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)