08.14.09

Swoon PGH

by: ian

Last Friday while strolling down Penn Avenue during Unblurred, the gallery crawl in Garfield on the first Friday of every month, we stopped to remark on the life sized cut-out by street artist Swoon.

Swoon is a popular NYC based street artist, she studied painting at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and began making street art in 1999. Most of the figures are people Swoon observes and interacts with like family and friends. Most of these portraits are woodcuts and sometimes, to play with negative space, the paper is “carved” meaning sections are cut away using an x-acto knife. All figures are plastered using wheatpaste, an organic liquid adhesive made from vegetable starch and water.

There is a movement towards street artists using more “eco-friendly” and less permanent/destructive methods of creating public art. The wheatpaste and the paper its holding onto the wall will both deteriorate and not leave any lasting damage on the surface. This is not only a more ethical form of vandalism but can also become a part of the piece itself. Swoon is also a founding member of the Miss Rockaway Armada, an art collective whose mission is to float down the Mississippi River from Minneapolis to New Orleans on homemade rafts built from trash and recycled materials.

To see more of Swoon’s work try a Google image search or some street art blogs like The Scenic Sidewalk or FatCap.

Have you all seen any other Swoon pieces here in Pittsburgh? I know there are some more out there. leave a comment and tell us where you have seen Swoon and your thoughts on street art!

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