Tagster 7

Tagster 5 was posted exactly a year ago, so I’m taking that as license to revisit the series… today, when people put on masks.  Murals on buildings add color and design.  Whenever I have time to kill in a new or even familiar city, I wander around, getting exercise while at the same time looking for sights like these.  Guess the city?

See the purple squiggles along the right side of the photo below?

They led me to the far side of the building, where I saw this colossal image of a hometown icon.  Click on the photo to hear my favorite song from this depicted icon.

 

What language is Kraken anyhow?

 

Above and below . . . there’s dramatic range in the murals here.

 

Origin of “hula“?

If your residence is painted this way, do you need to attend to lawn or landscaping?

 

 

 

Guess the location?

All photos by Will Van Dorp, who took these and many more during the course of an energetic several-mile stroll.

Art on ship’s propulsion?  I don’t mean props, but check out this followup to a post I did years ago . . .

 

 

Tagster 6

Today I pass a personal milestone . . . er, year stone, so the editors in Tugster Tower allow me to veer off topic . . .  first, to muse about the effect of picking up a camera and navigating life with it.  While I mostly photograph “sixth boro … and beyond” things that float, getting to and returning from the waters, sometimes I see other surfaces that beckon.  I love murals, especially.  That’s what these are.

First, I’d like to commend Monir’s Deli for a really smart mural.  I’ve never a sandwich from Monir, but the references in this strange assemblage of images compel me one of these days to stop by.  The mural also shows up in this profile of my neighborhood.   Yes, this is NYC . . .

Ditto.  Monir is in Queens, and Sofia’s on Staten Island.  I wonder who painted this first woman in a cocktail glass.  And where, when?  As with Monir’s place, I should stop by Sofia’s one of these days.

This mural was in Harrisburg PA.  I’m not sure what the reference is, but it was s a warm image on a cold day.

The rest here come from Bushwick Brooklyn.  The area at the head of Newtown Creek is certainly worth a visit.  Tagster 5 was based on a walk around there.

I find the one below disturbing.

Here below, I love the incongruity of ballet and boxing.  This outfit suggests some choreography needs doing . . . or improvising.

This is two murals:  one on the side of a truck and another behind it, painted onto the side of a building, with a sidewalk in between.

Here’s the same location shot 20′ to the left.

The chainlink fence adds a layer here.

And finally, the figure in the pigtails appears to be admiring–like me– the colorful foliage painted onto the building at the corner of Jefferson and St. Nicholas.

All photos by Will Van Dorp, taken while on the journey.

Here’s another focus for murals in the county where I grew up.

 

Tagster 5

I blamed Christina Sun aka bowsprite for starting permutations of “tugster,” but I’m not revealing any great secret to say I’m glad for her influence.  Unrelated to that and her, I went to a new part of the “terre-est boros” the other day, of course a boat was involved . . .

but more on that later . . .

stopped at a stop light, looked to my right, thought . . .  “funny, I’d been talking to my son about Utagawa Kuniyoshi just the other day . . .

and decided immediately to pull over and enjoy this version of masks on buildings.  I took this batch in four minutes flat!!  I stayed in the neighborhood for about an hour.

 

Every direction I walked,

 

and

every which way I looked . . . there were more.

Let me know if you’re interested in seeing more . . .

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

Tagster 4

Happy September 3, 

and August 2

and  . . . well, someone’s vision of  the moment or a zeitgeist,

heritage,

zeitgeist,

heritage,

zeitgeist,

heritage…

All photos by Will Van Dorp, who thinks that’s where a tension exists.

 

Tagster 3

Here were previous installments of this.

These images are intriguing.  They challenge the brain.  Have I seen these before somewhere?

In a dream maybe?

These are on a building near the midtown cruise terminal.

But here  . . . recognize these on a building along the major avenue?

They conjure up historical Assyrians passing laws?

And this, a pensive monster or a befuddled one?

What context is there for a fragmented horse and human?

What provokes a playful crow and evolved wolf reading about fig or olive branches, or is it something else like an herb in a cookbook?

It’s all surely not comprehensible but

the animals in both places

command attention.  They may be shards of a half-remembered nightmare, or

parts of an undiscovered heritage.

Photos of a repositioning from NYC to Chicago by Will Van Dorp.

 

Tagster! 2

Since I’m off gallivanting in a very cold place, how about some warm five-boros’ tagging, following in the spirit here. Of course, in the sixth boro, meow man rules all tagging, as I paid tribute here three years ago. Photo below I took a few weeks ago in Manhattan.  It says what Manhattan can be . . . or NYC for that matter.

Here’s a photo from bowsprite, and no matter how ambitious she is with brushes, she did not paint this.  All her photos in this post are from Brooklyn. I apologize I have no Bronx photos, but the Bronx is the unknown boro for me.  Anyone help?  And Queens . . . is it me or is there no wall art there?

Here’s the other side of dreams . . . heartbreak.  Maybe someone more studied in this vernacular can explain the winged disks in her hands. Again, Manhattan and my photo.

Here’s another bowsprite photo of a complex tag, maybe some allusion here to meow man?

This comes from the edge of Little Italy, mine.

Hers, in Brooklyn.

Faded by too much spotlight.  Mine.

Staten Island has a different character;  I took the next ones just off Bay Street, where NYCArtsCypher.org seems to base itself.

And the images are as diverse as the area is, as polyglot as this city is.  Less than 300 yards behind the Tapas place, you’re in the water, in the Bay, in the sixth boro.

 

I love the lobster there.

Photos by a team.

 

Tagster!

I blame my dear friend Christina Sun for this post.  Well, “blame” is the wrong word, but I’ll use it. She started it many years ago with this post on her blog, a project which I believe is “under re-powering and life extension,” to borrow someone else’s phrasing, and needs some encouragement, although she’ll blame me now for speaking that.

I’m impressed by murals, official and otherwise.  Mayor Steven Fulop in Jersey City  has promoted this public art in the city on the west side of the sixth bor.  Enjoy these.

I like the wave here, but even more, love that copper sheath on the cylindrical corner to the lower right.  It reminds me of a firecracker, or old-fashioned “rocket of the future.”

Near FIT in Manhattan, folks were painting

these as I passed.

Here are some on 9th Street in Brooklyn in the block directly south of the Gowanus Canal.

Back in Manhattan, here’s one seen from both ends on the west side of the Maritime Hotel, a once-maritime related building that was left as on the high tide mark when the port receded and left Manhattan.

 

Upriver in Troy and under the Green Island Bridge, it’s Troybot, who in the third panel of four

appears to be saving a sinking passenger vessel.

Also in Troy and under the Route 7 Bridge, someone summoned the spirits of some exotic sirens.

This is a unique form of tagging, drawing on the algae-covered walls of a lock chamber as it drains.

Oswego invites its high school students in.

That Great Lakes city also has this mural about an event in another Great Lakes city that inspired this quite profound hymn.

Here’s a mural visible from the Cuyahoga and under a bridge in Cleveland.

Ann Arbor’s Huron River has never known these faunas, but someone still imagined them.

But it was in Montreal this fall that I saw the best murals, as on this wall, with a variety of influences.

 

 

 

This one commemorates an actress from the Beijing opera. Click here for the back story and the artists.

Here are some in Beacon NY a few years ago.

 

And this brings me back to Staten Island, and Lina Montoya’s projects, these over along the tin sheets screening off Caddell’s.

 

Philadelphia is where I first encountered the result of the city organizing a murals program. See some here.  I’ve heard about the Oakland project, but I’ve never been there.

All photos here by Will Van Dorp, whose point here is that he takes photos of other things while focusing boat to boat.