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Sara and Marc Schiller, Street Art’s Ambassadors
Sara and Marc take questions during their Toronto talk.
Wooster Collective, now the definitive online source for contemporary street art, began with no goal in mind other than finding and preserving the fascinating and fleeting art that Marc and Sara Schiller had begun to notice around their NYC home.
In 2000, before the devices were as ubiquitous as they are now, Marc purchased a digital camera during a visit to Japan. With it, he and Sara began feverishly documenting the art that appeared on the walls surrounding their Wooster Street neighborhood, casting as wide a net as they could and capturing as much as possible. Eventually they ran out of storage space on their computer and—rather than delete the pictures—decided to put them online. Wanting to share what they’d found, they sent the link to a few friends. From there it spread as only the Internet can, and soon Wooster as we know it was born. Sara likened the initial experience of discovering street art to opening a manhole cover, something like an urban Alice in Wonderland: she peered inside and discovered a hidden world, a secret culture. Since that time there has always been more to see, and Marc and Sara have been falling deeper and deeper into the rabbit man hole ever since.
During their visit to Toronto to give a talk and see A City Renewal Project, Fauxreel and Specter’s new work, Vandalist sat down for a quick chat with Sara and Marc about the state of the art and their thoughts on where Toronto fits.
Kelly Goeller, in New York City. Photo by nickgraywfu.
Wooster is no longer a personal gathering of photos; it accepts submissions from around the globe and circulates them to a huge audience. A work in a high-profile location on the street may be seen there by hundreds, but a work featured on Wooster will be seen by thousands or even millions—and artists know it. Inevitably, attention-hungry artists are now making work with the intention of appearing on Wooster Collective. Marc and Sara know this, but aren’t upset by it. “There was a period of time,” says Marc, “where we wanted to put online as much work as we could because we weren’t aware that people knew that there was this global movement happening….now we get over six hundred emails a day, and we can only put up three or four images, so the issue is much less.”
How do they choose from all those submissions? “It is really a very quick, visceral thing. If it inspires us the second we see the photograph, or if it makes us smile—basically if it’s something we want to share, then we try to get it up before we go to work. We do what we need to do.” “We know passion,” explains Marc, “we can see it.”
“But also our criteria has changed,” adds Sara. “We used to put up, as an example, a lot of stickers that were mass produced and put anywhere; we now want something that is site specific, something that interacts with the environment.”
Marc agrees. “For Sara and I now, it’s more about that really incredible quality of street art being a collaboration between the artist and the city.”
Banksy, in London. Photo by nolifebeforecoffee.
Still, documentation has changed street art, and Wooster has led the charge. When Wooster features a work, the primary audience—at least in terms of numbers—is now online and not on the street. This has inspired some backlash from purists who feel that the proper way to experience a work is through a personal encounter on the street. And, actually, Wooster agrees.
“We say the same thing,” and, talking over each other in agreement, they continue. “We’ll say the same thing tonight. We always say the place to look, the best way to discover the work, is on the street.” “A photograph will never capture that impact.” “Get out of your house, walk around.” “The beauty of the street is that it’s ephemeral and will decay and disappear, but the beauty of the Internet is that it’s capturing it before it disappears….It’s nice that there’s an online documentation, and it also helps the global movement—street art is the first art movement that’s been fuelled by the Internet.”
The Internet certainly has allowed street art to explode, grow, and spread, and Wooster has been a big part of that. Many people from all walks of life get their first impressions of street art from Wooster. Gallery curators and corporate cool hunters alike keep their eyes on the site. As a result, Wooster has helped make many artists’ careers, but it has also helped inspire a great deal of questionable advertising campaigns. Marc and Sara enjoy the grey areas, though, and when pushed to name any regrets, Sara answers that “we’re not people that look backwards and dwell on the negative.” Marc agrees. “We know the issues with doing it, and at the end of the day the pluses outweigh the negatives for us. There are thousands of people that would never get to see the work otherwise.” Sara continues, “No one’s perfect, and people evolve, and advertising may be a part of that. We think some street-based advertising is very good, but it’s a very, very small amount.”
Before our talk, Sara and Marc toured the city to get a feel of what Toronto’s streets had to offer. They visited, among other spots, Fauxreel’s installation at Regent Park. Because this was their first visit to Toronto in a long time, the couple was hesitant to make any sweeping statements. But when asked to give their thoughts on the Toronto street art scene, Sara and Marc were very positive. “There is definitely a lot of incredible graffiti in the city,” says Marc. “Wild Style and that type of graffiti, which Sara and I—we’re not experts on—but we recognize that Toronto has some incredible graffiti artists here.”
Oskar alongside the Don Valley, Toronto. Photo by Now and Here.
Several of the works we’ve featured on Torontoist have gone on to be shown on Wooster and have helped give Marc and Sara a sense of our scene. Marc comments, “Looking at Torontoist, I love the element of culture jamming that’s here in Toronto—that the work has a purpose. There is a strong group that is really looking at issues of the city—gentrification and what-have-you—so for us, that’s fantastic.”
Although it was the Specter and Fauxreel show that brought Wooster up to Toronto to talk, Specter was, ironically, making the same commute; he recently moved to New York. Though we wish him the very best of luck in NYC, we’re also saddened to have lost one of our finest street artists, and we wanted to hear what Wooster thought of that old issue of the “Arts Brain Drain.” We told them that, unfortunately, it seems that Canadian artists have to be acclaimed abroad before they’re accepted back home. Marc and Sara were no strangers to this idea, and they began nodding their heads. “That’s something we’ve been hearing,” Sara says. “I think there’s something about New York, that for all artists to spend a year or two in NY is great,” adds Marc, “but a lot of artists are going back.”
Swoon, in New York City. Photo by shoehorn99.
Wooster believes that a 416 or a 905 area code is not ultimately a handicap to artistic success. As evidence, Marc is quick to rattle off several names of successful homegrown studio artists such as Gary Taxali, Derrick Hodgson, and Marcel Dzama, many of who have moved abroad, but some of who have returned to continue their careers in Canada. “You’ve got a lot of artists that have done very, very well in Canada. There are a lot of artists I knew really well in New York that now live abroad, specifically in Canada…There is a cynicism about local artists, but you find that in a lot of cities, not just in Toronto.”
Sara adds, “We personally are infatuated with New York. We think it’s a great city and everyone should visit or live there for a while, but just spending time in Toronto, there are a lot of elements of NY here; it’s really diverse, it’s got a lot of individuality, it’s not overtaken by chains. You can feel the heartbeat of the city, which is really nice. I think someone can be just as successful here, as long as Canadians, as long as Toronto, supports its artists.”
“That’s key,” adds Marc.
We couldn’t agree more.