The LISA Project Inaugurates the 1st Annual ‘LoMan Mural Festival’ Today
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Photo: LoMan Art Festival
Today marks the inaugural kickoff of the LoMan Art Festival. Presented by the Little Italy Street Art Project, the event brings a bunch of big names (Ron English, Os Gemeos, Beau Stanton, Tatyana Fazlalizadeh, TATS CRU, LUDO, Solus) and new murals to Lower Manhattan. Blank store gates and walls – in over twenty-one different neighborhoods – will be fresh with spray paint and wheatpaste to celebrate street art and its culture, turning Lower Manhattan into “an international arts district.” You know, because the myriad galleries haven’t done that quite yet.
The real aim? We’ll let organizer Wayne Rada do the talking.
We conceived of this festival as a revitalization of the artistic energy of downtown Manhattan. NYC is such a nexus for art, but these days so many artists are being pushed to the outer boroughs. Following the success of The L.I.S.A project, we wanted to create a larger public arts district and community of support worthy of the city’s thriving art scene. Though the events of the festival will only last a few days, the resulting artwork will leave a permanent, and extremely positive, mark on downtown Manhattan’s neighborhoods.
The festival shows promise of being family friendly; there are plans for sticker wall games for kids and street paint battles between graffiti crews. But it seems like somewhat of a mixed message, given Mayor de Blasio’s war against graffiti campaign. Regardless, that sanctioned “All American Temper Tot” on the Bowery graffiti wall sure is cool; it’ll be interesting to see what Ron English has up his sleeve this time around.
More info can be found here; weekend highlights are below.
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Friday 8/7
SCULPTURE GARDEN The festival’s sculpture garden opens in the “Ron English – Temper Tot Lot” at 114 Mulberry Street. Starring the bust of Edward Snowden by Andrew Tider and Jeff Greenspan, as well as works by Ron English, Leon Reid IV, Art is Trash, Nicolas Holiber, The DR¡F!, and Sucklord. Open through 8/9.
PANEL 7pm: A panel at Con Artist Collective, discussing illegal vs. legal street art installations, 7pm.
Saturday 8/8
STICKER PARTY 1 pm – 6 pm: Sticker Social Club An all-ages, family-friendly event where visitors will learn about sticker culture and create their own signature stickers.
STREET ART ZINES 1 pm – 6 pm: CarnageNYC CarnageNYC, an indie publisher of Street Art Zines, displays and offers a selection for sale.
LIVE STREET ART BATTLE 5 pm – 7 pm: Secret Walls: Team Crash vs Team BIO Secret walls, an underground live action illustration battle, comes to LoMan, pitting legendary streets artists Crash and BIO against each other. The event challenges artists or teams to cover 25 ft high walls with black and white images in 90 minutes. The winner is decided based on the crowd’s applause.
FILM SCREENING: 8 pm : An outdoor screening of the never-seen-before European cut of Banksy Does New York.
Sunday 8/9
LIVE PODCASTS 12 pm – 5 pm : Live podcast recordings in the sculpture garden including one from the comedy cast of Legion of Skanks from the Anthony Cumia Network.
CONCERT 6:30 pm: Musical performances by rapper/street artist, TT the Artist, Corey Glover from Living Colour, and more. Completed murals from the festival will be projected on the walls.
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