Street art...

Street art fascinates me: it is creative, in your face, funny and often poignant and insightful. From the political graffiti of the 60s to the TED winner JR, I love it all.

One of my favorite daily delights is an email I get from a place called VANDALOG - a street art blog - that collects and shares street art from around the world.  I don't save most of them but every now and again something rises to the top and really grabs my attention.  For example, here's a posting about "a new book from Dran called: I Love My World. It just came out on Edition Populaire over the weekend. One of Dran’s old books, Television, is one of my favorite art books from an individual artist, and from the previews, I’m hopeful that Love My World will on par with that one."  (Check them out @ http://blog.vandalog.com/)

I think this is one is incredible... on so many levels.

Then there is something called ARTISTADAY who describe their mission like this: Our purpose is to raise awareness of art globally and bring more art to more people. We feel artists are under-valued, under-exposed, and generally under-appreciated. Our goal is to bring attention to artists that otherwise don't get the attention they deserve. If we can bring their art to one person that would have otherwise missed the opportunity to see it, we feel like we have made a contribution to the art community.

We don't intend to showcase all the artist's work, in fact we only show one or two images by the artist. Be sure to continue through to the artist's website to find more of their work. If you like the artist's work, take a second to leave a comment to tell them so. If you don't, feel free to tell them that as well (constructive criticism is always appreciated). (Check them out @ http://www.artistaday.com/)

Today's artist was Josh Goldstien... "who received a BA in Architecture from Pratt Institute and a BFA from Washington University in St. Louis.

He does most of his research on his bike rides around New York City. His art is inspired by a fascination with the the density, decay, and diversity of the city—street signs, Chinese take-out menus, old bodegas, graffiti tags, and other urban ephemera.

The resulting plywood collages express the murky boundary between the mundane and the sublime that Goldstein encounters on his bike rides. ‘It is my aim to re-contextualize the banalities of city life through my salvaged plywood constructions,’ he says.

And then there is the photography of my wife - who has an eye for pictures - and a great sense of humor, too.  Wherever we travel - and we've been around a LOT of Europe together over the years as well as parts of Canada - she finds street art that speaks to my soul. I am grateful for this gift on Mother's Day and can't WAIT to see what she photographs when we head to Istanbul in a month.