Monthly Archives: July 2005

Lightning Bolt on Ludlow Street, Lower East Side

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We love the graphic idea for this throw-up on Ludlow Street in the Lower East Side, which is now going through a sizzling real estate boom and is years-deep into a sweeping gentrification process. (Buy your loft or condo now, if you can!) The lightning bolt is literally and figuratively an energetic symbol. We love the swift electrical power a bolt suggests. The graf treatment here is enhanced by the corrugated surface and texture of the metal shutter.

Kicks on our feet: Puma 5000M
Muzik on our iPod: Royksopp “Melody A.M.”

Ivan Corsa Photo

Boombox Dude by WK Interact 02

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Here’s a details of the boombox in a wheat-paste artwork by New York City artist WK Interact next to the 2nd Avenue Subway entrance at Allen and Houston streets in the Lower East Side. The neighborhood that is rapidly giving way to the development of luxury condos and apartments, as well as expensive restaurants and hotels.

Ivan Corsa Photo

Boombox Dude by WK Interact 01

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Here’s another awesome — and new — piece of wheat-paste artwork by New York City artist WK Interact. This work depicts a black-and-white life-sized dude with a classic old-school boombox (a.k.a., ghettoblaster). This artwork is next to the 2nd Avenue Subway entrance at Allen and Houston streets in the Lower East Side. WK Interact’s studio and shop is on nearby Stanton Street in a diverse and creative neighborhood that is rapidly giving way to the development of luxury condos and apartments, as well as expensive restaurants and hotels.

Ivan Corsa Photo

Artist Rich Jacobs: Work in Progress at Eleven 03

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Here’s a shot of the artist Rich Jacobs, a super-nice guy who took a few minutes break from his work on a hot NYC day last weekend to speak with us about his art. Rich had just recently returned from Tokyo, Japan, where his work was being exhibited in a Harajuku art gallery. Rich’s work has also been featured as part of the current Vans sneaker campaign. Here Rich is standing in front of a work in progress at the corner of Prince and Elizabeth streets in Nolita, in New York City. He was painting the first background layer of an original painting on a board affixed to the side of a vintage clothing shop called Eleven. Rich painted the exterior of the shop and it’s logo. Check back at Global Graphica to see this finished work.

Linkage

Rich Jacobs Bio [XLarge]

Rich Jacobs Bio [96 Gillespie]

Ivan Corsa Photo

Exhibitionist Shop Graf, LES

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This is some serious aerosol work on super-trendy Orchard Street on the Lower East Side, in New York City. The art is on the storefront shutter of a shop called Exhbitionist. The shop is on a block that is undergoing a truly radical — even by Lower East Side standards — transformation. Several low-rise buildings that thrived with retailers on both sides of the block have recently been torn down to make way for taller (read “more profitable”) mix-use buildings, that is, new real estate developments that will include businesses and new apartments and condos together in a single structure, not unlike many NYC residential high-rises. As they say, everything in New York City eventually boils down to a conversation about real estate.

Ivan Corsa Photo

“Arab”

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This tag is jarring, not so much for its style or boldness or scale, but because of the moniker itself. Given current events in the U.S. and globally, the tag resonates with New Yorkers and, perhaps makes us pause to think, in a way it wouldn’t have several years ago, before the events of 9/11/2005. Which, whether the intention of the writer or not, is the importance and value of art (whether or not you consider Krylon tags art).

Sneakers on are feet: Puma 5000M
Tunes in our ears: Seu Jorge “Carolina” (Mr. Bongo Records)

Ivan Corsa Photo