juxtaposition

Wonderful new exhibit at the Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art titled "Iced".
I know not many people would get excited by such a thing, but my heart was beating fast when I saw the Elisa Lendvay "Umbra Mound" and then close by Matt Frieburghaus had a video that worked so good with her sculpture. Those recycled umbrella art pieces impress me anyway. I'll never forget the work of umbrella fabric sewn together like lace in the trees at the Socrates Sculpture Park in Long Island city last year, though don't know the name of the artist who created it. Same thing at Iced, the artists are a secret- no name signage. I had to go on a hunt for the gallery list and was lucky to snag the last one.

Iced through Sept. 4
Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art
1000 Richmond Terrace, SI, NY

Lists

Despite that some people find it repellent I sometimes (often) pick up things off the ground and pocket them. The children across the street recently were aghast (or jealous?) when they saw me going through the garbage that had spilled from the can and collecting doll shoes, a hello kitty pez dispenser and a toy "Wild Rose Princess" cell phone (that still works). My favorite things to find are small toys, pieces of metal and paper with writing or drawing on it. I have found several lists on the ground- grocery and to do lists. They are charming self portraits.

Some of my collection came into use a few months ago when I received Matt Taggerts "String Theory" performance fluxkit, which is a kit of string and label that he asks you to combine with things you have found and then send him a photo which he enters onto his blog. I decided to use the hands and arms that I had collected and strung them incrementally by size.

After viewing "Lists: To-dos, Illustrated Inventories, Collected Thoughts, and Other Artists' Enumerations from the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art"  at the Morgan Library & Museum, I realize I created a 3d list.

The lists in the Morgan Library exhibit, of course by know people, are collections of thoughts- the usual-  things bought, thing to be sold, but also a beautiful list that was a love letter by Eero Saarinen and Ray Johnson's "people who have posed for silhouettes". Philip Evergood made lists by taping new paper notes onto the bottom of the previous notes, creating visually exquisite accumulation pieces.

I had not been to the Morgan Library & Museum for a really long time. There has been a renovation, the exhibit space is wonderful. And my visit allowed me to cross off something from my list- "museums to get to" as there are a number of good shows up right now.

Norman Pate at SHOW Gallery

 So glad I saw the Norman Pate artwork at Show Gallery. Part of the Art By The Ferry weekend, it glowed among the other predictable exhibits. Show Gallery did a great job of installing the work with a wall of collage on wood and wood piece assemblages and a wall of paper works. Since Pate's death there have been so many shows and sales of his tremendous volume of work, it is hard to believe that at this point there are still gems available for sale. Having already collected many of Pate's works through the years I vowed not to purchase any here, but was sorely tempted, especially by this beautiful collage on wood. The color is exquisite.

Show Gallery
156 Stuyvesant St.
Staten Island, NY

Kate Ganina

The painting I purshased from Kate Ganina
who was selling her work (paintings and puppets)
in the Alice Austen House yard today.

Artist Registries

I just stumbled onto the COAHSI artist registry.

 I remember mumblings at some point that this was happening, but never a followup that it was in place. I know alot of artists who are not listed and should be. Get your info out there. Below I also listed a few other NY registeries.

 http://www.statenislandarts.org/artist-registry

http://registry.whitecolumns.org

http://www.drawingcenter.org/viewingprogram















Photo of the remains of "Crystal" Dominic Cloutier's
installation from "Glow" St. George Ball at the S.I. Museum

1001 chairs for Weiwei

 My first expectation of the reenactment of Ai Weiwei’s project Fairytale: 1001 Qing Dynasty Wooden Chairs (call-to-action-1001-chairs-for-ai-weiwei) was that there would be rows of people neatly lined up in a solemn spectacle. I arrived at the scene to find something more like an opening in a gallery with no walls. A bunch of people mingling, many well know artists and critics, some seated, some with signage, next to a group of chanting Chinese activist.

Eventually someone organized the group for a photo op. All people with chairs were requested to line up in rows. And almost as many photographers started snapping. Then it was requested that since the piece was about empty chairs that we leave our chairs and move to the side for that image to be captured. So while not exactly to my original idea, the arts community did end up with an esoteric protest image.

see also- http://bambuser.com/v/1586643

Over the past eight weeks, more than 100 activists in China have disappeared, been detained, or are confined to their homes, including Weiwei's lawyer.  Today's protest was enacted internationally.

S.I. Museum in the NY Times

Staten Island Museum Breaks Ground on New Home
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/22/staten-island-museum-to-break-ground-on-new-home

Staring at that image in the NY Times that accompanies the article about the Snug Harbor building renovation.

They managed to get in a bunch of demographics- hipster, old couple, mother and child, tourist.

The grass is green but the trees look more winter time.

And the exhibit banner is for the "Lost Bird Project".

Somewhere else I read that the Mastodon will appear to be breaking through the wall into the gallery space. Interesting visual impact.

Equinox Egg Standing

A bit of Donna Henes "CELESTIALLY AUSPICIOUS" ceremony this evening on Staten Island, as I balanced an egg on it's end at the time of the equinox.

For 18 years, thousands of people participated in Henes annual egg stand ceremonies on the black marble fountain in the plaza of the World Trade Center's Twin Towers. I dragged myself out of bed one year and looking back I think about how amazing Henes was to get a bunch of us out of bed so early to stand around in the dark cold morning to look at eggs!

Henes still produces the ceremony in NYC, today it was performed in Brooklyn at Grand Army Plaza, at 7:21pm.

She says "In order to be real, a ritual has to be really done: actually, physically performed by each participant in a personally relevant way."

Not able to join the ceremony in Brooklyn I took the advice that Henes gives on her blog- "Stand an egg wherever you are."

Staten Island Mapmakers

When Debbie Davis map was first published i spent a long time pouring over it, discovering places I didn't know about and places I knew, but never considered their toxicity.

http://www.toxictrailmap.com/

http://photos.silive.com/advance/2011/03/toxic_trail_map.html

Many years ago a car service driver told me a story as we drove through Mariners Harbor of secret dumping of nuclear waste, which I laughed off as an urban myth. Maybe he was right.

Staten Island has several map makers that I know of, maybe there are more too.

Robin Locke Monda has made Staten Island maps full of personality, defining ethnic areas on the island.

Robert McMurray's remind me of to do lists, with annotations and reminders.

Nancy Bonior plays with our abstract man made boundary lines.

Different approaches to get us all to a similar place- defining our place in the world.

Schools on Staten Island dead last funding art classes

Clay masks created by PS 18 students 2001

article in the Staten Island Advance
Schools on Staten Island dead last funding art classes
Published: Sunday, February 27, 2011
By Amy Padnani

I haven't been involved in education for awhile, but as much as I've heard NYC schools in certain neighborhoods have long had a dearth of art education. I taught at S.I. PS 18 in 2001 for the Studio in a School program one day a week and it was the only art education in the school. At the same time my son went to PS3 in the West Village of Manhattan where there was a full time staff art teacher and additionally the parents pooled money to hire ceramics and music teachers. Different priorities for divergent communities.

As an attendee and presenter of arts programming on Staten Island it would be great if more of the non-arts community had an appreciation for what is offered here. It seems most often at events the art community is just working and reaping the benefits for itself. Is that the result of the Staten Island public not getting enough exposure to the arts as youth or just laziness?

The article mentions that some cultural community leaders are now creating the SI Teaching Artist Institute. It doesn't tell you that the artists have to pay to attend. I felt bad for the artists attending this training since Studio in a School pays the artist for their training. And training the artists isn't going to solve the inadequate amount of arts education, parents and school leaders need to fight for curriculum improvement.

Fluxfest buttons by Picasso Gaglione

Fluxus art on SI, in 1967 and 2011

The Day de Dada art nurses had a great weekend at Fluxfest Chicago. Our performance went well and was appreciated by the audience. We met a lot of wonderful Fluxus artists and saw a lot of other interesting work too. We were excited that Yoko Ono liked what we were doing and added it to her web site.
http://imaginepeace.com/archives/13922

I learned that in 1967 Charlotte Moorman organized the "5th Annual Avant Garde Festival" on the Staten Island ferryboat- John F. Kennedy with approximately a hundred artists' kinetic-light artworks, sculptures, videotape recorder compositions, environments, and computer compositions as well as jazz, poetry, electronic music, Happenings, chamber music, and dance. It was a 24-hour event and participants included Christo, Al Hansen, Geoffrey & Bici Hendricks, Ray Johnson, Moorman, Nam June Paik, Sun Ra, Carolee Schneemann, and Bob Watts. Ken Dewey got the fire-department boats which shoot huge streams of water, to shoot their water over the harbor. The festival began with that piece and a piece by Allan Kaprow in which all the cars on the ferry and various people with foghorns blew their horns in unison.

Moorman estimated that forty thousand people came to see the festival in a
twenty- four-hour period, and said "When we finished, Staten Island wasn't any the worse for it." Wonder if any Staten Islander who were around then remember it?

And so April 11 - 16 is Fluxfest NYC and Saturday April 16 the Fluxus artist will once again venture onto the ferry and this time into Staten Island. What will happen that day?

Art Nurses checking the pulse from SI to Manhattan

Escaping a cold, quiet Staten Island, Day de Dada art nurses proceeded to Manhattan at the invitation to be part of the PVE- Performance Video Event. While they had offered their check ups, lollipops and stickers to a few skeptical Staten Island groups the same evening, members of PVE crowd were enthusiastic at the chance to see their creative pulse. Nurse Mary handed out the intake forms to be filled out- "how does creativity effect your body?" and "scars caused by art", and then rewarded the patients when forms were submitted. Art Nurse Viv tweeted the responses (http://twitter.com/#!/DaydeDada) and it was projected live for the audience to see the collective art pulse, a mixture of physical and emotional pain, mixed with some satisfied creatives.

The program notes for PVE stated it as a dynamic multidisciplinary evening of experimental video, performance art and conceptual music showcasing ground breaking artists. There were several unique pieces, one of the best- Daniel Phiffer- (http://phiffer.org) photographing the scene with no memory card in the camera so the image only lasts until the next picture is taken. There is no eternity for the image, except the grainy second generation iphone image from  a viewer...


PVE- New Media Caucus Event
February 12, 2011
University of the Streets
130 East 7th Street, NY

The New Media Caucus (NMC) is a non-profit, international membership organization that advances the conceptual and artistic use of digital media. The NMC represents artists whose media are expanding with developments in digital technology, and artists working in newly emerging media such as robotics, virtual reality, interactive and installation environments as well as artists working in established digital areas of video, sound and graphics. (During the College Art Association Conference)

“3D SI”

Tom Ronse http://tomasronse.wordpress.com has always been a favorite of mine. Look at what he does, found objects, great compositions, interesting installations. These pieces didn't have the humor that I enjoyed in past work, there is a more serious determination here. We all agreed the room had a surrealistic feeling and Denise Mumm commented on the fact that when Ed Davin stood behind the one piece he became part of it, so I photographed Denise in that way. It does have a Magritte like feeling.

At the end of the opening when the space cleared out it appeared- the precious piece. It was right next to the door!  I had walked by it a few times, but of course could not see it until there was quiet. A quiet bell.

“3D SI”
New work by 8 Staten Island Sculptors
Pat DeCicco, Steve Foust, Joyce Goldstein, Susan Grabel, Ann Marie McDonnell, Janice Patrignani, Tomas Ronse, Linda Wasylewski

February 5 - 27, 2011
ART at Bay, 70 Bay St. S.I.,N.Y 10301
Hours: Saturdays and Sundays in February noon – 6 pm

Inside My Brain

marycampbell.net