Dans cette série “Blizzard”, le photographe Navid Baraty a voulu immortaliser la tempête qui s’est abattue sur Brooklyn et ses conséquences. Principalement prises à Park Slope, les clichés de l’artiste new-yorkais sont impressionnantes. Des visuels à découvrir dans la suite de l’article.
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How one global art community is connecting through sketchbooks
Five years ago, Shane Zucker and Steven Peterman, fed up with the challenge of making a living as artists, founded Art House as a student project. Now, the active online community has over 50,000 users and an art library that is traveling the United States.
Art House’s beginnings go back to Atlanta College of Art (SCAD since bought it), where Shane was studying graphic design and Steven, printmaking. Seeing their friends daunted by the task of getting into galleries as a daunting task, the two rented a space and held their own pay-to-play exhibit, charging artists enough to show so that it covered their overhead.
Shane’s father mentioned sketchbooks—what if people from all over the world paid to submit sketchbooks to be displayed? Between April and November of 2010, 28,000 people signed up to be a part of the Sketchbook Project and 10,000 of the sketchbooks sent out to people in 94 countries were sent back. The collection is now touring nine U.S.cities and you can even get a library card to check them out.
Shane sat down with me and a new member of the Art House team, Eli Dvorkin, recently to explain the power of community.
Eli: We’re not telling anyone that they are going to suddenly become famous through this. Also, we don’t sell any of the work. There’s no financial benefit to anyone here. If you think about the resources that go into this tour and having a permanent space in Brooklyn, it adds up to a lot of money and time. As five people or even 100 of your closest friends, you could never do this, but when 10,000 people come together, you can actually do it.
Shane: For a lot of galleries, art is a means of commerce. They make money. That’s just not us.
S: Serious artists. Scrapbookers. Moms. There’s a huge range of people who do the Sketchbook Project. There are teachers that have their students do it and then there are senior citizens who are just bored.
E: People have written exactly that to us. People say, “This is essentially my one outlet a year for my artistic impulses.” Overtime they sit down with the sketchbook and it’s with them for a good chunk of the year. We get little life stories. Like 10,000 lives on shelves. Only a small subsection is any formal study. It’s cathartic.
S: Steve came up with most of the themes. My favorite is “Science Project Gone Wrong.”
E: I think I’d have to go with “Mystery Maps” even though I devised it. The themes are not rules, but it’s interesting to see how a teenager in Singapore and a senior in Canada interpret “Science Project Gone Wrong.”
E: We’re starting to collect a lot more information about the participants. When you check out a sketchbook, the artist has the option to be notified by SMS and eventually you’ll be able to get in touch through our website.
S: We’re going to relaunch the site and will be scanning most of the sketchbooks so that people can start tagging individual pages of books. You”ll be able to search “Photography” and “China” and find results. But what’s really cool is that we don’t have to do that, because the community is dying to get involved.
E: Shane, you better not!
S: No, this has been pretty full time. I haven’t even made a sketchbook. Steve started one, but I don’t know if he finished it.
E: We have a lot going on at Art House though. Soon we’ll be launching our own notebook collection. The names will co-ordinate to the sizes, like “Back Pocket,” “Messenger Bag,” etc.
S: And of course there’s the tour and soon we’ll start sending out the 2011 sketchbooks to participants!
The 2010 Sketchbook Project began in April, so stay tuned for this year’s launch. Also, to see the library in person, check out the 17,900-mile tour or the permanent location in Brooklyn.
Photography by Aaron Kohn
Brooklyn-based chefs revive hard candy with secret ingredients and throwback packaging
Like millions of good ideas, Brooklyn Hard Candy was dreamed up over several drinks one night. But unlike most booze-fueled enterprises, this one has more than enough cred to back it up. The joint product of Le Cordon Bleu grads Danny Mowles (also the executive chef at NYC’s The Roger Smith Hotel) and Nathan Panum, the pair set out to create something distinctly Brooklyn and unmistakably “hard.”
“We saw everything moving towards local,” Mowles explained when I recently spent the afternoon with him in Brooklyn. “We knew we wanted to do something sweet, but everyone was doing chocolate. After that it was just finding the right type of sweet that we could make our own.”
Standout flavors include Wild Strawberry and Green Apple (I liked Tangerine and Blueberry too), but all seven have their own secret flavor ingredient, lending a subtly delicious aftertaste.
The cooking process follows standard candy-making procedure (cooking the sugar to a “hard crack” before adding citric acid and flavor), but the candy’s shape is the result of a custom-made cutting machine. Sourcing all of their Ingredients from the U.S., Mowles comments, “One of the things we’re most proud of is being a handcrafted American company.”
To attract customers, balancing the look of the packaging with their values was just as important to the candymakers as making tasty treats. “People keep asking if we can do organic candy, and that kind of takes the fun out of it—it’s candy—but what we have tried to do is keep the packaging as green as possible.” Made of recycled glass, cork and paper, the bottle is reminiscent of the type used in old-fashioned apothecaries.
With demand wildly exceeding expectation, the duo is trying to find free time between their busy day jobs to produce enough candy for both retailers and a growing online fan base. Launched December 2010, the company still operates out of multiple locations. “We get time from big kitchens at night, come in there in the off hours, prepare as many vats as we can and see how it goes.” An initial run in Brooklyn’s Bedford Cheese Shop helped the charming bottles sell across the area, and moves to larger markets are in the works, as well as a new product—look out for a lollipop line in time for summer.
In the meantime the candies start at $7 per bottle and are available at Greene Grape, Brooklyn Larder and Blue Apron Fine Foods, or through Brooklyn Hard Candy’s online store.
Compete to reinvent a shipping container for Brooklyn’s new community market
Located in the heart of downtown Brooklyn’s Fulton Street mall, the upcoming Dekalb Market will be home to a food market and incubator farm, restaurants, work-sell shops, a performance venue and more. One of the spaces dreamed up to enclose all these attractions is a re-imagined shipping container, which Dekalb Market developer Urban Space is challenging you to design. The “Not Just A Container” competition tasks the creative community with coming up with an innovative idea for the structure, with the winner receiving six months free rent and $3,000 for design and construction, as well as one year memberships to 3rd Ward and the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce.
Beginning today, the contest spans one month and I’m looking forward to checking out the designs as one of judges on the panel. Suggestions for use range from art installation to sports venues, but entrants are free to stretch their imagination while keeping to key criteria like design quality, sustainability, community impact and entrepreneurship. Designs must also conform to the size limitations for an ISO steel shipping container (8′ x 20′ x 9.5′).
For a full list of rules and regulations, visit the Not Just a Container website.
José Parlá on experience and emotions in his solo show and new book
God is “a shout in the street.” So begins Greg Tate, channeling James Joyce, in “Walls, Diaries, and Paintings,” artist José Parlá’s new monograph of past and present work. It’s a conviction that has perhaps never rung more true as the particular modern art movement that Parlá helped define continues to take shape. First made famous by the likes of Jackson Pollock and Cy Twombly, the sentiment was further romanticized by the subway graffiti artists of the 1970s and ’80s and is now a gallery mainstay.
Parlá, heavily influenced by Abstract Expressionism, with deep roots in writing (under the nom de plume Ease) as well as in hip hop and breakdancing, and possessing an acute awareness of the geography around him and the emotions connected to it, practically illustrates the evolution of graffiti himself.
The Brooklyn-based artist’s work takes these moments of time in the streets and makes them current on canvas for a whole new generation to explore. First and foremost a storyteller, he tells CH, “[I] love recalling the many crazy, fun, dark, wonderful, extreme, violent, happy or sad times that have passed me by. For sure when I am painting I need to exorcise some of the happenings of my life into something more than just a memory.” The stories he tells, through a mixture of paint, marker, paper, aerosol, charcoal and found objects allows Parlá to make these experiences physical.
With a new show at Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery and the companion monograph releasing this week, Parlá shows us the full circle of his work, with each painting a brand new landscape to explore. As usual, each work is full of transcriptions where the viewer is invited to read as their own stories and layered memories. In “The Struggle Continues,” seen below, Parlá explores the concept of an artist needing to protect themselves once they start selling works. “No art school really prepares artists for the type of language that exists in the business world,” he says. It’s an experience anyone can relate to in their own transition into the workforce.
Another work addressing 9/11, “Victory” pays tribute to New York City. The painting is made up of posters collected from each of the five boroughs, and depicts the languages, cultures and stories that make up his city. And although his work takes inspiration from his travels from Tokyo to Istanbul to Havana, he admits that NYC is his favorite city in which to paint. “No other place in the world sounds quite like it, and this is part of what informs my personal rhythm for painting. I hope to translate the cacophony into a symphony.”
Through these compositions, Parlá creates a sign of the times, but also much more. “I’m a writer using the medium of painting to translate my original roots through a semi-realistic, wall textured, calligraphic language rendered into abstraction,” he tells CH. It’s this constant evolution found in Parlá’s work that allows us as viewers to once again become excited and involved as active participants in modern art.
“Walls, Diaries, and Paintings” will be on view at Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery from 3 March 2011 through 16 April 2011.
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Actor-turned-woodworker repurposes New York City structures as classic furniture
by John Ortved
At just over 350 years old, New York’s identity—as both a relatively young city globally and as one of the oldest U.S. cities—makes the quest to possess a slice of its past rival even that for the hot new thing. Enter furniture designer
Jesse Hooker. The former actor builds custom tables, mirrors and seating using reclaimed wood from those structures—the Central Park Stables, for example—that helped define one of the greatest modern metropolises.
Hooker, the son of a potter and a painter, grew up in Wisconsin and has been woodworking since he was 12, restoring wooden boats from the WWII era. When the now 30-year-old moved to New York in 2005 to act, he took odd woodworking jobs, like building gyrotonic exercise equipment, or “Hippie Bowflex torture machines” as he calls them.
After a friend saw a trestle table Hooker had built for himself and payed $1,500 for Hooker to build him his own, Hooker started taking commissions in 2008. Others saw the friend’s table and wanted their own; his dining room tables caught on similarly. Built from the remnants of a Queens bowling alley, Hooker constructs their frames from simple angled iron welded together (with exceptional attention to detail), which he then hand paints.
“It always starts with the materials,” says Hooker, surrounded by ancient wood in his studio. “Someone will ask for a commission and I’ll go to salvage and start working around whatever I pick out.”
Hooker’s craftsmanship is immaculately simple, yet having a piece of his furniture isn’t just an aesthetic experience, it’s a connection to a bygone New York City’s older aspects of manufacturing and design. “I like the history of the materials,” he continues. “Those beams over there, some guys with handsaws and nails used them to erect a building, and then years later it’s all torn down to make room for steel and glass condos. But you can have a piece of that history. You can have some of that workmanship.”
Resurrected dreams in emerging artist Jason Bard Yarmosky’s portraits
Rife with the painful vulnerability of reclaimed innocence, Jason Bard Yarmosky‘s painting series “Elder Kinder” reflects the parallel behaviors of growing up and growing old. Exhibiting at his first solo show (which opens this Friday at Brooklyn’s Like The Spice gallery), the works depict a cast of characters portrayed both in bold paintings and equally intriguing but more softhearted drawings. No matter the medium, meeting the direct stare of “Ballerina” or “Cowboy” is looking face to face with the raw sincerity of the subjects.
Yarmosky explains in detail, “Elder Kinder juxtaposes the young and old to push the limits of social norms and freedom of expression. As a child you learn to walk, but later in life you learn to un-walk—the raw freedom that is so much a part of youth gives way to borders and boundaries placed on adult behavior. But the dreams of the young, often sublimated by the years, never really disappear.”
Echoing the heroic themes of his earlier work, the models—Yarmosky’s Brooklyn grandparents—wrest their purest form of self from a lifetime of adult demands and responsibilities. His deft rendering of their worn faces is outdone only by their poignantly complex expressions.
Yarmosky’s work was shown this year at Aqua Art Fair in Miami, as well as Scope Art Fair—both concurrent with Art Basel. “Elder Kinder” opens at Like The Spice Gallery in 11 February 2011 and runs through 7 March 2011.
Lather up pooches with Skinnyskinny’s organically moisturizing bar soap
The “people-tested” Fetching Dog Shampoo from Brooklyn-based body care brand Skinny Skinny works on any pup, but was created specifically for dogs with sensitive skin. Comprised of all organic ingredients like rosemary, citronella and ylang ylang, the potent suds keep insects at a distance while loading up on moisture to alleviate irritation.
The handmade bar soap, designed to be a mutually beneficial experience for both owner and dog, creates a nice low-foam lather. Skinny Skinny’s shampoo is 100% carbon neutral, purchasing wind-powered electricity to fuel their small-batch operation and carbon credits for everything else. They also use recycled paper and soy-based inks for their no-frills packaging.
Skinny Skinny Organic Fetching Dog Shampoo sells online for $8 per bar, or from their shop in Brooklyn, along with a nice assortment of products for people.
Brooklyn folk collective Fort Makers create wearable art in their latest venture
Combining art and fashion in the literal sense, The Dress Project is a creative endeavor in dressmaking using silk and cotton fabric hand-painted by artist Naomi Clark of Brooklyn’s playful cohort, Fort Makers. Clark, along with co-founder Nana Spears, tapped fashion designer Lauren Nevada to create the dress form—a simple button-down shirt-dress intended to convey a sense of all-American style. “As we brought our ideas together, we realized this design would, on one hand, be the most symbolic piece we could find,” explains Nevada, while also noting that the relaxed silhouette (requiring few seams), would complement the garment’s identity as a wearable canvas.
The one-off frocks showcase Clark’s vibrant artistry, a form of object metamorphosis executed through the use of organically painted geometric shapes and patterns, bold brushstrokes and lively, often eye-popping colors. “The results are a wonderful surprise,” adds Nevada. “We found compositions hidden under the collars and button tabs sometimes—details that make them very special.”
The dresses will be available at Bird boutique in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhod, which will also be a temporary gallery space for pieces from Fort Makers’ inaugural venture, The Blanket Project. Employing a similar perspective and aesthetic towards textile art, the two-year-old collective self-dubbed “urban folk artists” source secondhand wool camping blankets from flea markets, garage sales and eBay, which are then cut, dyed, and sewn into new quilts.
The dresses will retail for $745 at Bird, as well as at Louis in Boston.
Artists reinvent favorite album art in a group show
Skindeep approximations, deceitful marketing ploys, masterpieces of graphic design—cover art’s slippery role gets a tribute in Cover Version (LP), curator and artist Timothy Hull’s second show to take up the theme. The first, held at Los Angeles’ Taylor De Cordoba gallery, had artists dreaming up alternate covers for books in 2008, but in this show Hull tasked the over two dozen artists with re-imagining record covers that made an impact on them.
Predictably, the resulting exhibit currently at the Brooklyn Academy of Music runs the range, from the iconic (Grace Jones’ Night Clubbing by Colby Bird) to sardonic (
Mathew Cerletty’s stock photograph version of Harvest) and silly (a topless girl astride a dinosaur as envisioned by Dave McDermott).
The show is open through 20 March 2011, check out more images in the slideshow below.
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