Monday Morning Affirmation

Seen on the street of Dublin (via Wooster Collective)

Amazing stuff from Berlin

Very Cool Project

Came across this gem while reading Wooster Collective.

Great Street Art project by Mister12Gage in Portland:

I’ve always thought it was strange to see large images of celebrities, models and news anchors on walls, billboards, and buses. I’ve wondered why these people are adorning our walls and public spaces instead of the individuals that make up our community. This project serves as a physical representation of the city of Portland through drawings of it’s inhabitants.

Everyone pictured is completely unknowing and chosen at random. Whether your reaction is positive or negative, please let me know by  emailing me at pasteyourfaceproject@gmail.com. I’d like to hear your initial reaction, as well as what you think now that you know what this is all about.

I’m sorry or you’re welcome, depending on how you feel about this.

Phoenix Recognized for our worst possible contribution.

I’ve written multiple times about my love for Street Art and how much I dig Wooster Collective.

Not too long ago Phoenix artists Mac & Kofie was featured on Wooster for this piece, as documented by Light Rail Blogger.

So imagine my surprise, when, as I was writing last week piece “Something else we need in Phoenix“, I noticed that Wooster had featured the horrible PBR mural that was put up on Roosevelt, only a few feet from the Mac & Kofie piece.

My Objections are this:

1. 25-cent beer should sell itself
2. The owner the building this is painted on also ripped all the street art and posters off the front of the building, while allowing this billboard to go up
3. Roosevelt Row is clearly the “Arts District”, so placing this faux-mural here has only one purpose, to mis-appropriate the slowly growing reputation that so many legitimate artists have toiled to build here over the last two decades.
4. It took weeks to do and looks like crap.

I agree completely with the tagger.

Also, to point out a quote from LRB:

“..tagging work by respected artists is a no-no in the world of vandalism.”

Guess what, hack; that checklist means nobody respects your billboard.

I am Doofus.

It’s 100% true.

Though in many past instances I have referred to myself alternately as “clever”, “brilliant”, a “genius”, and one or twice even “not just a hat rack”, it turns out I was over-estimating.

As you may know, I help monitor Twitter traffic for my employer, and so during the day I have the work-related feeds and my personal feed on screen.  Oftentimes, links will be included in a tweet, and I’ll just favorite it to review later when I’m at home.

Never know what someone will link to, after all.

…and yes, this means that you will never know that someone you admire has linked to your blog.

….and sometimes because you don’t know all of this is happening, you respond to the words in their tweet without clicking the link, trying to sound like a joiner-in’er, a little “hey, look at me, I’m also interested in the topic you’re talking about, please loop me in”, and instead only end up sounding like a doofus.

It’s rewarding to see that so many people have connected with essay I wrote about passion on the Wooster site: http://bit.ly/c8Wn89
9:41 AM Apr 28th from @MarcDSchiller

–

@MarcDSchiller really dig the “Passion” essay. quoted it a bit on my blog the other day.
9:45 AM Apr 28th via TweetDeck in reply to MarcDSchiller

Yes, you doofus, he already knows you wrote about it.  He linked the damn thing.

Way to be a doofus, Ryan.

Knowing is half the battle.

P.S. Thanks for the link Marc.  I’ll be less dumb next time.

Passion

The other day I was checking up on my favorite Street Art site, Wooster Collective, and found something unexpected.  Instead of great, inspirational art, there was a page-long dissertation on the subject of “Passion”, and why we do what we do.

For a long time, Sara and I have been struggling with the fact that for us, the Wooster Collective website is still a very small and personal blog with no agenda other than to use it as a way to share with our friends the things that inspire us. Some of those friends we know very, very well. We meet each week face-to-face in New York to talk about art, family, New York, etc. Other “friends” we have never met, but we know from the emails that we receive that we share with them a common view of the world and the way we wish to live in it. The blog is a way for us to learn about new things, meet new types of people, and to take us out of our comfort zone so we can achieve new goals. It’s 100% a passion project and a passion project only.

…..To be honest, we’re not sure how long we can do the website. We have no intention of stopping it, but one of the joys of the site is that we can end it tomorrow if we wanted to. Since it’s not a business, the only ties we have to keep it going is our true passion.

While Marc Schiller wrote this message referring to his extremely popular site, I think it can apply to a lot of what each of us does everyday.

Don’t we often get involved in things we are passionate about, then end up making concessions and deviating from our original intent?

What are you passionate about?
What should you do today to make that passion more personal and more effective?

Shepard Fairey speaks

From Wooster Collective, a great interview of Shepard putting up another massive new piece discussing New York, life, why Street Art is relevant and “Exit Through the Gift Shop”.

New stuff from Best Ever

courtesy of WoosterCollective.com

New stuff from Best Ever.  I’m continually blown away by the quality of work here. Remember folks, this is on a wall, not a canvas.  Think about the typical street art you see, and they look at the details here.  It’s amazing.

Street Art Being Made

Works by The London Police in Miami, courtesy of Wooster Collective:

Fresh stuff from Best Ever

From Wooster Collective.

Take a look at the images below.

Yes the work is rough, and it’s abstract with a sense of cubism or surrealism thrown in there.

But then take a close look.  Each of the elements is clearly defined in great detail, and transitions exactly where it needs to transition to retain our attention and not look totemic.

This is my first time seeing the work of Best Ever, and I hope it won’t be the last.

Image slightly NSFW