“I think a lot,” laughed the artist Itziar Barrio, stationed at the desk in her fifth floor studio at CSV (Clemente Soto Velez) on Suffolk Street in Manhattan. “That’s my job!” We were discussing her past eight years working as a full time artist – six of them in New York …
May 16, 2013 Classic, Featured Artists, Film
The FAILE tower has been assembled under the forty-foot tall ceiling of this luscious alter to New York’s cultural dominance.
February 13, 2013 Art Reviews, Boroughing, Classic, Multi/Media, New, Photo
I spent the majority of my evening last Monday surveying the crowd at Lincoln Center’s preview of Les Ballets de FAILE for anyone who looked like a possible graffiti artist.
February 13, 2013 Art Reviews, Boroughing, Classic, Multi/Media, Photo
Local photographer and artist Ryan James MacFarland is preparing for his next show, but was among the first to attend the Shandaken Project residency in upstate New York aimed at creating “a space where experimentation, process, and research are privileged as ends in and of themselves.”
January 10, 2013 Boroughing, Featured Artists, Multi/Media, Photo
These are the real local natives.
December 12, 2012 Boroughing, Classic, Featured Artists, New, Night/Life, Photo
Ultra Violet and Taylor Mead were in Andy Warhol’s inner circle and speak about him in a new documentary Full Circle: Before They Were Famous, screening at at Site/109 in Manhattan.
May 11, 2012 Boroughing, Classic, Featured Artists, Multi/Media, Video
At the new gallery Site/109 on Norfolk Street recently, the photographer William John Kennedy and his lovely wife Marie, now advanced in age, walked me through an extraordinary collection of Mr. Kennedy’s prints on view for the exhibit Before They Were Famous: Behind The Lens of William John Kennedy running through May 29. They were telling me the story of how they met and came to photograph Andy Warhol and Robert Indiana as emerging American artists.
May 5, 2012 Boroughing, Classic, Featured Artists, Multi/Media, Photo
What more can we ask for but a good old fashion examination of SEX DUIS and VIDEOTAPE? That’s what Site/109 must have thought when they booked this show, running through Sunday, in their newly anointed LES space. Dumbo-based curator Claire Breukel was on hand at the opening reception to give me a short tour of the deceptively spacious pop up space run by social media and publicity mavens Meryl Weinsaft Cooper and Helen Allen.
March 9, 2012 Boroughing, Classic, Featured Artists, Multi/Media, Video
It seems the local DIY culture is starting to get noticed by the big leagues for its capital power. NYC life gets next to Etsy in a new series.
February 27, 2012 Featured Artists, Multi/Media, The People, Video
We first introduced you to Iztiar Barrio in December 2009 when she placed a billboard atop a building at the corner of Fulton and Nostrand in Bed-Stuy proclaiming it the new paradise. On Friday September 30, Ms. Barrio will take on another public art project called The Blue Wall Project, this time tapping into the impermanence of the city in – where else? – Williamsburg.
September 22, 2011 Art n' About, Boroughing, Film, Multi/Media, Photo
Casey Scieszka and Steven Weinberg were strangers when they met in Morocco as exchange students in 2004. Now, Casey, a writer and native Brooklynite, and Steven, an artist, originally from Maryland, both 27, are Park Slopers–they are enjoying the fruits of their unexpected life path. So what happened between then and now?
May 10, 2011 Boroughing, Classic, Featured Artists, The Art
“The word ‘Aitai’ means I want to see you or I want to meet you or I miss you. It phonetically sounds the same sounds as ‘I Tie’," New York-based Japanese visual artist Tomoe Tsutsumi explained to me recently. Tsutsumi was a 2010 artist in residence at Skowhegan School of …
March 25, 2011 Art n' About, Boroughing, The Art
A certain magic whirled around a particularly windy night in Bushwick recently as winter pushed its way into spring, if only briefly. Along with a mix of sidewalk debris, groups of people hovered near featured galleries, marking their otherwise undetectable entrance ways. The light of the full moon was a nice extra as I made my way to view the participating galleries in Bushwick’s Beat Nite.
February 24, 2011 Art n' About, Boroughing, Night/Life
LaunchPad is an arts-based community center in Crown Heights. Started by Mike Kunitzky last winter, the space transforms depending on what neighborhood groups want to use it for. “I wanted a place where people could exchange ideas and make things happen,” says Kunitzky, a constantly smiling 35-year-old. “There’s potential for magic in those unexpected talents and interactions.”
December 17, 2010 Art n' About, Boroughing, Culture, Multi/Media, Photo, The People
For the last nine years, artist Trevor Wentworth has made work at studios in Bushwick, Williamsburg, and most recently Carroll Gardens. His third floor studio on Bergen Street is eight feet wide and twelve feet long, just enough room for the bare essentials. It’s here that Wentworth creates his bracingly complex paper sculptures and miniature tabletop installations, which form at the intersection of the physical and metaphorical definitions of the lens.
December 13, 2010 Boroughing, Classic, Featured Artists
Last Thursday night at least one gallery was experiencing some post-tryptophan bliss. At 111 Front Street, A.I.R. Gallery boasted three simultaneous openings.
December 7, 2010 Art Reviews, Boroughing, Classic
Ever fantasize about a baby-headed Karl Rove cuddling a duchess Ronald Reagan or perhaps a handsome Jesus-Reagan cradling a little Glenn Beck lamb? Greenpoint artist, Michael Caines has dedicated the past year to doing just that.
December 7, 2010 Boroughing, Classic, Featured Artists
If you remember the good old days of Manhattan Neighborhood Network’s (MNN) public access television extravaganza, then you might remember seeing one Diane Dwyer, DIY circus performer and local artist, whose 1994 lo-fi video production of her very own circus hit the airwaves before YouTube was even a twinkle in our eyes. These days her program, Diane’s Circus, is on it’s way to making a comeback – digitally.
November 19, 2010 Boroughing, Classic, Featured Artists, Theater
Last month the Art Lot in Red Hook opened its most recent show, Media Mix x 4. The collaborative amalgam of painting, architecture, photography and textile includes work by local artists Cynthia Lawson Jaramillo, Babs Reingold, John Roach and Mary Schiliro. “The emphasis is not on selling,” curator Jim Osman tells us.
October 7, 2010 Classic, Featured Artists, Shared Content, The Art
The weather is getting cooler, but urban planner, visual artist and recent Brooklyn The Borough profile subject Alex White Mazzarella and his team of artists will soon head to warmer pastures. The clan will fully immerse themselves in Dharavi, a slum in Mumbai, India, this winter to document and manifest their experiences as they engage the city through art and film. In this international-meets-hyperlocal update, Mr. Mazzarella tells us about his plans for Mumbai and beyond.
September 13, 2010 Featured Artists, Film
Welcome to the new home of Brooklyn Collective, an artisan gallery and boutique in the Columbia Street Waterfront District that exhibits and sells handcrafted jewelry, clothing, art, and housewares. For the first time since its inception six years ago, the Collective has a space all its own.
August 18, 2010 Art n' About, Classic, Fashion
Todd Shalom wants you to walk down Carroll Street with your eyes closed. He wants you to write poems in the sand at Brighton Beach. He wants to stroll across the Brooklyn Bridge with you, marveling at the worn planks and angled wires. He wants you to experience this great city in a whole new way. Living in New York City, it’s easy to take our everyday surroundings — the size of a city block, the copious amounts of public art, the glean of the skyscrapers — for granted, which is why Shalom, a Brooklyn artist, founded Elastic City.
August 11, 2010 Art n' About, Classic
For decades, artist registries (think a library containing only encyclopedias filled with slides of artwork) have existed as neutral playing fields where artists can catalog and display their work for curators and gallerists. Now, slide registries are quickly vanishing and sleek, easy-to-use digital databases are becoming the norm, with emerging artists reaping the benefits.
July 30, 2010 Art n' About, Classic, The Art
A lot has gone down on the boardwalk in Coney Island, that’s for sure, but how about a woman painting circles with her wheelchair or a guy diving onto a slip-n-slide full of paint? This past weekend those were just two of the unique ways Brooklynites helped create ten large scale abstract paintings as part of an interactive performance art event featuring local artist Paul Campbell and his counterpart from Singapore, artist Shih Yun Yeo.
July 21, 2010 Art n' About, Classic, Photo
“Generative” is difficult to define. A collaboration between artist Alex Dodge and Brooklyn based tech start-up Generative, the series of concept prototypes shown in the gallery seriously blur the boundaries between art, design, and technology.
June 23, 2010 Art n' About, Classic
Brooklyn’s atmosphere constantly inspires artist Alex White Mazzarella. “The people here, the mixing of cultures here, and the energy that exists here are much deeper inspirations than the physical coolness of other cities I’ve been to,” he says.
June 23, 2010 Classic, Featured Artists
Kyoung Eun Kang’s Happy Birthday is a stunning, disturbing piece, a reflection upon the messiness of birth and life and runs through June 13, 2010 at A.M. Richard Fine Art, in Williamsburg.
May 20, 2010 Art n' About, Classic, Multi/Media, Photo, The ArtBrooklynTheBorough.com stopped into the BKLYN Designs in Dumbo over the weekend to check out some of our borough’s most forward thinking design companies.
May 11, 2010 Art n' About, Classic, The Art
A few weeks ago BrooklynTheBorough.com began its search for a new logo to grace its pages and we were lucky enough to find just the right fit with a design by Christopher Swift.
May 7, 2010 Featured Artists, Multi/Media, Photo, The Art
Rumor has it that the main reason for President Obama’s trip to New York this morning was not to discuss financial regulatory reform, but rather to see the new Shepard Fairey wall on Houston Street, a few short blocks south of Cooper Union where he spoke. This Sunday April 24, 7-9:30pm, Mr. Fairey’s work will also hang on the walls of Factory Fresh Gallery in Bushwick for the Street Art New York Silent Auction to end all auctions, raising cash for Free Arts NYC.
April 22, 2010 Art n' About, Multi/Media, Photo, The Art
The media you see here is free, both in the sense that you are not paying for it, but also in that it serves as a place to exchange free speech. This speech is not mediated by corporate sponsors. If you find it compelling, please support this project as we build new media for free culture in Brooklyn.
As little as $5 goes a long way as we build our new infrastructure without venture capitalists, grants, traditional media or sponsorships. This project is totally DIY and donations are tax-deductible.
