A couple weeks ago, number eleven spring street was torn down to be turned into condo building. This is a Bad Thing.
I’ve been meaning to post on this for a while now, but I’ve wanted to give it some worthwhile thought. I don’t really feel like I’m doing it much justice with all these blockquotes, but I try. Anyways it’s up now.
the wooster collective had some nice words to say on it, being their own work for the most part, they also opened an exhibit to show it off during its last days. They’ve labelled it as a time-capsule and have decided that it is not being ‘destroyed’ at all.
So after the Wooster on Spring exhibition, all of the interior walls of 11 Spring will be covered during the construction process. 11 Spring will become one of the most fascinating art time capsules in history. We love the fact that two hundred years from now, a brick might fall out to reveal an original piece creared by Lady Pink, Shepard, Swoon and 35 other incredible artists.
greg.org also offered some words. He brought up a great comparison with the Warhol piece that has since been lost in another appartment building.
It reminds me of the Warhol hidden somewhere in LeFrak City. Back in the day, Samuel LeFrak commissioned a then-still-unknown Andy Warhol to decorate the kitchen and bathroom of a model apartment in the then-new Queens apartment complex. The model was painted over, and then it was lost. Somewhere, in one of the 5,000-plus apartments, buried under nearly half a century of tenement white, is the first Warhol installation. And soon enough, the works of some of the world’s greatest street artists will be buried under some hedge fund dude’s sheetrock.
speaking of Warhol, I’m reading his journals these days and it’s incredibly interesting … well worth your while.
the nytimes wrote an article on it
In this case the art is not hanging inside the building but is splashed all over the walls outside, in spray paint, wheat paste, rubber, plastic, metal, cardboard and various other unidentifiable substances, a story-high gallery of graffiti and street art that seems to have grown almost organically (and mostly unimpeded by the authorities) over the last two decades.
“In a way the art is all going to disappear, but it’s also going to be sealed up in this incredible time capsule”
Depending on your point of view, the hulking 19th-century brick building at 11 Spring Street in NoLIta, a former stable and carriage house, was either a stunning eyesore or one of the most famous canvases and lodestars in the world for urban artists. When those of the latter view heard recently that the building had been sold and would soon be gutted and converted into condominiums, they considered it the end of an era. Bearing their cameras, they began showing up at the building over the last few weeks in a kind of mournful procession.
After buying the building several months ago, the new owner-developers, Caroline Cummings and Bill Elias, wanted to find some way to bid an appropriate farewell to its past. They admired the artwork, they said, even if there was no way it could remain on a building where buyers would soon be dropping millions of dollars on new condos.
I feel very fortunate to have seen (some of) the great stuff that was there, [more than once]: It’s an incredibly dynamic medium, being street art; while each piece on its own can be great, as a whole it is so much more and it has got a really unique impact to it. I’m sorry to see it go, but I do actually kinda dig the whole time-capsule interpretation on it.
many great photos are all over the interweb … in case you don’t do the web :
- the flickr pool for 11 spring
- NYCJPG
- a bit in MAKEzine
- the gothamist
I would definitely recommend you take the time and look through at least some of the amazing captures from 11 Spring Street, they’re very impressive. I’m still trying to dig up my old stuff from it.
I got myself a pad of about a dozen blank 4×6 postcards yesterday on the way home from the dentist’s. They’re very hefty (watercolor 140lb) and I’m very eager to make good use of them. I’m thinking I might draw one of my photographs for the front side (or if that doesn’t work out too well, I’ll experiment with manually enhanced printing).
Let me know if you’d like receive a little something in the mail and I’ll try and come up with something interesting for you. I’m still not sure what what exactly I’m going to do with these but I’ve got a bunch of ideas floating around. I’m also thinking about letterpressing (inspired by jasonsantamaria) and maybe starting a snailmailing-list of interesting junk .. real junk not just handwritten links ;-) but still indirectly inspired by the spontaneity and random factor of tumblelogging [i.e].
[Anyways,] I can’t make any promises, but if you leave me your mailing address or somehow communicate it to me, I’ll try to come up with something interesting to send your way. “Requests” or even vague inspiration are welcome.
If I ever get into letterpressing, I think a snailmailing-list might actually be really cool; or sans the small scale mass printing of ancient letterpressing, we could arrange a round-robin-esque chain mailing, perhaps with appended post-it notes or something of the sort.
[I don’t really know where I’m going with all this,] but I’m really liking some of these ideas. I also once planned to start up The Swap based on a bookshelf at my place for all the great folk who would participate in my winter barbecues, that never took off only because I never had the room for it, but now I’ve got loads of starkly blank wall space which I can’t wait to leverage.
Be sure to hit me up with your thoughts if unconventional group snail mailing appeals to your groove.