New York City: Street Art - Meet Adam Cost

(Drivebycuriosity) - New York City is a place full of surprises and colors. You can find a lot of street art there which gives the metropolis a special charm. Many artists are garnishing streets and places with murals, graffiti, stickers and more. One of the most ubiquitous street artists is Cost. Often you could read "Cost was here", "Cost did this ….Cost did that…." and more.

Cost, who´s real name is Adam Cole, according to Wikipedia (wikipedia), often uses stencils, which are usually cut out pieces of paper or cardboard (wikipedia). They get glued on walls, doors, walk/don't walk street-crossing and other places with the help of wheat paste, a gel or liquid adhesive made from wheat flour or starch and water .

The street artist, who started his career in the early 1980s, had a long hiatus. In 1995 a judge ordered him to do 200 days community service removing graffiti (wikipedia) That run-in with the law eventually led to Cost’s temporary bowing out of the graffiti scene, comments Wikipedia.

Now Cost is back! His messages are again amassed in the streets of Soho and Lower East Side like Lafayette, Green or Mercer Street. And he is transforming his popularity into money. VillageVoice reports that he is selling parts of his work in posh galleries and that some collectors pay more than $30.000 for pieces of Cost (villagevoice).

Cost is more a Henry Ford (a pioneer of assembly line factoring) than a Tiziano (an Italian painter of the Renaissance). He works very economical. The use of stencils is efficient & productive. Those tags are reproducible and can be very fast glued onto any place.

Enjoy