Currently sitting in Foley Square in Lower Manhattan, have been here since 6am assisting Nora Ligorano and Marshall Reese – two Brooklyn-based artists – to realize their public installation, Main Street Meltdown.
Even though the available WiFi is sweet I don’t have much time to write. So I’ll just post some quick images and captions so I can get back to taking more images. I’ll write up a more comprehensive post laters.
around 7am, the tables are setup which will become the plinth for the 1600 lbs. of ice sculpture that will get loaded on top.
Marshall Reese, planning the next move.
Dressing the table.
preparing the ice trays
master ice sculptor Okamoto from Long Island City, preparing the base.
Entire work made from scrap wood – additional hardware used include brad wire nails, angle bracket, screws and finishing washers. Sculpture on top is scrap dowel rod, covered with flock grass and finished with brad wire nails and staples.
scrap wood sculpture #1 – one of many, many to come (yay for working indoors during the winter!)
I’m thinking about donating this to the Flux Factory 2008 Benefit Auction. Look for it there if you’re interested in picking it up. It’s very precarious!
In mid-November I received a postcard in the mail. I immediately recognized it as being from my friend Jason Eisner, for a show that he was telling me about two months back. I opened the envelope only to realize that the opening was the weekend that just passed. I missed receiving the postcard on time because of the way in which our house mail system operates, so I became internally frustrated, because I would have loved to have attended the opening, which was laced with several performances.
But sometimes, things are somehow for the best.
I could not attend the following two weekends (the gallery is only open on Saturday and Sunday) because of Thanksgiving (closed) and prior engagements, so I set aside 2 December, a Sunday, to parade my way to this new-to-me space, the English Kills Art Gallery.
Living in Queens can be frustrating, because Brooklyn is right there – right there! I have to take three trains: the 7 (from 40 St/Lowery St) to the G (transfer at Court Square) to the L (transfer at Metropolitan) to Morgan Avenue, to arrive in Bushwick, an area technically only three neighborhoods away (but by other measurements worlds apart). That’s one train per neighborhood! Meanwhile the next decade-plus will see likely a billion dollars poured into constructing a new subway in Manhattan so that Upper East Side bougies don’t have to walk two blocks west to crowd themselves onto the 4/5/6. But WHATEVER! I exit at Morgan Avenue only to find a map for “Open Spaces“, a one-day event promoting artists and galleries in the Bushwick area – everything would be open! Sweet!
My agenda was set: first to English Kills, then just stroll and look, at my leisure.
Billed a ‘double solo show’, Jason and Brent Owens each got one of the two cavity spaces that constitute the English Kills space. Even before entering though, you knew you would be entering an alternative space, as each artist had made exterior signage (above image) to promote entry. Ahead – Knucklehead Blues!
(install by Brent Owens)
Both artists have similar but separate approaches: each obviously have a fondness for wood, drilling into it, chopping it up, hacking it as it were. Transforming it to their will. Owens additionally relies on a specific vernacular which he imposes into the grain, and one can leap from the language he uses to imagined narratives about his upbringing: LIKE THE PATH BEATEN BY THE SWINGING SACK OF FATHER TIME. One can only guess he’s from the South!
The Taxpayer, by Brent Owens, a homebrew-looking machine with multiple buckets, containers, modified Anheuser-Busch keg, propane tank. Where’s the moonshine bruh?
Eisner activated his space with both static works (as in framed, none pictured here though) and site-specific installation and sculpture. One or two of the works you got the impression were not only built & installed on-site, but perhaps not even conceived of until the artist was present in the space: wood blobs taking over the architecture or wood shoes hanging from conduit, or various carts promoting their… is that a billboard or a landscape?
The main work in the space was a cart, with inoperable wheels and a suggestive tow hitch, its bed stuffed with slats of foamcore to hold stiff what appeared to be a type of billboard structure depicting a rolling, segmented, landscape. An open cavity in the billboard-landscape revealed hidden works and spaces beyond: power towers, forest stubs, and a plastic work. Originally seen as obtrusive, the viewer is meant to penetrate the landscape in order to find these hidden messages and metaphors.
The delight of the day though was the Open Spaces event, and simply having the time to walk around and enjoy viewing random spaces, art and artists in their spaces. Other notable stumbled-upon spaces included Pocket Utopia, where artist Libby Hartle sat in residence, conversing with punters and carving short wood sticks out of re-constituted paper pulp.
All my cynicisms about this area of Brooklyn aside, it is obvious that some fantastic new spaces are cropping up and are being operated by people that obviously have an investment in their work and the artists they support. Our fair city’s first snow of the season fell this morning, but that didn’t stop me from trekking (again, THREE trains!) there to engage the area, and it shouldn’t stop you either! The Arts in Bushwick non-profit have simplified the task with an accessible map of the area’s galleries and studio complexes.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again (and likely again), around these parts inactive blogging is usually a sign of activity, elsewhere.
such has surely been the case these just-over two weeks I have been back since my summer holidays.
my first full 24 hours back home was burdened by a futile attempt to start cleaning our home from a potential (one could say inevitable given the nature of our living setup and lifestyles) bedbug infestation. it appears this past summer that a temporary subletter brought upon us a very permanent problem, something that has recently really been plaguing NYC and tearing homes and living situations apart (NYTimes article from 2005 Nov).
Welcome home!
Additionally, I was burdened both by work and practice: two days later returning to the job to help install and also make work for (see this post) Crater NY.
But the title of this post is not concerned with those politics!
Rather, it’s in reference to the hundred-plus openings from the past week in Chelsea and around the rest of New York City, proving the impossibility of seeing it all, taking it all in (not as if the openings are for the work anyhow). Plus-plus impossible if you are involved with a show yourself, as was the case with Crater NY, and being stuck in your one venue, and away from the mob scene that was likely in Chelsea and other places. Okay so I missed the big night, the 6th, when around 100 exhibitions opened and a couple thousand litres of wine got served, sunk and spewed, so I thought I’d venture out on the 7th after work, and nip in to whatever I saw was open and interesting (going by the crowd there).
So I headed over to Roebling Hall because I like Roebling Hall and think they have consistent shows and they’re not in the thick of Chelsea but off to the side and near that incredible industrial building on 11th Ave (between 26th and 27th, west side of street). it’s been a while but I like to think that I’m walking over there and not over there where everybody else is. Anyhow their opening was a show that sounded interesting but which I really didn’t know what to expect, by David Ersser called Nothing But Heavy Duty (sorry Roebling Hall I have to point to artcal because you use frames in your website, so I can’t link to anything!).
Sure enough, it was interesting:
(Makita? Milwaukee? ain’t no DeWalt that’s for sure!)
(ahh, he’s a quick-release bit kinda guy!)
The approach to the work was a good start, a half-completed stud wall where real screws were needed to hold it all together but included facsimile screw notches of sorts to suggest another anchorage. One wall wasn’t even hung, but merely leaning on the studs. Immediately you knew you would be dealing with something that questioned your sensibilities about ‘what is complete here?’ The room inside the room included power tools like a chopsaw and circular saws, power screwdrivers of various dispositions, makes and models, screw bits, caulking guns, ladders and even the presence of ‘raw wood’ sheets and sawdust suggesting activity but which could have been fabricated itself.
I left rather pleased, but was already mulling over the thought in my head, “What is art supposed to say to me?”
What are artists these days trying to say to the public with their work? What are they trying to accomplish? What is their message? What class do they belong to? etc.
As I walked back towards the throngs of Chelsea that were starting to gather – fashionably late like – I stumbled upon Ersser’s competition: life.
And the difficulty of it.
It was hard to tell what was going on here, and unlike so much art that is what made it interesting. Strange that it was less than a block away from Ersser’s installation, and thinking of Ersser’s show in relation to this space, but here was the real thing: detritus lived, worked and abandoned.
Materials from umbrellas to baby strollers, from luggage cases to Multi-Function Printers, lay strewn about, with several wardrobes thrown around for good measure. Where did all of this stuff come from, and who left it all here? The fence was bent, there was an entryway, someone wanted to get in and out of here. When it wasn’t a parking lot that is, this plot of asphalt that has no doubt seen its real estate value increase ten-fold over the past couple decades.
As I turned to continue walking it was a simple blip. Having just taken in Ersser’s show, and then contemplating that abandoned plot, I simply felt I didn’t need to see anything else, one opening was plenty.
Several of my friends have cringed from thinking about how to take in as many openings as possible, how to schmooze the scene and be in too many places at one time. But me, I’m a little pessimistic this time around. I’m burdened by real troubles to the point that I’m not so certain what it’s all for anymore. My only comfort was the thought of going home and making some art.
the next few weeks are a unique situation for me. For the first time ever I have been requested to be a participating artist in an exhibition at the same gallery I am employed at. Fun.
Since returning from abroad I have hit the ground running, the problem is one finds oneself running in opposite directions! On the one hand I need extra hours for the money because, well, I have none. On the other hand I need to make the best work possible for the exhibition because, that’s my practice! As an artist I need studio time to develop my work but as an employee I’m expected to fulfill certain tasks. I handle all the installations at Location One, so that gives me a unique perspective; indeed, one variable of my work has changed just from the process of assisting with the installation, when the artists who schemed up this show mentioned possibly employing certain colour preferences, that set off a spark in my mind. Not sure if that would have happened if I was simply holed up in my studio (which reminds me of the importance of dialogue, discussion and interaction with people as an important process of one’s artistic practice – so simple but so crucial).
I’m in tune with this exhibition, because Crater NY as it’s called, isn’t simply a static visual exploration of the surface of the moon. It’s a lunar drawing contest in which the audience will actually create the show. A handful of artists have been asked to create objects or works for installing on the surface of the moon, restricting themselves to a loose scale. The works will be installed by Ligarano & Reese. But the public are being asked to attend the show and take up either pencil or digital tablet and draw what they see, to interpret this orbiting celestial body, seen right there on the gallery floor! They can focus in on an artist’s work or neglect them completely and concentrate on the surface texture instead; it is their choice really. Their drawings or digital renditions will be displayed on the gallery walls. To conclude the exhibition, after three weeks there will be a judging session in which a panel of judges review all the submitted works and decide a winner. And here’s the punchline.
The winner of the contest will receive a free acre of land on the moon! And the real estate is located inside the Sea of Tranquility, which is truly prized land!
As such, it is not important to me that people attend the opening, because this isn’t a show about the opening. It’s a show about the process and the course of time, and we are requesting people attend to draw, not to view.
You can pop in to see if drawing sessions are available, or call (212.334.3347) or email (info [at] location1 [dot] org) to register for an available timeslot.
I’m not going to tell you what my work is just yet! You’ll have to show up and draw it to find out!
