it’s always nice to take a morning stroll and see that the streets are already energized with activity, be it some of the locals smashing a piano or a girl tying red string around her head. Either way, I guess that’s why I live here: to luxuriate in the inexplicable that still likes to find its way onto Bedford Avenue every once in a while.
Now the creation inherent in destruction, or the destruction inherent in creation, is the invisible music of our daily endeavours, so the piano I have no qualms about. But I do wonder what String Girl was trying to say…I mean, are our lives formed by a simple collection of threads weaving into our minds, and do those threads become manually unraveled over time only to create new stories equally as fragile as stringy thread? or is String Girl just a silly girl with a roll of red string and very poor aim? I fear the answer is neither.
Crest Hardware Art Show – a hit & a blast!!
June 13, 2009
Saving the day for the Northside Art Festival was the annual ‘hardware-based’ show by locals, where you can walk up and down the aisles of Crest Hardware Store and be surprised and downright titillated by art stuck, hung, and plopped into the nooks & crannies of the space. I busted out some cell phone pix to share the fun & creativity, which was abundant!
Click on the pix to see the materials etc. And we were dancin’ out back waving grilled hamburgers as dancing props! Really fun…
More Art in the Streets…
June 11, 2008
While we mostly accept that art is best when it comes from the Inside Out, there are always those — especially among contemporary artists who are more concerned with manipulating social response with their work to get into magazines, rather than being a channel for pure artistic impulses — who prefer making art from the Outside In. Understandable. So imagine my humor at seeing this bit of very personal art on the sidewalk, that came from both the outside in… AND the inside out!!
And yet, how it spoke so poetically of my gut response to that very misdirection of so many contemporary artists! Did you ever see such a beautiful thing as that?!
Brooklyn has always been My Hollywood
June 11, 2008
The liquor store off my subway stop on Bedford Avenue had this little creation in the window.
Now as much as I love being in L.A., I suppose a major reason I haven’t moved there is because Brooklyn has always been truer to my notion of a Personal Hollywood. What an honor it has been to be ‘World Famous in Williamsburg Brooklyn’ for so many years…or I should say in living in one of the only places where a great joy and pride is found from being ‘Internationally Unknown’ as a vital artist without anyone knowing what it is you exactly do. In a sense, we can revel in the privilege of a certain royal locality.
“You who have nothing have something that only the 1% could ever see” sings Chrissie Hynde as I write this. Yeah, that’s basically what I mean.
Image or Word?
June 11, 2008
Everyday on my way to work during the primaries, I would pass this t-shirt in the window…
and each day, because I am already by nature open to the wiles of momentary dyslexic interpretations, would think, ‘This design is betting either on its general audience being more trustful of IMAGE to speak intention, or of WORD’… which would be a fascinating study. Do we think the word we see is the one intended…or the image as bearer of truth? Or to what degree does our own preference of the outcome play the predominant role in what we believe the image to mean?
Of course my chosen personal interpretation was as a wish, in that I want both to be on the ticket together to lead this country in BOTH image and word, in whatever configuration that must take to make it happen. As usual, I am pretty sure I was not on the same wavelength as the t-shirt designer in that interpretation, but walking by that image daily, suggestive of both together in one moment, increased my sense that only with both together does America have a perfect candidate to shift world opinion of this country, whose chasm between word & image has never been further divided.
Today I ordered up a big heapin’ bowl of candy for all the kids at work, and got to thinking there must be some kind of willy wonka celebration in the air. (These are my co-workers surrounding me, with the joy they felt from all the candy I brought them.)
So i looked into the hunch i was feeling, and sure enough the two actors who played willy wonka were born in a cusp around today’s date of june 10 (gene wilder on june 11, johnny depp on june 9) … which makes, if my studies on the subject are to be believed, TODAY, June 10… the official international willy wonka candy-man day! OomPA!
