It’s the holidays and if you stayed clear of the madness of black Friday and cyber Monday, you might still have a pile of people you need to buy gifts for. Or maybe it’s just time to treat yo’ self! Toasters and electronics are boring. Give and get some original art!
QR Code Ceramic Ornament by Robert Raphael & Lauren Houston
In its fourth installment, Calico Brooklyn has put together CALICORNUCOPIA, a Holiday exhibition of works by local artists priced at $300 or less. On opening night, I picked up a drawing “The Crush” ($80) by Mike Hambouz, a gnome laser cut magnet ($40) by Adam Puryear, and a QR code ceramic ornament ($35) by Robert Raphael & Lauren Houston. Continue reading →
This Saturday (8/8, 2-7pm) at Calico Gallery, artist Scott Chasse is hosting an indoor BBQ and selling some of his recent and not-so-recent artwork at massive discounts!
Everything will be marked down up to 75% off. Plus there will be free beer, veggie burgers, regular hotdogs, and chips. Music by DJ Ning Nong from 4-7PM.
Colin Ruel, Eric Lee Bowman, and Jon Legere‘s work showing at West Street’s Calico Brooklyn through tomorrow (6/13) can only loosely be thought of as working in the abstract. All works are generally two dimensional, non-representational, and refer to a history of this sort of thing.
Any parting from history might be due to art’s continuing blur into the real world, as well as a change from working with material to using abstract art for varying adaptations. There is a dizzyingly unending array of work out there, slipping between the transcendental and the formally grounded, so it’s a pleasure to drop by a space offering such open and easy suggestions. Continue reading →
WEDNESDAY 2/18 # Eastern District Wine & Cheese Tasting @ Adelina’s (159 Greenpoint Ave) 5pm, $18, Pairings of four cheeses and four wines, More info
* Beading on the Loom of Time @ Sacred Arts Research Center (107 Green St) 7pm, $65, Learn the basics of loom beading, a versatile and old technique found all over the world, and create a beadwork piece, More info ♫ The Greenpoint Get-Down @ No 7 North (931 Manhattan Ave) 9pm, FREE, DJ Patrick A. Reed spins classic hip-hop, heavy soul, deep funk, ska, and rocksteady, More info
WEDNESDAY 1/07 * Zombie Night @ Word (126 Franklin St) 7pm, FREE, John L. Campbell launches Drifters, the final book in his Omega Days trilogy, with Roger Ma, author of The Zombie Combat Field Guide, RSVP ☺ Meditation Guided by Laughter @ Muchmore’s (2 Havemeyer St) 9pm, FREE, With Brett Davis / Eliza Hurwitz / Scott Nossen / Joe Pera and more, RSVP
♫ Le Noize @ Macri Park (462 Union Ave) 10pm, FREE, Sing your heart out at this new monthly karaoke party, RSVP
It was like gallery night all over again in Greenpoint, with five art shows opening last Friday. Instead of reviewing each show individually, I decided to play a little game. I asked at least one artist from each show the same question: “What does your work have to do with the title of the show?” They answered in one sentence or phrase.
Here is what they said – in order of my art stroll:
Gallery: Java Studios Gallery (252 Java St #308)
Show Title: “The Shape of Control”
Artist: Robby Rose
Answer: “Death and how we remember people.”
Greenpoint based artist Kate Nielsen bases much of her work on “survival tips” in the wild. As the sole individual successfully selling artwork on Amazon, she is also an example of a new type of artist’s preservation. Greenpointers had a chance to talk with the survivor on the eve of her inclusion in Calico Gallery’s Crowd Control. Continue reading →
What pictures would you pick of yourself for a “now and then” slideshow? Would the choices accurately depict progression or would they represent a cultivated presentation of how you’d like to be thought of?
Calico Brooklyn’s “Throwback Thursday” is an art show that compares old and new works from a kind of high school yearbook haircut stance (the title comes from the urban dictionary definition to this effect). Pairings by ten artists are hung with a newer piece on the right and an older piece to the left. Continue reading →
A great Greenpoint gallery called Calico Brooklyn opened this past year and contributed 10 amazing art shows that represented over 50 local artists in our art community. It was a lot of fun to go to the shows, see inspiring work, mingle with talented people and drink free beer. But organizing and installing art shows isn’t free and the first season was funded out of pocket by gallerist Scott Chasse, who also organized the Greenpoint Gallery night.
This gentleman is contributing a lot of his time and resources for the art culture in our neighborhood. For season 2, which will begin in September, with plans to produce another 10 shows, he is asking for the community to help him raise $5000. He has already raised $4,200 and has 1 day to go. Help get him to his goal and look forward to some really fun Friday art nights.
There are tons of great “perks” for donating, but I do recommend donating at the $250 level because you will receive an original piece of artwork by artists who have kindly donated their work to the gallery’s fundraiser who normally sell it for way more money. That’s not a donation – thats an investment in artwork!
Charles Wilkin "Untitled (fawn)" (pigment stain on postcard, C-Print) 18" x 24"
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 →
