Category: Art n’ About

Public Art Project Looks at Impermanent Life in the City

By Nicole Brydson

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.

I Tie, Aitai: Tomoe Tsutsumi Reaches Out to Japan

By Angela Basile

“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 …

Full Moon Brightens Bushwick’s Beat Nite

By Angela Basile

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.

Thriving Crown Heights Community Hub ‘LaunchPad’ Introduces Neighbors

By Jessica Dailey

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.”

Artisan Boutique Brooklyn Collective Finds There’s No Place Like Home

By Jessica Dailey

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.

Elastic City Art Walks Unveil A Multi-Sensory City Landscape

By Jessica Dailey

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.

Art World Networking in the Digital Age

By Jessica Dailey

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.

Painting Like Pollock on the Coney Island Boardwalk

By Jessica Dailey

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.

‘Generative’ Blends Art, Design, and Technology

By Suzanne Stroebe

“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.

Williamsburg Gallery Exhibits A Candy Coated Metamorphosis

By Suzanne Stroebe

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.

BKLYN Designs Weekend Is Christmas for Creatives

By Nicole Brydson

BrooklynTheBorough.com stopped into the BKLYN Designs in Dumbo over the weekend to check out some of our borough’s most forward thinking design companies.

Slideshow! Street Art New York

By Nicole Brydson

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.

BAM’s Next Wave Art Showcases Artists Across Disciplines

By Lauren Raheja

Open through December 20, BAM’s Next Wave Art, the visual component of the Next Wave Festival showcases works across disciplines. The festival’s featured art includes a video installation, sculpture, graphite drawings, and oil paintings in the lobby of the Howard Gilman Opera House and the adjoining Leonard Natman Room, but the exhibition also spills over into the BAMcafé, the BAMcafé Gallery, and the BAM Harvey Theater.

Utopia and Distopia Emerge at the Bushwick Biennial

By Nicole Brydson

The Bushwick Biennial opened last week and we caught up with NurtureArt gallery director and curator, Ben Evans, to ask him about the show, emerging artists, and the art scene in Brooklyn.

New York Magazine’s Jody Quon Opens Exhibit At Photo Fest

By Nicole Brydson

“The title of the show comes from [the movie] Juno,” said New York Magazine Photo Editor Jody Quon, standing in the middle of St. Ann’s Warehouse in Dumbo on Wednesday night. The opening night of the New York Photo Festival was already underway.

“It’s that moment when [Ellen Page’s character] tells her father that she’s pregnant and he says, ‘I thought you were the kind of girl who knew when to say when,’ and that’s when she says, ‘I don’t really know what type of girl I am.’ So that’s the whole loop.”

Will Proximity To ‘Art’ Still Sell Condos?

By Nicole Brydson

Like the weather on a recent Thursday, the building at 542 St. Mark’s Avenue in Crown Heights couldn’t decide whether to be one thing or another.

D’Oh! ‘Vandals’ Make Art Again

By Nicole Brydson

The state has apparently removed part of a fantastical piece of work by design company Exhibitology in Dumbo.

At New Dumbo Gallery, Cops Critique Recession-Proof Art

By Nicole Brydson

“We’re just going to do it,” said Kris Graves, sitting on an ottoman in the center of Kris Graves Projects, his new eponymous Dumbo gallery. “Fuck it.”

It was a recent Sunday afternoon and Mr. Graves, 26, was explaining the sentiment he felt when he and his cousin Gravelle Pierre, 29, decided to open the gallery. It’s a sentiment that seems to have pervaded Brooklyn’s creative class as of late.

Auction This! Art Seeks Dollars for More Art

By Nicole Brydson

Just because the gross domestic product shrank at a rate of 6.1 percent recently, doesn’t mean you can’t still invest in something good. As the economy tanks, there is no shortage of auctions kicking up dollars for the arts in Brooklyn.

Trust… Art?

By Nicole Brydson

Apparently the only trustworthy investment left in New York these days is art. Or so say the folks behind, who are encouraging you to use your cold hard cash and social network to raise awareness and money for public art projects – a few of which will originate in Brooklyn.
Trust Art works like this. Ten artists have envisioned social art projects, which you, the money bags, can invest in. Once the projects are completed they will be auctioned off and the proceeds will be split between the artist and each project’s shareholders. They call it a “stock market for cultural renewal.”

The Art of Brooklyn

By Nicole Brydson

What do Jasper Johns, Cindy Sherman, Annie Leibovitz and Keith Haring all have in common? Each artist has work up for sale at the 4th Annual Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM to us locals) Silent Auction.