Bklyn vs Bmore in Bushwick

audience participation/ dance off:



I really like two second videos - just a few frames, or digital formulas capture a lot. Youtube weighs it down with the overload for me.

It is also still weird/ amazing to me that an "underground" sort of show here has a thousand plus people in attendance. I spent a portion of the evening as alternately a sea kitten and a dogg via giant plush headgear. Everyone wants to touch you when you are an animal. I also posed in photos with people, and then I hugged a giant plushy pokemon. But it wasn't a rave or anything.

meat

"Meat Love" by Jan Svankmajer

ok. so this morning I was in a studio audience watching Sigourney Weaver quarter a chicken and crack its bones open. It was very exciting. I thought of the production still from Ice Storm with her wielding a whip. (This an interesting juxtaposition as it was the Martha Stewart show, but Martha did have Lil Wayne going during the commercial breaks) The video above was found at Meatpaper's site, my new fave periodical. I am also excited about being a vegan, or at least, not consuming the cows.

Narrative Thread show

photos from lyonswierortt.com

I stumbled upon this fantastic fiber arts show at Lyons Wier Ortt gallery in Chelsea. The above portrait is all embroidered, about a foot tall. There was also work by the amazing Nava Lubelski:

It was co-curated by Orly Cogan, a new favorite. Her work is really familiar, using domestic imagery in a domestic arts context. But it layers upon itself creating a new domestic dimension:

There was a lot of other work, I included some of the pretty stuff here. There was some crass and strange and silly work as well. I enjoyed the show as a whole. It was really exactly what I look for in an art show.

Lyons Wier • Ortt Gallery is located at 175 7th Avenue (at 2oth st) in new york. The show is up until the end of this month.

NY Outsider Art Fair

work by Alan Wayne Bradley aka Haint

I read in an interview somewhere offering advice to impatient listeners of Merriweather Post Pavilion (I'm sorry, I can't remember who said this or where - likely some indie dude at brooklynvegan or pitchfork) that instead of getting all worked up and crazy in the absence of the yet-to-appear, create what you think it will be on you own. (Interviewee had done this for Pavement or something.) So on the subway to the fair, I made a list of what I thought I would see, some drawings, and short story bits. It now stands as a way better representation of the form for me than the complementary catalog.

An older man ducked into my elevator (with a flatscreen showing the news) while I was leaving, and asked me what I thought. Wonderful, I had said, reminded me of work some of my friends do. Well, if your friends are untaught, and they don't go to art school... But what is the line/ age limit for this education? I asked. He went on to say that when he first got into it, it was only psychiatric patients. This is not so anymore. The show had some of that, but also a lot of "folk" art made by untrained artists in "developing" countries. Don't get me wrong, I really appreciated a lot of what I saw, it is just a strange catch-all label.

The appeal (to the buyer) seemed to lie in the creation through eyes untouched by big ideas of/about art. And this was a show for buyers. Peering in on a tour group, I heard the guide use the word "psychedelic" two or three times in the span of thirty seconds.

In the subway tunnel were several breakdancing crews and I asked myself - is this outsider art? Mostly because there was a little kid popping some crazy moves, he was probably taught by his older brothers, not at some proper breakdancing institution. I guess I just don't understand what untaught means now-a-days.

There was a lot of beautiful bead work and embroidery - domestic art taken to nearly perverse extremes. Color fragmented kaleidoscopic throughout. Many repetitive drawing layers. Strange relics. Voodoo. Tiny works made from sock thread ends. An entire roll of canvas depicting (very psychedelic) NYC, leading to a theater/temple. Drawings by an eight year old. Obsessive quilts. Topographic maps. Invented languages. And it was snowing out the windows - glad I went, thanks Ness for the heads up.

Artist - Xenobia Bailey (and Todd Selby, Fanny Bostrom, my mother)

both images from the artist's blog

I just came upon the amazing artist Xenobia Bailey via her blog, xenba.blogspot.com
Her blog is fantastic, I reached it when seeking some traditional knit methods, she chronicles a wide array of events and artists of fiber form. Her work is stellar - the tent above from a show at the Jersey City Museum.


This above work reminded me too of a painting I saw earlier today at photographer Todd Selby's theselby.com interiors section, at the artists Fanny Bostrom & Bill Gentle's home:

Which really just recalled an inspirational image stored on my hard drive:

from where on the internet I found the above I can not now recall, only that I was seeking some relationship to the hats my mother made my brother and I when we were young:


I guess it is good to get to the source of the attraction.

i am curious blu / jewels