Marc and Sara Schiller collect the writing on the wall.
"People get very polarized by graffiti. Is it the broken window syndrome? Is it creating violence? The one thing about graffiti or street art is you know there's life," explains Marc Schiller, 42. He, with wife and collaborator Sara, 37, beside him, pours enthusiasm as he talks about street art and graffiti-legally and artistically daring work, often placed right before our eyes, yet so often unnoticed. This art exists as much for its own sake as for any audience, but thanks to the work of this unlikely husband-and-wife team, street art has a champion: the website Wooster Collective.For Marc and Sara Schiller, who launched Wooster in 2001, the idea for the project began as they explored their neighborhood in New York City ten years ago. "We started to tap into the fact that the city we were living in has another layer to it that not everybody sees," Marc says. "As you become more aware, you realize it's exploding with creativity and inspiration and art." The Schillers, though not artists themselves, began to document this underground city-five years and several full hard drives later, they put it online.Wooster Collective, described simply as "a celebration of street art," soon became an online home to artists who use the city as their canvas. The content, personally chosen and posted by the Schillers, makes sense of a broad and disparate art movement that was, at the time, barely aware of its own existence. Visiting the site is like taking a tour of every imaginable corner of the globe, while never leaving the same thriving creative community. "Go to any city in the world," says Marc. "If you look around, you'll see a stencil of Gandhi on the ground, or a sticker on the corner."| Quote: |
| Go to any city in the world. If you look around, you'll see a stencil of Gandhi on the ground, or a sticker on the corner. |
