connecting*the*dots

(originally uploaded by Indignico)

Classic.

Not bedroom decor, but classic nonetheless.

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On vacation this weekend, on the road all next week.

Found in the Mission, San Francisco, CA.

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Harlem, New York

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The Village, NYC.

(originally uploaded by ectomorfo)

A few years old now, but as powerful as ever:

The reporter didn’t correct himself, forgetting to mention that the wall that Banksy addressed actually divides Palestine from itself *not* just Israel from Palestine.

In any event, Banksy went to town with his unique style:

(originally uploaded by FREEPAL)

(originally uploaded by FREEPAL)

(originally uploaded by the walker cleavelands)

He followed up the street art with a more traditional painting of Jesus & Mary unable to get to Bethlehem because of the Israeli wall:

(originally uploaded by FredR)

Classic.

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Bloomington, Indiana

UPDATE: I just found a video clip of this work w/the artist’s description on WC:

From the Artist:

“This piece is part of a line of work I have been developing over the last year or so, which is called “Urban Impressionism”, in which represent 3D objects in 2-Dimensions through shadows. These shadows are created at a particular point of day, or night, and later stenciled and spray-painted in order to resemble real shadows. Through this process I am able to discuss light and form, in an unconventional way, placing it directly on the streets of the contemporary urban “cityscape” that surrounds us.

Ideally I hope to create a moment of magic or illusion in which the spectator or passer-by questions the space around him/her, through the shadows that are either naturally cast or artificially created. This particular piece incorporates text to politicize a very important issue for many of us today — the end of the war in many regions of our globalized world.

PS. I noticed that on the site, the piece had been mistakenly tagged as a “chalk” piece… The piece itself is was stenciled on the floor using a shadow cast by a light post at night, and later carefully sprayed with a ‘camouflage black’ can.”

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Gent, Belgium

Sandow Birk: The Liberation of Baghdad

New York Times Iraq reporter John Burns

(originally uploaded by Captain Flexible)

by Joan Vizcarra Carreras

JR and Marco on the Face2Face project:

When we met in 2005, we decided to go together in the Middle-East to figure out why Palestinians and Israelis couldn’t find a way to get along together.

We then traveled across the Israeli and Palestinian cities without speaking much. Just looking to this world with amazement.

This holy place for Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
This tiny area where you can see mountains, sea, deserts and lakes, love and hate, hope and despair embedded together.

After a week, we had a conclusion with the same words: these people look the same; they speak almost the same language, like twin brothers raised in different families.

A religious covered woman has her twin sister on the other side. A farmer, a taxi driver, a teacher, has his twin brother in front of him. And he his endlessly fighting with him.

It’s obvious, but they don’t see that.

We must put them face to face. They will realize.

We want that, at last, everyone laughs and thinks when he sees the portrait of the other and his own portrait.

The Face2Face project is to make portraits of Palestinians and Israelis doing the same job and to post them face to face, in huge formats, in unavoidable places, on the Israeli and the Palestinian sides.

In a very sensitive context, we need to be clear.
We are in favor of a solution for which two countries, Israel and Palestine would live peacefully within safe and internationally recognized borders.

All the bilateral peace projects (Clinton/Taba, Ayalon/Nussibeh, Geneva Accords) are converging in the same direction. We can be optimistic.

We hope that this project will contribute to a better understanding between Israelis and Palestinians.

Today, “Face to face” is necessary.
Within a few years, we will come back for “Hand in hand”.

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Background on the entire series.

(originally uploaded by Akcelik)

sponsored by…

Dope photography, that is.

Lisa Scheer (blog | flickr)

Ana in Honolulu forwarded me this after coming across it in a Google search. Anyone happen to know where the shot was taken?

UPDATE: It appears that Mantis dropped this stencil across the UK.

Haunting.

(via The Wooster Collective)

Slinkachu is having a lot of fun with this art project, as he leaves each of these scenes on the streets of London for people to stumble across, trample, steal, etc.

His work reminds me of my father’s mini-sculptures, but with the additional fun memories of playing with die-cast action figures as a child in the great expanses of my backyard.

So much fun.

From Wooster Collective:

Yesterday, Nico woke up in his flat in Split Croatia. On his closet door was a map created by his girlfriend, Andrea. The map showed different places for Nico to look as his took his usual route from his apartment to the academy where he studies.

What Nico found was an elaborate love poem done on the streets of Split by Andrea. She had put up stencils, paint, aerosol, collage wheat pastes etc. with last piece reading…. “i love you”.

Simply beautiful.

dragonflysky took the shot and flickr’s patented interestingness algorithm decided that her photo is the most interesting photo tagged with “Greensboro” out of more than 9,000 images.

Margaret, a reader from Minnesota, sent me this beaut the other day from Northern Minneapolis.

Thanks, Margaret, and keep ‘em coming!

The Real Story of the Superheroes
by DULCE PINZÓN

After September 11, the notion of the “hero” began to rear its head in the public consciousness more and more frequently. The notion served a necessity in a time of national and global crisis to acknowledge those who showed extraordinary courage or determination in the face of danger, sometimes even sacrificing their lives in an attempt to save others. However, in the whirlwind of journalism surrounding these deservedly front-page disasters and emergencies, it is easy to take for granted the heroes who sacrifice immeasurable life and labor in their day to day lives for the good of others, but do so in a somewhat less spectacular setting.

The Mexican immigrant worker in New York is a perfect example of the hero who has gone unnoticed. It is common for a Mexican worker in New York to work extraordinary hours in extreme conditions for very low wages which are saved at great cost and sacrifice and sent to families and communities in Mexico who rely on them to survive.

The Mexican economy has quietly become dependent on the money sent from workers in the US. Conversely, the US economy has quietly become dependent on the labor of Mexican immigrants. Along with the depth of their sacrifice, it is the quietness of this dependence which makes Mexican immigrant workers a subject of interest.

The principal objective of this series is to pay homage to these brave and determined men and women that somehow manage, without the help of any supernatural power, to withstand extreme conditions of labor in order to help their families and communities survive and prosper.

This project will consist of 12 color photographs of Mexican immigrants dressed in the costumes of popular American and Mexican superheroes. Each photo will picture the worker/superhero in their work environment, and will be accompanied by a short text including the worker’s name, their hometown in Mexico, the number of years they have been working in New York, and the amount of money they send to Mexico each week.

Dulce Pinzón

When I lived in that neck of the woods, I had a hard enough time keeping a savings account moving in the right direction on a corporate salary.

My personal favorite of the exhibition:

THE HULK
Paulino Cardozo
from the State of Guerrero
Works as a loader in New York
Sends home $300 per week

Color prints mounted on Sintra (series 1/5)
16 x 20 ”
2004/2005

Thanks, Ethan

My father sent me an email the other day, encouraging my brother and I to go see Children of Men. Apparently, both the premise and the art direction of the film — shot in twisted, bleak, monochromatic settings — reminded my dad of Picasso’s Guernica.

When he mentioned the reference, he did so in a way as if I had no understanding of its impact as a piece of art. I responded that I’ve always admired the painting as extremely powerful. This was his response in turn:

A Note About GUERNICA:

As you must know, when Picasso finished this painting he gave it to the Modern in NYC with the understanding that it would be returned to Spain after Franco was no longer in power. When I came to New York in the late 50’s, I rediscovered this painting for I only had seen slides of it in art history when I was in college. The painting had its own room on the first floor… with many sketches on the other walls. I fell in love with the power of that painting. I studied its structure in-depth and I spent hours just sitting in that room, looking at every detail of the work.

In the 60’s when in the city on gallery visits I would go to the Modern JUST to visit with GUERNICA. I can’t imagine how many times I paid the entrance fee to the museum for that reason alone. I knew the painting so well that I could close my eyes and see certain brush strokes… it was like my GOOD friend. And, you know what happened… Franco was gone and the Modern living up to its promise shipped the work to Spain. Certainly, I missed the painting on my further visits to MOMA.

Eventually, we visited Spain… and Madrid… and the Prado. GUERNICA had its own room there with very special installation… it seemed to float in that space. When I entered that room, I was absolutely overwhelmed by the sight of the painting… I think I stopped breathing… I had to use all my skills NOT to weep for I was at that point. It was a powerful emotional experience for me. WOW, and after leaving the Prado, it took quite a while before I was really part of my surroundings.

I’ve looked back at that experience over time and I know that it wasn’t GUERNICA per se… it was the culmination of all my other visits and my study of the work… and the anticipation… as well as the painting itself… and it just all came together for me at that moment in the Prado. And that’s my note about GUERNICA.

-DAD

As always, thanks, Dad.

(originally uploaded by - ♡ 14.2.1 ♡ -)

Jackson Pollock is my all-time favorite American painter. Now, thanks to Miltos Manetas, both you and I can emulate his signature “splatter” painting technique… online.

Apparently, the Flash site has been up since 2003, but I just stumbled upon it today.

Sheer brilliance.

Thank you, Miltos.

Suggested context: The next time you’re in Long Island, consider driving out to East Hampton to visit Pollock’s home & studio. I toured the grounds in the summer of 2005 and the experience expanded and edified my respect for both Pollock and his wife, Lee Krasner.

Charlie Rose on the career of Jackson Pollock, below:

The Outline of a Skeleton, 2006
47,5×37x7 cm
Acid free A4 80 gms paper and glue in artist made frame

From Peter’s website:

[…] Most recent I have started to make white paper cuts/sculptures inspired by fairytales and romanticism exploring the relationship between two and three dimensionality, between image and reality. I find the materialization of a flat piece of paper into a 3D form as an almost magic process - or maybe one could call it obvious magic, because the process is obvious and the figures still stick to their origin, without the possibility of escaping. In that sense there is as well an aspect of something tragic in most of the cuts. […]

Once a New Yorker, always a New Yorker. She’s looking beautiful, no?

Thanks, Courtney.

Cuban artist Arístides Esteban Hernández Guerrero (Ares) drops his point of view with these classic illustrations.

(stencil created, shot and uploaded by asboluv)

Update: The original artist makes contact in the comments:

when I did this stencil I had some text to accompany it which simply read:

BUSH BABY

during the act of spraying it onto the wall in my local town (Ipswich UK, where it still remains today) I broke the stencil with the text so only the image went up which in retrospect is more powerfull on its own than with the text which would have had a more direct and obvious message

[…]

I’m more proud of the fact that after 35 years of living on this planet and now working 9 to 5 and living the life of a parent, husband, car owner and home owner I still have the passion, anger and inspiration to want to challenge and comment what is going on in the world by sitting down for a few hours designing this stencil and getting up at 4am to spray it up on the street!

[…]

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(originally uploaded by Nomine UK)

Created with fd’s Flickr Toys.