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Art

Anna Meejin: On Identity, Ancestry, and Finding a Place in American Culture

March 23, 2022 By Julia DePinto Filed Under: The Arts Tagged With: Anna Meejin, Art

An invincible nostalgia for an unlived experience is illuminated through Meejin’s art. 

Lady in Green (2021), oil on canvas, 24″ x 36″. Image courtesy of the artist.

Anna Meejin’s paintings of landscapes, dinner plates, portraits, and horses cover the walls of her Brooklyn home. The large-scale paintings are hung salon-style against exposed brick, juxtaposed with ordinary household furnishings and decor. The lushly smooth surfaces with rich color palettes and ambient metaphor reveal a totality of nuanced domesticity, cultural patrimony, and the complexities of American history and Western civilization. Meejin’s paintings pay homage to the people and events in her life while reflecting a perpetual curiosity about a culture she has never known. 

Meejin’s legal name is Anna Mee-Jin Hurley-Echevarria. She was born in Manhattan and raised between New York City and Puerto Rico. Anna’s mother is Puerto-Rican; her father is of Irish heritage. Although she was raised in a culturally pluralistic home in one of the most diverse cities in the world, Meejin always knew she was adopted. The striking physical differences between her and her parents were inevitable. The enforced societal expectations of constructing an American identity—for a child growing up in the early 2000s among rapid technological advances and economic crisis— led Meejin down a tumultuous road of self-discovery in an extraordinary period of US history. 

“I was always trying to figure out where I fit in,” Meejin told me over the phone. “I knew I was Korean but never had a relationship with my culture.” 

In the series, Considering Her Past (2020-21), Meejin explores the delineation she often feels from her Korean identity, while simultaneously searching for her place in contemporary American society. Painting through the pathos of confusion and detachment, she creates exaggerated portraits of Korean women and fictional horses. Traditional objects of cultural importance entangle with narratives told but not lived. The illustrative compositions examine the dichotomy between what is and what could have been.

“I was going back in time learning about the traditional things,” Meejin explained. “I was thinking about an experience I never had.”

Sweet Thoughts (2020), oil on canvas, 36″ x 42″. Image courtesy of the artist.

In “Sweet Thoughts” (2020), an invincible nostalgia for an unlived experience is illuminated through the portrayal of a seated Korean woman, holding an intricately crafted folding fan. The traditional Korean fan, called a hapjukseon, dates back to the Goryeo Dynasty which ruled Korea from 918-1392. Covering the slim bamboo strips and the delicate frame is a painted landscape, applied directly to the hanji— a fine handmade paper made from mulberry trees. The hapjukseon covers the nude female figure, whose stylized anatomy and downward gaze are placed in the center of the composition— and are confined by the barriers of the canvas. Her porcelain-white skin and rose-colored makeup date back to the cultural aesthetic of early Korean Dynasties, long before Eurocentric beauty standards came into existence. The figure is ungrounded, floating in a dream-like state through lulling brushstrokes that sweep across the surface of the canvas. 

The Last Peach (2021), oil on canvas, 36″ x 48″. Image courtesy of the artist.

In “The Last Peach” (2021), Meejin creates a fictitious world to poignantly route her lived experiences. The painting is paramount to Meejin’s Korean-American identity; the narrative is heavily influenced by Western allegory and Korean metaphor. A celebrated horse, symbolic of the historic European ideals of power and conquering a people or place, is painted in the center of the composition. The horse’s neck is outstretched; his jaw is defined. His gaze is determined by greed. Dangling above the horse from a flimsy tree branch is a ripened peach. The peach is vibrant, fresh, and representative of Korean ideals of abundance, fertility, and longevity. It is a symbol of wealth that taunts the horse, whose form becomes distorted with the desire to obtain its fortune. In the backdrop of the painting is a pool of water that eventually drowns the horse. 

Steak Frites (2021), oil on canvas, 24″ x 36″. Image courtesy of the artist.

In her recent work, Meejin has turned to those around her for inspiration. Oil paintings of friends and family members have shifted Meejin’s aesthetic from personal narratives to the subtleties that encompass the existence of others. Nuanced scenes of domestic routine warrant the stoic expressions of the figures who gaze back indifferently at the viewer. The figures sit in chairs at dinner tables and desks. They eat dinners of steak frites and snacks of delicately sliced fruits. They read books and smoke cigarettes. Bold color palettes and atmospheric lighting set the tone of the paintings— elongating the forms and evoking a sense of belonging. The paintings provide an astonishing direct line to reality and the shared human experiences that exist in all cultures. 

Filed Under: The Arts Tagged With: Anna Meejin, Art

We Don’t Deserve Dogs: Park Slope Documentary Filmmakers Connecting The World

October 5, 2021 By Sofia Pipolo Filed Under: Park Slope Life, The Arts Tagged With: Art, dogs, dogs in Park Slope, film, Park Slope

What connects us? What makes us different? What’s it like being a shepherd in the isolated mountains of Romania? Or an evening with a dog walker under the streetlights of Istanbul? And how does listening to these stories help us grow together?

From Park Slope filmmakers Matthew Salleh and Rose Tucker the new documentary We Don’t Deserve Dogs travels around the world beautifully capturing the lives of everyday individuals and their dogs. While we may never truly know what we did to deserve the unconditional love of our four-legged friends, there are sure to be life lessons in this special relationship.

The filmmaking duo of Urtext Films began their career in their home city of Adalene, Australia; and soon began developing and perfecting their own DIY hands-on way of documentary filmmaking. “When we started doing the documentary work we realized how much we could achieve just the two of us,” reflects Producer Rose Tucker. During production, Rose also manages Sound Recordist, while Matt takes the role of Director and Cinematographer. Together they’ve traveled the world intimately capturing the daily lives of individuals you may not normally see on screen. With just the two of them and sometimes a local translator as the crew, Matt and Rose are able to create a non-disruptive and personal filming experience, which reflects greatly in their work. The small, quiet details as incense smoke fill a prayer space. The rhythmic jingles of a dog’s collar tag. The friendly looks between patrons at a local pub. These natural moments make Matt and Rose’s first-person filmmaking style that much more mesmerizing, unique, and maybe a bit familiar.

Familiarity is always a starting point for Matt and Rose. Subjects that people are passionate about, things that get people talking. Their previous award-winning feature film, Barbecue (2017) covered BBQ culture across the planet. By capturing how everyday things manifest they can explore contrasts in cultures, while simultaneously connecting the things humans have in common. “It’s important to me because I come from a mixed-race background, so I’m always questioning what comes from each side,” says Director Matt Salleh. “We live in a seemingly very fractured world, and post-pandemic even more fractured. We can give insight and show commonalities in people’s lives while celebrating our unique differences.”

Of course, Park Slope is no stranger to the connective joy between fellow dog lovers. “One of the inspirations for this film is just looking out our window in Park Slope,” Rose remembers. “There are always people walking their dogs. People having relationships with each other based on their pets, visiting each other, and going to Prospect Park together.”

Filming for We Don’t Deserve Dogs took our fellow Park Slopers around the world. Traveling to 11 different countries in 9 months finding remarkable stories that would normally go untold. From Italy, Turkey, Uganda, Pakistan, Chile, Finland, Romania, Peru, Vietnam, Nepal, and Scotland; featuring 10 different languages, including some rarely seen on screen like the Acholi/

Lou language of Northern Uganda. “I think traveling when making a film is so different than traveling for tourism because you get that insight into what real life is like for people. You travel to neighborhoods you wouldn’t normally go to,” says Rose, who coordinated their travels and connections in each country.

By working with locals as tour guides, translators, and researchers they successfully sought out interview subjects and narratives. These tour guides, dubbed ‘fixers’ came from all walks of life. Some journalists, photographers, or students, all people who were embedded in the local community in some way and offered a bridge into that specific culture. For example, Matt tells about working with a female street performer in Santiago, Chile. “She created these street tours that took us to hidden parts of the city. She knew the lesser popularised history, like LGBTQ history, which meant she had to talk to people, understand the culture and people’s stories.”

Spending about 2 weeks in every country, the duo worked tirelessly, on foot, by car, and even on motorbike to capture the immersive terrains, complex soundscapes, and individual narratives. They didn’t seek to create the cliché cutesy dog film, nor interview celebrities or the boldest of personalities, but rather everyday individuals and their canine companions. Whether energetic or melancholy, spiritual or quirky, We Don’t Deserve Dogs shifts with each location’s distinct rhythms and pace of life. In Miraflores, Peru, you’ll meet young women throwing birthday parties for their adopted dogs. In Turku, Finland, support dogs for the elderly and disabled bring needed joy and cheer. In Gulu, Uganda, former child soldiers help rehabilitate street dogs as a form of trauma therapy. While directing Matt trusted subjects to share their experiences in their own voice and view. “We are not a voice-over saying what people should think about other people’s lives, we just want to show people’s lives as they are.”

While Matt and Rose feel privileged and bless to have their nomadic filmmaking lives, they have continued to find comfort in returning to Park Slope. A place that again brings together community and familiarity within the much larger New York City setting. Having immigrated to the United States four years ago, Rose expresses her appreciation, “We are lucky to have landed in Park Slope. We joke that we are more connected with our neighbors here than we were in a smaller city back in Australia. It’s a different kind of community living. In Australia everyone is in their house or in a car, here everyone is walking, sitting outside, everyone knows their neighbors and knows who works at the shops.” This aspect has also influenced the couple creatively. Not only reflecting on the immigrant experience, but the ability to find affinity, support, and friendship through genuine connection with those around us.

So here in their one-bedroom apartment, the editing process commenced for 3 months; reviewing hundred of translated transcripts, determining detailed story structure, meticulous color grading, and adding the beautiful score by composer Blake Ewing. Matt and Rose emerged from the editing cave in February 2020 (unfortunately only to return a month later for quarantine), and We Don’t Deserve Dogs made its virtual world premiere at South by Southwest 2020 Film Festival. The film is now digitally available for everyone to enjoy.

And it’s the perfect film for Park Slopers. Yes, of course, because of the dogs; but equally the showcasing of different cultures, religions, genders, and generations. “I think people in Brooklyn have a strong interest and deep respect for other cultures and want to know what’s happening around the world,” says Rose. “We made a very intentional decision to not film stories in Western countries like the U.S. or Australia. All of the stories are coming from lesser-known places. And I think people in Park Slope would be very interested in seeing for example what the relationship between a Muslim woman and her dog in Karachi [Pakistan] is like, and how that can relate to their own experience back here.”

There are no doubt commonalities seen right here in the melting pot that is Brooklyn. Every corner has a little – or more likely a lot – of history, culture, and influence from around the world. Matt expressed, “I don’t think Brooklyn would function in the way it does without all these different cultures coming together.” Matt and Rose even express how that if they find a food dish they love while traveling they have good faith in Brooklyn’s diversity they’ll be able to get it when they return home. “In filmmaking, we have this love and opportunity to travel and meet people from dozens of cultures, and they are all also right here in Brooklyn.”

If there is something special to be said about our ability to come together and blend cultures in our neighborhood, there is equally something to be said about how we can distinctly set each other apart. “We always start our films off with this positive hypothesis that there’s more good in the world than bad. Over and over again we meet people who prove that and amaze us with their stories. Their courage, their bravery, their insight into the world, how they preserve their history, how they celebrate their cultures,” Matt says when reflecting on what he hopes people will get out of the film. “So the fact our film is just listening to people talk about their lives, where they come from, and what is important in their culture, I think it’s a good first step to greater cultural understanding.”

In documenting these genuine stories, valuable kinships, and heartfelt moments from around the world, Matt and Rose’s film We Don’t Deserve Dogs follows the thread that connects us to the humanity, companionship, and unconditional love we may have with dogs and with each other.

Visit wedontdeservedogs.com to watch

Follow @urtext

Filed Under: Park Slope Life, The Arts Tagged With: Art, dogs, dogs in Park Slope, film, Park Slope

Art and the City: Public Art Unveils Controversy in the City

February 10, 2021 By Julia DePinto Filed Under: Community, Feature Tagged With: Art, city, feminist movement, julia depinto

Giancarlo Biagi & Jill Burkee-Biagi, Mother Cabrini Memorial (2020), bronze.
Image courtesy of the Office of Governor Andrew Cuomo.

To most, public art may seem innocuous. Art brings vitality to public spaces. It helps districts establish identities, provides artists with income, and boosts local economies by providing sought-after destinations for art lovers. And perhaps more importantly, public art provides an opportune backdrop for tourists and selfie enthusiasts. However, for New Yorkers who are especially inundated with public artworks ranging from historical tablets and monuments in public parks to contemporary works, like Jeff Koon’s colossal Balloon Flower and Jenny Holzer’s impermanent text-based projections, the relationship between the public and art is not always positive.

Public art is rarely considered by art critics to be “good” art. Seldom does it arrive without a myriad of complications. Aside from often being overly symbolic or kitsch, public art is largely taxpayer-funded, governed by private capital, and decided on by a panel of bureaucrats. 

In 2020, the city planned, commissioned, and installed dozens of public sculptures, installations, murals, and artworks. Below are three of the most recent public sculptures to be unveiled, all of which were met with varying degrees of controversy.

Mother Cabrini Memorial 

Giancarlo Biagi & Jill Burkee-Biagi (2020) 

A bronze and granite memorial honoring the life and service of St. Francis Xavier Cabrini, the Patron Saint of Immigrants, was recently erected in Manhattan’s Battery Park City. Cabrini, more commonly referred to as Mother Cabrini, an Italian immigrant and devoted public servant, founded over 60 schools, orphanages, and hospitals, including numerous academic and health care institutions in New York City. She was the first naturalized American to be canonized by the Roman Catholic Church, nearly three decades after her death. Although Cabrini’s legacy parallels the valor and perseverance of many immigrant communities, the memorial was heavily disputed by the public and follows a contentious stint of bureaucratic conflict between New York’s city and state governments. 

“We are all immigrants in one way or another. We all share the immigrant experience,” said Italian-American artist, Giancarlo Biagi in an interview.

Biagi and collaborator, Jill Burkee-Biagi, were selected by the Governor Cuomo-appointed commission to complete the Cabrini memorial—budgeted at $750,000— in a remarkable nine months. The life-size bronze monument atop a marble base depicts a young Cabrini and two small children in a paper boat, gazing ahead into a distant future. It stands erect in a cove along the esplanade and against a backdrop of Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. The commemorative memorial is filled with metaphor, perpetuating collective immigrant experiences of hope and new horizons, while also containing small anecdotes of Cabrini’s mortality. The plaza is surrounded by mosaic, created from bits of riverbed stone near Cabrini’s birthplace in Sant’Angelo Lodigiano. The memorial was unveiled on Columbus Day and dedicated by the New York Governor. 

The controversy of the Cabrini memorial—as with most memorials—lies within the boundaries of taxpayer-funded public art, the site-specificity of the artwork, and how the overall content and design are determined. In 2018, First Lady Chirlane McCray, Deputy Mayor Alicia Glen, and the Department of Cultural Affairs announced the She Built NYC initiative, a project focused on funding public monuments and artworks to honor women’s history. The initiative builds on the recommendations of the Mayoral Advisory Commission on City Art, Monuments, and Markers— a commission that advises the NYC Mayor on issues surrounding public artworks and markers on City-owned property. An advisory panel, appointed by the de Blasio Administration, was founded to oversee the commission of large-scale commemorative statues of revolutionary women— including women of color, trans women, and non-binary individuals— to address the disparate gender imbalances in public spaces. The Department of Cultural Affairs committed to a budget of up to $10 million over the next four years. 

The She Built NYC initiative, spearheaded by McCray, accepted public nominations via an online survey, receiving close to 2,000 responses in total. Although the submissions overwhelmingly favored a memorial honoring the legacy of Mother Cabrini, the panel disregarded the majority, sparking outrage among Italian-American and Catholic communities. In response to the outcry, the governor announced his administration’s plans to work with local Italian-American groups and the Diocese of Brooklyn to oversee the creation of a state-funded memorial to Cabrini. 

The pandemic has indefinitely shelved the She Built NYC project.  

Italian-American and Catholic communities applauded the decision to erect the Cabrini monument, however residents of the southernmost district of Manhattan disapproved— arguing that Cabrini had little involvement with the region. The Mother Cabrini Memorial Commission was able to bypass political disputes and reject public concerns for building the monument in Battery Park City— an area that is owned and controlled by a state corporation. In the long-term, taxpayers and residents of Battery Park City will continue to pay upkeep on an ever-increasing collection of public artworks, jointly valued at $63 million. 

Ruth Bader Ginsburg Memorial 

Gillie & Marc (forthcoming)
Gillie & Marc, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Memorial (forthcoming), bronze. Image courtesy of the artists.

The nation is still mourning the untimely death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The announcement of her death, less than two months before the divisive 2020 election, was met with an outpouring of public grief for the beloved civil rights attorney and gender equality advocate. On the steps of the Supreme Court building in DC, mourners left makeshift memorials with handwritten notes, flower bouquets, and votive candles; public gatherings and candle-lit vigils were held in cities all over the country. The following day, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced in a tweet that the state plans to honor the life and legacy of Justice Ginsburg by erecting a permanent statue in her native Brooklyn. 

Less than a month later, the governor appointed a 23-member commission to oversee the design and location of the memorial, including members of Ginsburg’s family. NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio also announced plans to rename the Brooklyn Municipal Building in honor of the late Justice.

Officials at City Point, a residential and commercial development in Brooklyn’s metropolitan center, said that the monument will be unveiled on March 15, 2021, coinciding with both Women’s History Month and Justice Ginsburg’s 88th birthday. The bronze statue, created by artist duo Gillie and Marc, was originally built in partnership with Statues for Equality, whose initiative aims to balance the gender, racial, and ethnic disparities of public sculpture. The artists believe that installing statues of women in public spaces are major steps forward in the long-overdue fight for gender representation. 

Unlike the Mother Cabrini memorial, New Yorkers have mostly welcomed the forthcoming and permanent iconic statue of Justice Ginsburg. There has been little, if any, protest from the public regarding the budget of the memorial or upkeep. However, some in the art world wonder if the traditional solution of building a larger-than-life statue atop a pedestal is the best approach to memorializing the legacy of the adored American figure. Jerry Saltz, Senior Art Critic for New York Magazine, attributes “bad” and “generic” public sculpture to the bureaucratic systems that have long dictated public art— including the commissions composed of politicians, life-long political advisors, architects, and real-estate developers.

“One way to avoid this,” Saltz said, “is to, first of all, get a group of women together. I think you do not want the governor and another batch of male-whatever-politicians big-fucking-footing this thing around. [They should] just shut up and listen. Because to me, the monument to Ginsburg is not only a monument to Ginsburg; it is a monument to one of the greatest liberation movements in this country, which of course is feminism.”

Medusa with the Head of Perseus 

Luciano Garbati (2008-2020)
Luciano Garbati, Medusa with the Head of Perseus (2008-2020), bronze. Image courtesy of the MWTH Project.

One of the most controversial public sculptures of recent memory is Luciano Garbati’s, Medusa with the Head of Perseus. The seven-foot bronze sculpture of an unclothed Medusa reimagines the Greek myth by shifting the narrative of the myth to the perspective of Medusa while positioning the physical sculpture in the context of the #MeToo movement. Smooth and cold to the touch, but resolute and distinguished, Medusa gazes out above a sea of passersby. She is installed in Manhattan’s Collective Park Pond, across from the New York County Criminal Court where the Harvey Weinstein trials commenced. 

The sculpture is inspired by Benvenuto Cellini’s 16th-century bronze masterpiece, Perseus with the Head of Medusa. As Greek Mythology recounts, Medusa was once a beautiful maiden whose appearance was transformed after she was stalked and raped by the sea god, Poseidon in Athena’s temple. As punishment for “breaking” the vow of celibacy, Athena turned Medusa’s hair into a tangle of snakes and cursed her with a gaze powerful enough to petrify men. Perseus, son of Zeus and Danäe, murders Medusa in her sleep. He holds her severed head in an upright, trophy-like position— weaponizing it to turn his enemies to stone. Cellini’s statue and Greek Mythology shame Medusa for being a victim of rape. The Argentine- Italian sculptor’s interpretation, Medusa with the Head of Perseus, flips the context, giving the power back to Medusa and victims of sexual assault. 

At the mid-October unveiling, Garbati spoke of the women who had written to him, viewing the sculpture as catharsis. The artwork, created in 2008, has materialized into an artist-led project first conceived by Bek Andersen, called MWTH (Medusa With The Head – pronounced “myth”). Andersen contacted Garbati after the image went viral. Together, the two applied to NYC Parks’ program, Art in the Parks.

MWTH engages the narrative habits of classical imaginaries of the past, present, and future, and sells miniature replicas and agitprop of Garbati’s, Medusa. A small portion of the proceeds goes to the National Women’s Law Center.

Although the sculpture reimagines the myth by shifting the power to women—an act that is seemingly well-intentioned and fits into the narrative of feminist ideals— the artwork has been met with a deluge of controversy. For one, the sculpture predates the birth of the #MeToo movement by nearly a decade. Secondly, #MeToo was created by Tarana J. Burke, a Black activist from the Bronx. In a post, Burke wrote: “This monument may mean something to some folks, but it is NOT representative of the work that we do or anything we stand for.” In Garbati’s vision of Medusa, the Gorgon unrelentingly grips the severed head of Perseus and not the head of Poseidon, her rapist. This may be an act of irrefutable violence but artistically, it is not a radical political act. [Violence in art is nothing new.] The emphasis on violence and revenge in Garbati’s narrative conflicts with the entirety of the #MeToo movement. “This isn’t the kind of symbolism that this Movement needs,” wrote Burke.

The decision to erect Garbati’s Medusa is a classic example of a missed opportunity for minority representation that the City [and the art world] will continue to perpetuate. Instead, the City chose an artwork with a message created by a man, depicting a naked woman with an idealized muscular physique, Euro-centric features, and shaved genitalia. 

A redeeming quality of Medusa with the Head of Perseus is that it is temporary. Until her removal, Medusa will stand indignant, across the street from a criminal courthouse, reminding the public that through millennia women who are sexually assaulted are likely to be blamed. 

Filed Under: Community, Feature Tagged With: Art, city, feminist movement, julia depinto

The Free Black Women’s Library: A Space for Radical Ideas

November 15, 2020 By Sofia Pipolo Filed Under: Community Tagged With: Art, community, free black womens library, sofia pipolo

Back in 2015, visual artist, OlaRonke Akinmowo wanted to create an art project that empowered and honored Black women’s creativity, scholarship, education, and research. With a background in collage, printmaking, and decorating, Ola’s work brings different pieces together to create something new and unified. With this, she created The Free Black Women’s Library.

The Free Black Women’s Library is a literary social art project featuring traveling installations of over 2,000 books, magazines, and other material written by Black women. The program is simple: come to a library event, join the discussion, donate a book, and choose a book for yourself. Every event takes a different shape by taking on a different space. “Like a collage: poetry, horror, science fiction, romance, comic books, children’s books all written by Black women are being brought together in a way to create a library shape and community space.”

Nervous but excited and curious how the neighborhood would respond, Ola started the library one summer day off a front stoop in BedStuy, Brooklyn with just 100 books. With the forecast possibly showing rain, she remembers her main concern being the safety of her then small collection of books. She reminds us, “Books are precious objects.”

Over the next years, the library has grown and traveled to hundreds of locations around New York City, and outside to Detroit, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. Each month there is a different theme, book, or writer that compliments the location. For example, this past March, for Women’s History Month, the installation at Weeksville Heritage Center in Crown heights focused on womanism within Black history. When it was at Concord Baptists Church, they focused on themes of humanity, spirituality, and love. Each installation brings new crowds, where everyone is welcomed to hang out all day, making new friends, reading, writing, and trading books.

The main goal is “to build a comfortable and creative space for radical ideas. Deep connections, vulnerability, joy, and pleasure… Visitors can come and find themselves in the space. I want it to feel like an inclusive space. Intergeneration. Always free.” The library has attracted young and old readers, families, and friend groups to visit and follow the program online. With a large collection of children’s books, classics, and contemporary literature, there is something for all interests, ages, perspectives, and reading levels. It’s a sustainable, ever-flowing, and connecting system where each individual’s participation influences the library’s collection.

By focusing on Black female authors, the library highlights the nuances of subjects, genres, and experiences of Black women. These vast distinctions and variety of voices are often disproportionately overlooked in traditional literary discussions. It works to share and give a platform to authors and ideas that may not be as widely recognized, especially in particular genres like fantasy or young adult novels. “The beauty of it is if you are a Black woman who has access to Black women writers it is very affirming to see yourself in art and literature. It’s humanizing.”

By inviting others to share in this empowering and humanizing art and activism, Ola strives to create a more positive world for her daughter (18). Motherhood has kept Ola constantly up, curious, and creating. It’s also one of her reasons for starting the Sister Outsider Relief Grant, a one-time cash grant for single community-working mothers. She states, “I want to make the world softer and kind.”

While recognizing how Black women deal with racism and sexism on an everyday basis, the library provides a space for Black women to express themselves and be seen as more than the archetypes they are too often boxed into. The Free Black Women’s Library asks more from visitors, readers, writers, and traditional institutions by exposing and bringing together the extensive works of Black women. Most importantly allowing them to be seen and be brilliant, imaginative, tough, funny, smarkt, and romantic. Anything one wants to be.

Everyone is invited to join the library community. Ola believes in the strong value of all genders, racers, ethnicities, and backgrounds to open and excite their minds to Black female authors. “It may take you out of your comfort zone and inspire you to think differently.” As an artists, activist, and educator Ola’s work invites and strives to open people’s minds. She advises, “Make sure your reading list is open and diverse. Read different types of stories. Not just stories that are written in this perfect Queen’s English, but slang and country English. And see the world through another woman’s eyes.”

While the COVID Pandemic had stopped the library from traveling and setting up installations, they have transitioned online, but it has been a challenge for a project that thrives on community. The library works best when people can come together with books in their hands, to meet face to face, and create a shared educational space. Now there are limits from internet access, to online devices, and scheduling. But the Free Black Women’s Library is still doing all it can by starting a YouTube channel, Instagram Live streams, and Zoom calls with readings, discussions, and writing prompts.

While they have been keeping people engaged, Ola has looked forward to when everyone can come together again and trade books, ideas, and smiles (even if it is behind a mask.) She will also be working towards some big long-term goals for the future of the library, including getting a vehicle for a bookmobile, creating an app, and establishing a full-time space and resource center.


Follow the Free Black Women’s Libary on Instagram @thefreeblackwomenslibrary and use the link in bio to learn more about how to support the program. Or visit their website here.

Support on Patreon.

Filed Under: Community Tagged With: Art, community, free black womens library, sofia pipolo

Shirley Chisholm Returns To Brooklyn: A New Take on the American Monument

July 16, 2019 By Sofia Pipolo Filed Under: Community Tagged With: Art, prospectpark, shirley chisholm, sofia pipolo

Our Destiny, Our Democracy artist rendering

Shirley Anita St. Hill was born and raised in Brooklyn New York to Caribbean immigrant parents. She attended Brooklyn College and Columbia University, earning a masters in elementary education. After working as a teacher and daycare director, she moved into public service serving two terms in NY State Legislature. In 1968, she became the first black woman elected to Congress, representing NY’s 12th congressional district of  Bedford-Stuyvesant. Then in 1972, she became the first black woman to run for President under a major political party saying,

I am not the candidate for Black America, although I am black and proud. I am not the candidate of the women’s movement of this country, although I am a woman, and I am equally proud of that. I am the candidate of the people of America.

Shirley Chisholm on her presidential run in 1972

Chisholm went on as a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus and the Congressional Women’s Caucus. She retired after 14 years and passed away on New Year’s Day 2005. Ten years later, Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom. And now her portrait, commissioned by members of Congress- an honor usually only reserved for party leaders- watches over the most diverse and most female freshman class Congress has ever seen.

Chisholm will once again make history as the first female historical figure to have a monument dedicated to her in Brooklyn. 

Artists Amanda Williams and Olalekan Jeyifous’ design “Our Destiny, Our Democracy” honors Shirley Chisholm in a way that reimagines the functional purpose and ideology of the American monument. “This artwork will be bright, bold, and makes a statement – just like Chisholm herself,” says First Lady Chirlane McCray. This project, from She Built NYC, is working to represent the women who have shaped the city while addressing the gender gap in NYC monuments. Currently, just 5 of the 150 statues in NYC depict women. 

She Built NYC will change this male-dominated landscape of historical figures. So far, five trailblazing women will be commemorated in upcoming projects set to hit the boroughs- Billie Holiday (Queens), Elizabeth Jennings Graham (Manhattan), Dr. Helen Rodriguez Trías (Bronx), Katherine Walker (Staten Island), and of course, Shirley Chisholm will return to her home of Brooklyn. The 40 foot-tall structure, set for completion by the end of 2020 at the southeastern corner of Prospect Park, encompasses Shirley’s life’s work and her mindset of coming together through democracy.

During Shirley’s time in Congress, she worked to represent the needs of the people. Specifically, those who were underrepresented, which in 1968 and still today means women, people of color, and the youth. Her wants for equal democracy and unwillingness to back down from what she saw was wrong earned her the nickname “Fighting Shirley.” 

Speaking about the title Dr. Zinga Fraser, Director of The Shirley Chisholm Project of Brooklyn Women’s Activism says, “The name referred to Chisholm’s commitment to taking on the status quo… As a Black woman in America who sought to be a “catalyst for change” in a historically oppressive society, fighting was a routine aspect of her life… Any narrative about Chisholm or Black women’s activism that overlook this struggle is a misleading narrative.”

During Chisholm’s time in office, there were more bills passed relating to child care, education, and human rights than any other point in history. Dr. Fraser points out, “She would argue that a nation’s most important resource was ‘its children.’” Distinguishing herself as a champion of youth, many agree that every school child should know who Shirley Chisholm was. And know they will! – when students, parents, teachers, and all Brooklyn residents walk down Parkside Ave to see Chisholm’s beautiful figure.

The vibrant design from Williams and Jeyifous works to embrace this fighting spirit. The multi-prog, 40-foot tall steel sculpture reconstructs Chisholm’s portrait, the United States Capitol Building, and decorative patterns of vines and leaves. Her strong eyes with signature glasses, full head of curly hair, and poise figure will greet the public reminding us of her unique gift to connect to both children and adults with grace and empathy. Throughout the day these silhouetted compositions will cast shadows along the sidewalks complementing the surrounding trees and vegetation. These strikingly colorful and dynamic pieces assemble an amphitheater-style stage; inviting people to come together, interact, and occupy the space below Chisholm’s guiding light. The elevated seats will be inscribed with the names of women who followed- and will follow- in Fighting Shirley’s revolutionary footsteps; reminiscent of her famous quote, “If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.”

Olalekan Jeyifous and Amanda Williams
Credit: Faye Penn, women.nyc.

With differing styles rooted in architectural study, Williams and Jeyifous’ individual and collaborative work focus on public spaces and public conversations. “Our project celebrates Shirley Chisholm’s legacy as a civil servant who ‘left the door open’ to make room for others to follow in her path toward equity and a place in our country’s political landscape. We have designed a monument in which her iconic visage can be immediately recognizable while also equally portraying the power, beauty, and dimensionality of her contributions to our democracy,” reads their artist statement.

“Our Destiny, Our Democracy” works to challenge the traditional notions of the American monument. Think Gaetano Russo’s Columbus Circle statue, or literally every monument just north at Grand Army Plaza. These traditional monuments commemorate figures by placing them in positions of power- strong and sturdy like the marble they are carved in. Telling us, “This person was important!”, but not much else. Many have sparked controversy that even Mayor De Blasio has addressed; “Our approach will focus on adding detail and nuance to – instead of removing entirely – the representations of these histories. And we’ll be taking a hard look at who has been left out and seeing where we can add new work to ensure our public spaces reflect the diversity and values of our great city.”

We hope that it will also promote Chisholm’s long-held belief that direct involvement alone is the only thing that changes the system.

Williams and Jeyifous want to grant the ability to interact with art and tell that larger, more intersectional story. A narrative that showcases “the substance of Chisholm’s career- a career in which she fought for human rights and against corrupt and anti-democratic features of the U.S. political system… [and] created a foundation for candidates like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, but also candidates like Jesse Jackson and Bernie Sanders who sought to expand the electorate and/or advance under-represented philosophies.” 

Dr. Zinga Fraser was part of the team that observed the artist presentation for the monument. She states, “We hope that the new monument will provoke conversation about Shirley Chisholm’s decision to become directly involved in politics even when the system and its defenders actively tried to tear her down. We hope that this will generate conversation about the unique challenges of marginalized communities and how they help transform American democracy for themselves and for humanity at large. We hope that it will also promote Chisholm’s long-held belief that direct involvement alone is the only thing that changes the system.”

The new 360-degree design will allow us to immerse ourselves in compelling examinations of history. From different points of view around the sculpture, the viewer will see varying ways the capital, vegetation, and Shirley herself come together. At no point is one piece wholly visible, in the same way, one never completely disappears. Instead, their relationship is inseparable. 

Thanks to She Built NYC, these artists have been given the ability to reflect on our current political, social, and cultural climate; and from there, promote diverse and unique perspectives of history and relationships. Questioning the relationship between individuals and government, citizen and leaders, laws and communities, nature and humankind, and so on. By breaking down the traditional American monument, they have created public art whose meaning and connotations are ever changing. Soon, we will see- and be able to participate in!- the discussions Williams and Jeyifous’ piece will provoke – during this the current Trump Administration, the upcoming 2020 election, and wherever the future of politics and American life takes us. The beauty and revolutionary aspect of this monument is not only that its subject is black and female, but that its narrative will transform with each individual viewer; inviting them to sit, think, and share their experiences, identity, and even arguments with others in the same way that Shirley Chisholm did. 

We look forward to experiencing this new kind of monument accomplish its goal of portraying a multidimensional narrative- a more diverse, complete, and malleable story of equal democracy that will transform how we view history for years to come.

Our Destiny, Our Democracy

Filed Under: Community Tagged With: Art, prospectpark, shirley chisholm, sofia pipolo

Uncompromising Identity: Frida Kahlo at The Brooklyn Museum

March 19, 2019 By Sofia Pipolo Filed Under: Reviews, The Arts Tagged With: Art, art and media, Brooklyn Museum, exhibition review, frida kahlo, sofia pipolo

Frida in New York, 1946. Nicholas Muray

Known for housing extraordinary exhibitions of art and media, The Brooklyn Museum has always brought history and contemporary culture together in unique perspectives. Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be Deceiving (running from February 8th to May 12th, 2018) is no different. 

If you are expecting to see rows of Frida Kahlo’s beautiful, colorfully painted self-portraits you will not find them here. Instead, for the first time in the United States, the exhibition displays the iconic artist’s trove of personal photographs, clothing, and belongings.

After her death in 1954, these possessions were locked away under the instruction of her husband, muralist Diego Rivera. Fifty years later, uncovered from her life long home, Casa Azul, The Blue House in Mexico City, they now lay on display to explore Frida’s work in relation to that which surrounded her. This framing is what makes the exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum so unique. With only twelve of her paintings within the 350 objects, the exhibition itself questions what is more important- the art or the artist? 

Frida painted her image in the same manner that she presented herself every day. In both appearance and art, she dressed in the fashion of the indigenous Tehuantepec women of Southern Mexico; with her long enagua skirts, huipil square cut tunic, and braided hair decorated with blooming flowers. She challenged the growing Euro-centric beauty standards by noticeably darkening her skin in paintings and highlightings her thick facial hair and eyebrows; while also celebrating her femininity, wearing traditional lace resplandor garments. The ruffled white lace framing her done-up face like a flower. These hand-made dresses are featured in personal photographs and on petite mannequins complete with floral headdresses and heavy pendant jewelry. No two dresses similar in detailed design. 

Her appearance cemented her identity with Mexico motivated by her personal, political, and artistic convictions. Raised by a mother of Indigenous and Spanish descent and German immigrant father against the backdrop of the Mexican Revolution, Frida became educated in her Mexican heritage both colonial and modernist. She contracted Polio at a young age and later suffered a broken spine and injuries in a severe trolly accident. She began painting, fixated on her own image in the mirror as she lay hospitalized for months. These injuries would stay with her, causing her several miscarriages and need for abortions. She joined the Mexican Communist Party in 1928, immersing herself in political and intellectual issues alongside her husband, Diego Rivera. She also took a leading role in the Mexican Muralist Movement. 

Diego on My Mind, (Self-portrait as Tehuana), 1943

Seen in the love letter from photographer Nickolas Murray- with whom she had an on and off affair- he, maybe ironically, applauds Frida for her devotion. Frida Kahlo had a strong devotion to herself- her identity, her beliefs, and above all her art as she painted her way through pain, love, heartache, and joy. Never giving up or compromising on her own image, Frida meticulously crafted a visualization of her identity.

From the small Aztec sculptures to her painted diary entries, this personal story is told with each piece in the collection. Showcased at the center of the exhibition is the pink lace garment and flower headpiece she dons in the self-portrait Diego on My Mind (1943). The huipil grande headdress, a defining accessory of Tehuantepec women, was found on a statue of the Virgin Mary, attracting visitors to gather round. Contrastingly, the actual painting featuring the garment, complete with gold leaf and Diego’s figure above Frida’s striking brow, is tucked in the corner of the room. 

Plaster corset, painted and decorated by Frida Kahlo.

Under the square tunic blouses, Frida wore an orthopedic, leather-bound corset that assisted in supporting her fragile spine and back. Pages of medical reports and documents give information on her clinical history are uncovered. Her prosthetic leg with traditional Chinese fashion inspired laced up boots, which she strategically hid from prying audiences under her large skirt, come to light. Also displayed are Frida’s plaster cast corsets covered in some of her first paintings composed as she lay after surgery with a mirror about her body. On one she paints a fetus over her abdomen, another a gaping empty space on the stomach. One other features her spine as a broken column cracking and crumbling to dust. On two she paints a large, red Communist hammer and sickle over her heart. Frida, herself, chose to keep these casts once they were taken off, perhaps as a way to remember and document the suffering she endured which worked to fuel her creative energy. A surrealist drawing from her diary shows her as a one-legged child, inscribed “Feet, What Do I Need Them for If I Have Wings to Fly?” 

So with her art, and furthermore her everyday life, is Frida daring us to be bold and live to outwardly express ourselves?

Frida’s image was conscious, considerate, complex, and strategic. In photographs, she posed in such a way to hide her disability, but even that which was private and purposefully covered up was essential to her identity. Contrastingly from these private elements, greenstone and jade beads, finely carved rings, silver earrings, and heavy gold Tehuana necklaces materialize under glass cases. Some would say this heavy jewelry and flower crowns would upstage the young artist’s petite figure, but others saw the significance of the overpowering look. Each beautifully crafted works of art in themselves, which Frida was adamant to decorate herself with. Personal photographs document her enjoying Mexico City’s markets and the purchases she made there- rings, dolls, and decorative trinkets. Frida was known never to barter for goods, indicating a belief in the value of material things. 

She cultivated these purchases in a collection of gems, clothing, writing, sculptures, and even animals at The Blue House. Often housebound due to her disabilities, Frida created a microcosm of Mexico within her own home. Filled with craftsmanship that celebrated Mexican history and culture, every element that influenced her life came together in The Blue House. There she cared for monkeys and other animals as pets- or perhaps as surrogate children-, decorated with Olmec figures as her alter egos, and hung mirrors around every corner to compose her appearance throughout the day. Appearances Can Be Deceiving gives us a glimpse into the highly detailed world Frida cultivated- a treasure trove of her integrated parts of her life, art, and identity. 

Just as the objects around her were important, so were the people. Frida surrounded herself with like-minded artists and individuals that helped to record her artistic legacy. The influence from her parents, her sister- who had an affair with her husband-, American photographers Lous Pachard and Imagen Cunningham, and of course her husband, Diego Rivera. About him, the subject of many of her paintings, Frida writes, “I suffered two grave accidents in my life. One in which a streetcar knocked me down… The other is Diego.” Referred to by their family as “an elephant and a dove,” the exhibition has hundreds of photos and films of the couple painting, at political events, traveling, and living in The Blue House together. In the press, Frida was often referred to in relation to her husband. It is interesting enough to wonder if Frida knew that in the future her name would largely mean more to us than his. But maybe she did as she stated seemingly realizing her own importance and iconic image, “All the painters want me to pose for them.” 

Photographer Imagen Cunningham said that people marveled over Frida’s appearance when she came to the United States. And how is that any different from today? As I walked through the museum, I came across a young woman dressed as Frida Kahlo, in full hair, makeup, and costume. Still today the bright, beautifully woven colors and patterns of the Tehuantepec style highly contrast the black, solid prints of modern New York fashion. Ironically enough, the one black colored dress in the exhibition, Frida wore to a New York art show and dinner event in 1933. From her fiery red lipstick to her embroidered skirts, to her shoes from New York or San Fransisco’s Chinatown to her iconic unibrow, Frida’s appearance was truly her own. 

Installation view, Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be Deceiving, Brooklyn Museum, February 8 – May 12, 2019 (Photo: Jonathan Dorado)

No piece of her was without thought. In mind, body, and appearance, Frida was aware that every part of her being brought about her values and message. Whether she cared if we agreed or not, Frida worked for others to know who she was through her open visual identity. Proving this, on the back of her mother’s First Holy Communion photo Frida writes in pen “Idiota!”. She has even stated, “I do not like to be considered religious. I like people to know I am not.”

So with her art, and furthermore her everyday life, is Frida daring us to be bold and live to outwardly express ourselves? Or did she simply not care about us- the audience- using her self portraits and painting as just another way to curate her uncompromising identity? If so, what does this exhibition signify- where do the importance and meaning lie in these personal belongings? The title of this exhibition, Appearances Can Be Deceiving, suggests that there is more to what is outwardly presented. So if Frida was in fact so adamant about visually presenting and cultivating her identity, what deeper truths are there to be uncovered? I urge you to visit this must-see exhibition at The Brooklyn Museum with these questions in mind as you walk through surrounded by the same items and objects that Frida Kahlo chose to surround herself with.

Filed Under: Reviews, The Arts Tagged With: Art, art and media, Brooklyn Museum, exhibition review, frida kahlo, sofia pipolo

Synchronous Art: His Lifeblood, His Being

May 11, 2018 By Lola Lafia Filed Under: Personal Essay, The Arts Tagged With: Art, artist, Brooklyn, form, installation art, light, local, material, nyc, Park Slope, process, studio

 

The light that shines through the translucent plastic is viciously sensual. The sun permeates the material and projects a candy colored pink shadow onto the wooden floor, met with varying shades of effervescent lime, intrepid orange, and delicate violet. The radiant shadows dance with one another, shifting in hue and intensity as the outside light moves from dawn to dusk.

A ten foot by four foot patchwork of pellucid materials sewn together hangs from the bay window of a brownstone in Park Slope, Brooklyn. This is the work of Marc Lafia, an artist that has made his studio the bottom floor of his family home. 

It is a quiet Thursday afternoon and the studio is vacant: not of the art, but of the artist. It is rare to experience the space without the emanating presence of Marc, who spends most days working, writing, and creating art in the various rooms of his atelier. As he innovates, he unearths himself. 

Marc’s art practice is iterative and perpetually blossoming. He’s like a conductor of a massive orchestra that he is constantly recasting, refining, and expanding. His musicians take the form of any and every material that one could imagine: sheets of silicon, latex, silk, diaphanous plastic, giant gauze, organza, metallic mylar, wooden cubes, cardboard, sheer cloth, tissue paper, textiles, zippers, pliable string, potato sacks, felt, zip lock bags, and more. The list is infinite. Marc decides how these materials will come together to form works of art, sometimes in duets, sometimes in quartets, and most often in symphonies.

A few days each week, Marc roams the aisles of Canal Plastics and Mood Fabrics, two of his go-to stores in Lower Manhattan. He can spend hours observing the highly industrialized and refined products that line the shelves of these emporiums, touching every piece of neoprene or acrylic he comes across. He examines the materials by feeling them, touching them, scrutinizing their various sizes, weights, shapes, and textures. Sometimes he knows what he is looking for, but often what he brings home is different from what he set out to buy.

Perhaps that is an apt parallel for Marc’s style as an artist. That is not to say that his work is random: not at all. It is deliberately eclectic. He knows, but he doesn’t know. He is perceptive and reflective, thinking deeply about his ideas, claims, and desires, but he often translates these preconceptions into tangible realities via of-the-moment discoveries. His work ethic is deeply in touch with the present, with his surroundings and his environment, with the materials he has at hand, with the weather of the day, with the light of the hour. 

Marc’s ever expanding toolkit of raw materials are more than just a response to his artistic visions. In fact, for him, that link is actually reversed: it is the materials themselves that garner his vision. His work certainly requires cavernous rumination, but not without the help of a physical substrate laying before his eyes to help propel his thinking forward. He will admit, and proudly so, that his materials often dictate his ideas. 

______

The next morning, a brisk December Friday, he embarks on his daily routine of waking up with the sun and walking downstairs to retrieve hot coffee with steamed milk in a mossy green mug. He then returns to his bedroom, sinks into his mattress as he leans against the blue-gray colored wall, and opens the “Notes” application on his computer. Here he keeps hundreds of documents of essays, moodboards, and nuggets of thought about his current body of work, which has yet to have a definite title. It oscillates between “In What Language to Come,” “Forms, Appearances, and Representations,” and “Experience of the Pleasant, of Reward, and of the Beautiful.” 

 

 

He spends the next few hours writing away, perhaps energized by his eccentric dream from the previous night. Marc is an avid and vivid dreamer, each night bringing a new discovery, terror, realization, or experience for him. He likes to stress that he dreams in intense color. In his last slumber, his escapade began by him walking down a hill of lusciously green grass. He says he came across a deep, dark, bottomless, aquamarine, reflective blue lake. A crisp white convertible car was dripping water in slow motion as it was pulled up by a bright orange crane. A massive crowd of people gathered to watch, and they were all wearing glossy yellow raincoats.

Though he tries not to take the content of his dreams too seriously, it is the arresting colors that stick with him throughout the day. Around 10am, he dresses in one of three typical outfits: an all white ensemble, a blue pinstripe button down shirt coupled with black trousers, or a fabulously patterned shirt paired with hazelnut colored corduroys. The constants of each day’s attire include a bedazzled black belt and a dainty neck scarf. He also always wears two beaded bracelets, one blue and one black, that were made and gifted to him in Japan two summers ago by the mother of a good friend of his, a fellow artist herself. The mother passed away a few months following Marc’s visit to her home in Tokyo, and he has worn the bracelets daily ever since.

Marc descends the two flights of stairs from his bedroom to the bottom floor, stopping briefly in the kitchen for a handful of salted nuts. He slips on his caramel brown Turkish slippers–that are so worn they need orange duct-tape to keep them from falling apart–as he crosses the threshold of his studio. The room is freezing–he calls it his “winter palace”–but he is immune to this arctic cold since he spends nearly every day in it. Sometimes he lights a fire in the backroom fireplace, which adds to the natural, earthy feeling of his space. Still, his resistance to the cold isn’t strong enough to stop him from putting on a thin black jacket for imperative warmth.

The particular brownstone inside which he has built his studio is a unique space because it is a corner house, and thus has sixteen windows on the parlor floor alone. “To me it’s like an amazing, massive camera,” Marc describes. “You’re getting almost four sides of light.”

His sensitivity to light is deeply ingrained within him, likely formed by his background in photography and film. Although his career path shifted to fine art fifteen years ago, his time in film school and utter love of photography have been integral in forming how he experiences the world, and in turn how he experiences and thus creates art. Marc’s mind is always thinking of different “shots,” constantly constructing a story and a documenting a narrative as he goes about his day, just as he was trained to do as a filmmaker. He does not passively standby and watch reality unfold, but rather actively experiences thing with an eye trained to preserve content that might be perfect material for a later project. In this vein, Marc is the epitome of a metacognitive person and thinker: in fact, one could say that he is a metacognitive connoisseur. He is always stepping back to think about how he is thinking, how he is doing what he is doing, how he is responding to the things that he feeling. His cinematic mind has become intrinsic, morphing into a philosophical locomotive that critically thinks and makes in tandem.

Marc’s current work is perhaps the culmination of years and years of retaliation against photography as it is most typically known. As someone who lived through the transition from the analog to the digital, he has become acutely attune to form. He is obsessed with the how of things, anything, more so than the what or the why. He grew up with the restriction of 35 shots on a roll of film that would take days to get developed, and fifty years later he has an iPhone with 64 gigabytes of storage that allows him to take thousands upon thousands of pictures that he can view instantly. Having witnessed such a rapid transition and expansion of the capabilities of a camera, Marc is fascinated by what a picture was, what a picture is, and what a picture can be. Evidence of this interest is clear in the titles of his last and current books: “Image Photograph,” and “The Event of Art,” respectively. 

“One of the things that interested me when I was doing a lot of photography was the physical act of printing the photographs,” Marc recollects. He goes onto describe how he’d go to galleries and play close attention to the frame that a photograph was placed in, the size of the image, the paper it was printed on, and so on. This led him to the profound realization that a photograph is also an object, a claim that he has since been working on for years on end.

“I wanted to make an image with a new kind of substrate,” he declares. That desire transpired a few years ago when Marc began to print photographs onto paper lampshades from Ikea. He found interesting ties between this new work and the traditional medium of photography when he happily remembered that all negatives are plastic–analog film is plastic, so the physical existence of a “photograph” is enabled by a palpable material.

That was the beginning of a very organic progression of zealous work for Marc, all budding and building and growing from an underlying desire to discover and create a new form of photography. He started venturing to fabric stores, on a mission to discover the possibilities that materials of all kinds would lead him to.

He started with sewing the Ikea lamp shades to a piece of colored plastic, and hung it up in his studio as a kind of experiment. He waited for the afternoon light to hit, and all of a sudden the newly made sculpture began to glow. This was his first iteration of a new kind of material “photograph.”

It’s no wonder that Marc has been making work that encompasses light, because the way that the sun gushes and blushes and bursts through the windows of his studio would fill anyone with exuberance. The late afternoon light in particular, which hits the front, western side of the room, is sure to galvanize a visceral reaction. Each hour of the day fills his studio with a different sensitivity of ambient light

Marc walks up to the pink, sheer cloth that hangs from a clothesline-like structure in the center of the room, examining it by way of touching it. He picks up a larger piece of fabric, composed of several smaller pieces sewn together, and fastens it to an opening further down the clothesline. 

It is a day in which the sun’s desire to shine is constantly wavering. One moment the sky is overcast, and the next the sun is beaming. It is during the latter that the art in the room is at its peak. A leisurely, observant meander throughout the studio reveals a myriad of shadows in every nook and cranny. Fabric pieces are hung all around the room, creating projections of light that are variable, fluctuating, mercurial, volatile, fluid, shifting.

After his first fabric experiment, he coined the term “light-sculpture,” and began making a multitude of them. “These fabrics are light sculptures in the sense that they are light sensitive, made with various kinds of plastic and polyesters,” he explains. “Each material has a different kind of opacity, transparency, and color that emits light; that lets light moves forward; that lets shards of sun ripple through.” With each new piece, he continues to explore his fascination with what happens when light is enclosed, enraptured, and held within itself. “It’s kind of like an adventure that gets very obsessive. You just keep going with it, you follow it, and it takes you where it wants to go. That’s the whole point, and that’s what I love about it.”

His studio is now full of light sculptures of all shapes and sizes and colors, all of which refract and transpose light in different ways. The way that the fabrics fold and mold into each other feels organic and animate, as if the sculptures themselves are living and breathing just like we are. “They are very alive.” 

          

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

His work reminds the viewer of something, but they are not sure exactly what it is. “It’s very oblique in a way.” The viewer wants to touch them, or at least imagine what the various materials feel like. “I want to step back from depiction, representation, and imitation, and present things as phenomena itself. From there, I can open up a space to give view to materiality and form as an object itself.” 

Marc’s work fluid, ephemeral, and ever changing. He says that he’s been trying to make something that changes as you move about it, something that sees you more than you see it. He wants to evoke a relationship between “the perceiver, and the embodied perception.” At the same time, his new work is very much about fragility, a kind of “frozen calamity physics,” as he describes. To him, it’s all about the things that are about to fall apart, and yet precariously stay together. He adamantly disagrees with the common perception that art is permanent, that it defeats time and can exist forever. For Marc, art is an experience of the moment. He is inspired by painter Marcelle Duchamp and musician John Cage, who were both interested in the idea of variability and chance. One of Marc’s essential mantras is from a Mallarmé poem: “a throw of the dice does not abolish chance.” He says that he still doesn’t quite understand what the phrase means, but he loves it nonetheless. Marc seems to be increasingly interested in dichotomies: how we as people are both so strong and so frail. He tries to echo this paradox in his work.

________

Evening comes, and Marc sits on his red reef couch in the back room of the studio reading an article called “Art and Its Surrogates.” Morrissey, his favorite musician, is blasting on speakers. He listens to “Mountjoy” over and over and over again, singing along to the lyric, “The joy brings many things, but it cannot bring you joy.”

He looks up towards his sculptures, which hang about the space without the presence of light. They are resting, sleeping, unwinding. Getting ready for tomorrow, for another day of luminescent variability. 

“You can make art with your family, in your house, on an airplane, at the beach. You can make art, do art, be art, act art. You ARE art. Art has a fullness and a robustness that is everbecoming. It’s really fun.”

His orchestra tunes its instruments, and their conductor falls into a colorful dream.

Filed Under: Personal Essay, The Arts Tagged With: Art, artist, Brooklyn, form, installation art, light, local, material, nyc, Park Slope, process, studio

How Do I Love Thee, NYC

February 27, 2018 By Nicole Kear Filed Under: Dispatches From Babyville Tagged With: Art, authenticity, bodega, city, culture, love, music, New York City, pizza, subway

I don’t need an “I heart NY” T-shirt to proclaim my love. The proof is in the being here. As a native, I didn’t have to come here from somewhere else, but I’ve stayed. I’ve chosen to make this city home to my three kids, aged 5, 10 and 13. So, clearly, I love New York. 


But not always. 

Any relationship takes work, and my long-term love affair with the city is no different.  As places go, it’s not the easiest to keep loving. It’s high-maintenance, draining, often temperamental. It can be difficult, sometimes maddeningly so.  I just finished helping my son apply to high school while also helping my daughter apply to middle school – and if that doesn’t explain why New York and I are on the outs, nothing will.

If I could find a T shirt to express my feelings about NY of late, it wouldn’t be “I heart NY.” It would be “I have-to-sometimes-wonder-what-the-hell-I’m-still-doing-in NYC.”  Life would be easier, and cheaper, and warmer, in a lot of other places.

When this happens, when I’m fed up with re-routed trains, and exorbitantly-priced cups of coffee, when I’ve had enough of the (sometimes literal) rat race, and with the anxiety and stress that sometimes seems inescapable in the city that never sleeps — when this happens, I need to focus on the little things I love about my hometown.

I can remind myself of the big perks, the headliners – the diversity, the culture from museums to plays to music, the incredible schools I’m now intimately acquainted with – but those things, while convincing on a cerebral level, don’t make my heart melt. It’s like reading your husband’s resume – it reminds you he looks good on paper but, it doesn’t make you swoon. What makes you swoon are the small idiosyncrasies, his off-kilter sarcasm, the scratch of his unshaved face, the particular tilt of his head as he looks at you over the tops of his glasses.

What makes me swoon for this city are the same kind of small stuff, stuff that doesn’t mean anything but, at the same time, means everything. How do I love thee, NYC? Let me count the ways.

1) Secret subway art 

Have you ever been on the D train, wearily staring out the filthy window, as the subway barrels out of DeKalb? And then, suddenly you think you’re seeing things because, somehow, impossibly, you seem to watching a movie on the subway wall? It’s not the mad musings of an addled brain, it’s Bill Brand’s Masstransiscope, a flipbook-style moving picture painted in the old Myrtle station. There’s so many little gems of subway art like this – the Beehive Lights at Broadway-Lafayette are another one of my favorites. That surprise, that unexpected delight, the beauty when you least expect it, that’s exactly what I love most about New York.

2) Bodega cats

Just bodegas, themselves, should be high on any list of things to love about NYC They’re the kind of things you don’t miss until they’re gone. Such was the case when I moved to LA and couldn’t figure out where to get an egg-and-cheese sandwich for under $3 in three minutes or less, while also buying Tylenol and laundry detergent. Bodegas are enough to love on their own. But the cats that live in bodegas, and create for my animal-loving (and animal-deprived) children an extensive network of surrogate pets – well, those turn the bodegas from great to beloved.

3) Walk-and-eat pizza

There is no pizza, anywhere, more portable than the New York slice.  Okay, Rome maybe. But, even then, the square shape makes it less ideal for eating while walking. The New York slice pleases palates, wallets and tight schedules, all at the same time. Let us never take it for granted.

 

4) The New York minute

Sometimes, when I’m outside of New York, I can’t help but feel like I’ve taken some psychedelic drug that make time slow to a crawl, just meeeeeeeelt, like I’m in a Dali painting. Things that take 30 seconds in NYC, like tossing a pizza pie into a box, take five . . . full . . . minutes. Now, this item probably should go on the list of “Things About NYC that Ruin You for Other Places and Probably, Just Ruin You in General” but I’m choosing to put it here. A minute in New York counts for five in most other places. So, in a way, we’re living longer. If you don’t count the toll exacted by such stress.

5) People wearing incredible things

In all sense of the word incredible – the good, the bad, and the incomprehensible. Once I saw a bunch of youngish-sounding guys wearing paper bags on their heads. Not only do I enjoy how much more interesting this makes a commute, I also relish the freedom it affords me. Knowing that a paper bag is a feasible apparel option for me – well, that’s priceless.

6) Hearing more languages than you knew existed

On the bus and the train and the sidewalk, in pharmacies and coffee shops and laundromats and banks and bathrooms and elevators. Not only do I love hearing the sounds of words I don’t understand, I love hearing my kids hear those sounds. Because what those sounds unlock is the understanding that the world is big, so big, bigger than us, bigger than we can even imagine. And what a thing to know.

7) People making music everywhere

Nothing, and I do mean nothing, raises my spirits like the right busker singing the right song at the right time. Just this morning, a guy with a guitar and a killer voice singing “I’ll Fly Away” brought grace and gratitude to my morning commute.

There’s one such moment I always think of as a kind of quintessential New York moment, a magic moment that stands apart from the rest of memory in a little well-preserved bubble. It was about two years ago, a Sunday afternoon in May and my daughter, then 8, and I were on our way to Union Square, to see a guy about a hamster. It was her first-ever real pet, and she was brimming over with joyful anticipation. A trio of men walked into our car, singing “You Are the Sunshine of My Life,” and the way their voices worked together, you could tell they’d been working together for a while. It was a big,robust sound that filled the whole car, and made us look up and smile. The passengers enjoyed the song, so much so that the trio stuck around and as we pulled into the Prince Street started a new song. “Raspberry Beret.”

“It’s Prince!” my daughter exclaimed, “On Prince Street!”

It was, indeed. Prince had died only weeks before so our listening had an unusual reverence to it.

Maybe it was because my daughter was clapping with particular fervor, or maybe it was the dollar she dropped in the hat held out for donations, but when they were done with Prince, they started singing “My Girl.” To my girl. It was a sudden, sweet serenade and my daughter beamed every bit as bright as sunshine on a rainy day.

The voices of these three strangers twined together to express, perfectly, the full feeling in my heart just then. And for a moment, I think all of us on the train felt it – or, if not all then, many. The trio and I did, at least, and my girl did, too.

A moment later, we got off the train at Union Square. My daughter was smiling the kind of smile mothers live for.

“I think that was a good omen,” she said.

I smiled back. “Me, too.”

 

Nicole C. Kear is the author of The Fix-It Friends chapter book series for kids, including Eyes on the Prize, and Three’s A Crowd, released this January from Macmillan Kids. For more info, visit fixitfriendsbooks.com.

Art by Brenda Cibrian

Filed Under: Dispatches From Babyville Tagged With: Art, authenticity, bodega, city, culture, love, music, New York City, pizza, subway

A Year of Yes at the Brooklyn Museum

April 26, 2017 By Meghan Cook Filed Under: Reader Profile Tagged With: Art, black women, Brooklyn Museum, Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, feminism, feminist movement

A Conversation with Brooklyn Museum Curator Catherine Morris

For the ten-year anniversary of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum curator Catherine Morris planned a series of exhibitions titled A Year of Yes: Reimagining Feminism, which would begin in October 2016 and end in early 2018. The various exhibits would examine artwork, social movements, and historical periods with a keen feminist eye. When reflecting on the past decade and the ways in which society and media had gradually come to accept feminist methodology more and more, Morris was struck by a thought: how long does a place like the Sackler center need to exist? Is there a day when we will no longer need a center devoted to preserving and educating the public on feminist art?

She did not have to wait long for an answer. In early November, Marilyn Minter’s: Pretty/Dirty exhibit was underway, and Morris and her fellow coordinators looked on with pride. They expected Marilyn Minter’s examination of female body image in America to coincide with a Hillary Clinton presidency; a retrospective on the commercialization and objectification of the female form timely paired with a much-anticipated first female presidency. The coincidental juxtaposition of the two would have in and of itself been a lesson, a lesson that boldly said, “Look how far we’ve come!” Instead, when Election Day arrived the lesson became, “There is still so much left to do.”

 

Marilyn Minter’s Blue Poles from Marilyn Minter: Pretty/Dirty.

 

Morris no longer feels like she needs to question the existence of the Sackler Center; she sees Donald Trump’s presidency as a confirmation of its necessity. “I have to say, since November 8, I don’t want to have that conversation anymore,” said Morris. “That day answered that question for me, at least right now, and for the next four years.”

Morris went on to discuss how the election results shifted the intention and reception of A Year of Yes’s programming. Minter’s show took on an entirely new energy, and suddenly became one that “needed to protest, to talk, to strategize.” Alternatively, the concepts and themes conveyed in another show, We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women 1965-85, felt eerily prescient. It is difficult to ignore how, overwhelmingly, white women voted for Trump while a majority of black women voted for Clinton, statistics which reveal in Morris’ mind, “that kind of contested relationship between women who on so many agenda levels want to be allies” but find themselves separated “in a politically divided and racially fraught moment.”

 

Faith Ringgold’s Early Works #25: Self-Portrait, 1965 from We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women 1965-85.

 

We Wanted a Revolution, which opens April 21, details how the feminist movement emerged in African-American communities in the sixties and examines what Morris openly identified as an “uncomfortable relationship between women of color who did not necessarily always feel welcome, understood, or even heard, within the context of second-wave feminism which was largely white, middle-class, post-college degree-[holding] women.” Morris noted that it is worth looking at both feminist history and its present-day practice with a critical eye, cracking it open to point out the flaws that lie within. Even Minter often faced criticism from fellow women for her artwork, despite being an outspoken and self-identifying feminist herself. “Feminism is not a monolithic thing,” insisted Morris. “It is in fact, intersectional in and of itself, and is only enriched by having these complicated discussions.”

Even the word feminism itself carries a weighted and complex history. While men and women alike once balked at the word, which evinced mental images of enraged women brandishing burning bras, it has come a long way in the national lexicon. It still faces criticism, but it also holds a new status in the media, with pop culture icons like Beyonce and Taylor Swift declaring themselves feminist as mass crowds of impressionable girls look on in admiration. Morris said in her lifetime, “the ebb and flowing of the term is enormous” and it has gotten to a point where “in the digital era, its value changes from week to week.”

For her, this is evidence of the word’s importance, even if some view it as radical or demeaning towards men. “We also are acknowledging the fact that even if the term is problematic, the impulse towards gender equity or parity is certainly a human rights issue that I think you’d be very hard pressed to find anybody say they didn’t agree with,” reasoned Morris. “Different people just have different ways of defining it, contextualizing it, being comfortable with it.”

This range in interpretation and definition extends to the series of exhibits themselves. Despite varying subject matter, the exhibitions are all tied together by the unique tools feminism has provided historians; one of the most important of these tools being historical revisionism, which allows canonical histories to be rewritten. Consider Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party (1974-79), a commemorative art piece depicting a banquet with a place setting reserved for thirty nine women of historical importance. Morris explained that “even in the earliest moments of second wave feminism, artists, curators, and historians were really wanting to change history; to talk about the people who were overlooked and put them back into it.”

 

Piece by Amarna King from A Woman’s Afterlife: Gender Transformation in Ancient Egypt.

 

Historical revisionism also helps to understand the past in new ways. For instance, A Woman’s Afterlife: Gender Transformation in Ancient Egypt may look back on a time period when feminism did not yet exist, but it proves that exploration of a subject through a particular lens can unearth new discoveries. Morris said that with more women entering the field of Egyptology, unique conclusions are being drawn by archaeologists who are able to “look at things differently and ask certain questions, and as a result, get different answers.”

Morris hopes that those who come to the Brooklyn Museum to experience any of A Year of Yes’ many exhibits leave with a new understanding of the world around them and recognize the value of making room for other people’s stories. The driving force of the exhibition series is to be a space of inclusion and education. “I think that as I have said many, many, times I am really proud to be the curator of the Center of Feminist Art and not the Center of Women’s Art,” said Morris. “I think feminism applies to everybody.”

 

Upcoming and ongoing exhibitions:

Infinite Blue (Nov. 25, 2016 – Nov. 5, 2017)

A Woman’s Afterlife: Gender Transformation in Ancient Egypt (Dec. 15, 2016 – ongoing)

Georgia O’Keefe: Living Modern (March 3, 2017 – July 23, 2017)

Utopia Station (March 2017 – ongoing)

We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965-85 (April 21, 2017 – Sept. 17, 2017)

The Roots of “The Dinner Party” (Oct. 20, 2017 – early 2018)

A Feminist Timeline (Oct. 20, 2017 – early 2018)

 

https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/year_of_yes_reimagining_feminism

Filed Under: Reader Profile Tagged With: Art, black women, Brooklyn Museum, Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, feminism, feminist movement

Art in the Slope

October 12, 2016 By Anni Irish Filed Under: The Arts Tagged With: 440, Allie Rex, Art, art slope, artists, ArtSlope, Brooklyn, Elise Kagan, exhibition, gallery, Groundfloor, Joanne McFarland, Mel Prest, Mie Kim, Rhia Hurt, Site, Trestle, Valeria Schwarz, Vicki Behm

With fall in full effect, there are a plethora of art exhibitions that are on view for the public throughout the city. But don’t feel like you need to leave the borough to see great art! In the Park Slope neighborhood there are several galleries that offer the community a chance to see world class art.

Here is a breakdown of the top five shows to see now and also a sampling of what these galleries have to see through the end of the year!  By Anni Irish

What to see right now:

Diana Kane who is a Brooklyn based jewelry maker and artist and owner of Diana Kane Boutique opened her latest show, Portraits of Women: Icons and Feminists last weekend. The exhibition features over twenty artists who are working in various mediums. The premises of the show is based in its subject matter– to create portraits of women on 12”x 12” wooden panes that each artist was given. Who each artist decided to commemorate on their board was up to them and the results are stunning! The show is on view until 10/17 at the Diana Kane Boutique located at 229 5th Ave Brooklyn, NY.

AquaPoster Viscosity, Chad Andrews / Site:Brooklyn
AquaPoster Viscosity, Chad Andrews / Site:Brooklyn

On view until 10/8 at Site: Brooklyn is Up From Under Video Art by the artist Madeline Altmann. The show consists of multiple video installations that are in a larger dialogue with Henry David Thoreau– Atlmann lives and works close to where Thoreau’s home is located. By considering issues of time, nature, technological change and visual representation, Atlmann’s work delves deep into the human psyche. While the pieces that are on view are shown together as a tightly bound unit, many took over three years to create. To see Up From Under visit Site: Brooklyn located at 165 7th Street, Brooklyn, NY 11215. Gallery hours are Thursday-Sunday 1-6pm and by appointment.

Groundfloor Gallery Assembled Desire a show that opened during ArtSlope, a nine day art festival that happens in and around Park Slope is on view until 10/9. This group exhibition features the work of Allie Rex, Elise Kagan, Mie Kim and Rhia Hurt. The show explores subject matter from popular culture thorugh “exptertiments in collage, painting, and mixed media.” Groundfloor Gallery is located at 343 5th Ave Brooklyn, NY 11215. Visit their website for more information.

gail-flanery
Tumbled Sky, Gail Flanery / 440 Gallery

Up until October 16th 440 Gallery currently has a solo exhibit of the work of Gail Flanery. Flanery who is a graduate of Cooper Union has produced a series of mixed media prints for this show entitled Tumbled Sky. The imagery Flanery uses in these prints are derived from nature however the “geography is rarely specific.” The images created are gestural, colorful and create “an expansive sense of space.” 440 Gallery is located at 440 6th Ave Brooklyn, NY 11215

On 9/23 Friday Trestle Gallery premiered their last group show, Paper Pushers. This exhibition features the work of ten artists who have come together to explore the larger use of paper in two ways. First, there is a commonality among the material being used and second through the way that each artist has repurposed it to create something entirely new. The show was gust curated by Rob de Oude and Mel Prest. It is on view until November 4th at Trestle Gallery located at 168 7th Street, 3rd Floor Brooklyn Gallery hours are Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 1:30-6:30pm.

What’s Coming Up:

Another Space: Permanent Construction / Open Source Gallery
Another Space: Permanent Construction / Open Source Gallery

Open Source Gallery: On October 1st Open Source Gallery will debut Once Upon Unfolding Times. On weekends with the assistance of the hypnotist, visitors will be invited to take part in a unique experience of visiting a fictional city. “Once Upon Unfolding Times has being conceived by Valeria Schwarz and is produced by i Collective. i Collective is an organic, collaborative platform of artists, curators and scientists working in the intersection of art, urban interventions and socially-engaged project.” Tours will occur on: October 1 (6pm), October 9 (11am), October 15 (6pm), October 22 (6pm)

Portal, Kimberly Mayhorn / Ground Floor Gallery;
Portal, Kimberly Mayhorn / Ground Floor Gallery;

GROUNDFLOOR GALLERY The group exhibition, “Portal, “ celebrates local artists based in Gowanus, in conjunction with Gowanus Open Studios weekend and runs from October 14th – November 27th, followed by #newcollectorbk: Gifts by Artists, our holiday show featuring original and affordable gifts made by local artists (December 2 – 18th).

On November 3 Open Source will show Another Space: Permanent Construction. Curated by Victoria Bugge Øye and co-founders of Another Space, architect Nicola Louise Markhus and curator Marte Danielsen Jølbo. This exhibit aims to “aims to instigate immersions and critical approaches to the cross-disciplinary field and its potentials through presenting current and enduring issues within art, architecture and society. Their curatorial approach is based on concerns for spatiality, materiality and craftsmanship” and features the work of : Melodie Mousset, Anna Daniell, and Owen Armour

Ghost Dog of Prospect Park, David Klein / Site:Brooklyn
Ghost Dog of Prospect Park, David Klein / Site:Brooklyn

Site: Brooklyn: Opening on October 1st, is the 2nd Annual Hand Pulled Prints: The Current Practice in Printmaking. This group exhibition featuring over 30 artists seeks to show a wide reaching set of pieces that are capturing the current state of the medium of print making.

Gallery 440: Opening on October 20th is artist Vicki Behm in an exhibit entitled 1000 Drawings of NYC. This show will consist of 1000 5”x5” drawings Behm produced and will hang within the gallery space. Despite the size of the drawings, they will come together to create a large impact.

On December 1st the gallery will debut their annual small works show. Currently there is a call out for artists who wish to participate. More information can be found here. The work is all 12”x12” or smaller and will be juried by Joanne McFarland, the former Director at A.I.R Gallery.

“A knot, a tangle, a blemish in the eternal smoothness”, Hedwig Brouckaert / Trestle Gallery
“A knot, a tangle, a blemish in the eternal smoothness”, Hedwig Brouckaert / Trestle Gallery

Trestle Gallery: On December 9th from 7-9 pm join the gallery in their annual art benefit event. Featuring works from over 100 artists as well as food and drinks from local vendors, Trestle Gallery hopes to raise $30,000 to fund their 2017 exhibition series Artist as Curator.

Filed Under: The Arts Tagged With: 440, Allie Rex, Art, art slope, artists, ArtSlope, Brooklyn, Elise Kagan, exhibition, gallery, Groundfloor, Joanne McFarland, Mel Prest, Mie Kim, Rhia Hurt, Site, Trestle, Valeria Schwarz, Vicki Behm

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