Monarchs

"Monarchs" | Jeremy Novy

Milwaukee, WI

The monarch Butterflies mural was the first official Black Cat Alley mural to go inside the Alley in 2016, second only to MTO’s “Glitch Frog” which went up outside the alley in 2016.

Jeremy Novy’s unique brand of street art is ripe with thoughtful social examinations. Novy has combated a homophobic lack of representation with a celebration of gay iconography, bringing joviality and warmth to disused urban spaces. With a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, he curated the first major exhibition of its kind, “A History of Queer Street Art,” premiered in San Francisco in 2011 and later toured to Pop Up Gallery in Los Angeles and Yale University.

Since graduating from the Peck School of the Arts, Novy’s art has been met with acclaim across the country. His work has benefited non-profit foundations, advocacy organizations, and community service programs and has been featured in numerous films, books, publications, and collections public and private. His stencil work is cogent in its messaging and remarkably complex for its compositional simplicity—like the koi fish of his most-established series which, floating beneath the surface of concrete, refer to anti-authoritarian coded symbols in Chinese art under communism. His pioneering images of drag queens, physique pictorials, and pornography bring to life the multiplicity of modern identity, reminding us that we, each of us, must walk the streets of our cities in collective solidarity. (Excerpt from Artsy)