I first met Itamar Paloge, a street artist in his late twenties and the curator of the Tabula Rasa street art project next to the Mahane Yehuda Market in Jerusalem, on a YouTube  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXRpDlvnd5M . Until he walked through the doors of the Casbah restaurant, Florentin #3 in Tel Aviv, I had expected a middle aged person (You tubes are deceiving.), partly because of the size, complexity, and depth of the project and partly because of his prompt and professional response to my email requesting a meeting and interview: “It’s an honor, and I’m very glad to hear that you like Tabula Rasa so much. I will be glad to meet with you.” (He suggested the restaurant choosing somewhere “cool” for me and a place close enough for a walking tour of the street art in South Tel Aviv.” I like it here,” said Itamar, “because it’s so free.” Wearing an orange and blacked striped hoodie, wool cap, and bright yellow chain hanging from jeans pocket, Itamar joined me and my Canadian companion Shirley.
 

Over Pad Thai, hamburger, antipasti, and Goldstar, I interviewed Itamar for 20 minutes asking him about his art, work as a curator, and thoughts on street art as a medium of expression.  Growing up in Ein Kerem, a picture perfect village in West Jerusalem, Itamar described his family as “really left wing.” After receiving formal training as a jewelry maker at Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Itamar decided he wasn’t a studio person who could sit in a room painting for hours.  He needed “adrenaline and action,” so three years ago he began doing live art performances in events, at festivals, and during parties. He believes street art reaches a lot of people whether rich or poor; people who wouldn’t necessarily go to a gallery.  Currently, he is self-supporting through his art, but before this “being good with his hands,” he worked as a carpenter, installer of sound systems, and even designer of restaurants.
 

Itamar loves to color up neglected and under-served neighborhoods. It was his idea to cover the metal siding which surrounds construction sites in Jerusalem with street art. Based on the work he had completed for the municipality of Jerusalem in projects such as the one on Shushan Street, he was hired to be the curator of Tabula Rasa for which he collected approximately 30 artists, photographers and sculptors both students from schools like Bezalel and street artists such as Einat Shtekler, Itamar Mendesflor, Tamar Pikes, and Know Hope.
 

Itamar believes all street artists share the message about or have the desire for freedom of expression. “The walls are mine; this is where I live, and I want to be part of it.” Beyond that he thinks “some street artists are political, some social, and some are in it just for themselves.”  Believing that street art appeals to all ages, Itamar also  recognizes that right now street art is cool and in fashion, but if it is “smart enough and good enough,” it will appeal to anyone. Most people have welcomed Tabula Rasa and the work he does, but sometimes people think he is “polluting or defacing” their worlds. He hopes Tabula Rasa will be extended because it has “good resonance."
 

He admires Know Hope who is “so poetic” and also a close friend and thinks that the Broken Fingaz, a group from Haifa, “is technically outstanding.” He also likes the big four: Foma the only female street artist he knows, Zero Cents,  Klone, and Know Hope. He admires Dioz, “a close friend and big talent,” and he has just gotten to know the artist Natalie Mandel with her street installations. Itamar likes text and art together and acknowledges that that’s how graffiti and street art got their beginnings: “First there was the word.” When asked about the difference between street art and graffiti, he said street art is everything not just sprayed art.  It is really just a technical separation. He likes the idea of “coloring up the world” which includes Israel’s separation wall but he recognizes “he is not from that side of the wall” and understands that many Palestinians think the wall is ugly and don’t want it made beautiful because of the reality it represents.
 

In the future Itamar would like to do a project with kids. While traveling in Cambodia, he paused at the Land Mine Museum, which presents thehorrors landmines have caused Cambodians, and there he volunteered, teaching painting to children. But always, Itamar would like “to go someplace where some color is needed and where it is monochrome and depressing.”

If you would like to see more of Itamar’s work, go to