The store becomes a street art haven!

by admin on 17/02/2017

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

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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

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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!

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Street artists also used the store as a base from where they could put together art they were putting in the neighborhood

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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._DSC0086_1

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

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to this…

to this…

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This wall started off just saying “where’s my bike?”

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and ended up like this

20160730_170650Here’s some of the people responsible for transforming the space into a street art gallery a b c d e f g  i IMG-20151127-WA0009 j k l m n ho pArtists 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…

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and of course party…

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even on the roof!

 

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