By Jason Brick | 30 October 2014
Street art at its best creates murals and images that stir your emotions each time you pass it. At its worst, it’s just another patch of graffiti marring a building or a subway wall. New York City’s Street Museum of Art (SMoA) is collaborating with three local artists to bring out and feature the best of street art.
-Elle is a California native whose street art includes stickers, roller and spray paint, fire extinguishers, wheat paste and projected video.
-Rubin hails from Sweden originally, working to blend traditional graffiti with abstract geometric designs.
-New York native Skewville’s most famous work was a series of skewed self-portraits hung on walls, light posts and buses. His recent sneakers project captured a street trend and turned it into art.
All three artists have worked with SMoA for years, and won the hotly contested berths in the project due to the scope and skill of their work. The GOOD Cities project, in conjunction with Ford Motor Company, will create a series of three billboards. Each will feature photographs of an artist’s body of work, taken in their native street habitat, then superimpose a brief written “Love Letter to New York” over the images. The hope is that by presenting the quintessentially New York urban art experience through three very divergent lenses, that the project will illustrate how vibrant, diverse and colorful New York is.
The project premieres in November as an installation featuring images by all three artists and the love letters they have created. Once the installation closes, the billboards go live throughout New York City and other cities from more artists are forthcoming.
The GOOD Cities Project is a partnership between the artists, SMoA and Ford, which has funded the initiative as a way of exploring the relationship between a city and the people inhabiting it. It is slated to run for five months.
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