The McCarren Park hawk, image via McCarren Hawk’s Instagram, photo by keenkenzie
If you’re like many of us, you’ve probably seen a hip-looking hawk roaming about McCarren Park. Whether he’s sunbathing on a Pendleton blanket with a Turkey’s Nest Margarita or simply strutting around the farmers’ market sporting his newest pair of Raybans, this hawk is LIT. And how he has an Instagram account. Check it.
Group Partner, the Instagram darling of the pottery world, has certainly come a long way since their early days at their studio studio on Norman and Lorimer. Headed by Isaac Nichols, the studio has become known for their quirky, iconic boob pots and other equally alluring containers. The pots, designed by Nichols, started out as a hobby that bloomed into a successful ceramics studio business. Continue reading →
Martynka Wawrzyniak, a Polish-born local artist driven by a creative vision, recently learned that local history eerily repeats itself. Researching Greenpoint history for her local site-specific artwork, she learned she was following in the footsteps of another Greenpoint Polish woman whose quest to create a local monument decades ago amazingly mirrored her own efforts.
Martynka is currently working on a community-engaged public art project, celebrating the disparate cultures comprising North Brooklyn. Her work titled Ziemia (which means earth in Polish), created in collaboration with local residents, invites locals to contribute soil from personally meaningful locations that symbolize their identity. Ziemia will take the form of a three-foot diameter ceramic orb sitting atop of a native plant meadow in McGolrick Park. Grenpoint clay will serve as the materials for the orb and the mix of soil contributed by residents will be used for the glaze. The piece will function as a collective community portrait, embodying the many Greenpoint homeland and migration stories. You can follow along with the sculpture’s progress on Instagram. Continue reading →
Tomorrow night (Friday, 4/7) local instafamous Instagram Taste of Streep is hosting THREE screenings of The Devil Wears Prada at Syndicated Bar & Theater in Bushwick (40 Bogart Street), at 6pm, 8:45pm and 11:30pm. Tickets ($25) include a cocktail and a genuine Taste of Streep goodie bag, plus trivia before the show. But how to choose which screening? It’s a tough call. They’re so different.Continue reading →
If you follow us on Instagram, you may have noticed that this week we have Greenpointer Edoardo Monti taking over our account. He’s also co-sponsoring the Greenpoint Instameet (part of Instagram’s Worldwide Instameet 13) with us at 6:30pm this Friday, April 22 at Greenpoint’s scenic Transmitter Park. Continue reading →
Maybe you’ve noticed the pop-up gallery with an inflatable dancing man on the corner at 644 Lorimer Street.
Three Brooklyn-based creative agencies (The BOSCO, Bobby Redd and AGW Group) have taken over the storefront to present #INSTANTARTIST, described as “a user-generated art experience that gives anyone an opportunity to showcase their photography, sourced from Instagram, in a gallery setting.”
Using The Bosco’s on-demand printing technology, the exhibition invites anyone to participate by tagging Instagram photos with the hashtag #INSTANTARTIST, at which time a 6”x6” print of the tagged photograph will be printed and hung at the gallery.
Upon writing this, #INSTANTARTIST already has over 8,400 posts, which begs the question I think this exhibition is asking: Of all these Instagram pictures, how many are gallery-quality, artful photographs? How many can make the leap from URL to IRL?
With over 400 million users on Instagram, how many are true photographers and how many are simply, perhaps compulsively, shooting and sharing and shooting and sharing? How many are taking a practiced, thoughtful approach to photography and how many are posting narcissistic selfies? In this instant-gratification age of digital photography and social networks, do we still have photography as art?
Maybe this exhibition can help answer that question, using white gallery walls as a litmus test. Are you an artist or are you just taking pictures?
Hearty beef & Guinness stew with carrots and mushrooms, over mashed potatoes
My mother is born-and-raised solid country stock from County Westmeath, Ireland. She remembers St. Patrick’s Day celebrations as chiefly religious, with the country going to mass with freshly-picked clovers pinned to buttonholes to honor their patron saint. Then there would be a shared family meal with special-occasion ingredients like beef or lamb, usually presented in roasts or stews.
Regardless of how you choose to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day (or whether you want to avoid all related shenanigans entirely), this traditional Irish dish is straight-forward, nourishing, rich, and perfect for spooning out among any group of friends and family (though with all due respect to my grandmother and her preferred method of just dumping everything in a big pot and leaving it, I’ve added and tweaked some steps to improve texture and flavor).
North Brooklyn offers a cozy mecca of studio spaces for artists to work, live in, and Instagram. While the app has earned a reputation for promoting endless boredom check-ins and vanity selfies – plenty of artists are taking advantage of the platform to promote events and shows, document their work in various stages, and link with other like-minded creatives.
I scoured the ‘gram to find my top 8 pick of talented painters in the neighborhood with impressive archives, all for your viewing pleasure. Continue reading →
We had such a great time inviting locals to take over our Instagram in 2014, that we decided to continue in 2015. Each week a new photographer will get the password to our Instagram account and show us their unique view of the hood.
If you want to participate – it’s super easy – just fill out this form and we will contact you to take over for one week coming up.
