Wooster Collective

Last updated

Wooster Collective is a website founded in 2003 that showcases street art from around the world. [1] [2] TheNew York Times called it "a leading street-art blog." [3] It features ephemeral art placed on streets in cities around the world. The site also offers podcasting with music and interviews featuring street artists. The name Wooster comes from Wooster Street, located in the SoHo neighborhood of New York City.

Contents

The website's archive starts in January 2003, and the category list is over 100 items long. [4] Categories include entries as "Cardboard" art and "Guerrilla gardening", as well as locations with a street art presence such as Tokyo, Dublin and Milwaukee. It also contains interviews of street artists, [5] with reviews of artists' new work or of recent gallery exhibits. [6]

11 Spring Street Project

Wooster Collective was involved in gaining recognition for street art in its own neighborhood. In 2006,the website collaborated with Caroline Cummings and Bill Elias, members of a development group, with the idea of turning the building located at 11 Spring Street in New York City into a temporary street art gallery. [7] [8] The address was about to be converted into condominium apartments.

The idea for the project was set forth when Elias Cummings contacted the Wooster Collective site and suggested that they curate a show at the location to celebrate the building's place in the history of street art.

The show ran for three days, from December 15 to December 17, 2006. Street artists who had been featured in the Wooster Collective, such as Shepard Fairey, Swoon, Dan Witz, Above, Bo130, Doze Green, D*Face, The London Police, Skewville, Lady Pink, Microbo, Jace, Kostas Seremetis, John Fekner and Don Leicht, Ruslan Karablin, Graffiti Research Lab, Will Barras, WK Interact, and many more participated in the event. The art was left on the walls and built over (a nod to a tradition in construction of leaving newspapers in the walls of a house as a sort of "time capsule"), thereby leaving a legacy of street art behind for future excavators.

Books

In 2012, Wooster Collective released the second in a series of 'Wooster on Paper' books called Graphite [9] which featured pencil drawings by a number of their favourite artists including Paul Alexander Thornton, Connor Harrington and Word to Mother.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jean-Michel Basquiat</span> American artist (1960–1988)

Jean-Michel Basquiat was an American artist who rose to success during the 1980s as part of the Neo-expressionism movement.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tribeca</span> Neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City

Tribeca, originally written as TriBeCa, is a neighborhood in Lower Manhattan in New York City. Its name is a syllabic abbreviation of "Triangle Below Canal Street". The "triangle" is bounded by Canal Street, West Street, Broadway, and Chambers Street. By the 2010s, a common marketing tactic was to extend Tribeca's southern boundary to either Vesey or Murray Streets to increase the appeal of property listings.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Street art</span> Art that is public and temporary in public spaces

Street art is visual art created in public locations for public visibility. It has been associated with the terms "independent art", "post-graffiti", "neo-graffiti" and guerrilla art.

George Lee Quiñones is a Puerto Rican artist and actor. Quiñones rose to prominence by creating massive New York City subway car graffiti that carried his moniker "LEE". His style is rooted in popular culture and often with political messages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stencil graffiti</span> Graffiti painted through a stencil

Stencil graffiti is a form of graffiti that makes use of stencils made out of paper, cardboard, or other media to create an image or text that is easily reproducible. The desired design is cut out of the selected medium and then the image is transferred to a surface through the use of spray paint or roll-on paint.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lady Pink</span> Ecuadorian-American graffiti and mural artist

Lady Pink, born Sandra Fabara (1964), is an Ecuadorian-American graffiti and mural artist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Colab</span> New York City artists group

Colab is the commonly used abbreviation of the New York City artists' group Collaborative Projects, which was formed after a series of open meetings between artists of various disciplines.

Vexta is an Australian stencil artist and street artist from Melbourne, Victoria.

<i>Bomb It</i> 2007 American film

Bomb It is an international graffiti and street art documentary directed by Jon Reiss that premiered at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival. Filmed on five continents, featuring cities such as New York, Cape Town, London, Paris, Amsterdam, Tokyo, Berlin and Sao Paulo, Bomb It explores the interplay between worldwide graffiti movements, the global proliferation of "Quality of Life" laws, and the fight for control over public space.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anthony Lister</span> Australian artist (born 1980)

Anthony Lister is a contemporary Australian artist. Lister helped pioneer the street art movement in his home city Brisbane as a teenager, and later in the inner suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne. His artistic style employs charcoal, acrylic, spray paint, and oil. His exhibitions include those held at the Urban Spree Gallery in Berlin, Robert Fontaine Gallery in Miami, Allouche Gallery in New York, Olsen Gallery in Sydney and Black Art Projects in Melbourne.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Skirball Center for the Performing Arts</span> Theater in Manhattan, New York

The Jack H. Skirball Center for the Performing Arts, generally known as NYU Skirball, is an 850-seat theater at 566 LaGuardia Place in Manhattan, New York, owned by New York University. It was named after philanthropist Jack H. Skirball. The theatre was completed in October 2003 and cost approximately $40 million. The architect was Kevin Roche, John Dinkeloo and Associates. The institution typically presents two seasons of curated public performances, talks, and events per year.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">5 Pointz</span> A building in Queens, New York that was known for its extensive graffiti

5 Pointz: The Institute of Higher Burnin' or 5Pointz Aerosol Art Center, Inc., mainly referred to as simply 5 Pointz or 5Pointz, was an American mural space at 45-46 Davis Street in Long Island City, Queens, New York City. When the building opened in 1892, it housed the Neptune Meter factory, which built water meters.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jonathan LeVine</span> American art dealer

Jonathan LeVine is an American art dealer, instrumental in the proliferation of lowbrow and street art on the East Coast of the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Blek le Rat</span> French graffiti artist (born 1952)

Blek le Rat is a French graffiti artist. He was one of the first graffiti artists in Paris, and has been described as the "Father of stencil graffiti".

RISK, also known as RISKY, is a Los Angeles–based graffiti writer and contemporary artist often credited as a founder of the West Coast graffiti scene. In the 1980s, he was one of the first graffiti writers in Southern California to paint freight trains, and he pioneered writing on "heavens", or freeway overpasses. He took his graffiti into the gallery with the launch of the Third Rail series of art shows, and later created a line of graffiti-inspired clothing. In 2017, RISK was knighted by the Medici Family.

<i>I AM THE BEST ARTIST Rene</i> Murals by René Moncada in New York City

Beginning in the late 1970s, and continuing into the 1990s in New York City, several prominently located murals of impressive size proclaimed I AM THE BEST ARTIST to all who walked or drove past them along the streets of SoHo. The murals were the creations of artist René Moncada, who lived in the neighborhood.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Quin</span> Hotel in Manhattan, New York

The Quin is a luxury hotel in New York City. It is located on 57th Street and Sixth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan, two blocks south of Central Park.

Roger Gastman is an American art dealer, curator, filmmaker, and publisher who focuses on graffiti and street art.

Michael De Feo is an American artist based in New York City. He is best known for his floral paintings and street art which deal with themes of ephemerality, growth, the cycle of life and the coupling of beauty with the universality of death. De Feo's penchant for flowers have earned him the nickname, "The Flower Guy."

The Bushwick Collective is an outdoor art gallery and collective in Bushwick, New York. It is located at Troutman Street and St. Nicholas Avenue.

References

  1. Kugel, Seth (2008-03-09). "Weekend in New York: Street Art - To the Trained Eye, Museum Pieces Lurk Everywhere - Travel". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2019-04-11.
  2. Bleyer, Jennifer (2007-03-25). "Billboard Blues". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2019-04-11.
  3. Allen, Greg (2005-07-10). "And Now, a Word From the Streets". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2019-04-11.
  4. "Wooster Collective". Archived from the original on 2015-10-27. Retrieved 2015-10-27.
  5. http://www.woostercollective.com/2003/11/profile_blek_le_rat.html Interview with Blek le Rat
  6. "Wooster Collective: REVIEW: Tuesday Night's Opening Night" . Retrieved 4 March 2018.
  7. Barbanel, Josh (2008-05-25). "11 Spring Street Graffiti Celebrated". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2019-04-11.
  8. "Last Hurrah for Street Art, as Canvas Goes Condo". New York Times . 2006-12-14.
  9. "Wooster Collective: Announcing Wooster on Paper #2: Graphite" . Retrieved 4 March 2018.