The ProjectArt Student Exhibition reception is Saturday, June 9, 2018, between 11am and 2pm. Hope you can come and see the amazing work of my students ages 4-17 from my teaching fellowship at the Peninsula Branch with ProjectArt as this library's Artist-in-Residence. The Queens Public Library Peninsula Branch is located at 92-25 Rockaway Beach Boulevard, Rockaway Beach, NY 11693. Contact: ellie.murphy@me.com for more information.
http://gothamist.com/2015/11/30/gentrifiers_bronx_mural.php
I really like this story about The Bronx today. Read it and have a great December. Check out the original story with more pics.
BY EMMA WHITFORD IN ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT ON NOV 30, 2015 1:32 PM
A new comic book-inspired mural on Walton Avenue in the Bronx depicts native bees driven from their hives by a so-called "crops developer." With an ominous tank of chemicals strapped to his back, nozzle in hand, the villain shouts, "Go my HIPSTER-MITES! Gentrify these honeycombs with your cultural appropriation and privilege!"
The mural, which runs the length of one warehouse's exterior wall, was conceived and executed by cartoon and mural artist Alberto Serrano, a.k.a. Tita Na Rua or "Tito on the Streets." Serrano collaborated with Bronx graffiti artist Alfredo Bennett a.k.a. Royal KingBeeover the course of nine days in mid-November.
Serrano says he was excited to work on the Walton block in Mount Hope—his home before moving to Rio fourteen years ago. "KingBee has been painting murals there for years and it had an impact on how I perceived graffiti art," he told us this afternoon. "When he suggested we do the art on that wall I freaked."
Bennet has been tagging his signature bees in the Bronx for more than two decades. In 2013, he became interested in the depletion in the bee population worldwide, and took on more politicized projects. The fleeing bees in his new mural are a literal depiction of a species in danger, but here they also represent the negative effects of rampant gentrification. "It's a double-edged thing for me," he said.
For Bennett, there's further significance in the wall's proximity to Jerome Avenue. The mural stands just one long block from a section of the Bronx slotted for rezoning as part of Mayor de Blasio's affordable housing plan. The plan has been met with neighborhood opposition from East New York to the Lower East Side, and has also been criticized in the South Bronx, as it would allow for the development of part-luxury, part-affordable high rises.
"The mural's literally in the heart of where the rezoning is going to be happening," Bennett told us. "People who have lived here for over 50 years, mechanics and auto body shops where I take my cars, are all going to be impacted. This is not something that's going to happen overnight, but in the next five years you're going to see that."
Serrano told the Times that two recent events inspired him to paint an anti-gentrification mural in his old neighborhood—an idea he's had brewing for some time.
In late-April an art show at the Old Bronx Courthouse—a building that had stood empty for nearly 40 years—attracted crowds from all over the city, prompting local activists to protest with the chant, "Don't use art to pimp us out.” A party for real estate brokers, intended both to promote the art show and "introduce" brokers to the neighborhood, was canceled in the face of community opposition.
The final straw for Serrano was news of a star-studded Halloween rave in a former piano factory in Port Morris, hosted in part by the developers of two forthcoming luxury towers on the Bronx waterfront. Organized around the theme "Bronx is burning" (an allusion to a tactic used by landlords in the 1970s) the party was decorated with burnt-out, bullet-riddled cars and flaming trash barrels.
Developers Somerset Partners and The Chetrit Group have also banded together to brand Port Morris along the waterfront as the Piano District, a sort of hopeful Williamsburg equivalent. The fear of gentrification and ensuing displacement has been alive in the South Bronx for severalyears, and a 2009 rezoning paved the way for residential, commercial, and green-space development in a formerly industrial area.
Serrano said that some of the change has been positive. "Where the mural is located seems to have taken a turn for the worst," he said. "But in the South Bronx, where I spent my early years playing in the abandoned lots of burnt out buildings, there are now very nice tree-lined streets."
Still, speech bubbles across Serrano's mural call out telltale signs of gentrification, with appropriate comic book excitement. "NO... NOT A WHOLEFOODS!" reads one panel followed by "YES... AND CROCHET STREET ART AS WELL." The latter refers to a wall-length yarn bomb installed, without permission, on a private home in Bushwick this summer. The home happened to be adjacent to the Bushwick Flea, and Flea organizer Rob Abner later justified his decision this way: "What we did with the crochet art, is we covered up nasty graffiti with nice graffiti."
"I have a couple friends who live in Brooklyn, and they've seen the rents go up," Bennet said. "My mother has been living on Burnside Avenue for almost 50 years now, and we see the rent climbing up, too. It's just a matter of time before we have to relocate as well."
Thanks for taking me, Natalie! This show inspired. Here's all about it from the BAM website:
Part of 2015 Next Wave Festival
BAM and Performa present
More up a Tree
By de Serpa Soares, Sussman, and White
On one side of a two-way surveillance mirror, the audience peers in on an experiment: dancer Claudia de Serpa Soares (Sasha Waltz & Guests) and drummer Jim White (Dirty Three) attempting to create something resembling melody using movement, rhythm, and light. Created by de Serpa Soares, White, and artist Eve Sussman (Rufus Corporation) and co-presented by Performa 15, this inventive performance work—in which the fourth wall is just as much a window—heightens the hermetic world of artists and voyeuristic role of audiences as its tandem soloists go roving.
Choreography by Claudia de Serpa Soares
Installation by Eve Sussman
Music by Jim White
With apologies to my son, damn I cannot stop playing this song. I love it so much and it will make you happy and glad to be alive. It's of the type of tune that Terry G. and I used to call "Existential" just kind of about the simple pleasure taken in the continuum of life. Other examples include "Swing" by the B-52's and "Home" by Talking Heads. Do you have any favorite songs of this type? I supposed it would be nice to make a bigger list of them sometime since this is a favorite song-trope of mine.
Because I'm obsessed.
Ball Fringe
Ric Rac
Buttons
Fringe
Stitches
Malcolm "The hole doesn't get eaten."
Solid State
Bayrle Film German
Color Palette
pantyhose stretchy parabola
Two wrongs don't make a R, but maybe 250 might...
TRIM decoration at the margins
an unofficial exploration of illumi decorated edge and the marginal
Big Quilted Bulletin Board w/pins
Make an oversize Preppy Plaid Button wood Purse
Lime GREEN HAIR
Spats & pompoms on shoes
Calico Spats
Indian Drawings of Clothes
See Nari Ward
______________
Lois & Kelly
Make shells 4 Hermit crabs.
Drink Me
Wistful.
Blue Willow
Latice With Nails
POW
WOW
Lobster Porno
"Hat 4 A Secret Icelandic Wedding"
Felt Tongues
... it's got everything you want and too much of it! Perfect.
I just finished the updating my website and to celebrate I offer you Louise Eastman's Potholder, a piece I LOVE! I hope you like the new website. Please let me know your thoughts and tune back in for more updates.
On Monday night I went with Natalie to the first visiting artist lecture of the season at Pratt by Dread Scott. He gave a very inspiring presentation. He perfectly blends humor and spectacle with his politics and committed message.
This lecture series is free and open to the public. I'm definitely going to try and see some of the others.
September 28 - Dread Scott
October 19 - Sara Greenberger Rafferty
October 21 - Zanele Muholi
November 16 - Sam Moyer
December 7 - Paul Ramirez Jonas
January 25 - Nicole Eisenman
February 8 - Duke Riley
March 21 - Pam Lins
April 11 - William Lamson
Mondays, 7:30 PM
Pratt Institute Brooklyn Campus Memorial Hall
Free and open to the public
https://www.pratt.edu/academics/school-of-art/graduate-school-of-art/graduate-fine-arts/vals/
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/sep/29/ta-nehisi-coates-macarthur-fellow-genius-grants
Congratulations! This is actually a really interesting list including: (chronicle.com)
Patrick Awuah, 50, founder and president of Ashesi University College, in Accra, Ghana.
Kartik Chandran, 41, an associate professor of earth and environmental engineering at Columbia University, in New York.
Ta-Nehisi Coates, 39, national correspondent at The Atlantic, in Washington.
Gary Cohen, 59, co-founder and president of Health Care Without Harm, in Reston, Va.
Matthew Desmond, 35, an associate professor of sociology and social studies at Harvard University, in Cambridge, Mass.
William Dichtel, 37, an associate professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Cornell University, in Ithaca, N.Y.
Michelle Dorrance, 36, founder and artistic director of Dorrance Dance/New York, in New York.
Nicole Eisenman, 50, a painter in New York.
LaToya Ruby Frazier, 33, an assistant professor of photography at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, in Chicago.
Ben Lerner, 36, a professor of English at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, in Brooklyn, N.Y.
Mimi Lien, 39, a set designer in New York
Lin-Manuel Miranda, 35, a playwright, composer, and performer in New York.
Dimitri Nakassis, 40, an associate professor of classics at the University of Toronto, in Toronto, Ontario.
John Novembre, 37, an associate professor of human genetics at the University of Chicago, in Chicago.
Christopher Ré, 36, an assistant professor of computer science at Stanford University, in Stanford, Calif.
Marina Rustow, 46, a professor of Near Eastern studies and of history at Princeton University, in Princeton, N.J.
Juan Salgado, 46, president and chief executive of the Instituto del Progreso Latino, in Chicago.
Beth Stevens, 45, an assistant professor of neurology at the F.M. Kirby Neurobiology Center at Boston Children’s Hospital and at Harvard Medical School, in Boston.
Lorenz Studer, 49, director of the Center for Stem-Cell Biology at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, in New York.
Alex Truesdell, 59, executive director and founder of the Adaptive Design Association, in New York.
Basil Twist, 46, puppetry artist and director, in New York.
Ellen Bryant Voigt, 72, a poet in Cabot, Vt.
Heidi Williams, 34, an assistant professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in Cambridge, Mass.
Peidong Yang, 44, a professor of energy and of chemistry at the University of California at Berkeley, in Berkeley, Calif.
Some sculpture for Monday by Ruben Ochoa at Susanne Vielmetter gallery LA. I like this show.
Teal Daylight 68 x 63 2010
VALENTINE
581 Woodward Avenue
Ridgewood NY 11385
718 600 9417
valentineridgewood@gmail.com
Friday-Sunday from 1-6pm and by appointment
This woman. Life goals pretty much unchanged since age 5. Get your toes wet today, people : )
This is happening at Outpost Artists Resources on Oct. 2. "Checkered History: the Grid in Art & Life. With Lala Abaddon, Meg Atkinson, Larry Auerbach, John Avelluto, Stephen Beal, Serra Victoria Bothwell Fels, Michael Caputo, Paul Corio, Caroline Cox, Ryan Dawalt, Lori Ellison, Robert Otto Epstein, Nate Ethier, Ellen Hackl Fagan, Jean Foos, Matt Freedman, Rico Gatson, Lawrence Greenberg, Crystal Gregory, Lisa Hein, Christine Heindl, Dale Henry, Robert Hickman, Brece Honeycutt, Gilbert Hsiao, Robin Kang, Suzanne Keiser, Sabine Laidig, Lindsay Landfried, Eric A. Mack, Doris Marten, Ellie Murphy, Max Neuhaus, Fran O'Neill, Matthew Ostrowski, Rob de Oude, Alex Paik, Bruce Pearson, Ronald Pellegrino, Jerry Pinsler, Cathy Quinlan, Kathryn Refi, Peggy Reynolds, Erin M. Riley, Barbara Rosengarth, Andrew Ross, Etta Sandry, Bob Seng, Filipe de Sousa, Tim Spelios, and Oriane Stender.
Don't you just love the soundtrack to Charlie Chaplin's City Lights? He also wrote this music. Great for a studio day.
Hoping my new website will be live by the autumnal equinox on Wednesday. Anyone else not quite yet ready for fall?