Photos By Gail
When David Bowie was alive, he spent his time in NYC living in the SoHo neighborhood; specifically, in a luxury apartment building located at 285 Lafayette Street. Since Bowie’s passing in 2016, various pieces of street art have popped up on the block as a continuing homage to the late icon. The mural above is the latest. At first glance, it looks like just a random collage of images with the featured one being some sort of monster or alien being. But if you stop to take a closer look, you can’t miss the visage of David as Ziggy Stardust over on the right.
Not only that, lyrics from the song “If You Can See Me,” (off The Next Day) are visible just below Ziggy’s chin. Other Bowie motifs include an astronaut (possibly a nod to Major Tom / “A Space Oddity”) as well as the Planet Earth, which is mentioned in the chorus of that same song. Circling back to the blue Alien creature, that could refer to “Loving The Alien.” As far as the preponderance of mushrooms and butterflies, they could be references to drugs or spirituality, but your guess is as good as mine. I wasn’t able to identify the name of the artist anywhere on the piece, and a Google image search turned up zero results. Feel free to leave your thoughts about this enigmatic piece of street art in the comments