It seems like you can’t take a trip to Materials for the Arts without some bucket of awesome being splashed all over you! I recently went to MFTA on an off-shopping day just to see about retrieving some cardboard boxes for moving some studio supplies (which I got – thanks MFTA!), and was greeted with not one or even two walls but an entire winding hallway of graffiti by “ART DE CLARKO” – whom when I google search looks like they maintain a Flickr account. So the next time you go shopping there give yourself some extra time and be sure to give this mural the attention it deserves… bucket of awesome!
The Color Wheelz in Long Island City project was a resounding success! We made around 15-20 new installations in and on the Color Wheelz van, and talked with another 50-60 people passing by, visiting the neighborhood, taking a daily constitutional, or otherwise enjoying a really lovely day in Queens!
painted linoleum arrows lead pedestrians passing through the nearby intersection to the van; I also installed some triangles across the street to get people to glance eastward and see our activity
artist Julia Vallera talking with passers-by, describing the project, talking about Flux Factory, notions of neighborhood and community, color, and participatory art
a wonderful shot of the Manhattan skyline from 45 Road and 21 Street in LIC – that building tip is the Chrysler Building, and that van is the Color Wheelz!
the Bigger Bird public sculpture (yellow thing), the Citi building, and the Color Wheelz van parked on 45 Road
Flux Factory is a not-for-profit arts organization supporting innovation in things. Until November of 2008 we were located on 43rd Street near Northern Boulevard, in an industrial wasteland – surrounded by warehouses and bordered by the edge of the Sunnyside Yards. After our eviction by the MTA to pursue development on the East Side Access project, we spent some time in limbo before eventually relocating to the Dutch Kills sub-neighborhood of LIC, on 29 Street just north of Queens Plaza. Both of our facilities were located in LIC, yet the two are worlds apart in terms of operation and our interaction with the surrounding community. We’re learning there’s still lots to learn from LIC!
Inviting artist Julia Vallera and her Color Wheelz project to Long Island City is part of that learning process, an investment back into our community and an exploration of identity of the surrounding neighborhood at large. LIC is a very large neighborhood! Like the Queens borough, LIC is extremely diverse and is not typified by any one singular identity, ethnic group, language or architecture.
The John F. Murray Playground presented itself as an ideal location for this exploration and understanding because of its location and relationship to other spaces: it is equidistant between the Pulaski and Queensboro bridges – structures that lead to other boroughs and worlds unto their own; it is sandwiched between an Avenue and a Road, and between two Streets that are somehow numerically 10 streets apart, typical of the street-ordering system of this borough; on one side of the park one is greeted with incredible skyline-views of Manhattan, on the other the irony of the tallest building in NYC outside of Manhattan all by its lonesome surrounded by much lower mixed-use neighborhoods.
The Playground itself also includes a little bit of everything: a dog run, handball and basketball courts, public art (Bigger Bird), game tables, sitting areas, a ballfield and playgrounds for children of all ages. It is my hope that the Color Wheelz van will allow all who interact with it to explore and express their relationship to this playground, to the surrounding neighborhood, to our wonderful city within a city!
The mailer doesn’t specify but the Color Wheelz collabo is curated by moi! I met Julia Vallera about 3-4 months back and thought her project would be a great way to “craft” Long Island City, and for its inhabitants – of which I am one – to better understand our dynamic city-town.
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This month:
Going Places (Doing Stuff) III
Flux Thursday
#24hCycle
Color Wheelz
Room I + Room II
2009 SP Weather Reports
Going Places (Doing Stuff) III
You get on a bus, you don’t know where you’re going, and then something happens!
You’ve probably heard about our amazing bus tours. If you haven’t, click here to learn more! We have four more tours coming up this summer:
August 7 Josh Bernstein, Moses Gates, Matt Levy & Moira Williams: Wild Tilly’s Circus Story
August 14 David Horvitz: 500 Golden Buddhas and the Speed of Water
August 21 Marie Lorenz: Ghost Ships of the Kills
August 28 Margaret Coleman: Demonstrations of Aptitude
Going Places (Doing Stuff) III is made possible in part through support from the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, Carnegie Corporation, and the New York State Council on the Arts.
Flux Thursday!
Join us on August 12 for this month’s Flux Thursday, our monthly potluck and salon. Dinner starts at 8 pm, with presentations to follow. Resident artist Sarah Tosques will present work from Iceland and New York, and Man Bartlett will be talking about his recent and upcoming performance art. We’ll be there – will you?
What do the news and laundry have in common? Probably nothing! But we’ll be tasked to see how the two play together… over the course of 24 hours in August.
#24hCycle is envisioned as an absurdist summer party, a communal laundry washing experience, and a reading/discussion of the most up to the second news. It’s an excuse to do laundry. An opportunity to become sickly saturated in the news. Laundry will be aired and hung to dry, accumulating in the gallery space around us. Arguments will be lost and won. Our comforts may be met with discomforts, and vice versa. Our private articles of clothing will be made public, and public news articles will be made personal.
You may also bring clothing that you’d like to get rid of; the artist will be donating it to a local organization in need. Some refreshments/libations will be provided, but you’re encouraged to BYO: laundry, laptop, beverages.
For those who cannot be there in person, a live feed will be streamed, and developing interactions will be encouraged online at manbartlett.com/24hCycle.
Flux Factory artist-in-residence Man Bartlett creates performance-based works that take one task to the extreme for an extended period of time, while encouraging dynamic physical and virtual participation. These performances have taken place in diverse locations, such as a Best Buy, Winkleman Gallery, a former factory building in New Jersey, PPOW Gallery, and the Whitney Museum.
Color Wheelz
Saturday, August 14, 11am – 5pm
Flux Factory, in collaboration with artist Julia Vallera (MFA Parsons), would like to present Long Island City with Julia’s Color Wheelz project. Color Wheelz is designed to transform a 1997 Ford van into a traveling, participatory installation. This van travels through the five boroughs of NYC filled with playful activities, which facilitate exploration into how color relates to community. Visitors at each destination adapt the inside and outside of the van using an array of color-related items. These items include glowing neon wire, cling paper, velcro shapes, magnets and fabric.
The Color Wheelz van will be parked at the John F. Murray Playground on 21 Street between 45 Ave and 45 Road (map) on Saturday August 14th from 11am to 5pm – JOIN US as we visually craft Long Island City!
Room I + Room II
August 27 – September 6
Opening and performances Friday, August 27, 6-9 pm
Flux artists-in-residence Astrid Bussink, Kate Shaw, and Sarah Tosques are collaborating for an end-of-residency exhibition, showing new works including videos, performances, installation, photos and painting.
Room I
Still from The Art of Crocheting, by Astrid Bussink and Sarah Tosques
Astrid Bussink, a Dutch artist and documentary filmmaker, and Sarah Tosques, a visual artist and educator from Montreal, have collaborated to create a video installation and performance called “The Art of Crocheting.” A decade apart in age, they examine shared concerns as artists and individuals, personal pursuits, dreams and their effects. Astrid Bussink will also be presenting part of an on-going project called Constructions of Happiness.
Room II
Kate Shaw is an Australian painter that cheats on the medium with collage. A new series of her layered, brightly colored, marbled landscape paintings will be premiered at Flux Factory! The exhibition contains paintings, artist’s books, and video inspired by a recent road trip through the southwest and looking at how different cultures intervene with and interpret nature. Other work takes inspiration from an man-made mountain built from adobe (hay and mud) illustrating bible stories, rock shops in Utah, and mountains named after Biblical subjects.
Portfolio Launch: 2009 SP Weather Reports
Sunday, August 22, 4pm
The artist-run SP Weather Station, currently based on the roof of Flux Factory, invites you to a release party for its 2009 Weather Report portfolios. Each portfolio in the edition of 30 contains 12 works produced by 12 different artists who were invited to respond to any aspect of one month of SP Weather Station data in any format they desired. Works from the portfolio, including audio, books, drawings, and prints, will be on display in the gallery; the portfolio will also be for sale.
Participating artists include: (January) Mike Estabrook and Vandana Jain; (February) Susan Goethel Campbell; (March) Emily Larned; (April) Luke Strosnider; (May) Andrea Polli; (June) Mark Nystrom; (July) Patricia Zarate; (August) Jane D. Marsching; (September) Stephanie Rothenberg; (October) Graham Parker; (November) Isaac Gertman; (December) Birgit Rathsmann.
SP Weather Station is an interdisciplinary project that collects weather data, hosts a guest lecture series, and organizes weather-related publications, events, and exhibitions.
Flux Factory is an artist-run not-for-profit organization that provides residencies and work spaces for 14 artists and organizes group exhibits in-house and worldwide as an arts collective. The premises include a gallery, a coworking office, a screen printing lab, and a wood shop. It also has a shared kitchen, library, and lots of great people. Residents benefit from an engaged and creative community, studio visits, monthly art salons, and exposure to a large community of creative collaborators who both maintain personal practices and also develop projects together. All residents have a voice in planning programming and sustaining the organization as a whole.
We’re looking for an artist, community member, and friend who enjoys being part of a wonderful and active social milieu, and has a willingness to work collaboratively and/or socially.
Applications are due on August 1st.
All rooms have big windows and range from $550-700 per month plus utilities. Square footages range from 120-207. Residents must find their own funding for their residency.
Ahhhh how things have a way of coming back around on themselves, and how art has a way of blurring the boundaries of itself, life, and entertainment.
Socrates Sculpture Park opened up their 2010 summer film series, Outdoor Cinema, last week with a screening of the “road movie on a river”, Flood Tide directed by Todd Chandler. The movie was a “remix” in the director’s own words, since it was specially adapted to feature a live score by Dark Dark Dark:
Genius! At times their score was seamless, to the point where I was watching a film and the music started to effect me in such a way that I had to remind myself that it was live, and I had to glance over at Dark Dark Dark on the adjacent stage to confirm that indeed they were playing the music I was hearing. And as always, set against the backdrop of Roosevelt Island and the Upper East Side of Manhattan makes any trip to Outdoor Cinema a blast!
And then this really wonderful moment occurred where one of Swoon’s Switchback Sea boats, floating down the Hudson, was projected onto the blow-up screen and reminded me of 2008 September 7th when I took a similar shot of another boat from that same armada floating down the East River, passing via the same park I was now sitting in – watching a filmic representation of that similar moment! Funny how life does that to you, eh?
