The Inutilious Retailer was designed as a community place for everyone to create art. As someone who created and had friends in the street art world, I had always planned on utilizing the store facade as a legal spot for different artists.
The front of the store was a prime Lower East Side spot and it was quickly embellished, including the first yarn bombed gate by London Kaye, the side panel by Wheatpastewoman/Phoebe and a doorway piece by Pyramid Oracle
The side panel was always a multi layer, free for all…
The idea to use the entrance for the basement as a kind of Street Art Advent Calendar was hatched and changed every couple of weeks
When Frank Ape added his piece, he combined it with a shirt inside which could be won if the slot machine was pulled and three of the characters he added to the blank reels lined up!
Street artists also used the store as a base from where they could put together art they were putting in the neighborhood
The Graffiti Garden
What I didn’t realize when I rented the store, was that included a huge back yard that was devoid of any graffiti except for this late 70’s or early 80’s piece that nobody had seen before or knew who created it.
I invited artists to add whatever they wanted to all the walls, with the condition that nobody went over the vintage piece.
One wall went from this
to this…
to this…
This wall started off just saying “where’s my bike?”
and ended up like this
Here’s some of the people responsible for transforming the space into a street art gallery 
Artists who were young
artists who had done graffiti for 40 years
or artists who tried it for the first time
but in the end, the garden became a place where even the floor was covered in art, where anyone and everyone could come, create, relax…
and of course party…
even on the roof!
