Wooster Collective
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Wooster Collective is a website founded in 2003 that showcases street art from around the world. It is dedicated to showcasing and celebrating ephemeral art placed on streets in cities around the world. Updated by Marc and Sara Schiller, the site also offers podcasting with music and interviews featuring street artists. The name Wooster comes from Wooster Street, located in the SoHo neighborhood of New York City.
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[edit] woostercollective.com
At the homepage of the Wooster Collective website are images, videos, and descriptive comments documenting new and interesting street art, events, and other news, as well as navigational tools for searching the site's voluminous archive. The website's archive spans back to January 2003, and the category list is over 100 items long.[1] Categories include such interesting entries as "Cardboard" art and "Guerrilla gardening", as well as locations with a street art presence such as Tokyo, Dublin and Milwaukee. The collective's archive can also be searched by keyword. Users of the website can find many interviews of street artists, interviewed by the Wooster Collective itself. [2] Users may also find reviews of an artist's new work or of recent gallery exhibits. [3] Also listed on the collective's homepage are links to the websites of many "street artists", from Blek le rat to Swoon.
[edit] 11 Spring Street Project
One of the Wooster Collective's more interesting projects and notable achievements involved gaining recognition for street art in its own neighborhood. In 2006, Marc and Sara Schiller collaborated with Caroline Cummings and Bill Elias, members of a development group, with the idea of turning the building located at 11 Spring Street in New York City into a temporary street art gallery.[4] The address had been something of a landmark for street artists, and was about to be converted into condominium apartments.
The idea for the project was set forth when Elias Cummings contacted the Schillers (after finding the Wooster Collective site while researching street art) and suggested that they curate a show at the location to celebrate the building's unique place in the history of street art.
The show ran for three days, from December 15 to December 17, 2006, with lines stretching around the block. Street artists such as Shepard Fairey, Swoon, Dan Witz, Above, D*Face, The London Police, Skewville, Lady Pink, John Fekner and Don Leicht, Graffiti Research Lab and many others participated in the event. Each artist in the show had previously been featured on the Wooster Collective site. The art was left on the walls and built over (a nod to a tradition in construction of leaving newspapers in the walls of a house as a sort of "time capsule"), thereby leaving a legacy of street art behind for future excavators.
Artist Richard Hambleton even appeared and did his own installation piece featuring small reflective mirrors in commemoration of the event.
[edit] You Tube Channel
In response to the growing popularity of street art, on August 11, 2009, the Wooster Collective launched its own channel on YouTube.[5] With videos and reports similar to those found on its website, such a move expands Wooster's Collective's role in documenting the important developments in street art to a larger audience.
[edit] References
- ^ http://www.woostercollective.com/
- ^ http://www.woostercollective.com/2003/11/profile_blek_le_rat.html Interview with Blek le Rat
- ^ http://www.woostercollective.com/2003/02/review_tuesday_nights_opening.html
- ^ "Last Hurrah for Street Art, as Canvas Goes Condo". New York Times. 2006-12-14.
- ^ http://www.youtube.com/user/TheWoosterCollective
[edit] External links
- Wooster Collective
- New York Times article on 11 Spring St. Project
- Wonka Vision Magazine article on Wooster Collective
- MTA Arts for Transit-The Official NYC Subway Art and Rail Art Guide
- Marc & Sara Schiller at the PSFK Conference NYC: City As Canvas
- Wooster Collective YouTube Channel
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