We love this stencil pattern of Marilyn Monroe on a red door in Chinatown. The Monroe iconography works on a couple of levels here, we think. Not only is Marilyn a pop culture icon due to her tragic celebrity as film actress and sex symbol, but she is also anContinue Reading
Here’s a third shot of the Carmine Street Pool mural by the late artist Keith Haring. Ivan Corsa Photo
This is the second in a series of three shots of a mural by 1980’s art star Keith Haring at the landmark Carmine Street Pool in the West Village, in New York City. Ivan Corsa Photo
The late Keith Haring was one of several art stars to emerge from the downtown New York City art explosion in the 1980’s. Haring made a name for himself early in his career for graffiti and street art. After becoming established he was commisioned to create major public art works,Continue Reading
Here’s a wide shot of the same Chelsea building in New York City where a real estate developer has cleverly built new luxury condos over an existing and intact historic 19th-century building. Ivan “Van” Corsa Photo
Real estate developers looking to maximize use of space, as well as profits, must find creative architectural solutions to create new, larger residential spaces within the constraints of New York City’s myriad rules and laws governing zoning, air rights, and historic preservation, not to mention building codes. One work-around andContinue Reading
Here’s a cool stencil we’ve seen all around downtown New York City for a long time. From Tribeca and SoHo to Chinatown and the East Village, this stencil of a Mars Rover-type vehicle is a regular reminder of NASA’s mission to the mysterious red planet in the 1990’s. But wait,Continue Reading
Hey, “All kinds of alterations done,” folks! Gotta the love the Chinese boy and girl characters flanking the message on the left and right, which you see on the doors of various Chinese dry-cleaners/tailors/laundromat shops. The imagery is rooted in a tradition, we imagine. The touch that really makes thisContinue Reading
We love the store front to the SSURPlus select clothing shop in New York City. Regular visitors to this site may recall an earlier photo of the SSURPlus boutique many months ago. That shot was taken in the day. But this one-of-a-kind store window with it’s etched-glass Bruce Lee motifContinue Reading
Visual irony at street level: a wheat-paste paper cut-out of a van covered in graf tags. We love it. This piece of street art was found in the East Village. Wouldn’t this image be cool as a graphic tee shirt? We could see someone like Nigo / A Bathing ApeContinue Reading
We spotted this truck on a block in downtown New York City where Chinatown and Little Italy converge, overlapping each over to create a an weird, intermingling sino-italian cultural landscape of dim-sum palaces and trattorias. In any event, we just thought the logo on this truck for “Bally Produce Corp.”Continue Reading
Cow Parade was a major public art event to visit several foreign and U.S. cities, including New York City, in the early 2000’s. The project entailed the placement of hundreds or thousands of often brightly painted life-size models of cows, each decorated by an artist. This cow was placed inContinue Reading
This piece of graf is in the heart of SoHo shopping district, where all the landmarked cast-iron buildings and mega lofts that real estate agents drool over can be found. The “up” is by “Smart.” Note the backwards “R” in Smart. Highly stylized tags can sometimes be read like typographicContinue Reading
If you’re not looking carefully, you might easily miss this stencil as you’re walking by it on the street because this work is really small. In that way and in the utter simplicity of it — a man’s head –this stencil is a subtle piece of street art. Ivan CorsaContinue Reading
This truck is the bizzomb!!! Or rather, the graf makes this truck the bizzomb. You can always find this truck parked in SoHo near the intersection of Spring and Greene streets. The “Fred” in this art work is is the Fred Rogers of Mister Roger’s Neighborhood fame. Everytime we seeContinue Reading
New York City-based Kaws is an art star of the global street art and graf worlds. His work can be found in massive white-wall gallery exhbitions and on the street, as is the case of this black and green sticker, which looks like Kaws’ take on the Michelin Man character-logo.Continue Reading
Moss is an example of high-end contemporary design at the retail level. The store, on Greene St., in SoHo, is a temple to clever, expensive and beautiful furniture, household goods and decorative objects. All of it for sale. We love the Moss logo and the store’s window displays, which changeContinue Reading
SoHo in New York City often conjures images of art galleries, artists and huge lofts. But these days the only artists and art galleries that can call SoHo home must have deep pockets and must be already firmly established. SoHo long ago became a mecca for sleek and chic urbanContinue Reading
If it’s pandas you want, then it’s pandas you shall get … at least as far as this example of stencil street art goes in lower Manhattan. The stencil genre has become ever more visible over the past four or five years, with a lot of Australian street artists leadingContinue Reading
It’s hard to go wrong by employing repetition. As an aesthetic principle, showing the same image, or a slight variation of an image, in multiples and in an evenly distributed fashion, equally weighted in a grid-like pattern, is a visually compelling technique. Such patterns engage the eyes and draw theContinue Reading