Swoon, Quite Rightly

Pitchaya Sudbanthad, who I just met at Cupcake a few days ago, has a lovely new piece at - I think, my absolute favorite general-interest website - The Morning News. It's an interview with a female street artist named Swoon that delves into her process and philosophy. I am sort of in love with street art lately (isn't everyone? I guess you sort of have to see the beauty in graffiti sooner or later if you live in New York) and so this piece came along at the perfect time to pique my interest even more.

Pitchaya's approach to this interview is fabulously intellectual (and therefore, refreshing), and he blows my mind basically from the first question:

Pitchaya Sudbanthad: Some of your hand-pulled prints and cutouts take up to two weeks to make, and then you post them outside, exposed to wind, rain, and sun. There’s something very Buddhist about that process, which makes me think of intricate sand mandalas that Tibetan monks make and then wipe away with a broom. Can you talk more about that will of decay?

Swoon: One thing I have to say is that I’m not as pure in that way as you might think. With the prints, I have print blocks I keep that I can work from again and make multiples. So, in a way, the images can be thought of as permanent...

So go and read it right now. It's that good.

Worth checking out: Wooster Collective, Faile, and the Heidegger-influenced work of Shepard Fairey. Also related is the work of my lovely friend Jes, who paints and documents New York in the most a-m-a-z-i-n-g way. She can take a simple image - an empty subway car, a picnic in the park - and render it so that the single frame becomes intricate beyond measure, beautiful beyond comparison. Support a living artist and pick up some of her genius work before it becomes prohibitively expensive. And yes, just to make this meme a trend, Emerging Arts is planning a photography exhibition of street art in the five boroughs.