Banksy is - as you maybe noticed - on a trip through the United States und Canada. Following LA, San Francisco, Detroit, Chicago and Toronto, the worlds most famous street artist recently visited Boston. In addition to that typical Banksy artworks, which work with a lot sarcasm and which you could find following his route, he left behind some very nice and inspiring large-scale painting, which were called the Banksy Child Drawing Series by the Wooster Collective. ...

The German Klebstoff magazine is a sticker magazine which consists only of stickers. Yes, it’s a bit crazy, but very successful! After the first issue with its 1000 copies was sold out after only four weeks, the Sticker Mag crew did another one: The second issue contains on 46 pages more than 100 stickers by 24 more or less famous urban sticker artists, including Klub7, Dan Witz, xXcrew, Eko, 1010, and others… ...

Oh yes, I have a new hero - It’s the young Portuguese urban artist Pedro Matos, who convinces with an unbelievable painting talent! This June he will open his new solo-exhibition called “Reality Show” in Lisbon, what makes me angry because I can’t be there. The very amazing artworks (they are great, right?) of his recent series are a mixture of rough and dirty aerosol paintings and fine, detailed oil and acrylic paintings, mostly showing portrays. It’s like post-graffiti meets an old master of arts! ...

At the end of February, the second edition of the subcultural and urban Urban.Spacemag magazine was released, including info about Japanese tape artist Shuetsu Sato, Australian tape artist Buff Diss, and other articles corresponding to the magazines topic Gaffa-Urbanism. Now the third edition is in work and the crew behind the Spacemag calls for your contributions! This times topic is Copy & Paste. They are searching for statements and articles from the creative fields of architecture, urban planning and arts… ...

Today, Aaron sent me a nice e-mail, calling attention for an interesting urban painting action by four world-renowned aerosol artists - Faith47 from South Africa, Titi Freak from Sao Paulo, Peeta from Italy, and Indigo, a local artist! Religious Street Art? WTF? The event was organized and the four artists have been invited by the United Church of Canada. The urban artwork is a part of their ongoing national “Paint Your Faith” campaign… ...

Since I launched Urban Artcore with that great Urban Photo Contest in August 2009, a lot happened. I wrote 358 articles about graffiti, street art, urban life, abandoned places, exhibition, art shows and festivals, drew up 474 tags and made interviews with a large number of famous artists. Although the number of visitors and also the number of feed readers are continuously increasing, I’m a bit impatient of the number of comments… In my opinion, comments make a blog more vibrant and allow more controversial discussions or changes of views. For that reason I thought, that it is time to originate an Urban Artcore question time! Now I would like to know what I can do better!? ...

Last Friday, the urban art festival “Concrete Playground” started in Essen. With about 20 internationally well-known street artists, contemporary artists and urban art photographers the art show with its unique installations and paintings is the most important part of the festival, which also offers different workshops and lectures. To put the phenomenon Streetart under the microscope, a series of events called Concrete Playground is taking place in 2010’s subcultural capitals Essen, Bochum and Dortmund. In the Fördermaschinenhalle 1/2/8 of Essen’s Zeche Zollverein you can find different workshops and temporary exhibitions of modern and classical street artists. (Words from the Playgroud) ...

Have you ever heard something about a crazy game called “Urban Defender”? No? Me neither! But yesterday I read a text about it and thought it might be interesting for you… Urban Defender is not that classical game, young people playing in the streets of their quarter, it’s something more! It combines action, tactical planning and high-tech: *“Urban Defender is a location-aware game that takes place in cities and towns. The game and its main interface, the ball, are situated inside the real world. Other location based games often only work with displays or have navigational character. ...

Yeah, it’s time again for some urban art eye candy from the Urbanartcore Flickr-group and some very interesting stories, which are too small for an own article: L’Atlas in Berlin - French urban artist L’Atlas is in Berlin! Berlin-based street art photographer Just was on the streets with him and took some great shots… Pothole Gardening - Pete Dungey and Steve Wheen created a new way of green street art! They planted flowers in potholes… ...

This Friday, May 7th, the fantastic “Concrete Playground” street art festival will start in Essen! Concrete Playground, that are different workshops, lectures and of course fabulous temporary exhibitions with a lot of the world’s greatest modern and classical street artists. Some of the participating artists, of whom you should have heard as an Urban Artcore reader, are for example BUFFdiss, Above, D*Face, Just, Martha Cooper, Base23, Niels Shoe Meulman and 44flavours. Regardless of being legal or illegal, Streetart meanwhile is part of the townscape of even smaller cities. Linked-up with other subcultures such as skateboarding, BMX and Hip Hop, Streetart has a large impact and a huge economic power that makes it ubiquitous for all kinds of media that deal with youth or culture. This means that Streetart becomes less and less ’street’, its term is reduced to absurdity because much Streetart is produced by graphic designers on a computer with an apple attached on it. (Words from the Playgroud) ...