After placing your votes, the winner of the Greenpoint Libary Mural Competition is Leslie Wood. The mural will be painted in early June.
Submit your art to Northside Art at Williamsburg Walks, which takes place June 15th 3-8pm (N8th- N9th Bedford Ave) & June 16th Viewing Party @ Acme Studios Noon- 6pm (63 N3rd).
Deadline: May 15th, 2013
Temporary wall units, interactive installations and sculptures will be staggered throughout the block for live painting performances, graffiti and other participation oriented works. In addition to the installations there will be a variety of related activities to engage in and pop up parks. All works created during the event will be on display during a viewing party held the next day at Acme Studios (65. N3rd St) from noon-6pm.
Northside Art is seeking proposals for:
1. live painting/graffiti/collage
2. interactive installations/workshops
3. sculpture/stand alone installations
Send all submissions and questions to varneyvictoria (at) gmail.com.
Greenpointers is excited to announce Greenpoint Gallery Night on Friday May 10, 2013 from 6-9pm at over a dozen participating Greenpoint art galleries.
All are welcome to stroll from gallery to gallery, free of charge, and experience the wealth of artwork and diversity of exhibition spaces our great neighborhood has to offer.
Afterparty is at the newly reopened Coco66 (66 Greenpoint Ave.) at 9pm!
Co-organized by gallery owners Lia Post (Fowler Arts Collective) and Scott Chasse (Calico), the following galleries will be opening their doors for an evening of gallery hopping: Beginnings, Booklyn Artist Alliance, Calico, Theceeflat Gallery, Dobbin Project Space, Fowler Project Space, G Spot (at CoCo66), The Greenpoint Gallery (8-12pm only), Heliopolis, Janet Kurnatowski, Laundry Lung, The Yard, Yashar Gallery, and Yes Gallery.
There is always something intriguing going on at Greenpointers HQ, which is the home of Dobbin Project Space (50-52 Dobbin St). When I walked in the door there was a gorgeous array of local flora in the window, part of an exhibition called “Botanical,” presenting new works inspired by the plant kingdom by artist Laurie Sumiye.
“In her installation, Island, Sumiye uses endemic New York grass plants from a local native plant nursery to recreate a patch of wild, uncultivated land — a forgotten bucolic landscape of Williamsburg-Greenpoint. The live grass plants (Scirpus cyperinus, Leersia oryzoides, Carex comosa) represent a homecoming and estrangement; native seedlings are reintroduced to a location where they once grew, but inside a building surrounded by urban industry. Island explores the tension of controlled environments, as well as reflect a specific history and perspective of place.”
The exhibition opens Friday, April 11, 2013 from 6-9pm, and on Saturday from 2:30-5pm there will be live drawing of plants in the nude. ($12 suggested donation)
See you there!
This is going to be a hard one. After 40 submissions, the Friends of the Greenpoint Library have selected 4 finalists and it’s time for you to put in your vote to “help” the judges decide which mural will adorn the exterior of the library. This is a survey, and “the results of this vote will help the Friends decide which design would best suit the community and the neighborhood.” Vote here and feel free to leave comments about which mural you want to win and why in the comments section below!
Clay Space 1205 celebrates 7 years of community and creativity! Tonight, Friday March 22, 2013 from 6-9pm, join Clay Space (1205 Manhattan Ave) for a group show of former and current members’ work exhibiting the diversity of the Clay Space community.
When I previewed Calico Brooklyn’s show titled Born Again, featuring the works of Thomas Buildmore, Allison Maletz, and Charles Wilkin, it was easy to find the theme of reuse and reinvention in collage artist Wilkin’s enlarged pigment stained postcard prints and Buildmore’s drippy spraypaint floral still lifes, but Maletz’s sound installation called Utility Purgatory, outfitted with a telephone and surrounded by her watercolor mold paintings was harder to discern. That is, unless we consider the post-Mayan apocalyptic experience referenced by Curator Scott Chasse, which he described as “very similar to the pre-Mayan apocalypse, only we are able to celebrate the afterlife in real-time.”
When I asked Chasse what inspired Born Again he said, “I understand that appropriation and reuse of images, ideas, materials, etc is nothing new, but I think that looking at the works by these three artists as a form of “rebirth” gives a fresh, slightly different way of experiencing what is being presented.”
Sitting on a rotary phone on hold with the telephone company for so long that mold grows on the walls would leave anyone dreaming of the apocalypse, or at least the reinvention of customer service tactics.
Maletz explained that, “these services exist in theory to improve our lives, yet are rendered useless as all the various “please hold” messages loop endlessly, leaving the audience completely impotent.” But Maletz doesn’t take “hold” for an answer and presents this experience in a new way with “a new meaning, so that we might all step back as outsiders looking in, to observe and perhaps even enjoy this well known and frustrating experience.” She went on to say that she made “the Mold Paintings specifically to go with Utility Purgatory. At their core, both works are about what can grow out of neglect.” Continue reading
Yes, there is a stupid blizzard, but a walk in the snow if fun, and so is a walk in the snow to an art show with amazing work, friends and drinks to warm you up!
I recommend this show for tonight, Friday February 8, 2013:
Born Again is opening tonight at Calico Brooklyn (67 West St) from 7-9pm and features the artwork of Thomas Buildmore, Allison Maletz & Charles Wilkin. The show follows the theme of reuse and recontextualization in the work itself but also in the new techniques and styles presented by artists.
It will be so moving that you might begin trembling and speaking in tongues.
Black confronts white, movement smacks against immobility and seriousness is sliced with subtle humor. Unlike the familiar idiom, Michael Lee creates opposites that do not necessarily attract one another, but generate a captivating, if uneasy, tension. His use of patterns and collage make for optical illusion that produce visual challenges and seemingly impossible scenarios. The disorientation that results is most definitely intentional.
Speakers, an art show curated by Michael and colleagues, opens Thursday, October 4, 2012, 6 – 9 @ 111 Front St #216 in DUMBO, Brooklyn. Continue reading
You might know Scott Chasse from his OMGWEBCATS drawings or from his obsessive paintings of Burt Reynolds. This Friday September 28, 2012, 7-9pm, Scott is introducing a new art gallery to Greenpoint called Calico Brooklyn (67 West St, #206), with an opening reception of the inaugural show titled, Exhibit A.
When asked the significance of the word Calico and whether it has anything to do with perhaps a secret obsession with feline’s, Scott said he liked the ring of the question: “Are you going to the opening at Calico tonight?” He did mention he has “two pretty cool cats at home,” and believes that “cats are good marketing tools.” Continue reading
