Swoon Enough

One last image by Swoon for now. 

Until we check in with her again, check out this link:

www.historyofgraffitiart.com

I came across this while researching the last few days' posts. A nice guy named Frank Essink in the Netherlands provides this e-book download "Vandals and Crusaders" free of charge, and includes a "Graffiti History Course." Not sure what that is yet but I am looking forward to his next e-mail!

Swoon Me

These are great examples of Swoon's papercut technique. She makes rough drawings and then slices the images out of stacked sheets of paper, creating a sort of limited print run. The papercuts become almost translucent when absorbed into the surface on which they are plastered. They are like living organisms, the artist has said.

I like the way this image is altered by its context (above).

But what about this context (below)?

It's actually a gallery space - Deitch Projects' Art Basel Miami.

For me, the work doesn't have nearly the same power, not only because its raucousness is contrived, but because only the elite will ever see it:

Who wants to see street art in a gallery? WHO knows it's there?

Monswoon

Swoon makes big drawings of people - portraits of friends and figures she encounters on the streets in New York City. She draws these images on big planks of Linoleum or wood, and painstakingly carves out the negative spaces with carving tools and her trusty Dremel. Then she takes a giant litho roller and inks up their surfaces, and lays down big sheets of paper and walks on them to transfer the images. Sometimes the paper she uses is from Chinese newspapers, which texturizes the drawings and ladens on even more meaning.

When she has printed multiples of each image, she cuts them out and attaches them with wheat paste on exteriors around the city, mostly on the Lower East Side. Over time, the drawings begin to blend into the backgrounds and alter or take on meaning. Pidgeon poop, truck exhaust, tagging, or scars of any order become a part of these images.

  

Swoon in the Streets

When I was living in NYC in the early 1980s, I loved to walk everywhere, because every block of city was permeable to the random affronts of graffiti artists. Along with miles of stylized, spray-painted script, I might come across something by Keith Haring or Jean Michel Basquiat. Neither had quite yet made it huge in the art world, and both were still alive. The Lower East Side is still awash with amazing images steeped in the process of decay, either by passersby or demolition or the weather. But they are made by what we now call "street artists," and my favorite is Swoon.

Over the next few days we'll explore her work.