 Tanya's Daily Scoop Covering the West Coast & the World CURRENTLY IN: SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA |  Elisa's Daily Scoop Covering Long Island & NYC Boroughs CURRENTLY IN: LONG ISLAND, NEW YORK |
Welling Court Mural Project - Astoria, NY (c) travelincousins.com
| Well hello world! After arriving home on Friday at the ridiculous hour of 8a on Saturday. I'm now coming off of what was a perfect and very mellow weekend that was full of shopping, relaxing...(shopping is relaxing), family and some rather tasty bites. Take a looksie:  Sweet little mischief maker Aurora (c)travelincousins.com  Aurora trying out my sunglasses (c)travelincousins.com  Somewhat giving a special doggy donut to Goldie (c)travelincousins.com  Japanese Avocado Toast - oh so good (c)travelincousins.com  I'm really only high maintenance to myself (c)travelincousins.com  Colorful and delicious salad bowl from CAVA (c)travelincousins.com Speaking of being colorful, I thought it was a fantastic idea when Elisa suggested the theme for the day to be "street art". Then just like that and all of a sudden the memories and the still shots in my mind started pouring in from oh so many various places where I've visited "street art" around the globe! My day has been local but also quite busy up until now. I thought that I'd have the opportunity to jump on here and share these pictures with you earlier... But alas here they are. Please enjoy! A few fun walls in some of our USA cities -  Denver, Colorado (c)travelincousins.com  Los Angeles (c)travelincousins.com  Citrus Wall in Tampa, FL (c)travelincousins.com  Freak Alley, Boise, Idaho (c)travelincousins.com Freak Alley on Boise, Idaho it is limited to one long alley along with the walls of a connected gravel parking lot. Collectively it has the works of more than 200 artists and the murals are painted over and either replaced or incorporated into anew every 2 years. Pretty cool!  Freak Alley (c)travelincousins.com Now how about a skip across the pond to Germany and the famed Berlin Wall...  Berlin Wall (c)travelincousins.com  Berlin Wall (c)travelincousins.com  Berlin Wall (c)travelincousins.com And lest we forget the Peace Wall in Belfast, Northern Ireland  Peace Wall (c)travelincousins.com  Peace Wall (c)travelincousins.com  Peace Wall (c)travelincousins.com Even in the Azores...  A little bit of love from the Azores (c)travelincousins.com Just found out the I have to run out again!!! So this will have to do, unless I can manage to bop on again later tonight. Toodles for now, -Travelin' Tanya | Hey there!! It's Monday again - wow - these weeks are just flying by! I cannot believe that we are already in week 3 of the kids being back in school! As of today, Kelsey is attending school in-person, while Gianna has opted to go remotely. It seems to be working out just fine...so far. Actually, Gianna had off today, and I cannot tell you what a huge help she was to me in my errands. First, she came with me food shopping and then we had to pass by my mom's for a long awaited trip to pick up a huge pile of our belongings that had been there since we moved out into our new house, back in June.  We had been staying with my mom since January when we sold our former house of 20 years and were awaiting the construction to be done on our new house. Thanks to Gianna, we got everything into the car and then she helped me to bring it all in our house. Some of it I immediately dumped out and/or brought over to goodwill. Then, once the groceries were put away, we finally got to sit down at noon today, following four hours of being on the go, when the doorbell rang. It was the HVAC company, who I had called to make a few final fixes on our new system for using the heat. With the sudden weather drop this past weekend, me and my girls were mighty chilly. Now, we are all set and ready for winter! Moving right along... Last night, Tanya and I got to chatting about "street art" and all the lovely photos we had taken through the years during our many travels, and decided this subject would make a good subject for today's Scoop!!  Welling Court and 30th Avenue in Astoria, Queens - one of the blocks featuring the street art of the Welling Court Mural Projects (c) travelincousins.com One of the coolest areas for viewing blocks and blocks of street art is the town of Astoria in the NYC outer borough of Queens. It all began two decades ago with the vision of members of the Welling Court community who, after meeting at the Bushwick (Brooklyn) gallery of Ad Hoc Art invited Ad Hock to come up with a vision to beautify their neighborhood. According to the official Welling Court Mural Project Website, "Having community support and a timely visit by Poland’s wall-crushing M-City, the first mural was painted in the freezing temperatures of December 2009." Throughout the rest of the winter, Ad Hoc planned the launch of the first multi-block mural project that occurred in May 2010 comprising over 40 murals. Today, the Welling Court Mural Project features over 140 murals by both local artists and from those around the world.  (c) travelincousins.com During one of my recent visits to Astoria, I drove all around the area - camera in hand - and stopped to admire the many murals throughout the area, and of course, capture a number of them from various angles.  (c) travelincousins.com I definitely recommend paying a visit, either by walking around this gem of the borough as it represents one of the best collections of street art in the world. Plus - it's open and available for viewing 24/7/365!! The official website has a map detailing the locations of the murals throughout the various blocks and which artist's work(s) is featured in each respective location. Here are some more murals I photographed during my neighborhood walk.  (c) travelincousins.com  (c) travelincousins.com  (c) travelincousins.com  (c) travelincousins.com  (c) travelincousins.com  (c) travelincousins.com  (c) travelincousins.com Other Places Featuring Street Art Both Tanya and I have captured our fair share of street art and here are a few of the many other places where I've snapped away... Bronx Street Art  (c) travelincousins.com Brooklyn Street Art  (c) travelincousins.com  (c) travelincousins.com Scranton, Pennsylvania Street Art  (c) travelincousins.com  (c) travelincousins.com  (c) travelincousins.com And Even More Street Art And if you cannot get enough of street art, here are a few other things that might interest you. Back in February 2020, I visited The Bronx Museum of the Arts for its exhibit, "Henry Chalfant’s ART VS. TRANSIT, 1977-1987". The exhibit featured the photography of Henry Chalfant, who having arrived in New York City in 1973, became interested with "graffiti art" which is now referred to as street art. As I noted in my article in ThisIsTheBronx.info, "His desire to photograph the entirety of art-laden subway cars led to the development of a unique photography technique in 1976 and by 1977 he was using his technique whereby he would capture exposures in rapid succession on his 35mm camera from different positions on the platform, documenting the entire train in multiple, overlapping shots." The result is some of the coolest photography of street art around! Additionally, today there exists a museum dedicated to street art, appropriately enough called The Museum of Graffiti. Located in Miami, Florida, the Museum is the world's first museum exclusively dedicated to the evolution of the graffiti art form. According to the venue's website, "What was once a sleepy industrial neighborhood, Wynwood was transformed by graffiti artists into the largest open-air gallery in the world. Despite being a global arts destination, the Museum of Graffiti is Wynwood’s very first museum. While the main exhibitions are indoors, the Museum has programmed several of the exterior walls to present the work of today’s top graffiti artists." This is definitely on my bucket list for my next trip to Miami!! Tanya has featured some of the most interesting shots of street art of her own from her travels around the United States and the globe, so be sure to check out her Scoop column today!! See ya next time! -Travelin' Elisa xoxo |
