In 1986 I met a graffiti artist (STER) from the Bronx. STER opened my eyes even more to what it meant to be a true writer. Together we created my tag: SNO. Armed with an alias I started to truly bomb my environment. I was considered to be the most widely recognized graffiti artist/tagger in Southeastern, MA from 1986-1993. I believed I gained this recognition because I always had a thirst for taking aspects of my life to the Nth degree.

My vision is to recreate this battle between graffiti and street artists' in my studio work. By mixing my past graffiti experience with the street art pieces I do today, I am able to fuel my attack on the canvas. As feelings are evoked from the written words and the often emotionally charged imagery I leave on the streets a physical manifestation builds to a point of overflow. Ultimately unleashing itself in a furor of uninhibited energy, where time and place become nonexistent. It is in this vitality that my artistic soul reveals itself and dances its way into a flurry of whirling paint and exploding spray paint cans.

I believe this melting of the graffiti/street artist in me with the abstract expressionist produces an original take on two major art forms. I have coined this amalgamation 'Post-Graffiti Abstract Expressionism' and it serves as the backbone to my work.”

T-Kid’s work has been shown all over the world including at MOMA PS1 next to Keith Haring and Jean Michel Basquiat and has been sold at the prestigious Sotheby’s London Auction House. 

Mike designed a substantial amount of artwork for Alec Monopoly for almost 5 years, creating hundreds of pieces for him. Mike is a street artist from way back in the 70's. He became a Professional Illustrator and Product Designer in the 1980's and have illustrated over 100 licensed Kids Books with Disney, Warner, Ninja Turtles, and dozens more.

Born and raised in New York City, Ricky Powell is a legendary photographer who specializes in the environmental portrait. He graduated with an AA in Liberal Arts from LaGuardia Community College and a B.S. in Physical Education from Hunter College. Though Powell initially rose to fame because of his relationship with the Beastie Boys, he is well-known for his intimate photographs that have been featured in The New York Times, The New York Post, The Daily News, The Village Voice, TIME, Newsweek, VIBE, The Source, Rolling Stone, and more.

Richard's work has been collected by the likes of: Marc Jacobs, Beyonce, Jay-Z, John Varvatos, Justin Bieber, Elton John, Gerard Butler, and Christina Aguilera among many others. Press features and favorable reviews have appeared in such publications as The Wall Street Journal, NY Times, Vogue, Architectural Digest, Huffington Post, and Time Magazine. His work is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Fine Art Boston as well as other institutions.

Despite his abilities as a realist painter in the gallery setting, Paul Richard’s street portraits possess a playful sense of spontaneity and quickness as he manages to capture the facial features of his subjects with nothing more than a few drips of paint. Rather than applying his portraiture on the surface of a building, allowing for the work to be more easily seen by pedestrians, Richard plays with the public’s general inattentiveness to their urban surroundings by painting on the city’s sidewalks.

By the time he graduated from high school he was creating commissioned murals throughout the New York City area. Johnson pursued his artistic studies at New York University where he graduated in 2000 with a B.A. in Fine Arts. In 2001, Johnson began showcasing his work at various bars, nightclubs and cultural outposts throughout the Lower East Side and East Village of Manhattan. Unsatisfied with the physical and creative confines of traditional art galleries, Johnson continued to create street art throughout the city, posting his work and philosophical musings on street poles, walls, parking signs and sidewalks.

These explosions of color and imagery can be described as urban surrealism: a melting pot of style and art movements. His paintings draw influence from pop culture, comic book art, the streets, cartoons, tattoos and skateboard style graphics, as well as traditional and non-traditional art movements such as abstract and neo-expressionism, op-art, graffiti and surrealism.

In addition to painting on canvas, metal, plastic, and Plexiglas, Johnson has remained true to his early beginnings in recent years by completing commissioned paintings and murals inside of nightclubs such as Quo, Pink Elephant, NA, Plumm, Eleven, Go-Go, Retox, and Webster Hall. He has completed murals for Design Within Reach, The Surf Lodge in Montauk, and the U.S. OPEN in Queens.

Johnson’s work has been displayed in such galleries as Mark Murray Fine Arts, Factory Fresh, Bent, Sotheby’s, Half Gallery, and The New Museum. Press features and favorable reviews have appeared in such publications as Gotham Magazine, Radar, Zink, SOS, Hampton’s Magazine, The City Review, The Daily News, Forbes Magazine, The New York Post, The New York Observer and The New York Times. His work is in the permanent collection of the Patterson, Hamilton, and Chelsea Art Museums.

Zimer learned the art of graffiti from the underground walls of Queens, New York.  After developing his personal aesthetic, he increasingly adopted fine art principles into his paintings. The intertwined influences of Graffiti and Art History on his style have transcended it beyond traditional classification.  

In addition to exhibiting in galleries and creating murals, Zimer received his BA in architecture. His studio practice has included sculpture, fashion, furniture, animation and graphic design.  

Zimer has painted murals all over the world including: The New York Auto Show, Comic Con, The World Trade Center, Philadelphia Tattoo Convention, London’s South Bank, and the Northside Arts Festival.

His clients have come to include: MTV, Virgin Records, USA Network, A&E Network, Rebel, Intrinsic Wine Co., Bowen Media, Random House Publishers, The City of New York, and The City of Glen Cove.  Press features and favorable reviews have appeared in such publications Forbes, Business Insider, Newsday, Elemental Magazine, Rides Magazine, and the books ‘Hip Hop Files’ and ’Burning New York.’ 

A child of the 80s, Chris’ world was often completely flooded with the imagery and ideas presented by his television, his comic books, and the music and movies of the time. Immersed in these various mediums, Chris began to store the images brought forward though these everyday experiences in what he refers to as a “mental journal”. This journal was a haven of his thoughts that he could refer back to whenever necessary. Chris’ paintings frequently cite past conceptions of popular culture embedded in his psyche’s cache. This use of intertextuality also serves to offer a comfort or familiarity of sorts to the viewer. Chris’ works frequently reveal everyday musings and people one would pass on the street without looking or thinking about twice. These images also aid Chris in the creation of a visual language comprised of his own iconographic imagery. Through the repetition of this imagery, Chris strives to familiarize his viewers with the language he has constructed. Chris believes that the notions within his pieces serve as a backbone to the many stories created by the onlooker when he or she is viewing the work.

In 2001 Chris set in motion RobotsWillKill.com. Robots Will Kill is an arts site dedicated to community and exposure for artists/media often disregarded by the mainstream art world. Rather than featuring his own work exclusively, he opened it up to allow the possibility for it to become whatever it evolved into being. RWK has a core group of artists, those artists are Chris, Kev/Psyn, Veng and Over Under. Along with overseas affiliates ECB (Germany), Peeta (Italy), Flying Fortress (Germany) and JesseRobot (Belgium). This extended roster of artists helps to promote RWK as we push the boundaries of art.

Dare is a Brooklyn-born NYC street artist, bitten by the graffiti bug during the summer of 1980 as he watched a tag being left at the Park Circle skating rink. Since then he’s made his mark on walls, trains and tunnels with the tenacious drive he retains today.

Growing up in NYC, Dare was influenced by the turbulent and free spirited 70s and 80s, a exciting time in music, art and style. Now blending graffiti, hip-hop, punk and metal, his work is burnished with pop culture to create his signature aesthetic.

Since the second wave of NYC graffiti artists, he’s been best known for his Bunny, an icon he’s drawn since childhood. This heartbroken, blind bunny earned Dare the nickname "The Bunnyman" and inspired his slogan "Ain't about the money, All about the Bunny."

Integrating socially conscious street art with self-expressive imagery, Adam Dare’s work uses an emotive technique of mixed media, negative stencils and dark subject matter to cast his talent from NYC, Miami and LA to London, Berlin and Rome.

NIKOLINA KOVALENKO- Artist BIO

Nikolina Kovalenko received her MFA from Moscow Surikov Art Institute and studied in Berlin at UDK.  She holds a Gold Medal from the Russian Art Academy. Nikolina currently lives and works in New York.

Kovalenko states, “My work captures the confrontation between realism and idealism making the modern consumer choke on their choices. Let others deal with your internal chaos. Life begins at the end of your comfort zone."

Recent reviews:  

"Presented as actors in a drama with cosmic significance, the figures that people Kovalenko's paintings engage in various kinds of display, presenting a calculated face to the world around them. By their makeup, dress, and roles, the masqueraders create a persona that is echoed by the world around them. Kovalenko's "Masquerade" encourages viewers to consider how much of their own identity is performed, and whether the face we present to the world is what we would really want to show."

                                                                             Fine Art Connoisseur

Artist Statement:

"I'm interested in people - their habits, dreams, delusions, and drawbacks. My work explores how we find ways to emerge victorious from complicated, weird, challenging, dangerous, absurd situations or how we manage to completely ignore the obvious.

I love to observe, to notice the hidden meanings and humor in everyday life, to create my own connections between contrasts. I always carry a sketchbook to capture these unusual moments. Sometimes my pencil finds the secret messages during the process of drawing lines, silhouettes and facial expressions.

I create a series of canvases picturing people interacting with their own masks. In this world of masquerade we wear masks in different moments and circumstances, forming a seemingly infinite pocket catalog of perfectly fitting masks for every life situation that doesn’t leave us indifferent. Being aware of it or not, we create this circus of emotions that provides us a comfort zone in a daily whirlwind of change. I want to explore, dissect, undress, understand and convey these complex moments in my oil paintings, executed very realistically, following our everyday life routine but with this otherwise invisible mask on. Suddenly the totally normal picture creates dissonance between the reality we are used to seeing and this superimposed mask.

I want to increase people’s awareness of their actions by showing them the twisted reality we live in from a different angle. "