Thursday, August 28, 2008

Swimming Cities of Switchback Sea





It was a beautiful day to drive up the Hudson. First stop, Kingston, to resupply with clay and glaze materials from Bailey Pottery. Then up to Saugerties for an obligatory visit to Krause's Chocolates. FInally, back down and over the glorious Kingston-Rhinebeck Bridge to continue southward on the NY side, to Croton-On-Hudson, where I was able to catch the swoon/Lisa D'Amour collaborative art-environment and play. The atmosphere was fun and laid-back, the music and the theater piece terrific, and the vessels themselves an enthralling collage of salvaged and arty materials. Impossible not to love the idea and appreciate the work that went into making it. I especially enjoyed the recurrence of snippets of block-printed imagery that I had seen elsewhere as part of the swoon oeuvre. I was surprised, a bit, by what seemed a more meager turnout than I would have expected for this. In Saugerties, one of the chocolate shop kids had heard of their performance there the week prior, but didn't see it, and the coffeeshop guy was unaware of it. My feeling is that when they get to Long Island City for their Deitch Gallery- sponsored docking and performances ( sept 10-12 ) it will be much more of a hipster/artworld happening. There has just been a last-minute addition to their schedule: Sept. 2nd at Riverside Park. Shows start at about 8 pm.

Sunday, August 10, 2008

Friday, August 1, 2008

"Paper City" @ Mixed Greens




This group show of a dozen artists focuses on paper-made objects. The 2 images above are by Mia Pearlman: an atmospheric swirling cocoon that catches the light and throws shadows in a nice way. The 2 lower images, by Andrew Scott Ross are details from an impressive and amusing floor installation of extremely intricately cut and propped up gray cardstock that pushes the positive-negative of cut paper pretty far. The overall diorama-style piece is reminiscent of the presentations in those TimeLife books about the Dawn of Man showing mastodons, neanderthals cowering in caves, discovery of fire, unclothed hominids running from sabertoothed tigers (good lluck!), etc. I have to say, I got a real kick out of this piece, and its wonderful economy of means. Most impressive of all was a video work that I couldn't photograph to show you. It is Metropolis, by Rob Carter, and chronicles a sort of urban history of Charlotte, N.C. The way the images segue into one another and the phenomenal noise-track really blew me away. This show ends August 15. Mixed Greens is at: 531 W.26 St.