The Bowery Mural and East Houston Street between Elizabeth and the Bowery

The two sides of this street are practically on different blocks, since they are separated by the very wide Houston Street. 

Death, taxes, and construction on Houston Street.

Anyway the highlight of this block is the Bowery Mural, which features a work by a different street artist about 2 or 3 times a year.

The latest work on the wall, which just went up in August, is by Logan Hicks.

According to Gothamist it is called "Story of My Life," and features people who are important to the artist.
 
It is sort of a panorama view of the nearby intersection of Spring and Greene Streets.

The wall has been owned by Goldman Properties since 1984, which has worked with Deitch Projects, an NYC art gallery, to use the wall as a rotating showcase for street artists since 2008.

Here is the wall on July 30 and August 1 of this year, between the latest transfer to a new artwork.

"another day another flower" was not a commissioned work on the wall, just someone writing on it. As far as I know, anyway.

The first work of the project in 2008 was a tribute to Keith Haring's mural that he did on this wall in 1982 with his partner Juan Dubose. 

Haring said that back then it was just a run-down area and former handball court, filled with garbage and practically abandoned, so he and Dubose cleaned it up and painted the wall white before Haring worked on it over about 2 days.

Here are some photos of the Haring mural being made in July 1982, with all the photos by Tseng Kwong Chi.

Pretty cool. There's something about Keith Haring's art that just pops with life and energy. 

Before we (okay, I) get too romantic about this wall's connection with Keith Haring, it should be noted that Haring did not necessarily have a great experience overall with this project and the general area. 

Some artists resented Haring for having left the East Village art scene and supposedly 'selling out,' so his mural was vandalized many times. 

Haring fixed up his work initially but eventually just left it because it was happening too much and he also realized that he had to accept that he had done a work in a public space. 

Then someone wrote across the whole mural '$9,999,' because Haring had said in an interview that he still hadn't sold anything for over $10,000. Haring said of this: "It was really too much to fix and was really too obnoxious. I painted the entire thing silver and destroyed it and said, 'Okay, f--- you, this is the end of the East Village.' I want nothing else to do with it. I'll never do another mural in the East Village." 

I thought that was an interesting anecdote, especially because I think of Haring as such a celebrated downtown artist but didn't realize what he had to deal with. Especially from other downtown artists, which is really a shame.

(Keith Haring's memories of this mural project and the photos of it  come from the great book "Keith Haring," by Jeffrey Deitch, Suzanne Geiss, and Julia Gruen)

By the way, according to the Bowery Boogie website, the Logan Hicks mural was vandalized by taggers just weeks after going up, and has since been cleaned up.     

Despite unfortunate incidents of defacement, the mural wall makes this a significant block for downtown art, especially street art. 

Hey, maybe the construction is also art, commenting on all of Manhattan seeming to be in repair and on the constant noise and clamor of modern city life. Maybe not.

I don't know if there's much to say about the rest of the block, but let's quickly go through some of it. 

Next to the mural wall is a new building that seems to be for commercial space.

It's made of brick, and has arches... so that's cool. Hopefully it will house a bank or Duane Reade soon enough. 

The other side of the street has some nice buildings with character that aren't too tall.

Under the scaffolding is a store called The Mobile Spa, which apparently is where phones get pampered. 

Their locations include a store in NoHo and one in SoHo, in case you break your phone in between those few blocks.

An annoying thing about scaffolding is that it makes the sidewalks narrower, so that if you're in a hurry it's easier to get stuck behind a slow walker who you can't go around because of oncoming foot traffic. 

On the other hand I was recently caught in a downpour with no umbrella and was suddenly grateful for all of the scaffolding in lower Manhattan to take refuge under. So scaffolding can be good, one or two days out of the year.

There seem to be 2 rag & bone clothing stores on the block. I would assume they are actually one connected shop but it looks like there's a shoe store in between, along with 2 doorways with graffiti-type stuff on them.

The one in this bottom photo is called rag & bone/JEAN, so maybe that offers more casual wear? I don't know, it's all a big mystery. Of course I could've gone in the stores to find out, but I didn't feel like it. 

I guess that's all for this block. It's at a big crazy intersection but worth a visit for the Bowery Mural, and I hope you enjoyed the look at Keith Haring's painting as well. Thanks for reading.