Fortnightly Round-Up of Street Art

by wlancehunt in Barcelona, Brooklyn, Mexico, mural, South Africa, Street Art

Presenting art found on the walls, streets, curbs, lampposts and other public spaces around the world

A number of years back, I was in London and saw a Thai restaurant sign that I had to snag: “Phat Phuc.” Then I kept seeing other signs that struck me as something I needed to collect. On that same trip, the idea that other people could enjoy these signs as well as the cool and provocative public art I kept stumbling across gelled. Especially the stuff that’s not commissioned by some government or even business, the art by people showing off. At home, I found photos moldering in my iPhoto (back then) app and have since found that every place has its own sort of street art aesthetic. New York and Tel Aviv have loads of graffiti, but it’s almost completely absent in other cities, where it tends to be replaced by stickers. The message still gets out, only in smaller format and more easily removed media.

I’d been planning on getting all this street art out from hiding on my computer in deep software storage and back out into the world where it should be for a number of years now. The largest problem was displaying it. I didn’t need a separate template and new URL for art, and my WordPress template is geared towards words, not images. But that has changed with Word Press’s Gutenberg update: anyone can actually publish images on any template, without having to learn HTML and CSS forms, in a way that looks good that looks how I imagined it could if only I were a coder. Now there is no need for that rot. About a day of futzing around off and on and up went this gallery.

These fortnightly posts are organized by city, country, neighborhood or theme. I’m looking forward to the Ugli Pygs theme post. These bits of graffito appear a lot around this part of Brooklyn. But, for this first post, a time capsule from Mexico City & Barcelona (late November 2007) back when the idea was just forming. Yes, that means there are 11 + years of images, so plenty of fun to be had. Plus two brand new ones that I was itching to get out in the world from a few days ago.

First, seven slices of Mexico City street art, including an old mansion, a VW Beatle with Spider, nighttime globes and machine-work walls.