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Posts Tagged ‘new york’

Woodsman Warms Neighbors

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on March 30, 2024| 3 Comments »

Photo: Landon Speers/Guardian.
A Woodstock, New York, woodsman who prefers to be anonymous, cuts logs in his yard to deliver to neighbors.

Some people do good deeds and seek no credit. At the Guardian, David Wallis wrote early this year about one of those people.

“On a chilly morning in Woodstock, New York, frozen dew turns lawns a glistening white as puffs of smoke from chimneys float across the road.

“ ‘Winter is here,’ declares the woodsman, a broad-shouldered man in a black-and-gray checked wool shirt and navy denim Carhartt overalls as he sharpens his orange chainsaw. … The woodsman, who requested anonymity, is an accomplished director, writer and producer with several popular film and TV credits on his IMDb page. But he now devotes much of his time to supplying his struggling – and sometimes freezing – neighbors with free firewood. …

‘Many people are suffering,’ said the woodsman. ‘So many more than I imagined. Quietly, just secretly, really suffering.’

“The numbers back him up. Almost half of the children in the local public school district are economically disadvantaged, meaning that they or their families receive government anti-poverty aid such as supplemental nutrition assistance program (Snap) or disability funds. Affordable housing is in short supply: there are only a handful of long-term rentals on Zillow in the 12498 zip code with an average price of nearly $4,000 per month.

“A cord (128 cubic feet) of firewood, about enough fuel for a month or two, costs between $250 and $350 in Ulster county – up from about $200 before Covid. … In the world’s wealthiest nation, some people freeze to death inside their homes. … For many Americans, warmth is just another unattainable luxury.

“The woodsman has been an active activist for several years, helping refugees in Mexico stay in safe houses, distributing free masks during Covid and organizing voter registration drives with the Comedy Resistance, a non-profit organization.

“He moved to upstate New York from Los Angeles a few years ago to look after his mother, who had cancer and then Covid. He stocked a paying stand, which operated on the honor system, outside his mother’s house with bundles of wood; she donated the proceeds to local charities. But some of the bundles of wood vanished. The thefts distressed the woodsman, who recalled that a friend ‘suggested that I put a sign out on the stand that says if you if you need wood to heat your home, but you don’t have the resources, just ask me and I will deliver.’

“That conversation sparked the free firewood program. Two local librarians, Hollie Ferrara of the Woodstock Library and Elizabeth Potter of the Phoenicia Library, voluntarily spread the word about the grassroots initiative.

“ ‘Most people who work here can’t afford to live here,’ said Ferrara. ‘But there are still outlying folks who have been in their homes for a long time who basically have just about just enough money to live on and that’s about it.’ She acknowledged that librarians like her routinely act as unofficial social workers. …

“Residuals from the woodsman’s entertainment career defray some of his expenses. But Potter solicits donations for the charity from the community. Some benefactors leave gift cards for gasoline and stash them under a rock on her porch, or drop off oil for chainsaws.

“She first called on the woodsman during a power outage, a regular occurrence in upstate New York, two winters ago. An older couple had burned through their ‘last stick of wood.’ Within hours, the woodsman came to the rescue. ‘They said they and their spouse were huddled under the blankets upstairs, the fire long gone out, freezing cold, when they saw headlights in their drive and the soul-warming sound of wood being thrown on to the gravel. He got them through until the power was restored.’

“The woodsman considers his volunteerism a cheap form of therapy. ‘I’m sort of a quiet guy,’ he said. Giving away wood ‘does draw me out, pushes me out. When you interact with people, and I listen a lot, you do you learn their stories. And I’m moved by every one of them.’

“He often monitors his clients’ firewood reserves and notices that he is receiving requests for help earlier this winter than last, a sign, he believes, of increasing economic struggle. …

“When I visited him, he decided to check in with repeat customers who live about 20 minutes away from his wood lot. When driving on country roads, he eyed passing wood piles and offered reviews at 40 miles per hour. … He inspected a pile of logs strewn on the land to ensure they were not rotted. We then chatted in the house with Tom and Malley Heinlein, who had asked him to cut and split their wood. …

“Tom, the family’s main breadwinner, is gaunt and slowly recovering from Mycobacterium chelonae, a severe bacterial infection, that sapped his strength and swelled his body. ‘We’ve been happily living our independent little quirky life for all this time,’ Malley said wistfully. ‘And then all of a sudden, something trips you up.’ ” More at the Guardian, here. No paywall.

I have to say, I laughed out loud reading that, when the woodsman was a child, his mother boycotted grapes to help the United Farm Workers. I did that, too. Don’t know if there’s a direct connection, but both Suzanne and John do various kinds of good works now.

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New York Tackles Floods

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on March 17, 2024| 4 Comments »

Photo: Mary Altaffer/AP.
Construction underway on a flood resiliency project in East River Park in Manhattan in October 2022. Hello, Boston! See this?

For years there have been voices crying in the wilderness about the danger Boston faces from flooding. A city originally lifted from the sea like the Netherlands, Boston has powerful “progress” fanatics that have allowed the Seaport area to be overbuilt in the last 20 years. The Boston Globe’s David Abel even made a movie about it, calling the city’s touted Innovation District the Inundation District.

Meanwhile, in New York City, politicians have heeded a painful lesson from Hurricane Sandy.

Andrew S. Lewis writes at Yale Environment360, “On a recent morning in Asser Levy Playground, on Manhattan’s East Side, a group of retirees traded serves on a handball court adjacent to a recently completed 10-foot-high floodwall. Had a sudden storm caused the East River to start overtopping this barrier, a 79-foot-long floodgate would have begun gliding along a track, closing off the playground and keeping the handball players dry. In its small way, this 2.4-acre waterfront park is a major proof of concept for a city at the forefront of flood resilience planning — a city working toward living with, and not against, water.

“The Asser Levy renovation, completed in 2022, is part of East Side Coastal Resiliency (ESCR), the largest urban resiliency project currently underway in the United States. Over the next three years, at a total cost of $1.8 billion, ESCR will reshape two-and-a-half miles of Lower Manhattan’s shoreline. But ESCR is just one link in a much larger, $2.7 billion initiative called the BIG U — a series of contiguous flood resilience projects that runs from Asser Levy, near 25th Street, around the southern tip of Manhattan, and up to Battery Park City, along the Hudson River. When finished, the BIG U will amount to 5.5 miles of new park space specifically designed to protect over 60,000 residents and billions of dollars in real estate against sea level rise and storm surges.

“The BIG U was conceived in the aftermath of 2012’s Superstorm Sandy, which flooded 17 percent of New York City and caused $19 billion in damage. Like Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Sandy helped push New York … toward embracing the Dutch concept of ‘living with water,’ which emphasizes building infrastructure that can both repel and absorb water while also providing recreational and open space.

“In New York, ESCR, like any large infrastructure project slated for a densely populated place, has moved in fits and starts. Still, New York is making significant progress. ‘Anything that’s on the scale of Manhattan is always going to be so much bigger and more complicated,’ says Amy Chester, director of Rebuild by Design, the post-Sandy design competition from which ESCR was born. ‘And yet a lot has been done.’

“The ESCR project area encompasses a flood-prone wedge of Manhattan’s natural topography — a ‘pinch point’ between two higher stretches of shoreline. Some 400 years ago, when the island was inhabited by the Lenni-Lenape, this shoreline was woods and marsh that never rose more than a few feet above sea level. Tidal creeks drained from uplands dense with American chestnut, aster, and goldenrod, winding through spartina meadows to the river. Today, that landscape is lost beneath four separate public housing complexes, whose roughly 10,000 residents count on East River Park to buffer their homes from a waterway that has risen 8 inches since the mid-20th century.

“Because ESCR is the first segment of the BIG U to get underway, its path has been rocky, from debates about its final design, to budget cuts, to new concerns about the evolving risks of climate change, including the extreme rain events that New York experienced this year. …

“In 2018, the administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio quietly revamped the design: it would be faster and cheaper, the mayor’s team said, to wipe the park clean, elevate the landscape with more than a million tons of fill, then build anew on top.

“Unlike the kind of permeable buffers championed by the Dutch, the raised park would function more like a hard barrier. … Opposition to the redesign remains, but many residents of the public housing complexes, which are at high risk of flooding, support it. In the fall of 2021, demolition crews got to work. …

“The park will be landscaped with pathways and vegetation beds that snake around and through sports fields, an amphitheater, and playgrounds to form a terraced topography that will function as a berm to keep water from city streets. More floodwalls and retractable gates will run the park’s length and extend into surrounding streets, where archaic infrastructure will be overhauled so stormwater is less likely to mix with wastewater during flooding. …

“Other segments of the BIG U are also underway. In the Battery, at the city’s southern tip, the waterfront is being elevated with fill. Next, floodwalls, higher-capacity drainage, and new park space will be installed. Similar projects to protect the historic South Street Seaport area and the Financial District remain in the planning and design phase. …

” ‘Building a level of resilience capacity across society is critically important,’ says Henk Ovink, the former Netherlands Special Envoy for International Water Affairs and one of the creators of Rebuild by Design. ‘If you don’t invest in the most vulnerable links, the chain breaks.’ ”

Read more at Yale e360, here. No firewall. Donations solicited.

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Photos from New York

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on March 13, 2024| 8 Comments »

Photos: Suzanne and John’s Mom.

I love walking around dirty old New York, even in cold and rainy weather. Today’s photos are from last weekend, when I took the train down for a wedding.

It’s the small things one notices. The saxophone player under the pedestrian bridge in Central Park, where the sound amplifies like an orchestra. He was playing “Beauty and the Beast,” with his sax case open for tips, a stick placed inside to keep any bills from blowing away.

A nicely dressed woman on a city bus scrolling her phone and wearing a rubber Halloween monster mask — blue and green rubber with a gaping hole at the nose and beaver teeth hanging down.

Then there were two people from my childhood that I ran into on the same morning in the Upper West Side. Not people I even knew from the Upper West Side but from Fire Island. The one I met in an elevator was a close childhood friend. The one I met in a diner was someone I knew from the Ocean Beach teenage musicals I directed. So there we were in a diner on Broadway singing one of those old teenage show tunes.

I got myself lost in Central Park on my way to the Met Museum to see the Harlem Renaissance exhibit. Like all New York, it was way too crowded, too many long lines. You spend 20 minutes waiting to buy a ticket, and then, if you want to unload your coat and backpack, you can wait in a ten-minute line to check them in and another long line to pick them up. I decided I could carry mine.

I photographed the Horace Pippin painting for my artist friend Meredith, a Pippin fan. There were many works by Aaron Douglas, but it was too crowded for much picture taking. Here’s a representative sample of Douglas’s art from the Rhode Island School of Design Museum.

The Met exhibit was huge, with portraits of luminaries like Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, James Weldon Johnson, and Marian Anderson, and scenes of Black life in the 1920s and ’30s rendered in many styles and media. Some artists, like photographer Carl Van Vechten, were not technically part of the Harlem Renaissance, but close observers.

Moving on to other New York sights.

I often envy blogger Sheree, at View from the Back, who can post the most wonderful door photos. Of course, she lives in Europe. I have to go to New York to get anything comparable. Here are two interesting doors, the second in Riverside Park, where signs of spring were defying the miserable weather.

I love that new homeowners in New York often clean up the lovely, old architectural details. Notice the carved staircase, all sandblasted and spiffy.

Finally, here’s a shot for my Ukrainian friends. Thinking of you. Always.

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Throw a Book-Reading Party

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on February 17, 2024| 3 Comments »

Photo: Stefano Giovannini for N.Y.Post.
“Reading Rhythms is ‘not a book club’ but ‘a reading party,’ says the NY Post, ‘where about 60 to 80 bookworms gather to read” in company — not all the same book, just whatever they happen to be reading.

Here’s an idea whose time has come: gatherings where people who love reading read whatever they like in the same place at the same time and maybe take a few breaks to socialize. It’s called a “reading party,” and the foursome behind the concept calls themselves Reading Rhythms.

Molly Young writes at the New York Times, “On a cold Monday in December, 65 people were gathered for Reading Rhythms, an event that bills itself as ‘not a book club’ but ‘a reading party.’ The parties, which began in May, take place on rooftops, in parks and at bars. The premise is simple: Show up with a book, commit to vanquishing a chapter or two and chat with strangers about what you’ve just read.

“The attendees that night, each of whom had paid a $10 entry fee, were the lucky ones: 270 people were on the wait-list to get in. …

“The idea for Reading Rhythms emerged when four friends in their 20s — Ben Bradbury, Charlotte Jackson, John Lifrieri and Tom Worcester — discovered a shared sense of alarm over the deterioration of their book consumption. The causes were what you’d expect: annihilated attention spans, too much socializing, the treacherous enchantments of the iPhone.

“Bradbury and Worcester, who are roommates, hosted the first event on their rooftop. A playlist was compiled, 10 friends showed up with books, everyone read for a bit and talked about what they’d read, and then … went home.

” ‘I got an hour of reading done and I hung out with some of my best friends, which I’d wanted to do anyway,’ [Bradbury] said. ‘That doesn’t usually happen.’ …

“The four solidified a format, gave the series a name, planned additional parties, opened up the invite list and started an Instagram account. Since May there have been parties in New York, Los Angeles and (of all places) Croatia. …

“At the event this month, none of the guests seemed to operate under the illusion that they’d reinvented any wheels. And ‘glorified library’ actually described the ambience well: Seating included antique armchairs, deep sofas and velvety settees; flickering votive candles emitted an amber glow; hot toddies and beer were available. …

“As the founders continued to host parties, they settled upon a structure. Attendees are given a name tag and half an hour to find a seat and settle in. A host then gets up before the crowd and explains the night’s schedule: 30 minutes of reading, a break, 30 more minutes of reading and then a set of discussions organized around loose prompts. Parties are held early in the week to capture gentle, non-weekend energy.

“Lifrieri, one of the founders, suggested everyone pluck an idea from what we’d just read and ‘turn to a stranger’ to discuss. An icy dart of trepidation shot through my body at the command, but to a stranger I turned: Dilvan, 29, who was reading Michael A. Singer’s The Untethered Soul.

“Dilvan shared a paragraph that she’d highlighted and we discussed its implications, which turned out to be mutually troubling. Conversation turned to other topics: Dilvan had moved to the United States from Turkey for college, specifically to study in ‘a cold location’ featuring snow. The idea of weather-based school selection was fascinating to me. Dilvan landed in Minnesota, which satisfied her temperature requirements and also prompted her to learn English rapidly thanks to the absence of other Turks in the area. …

“Reading postures varied. Some attendees sat cross-legged with a book resting lapwise. Others were curled up on a sofa. Many adopted a modified ‘The Thinker’ position. One man read his book standing ramrod straight, like a marsh bird. Not once did a cellphone chime.

More at the Times, here, and at Reading Rhythms, here.

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Train Layout’s Bark Miniatures

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on December 9, 2023| 2 Comments »

Photo: Elaine Velie.
The New York Botanical Garden’s annual Holiday Train Show features nearly 200 miniature landmarks, all made of natural materials. This miniature is the Guggenheim Museum.

Probably because gifts of toy trains have long been associated with Christmas, model train displays are big at the holiday season. When I was working at the Fed, I loved the seasonal layouts at nearby South Station. (See below.)

Now Elaine Velie is reporting at the art newspaper Hyperallergic about a particulticularly artistic setup in New York.

“Inside the New York Botanical Garden’s (NYBG) Enid A. Haupt Conservatory, a miniature Guggenheim Museum sports a mushroom-cap roof, the Statue of Liberty is made of palm fronds, and the Brooklyn Bridge is supported by a dizzyingly intricate arrangement of tiny twigs. The scaled-down landmarks are just a few of the nearly 200 NYC buildings constructed using natural materials at NYBG’s annual Holiday Train Show, where around 20 doll-size conductors barrel and weave over a half-mile of track.

“The show begins outdoors, where trains circle jagged mountains and zoom above giant snowdrop flowers and rabbits in a fairytale-style enchanted forest, carting pinecones, bark, and acorn tops.

Photo: New York Botanical Garden.

“Laura Busse Dolan runs the Applied Imagination company that creates the structures in the exhibition. Dolan’s father, Paul Busse, founded Applied Imagination in 1991, and a year later, the botanical models maker displayed 15 buildings in NYBG’s first Holiday Train Show. Each year, a team of 15 artists adds new work to the show, and NYBG changes the exhibition’s layout and plantings. …

“This year’s train show is the biggest to date and stars Coney Island’s long-gone giant elephant, Manhattan’s demolished old Penn Station, Hudson Valley mansions, a miniature Central Park, and a host of museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Frick, and the Guggenheim, among other structures.

“ ‘I think Frank Lloyd Wright would very much approve of this,’ Dolan said of the mini-Guggenheim made of ‘cobbled together’ pieces of shell fungus. Another standout is a copy of NYBG’s Mertz Library. It’s decorated with black walnuts that an NYBG staff member collected. …

“The grand finale can be found in the conservatory pond room. City landmarks like the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, the Staten Island Ferry, the Plaza Hotel, and even the Oculus float on the stagnant water and line the stone fountain. …

“ ‘We’re in awe of the beauty,’ [visitor Mary] Trester said. ‘And the craft of the artists — the attention to detail and everything they do.’

“The Holiday Train Show is open through January 15, 2024.”

Extraordinary pictures at Hyperallergic, here. No firewall.

Photo: Suzanne’s Mom.
Model train at South Station Boston.

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Maybe Sammy the Seal Is Real

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on September 30, 2023| 6 Comments »

Photo: JShadab1/Twitter.
Says the NY Post, “A sea lion enjoyed a brief taste of freedom as she hitched a ride on floodwaters and swam out of her Central Park Zoo pool enclosure on Friday.”

Once upon a time, I was a kid who shared a crowded bedroom with two younger brothers. As the oldest, I was often relied on to help out — for example, by keeping the younger ones from wandering when they were supposed to go to sleep. And I did like telling them stories.

My series about a seal called Sammy who left the zoo at night for adventures but always came back in the morning must have meant something important to me because there were many episodes.

Sammy’s escape was different from Sally the Sea Lion’s in today’s story because Sammy had a secret place in the bottom of the tank where he went in and out, and he stayed away all night. Sally, on the other hand, merely took advantage of yesterday’s flooding to swim out the top of her enclosure for a brief look around and then go home.

I guess she was used to hanging out with the other sea lions there, her friends. I know what my hairdresser would think about this. She has almost convinced me that zoos are wrong. I think Tracie would let all the animals out if there were a way to do it safely.

Claire Fahy reports at the New York Times, “A female sea lion, known as Sally, escaped from her enclosure at the Central Park Zoo briefly on Friday, swimming out of the pool where she is kept when the heavy rains lashing New York City flooded the zoo grounds.

“Workers monitored Sally’s movements as she explored the area around the enclosure before rejoining the zoo’s other two sea lions in the pool, said Jim Breheny of the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Zoos and Aquarium, which oversees four zoos and the city’s aquarium.

“By 3 p.m., the water at the zoo had receded, and all animals were contained in their enclosures, Mr. Breheny said. No staff members were in danger during the storm, and the city’s four zoos were closed so that employees could focus on keeping animals safe.

“For Karen Dugan and her colleagues at the city’s parks department, the roving sea lion made for a rare sight from their third-floor offices in the agency’s headquarters at the Arsenal, a building inside the park that overlooks the zoo.” More at the Times, here.

What does an animal escaping the zoo mean to you?

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Homegrown Art in Queens

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on September 8, 2023| 2 Comments »

Photo: Maya Pontone/Hyperallergic.
Xiyadie, “Butterfly” (2023), paper cutout featured in July art show in Queens.  

Queens, a borough of New York City, is often a gateway to America for newcomers, and as a result it has a diverse and interesting population. The art that residents produce is also diverse and interesting, as an unusual show in a mini-mall recently revealed.

Maya Pontone reports at Hyperallergic, “Located at the tail end of the 7 train not far from LaGuardia Airport, Flushing is a magnet for both longtime Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) residents and newcomers from overseas. Home to New York City’s largest Chinatown, the Queens community has served as an entryway for new immigrants in search of work and housing.

“A new exhibition pays homage to Flushing and its history by spotlighting the work of eight artists, most of whom are residents of the neighborhood, and encouraging community contributions and interaction. Home-O-Stasis: Life and Livelihoods in Flushing, curated by Herb Tam and Lu Zhang, is staged in one of the area’s many mini-malls — places increasingly threatened by gentrification. …

“On the inside of the space, you can find a butcher, a beauty shop, a cell phone service store, a money transfer service/tea shop, and a barber; and in the far back, a 99-cent store. …

“A community-driven exhibition, Home-O-Stasis is interwoven into the mini-mall space as though camouflaged, blending in and standing out in understated yet profound ways. At the building’s entrance among hanging real estate ads, shoppers are greeted by a red paper-cut butterfly made by Chinese artist Xiyadie, who was taught traditional paper-cut artistry by his grandmother. Decorated with Buddhist etchings and an impression of the U-Haul clocktower on College Point Boulevard, the delicate work was created for the migrant workers who come to the mini-mall in search of housing.

A handwritten sign written by Xueli Wang that reads ‘Mom, have you eaten?’ catches people searching the bulletin board off guard. …

“Above the paper ads directly in view of the shop owners, a deconstructed calendar with dates and symbols carefully cut out by hand hangs from two delicate red threads tied to the ceiling beams — an allusion to the boundless, continual nature of passing time by Flushing-born sculptor Anne Wu. …

“For Home-O-Stasis, Yuki He and Qianfan Gu from the collective Mamahuhu created ‘Flushing Polyphonous’ (2023), a humorous reinterpretation of Flushing’s map as a Monopoly-like board game. With magnetic pieces and a pair of die, the game takes players through the Queens neighborhood focusing on landmarks and shared hyperlocal experiences. …

“ ‘You would say, “Oh, you go to that dumpling house next to the gas station.” Nobody uses the title of the shop,’ Zhang, one of Home-O-Stasis’s curators and artist contributors, told Hyperallergic. …

” ‘You can get everything you need when you start a life in New York,’ Zhang said, pointing out how many newcomers, luggage in hand, will often stop at the mini-mall first to browse the bulletin’s housing options, set up their phones, buy food, send money abroad, and purchase other home supplies. …

“ ‘In the new malls, each vendor is separated in their room. It has like a hierarchy,’ she said, adding that this mini-mall’s open layout gives it a ‘more organic community.’ …

“Zhang also said that when she and Tam were first hanging up the exhibition, some of the shop owners in the mini-mall seemed skeptical. But not long after Home-O-Stasis opened in late May, local businesses adapted to the art, welcoming the works and even caring for the installations when the curators aren’t present. …

“The daughter of the barber shop’s owner, Nikki, moved the cards and magnets to the side from ‘Flushing Polyphonous’ when she noticed that people kept knocking the game pieces to the ground. Tina Lin, who runs the skincare shop Tina House, has taken to caring for Wang’s reimagined flyers and Janice Chung’s photographic series HAN IN TOWN (2022) when the works get moved around. …

“One of the final elements of the exhibition, called Dream City 2.0, is dedicated to a community archive of personal landmarks and experiences. Inspired by a 1940s commercial development project that would have eradicated much of the neighborhood, the project calls on residents to build another version of Flushing based on past dreams rather than a reimagined future. On a sheet, residents have written down the names of vanished noodle shops, bookstores, and other spaces that have since been replaced by new businesses and apartments.” Oooh, I love that concept!

See other unusual art at Hyperallergic, here. No firewall. Subscriptions encouraged.

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An Indigenous Boutique

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on July 24, 2023| 5 Comments »

Photo: Maria Spann/The Guardian.
Liana Shewey and Korina Emmerich run a forward-thinking indigenous store in New York.

A friend who had just read Rinker Buck’s Life on the Mississippi was telling me recently how stunned she was to learn details of the Trail of Tears and related horrors visited on natives. Most of us know very little about that and have hardly been aware that indigenous people have been living among us all along.

At the very least, we are noticing them more now, learning more.

In today’s article, Sophia Herring of the Guardian interviews two very visible indigenous women with a new kind of shop in New York City.

“Location, location, location. It can make or break a business,” Herring says. “For Liana Shewey and Korina Emmerich, it was a call to action. When a mutual friend told the activists and creatives – Shewey is an educator and Emmerich is a fashion designer – about a newly vacant storefront on the ground floor of her mother’s Manhattan co-op building, the pair … visited the space. … ‘We jumped on it,’ said Shewey.

“The co-op board wasn’t willing to hand the keys over to just anyone. But their friend’s mother is Navajo, and also the board president. Within days the building had its newest tenant: Relative Arts NYC, a boutique that carries pieces by Indigenous designers and also hosts literary readings, album releases and art installations featuring work by Indigenous artists.

“ ‘It just felt so important for us to have a space, as grassroots organizers in the city,’ said Shewey, who was raised in Stillwater, Oklahoma, and is a member of the Mvskoke (Creek) Nation. Building a store that specializes in goods from Indigenous and many female-owned labels was a natural way to support their community. …

“The merchandise builds on their mission to shatter stereotypes. The entrepreneurs speak to ‘Indigenous futurism,’ an emerging art and design movement that leans away from cliches. …

“Emmerich, who grew up in Eugene, Oregon, and whose father is of Puyallup descent, focused on her own fashion label, EMME Studio, in her late 20s and early 30s. Her work has appeared on the cover of InStyle magazine and in the Lexicon of Fashion exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She still makes pieces by special order, and the shop doubles as an atelier. When she spoke with the Guardian, she was rushing to complete a dress that she was making for a producer of Killers of the Flower Moon, the new Martin Scorsese film, to wear to the Cannes film festival. Shewey, whose day job is as an outreach educator at the New-York Historical Society, was speaking from her car, where she was taking a break from a marathon day of teaching four sixth-grade classes.

“The entrepreneurs, who can be found at their shop every weekend, relied on crowdfunding to convert the space into a store. An initial round of fundraising garnered $6,465, which covered shelving units and a sofa from Craigslist. They found a handful of industrial school chairs on the side of the road.

“The pair are breaking even, and still debating whether to form a nonprofit or operate as an LLC. ‘We want Relative Arts to be a greater incubation hub for people to be able to learn, create and work out of,’ said Shewey. …

“Sophia Herring: Tell me about what led you both here.

“Liana Shewey: I lived in Portland for about a decade and got really integrated into the local rock’n’roll scene. I bartended, worked at a local Starbucks, and then eventually started a music production company of my own with a few friends. In 2014, I moved to the Czech Republic and started organizing around the refugee crisis. I came back in 2016 when everything was happening with Standing Rock. It made me realize my struggle is here and I need to be with my community.

“Korina Emmerich: At 13, I made my first jingle dress regalia, and got very into sewing. I came to New York with two suitcases, a cat and $75. I worked in a boutique and I had my own line. I actually had a lot of success, thanks to a company called Brand Assembly that helps support smaller designers. But you slowly realize with everything in the fashion industry, if you want to do it ethically, you will be poor. I just dreamed that one day I would have a space to be able to share everybody’s work.

“Herring: How do you work as a team?

“Emmerich: We’ve been planning and organizing together for so long that we just naturally gravitate towards each other in our work style. Liana is analytical and does the logistical things as well as planning, and organizing when it comes to programming. I have this more creative, community outreach part of my work where building relationships is such an important aspect. …

“Herring: How do you choose what goes in the store?

“Emmerich: Our goal is to showcase contemporary Indigenous designers who are doing fun, subversive, wearable work, as opposed to the assumption of what Indigenous design has to look like. I want to talk about how Indigenous people exist here and now and we’re doing contemporary work here and now. There’s no rule that says we have to only exist in a historical context.

“Herring: What is it like operating an Indigenous business within a community that so rarely acknowledges it’s on Indigenous land to begin with?

“Emmerich: Even though Relative Arts may be the first of its kind, we are not the first ones to be doing this work. It was amazing to have the American Indian Community House come to open the space on our first day, to say a prayer and give us their blessing.

“Shewey: I’m thinking about how many people come off the streets and buy one of our pieces just because they like the garments themselves. Then they look at the basketball jersey and ask: what is the Salish Sea? [The Salish coast, along the north-western US and Canada, is home to Indigenous nations.] If they didn’t know, they walk out having learned about decolonization. …

“Herring: What is your long-term goal?

“Emmerich: We like to think of Relative Arts as a hub. The plans that we have are so much bigger than just a store. …

“Shewey: We’ve mused that we want it to kind of look like an Indigenous-futurist version of Andy Warhol’s Factory. It would be so wonderful to have thousands of feet, although I doubt Andy ever had to apply for funding.”

More at the Guardian, here. No firewall. Donations encouraged.

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Subway Tap Dancer

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on July 11, 2023| 2 Comments »

Photo: William Frederking.
Ja’Bowen Dixon is a performance and visual artist on the Broadway Dance Center faculty. He is one of the founding members of the tap dance company M.A.D.D. Rhythms. 

The New York subway gets a bad rap these days, but did you know about all the art down there? So much great stuff to experience.

Gia Kourlas writes at the New York Times, “You can tell when Ja’Bowen is feeling a song. The grounded power of his feet — whether tapping delicate, whispery notes or hitting rhythmic patterns with ferocity and speed — enlivens an unassuming place: a subway platform.

“But beyond his sleek and supple feet, there is simply his presence. With rigor, elegance and humor, he takes the craft of tap seriously while disarming the crowds that pass through his impromptu theater.

‘You know, more than tap dancing, I’m working to bring some good energy to the city, to the moment where I am.’

“Stumbling on Ja’Bowen is like uncovering a New York City art secret. The lucidity of his body and the music that it produces are steadying forces in an unpredictable space. For months now, this Chicago transplant has been bringing quality tap to the uptown F platform at Delancey Street/Essex Street.

“What he creates with taps and a wooden board — his portable stage — is a reciprocal experience. His dances are containers for waves of energy that pass between him and a crowd. He is a dance artist who makes people smile. Of all ages. In the subway.

“ ‘I get real hyped, and then the audience gets real hyped, and then I lay back a little bit and the audience gets a little quiet,’ he said. ‘It’s like a tennis match going back and forth.’

“His improvs often start slowly. ‘If I’m being honest,’ he said, ‘sometimes people aren’t paying attention or could care less that I’m down there.’

“When a dancer, or really any performer, needs too much love, I tend to look the other way. Ja’Bowen is different. He can seem lost in his own world, dancing for himself until he feels the people around him drawing closer, looking — taking a break from social media to watch a live performance. That’s when he sends his energy out to the crowd.

“Ja’Bowen knows audiences love it when he dances fast, but his preference is to sit back in the pocket, to swing. His internal focus — the way he listens and reacts in this unprotected space of strangers — is a vulnerable display of deep body-mind awareness. And while his musical sensitivity starts at his feet, it doesn’t end there. He dances with his entire self. He likes to play with the levels and emotions in music.

“Ja’Bowen hails from a tap family in Chicago, where his older brother and a friend started the collective company M.A.D.D. Rhythms in part to give Ja’Bowen, then a teenager, something to do. Ja’Bowen joined the percussive-forward group with no formal training. Once he became proficient enough, he started performing in the streets.

“ ‘That’s what really developed my talent more than anything else,’ Ja’Bowen said. ‘You build the skill in rehearsals, but performing is a different thing.’

“If a train is a minute or so away and he’s done with his number, he’ll pick up his mic and invite kids on the platform — they watch him in awe — to learn a step. ‘I’m inviting the kids up, and I’m wishing everybody a good day and that’s intentional,’ he said. ‘You know, more than tap dancing, I’m working to bring some good energy to the city, to the moment where I am.’

“That idea is proven again and again. ‘Hey, tap dancer!’ a woman cried out from the opposite side of the platform one day. She wanted to know where to find him on Instagram.

“Where does his inspiration come from? Ja’Bowen, also an actor and musician, draws a lot from Jimmy Slyde for the way he used tap as a way to connect with an audience, as well as Sammy Davis Jr. and Gregory Hines. ‘It’s not just their footwork but their presentation,’ he said, ‘the way they talk to an audience when they’re onstage, the way they stand still.’

“Tap, he added, is like music. ‘The notes that you’re not playing also have just as much importance as the notes you do play.’ ”

More at the Times, here. Awesome videos.

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Turtle Rehab in New York

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on March 14, 2023| 9 Comments »

Photo: Brocken Inaglory/Wikimedia.
The green sea turtle above is in Hawaii. Others are in Florida, Egypt, and around the world. When threatened species like these get in trouble, they may receive care at a New York rehab center.

Americans are pretty good at volunteering, and there are so many ways to volunteer that everyone should be able to find something that suits them. I like assisting in English classes for immigrants. The volunteers in today’s story get involved with sea turtles under the guidance of scientists.

Dodai Stewart reports at the New York Times, “On a recent Thursday morning, Maxine Montello was at work making breakfast for 48 hungry diners.

“She had a stack of numbered plastic trays, and a clipboard with a list of corresponding menu orders. Methodically, she placed each tray on a scale, cut up pieces of frozen squid and cold raw herring and added them — including heads and tails — measuring just the right amount.

“Pills were hidden inside some of the fish, and Ms. Montello referred to notes about her customers. ‘Some of them don’t like the tails,’ she said. ‘And Number 7 doesn’t like the squid.’ …

“Ms. Montello is the rescue program director at the New York Marine Rescue Center in Riverhead, Long Island, a nonprofit organization stretched to its limits after receiving a record number of sick sea turtles in urgent need of aid this season. …

“The sea turtle swims under the radar. ‘Even people that might spend a fair amount of time on the water in the Northeast might never see a sea turtle,’ said Barbara Schroeder, the sea turtle coordinator for National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries. ‘But they do use Northeast waters extensively.’ …

“The rescue center mainly sees two types of sea turtles: green and Kemp’s ridley. Both varieties generally travel north in the summer and spend winters in warmer waters down south.

“The green sea turtle, a threatened species with a beautiful starburst pattern on its shell, can be found all over the world. The Atlantic Ocean population often nests in Florida and travels as far as Massachusetts in the summer. They live to about 70 years old, growing to three feet long and 350 pounds.

“The Kemp’s ridley sea turtle, a critically endangered species that nests in Mexico and eats crabs in the waters of New England and the Mid-Atlantic States, is smaller, growing to about 100 pounds.

“Once on the edge of being extinct, the Kemp’s ridley sea turtle has ‘a very positive conservation story,’ said Ms. Schroeder. Shrimp trawling and the killing of nesting turtles and their eggs at their very restricted nesting beaches had caused their numbers to plummet into the hundreds, but the Endangered Species Act, signed 50 years ago, has helped stabilize the population.

“Climate change has created new challenges to the turtles’ survival. Warming waters mean that ‘turtles and other species are expanding their normal territory,’ Ms. Montello explained. ‘So more and more turtles are going further north.’ Then, when cold weather arrives, often suddenly, the turtles are stranded. … Sea turtles are coldblooded, so when the water temperature drops, so does their body temperature. They become cold-stunned — similar to hypothermia — and go into a state of shock, washing up on beaches.

“The rescue center, founded in 1996, usually treats about 30 or 40 cold-stunned sea turtles during the winter. Ms. Montello has looked at records dating back to 1980, and said this year’s numbers are concerning. … ‘This year we had 95.’

“Of the 95 turtles found cold-stunned this season, 48 are still alive and in the care of the rescue center. The others were either dead when they washed up or perished soon after.

‘Their survival is dependent on how quickly they’re found,’ said Ms. Montello. …

“A lot is unknown about these creatures’ lives in the New York area, and much of the data comes from stranded turtles, not thriving ones. Ms. Montello’s research plans involve recording turtle behavior using customized video cameras that will be attached with suction cups to the backs of healthy turtles when they are released. …

“After the raw fish was loaded onto plastic trays, Victoria Gluck, a biologist on staff, carried a tray over to a turtle tank and doled out the meals with tongs, piece by piece, to the corresponding patients, whose numbers were written on their backs with nontoxic paint. Two volunteers, Britney Dowling and Cecilia Gonzalez, used nets to keep the other hungry turtles away as Ms. Gluck placed fish in front of each turtle, ensuring that they all got their allotted share; a turtle is supposed to eat 2 percent of its body weight a day.

“In the wild, sea turtles are solitary, so being in a tank alongside others in the rescue center makes some of the residents grumpy. On a whiteboard in the kitchen, the team had compiled a list of ‘tank bullies’: turtles known to push their tank mates or try to steal their food. …

“A veterinarian visits once a week, but otherwise the staff members — eight total, four full time and four part time, all women — and a small army of citizen scientists and volunteers are responsible for spotting cold-stunned turtles and helping them recuperate.” Read the rest of the story at the Times, here.

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Are You Ready for Cat Art?

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 16, 2023| 2 Comments »

Photo: Mrs.
Luke O’Halloran‘s “Eeeeeeeeeee” (2022).

Are you a cat person or a dog person? Both? I’m not sure that I have a preference, but over the years, I’ve cohabited with more cats than dogs mainly because they are so independent and relatively easy to care for.

I know from YouTube that there’s a large segment of the population that can’t get enough of videos featuring cats, and as the gallery in today’s post notes, cats have been subjects of awe throughout history.

“Since ancient Egypt,” the Mrs. gallery’s website notes, “cats have maintained a ubiquitous presence in art. Originally symbolic of an Egyptian idol and guide in the afterlife, during the Middle Ages cats became synonymous with superstition, witchcraft, and paganism — associations that linger to this day. It wasn’t until the 1600s that they became the domestic companions they are known as today. Featuring artists from multiple generations, this exhibition depicts cats in all of their glory, as loving companions, fierce protectors, stubborn rebels, shadows in the dark, mythical shapeshifters, and as vehicles of unabashed comic relief.” 

Today I must apologize to readers who might have been able to get to the Mrs. art gallery in Queens, New York: the cat-art show has ended. Fortunately, you can still enjoy it online at Hyperallergic.

Elaine Velie wrote about it there: “Cats have descended upon Maspeth, Queens, where Mrs. gallery is featuring the work of 39 artists focused on a single theme: furry felines. Cats have been an art historical focus for thousands of years, and the gallery’s latest exhibition, titled ‘Even a Cat Can Look at the Queen,’ suggests they are here to stay.

“From Cait Porter’s loving rendering of a fuzzy tabby’s paw to a Philip Hinge chair sculpture made out of scratching posts, the exhibition includes works by longtime artists of Mrs.’s program as well as some who have never before shown with the gallery.

“Almost all of the works are by living artists, with a few exceptions, including an Andy Warhol print that presents perhaps the exhibition’s most straightforward depiction of a cat. A painting by Renate Druks — movie star, director, and avid painter of cats — titled ‘Male Cat Club’ (1980) evokes the visual language of the Hollywood Golden Age she lived through. … The setting looks like a movie or stage set and the outdoor views visible in the background evoke the dreary exteriors of film noir.

“Other works in the show are decidedly more modern, such as Sophie Vallance’s ‘Tiger Diner’ (2022), which features the checkerboard pattern and rounded aesthetic that has become popularized on social media over the last few years. But like Druks, Vallance places cats in a surprising setting; namely, sitting in a diner.

“In both paintings — and in almost every work in the exhibition — cats display the utmost confidence, a holier-than-thou attitude that any cat parent will likely recognize in their own beloved pet. The animals take up space with dignity, suggesting that the oddity is not their presence but that of a human being.

“Other highlights include Katharine Kuharic’s ‘Long Wait’ (1990), an oil painting with such fine lines it looks like a tapestry. … Elbert Joseph Perez’s ‘Pierrot Greatest Performance’ (2022) is a highly detailed portrayal of a cat presenting an ominous paw toward his toy likeness as an audience of creepy, obscured cats watches the animal from the dark. …

“Johanna Strobel’s sculpture commemorates feline hero Félicette, the first cat in space, and Abby Lloyd’s ‘Enchanted Cat Girl’ (2019), a pink anthropomorphic foam figure, assumes different facial expressions depending on where the viewer stands. Lloyd has impressively managed to keep the sculpture upright despite the figure’s enormous head.

“The show’s title, Even a Cat Can Look at the Queen, comes from an old English proverb implying that even people of the lowest status — as low as a cat — have rights. After gazing at the works in the exhibition, however, the proverb seems too on-the-nose. With their distinguished attitudes and regal postures, it’s quite evident cats can ‘look at the queen.’ As Anna Stothart notes in her essay for the show, perhaps the ancient Egyptians were right: Dogs may be man’s best friends, but cats are humans’ idols, and although they may bless us with companionship, we exist only to serve them.’ “

Do you have a favorite piece of art from the show? For me, it was hard to pick. Click at Hyperallergic, here, to choose from some great pictures. The gallery’s site is here.

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Pandemic Jazz

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on September 20, 2022| 2 Comments »

Photo: Mark Lennihan.
Emmet Cohen (left), Nicholas Payton, Russell Hall, and Kyle Pool livestreaming one of the weekly jazz concerts Cohen launched from his small apartment when the pandemic struck.

I was listening to Christian McBride hosting “Jazz Night in America” (streaming weekly at WICN, here), and he made me want to learn more about the young musician Emmet Cohen.

Allen Morrison wrote at about Cohen’s pandemic venture at the Guardian: “It’s the most exclusive jazz concert in New York. Only about eight guests can attend the weekly shows, by invitation only, squeezing into the 32-year-old jazz pianist Emmet Cohen’s fifth-floor walk-up in Harlem. Meanwhile, thousands more around the world tune into livestreams of the event on Facebook and YouTube.

“Live From Emmet’s Place started as a near-desperate response to the disappearance of gigs for musicians when the Covid-19 pandemic began. Ninety-four shows later, the weekly concert featuring Cohen, his trio with bassist Russell Hall and drummer Kyle Poole, and a roster of guest musicians who represent some of the jazz world’s leading lights, has evolved into the most highly watched regular online jazz show in the world.

“Talking on a recent Monday afternoon four hours before showtime, Cohen, a one-time child prodigy who has become one of his generation’s most highly regarded jazz pianists, was chilling in a T-shirt and shorts. At this hour, his one-bedroom apartment seems relatively spacious by New York standards. But that’s only until the technicians – a piano tuner, a sound engineer, a videographer – start arriving and setting up equipment. …

After two and a half years, [it’s] been transformed from a ragtag live shoot using only an iPhone into a hi-tech, multi-camera production with pristine sound.

“The superior production values would count for little if they were not in the service of a charismatic, often dazzling, trio of performers. Partly it’s Cohen’s energy, exceptional musicianship, and likable personality. Partly it’s the appeal of his inclusive brand of jazz, incorporating the entire tradition of the genre from the 1920s to the present day. And partly it’s the joy and esprit de corps with which the trio perform, evident in Cohen’s frequent ear-to-ear grin and the trio’s telepathy.

“At first, the current music scene in Harlem was the central focus of the show. ‘There’s such a high concentration of great musicians living here, right down the block,’ he said, citing regular guests like saxophonists Patrick Bartley and Tivon Pennicott and trumpeter Bruce Harris, all rising jazz stars on the New York scene.

“ ‘There’s a rich history of great jazz musicians living in this area: Billie Holiday lived on the corner, Mary Lou Williams up the street, Thelonious Monk would hang out here … all the stride piano greats would play Harlem rent parties. Duke Ellington and his whole band lived here, Sonny Rollins … So, it just felt very natural to host a Harlem rent party, but an updated, digital, virtual version, where we could invite people in to try to make the rent and get the musicians paid at a time when people were really struggling.’

“These days, Live From Emmet’s Place has an audience that averages about 1,000 fans each Monday night on Facebook and YouTube, but videos of most of the shows, as well as dozens of individual songs, have logged tens of thousands more views on YouTube. One video, featuring the sparkling French-born jazz singer Cyrille Aimee, has racked up 4.6m views.

“ ‘I wanted to figure out how to create an online community where we could play and make money. When you play at [the New York City jazz club] Smalls there are 80 people, if you sell out; at Birdland, 250. When we did the first concert from the apartment on March 22, 2020, after one week the livestream had 40,000 views. For a jazz group to reach that many people requires months, if not years, of touring.’ …

“In its pre-pandemic infancy, the webcast’s unlikely success could scarcely have been imagined. In February 2020, Cohen and the trio were flying high. … ‘Suddenly we had no gigs and no idea when we would play again.

“[The show] quickly became an international ‘communal gathering,’ Cohen said. ‘And community, in a time of hardship, turned out to be the most important thing.’ …

“ ‘When I’m on the road,’ Poole said, ‘people say to me, “I’m part of the Emmet’s Place community.” ‘ …

“ ‘The pandemic caused incredible destruction and dismay, but there was a silver lining,’ Cohen reflected. … ‘The fact that we’re a family, Kyle, Russell and me, showed the brotherhood and what it means to be a band in a time of crisis.’ ”

Live From Emmet’s Place can be viewed most Monday nights at approximately 7:30 PM ET on Facebook and YouTube. More at the Guardian, here. And at NPR, here, you can click on links to several of the musical numbers.

French speakers, Rejoice.

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Pirate Artist

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on August 6, 2022| 7 Comments »

Photo: Art in America.
Dick Riley’s approach to art stirs things up.

The New York Times calls this anti-plastic missionary a “pirate artist.” Melena Ryzik‘s article explains how he got that moniker.

“The artist Duke Riley isn’t exactly sure why he had the idea to turn a plastic tampon applicator into a fishing lure, but he knows one thing for certain: It works.

“He put it to the test one summer day on a buddy’s boat in Block Island Sound, and, with his pastel bait bouncing along the ocean floor, pulled up a sizable fluke. It was a keeper — ‘I definitely ate it,’ he said.

“The applicator tube had first washed up ashore, part of the many tons of seaborne trash that Riley, a Brooklyn artist known to scavenge New York’s waterways for materials and inspiration, has collected over the years. Putting this spent plastic product to use as fish food — that was some D.I.Y. upcycling. Putting it into the Brooklyn Museum of Art: that is Riley’s wild and singular artistic ingenuity.

“There’s a film of the fishing endeavor, done in the style of a crusty YouTube tutorial. The lures — displayed on pegboard, as in a real bait shop — join other plastic detritus that Riley has repurposed, like straws, dental floss picks and vape pens, in ‘DEATH TO THE LIVING, Long Live Trash,‘ an exhibition [that opened in June] at the Brooklyn Museum. Across multiple rooms and settings, it confronts the calamitous environmental impact of the plastics industry and the ways in which unchecked consumption, for personal convenience, has polluted waterways.

“Its centerpiece is more than 200 works of painstakingly hand-drawn scrimshaw that Riley has spent three years making. Instead of the whale teeth and walrus tusks that 19th-century sailors once etched, he uses a contemporary, dispiritingly abundant, analog: discarded plastics. Lotion tubes, squirt bottles, brushes, a honey bear, solo flip-flops, a Wiffle ball and a legless lawn flamingo now stained bone-white, all provide the canvas for Riley’s patterned mariner drawings in India ink.

“As whalers often depicted the leaders and profiteers of their day, Riley portrays the C.E.O.s of chemical companies, plastic industry lobbyists and others he deems responsible for producing the devastating tonnages of single-use plastics that are engulfing our oceans and threatening our ecosystems. It’s a downer, but if you look closely there’s often a Riley twist of humor, like the seagull shown relieving itself on the head of a water bottle magnate.

“ ‘This is an artist who I always refer to as a modern-day pirate,’ said Anne Pasternak, the director of the Brooklyn Museum. ‘He’s not just an aesthete pointing to something passively, he’s working to actively spur change — you have to be in it with an artist like Duke. He’s not going to hold back.’

“Calling out corporate titans and politicians — particularly when institutions like the Brooklyn Museum depend on them for donations and support — comes from a fearless ethic and ‘a wit that is hilarious and unforgiving.’ She added, ‘I always think of him as the George Carlin of the art world.’ …

“Best known for ‘Fly by Night,’ a 2016 performance in which 2,000 trained pigeons outfitted with LEDs lit up the New York sky, or for launching his own homemade Revolutionary War submarine into the path of the Queen Mary 2 cruise ship, Riley has mostly succeeded by navigating around the commercial New York art world, though he holds degrees from some of its prestigious feeder institutions (a B.F.A. from the Rhode Island School of Design and an M.F.A. in sculpture from Pratt Institute). …

“ ‘Duke is a natural,’ said Ernesto Pujol, an artist and former professor at Pratt who has mentored him. ‘A huge talent. … He had to fight his way for the art world to see him holistically — he is the kind of artist that is always more than you bargain for.’ …

“Riley works in many mediums: The Brooklyn exhibition includes films, decorative installations, mosaics and illustrations, like a vast map of Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal, encompassing its history from precolonial bounty to Dutch settlers through the polluted Superfund site that in 2007 tested positive for gonorrhea. …

“His mosaics offer one of the biggest wows of the show. Inspired by sailors’ valentines, a nautical souvenir traditionally made of shells, Riley’s are enormous and quite beautiful.

Only on close inspection do you notice that the perfect, shiny seashells are interlaid with a rainbow of bottle caps, cigar tips, bits of mechanical pencils, and bread bag clips, all harvested from New York streets and waterfronts. …

“[His studio is] a cleanish space, stacked with neatly bagged, color-coordinated trash. A trailer outside was filled with more refuse. Some of it came from Fishers Island, the exclusive enclave in Long Island Sound, where Riley had a residency in 2019, and where he met a woman whose full-time job is to rid its beaches, the summer home of families like the DuPonts, of plastic rubbish.

“ ‘The exhibition is so much about holding people accountable, and the little acts that people can take to solve this problem,’ Liz St. George, the show’s curator, said. That includes museum administrators; in the course of working with Riley, they changed cafeteria suppliers to minimize plastic, and reconfigured water fountains to accommodate reusable bottles. …

“He did the scrimshaw in solitude aboard his boat, now docked in Rhode Island. A Massachusetts native who worked on the fish docks and grew up visiting places like the New Bedford Whaling Museum, he has always been attracted to a New England nautical aesthetic. …

“This week, Riley is also debuting a mosaic in Boston’s central library. It is one of only a few pieces of contemporary art purchased for permanent installation in the landmark 1895 building, since a circa-1900s John Singer Sargent mural. Riley’s work is partly inspired by the Great Molasses Flood of 1919, an urban disaster caused when a storage tank exploded, releasing millions of gallons of the sticky stuff. It destroyed neighborhoods in the North End, a community of Italian immigrants. …

“For his core group of collaborators, no project is too brazen, or too labor-intensive. ‘We always pull it off,’ said Nicholas Schneider, a New York City firefighter and a longtime member of Riley’s crew. Through all the fun, ‘there is always a somber or very serious component that I think he’s always been the most focused on and proud of.’ “

More at the Times, here. See also Art in America, here.

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Touring Staten Island

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on May 31, 2022| 6 Comments »

Although the Staten Island of actor Pete Davidson and Saturday Night Live is a running joke, there is more to this borough of New York City than people realize.

Liza Weisstuch at the Washington Post decided to visit as a tourist and found a lot of surprises.

“In 1916, a young woman with dreams of making it big on Broadway lit off from her home in Cincinnati, leaving her young children with their grandparents, and arrived in New York City. She never found success as an actress. Instead, she opened an antiques gallery on Madison Avenue in Manhattan and developed a keen fondness for — rather, obsession with — Tibetan art and took up residence on Lighthouse Hill, a leafy enclave of Staten Island.

“While Jacques Marchais never set foot in Asia, she accrued what remains one of the largest collections of Tibetan art outside Tibet. It’s all housed in the Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art, which she opened in 1947, next to her home. It took her nine years to build, during which time she collected stones in her pickup truck that were used in the construction of the museum and terraced garden.

“ ‘It’s a wonder there were any stones left on Staten Island after she was done,’ the museum’s executive director, Jeff Gaal, told me, pointing out the flat roof, trapezoidal-trimmed windows and doors with crosscut wood posts, a few of the elements in the style of a Tibetan monastery in the United States. …

“One day last spring, I sat for a while in the garden outside. It was easy to understand why Marchais found it a refuge from Manhattan.

“Staten Island, which sits 5.2 miles south of New York City’s Financial District and measures 58.5 square miles, has been called many things: the greenest borough, the Forgotten Borough, Staten Italy, the Rock, the city’s dump. (It was the site of a noxious 2,000-plus-acre landfill, one of the world’s largest, for more than 50 years. A project to turn it into green space is underway, with some sections now open to the public.) …

“Arguably today’s most famous Staten Islander is SNL prodigy and boyfriend to the stars Pete Davidson, who wrote and starred in Judd Apatow’s The King of Staten Island in 2020. …

“Over the past few months, I’ve made a few trips to the borough to see things I sheepishly and shamefully never knew there were to see. And learning what makes the island so unique has brought my understanding of New York City — and it’s no exaggeration to say other parts of the world, too — into clearer focus.

“Case in point: Tibet. And also, Sri Lanka. A community of Sri Lankans from the South Asian island nation has grown here over the past few decades. Lakruwana [restaurant], which opened its first location in Manhattan in the 1990s and its second here in 2000, is a bedrock of the community. It’s run by Jayantha Wijesinghe and her husband, Lakruwana, who met on the Staten Island Ferry. He oversees the place and decorated it with art, furniture and Buddhist sculptures he shipped over from Sri Lanka. She’s the chef, and her visually arresting dishes emphasize traditional flavor — curries and sambals. Their daughter, Julia, created a Sri Lankan museum, the first outside the country, in the restaurant’s basement in 2017. She was 18. …

“What was fast becoming an Asian-arts-oriented expedition continued a few days later when I returned to visit Snug Harbor Cultural Center & Botanical Garden, an 83-acre campus that encompasses three museums, 14 botanical gardens, two art galleries and a two-acre urban farm where produce is grown for some of New York City’s most famous restaurants. Among the sites is the New York Chinese Scholar’s Garden, an otherworldly … tranquil space, a re-creation of Ming Dynasty Chinese gardens. Sounding like the stuff of fairy tales, the buildings were fabricated in China by 40 artisans, then shipped to New York City and assembled here in the late 1990s in accordance with old-world methods. That’s to say: no nails, screws or glue, just pegs securing the latticework. …

“Snug Harbor is not why people call Staten Island ‘the greenest borough.’ You can chalk that up to the Greenbelt, a 2,800-acre expanse of parks, trails and open spaces that cuts diagonally across the center of the island. (For scale, Central Park is 843 acres.) The park on top of the aforementioned dump nearly doubles the island’s green space. Red foxes, groundhogs, beavers, deer, wild turkeys and great blue herons are just a sampling of the wildlife that roam the woods and wetlands. …

“Going back to the Lenape Indians who lived here when the Dutch arrived, life and commerce revolved around the farmland. And the sea. A visit to the museum at Historic Richmond Town, a collection of 40 structures (including outhouses) on the site of a 17th-century village, offers insight on that, with its display of old local oyster shells, some as large as adult shoes. …

“A visit to the National Lighthouse Museum, located in a former Coast Guard station a few minutes from the ferry terminal, gave me a clearer understanding of the island’s critical role in the evolution of the nation’s lighthouse network.”

More at the Post, here.

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Post-Covid Train Trip

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on April 12, 2022| 13 Comments »

The new version of Penn Station, New York, is across the street in the former Post Office. The Moynihan Train Hall has a large, high dome that lets in lots of light.

I do love New York. But thanks to Covid, I hadn’t been to visit it for two years. Last week I had my first big post-Covid adventure and went to my high school reunion in the city.

New York is in a constant state of crumbling and rising, disintegrating and reemerging. Like the rest of the world, I suppose. It’s just that in New York, it’s more obvious.

What did I feel about the city after two-plus years? I love the Upper West Side, but there are parts of it that are messier than ever: trash bags ripped open and spread all over the sidewalk, dog feces, a once productive community garden destroyed and turned into a mattress dump, a rat. In some places, I had a sense of New York saying, “OK, I give up!”

In the midst of all that, though, are the mothers leaving the projects holding the hands of their small children to get them safely to school, babies watching pigeons and laughing, workers going to work whether they feel like it or not. And right up against the trash and disintegration is the pristine haven of Central Park, where people from every walk of life are enjoying nature and enjoying being with other people from every walk of life who are enjoying nature. And dog lovers are throwing balls for happy, well-cared-for dogs.

Note the endurance of a small business below — a liquor store, no less — and its playful effort to grab your attention. Note the adaptability of Covid-era restaurants, almost every one of which has an air-circulating shed that looks ratty by day and magical after dark.

I wake in the night to the racket of something or other on Upper Broadway and roll over with a smile on my face. It’s the Lullaby of Broadway.

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