Wooster Collective is a

website A website (also written as a web site) is any web page whose content is identified by a common domain name and is published on at least one web server. Websites are typically dedicated to a particular topic or purpose, such as news, educatio ...

founded in 2003 that showcases

street art Street art is visual art created in public locations for public visibility. It has been associated with the terms "independent art", "post-graffiti", "neo-graffiti" and guerrilla art. Street art has evolved from the early forms of defiant gr ...

from around the world. ''The'' ''New York Times'' called it "a leading street-art blog." It features ephemeral art placed on streets in cities around the world. The site also offers

podcast A podcast is a Radio program, program made available in digital format for download over the Internet. Typically, a podcast is an Episode, episodic series of digital audio Computer file, files that users can download to a personal device or str ...

ing with music and interviews featuring street artists. The name Wooster comes from Wooster Street, located in the

SoHo SoHo, short for "South of Houston Street, Houston Street", is a neighborhood in Lower Manhattan, New York City. Since the 1970s, the neighborhood has been the location of many artists' lofts and art galleries, art installations such as The Wall ...

neighborhood of

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

. The website's archive starts in January 2003, and the category list is over 100 items long. Categories include entries as "Cardboard" art and "

Guerrilla gardening Guerrilla gardening is the act of gardening – raising food, plants, or flowers – on land that the gardeners do not have the legal rights to cultivate, such as abandoned sites, areas that are not being cared for, or private property. It enc ...

", as well as locations with a

presence such as

Tokyo Tokyo, officially the Tokyo Metropolis, is the capital of Japan, capital and List of cities in Japan, most populous city in Japan. With a population of over 14 million in the city proper in 2023, it is List of largest cities, one of the most ...

Dublin Dublin is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. Situated on Dublin Bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, and is bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, pa ...

and

Milwaukee Milwaukee is the List of cities in Wisconsin, most populous city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin. Located on the western shore of Lake Michigan, it is the List of United States cities by population, 31st-most populous city in the United States ...

. It also contains interviews of street artists, with reviews of artists' new work or of recent gallery exhibits.

11 Spring Street Project

Wooster Collective was involved in gaining recognition for

in its own neighborhood. In 2006,the website collaborated with Caroline Cummings and Bill Elias, members of a development group, with the idea of turning the building located at 11 Spring Street in

into a temporary

gallery. The address was about to be converted into

condominium A condominium (or condo for short) is an ownership regime in which a building (or group of buildings) is divided into multiple units that are either each separately owned, or owned in common with exclusive rights of occupation by individual own ...

apartments. The idea for the project was set forth when Elias Cummings contacted the Wooster Collective site and suggested that they curate a show at the location to celebrate the building's place in the history of

. The show ran for three days, from December 15 to December 17, 2006. Street artists who had been featured in the Wooster Collective, such as

Shepard Fairey Frank Shepard Fairey (born February 15, 1970) is an American contemporary artist, activist and founder of OBEY Clothing who emerged from the skateboarding scene. In 1989, he designed the " Andre the Giant Has a Posse" (...OBEY...) sticker campa ...

, Swoon,

Dan Witz Dan Witz (born 1957) is a Brooklyn, New York City, NY based street artist and realist painter. He grew up in Chicago, IL, and graduated in 1981 from Cooper Union, on New York City's Lower East Side. Witz, consistently active since the late 1970s, ...

Above Above may refer to: *Above (artist) Tavar Zawacki (b. 1981, California) is a Polish, Portuguese - American abstract artist and internationally recognized visual artist based in Berlin, Germany. From 1996 to 2016, he created work under the ...

, Bo130, Doze Green, D*Face, The London Police, Skewville,

Lady Pink Lady Pink, born Sandra Fabara (born 1964), is an Ecuadorian-born American graffiti and mural artist, active in New York City. Early life Fabara was born in Ambato, Ecuador in 1964, and moved to the Astoria neighborhood of Queens, New York wh ...

, Microbo, Jace, Kostas Seremetis, John Fekner and Don Leicht, Ruslan Karablin, Graffiti Research Lab, Will Barras, WK Interact, Matthew Hoffman (You Are Beautiful), and many more participated in the event. The art was left on the walls and built over (a nod to a tradition in

construction Construction are processes involved in delivering buildings, infrastructure, industrial facilities, and associated activities through to the end of their life. It typically starts with planning, financing, and design that continues until the a ...

of leaving newspapers in the walls of a house as a sort of "time capsule"), thereby leaving a legacy of

behind for future excavators.

Books

In 2012, Wooster Collective released the second in a series of 'Wooster on Paper' books called ''Graphite'' which featured pencil drawings by a number of their favourite artists including Paul Alexander Thornton, Connor Harrington and Word to Mother.

References

External links

* {{Street Art Online mass media companies of the United States Art websites