Catch a rising star

By Meredith Deliso

Theophilus London is a star — and he hasn’t even released a full-length album yet.

The snazzily dressed MC has been the toast of city’s press, handily sold out a show at the Music Hall of Williamsburg last month, and has been garnering deafening buzz for his debut album, “Timez are Weird These Days,” for the past few months (that album, by the way, finally dropped this week).

So it seems like a no-brainer to check out this musical nebula when he plays a free — yes, free — show at the Weeksville Heritage Center’s garden on Saturday.

Thanks to a few EPs, London’s associated with his 1980s electro-soul sound, though his influences are as varied as Marvin Gaye, Leon Ware and Morrissey.

The Weeksville party will feature an outdoor show by London and opener Phony Ppl, as well as food from NY Dosa, Wafels and Dinges, Nha Toi, La Table Exquise and Kem’s Jerk.

The hip hopper dreams of being Jay-Z big one day, so catch him before his next show is at Madison Square Garden.

Theophilus London at Weeksville Heritage Center [1698 Bergen St. between Buffalo  and Rochester avenues in Bedford-Stuyvesant, (718) 756-5250], July 23 at 6 pm. Free. For info, visit www.weeksvillesociety.org.

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Art in bloom at Opalia Flowers

By Meredith Deliso

Opalia Flowers is just bursting with color this time of year — burnt oranges, fresh greens, sharp yellows and bright blues — and it’s not just because of the flowers.

The Atlantic Avenue flower shop hosts an exhibition of paintings by Ken Rush, a Carroll Gardens-based artist who has been capturing cityscapes and landscapes for decades, opening this Thursday.

“I was looking for something fresh and different,” said Phoebe Crary, owner of the five-year-old Boerum Hill florist-turned-temporary gallery. “It seemed like a good fit. He’s so prolific.”

The show spans Rush’s career for the past three decades, from his landscapes in Vermont and Massachusetts to his cityscapes in Venice and Brooklyn. It’s called, aptly, “Places.”

“Location has always meant a lot to me, and this show is emblematic of that,” said Rush, who, ironically, is very much a “lifer,” living in Brooklyn for 40 years and teaching art at Packer Collegiate Institute in Brooklyn Heights for 33.

Of the 30 pieces hanging among the peonies, orchids, tulips and roses are his Vermont cottage houses, Massachusetts fields, and moody recalls of the canals in Venice. There’s also on-site portraits of the Gowanus Canal, which is “like a Venetian canal, albeit very polluted,” said Rush, who, during the 1970s and ‘80s, used to set up shop at the Hamilton Avenue bridge or at the edges of the canal itself and paint.

“I love artists like Edward Hopper and Charles Sheeler, and their approach to urban and industrial areas,” said Rush. “I have always been attracted myself to interesting industrial areas, in part for their mood, which is always somewhat forlorn.”

The subway was one of his first subjects when he moved to the city in the 1970s, offering a similar forlorn quality. One series involved bringing his easel down to the Hoyt-Schermerhorn subway station, setting up on the closed platforms, often used for film shoots, and capturing the darkly lit station and its passengers.

“They’re very urban, not happy subway paintings,” said Rush, who is very much the opposite of these dark portraits, with his boyish enthusiasm and energy.

For the past 15 years, the artist’s work has focused on conceptual landscapes — places recalled from memory or a feeling that don’t necessarily exist, but are still very much familiar to the urban dweller.

“I try to achieve a kind of universal feeling about a place,” said Rush. “You might look at one of the urbanscapes and say, ‘I know where that is.’ But you really don’t.”

“Places” by Ken Rush at Opalia Flowers [377 Atlantic Ave. between Hoyt and Bond streets in Boerum Hill, (718) 643-9160], May 12-June 10, with an opening night reception from 6 to 8 pm.

Photo by Tom Callan

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Calling all artists

Small Works for Change is throwing an art fundraiser — for a cause of your choice.

The group's collecting small, donated, two-dimensional art that would then be sold for $25, with all proceeds going to one of eight charities, including Japan Red Cross, that is of the artist's choosing.

The artwork will be on sale at the Brooklyn Flea in Fort Greene on May 21.

For interested participants, art work must be 8"X10" or smaller. You can drop the piece off at participating businesses in the Fort Greene/Clinton Hill area, including a piece of paper that includes:

Name

Date

Title (optional)

Personal Info you care to share (age, profession. residency, website, etc.)

E-mail (for office use only)

You can also mail your piece and this info to:

79 Clifton Place, #5C

Brooklyn, NY 11238

For more info, email smallworksforchange@gmail.com.  

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Calling all comic book artists

The Brick Theater is putting out a call for applications for its Comic Book Theater Festival.

Superheroes, space opera, true romance, hijinks, history, literature, autobiography, lines, dots, shapes, pencil, sound, ink, movement wanted.

From the release:

The Brick Theater, Inc. is now accepting applications for the Comic Book Theater Festival. For more information and to apply to be part of the June 2011 festival visit www.bricktheater.com/comics. The deadline for all submissions is February 15, 2011.

The influence of comics on our culture continues to grow. From the pop fantasias of Hollywood blockbusters to the rawness and refinement of intimate memoirs – and everything in between – it’s impossible to deny the wide appeal of comics’ words and images. The theater, of course, is no less immune to its spell. This summer, The Brick will invite one of history’s newest art forms to meet one of its oldest – and, through collaborations between visual and dramatic artists, the form and content of comics will collide with the content and form of theater to create strange new hybrids across both mediums. Also, superheroes and stuff. 

Every show that applies to be part of the festival is encouraged to create some sort of alliance between comic artists and theater artists. Ideally, each show will have a “staged” component, presented in front of a live audience, and a “printed” component, to be absorbed separately, either on paper or online. In order to foster collaboration and give artists a forum to meet and share ideas, a Facebook page has been set up at facebook.com/comicbooktheaterfestival. 

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Drink to this!

By Meredith Deliso

Many artists find inspiration in the bottle — but Joe Milazzo did it literally.

In his new series, simply titled “Bar,” the Bay Ridge painter presents works inspired by his own pub crawls, but with an old-school aesthetic.

“The style I have developed includes a lot of muted colors and earth tones,” said Milazzo, who’s known for his graphic design work among the Bay Ridge music scene. “The bars I go to are more old-world looking, and that seemed to really work with that color scheme. It was almost like a perfect fit for me.”

The resulting pieces — meticulously developed from photographs Milazzo took of bartenders and patrons — feature warm, inviting scenes of McSorley’s Old Ale House in Manhattan, Lucky 13 Saloon in Park Slope, and, his greatest muse, the Three Jolly Pigeons in Bay Ridge.

“That’s my watering hole,” said Milazzo of the bar, which presents his series with a show on Dec. 11. “I just love the woodwork in that place. It has a nice old-school vibe.”

Highlights of Milazzo’s works include a scene of a wistful bartender tending to an empty bar at the Three Jolly Pigeons, a proud, handlebar-sporting patron nursing a beer, and a simple shot of a larger-than-life glass of Jack Daniels — the artist’s drink of choice.

In total, Milazzo crafted 11 pieces in his bar series before deciding it was tapped.

“I’m a big Spinal Tap fan, so I thought stopping at 11 was good,” said Milazzo.

We’ll drink to that.

“Bar: Paintings by Joe Milazzo” at the Three Jolly Pigeons [6802 Third Ave. at 68th Street in Bay Ridge, (718) 745-9350], Dec. 11 from 2 pm-late. For info, visit www.gallery48.com. 

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How tweet it is

Artist Jenna Spevack
outside Sweet Melissa on
 Court Street in Cobble Hill,
one site of her bird song project.
The audio speaker is above
her head, to the right of
the air conditioner. Photo by Matt Isaac

This one's for the birds.


Crown Heights-based artist Jenna Spevack has installed audio speakers in different parts of Brooklyn that play the songs of 20 different birds that are rare, endangered or extinct in Brooklyn.


“Many neighborhoods in Brooklyn lack green space for bird habitats,” said Spevack. “Residential neighbors often coexist with industrial or commercial sites and birds are either drowned out or absent due to development and pollution.”


Called "Birds of Brooklyn," the speakers can be found outside of seven participating sites: Brooklyn Design Lab (Park Slope), Mile End Delicatessen (Boerum Hill), ShyBirdy (Williamsburg), Sweet Melissa’s (Cobble Hill), Lava Studio (Prospect Heights), and Monti Studios and Breukelen Coffee House (Crown Heights), sounding off from 8 am-8 pm.

The idea for this project gelled when she spent a month last summer at an artist residency in rural Connecticut, where she heard a great variety of bird sounds all day and night. 

“I returned home to Brooklyn and it seemed oddly quiet without the birds I grew accustomed to hearing. I also noticed a distinct absence of birds in my neighborhood, Crown Heights, except for the occasional sparrow. That’s when I started to research Brooklyn birds.”

Birds included in the project include the Ring-necked Pheasant, Grasshopper Sparrow and Eastern Blue Bird, played in a random loop through a small outdoor speake

Additional sites will be added shortly in the Downtown, Ditmas Park, Flatbush, Red Hook and Bay Ridge neighborhoods, including on the campus of City Tech. 

For more information, visit www.birdsofbrooklyn.org.

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A penny for his art

By Meredith Deliso

By sheer numbers, Michael Worthington should be the luckiest guy on earth.

Over the past 10 years, he’s picked up over 400 “lucky pennies” — coins found face up on the street that, as the folklore and your mom tells you, give you good luck.

At the time he started collecting them, Worthington wasn’t so lucky — he was unemployed. Walking the stree

ts, he was amazed at the amount of coins littered all over the place — in a city of wealth, money dropped wasn’t important enough to pick up, even the lucky ones.

His artistic impulses kicked in, and Worthington, a self-described “urban folk artist,” started picking up the pennies, ultimately crafting four-inch-by-four-inch paintings — small enough that you can hold in the palm of your hand, like a coin — with the penny at the center.

“The penny’s kind of magical,” said Worthington. “It radiates energy from the center of the painting.”

The subject matter for each piece is easy — the location where he found the penny, and date, serve as sources of inspiration.

“I’ve certainly never lacked for imagery,” said Worthington, whose influences range from pop artists like Warhol to KAWS.

One painting he recently finished is an homage to hot dogs and French fries thanks to a penny he found by Nathan’s in Coney Island. In the piece, Worthington ably employs the bright, solid yellows, reds and greens of the slogan, but makes it his own by juxtaposing that with white and black images of the food for a comic book feel.

A more abstract piece was made from a penny found at the corner of Myrtle and Prince streets in Downtown, a red spiral circle dripping like blood that speaks to that corner’s violent past.

By marking each piece with the date he found the penny and the city, the paintings have become Worthington’s own travelogues — many of the pennies were found in Brooklyn, naturally, but also France (the Euro cent), Iceland (the króna), and Barbados.

Worthington has nearly 90 “Lucky Penny Paintings” completed — some are in private collections, some are on the walls of his DUMBO apartment, and 25 currently are on display at Smith Hanten real estate in Cobble Hill.

“People say the pieces are a nice breath of fresh air in the neighborhood,” said Peter McGuire, a broker at Smith Hanten, which devotes his window space to art by local artists.

With hundreds of pennies waiting to be made into paintings, and new ones found almost every day, Worthington will never lack for work, or inspiration.

“As long as I find them, and they don’t stop making them, all the pennies will be painted,” said Worthington. “I’m always looking.”

And would he consider himself blessed by the penny’s folklore fortune?

“I would like to think so,” said Worthington. “I have a ‘life is meant to be enjoyed’ point of view. I like to think that over all, luck’s been on my side.”

Michael Worthington’s “Lucky Penny Paintings” at Smith Hanten [165 Smith St. at Wyckoff Street in Cobble Hill, (718) 834-0300], now through Sept. 30. For info, visit www.pennypainting.com.

Photos by Stefano Giovannini

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Calling all artists!

The North Brooklyn Public Art Coalition is looking for Brooklyn-based sound artists for its latest project, nbAUDIO 2011. Artists are invited to propose an original sound installation that addresses the historical, social, and political atmosphere of North Brooklyn’s community.

Additionally, artists are to identify a site in Williambsurg, Greenpoint or Bushwick, in which the piece would be installed.

The deadline for applications is Monday, Aug. 30, and the selected artist will be notified on Sept. 15.

For more information, visit www.nbpac.wordpress.com.

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'Greendale' goes graphic

Neil Young's 2003 album "Greendale" has spawned a film, art book, and stage show. Now, it's a comic.

Working with writer Joshua Dysart and Brooklyn-based illustrator Cliff Chiang, the legendary songwriter, a Brooklynite himself, has crafted a comic book about Sun Greene, the great-granddaughter of Jay Green, who founded the fictional California town of Greendale.

The mythical story delves into themes of nature and war, with Chiang, who Young specifically wanted for the project, crafting the whimsical pages, which one reviews says makes this new book "quite unlike anything else to hit the racks in recent memory" (in a good way).

Chiang tells Wired he thought of the project as a "cover song," thanks to the freedom employed. The rocker even shows up in the comic, as the face a young Jed, as well as a bandit who soon morphs into a demonic being and terrorizes the town.

Hear Chiang discuss the project when he appears at Rocketship comics [208 Smith St. between Baltic and Butler streets in Cobble Hill, (718) 797-1348] this Friday at 8 pm.

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Beyond Warhol

Mel Smothers' versus Andy Warhol's

Andy Warhol wasn’t much of a bird watcher. The iconic pop artist had a house out on Long Island — the closest thing we have to the county here — that was used mainly for parties.

For Bushwick-based artist Mel Smothers, that facet has inspired him to conduct a (metaphorical) dialogue with the pop icon in his series, “Dear Andy: Postcards from Montauk.”

In his paintings, the artist, and nature lover, has been communing with Warhol, traveling to the artist’s eastern aerie and reporting back what he sees. In a direct link to the artist, he is using as the basis for his paintings a takeoff of Warhol’s iconic portrait of Mao, but painting over in a similar vein to Robert Rauschenberg erasing the Andy Warhol of his day — Willem de Kooning.

There are hundreds of these paintings, with slight variations from one to the next, with laughing gulls and abstract lilies painted over the image of the Red Chinese leader.

“I’m using a visual image that Andy was famous for, which it was rumored he had assistants print 3,000 copies of,” said Smothers. “And I’m doing it with a paint and brush.”

One such painting — the 25th in his series — will be on display this month in the exhibition, “Beyond Warhol in the 21st Century: A Post-Pop MetaRomantic Retrofit,” running at the Brooklyn Artists Gym Gallery in Gowanus opening tomorrow.

The exhibition, fresh off a run in Chicago, features the work of four artists, like Smothers, who react consciously to the work of Warhol.The timing couldn’t be better — a major retrospective of the pop icon himself is opening at the Brooklyn Museum only a week after BAG’s opening.

“There’s such a close connection between what we’re doing and what they’re exhibiting at the Brooklyn Museum,” said Robert Furman, the curator of “Beyond Warhol” who sought out a Brooklyn gallery to exhibit the show timed with the Brooklyn Museum show. “It was such kismet. I couldn’t believe it.”

Beyond Smothers, there are Furman’s own pieces in the show — a mix of video and sculpture that find a kinship in other pop icons, including Marilyn Monroe. Photographer Peggy Roberts’s series of storefront photos reference Warhol’s days as a window display designers — surrealistic dream-like pieces that capture reflections from the street. And lastly, Pindar Van Arman takes Warhol’s desire to “paint like a machine” to heart — he uses a programmed robot to paint his pieces, which, like Warhol’s, tend towards portraiture.

While Van Arman embraces this machination of the art process, it is something Smothers reacts to strongly in his own paintings.

“On the East Coast, there’s the phenomena of the artist who doesn’t even do his own paintings,” said Smothers. “I really love painting, and that’s my dialogue with Andy Warhol: Is the pop artist just a machine? Or is pop art really about painting? What is pop art?”

“Beyond Warhol in the 21st Century: A Post-Pop MetaRomantic Retrofit” at BAG Gallery [168 Seventh St. between Second and Third avenues in Gowanus, (718) 858-9069], June 11-28 with an opening night party from 6-10 pm. For info, visit www.brooklynartistsgym.com.

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'Strange Intersections' in Brooklyn

Just a pair of old, worn-out jeans covered in dried paint?

Think again.

The work of Kensington-based artist Engels, such as “Engels 09,” which has said jeans crumbled into a pair of shoes packed into a wooden frame, shows his belief in the transcending power of art over the more mundane and material aspects of our lives. Here, that image conjures up one of bondage, of packaged humanity. And by standing the piece, as he does, on another that combines a picture frame with a mirror, the work is freed of its enslaved isolation and becomes an ode to painting.

In the exhibition “Strange Intersections,” at the Crown Heights-based Five Myles gallery, new works by the Haitian-born artist such as “Engels 09” are on view, showcasing the artist’s eye for details that, when combined on a canvas or a piece of plywood, become a unit. For Engels they resemble a journey, still ongoing and not afraid of detours.

The Brooklynite, who works out of his studio in Gowanus, describes his work as “abstract figuration” or “modern spiritual.” By often including photographs in his collages, he makes a contrast with the ephemeral strokes of a brush dipped in paint that for him is the underlying spirituality in modernism. Engels’ mastery of form, textures, colors, objects and built environments within the works, as well as his provocative juxtapositions, reveal his sense of the sacred found in ordinary things.

Strange intersections indeed.The exhibition is on view now through January 31 at Five Myles (558 St. Johns Pl.). For more information, call 718-783-4438.

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The face of Darfur behind the wheel of a taxi cab

By Joe Maniscalco

An entire ocean and half a continent separates Brooklyn from the suffering and dying in Darfur, Sudan — but you don’t have to look that hard to see the human cost.

“The world is small,” says documentary photographer Damian Wampler. “There is no such thing as a far away country or a distant land anymore.”

To glimpse the reality of Darfur for a compelling new photo series included in a School of Visual Arts exhibition called “Surface Tension” (now on view through November 14), Wampler, 32, only had to train his camera lens on one Brooklyn cabbie named Omer Omar.

About four-and-a-half years ago, Omar, now 30, won a green card lottery in Sudan that allowed him to emigrate to the United States.Today Omar is one of over 300 Darfuri refugees residing in the Kensington section of Brooklyn.

“It’s good,” Omar says. “Here is safer than in Darfur. I found nice people here.”

As appealing as Brooklyn is, Omar’s thoughts are never far from the 20 members of his extended family back home in Sudan who rely on his modest taxi cab salary to help them survive.

“My family is not safe,” admits Omar, whose father passed away two years ago. “One brother, I don’t know where he is. Friends told me they saw him outside their village, but I haven’t talked to him in three years.”

The sad fact is, Omar says, “Genocide continues in Darfur. People die everyday.”

Wampler started out his “Darfur in Brooklyn” photo project documenting the lives of the greater Darfuri community in Kensington, but soon came to the conclusion that Omar alone could represent the “face” of the refugee population.

“The tragedy of Darfur is forcing people like Omar to move all around the world to live a life that isn’t theirs,” Wampler explains.

The Delaware transplant, SVA graduate and former Park Slope resident, calls his friend Omar “an accidental American.”

Through stark, but intimate photographs of Omar — some behind the wheel of his yellow taxi cab, others waiting on the slushed-covered streets of Brooklyn — Wampler finds a man driven by a love of family, and yet someone profoundly and sadly alone.

“What impressed me the most about this group of photographers is how fearless each one of them is in capturing their subjects,” “Surface Tension” curator Dan Halm says. “From technical know-how to emotional impact, they all move beyond what one comes to expect within the realm of digital photography.”

For “Darfur in Brooklyn,” Wampler says he made a conscious choice to venture far outside the usual boundaries of what constitutes normal photojournalism.

“I create mood pieces that show how I interpreted this man’s feelings instead of using the language of traditional photojournalism, in which the photographer assumes much more responsibility for the content of the image,” Wampler says. “I leave each picture open to interpretation.”

On most days over the four-month period Wampler spent with Omar, he says the two passed the time just hanging out and talking. “We’d drive around in the cab or he’d run errands. It wouldn’t be until the very end when I would take out my camera.”

Omar says he hopes people will see his photos and want to ask questions about what’s happening in Darfur. After all, Wampler says, “It’s not far away — it’s right here.”

“Brooklyn in Darfur” is now showing at the School of Visual Arts as part of the “Surface Tension” exhibit. The show runs through November 14. Gallery hours are Monday thru Friday 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Saturday 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.SVA is located at 209 East 23rd Street in Manhattan. For more information, or to purchase exhibited work call 212-592-2145.

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Stories from the struggle for home

Now through November 2, while you wait for your laundry, engage in a cycle of stories.

At Wash and Play Lotto Laundromat in Fort Greene, an exhibit of "Housing is a Human Right: Stories from the Struggle for Home," an ongoing multiamedia project, will bring artists in to create and perform public art focused on the issue of housing.

Created by Michael Premo, a Laundromat Project Create Change artist-in-residence, and former StoryCorps facilitator Rachel Falcone, HRR is an ongoing multimedia documentary portrait of the struggle for home in New York City. Composed of oral narratives and photographs, along with testimonies and memories of home, woven and remixed with the help of turntablist DJ Oja Vincent, this collection of viscerally honest, first-person narratives serve as a reminder that home is as tenuous a space in New York City as the shelter that sustains it.

"I saw my community being blown away,” says Premo, a resident of Bed-Stuy. “Everyday there’d be a store that would be closed, a neighbor you wouldn’t see anymore. And with these changes and gentrification I started thinking about how this has happened before with the Great Migration, so-called urban renewal and I became fascinated with the concept of home and cycles of displacement.”

As chronicled by HHR, a woman whose dream home was foreclosed on while she battled cervical cancer. A small business owner on the verge of buying her first home spirals into debt after her successful store is displaced to make way for luxury apartments. A slumlord quietly moves an elderly couple’s belongings, piece by piece, from their home of 20 years into a barely habitable apartment to make room for higher paying tenants.

See it in action at Wash and Play Lotto Laundromat, 81 Lafayette Ave., now through Nov. 2. And watch the trailer here:

Housing is a Human Right Teaser from Housing is a Human Right on Vimeo.

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Kai Altair: the divine feminine

By Meredith Deliso

For an artist who draws very much on the visual and the creative, Brooklyn is the perfect place for Kai Altair.

“Living in New York is inspiring as an artist. Every sort of thing that can help to create imagery and fantasy that you could ever want is in New York,” says the Sunset Park-based musician, who plays Matchless in Greenpoint October 10. “Brooklyn is so good for an artist. It leaves a little more space for your creative mind.”

For Altair, music was her ticket to New York, studying opera at the Manhattan School of Music and then electronic composition at the Brooklyn Conservancy of Music.

“I love opera, but in my heart I always knew I wanted to do a band and write my own music,” says Altair. “At Manhattan School of Music you’re being groomed for the top opera houses in the world, but I really wanted to be drinking whisky and smoking cigarettes with my friends in the West Village.”

Finding her own voice, Altair has developed entrancing, hypnotic music with heavy synth that often focuses on another passion of hers: ocean conservancy. Growing up in the Northeast, as well as the Caribbean, water is something the musician feels a close connection with, and explores in her music.

“It’s kind of unavoidable for me to mention the ocean in my music,” says Altair, whose debut EP, out this month, is called “Star of the Sea” and includes singles like “Mama Ocean,” where she sings, “There’s a hole in my soul that’s lost at sea.” “Not just in a physical sense but also a metaphorical sense – it’s the place where our dreams come from.”

The imaginative realm is an endless source of inspiration for Altair, who’s drawn to the land of “fantasy, stars, oceans, mermaids, fairies and vampires.”

“These are things artists have been interpreting for society for thousands of years,” says Altair. “As a modern day artist, I feel the need to bring a modern day idea to these ideas of mythology.”

Another area of interest for Altair is goddess imagery and “bringing the divine feminine into our culture again.”

“I’m trying to imagine what the goddess image is today through my music and the images I create,” she says.

Through performance, she does just that, with costumes and tribal dance, a modern form of belly dancing, incorporated into her act.

Although she’s just getting started, with her EP out, fittingly, on Halloween, and her musical debut at Matchless in a bill put together by Resonator Magazine, Altair has big plans. She’s looking to amp up her live performance by adding backup singers and dancers, as well as organize a benefit for the ocean conservancy group Sea Shepherds.

And, with a sultry, gypsy-esque video just out for the single “Here She Comes,” she’s ready to get behind the camera once again and add to the iconography.

“I love the act of being a visual performer,” she says.

Kai Altair plays Matchless (557 Manhattan Ave.) October 10 at 10 p.m. With Bears Repeating, The Swear and Tealights, starting at 8 p.m. For more information, 718-383-5333.

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Underground art

A mosaic at the 36th Street R subway stop. Photo: Best View in Brooklyn

One of artist Grace Baley's favorite subway stations in the city is the 36th Street stop on the R line.

The Bay Ridge resident got into art because of mosaics like this one, which tells the history of the making of the subway.

"I swear people walk right by these things and don't even notice them," says Baley. "I had seen mosaics around that I loved, in New York City subways or just in random stores in New York. I just really loved and wanted to recreate them."

A little two pricey for her blood, one day Baley decided to make her own. Through lots of trial and error, she has taught herself, and, making them for the past 15 years now, is often commissioned to do portraits for people.

Baley works in her DUMBO studio, making mosaics like this Jimi Hendrix portrait, and has inspired others to try their hand at them as well. In her spare time, Baley trains at Gleaon's Gym in DUMBO, and this weekend, fifteen female boxers who train her will be showing mosaics they've made under the artist's watchful eye, as part of the Art Under the Bridge Festival. All proceeds from sales will go to the Brooklyn-based organization Girls for Gender Equity.

Baley will also be holding an open studio during the festival, in her space at 68 Jay Street, Room 819, where you will have the chance to see her work and meet the artist, as she'll be splitting time between her studio and Gleason's.

Ultimately, Baley would like to be commissioned to create her own subway mosaic, and become a part of subway history.

"[Mosaic's are] an outlet for this creative side that I personally never thought I would have," says Baley. "I really can’t draw a picture."

Gracey Baley photo courtesy of PowerImage PR
Jimi Hendrix mosaic courtesy of www.gracebaley.com

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Artist comes out of his shell

By Helen Klein

The stunningly beautiful scenery of the Galapagos Islands impressed Paul Franzetti, an amateur artist who rarely is found without a pencil or paint brush in his hand.

The Canarsie native -- who was educated at Canarsie’s recently closed Holy Family School and at the long closed St. John’s Prep on Myrtle Avenue -- was equally taken by the area’s amazing wildlife.

But, what moved him, almost beyond words, was a simple home for people suffering from Hansen’s Disease (leprosy) in Guayaquil, Ecuador.

There, Franzetti found a shelter for people suffering from a misunderstood illness, who needed help in day-to-day living. The refuge, Damien House, was founded and is still run by Sister Ann Credidio, a woman who, Franzetti is convinced, will one day be a saint.

Spending a day at the shelter left Franzetti and son Joe wanting to do something to help its residents, who live with a quiet dignity enhanced by Credidio’s efforts, but who -- because of their physical limitations -- cannot experience such locations as the Galapagos.

“It was humbling,” Franzetti noted. Sister Ann, he noted, was, “So overtly giving and focused on others. Her legacy is to give all these people hope.”

Franzetti’s first idea was to do some paintings of the Galapagos to hang at Damien House. That morphed, eventually, into an idea to create a calendar that could be sold in the United States, with all profits going to Damien House.

Together, Paul and Joe produced their first Galapagos Wildlife wall calendar in 2009, gracing each month with a painting by Paul and a sketch by Joe. Their first year, they sold 2,000 calendars featuring glowing renditions of the area’s birds and animals, and sent the profits off to Sister Ann, who is, Franzetti stressed, “Always two weeks away from closing the hospital,” which she founded, almost literally, on a prayer and a shoestring. “That she’s survived for 15 years is amazing,” he contended.

Now, the 2010 calendar, with all new illustrations, is ready to ship, and Franzetti is hoping that it will make even more money for Damien House.

His visit to Damien House, while coincidental, wasn’t precisely haphazard, Franzetti recalled. In 2006, the year that he and Joe visited the Galapagos for the first time, he had intended to go to Israel but changed his plans because of unrest in the Mideast. When he broached the idea of going to the Galapagos, Franzetti’s oldest son, James, who had worked in Ecuador on behalf of the Rostro de Cristo lay missionary program and who was originally supposed to accompany him as well, urged him to visit Damien House. That visit almost didn’t happen, but did eventually come off. What Paul and Joe saw there amazed and moved them, setting in motion their project.

Franzetti, an untrained artist whose day job involves teaching English to both high school and college students, painted his illustrations from photographs. He has painted since he was in his teens, but never done it for money, he said. While the compulsion to create art for its own sake is strong with Franzetti, even stronger is to paint in order to provide a benefit to those in need, he said.

“I’m working now more than I ever have, and I’m much more focused,” Franzetti confided.

While the refuge needs all the money it can get to keep its doors open -- the main reason the Franzettis have committed themselves to their annual calendar project -- this could be a good year for Damien House, Franzetti opined. Father Damien, who worked with victims of Hansen’s Disease on the island of Molokai, will be canonized in October, an event that he hopes will raise awareness of the ailment and the needs of those who have it.

Painting and producing the calendar, Franzetti noted, allows him to give back, something he has yearned to do. “I said to Sister Annie, you need help. I want to help. Your dream and my dream have met,” he stressed.

Calendars cost $15.00 a piece, plus $2.84 for shipping. People interested in purchasing one can get further details by emailing Franzetti at paul9527@earthlink.com.

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Gain insight into the artistic process in 'The Words of Color'

A piece by Fritz Weiss

Known for their multi-medium, multi-artist, multi-sensory shows, this fall, the Brooklyn Waterfront Artist Coalition doesn’t disappoint.

Starting September 12, “The Words of Color” presents over 1,000 works representing over 250 local artists, in the Red Hook organization’s fall group art show.

A narrative show, most artists will have a written narrative as well as their art work as part of their presentation. Some of the narratives are integrated into the work, and may be a statement, poem, or book. If you’ve ever wondered what goes on inside an artist’s head, you’ll get an opportunity to discover sources of inspiration, descriptions of techniques or entertaining works of fiction.

The works of four artists are featured in “The Words of Color”: avant-garde constructions by Carlo Grassini, where every day and found objects are transformed with the use of paint, wood and adhesives; wonderful urban landscapes by painter Cynthia Chatman, an installation of The Colors of Venice and Burano by digital photographer Steven (Fritz) Weiss, and Anita Giraldo’s See My Voice, a series of speech animated photographs.

Nearly a third of the 25,000 square foot waterfront gallery will also be devoted to “Further to the Edge,” a show within a show, where strict academic display methods have been abandoned and artists have hung their work in radical and exciting ways.

Also throughout the show’s run at the space, the 3rd Annual Red Hook Film Festival will showcase short films from around the world, this year focusing on Brooklyn filmmakers and films about the urban industrial waterfront (October 3 and 4); UnPlugged in Red Hook acoustic music series, with everything from garage punk to an accordion orchestra, on most Sundays; Screening Room Saturdays, which are free programs of experimental, documentaries, animation films and music videos; a program of Sunday afternoon poetry readings, including Nuyorican poetry (October 11); and an introduction to Photoshop (October 24).

The show kicks off September 12 with an opening reception featuring the music of Stefan Bauer, from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. All shows are free. “Words of Color runs until October 25.

For a more complete schedule, go here. For more information, call 718-596-2506/7.

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Duo channel their muse in 'Hazel'

Dayna Kurtz (left) and Mamie Minch share a “Love of Hazel”

By Meredith Deliso

Many musical collaborations are inspired by a mutual love for a band or musician.

For Dayna Kurtz and Mamie Minch, theirs is Hazel Dickens.

The two Brooklyn songwriters clicked a few years back, and realized they both connected with the music of the 60s bluegrass singer and feminist.

“We found that Hazel Dickens resonates with both of us, especially the duets between she and Alice Gerrard,” says the Park Slope-based singer and guitarist Minch, who has found fans of her own with her antique blues songs and confessional demeanor.

“The songs people identify with Hazel are the more stark recordings about coal mining and unions, but her songs about heartbreak are just devastating and so lovely,” she continues. “We wanted to sing them together, so we took a few into the studio along with some other tunes we loved, and it felt sort of magical.”

The end result of that sesion is the EP “For The Love of Hazel, Songs of Hazel Dickens,” a tribute featuring six songs written by or inspired by Dickens’s songwriting, voice, and groundbreaking collaborations with Gerrard.

“Although Hazel didn’t perform all these songs we recorded, she was very much in our mind and her sensibility and spirit very much informed these sessions,” says the Greenwood Heights-based Kurtz, an accessible performer with an unforgettable husky voice who has been invited to open for Rufus Wainwright, Antony & the Johnsons, and Keren Ann. “We thought it was appropriate to dedicate the record to her.”

Whether you’re a lover of the musician yourself, or a virgin to the music of Hazel Dickens, watch the duo ignite on stage when they celebrate with a release party at Union Hall (702 Union Street) on August 13 at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $10. For more information, call 718-638-4400.

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Sonic you

By Meredith Deliso

It’s no mystery that the city is loud, a noisy, cacophonous landscape.

But on June 7, you can experience Brooklyn like you never have before in one of ISSUE Project Room’s Soundwalk-A-Thon, a take on the “walk-a-thon” and a fundraiser for the Gowanus-based performance space.

Throughout the day, 20 leading sound artists and musicians will become sonic tour guides as they lead groups of 10-20 people on walks that range from meditative deep listening to sing-alongs, complete with instruments and iPods.

“ISSUE’s Soundwalk-a-thon takes the live experience from our venue and brings it outdoors,” says IPR’s Founder and Artistic Director Suzanne Fiol. “While many people in the experimental arts community are familiar with the work we do, the public-at-large is not. This event will bring together artists and audience, physically demonstrating the dynamic impact that experimental art is constantly having on New York City culture.”

Gowanus
As ISSUE is located in Gowanus, at the Old American Can Factory at Third Street and Third Avenue, it’s no surprise that a number of the soundwalks occur in the neighborhood. “Gowanus Field Reflections & The Great Steel Elevator,” led by composer Bradford Reed, moves through the neighborhood, ultimately ending up at the freight elevator of the Old American Can Factory, where the group will experience spontaneous “elevator music” being automatically created by custom software and the sounds of the elevator. Artist Betsey Bigg’s “Detox Project” starts at the courtyard of the factory and loops around the Gowanus Canal, as participants walk, hum and sing together. And Dylan Gauthier’s “Crudophonic Sound Event” places the “maligned urban oasis” of the Gowanus Canal, which potentially awaits a Superfund makeover, at the center of a meditation on open space, the open sea, floating gardens, green industry and utopian redevelopment.

Carroll Gardens
Nearby in Carroll Gardens, the Tin Can Telewalk, led by composer Kurt Gottshalk and vocalist Marie Evelyn, takes inspiration from the childhood game of “Telephone” and has participants echoing what they hear through tin can phones as they move through the neighborhood. Performance and installation artist Todd Shalom will guide walkers on a “Carroll Street Soundwalk,” encouraging different ways of listening.

DUMBO/Downtown Brooklyn
In DUMBO, let visual and sound artist Bruce Tovsky lead you on an underpass walk starting at the York Street F train station. Nearby at Brooklyn Bridge Park, sound artist Daniel Neumann leads “Demasking The Bridges,” exploring the noisy triangle between the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges while wearing masks to uncover more sounds. Walkers will sport iPods, not masks, on the Collective Opera Company’s “Shuffle Sing-a-Long,” and sing along - and out loud - with their music during the walk to create an a capella chorus (albeit one that’s not harmonizing together).

Prospect Park
Though Prospect Park may be a place Brooklynites go to escape the more chaotic, noisy elements of their lives, several soundwalks will make their way through the park. Sound and installation artist Andrea Williams’s walk focuses on to learn about the park’s sound and ecology; the “Prospect Park Ravine Walk,” led by interdisciplinary sound artist and composer Jonny Farrow, will explore those sounds occurring in the middle of Brooklyn – in the park’s ravine; drummer Kenny Wollesen will teach Lithuanian folk songs on his Balloon Bassoon Promenade soundwalk; and composer Edmund Mooney looks to lead a soundwalk through the park to “explore the unique sonic signature of various places in and out of the park.”

Starting Place Unknown
Other walks that might be for the more brave include Steve Dalachinsky’s Poets March, where an undisclosed number of poets will gather in Brooklyn and march toward ISSUE Project Room; Flaming Fire’s “We will run past all your walkers, opposite direction, screaming songs” soundwalk; Michele Nagai’s All Borough Bag Walk, which starts at the location of the participants’ choice, and Jonathan Kane’s “Bang a gong for ISSUE” soundwalk, a percussion improv march to ISSUE.

Beyond Brooklyn
The soundwalk-a-thon extends throughout the city as well, with ones along the East River Park (“Listen2009”), near the Bronx Museum of Art [“Transmutation in the Shift (---Documenting the Grand Concourse)”] and at the Battery Park Labyrynth (“Urban Zen Sound Meditation and Labyrinth Walk”).

Walkers interested in participating are committed to raising a minimum of $100 from “sponsors.” Registration for walks ends June 1.

All walk participants are invited to attend a post-walk after-party at ISSUE Project Room (232 3rd St.), with a musical performance by Ne(x)tworks. Food will be provided.

For more information, including start times and locations of the soundwalks, call 718-330-0313.

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Atlantic Avenue Artwalk: stop in and say hello

"Construction of Time" by Donato Giancola

By Meredith Deliso

Artist Ellie Winberg once heard somewhere that there are more artists living in Brooklyn per square mile than anywhere else in the country.

However equivocal that statistic may be, “it really feels that way,” says the Park Slope-based artist, who has a studio in Carroll Gardens at 160 Union St.

On June 6 and 7, Brooklynites will have the opportunity to say hello to just some of those artists who live and work in the borough through the sixth annual Atlantic Avenue Artwalk, a studio tour along the cultural corridor of Atlantic Avenue spanning Brooklyn Heights, Cobble Hill, Boerum Hill and Downtown Brooklyn.


Over 200 artists, including Winberg, will open the doors to their studios, or occupy various businesses and vacant spaces, over the course of the weekend, providing non-traditional venues for artists to exhibit and people to see art, as well as link the neighborhood’s artist and business communities.

“Because the geography of these neighborhoods that run along Atlantic aren’t your typical art tour neighborhoods, say DUMBO or Williamsburg, we decided from the beginning to incorporate local businesses and merchants and have a way for a lot of different people to participate,” says Lisa Shimamura of Colabs on Atlantic Avenue, who founded the artwalk in 2004 when there were just 30 artists and the tour route was just half of what it is now (indeed, the tour stretches as far south of Atlantic as Union Street). “There’s that other kind of growth,” says Shimamura, “of just discovering people who are right here who we haven’t had a chance to meet yet.”

There is a strong sense of discovery inherent in the artwalk, of finding out there’s an artist working sometimes literally right under your nose.

“It’s not just a show, you’re going into someone’s life,” says sculptor Alex Racine, whose home/studio is at 477 Atlantic Avenue near Nevins Street (look for the little sculpture of a hand above the door). Racine, who just finished up a commission for Gourmet Garage in Manhattan, and whose work also includes the building facade at 694 Degraw Street, sometimes also brings viewers into his work.

“One year I saw a girl making fun of one of the sculptors. I asked her to pose, and she’s now one of my portraits,” said Racine. “It’s that kind of experience that’s priceless.”

Donato Giancola has been prone to including his family in the tour. His studio, at 397 Pacific Street near Bond, is covered with his two young daughters’ work, in addition to his own oil paintings and commissions for publishers, and last year he performed a live oil painting demonstration with his daughter Naomi as a muse. This year, he might have something similar planned.

“Cecilia might want to participate,” says Giancola of his younger daughter. “I might do a drawing demonstration. I found the oil painting was long and tedious in nature.”

Collagist and animator Mac Premo uses the annual artwalk as an opportunity to take stock of his work and reevaluate his “artist statement.”

“Inviting people into the space where you work, it forces you to reassess what you’re about,” says Premo, who shares his space with a children’s book author and a jeweler at 134 Nevins between Dean and Bergen. “As an artist, you tend to wonder what your role is and if you’re doing anything of value. Opening your doors can give you a sense of what kind of value you provide to the community.”

In addition to studio tours, as well as public mural projects, the Atlantic Avenue Artwalk live music all weekend, with, among others, free, outdoor public jazz performances through Connection Works, a Smith-street based non-profit that does music outreach programs in schools and undeserved communities. Though block parties are not an unusual sight in Brooklyn during the summer, for the first time, the artwalk will hold a block party on Nevins between Atlantic and Pacific, too, with music and artist exhibitions. Local restaurants and bars will also be getting in on the action, offering special promotions and happy hour pricing all weekend.

While the Atlantic Avenue Artwalk certainly isn’t the only studio tour in town (Carroll Gardens and Red Hook will have its own through the Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition just the weekend prior, on May 30 and 31), it’s certainly one of the biggest, and shows a growing need for artists to find non-traditional, informal ways to show their work.

“I think there is a trend of so many more artwalks because there is a need for people to be able to share their work in this way,” says Shimamura. “By opening doors to studios or doing work in the public setting, viewers are able to live with art or experience art in an unexpected setting.”

The artists, for one, are grateful.

“It’s great to be a part of something that’s becoming a repeating thing that people look forward to,” says Premo. “It’s having a true foothold in the community.”

The Atlantic Avenue Artwalk take place June 6 and 7 from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. The event is free. For more information, including tour maps and artist information, go here.

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