Knitta, Please: Street Art in Paris

This morning I heard a story on NPR about L.A. yarn-bomber “Captain Hook”, which reminded me of the time I arrived at Cafe Eclectic one morning to find a knitted cozy covering a pole outside the cafe.  This had me scratching my head for a minute. Was it a giant afghan blown off a grandma’s porch and wrapped around the pole in a windstorm? (Granted, that didn’t seem very likely, but remember some of the weirdness following Hurricane Elvis?)  But then a few days later I found out it was actually done by the needle-slingers from Memphis Knit Mafia.

Yarn bombing or guerrilla knitting, the concept of “tagging” with a kindler-gentler alternative, is said to have originated with the Texas artist group Knitta Please in 2005.  Since then it has been taken all over the world.  (Check out this blog for some great examples.) And Paris is no exception to this trend.  Here is some work by Soso of the Collectif France Tricot:

LEFT: Dresses for Wallace's ladies. RIGHT: A maillot for Maillol. (photo credits below)

And here, a bit more abstract, are pools of pretty pothole fillers by Juliana Santacruz Herrera:

Even the potholes are more fashionable in Paris!

It seems like street art is absolutely everywhere in Paris.  (And why not, with the likes of Blek le Rat (originator of stencil graffiti) and Invader (perhaps first mosaic graffiti) and JR (huge scale mural artist) having made Paris their original canvas?)

Down the street from my house, near the Canal Saint-Martin, you can always find something new – from a simple stencil to spray paint bombing to giant murals.  There’s even a little Invader along the water:

Photo cred: Perry Tak

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Or this wall, which seems to completely change every six months:

For every season...

I feel super lucky to live in a place that manages to a bastion of art history with such a vibrant contemporary scene as well. Along those lines, I attended a street art exhibition opening at Espace Pierre Cardin last week through Artistik Rezo. (For those of you in Paris, I highly recommend becoming an Artistik member.)  The show featured the work by Banksy, Dran, Shepard Fairey, Speedy Graphito, JonOne, Miss.Tic, Mesnager, Miss Van et Space Invader; followed by a screening of the Banksy documentary Exit through the Gift Shop (FR title: Faites les murs).

For more pictures of murals/graffitis around Paris, there are several blogs dedicated to the subject, like Street Art in Paris and Paris Graffiti, just to point out a couple.

Photo credits: Wallace Fountain, Tofz4u on Flickr ; Maillol sculpture in the Tuileries, Soso ;  knit potholes, the artist ; Invader, Meteorry on Flickr.