Sunday, December 28, 2008

FAAN Tribough Bridge Adoption


Now the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge
My Gratitude For The Art Adoption Program and Aron Namenwirth

On the forth date, I was asked to decorate his home. Everyone had told me not to do it.
Don’t decorate the home of your brand-new boyfriend... especially when his divorce
papers are still being negotiated. Well, I didn’t listen to them. I’m not a stupid girl. I
knew I’d be doing it for free, with no future ownership of any of that decor. But, I saw
the need and I knew it was something I could do.

It was late. I had been searching the web for hours, for all things for someone else’s
home. I clicked into my email, remembering I had forgotten all day. And there it was.
Some email about art. Art. Yes, his house needed art. I started looking into the art
pieces... quickly thumbing through. And then... I saw it... this stunning piece. But,
even with all its drama, it was its subject matter that made me pause... the tollbooth into
Manhattan. Not only the place I dreamt of being, but the place that reminded me of
home.

My parents lived in Brooklyn Heights as a young couple, long before me. They saved
their money and purchased their first house in the southern tip of the Adirondack park.
Growing up in New Jersey, we would often spend weekends at the house in the
country... until we moved to Wisconsin. I hadn’t seen the house since I was ten.
Twenty-five years later, my father passed away. And instead of deciding we were going
to mope around with sadness in our hearts, we loaded up the car, grabbed the dog, and off
my mother and I went... to refurbish the home two newlyweds first purchased some forty
years prior. One day my mother would move back to that house, and I wanted it to be
ready for her. We completed most everything on our list, with the exception of art. There
was one wall in particular which was just a massive amount of empty space. It still was
not a home. But, after rooftops and windows and radiators, there was certainly no money
left for reupholstering or art. We had left the house for many months, and I had long
forgotten the empty wall.

But, then, there I was staring at this painting of the tollbooth into the city, and thought of
how many times my parents must have crossed those tolls. I thought of how much fun
they must have had in Brooklyn Heights, and remembered all their stories. I thought... if
only this painting were hanging in mom’s upstate house... to remind her that “yesterday”
is only a few roads and a toll away. I started to read more about this painting. Then, I
saw the size... it was much taller than me every which way it could be turned. And with
the obvious talent of the artist, surely this was no painting I could afford. Then, I noticed
the title of this website... “Art Adoption.” What on earth was this?, I thought. Well, just
a little bit of reading later, I discovered... this was a gift. The entire website. It was a
gift of the heart. I immediately understood, as it was for this same reason I was helping
this recent divorce. I was compelled to write to the artist, sharing this story as best I
could. There was only one painting, and surely many of us who asked to adopt. But, I
wanted the artist to know how much his gift had meant to me in so many different ways.
To my great surprise, I received a wonderful email back from him, Mr. Aron
Namenwirth. He and his wife had chosen me as the adoptive “parent” to his beautiful piece of art. And... it was going to hang in mom’s upstate house, on the massive wall
having patiently waited.
It was then when I realized, had I listened to the “others” and not seized the moment in
helping this now ex-boyfriend, I never would have taken the time to open that email
about the art adoption program. And I never would have discovered that many times
good things do come back to us... just not necessarily from the person you expect.

I am so grateful for the program... just knowing how many other lives must have been
touched by art in this similar way. This summer I look forward to meeting Mr.
Namenwirth and his family, and continuing a friendship which all began with everything
I always feel truly is art... a sense of love for our fellow-man.

My sincere gratitude,

Christina Peters

Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Christmas tree salesman

video: nicholas sullivan
*edited by my computer- for full 10min. version go to utube.

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

John Giglio and Paul Slocum at aMP


artMovingProjects
166 N.12th St, between Bedford and Berry Sts., Williamsburg (917-301-6680, 917-301-0306).
Subway: L to Bedford Avenue Thurday -Sunday, 1pm - 6pm www.artmovingprojects.com
info@artmovingprojects.com
www.artmovingprojects.blogspot.com


Opening: Friday December 12th 7-9 through Feb. 8th
by appointment: December 21st through Jan. 14th. Closed: Jan. 15-18th


John Giglio
“Designing Heaven”

Designing Heaven is a series of drawings that propose what the afterlife may look like, what form those who live there may take, and how they might spend their time. The project began as a simple challenge to myself: as an artist interested in alternative architecture, I spent a number of years designing and building amorphous, temporary, and transient structures – but could I design a space which is, by it’s very nature, completely intangible? What’s more, could I make the task a calculated and impartial investigation, one devoid of any form of critique or political statement concerning my subject? In short, could I simply do the job of designing heaven? While the answer to most of those questions may very well have turned out to be “No, I can’t”, the product of a sincere and even obsessive effort can be seen in over sixty drawings that make up the show.

Most of the drawings are small, 11”x 14” or less, and are done with Pencil, Gouache, and Ink. Included in the set are titles such as Transfer Station for Heaven-to-Earth Transitions, Apparatus for Heavenly Ascension, Depiction of a Soul, Ribbon Soul Communities Over Washington Square Park, Souls Doing Useful Work, Soul Residing Under A Child’s Bed, and Everyone Loves a Beanbag Chair, Even Souls.

New Media Project Space
Paul Slocum
“Transformer Fire”

As seen on Spirit Surfers an internet surf club “Transformer Fire” is transformed to
run in artMovingProjects N. M. P. S. What appear as 5 different videos depict failure of infrastructures looping infinitely and conjure systemic breakdown.

Saturday, December 6, 2008

Collapse of Culture in America (part 3)

5. Jan Mancuska : Andrew Kreps
This show had all the elements of a great show, but I not sure if it all added up to something or not. The variables included over the top installation, building out of screen with sheet rock, lots of super cool vintage collectible furniture stacked to make walls to the ceiling, video that was non-narrative and searching, vitrines filled with etched glass and ceramic, at huge production cost. This experience was of such large ambition that it made me feel lost, somewhat like going somewhere with the right address but in the wrong boro, and having a friend tell you that they are there and you are there but you can't see each other.




5. Meredith Allen : Edward Thorp
Another great show. In these photographs of trash, we find a symptom of our collapse.
Meredith using a medium that for the most part I have become bored with, touches on what
is destroying and what holds together society. This being our need to shop and buy beyond our needs and means. What is so amazing about these pictures is not what they represent but what they contain. (they remind me of the early work of Rachel Harrison, pictures of people walking by bags of garbage on the street). Here I think about presents made in china that will be on the street in a years time. I have talked about emotional content: an expression of Bruce Lee......
When I look at one of Allen's pictures it reminds me of the feeling I get from re-reading or looking at an illustration of a creepy scenerio in an old childrens book from when I was 4. What little hair left stands, and waves of feeling rush through my entire body:) In this case it is what covers the surface that delivers depth. Thank You Meredith. Her Partner Carol Saft is also good at navigating rough seas.


Detail (click to enlarge images)

4. Christian Schumann at Leo Koenig Inc.

This is one of the best shows I have seen in a while and it proves that while culture collapses
aspects of it can expand. In this work lie the ruins of civilizations. The bones and artifacts left behind a species in the process of self-destruction. Cheers Christian!

This show is great!

3. Lari Pittman at Gladstone Gallery: This guy seems to have taken Richard Princes place at Gladstone he influences a lot of young(er) painters namely my buddies Jay Davis, Emelio Perez, and Dan Kopp and others. Although they seem to be going for the thin gestural paint that is so now- anyway they Rock. I remember Carl Ostendarp once telling me you are only as good as those you influence.
So does Lari in this new show, all the paintings are consistently complex, tight and packed to the max with imagery that reveals itself slowly. So slowly in fact, that I did not have enough time to really give to it. The layering of form, use of line, and all that formal stuff was pretty incredible.


2. Richard Prince at Gagosian: This show lacks any of the wit Richard is know for. He is looking at Picasso and trying to redo him, but suffers from making the same painting over and over again. Does he think if he makes it big, and slings a brush around covering photo-shopped imagery of Richard Kern (who at this point is a much better artist) he is going to impress. Even the car in the window lacked the edge that Prince normally serves up. I think if this artist can not find any conceptual bite he should stop cranking out bad art, or he is going to devalue everything he has done up to this point. He should be looking at Duchamp more. Interesting expressionistic thinly painted canvases are back in fashion reminding me of neo-expressionism that preceded the last crash of the art market. Probably a symptom of a fast way to make a painting and a buck.

Another of my favs who has dropped the ball.





1. This first show was so bad I felt sorry for the artist, and am totaly blocking out his name,
but remember it was at Mathew Marks- oh yeah Terry Winters. What the hell happened to him? When I was in grad school he was the shit! That guy painted better than all the rest of them including Julian. His painting was fluid, they made themselves, worlds of all the stuff that existed at the beginning of the world. They seduced and sucked the viewer into their delicious realness and abstraction. They moved and danced. Nothing seemed contrived- they came from the earth and everyone in art school was trying to match him. Sam Reveles came close. The work at Marks lacked every quality of the earlier work except the oil paint and scale. Now the color seemed artificial and the composition static. This imagery rejects the grid template Terry imposes on it. What a disaster.

As I am opening up artMovingProjects with John Giglio and Paul Slocum in the New Media Project Space (N.M.P.S.) on Dec. 12th and presenting my own work "Made in U.S.A. at VertexList
on the 13th, so I am going to take the advice I gave to one of my very favorite artists Tom Moody and cool it on the criticism for the duration which is Febuary.

Blip Festival

Glomag
Bitshifter
Blip festival through sunday 149 7th st. Brooklyn between 2nd and 3rd ave. (Carrol Gardens)

Blog Archive