A Walk Across the Brooklyn Bridge

Walker Evans, Brooklyn Bridge, c. 1929 (Image via.)


After Walker Evans (Sherrie Levine would be proud)



Walking toward Brooklyn with all of the tourists.

The High Line

I love the High Line. I love Joel Sternfeld's photographs of it a decade ago and I love the park as it exists today. This was my second visit and after the first, I wasn't fully ready to write about it. It was the wrong time of day - my photographs were too dark and I spent more time experiencing it rather than documenting it (always a good thing). This year, it was windy and sunny and I managed to stroll the entire length (a feat considering all the walking through Chelsea galleries hours earlier).

I am drawn to images that show the extreme passing of time like Mark Klett's Third View. It is essential to include some of my favorite Joel Sternfeld photographs because I was thinking about them this last trip. His images below are from the monograph Walking the Line.


Joel Sternfeld, Looking West on 30th Street on a September Evening, 2000


Joel Sternfeld, Looking South on an Afternoon in June, 2000


Joel Sterfeld, Track Crossing Snow, January 2001


Joel Sternfeld, Ken Robson's Christmas Tree, January, 2001


Joel Sternfeld, Grape Hyacinth, April, 2000


Joel Sternfeld, View Towards the Empire State Building, November, 2000


Joel Sternfeld, Looking East on 30th Street on a Morning in May, 2000

Now for some far less sublime photographs taken on the G-12 and I-Phone from March 2012.



Charles Mary Kubricht, Alive-nesses: Proposal for Adaptation, 2011 = a little Razzle Dazzle in the form of painted storage containers.


One end of the High Line on West 30th Street near the soon to be developed Rail Yard.




Two "viewing stations" where one learns how mesmerizing watching traffic can be.


Where nature meets architecture in neatly constructed geometric units.


The brown I remember in Sternfeld's photographs though the path and the amount of occupants changed significantly.


The other end of the High Line on Gansevoort Street in the Meatpacking District.

I saw more high-end cameras and European tourists than either other location this trip. Can't wait to go back again preferably when it is green.

The Jeff Koons Show

Looking forward to this (may he eventually move into his new digs in Manhattan so I can finish that portion of the Artist Stalking Series).

Chelsea Part 2

Art for sale in Chelsea:



Gerard Petrus Fieret at Julie Saul Gallery:



From the gallery website: "Gerard Petrus Fieret lived in the Netherlands and was trained as a painter at the Academy and self taught as a photographer. He was active in a milieu with no societal restrictions. Fieret maintained a studio practice where he directly engaged with his sitters in a raucous confrontational and experimental mode. There is an open dialogue that is ambiguous and has a performance aspect. Fieret worked in a completely inconsistent and fearless way with creased, strangely exposed prints made in a great range of sizes, with dashing signatures in felt tip pen and studio stamps contributing to their strong graphic presence and dada spirit." [Click on view images for more]

What intrigued me most about his work is the David C. Nolan/Marilyn Monroe effect (stamping a name over the body as if that name owns it).

Tom Friedman at Luhring Augustine:



Tom Friedman, Untitled (Wrinkled Photo), 2012

This gives me a good idea for my next Postcard Collective entry!



Tom Friedman, Untitled (Sun), 2012 contains approximately 3,650 12" wooden dowels painted yellow and were adhered to a 12" styrofoam ball. The first thing I thought of when I saw this piece was "I have more paper cats than dowels represented here!" Yikes. Obsessive collecting.

Paul Graham's The Present at Pace Gallery:



This was one of my favorite exhibitions. His nod to Philip-Lorca diCorcia's lighting, the extraordinary presentation of the images, the passing of time (in brief seconds), and the profound content commenting on today's society (class, race, etc.) were truly engaging.

Douglas Huebler's Crocodile Tears at Paula Cooper Gallery:



The premise of this series is derived from a screenplay written in the late 1970s. From the gallery website: "The screenplay tells the story of fictional performance artist Jason James and brings together a number of issues as current then as today, such as the emergence of digital art, the strengthening of a profit-driven art market, artists’ resistance to commodification, the merging of art and entertainment, and more."



Douglas Huebler, Detail from an image in Crocodile Tears

Alec Soth's "Broken Manual"

One of the Chelsea gallery highlights was Alec Soth's Broken Manual at the Sean Kelly Gallery.


Alec Soth, S., Alabama

Vince Aletti offers a synopsis from The New Yorker: "Soth's subject here is elusive: he seeks out people who've gone off the grid, tracking survivalists, drifters, and recluses to their makeshift lairs. When he finds a bearded man in the wilderness, the picture he brings back can suggest surveillance records or mug shots, but other portraits are unexpectedly lovely and and sympathetic."



One was confronted by this installation upon entry. There is one copy of Soth's Broken Manual hidden inside one of the volumes on display. From the gallery press release: "This highly sought-after, signed and numbered edition is placed inside larger found books, the interiors of which have been carved out to create a secret repository for the manual, an action that mimics the concealment of covert material by someone living a double-life, who must hide evidence of their alternative existence from those around them."


Image above from Soth's website.


Alec Soth, 2006

These photographs are eerie. They reminded me of stumbling upon homeless shelters in the woods near the railroad tracks in Bend, Oregon - one senses someone is nearby but has no desire to confront them. There is an element of danger and of being watched in the photographs without men.


Alec Soth, 2006

I loved the combination of black-and-white photographs with Soth's signature color work. The scale has grown exponentially since I saw Sleeping by the Mississippi in Minneapolis in 2008.

Alec Soth, Edel's Hideaway (Summer)

Even though the above image was not in the Chelsea exhibition, it is one of my favorite in the series. It has the same sense of foreboding as Jeff Wall's Crooked Path, 1991 (below).

John Chamberlain Retrospective at the Guggenheim

John Chamberlain: Choices, the retrospective at the Guggenheim, began spring break's Art Extravaganza. I have always enjoyed his titles - some are so out of the ordinary and difficult to guess that I made a list of the ones that stood out most:

Mr. Completely
Opera Chocolate
Lord Suckfist
Rooster Starfoot
Chopped Lip
Toasted Hitlers
Miss Remember Ford
Sugar Tit



This is one photograph (below) of the Chamberlains in the Rotunda. In addition to crushed car metal, there were also works made with metal drawers (talk about tempting to touch and "open" the sculpture), decorative tins (including a pocket size prototype with a ground mace spice tin as the pedestal - why wasn't this available in the gift shop?), bent synthetic polymer resin, oil barrels, urethane foam (a conservationist nightmare), metal ceiling tile, and galvanized steel. My favorite material was the painted paper bags (of course).


General observations that I would have photographed if possible (some of which I did but are too blurry to include here):

• The oversized foam couch on display was covered with a silk parachute.
• In addition to title, medium, and date, it would have been very informative to have the weight of each artwork on the title cards (because everyone was curious).
• I was fascinated by how each wall piece was hung and spent a great deal of time looking at the structures behind the works. Because of the sloping Rotunda and irregular shapes of the twisted metal, the preparators used stone blocks as shims that were the same color and pattern as the tile floor.
• Some of the 1980s and early 1990s paint applications could certainly be called "tie-dye."
• His term for the shapes he made was "articulate wadding" (hope to use that in critique someday).

Read Andrew Russeth's review of the exhibition here.


A reflection on the walls of the Rotunda upon reaching the end of the exhibition.





I was amazed at how much the Guggenheim is deteriorating. There were large cracks on the floor like those above. In general, the museum is not an ideal building to show artwork though the building itself is spectacular.


More reflections on the sidewalk outside the Guggenheim.

New York: Random Photos from Day 1

This photo was taken not from Day 1 but over the kitchen sink in Muncie, Indiana. Consider it a visual point of reference (plus I love my refrigerator magnets).

Strand Books: "Where Books are Loved" and where I added infinite titles to my "to buy" and "library check-out" lists.


View of Central Park from Belevedere Castle


The Ramble at Central Park en route to Strawberry Fields


Strawberry Fields, Central Park


"Almost Mickey Mouse" chairs at Aloft, Brooklyn


Menu at Taqueria East Village

For every one of my photographs I frame...

... I hereby promise to frame someone else's artwork until I run out of space or finish the box of loose photographs that desperately need some wall time. First up... Jason DeMartre's Bologna (excuse the i-Phone quality & reflections that make the matboard look dirty).



The two David C. Nolan and Marilyn Monroe prints were matted and framed for the Lust exhibition. Thursday I had a three hour gap between the faculty meeting and my first class so I measured and cut the matboard. It was perfect timing because I also had a Photo 1 demo that evening with the bevel cutter so I had ready-made examples. What I didn't realize until five minutes before class started was my demo print was the one below left. Try to explain that to a Photo 1 class!



Friday I walked across campus with a very large (roughly 4' x 8') piece of cardboard during a tornado warning. Needless to say, I had to succumb to the wind and bend it in half to get it to the Art Department. I am very proud of my near perfect box and packing (one can tell I worked in a gallery and am related to my grandmother who could pack 100 things in the smallest of boxes). I told Hannah when a box turns out like this, it's the only time I like math. She reminded me that counting cats also features arithmetic to which I had to change "only" to "rare."





[I did fill those small gaps with rolled bubble wrap but only documented it beforehand.]


The prints will be shipped off to the Lust exhibition next week (I am waiting to include return postage). Then it's back to scanning those cats.