Work To Do: Day 3 in NYC

Saturday I got a chance to walk around the city on my own. Start had to meet with an academic colleague, so I loitered around SoHo soaking up the street art and popping my head in to some galleries... lots of walking. I stopped by the 112 Greene St Studio for their "Work To Do" exhibition. Wow! Lots of artists came together for this collaborative show. Here are some of the pictures I got:



After the Green Street Studio, I found some great street art around the area. While I was admiring the work I got into a conversation with another street art enthusiast who hipped me to Ryan McGinness's work at the Deitch Project's 18 Wooster Street gallery. Taken from the artist's statement I grabbed: "[McGinness's] work combines all-over composition, inspired by Jackson Pollock and the mechanical silkscreen process inspired by Andy Warhol....McGinness's paintings reflect his own mental landscapes. His compositions reflect the infinite, ever-flowing continuum of the universe." Pics:


And, there are pics from my walk around SoHo/LES:

The Land of Tall Bldgs (Day 2 in NYC)

Friday Start and I walked around Williamsburg (neighborhood in Brooklyn) to do a little street art hunting. We got some energy for the day at the Bliss Cafe, a small spot on Bedford Ave. Cheap and healthy vegan sandwiches are their game. The food was good (I had the BBQ tempeh) but I was quite annoyed after the same damn Alicia Keys song played for the third time in fifteen minutes... no joke.

Here are some pictures from the Williamsburg walk.

Faile:


Imminent Disaster (click on these to see the large view and check out the detail):


Know Hope:



Nohj Coley (yes, the woman's top is intricately cut out... wow):



RIME:



Zoso:


...and there's more on my flickr page... LOTS more!


Friday night was a fun night that turned into a pub crawl of sorts through the East Village dive bars:

First we met two friends at ACE... typical dive bar, except THEY HAVE SKEE-BALL (how cool is that?)! AND you can play in their skee-ball league. After a couple beers we went to 7B to wait for some more people to join the flock. 7B seems to be well liked, but I kinda thought it was a bust... choches to spare, not room to move at all. Once the others arrived we headed over to Botanica (the former location of the Knitting Factory) to meet up with another group of people. This was a great spot! Low ceilings and cleanned-up exposed brick walls made for comfy quarters, but with enough room to breathe and move about freely. An awesome DJ spinning old funk, and a laid back indy/artsy crowd. When our group began to dissipate, we went across the street for some subs to soak up a bit of the alcohol and then went to another bar (I don't remember this one so well) for a few more drinks before calling it a night.

Trip to NYC + Day 1

Wednesday I went up to Brooklyn to visit Start, an AMAZINGLY gifted poet and also one of my closest friends for the past 5+ years (here's his myspace and wordpress websites).

On my first full day in the city we went to The Tenement Museum . The museum educates the greater masses about immigrant life in NYC, roughly between the mid-to-late 1800s up through the economic hard times of the Great Depression, through guided tours. The tours take place in an old tenement building on the Lower East Side (Orchard St) where former residences have been designed to period. You can choose from several tours: you can take a guided neighborhood walk, listen to a Jewish family's stories of getting by during the Great Depression, learn about immigrants in the old garment industry, or hear the stories of Irish immigrants.


(I snagged this from the museum's website)

We did the tour called "Getting By" about an Italian and a Jewish family living on 97 Orchard St during the tenement heyday and then during the Great Depression. There were a couple of audio tapes featuring a quirky-yet-adorable woman reminiscing on her younger days in the tenement; singing songs on her mother's bedroom chest and listening to Italian music on the radio... over-all a good time. Only $13 for the tour.

Thursday night, Start was a featured poet for a Brooklyn College event. I'm including a short bio that I asked him to email me. Please look him up (websites above) and see his shows if you're in NYC.

Start is a poet/performer/grad student who believes that these 3 roles have a symbiotic relationship in his life. After being raised in the biggest city in the great bluegrass state of Kentucky and spending years around the greater Cincinnati area, start relocated to Brooklyn to pursue dreams of better, more efficient poetry as well as a master’s degree in psychology. He believes in the power of tattoos, dictionaries, and thesauruses, and is working for the day he and friends set up an incredibly multi-purpose non-profit organization.

Also present at the event were Mahogany Browne and Jive Poetic, Friday and Wednesday night slam hosts respectively at the famous Nuyorican Poets Cafe... good poetry and and free pizza. I was a happy camper!

Body Tagging Video!

Ethan has finished the Body Tagging video and it looks great... you can find out more information at his blog: ethandancesinpublic.blogspot.com

Sunday Body Tagging in the Nati

KEEP AN EYE ON ETHAN'S BLOG FOR THE VIDEO COMING SOON:





SUCH A GREAT TIME!


This Sunday Ethan Philbrick organized a group to go body tagging. I was very happy to be apart of this.







Photo credits go to Chris Breeden. Participants include:

dan davidson
kenneth wright
ashley hollingsworth
michael reece
kim burgas
claire timmerman
william lohr
ethan philbrick
justine ludwig
jeff elrod
eli braun
chelsea varnum
julianna bloodgood

Saturday Night at the Kingsgate Marriott

Saturday night, a group of friends had a post Rat-a-Tat(who played at Bogarts) party at the Kingsgate Marriott in Cincinnati... what looked like a party bound for being busted turned out to be one of the best times I've had at a hotel in a long time. After a couple of complaints by the neighbors, the night concierge offered us the first floor lobby to have our party. We were escorted to a deserted lounge/lobby area with tvs, hallways to explore, and a back plaza to smoke and play on. They brought us trash cans and a rolling bucket with ice for our beers. We were never asked to keep it down, and we were treated amazingly!!



We found a pitcher full of spoons and created our own symphony (inspired by Ethan's "Playing Spaces"). Debauchery all around and great times. At another point we created our own version of hotel jousting: picture kneeling on the seat of a rolling office chair while someone else propels you towards your opponent, your shield is a large wait-staff serving tray, and your sword is a pair of spatula-shaped tongs.

City Swings: Interactive Street Art in Sweden

Akay and Peter installed 65 swings throughout Stockholm's urban environment. Swings + Public Engagement = AWESOME!

Sheep Art?

Hmm...

..any thoughts?

Good Local Shots:

I really enjoy these walks...




(FAUS, RASKOE, CHRIS2)




(CURS DESTO PBJ)




(SENT RUMS NUS ???)

Now you can leave comments!

I fixed the settings. Try it out and see for yourself! Find your favorite old post and leave a comment, then comment on someone else's comment. Let's get conversations flowing.

Space Invader video

London-based street artist, Space Invader uses tiles to create hyper-pixelated mosaic characters from the video games of old. Amazing stuff... this guy is up all over the world, and is one of street arts greats.

SPACE INVADER #763
by extermitent

The Periodic Table of Typefaces...

Taken from Behance.net:


The Periodic Table of Typefaces is obviously in the style of all the thousands of over-sized Periodic Table of Elements posters hanging in schools and homes around the world. This particular table lists 100 of the most popular, influential and notorious typefaces today.

As with traditional periodic tables, this table presents the subject matter grouped categorically. The Table of Typefaces groups by families and classes of typefaces: sans-serif, serif, script, blackletter, glyphic, display, grotesque, realist, didone, garalde, geometric, humanist, slab-serif and mixed.