What is street art?

Not all street art is graffiti and not all graffiti is street art.
There are some style-types that will be referred to as street art, like stenciling or airbrush. But street art is not related to style or material, it is related to where it is and how it got there.

1 Street art is outside. 2 Street art is put there illegally.

First of all, if it’s not made for public space, it is not street art.
Art that is meant to be inside, in a gallery or a museum, is not street art. It could be art, it could also be art made by a street artist, but it can never be street art. If you steel a piece of street art from the streets, and hang it in a museum, I would say it still is street art. Because the artist put it outside, it is meant to be in the public space, and someone else took it to a gallery. (the fact that the thief and the gallerist are making the buck here and not the artist, is something for another blog) But when a street artist makes a piece on a canvas for a gallery to show, than it will be art made by a street artist. Never street art.

And secondly, not all art that is outside, is street art. Commissioned art in public space it not street art. There is lots of art out there, making the city look pretty, but if it is commissioned, then it is not street art, but art in public space. Street art is art that has been illegally placed in there. So if someone paints a large wall of a building, commissioned, then it could most definitely be art, but I won’t think of it as street art.

The rest of it is for the street artist to decide. Some artists sign their work, some don’t. Some works are the name or the artist all by itself, written beautifully.
I sign, because I think if I have the brutality to put my work in everyone else’s space, I might as well have the guts to say it was me who did. I’ve been busted before, but only if you’re caught red handed, the cops will give you a fine.
Some artists work at night, some work in brought day light. I like to paste my pieces on sunny days, because the glue dries faster and also because I like the kick of it. I do street art to make the world look nicer, so I don’t feel I have to be shady about it. The only ones I need to look out for are the cops. And I think I will be spotted easier at night than in daytime.

Then off course there are some rules in street art on how you go about other artists work. I don’t know many of those rules, but I do know I don’t go over someones piece, and if someone puts a tag on my piece, respecting the piece itself I kind of take that as a compliment. Especially when it is done is matching colors!