A number of artists created this tribute to David Jude Jolicoeur, who rapped as Trugoy the Dove in the trio De La Soul. He passed away in February 2023 at the age of 54. It was painted during the 2023 Bushwick Block Party this past summer and involved a number of artists (Enjoy Hads, Six Million Dollar Steve, Mr. Makro, Brandy, and Sure78 and more? )
below: On one of the walls there is a portrait of Biggie Smalls (1972-1997) also known as The Notorious B.I.G., a rapper and hip hop artist who was born and raised in Brooklyn. It was painted by Danielle Mastrion
below: Up high on the roof, figures by stik, holding hands and looking down at passers by.
A mural by Joel Artista, aka Joel Bergner in the East Village neighbourhood of New York City. Painted in 2019. Joel is a co-founder of Artolution, a non-profit organization supporting local artists and arts programs with vulnerable children around the world.
For this mural, Artolution partnered with KIND (Kids in Need of Defense), We Are Royale, Key Food Supermarket, and Education Alliance.
Photos taken August 2023
More Manhattan murals were featured previously in this blog – Kobra on 10th Ave (from 2022)
below: Sometime between 2018 and 2022, a large wall was built using old shipping containers. If you use street view on google maps there is a section that still shows images captured in 2018 where there is no wall at Kent & Clymer. There is now graffiti on the containers.
below: Small sticker on an already spray painted area with a sparkly, positive message, “It will all be okay”.
below: Just a little black bear.
below: Slightly misshapen but also intriguing.
below: There are a lot of containers!
below: Either it was the word on, or a word that ended with on. Your choice.
below: “Do not remove” and “Jesus saves”
below: Another angle.
below: If you don’t have a sticker, a band-aid will do?
below: Sarkarbeats image of the Taj Mahal along with the purple character with the funny head whose name is DPac. He has his own instagram page – DPac explores
below: Simple yet menacing.
below: Face pareidolia is the illusion of seeing faces in objects, or in this case, in the rips and tears of old paper. Quite the fancy red dress that she’s wearing!
below: Dollar signs on green
below: A lot of the graffiti was colourful but wasn’t more that scrawls or tags. My apologies to the men and women who made them, but I wasn’t very interested in them. If I took photos of every tag, I’d be swamped. Instead, I played with the lines, colours, and textures.
below: Sold Out Art Show sticker, face with multiple sets of eyes
below: Hydration Guy
below: There is a break in the wall for the exit from Steiner Studios and this is where you realize that there is a studio lot behind the wall.
Photos taken August 2023.
You can find more graffiti by Sold Out Art Show on a previous blog past from late August
A collection of slaps, pasteups and stickers, on a wall in Montmartre, with a large green crocodile (or alligator?) head in the middle. Maybe it’s Krok.
below: A Gameboy … The 9 of clubs says that it’s all smoke and fucking mirrors by Broken Hartist … the climate change slogan that crops up all over theplace “There is no Planet B”.
below:The Postman has done many pieces with artists and celebrities on spray paint cans similar to this one featuring Jim Morrison. He died in 1971 but his fame lives on.
below: Little Miss Tickles? or Sunshine? or something similar, along with Tropa do Carallo which turns out to be the name of a band.
below: Batman and Robin in an amorous pose on a sticker by Brazilain artist Eraquario, a portrait of Diana Ross by Narotones, and a big green teddy bear by Keja Creation.
below: Half hidden behind a bandana. painted on the page of a book where the last lines are, “J’entends le feu parler en raint de tiedeur. J’entends un homme dire qu”il n’a pas souffert” (translation: “I hear the fire speak in warmth, I hear a man say that he did not suffer”). It is a poem, ‘Dit de la Force et de l’Amour’ by Paul Eluard.
A woman, Madonna-like? or in a Muslim head scarf?….. holding an olive branch which is a symbol of peace, but she’s wearing an ammo belt around her waist.
Aurora refers to the buildings covered in the brightly coloured stripes, a work by the Spanish artist collective Boa Mistura. It includes the test, “In het hart van elke winter leeft een trillende lente” which translates to “In the heart of every winter lives a vibrating spring”. The artwork covers 228 apartment units and is probably the largest mural in Europe.
In front of the apartment complex is a large 3-D sign spelling the name of the city, Heerlen. When it was first installed, it was orange. Now it has been enhanced with some DazeTwo ravens and crows at one end ….
…. and the ending letters were decorated by Amber Delahaye with other elements from nature such as mushrooms, butterflies, and flowers.
NOTE: The quote on the buildings is taken from one by Kahlil Gibran which says: “In every winter’s heart there is a quivering spring, and behind the veil of each night there is a smiling dawn”
There are many murals and other great street art works in Heerlen. There are too many for one blog post so I have tried to find a way to show them in small sections that make some sort of sense. My previous post (the workmen and the black birds) contained photos of the ravens or crows that DazeTwo features in most of his work so in this post I will continue with more bird themed murals.
below: A massive heron with a collection of items that help represent Heerlen, a mural best seen from the other side of the railway tracks, or better yet from a train as it enters the city. The “Heerlen Heron” was painted seven years ago by Vincent Lancee and Dave de Leeuw.
below: Another collaborative effort, this time DazeTwo teamed up with fellow Heerlen artist, Ivan Sanda (aka MF Ivan), to produce an image of a woman whose head is also that of a raven.
below: High above the street a yellow bird in a cage. The canary in the coal mine? by Collin van der Sluijs.
below: Dzia’s little blue chicken on Willemstraat.
below: And last, a quick bird head in the semi darkness under a bridge.
below: Miners hard at work under the mining museum in Heerlen.
below: More miners, but this time they are having a bit of fun riding in the mine carts as they roll downhill.
below: The Heerlen workmen aren’t just in the mines. You can see them in a number of places around the city.
below: In some cases you can spot them dealing with the blackbirds, the gold crown topped ravens.
below: The stenciled workmen were created by Jaune. On his Instagram page there is a great line, “The world belongs to those who build it”.
below: A white crow joins the fun.
below: A larger mural full of black birds. Like all the other birds in this post, this is the work of Daze Two, a local Heerlen artist.
below: Closer view of the ravens in the mural above.
below: Is there a story here? What kind of interaction is there between the realistic looking black birds and the flat red bird? X marks the spot, but why?
below: A last look at the birds, a small Daze Two work, part of a larger piece, on a brick wall.
Photos taken October 2023
More Heerlen murals can be seen in the next blog post – link to “more Heerlen birds“.
below: Zahra El Jadid’s lovely water play scene evoking childhood memories.
below: Earthship by Iota – reading, dreaming, imagining
below: A mermaid? On the streets of Antwerp? Listening to the fishes as they swim past. A mural by Lucia Biancalana,
below: The “Walls of BoHo District”, 2nd annual festival, held a contest that was won by 14 year old Anastasia Tsiqaridze. This is her design. He? She? is faceless yet mesmerizing. (Walls of BoHo = Walls of Borgerhout, a neighbourhood in Antwerp)
below: Painted by Joachim Lambrechts, this is an image of Mala Zimetbaum who was a Jewish woman who lived in Antwerp. In July 1942 she was arrested and deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. She escaped once but was re-caught and ultimately died at Auschwitz.
below: The last few pictures are of the “Giants of BoHo”, another Joachim artwork. It depicts a large couple on two sides of a corner building. On Reuzenstraat (which translates to Giant Street!) is this woman.
There are a number of lanes and passageways that connect the canals/roads Singel and Herengracht in central Amsterdam. One of the narrowest of them is Treeftsteeg.
below: Entrance to the alley, from Herengracht.
Various messages and symbols of peace – “I Love Kherson”, a girl waving a large Ukranian flag, “Love no War” (Love not war?), a white dove with wings of blue and gold, “Love makes a house a home”. In addition (under the word Kherson) there is a portrait of George Yurri Shevelov (1908-2002). His CV is long but in general he is most known for his research proving that the Ukrainian language has a separate history from Russian.
below: The portrait of the man in the top left corner is of Taras Shevchenko (1814 – 1861), a famous Ukrainian poet. Moving right, the woman at the top with the orange background is the former Queen of the Netherlands, Queen Beatrix. Third from the left is Ukrainian writer and feminist Lesya Ukrainka whose work spanned the late 1800s and early 1900s. On the right side there is an image of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy although it is not the clearest picture.
below: Commemorating the sinking of the Moskva, a Russian ship in the Black Sea near the beginning of the war.
below: arrow showing the way to Kharkiv
below: caricatures
below: The narrowness of Treeftsteeg. Along with the pro-Ukraine messages, there are a few black and white portraits.
below: These portraits are part of “A Paper Monument to the Paperless” is an ongoing project headed by Dutch artist Domenique Himmelsbach de Vries.
Eyes on the Streets 