Swoon’s Hurricane Sandy Mural at the Bowery Graffiti Wall

Swoon’s mural at the Bowery-Houston graffiti wall is rather timely, channeling themes of Hurricane Sandy on this day the city and state are marking one year since Hurricane Sandy made landfall. The piece features an illustration of the A train (“rise above the challenge”), an allusion to the suspended subway service to the Rockaways, and a community message of “people helping people.”

Faile's New Artwork on the Houston and Bowery Intersection Mural Space

The famous mural space at the corner of Houston and Bowery Streets in Lower Manhattan currently showcases a new large-scale artwork by Faile, a Brooklyn-based artists collective co-founded by Patrick McNeil and Patrick Miller. They are known for pioneering a wider variety of mediums used in street art, and the use of wheatpasting (liquid adhesive made from paste and water) and stenciling. The same mural space has been home to artworks by artists such as Shepard Fairey.

Focus On Native American Reservations: "Lakota, Dakota Nation" At The Houston/Bowery Mural Wall

A new project was unveiled recently at the wall located at the corner of Bowery and Houston. The mural is called The Inside Out Group Action: "Lakota, Dakota Nation". It highlights the Standing Rock and Pineridge Native Reservations -- some of the most important Native American reservations whose impoverished and forgotten communities have suffered unspeakable hardships. The Lakota, Dakota Nation group action is to show that the people in this community are still struggling to hold onto their native way of life.

Community leaders work with their people to teach their traditions, history, and ceremonies - knowledge which is critical to their collective survival. The Inside Out Project "Lakota, Dakota Nation" is intended to shine a light on this rich culture, for which they are fighting daily.

Inside Out is a large-scale participatory art project that transforms messages of personal identity into pieces of artistic work. Everyone is challenged to use black and white photographic portraits to discover, reveal and share the untold stories and images of people around the world.

The INSIDE OUT project is a creation of the artist JR, recipient of the 2011 TED Prize. (information from the village voice blogs).

Os Gemeos Mural at the Corner of Houston and Bowery

Replacing the Keith Haring tribute mural painted last year at the corner of Houston and Bowery is the new OS GEMEOS mural. Os Gêmeos (Portuguese for The Twins) are graffiti artist identical twin brothers (born 1974) from São Paulo, Brazil, whose real names are Otavio and Gustavo Pandolfo. In this mural, Otavio and Gustavo depict "reality harmonically blended with the abstract."