the flash bounced off the glue (probably wheat paste) used to finish the surface.

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A collaboration between Judith Supine (NYC) and Rekal (Venice, Italy).

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NY's Faile created a huge comic cover on the ground floor.

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Work by Italy's BO130.

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Brooklyn's MOMO has been plastering posters all over NYC since, well, forever, if not before.

My favorite piece has to be how he papered Manhattan. It's a fractal, in that the individual pieces resemble the whole ball of MOMO.

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"The Graffiti movement has no other intention than to speak via pictures. Words for the community, words of love, words of hatred, of life and death. It’s just a fine and subtle kind of therapy and an attempt to fill the emptiness of this terrible world, to cover public space with pictures that people going to work can enjoy." — Blek le Rat

"I had the power to paint and to avoid all the middle-men who would judge my work with their values. Liberty if you like. " — Blek le Rat

France's Blek le Rat (also here) is among the oldest of the street artists. He was doing his shit when most of today's artists were still in short pants. Oh, wait, most are still in short pants. Well, whatever...

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Just pieces in the puzzle that is street art.

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The key to a good trap is selecting the right bait. Or maybe it isn't a trap, at all, it's just a metaphor for modern life.

But, damn, if this wouldn't be a great way to get rid of all the yuppies in the city...

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Any surface is fair game.

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Despite having the crap bombed out of the building by DYM starting at 6:30am on the 15th (opening day) using silver paint—the art equivalent of a clearcut followed by a forest fire—the ecology had recovered somewhat by Saturday.

I'm pretty sure the punk girl is Blek le Rat.

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