Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn

Simply Gorgeous: The Art of Joseph Mariano on Pardon Me For Asking

Recently Katia Kelly visited Gowanus artist Joseph Mariano. Head on over to her blog, Pardon Me For Asking, to read her profile and see more of his work. It is simply gorgeous.

 "When Gowanus area resident Joseph Mariano retired in 1996, he knew that he wanted to spend the rest of his life painting. Standing in his sun drenched studio, he showed me his many works. There were portraits and landscapes, some of Jamaica Bay, some of different scenes along the Gowanus Canal, one of his favorite subjects.

"Very often, Joseph takes a canoe out onto the water and paints the bridges at Carroll Street and 3rd Street. He likes to explore the canal's many inlets, places well hidden from others. Often, he encounters egrets and Night Herons. There used to be horseshoe crabs, too, but he has not seen those in the past five years."

Nov 7 & 8: Flatbush Artists Studio Tour

The Flatbush Artists Studio Tour is on November 7 & 8 from 11AM until 4PM. The opening on Thursday, Nov. 5, 7-10 PM at the Newkirk Medical Center (1414 Newkirk Avenue (Q train to Newkirk Ave.). 

Go to http://www.flatbushartists.org for more details, tour map and directions.

Cobwebs, Skeletons, Mutated Limbs & Recreated Childhood Mementos at Urban Alchemist

The “G-Train Salon” presents intimate discussions with emerging artists from the Park Slope oasis, Urban Alchemist Design Collective.  This month, artist Andrea Burgay ushers in the Halloween season with a ghoulish display of cobwebs, skeletons, mutated limbs and recreated childhood mementos.  Join us for a discussion and Q & A with the artist as she walks through this poignant landscape haunted by memories, nostalgia and “Hungry Ghosts.” www.gtrainsalon.blogspot.com

WHO: Mixed-media Artist Andrea Burgay at Urban Alchemist Design Collective

 

WHAT: “Hungry Ghosts,” solo exhibition and salon discussion

 

WHEN: Saturday, October 24, 2009

7:00pm Cocktails

8:00pm Salon discussion led by artist Andrea Burgay

Exhibition on view through November 19, 2009

 

WHERE: Urban Alchemist Design Collective

                 343 5th Street (Off 5th Avenue)

                 Brooklyn, NY 11215 

 

Friday at 9:30 pm: Rocky Horror Picture Show LIVE at Lyceum

Bring your black knit nurse corsets and heavy eyeliner down to the Lyceum to relive the classic stage musical of the Rocky Horror Show. Get into the Halloween spirit and come dressed to kill.  The Brooklyn Lyceum is the perfect location to hold all the campy suspense, with its 3000 sq ft of exposed brick, old bathhouse architecture and huge steel I-beams, the musical is practically asking to jump out of its walls.

No other musical blends science fiction with trampy campy sexy theatrics quite like Rocky Horror. By the end you’ll be humming along " ...Crawling on the planet's face, tiny insects called the human race, lost in time, lost in space - and meaning."  Love and Light Productions brings the full production to life with a one-night stop at the Brooklyn Lyceum on their East Coast tour. Director Alicia Starr and her talented full cast come ready to get you shakin', singing along and primed for the Halloween week ahead.  More info about the cast and production at loveandlightproductions.com.

The Brooklyn Lyceum, known formerly as NYC Public Bath No. 7, is a performing arts and cultural center in Park Slope. Originally opened in 1910 as an indoor bathing facility, it once housed the largest indoor public pool in the country. Reopened in 1994 as the Brooklyn Lyceum, the old bathhouse now plays host to a range of performance events, festivals and cultural activities, including the upcoming production of Bauhaus, by the resident theatre company Nervetank. Its café is open to the public daily and offers free wireless access. 

The show begins at 9:30 p.m. on Friday October 16th at the Lyceum: 227 4th Avenue in Park Slope, right atop the R train station at Union Street. 

www.brooklynlyceum.com.  718.857.4816

William Forsythe: Innovative Choreographer at BAM Fri & Sat

Tonight and tomorrow night at BAM: William Forsythe's innovative choreography at 7:30 pm.

"Forsythe is the foremost choreographer today, and every performance in his oeuvre challenges space, movement and the logic of music. These are works of enduring and unforgettable force." —BOMB Magazine

For three decades, choreographer William Forsythe has upended traditions and defied expectations, producing works of enduring power. Last at BAM with the politically daring Three Atmospheric Studies (2007 Spring Season), Forsythe returns with Decreation, a work that challenges our notions of dance in the 21st century and asserts his place as one of the world's most innovative choreographers. A piece on love, jealousy, and the soul, Decreation explores the forces that shape and rend our relationships—with one another and ourselves.

BAM Howard Gilman Opera House
65min, no intermission
Tickets: $20, 35, 50, 70

Issue Project Room: Poetry to the Infinitive Power(s) on Friday

Issue Project Room will be open for business on Friday night for a pre-planned benefit event called POETRY to the INFINITIVE POWER(s), an evening of poetry, dance, live AV projections, and music. All proceeds will benefit ISSUE Project Room's move to 110 Livingston.

 

Founder and Artistic Director, Suzanne Fiol died on Monday after a one year battle with cancer. The organizers of tomorrow's event say that "it is not memorial; it was, in fact, planned as a benefit party. We plan to carry on in this spirit, and ask you to join us in celebrating Suzanne's life and achievements."

 

Over the past days there have been stories about The Times, the Voice, the Post, and other media outlets and blogs. ISSUE Project Room sent this list by email.

 

Suzanne Fiol, Avant-Garde Impresario, Dies at 49
(Ben Sisario, New York Times)  

 

Christopher McIntyre's Reflections on Suzanne

(Christopher McIntyre, New Music Box) 

 

R.I.P. Suzanne Fiol, Founder and Director of ISSUE Project Room

(Zach Baron, Village Voice)

 

ISSUE Project Room's Suzanne Fiol is Dead at 49

(Gersh Kuntzman and Will Yacowicz, Brooklyn Paper)

 

Suzanne Fiol, Founder of ISSUE Project Room, Is Dead

(Benjamin Sutton, The L Magazine) 

In Gowanus, ISSUE Project Room Founder is Mourned

(Nicole Brydson, Brooklyn the Borough)

 

Suzanne Fiol, A Force of Nature Who Guided ISSUE Project Room

(From Neil Feldman, Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn)

 

Thank You, Suzanne Fiol

(Patrick Hambrecht, Vice)

 

For Suzanne Fiol

(Alex Ross, The Rest Is Noise)

 

Suzanne

(Peter Matthews, Feast of Music)

 

To Suzanne Fiol

(Glenn Kenny, Some Came Running)

 

Suzanne Fiol

(Matana Roberts, In the Midst of Memory)

 

Suzanne Fiol

(Kurt Gottschalk, Spearmint Music)

 

The Cultural Workhorse

(Edwin Torres, Harriet)

 

Read what people are writing about Suzanne on twitter.

Read what people have written on Suzanne's facebook wall.

Downturns & Destiny: Free Outdoor Films in JJ Byrne/Washington Park

Wednesdays in July at 8:30 p.m. at JJ Byrne Playground/Washington Park. Third Street at Fifth Avenue.

July 15th: What A Way to Go directed by J. Lee Thompson with Shirley MacLaine, Paul Newman, Robert Mitchum. It happens to be one of Hugh's favorite films.

July 22: Piper Theater Film Workshop''

July 29th: Sullivan's Travels directed by the great Peston Sturges

Tonight: Hamlet in Washington/JJ Byrne Park

We went last night and thoroughly enjoyed Piper Theater's production of Shakespeare's The Tragedy of Hamlet on the green in Washington Park. I wanted to ask director John McEneny all kinds of questions about directing Hamlet in a park setting (and maybe I will get a chance to do so tonight). 

In terms of staging, McEneny did wonderful things with ladders, chairs, picture frames and a stage within a stage, that created a very physical and dynamic Hamlet that worked well al fresco with a playground nearby complete with screaming children and squeaking swings.

As always with Piper Theater, the actors were uniformly good and well directed in a skillful, naturalistic and always accessible Shakespearean style. I love that Horatio was played by a woman, the excellent Zoe Frazer. Ophelia, Laerties, Queen Gertrude and many of the others were great to watch as the daylight dimmed and the darkness of the play was able to assert itself into the night.

Aaron Novak as Hamlet was especially powerful during the "to be or not to be" soliloquy which he did while standing on a ladder in the middle of the green creating quite a stirring image.

Piper Theater Productions was created by John McEneny with his sister Rachel McEneny. John runs the drama program at MS 51 and the very popular summer drama program for kids ages 10-17 at the Old Stone House. In addition to Hamlet, this summer's Piper Theater productions in Park Slope include, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Lililth, Holes, The Boy in the Iron Mask, Peter Pan and our Town.

For a complete schedule go to theoldstonehouse.org

Mississippi Mermaid: Truffaut, Denueve and Belmondo at BAM

Oh la la. Summer is always a wonderful time for a Francois Truffaut movie. Here, mon cherie, is the blurbage:

At BAM: Fri, Jul 10—Sun, Jul 12 at 4, 6:45, 9:30pm
Mon, Jul 13—Thu, Jul 16 at 6:45, 9:30pm

When isolated tobacco farmer Louis (Belmondo) meets his mail-order bride Julie (Deneuve), he’s unsure this beautiful woman is the same one he has been corresponding with by letter and only seen in photographs. Ignoring his doubts, he falls head over heels for her and the two begin a life together...until the day the mysterious Julie disappears with a large portion of Louis’ assets. Based on a book by William Irish entitled Waltz Into Darkness (also the source writer for Truffaut’s The Bride Wore Black), this tale of sexual obsession and betrayal unfolds in the lush tropical landscape of Africa’s Reunion Island. Truffaut draws on themes and conventions of American noir, while peppering Mississippi Mermaid with eclectic allusions to film and literature such as Renoir, Ray, and Balzac. In French with English subtitles. Courtesy of The Film Desk.

Guggenheim Series: It Came From Brooklyn (The Walkmen, Colson Whitehead Reads Whitman)

Frank Lloyd Wright meet Brooklyn. Or: how interesting that the Guggenheim Museum is doing a monthly series called It Came From Brooklyn starting with a performance by The Walkman, a band I discovered on walking into Virgin Records, where I was was stopped short by the rampage of sound that is the song, The Rat. I Inquired and purchased their first CD on the spot. Awesome music.

Tickets for these Guggenheim events go on sale July 14th.  This series is "conceived as a tribute to the recent Brooklyn renaissance and to serve the visual art scene’s appetite for interdisciplinary creative exchanges." Interesting.

Upper East Side: prepare to meet Brooklyn.

On August 14, the Guggenheim Museum launches It Came from Brooklyn, a new monthly concert series that will showcase Brooklyn’s emerging and established talents in the fields of music and literature as part of the museum’s 50th Anniversary celebrations. Conceived as a tribute to the recent Brooklyn renaissance and to serve the visual art scene’s appetite for interdisciplinary creative exchanges, each program will feature two live bands and readings by Brooklyn-based writers from 8 p.m. to 12 a.m.

With comedian Leo Allen serving as MC, the August 14 program kicks off with a special performance by the Brooklyn Steppers Marching Band, followed by opening band High Places and headlining band the Walkmen, while novelist Colson Whitehead reads selections from Walt Whitman between performances.

The second It Came from Brooklyn is scheduled for September 25.

Coproduced by author Sam Brumbaugh, the series will take place in the Guggenheim’s famed Frank Lloyd Wright–designed rotunda, continuing the recent tradition of acclaimed performances that have symbiotically activated the space: Marina Abramovic´'s Seven Easy Pieces (2005), Cai Guo–Qiang’s collaboration with the Cloud Gate Dance Theatre (2008), and Meredith Monk’s Ascension Variations (2009).

With comedian Leo Allen serving as MC, the August 14 program kicks off with a special performance by the Brooklyn Steppers Marching Band, followed by opening band High Places and headlining band the Walkmen, while novelist Colson Whitehead reads selections from Walt Whitman between performances.

Tickets go on sale July 14 at guggenheim.org/brooklyn: $45 for non–members, $40 for members.

Madarts: New Gallery Space on 5th Avenue and 10th Street

On Wednesday, July 8th, Madarts Studios will celebrate the grand opening of their new Park Slope art gallery with the exhibition: INTRO.  All forty artists of Madarts are featured in the exhibition to christen their new permanent gallery in the heart of Park Slope: 461 5th Avenue (right on the corner 5th Ave. and 10th Street).

At the exhibition, which opens at 6 pm will continue with a "meet the artists" after-party at Commonwealth Bar just down the street at 5th Ave. and 12th St. 

INTRO gallery hours will be Thursdays through Sundays from noon to 6pm, closing Sunday, August 9th.

 For six years running Madarts Studios has put on shows in the giant warehouse of art studios just south of their new gallery, which is an airy new gallery venue at Fifth Avenue and 10th Street.

Painting by Madarts artist Rebecca Aidlin

Panel Discussion at the Brooklyn Museum: "WomenGirlsLadies”

On Saturday June 20th from 2-4 p.m. in the Brooklyn Museum's Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Auditorium on the 3rd floor there's a panel discussion called WomenGirlsLadies. Sounds interesting to me.

Four feminist authors and activists ranging from Generation Y to pre-baby boomer reopen a dialogue about women’s lives, power, entitlement, and empowerment. The panelists are Gloria Feldt, author of The War on Choice; Kristal Brent Zook, author of Black Women’s Lives: Stories of Power and Pain; Deborah Siegel, author of Sisterhood Interrupted: From Radical Women to Grrls Gone Wild; and Courtney E. Martin, author of Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters.

BAM's Next Wave Festival Line-Up Announced

BAM's Next Wave Festival returns for its 27th season with quite a line-up of contemporary performance, artist talks, literature, film, and visual art.

There are some familiar artists at this festival as well as new ones and unexpected European celebrities, including Juliette Binoche in In-I and Isabelle Huppert in Quartett, participating in this festival dedicated to presenting "emerging artists at the forefront of their disciplines alongside modern masters who continue to innovate, this year's Next Wave is packed with adventurous art for adventurous audiences."

Here's what popped out at me:

In-I directed and performed by Juliette Binoche and Akram Khan: Sep 15, 17—19, 22—26

Songs of Acension by Meredith Monk and Ann Hamilton: Oct. 21-25

Itutu by Karole Armitage Gone! Dance: Nov. 4-7

Quartett by by Heiner Müller, Odéon-Théâtre de l'Europe, Conceived and directed by Robert Wilson: Nov. 4-, 10-14

Inside Out by Cirkus Cirkör, Live music by Irya's Playground, directed By Tilde Björfors: Nov 12 -14

Really Real choreographed and directed by Wally Cardona with live music performed by Brooklyn Youth Chorus: Nov 17 & 19—21

Kepler by Philip Glass, an opera about Johannes Kepler (1571—1630), a founding father of modern science who discovered the laws of planetary motion: Nov 18, 20 & 21

Janine Nichols: Park Slope Singer Makes Collage Art, Too

Award-winning collage artist Janine Nichols is having a trunk show at Lion in the Sun stationers
on 7th Avenue in Park Slope on Thursday evening, May 7th, from 7-9pm. This is a one night only
event.

A single mother with freelance careers as a musician, producer and promotions writer, Janine Nichols also makes art - collage - at night in her kitchen. One mid-night in 2006 she stumbled on
instructions for something called a packing tape transfer, minimum ingredients for which were clear packing
tape, water and a spoon. Before dawn, she’d found her medium: by layering transparent/translucent images
of various sources, time periods and printing methods (and working them with sandpaper, wire- and
toothbrushes), she creates depths of field that can suggest photographs taken before the invention of the
camera.

Nichols’ work is narrative and non-ironic, composed of images from discarded museum and lab supply
catalogs, poetry anthologies, maps, radio schematics, etc. Prices will range from $5 to $500, encompassing
greeting cards, decorated switch plates, and unframed collage on large (8 x 10 or 11 x 14 inches) vellum and
museum board. All works on paper are offered unframed. Some of the work being offered for sale can be
seen on the artist’s blog, http://jazzpaperscissors.blogspot.com.

Nichols is also the “arrestingly plaintive” (Village Voice) singer in the electric bass and voice duo
Flutterbox and, with Hal Willner, the creative force behind (and frequent performer in) a well-received
series of multi-artist concert events for Celebrate Brooklyn! exploring the music of, so far, Leonard Cohen,
Neil Young, Doc Pomus and Bill Withers. From 1985-2000, she was program director for Arts at St. Ann’s,
now St. Ann’s Warehouse, in its original home on Montague Street. She began her music career in the
1970s as music coordinator for the first run of Saturday Night Live.

Lion in the Sun is located at 232 7th Avenue, corner of 4th Street in Park Slope, Brooklyn.

God of Carnage: Cobble Hill Playground Parents Subject of new B'way Play

My friend is an understudy in "God of Carnage." which opened last night on Broadway and I'd heard that the play by Yasmina Reza, author of "Art" and "Life x 3" is very good.

The play, which is about two Brooklyn couples who meet to discuss a Cobble Hill playground fight between two of their children, opened last night. Marcia Gay Harden, Jame Gadolfini, Hope Davis and Jeff Daniels star. The following is from the Ben Brantley review in the NY Times.

"Examined coldly, this 90-minute play about two couples who meet to discuss a playground fight between two of their children isn’t much more than a sustained Punch and Judy show, dressed to impress with sociological accessories. But there’s a reason that Punch and Judy’s avatars have fascinated audiences for so many centuries in cultural forms low (“The Honeymooners” of 1950s television) and high (Edward Albee’s 1962 drama “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”).

"“God of Carnage,” which is poised somewhere in between, definitely delivers the cathartic release of watching other people’s marriages go boom. A study in the tension between civilized surface and savage instinct, this play (which recently won the Olivier Award in London for best new comedy) is itself a satisfyingly primitive entertainment with an intellectual veneer."

The Animated Life in the Times: Jeff Scher's In Your Dreams

Today in the New York Times, Jeff Scher's short short animated film "In Your Dreams."

"To make the film, I painted multiple watercolors of my wife, who has always been my favorite subject. I already had boxes full of paintings to work from, spanning the length of our marriage. They were all painted in the morning because, with its bright golden luminance, that’s the light I find most suited to watercolor. And we are both always quite happy when she can sleep late."

Watch the film here.

Two Lovers: Gwyneth Paltrow in Brighton Beach

The New York Times' movie reviewer (and Brooklynite) A.O. Scott liked it and I'm hoping it's going to play in Brooklyn soon. Hello?

Shot in Brighton Beach. Looks interesting. A must-see for me.

“Two Lovers” deals with the romantic ambivalence of a young man in Brooklyn, a description that might set visions of mumblecore dancing in your head. But this movie, the director James Gray’s fourth feature (after “Little Odessa,” “The Yards” and “We Own the Night”), is not another low-key, closely observed study in bohemian diffidence. It takes place in Brighton Beach, many subway stops (and sociological light years) from the northwestern sections of the borough, where the hipsters roam. And its palette of emotions, like its rich and somber 35-millimeter cinematography, departs from the hand-held, hi-def, discursive style associated with directors like Joe Swanberg and Aaron Katz, harking back to an older, artistically more conservative film tradition of lush, earnest melodrama. — A. O. Scott, The New York Times

Atlantic/Pacific MoMA

I've passed that station a bunch of times lately, but I haven't stopped to look at the MoMA installation of more than 50 reproductions of MoMA's greatest hits including Gary Indianna's painting of the word LOVE and Warhol's Campbell Soup cans. I can't wait to get on over there.

I mean, I ride through there all the time but I'm hoping to get out of the train and browse in the subway museum.

It'll be up from Feb 10 until March 15.

Be Part of the 12th Annual Art Under the Bridge Festival

Calling all artists. Calling all artists:

DUMBO's Art Under the Bridge Festival is calling for festival proposals in a variety of areas. The deadline is July 1, 2008 and if you have ideas for: Project Glow, Site-specific installation and sculpture, elevator/lobby art, interactive art, water art, roving performance, and simultanous projections.

There's also a category for Lead a Guided Tour: Propose your take on the concept of a “guided tour,” to entertain, educate, and fascinate festival-goers. Performance artists welcome.

Applications are here.

Sculpture Replaces Park Slope Books For Now

What a great story on Gowanus Lounge this morning. And it's breaking Seventh Avenue news. Apparently there's a sculpture in the storefront newly vacated by Park Slope Books.

Somehow I missed it. Dang. I walked by there yesterday. But after 3 p.m. all of my activity was ABOVE 3rd Street (Living on Seventh, Barnes and Noble, wine at Sette with Diaper Diva).

No surprise. The owner of the building, Mark Ravitz, is an artist and he's the sculptor responsible for the ICONIC gold drips on the Seventh Avenue building.

Those drips have been painted in various ways over the years. At one time, they were painted black and white like cows.

It had a very surreal quality. Cow drips.

The gold drips are quite lovely. And now a larger work is in the storefront. WHAT FUN!

The other day I saw a man looking pensive as he stood inside the store. I am wondering if that was none other than Mark Ravitz, contemplating the art that would soon occupy that space.

I knew Hepcat should have taken a picture.

Don't You Love Jonathan Richman?

He's playing tonight at the Music Hall of Williamsburg at 66 North 6th Street at 9 p.m. $15 gets you in.

Hepcat and I saw him at the Knitting Factory in the 1980's. That was fun. He's got a new album out called Not So Much to Be Loved as to Love. But how can he top his old stuff like I'm a Little Dinosaur and so many others.

He has a cult following up the wazoo, he still tours non-stop and he's almost as old as me.

MOMA: DESIGN AND THE ELASTIC MIND

This new exhibit at MOMA, which runs from February 24th through May 12th, shows how design helps people adapt to change:

In the past few decades, individuals have experienced dramatic changes in some of the most established dimensions of human life: time, space, matter, and individuality. Working across several time zones, traveling with relative ease between satellite maps and nanoscale images, gleefully drowning in information, acting fast in order to preserve some slow downtime, people cope daily with dozens of changes in scale. Minds adapt and acquire enough elasticity to be able to synthesize such abundance. One of design's most fundamental tasks is to stand between revolutions and life, and to help people deal with change. Designers have coped with these displacements by contributing thoughtful concepts that can provide guidance and ease as science and technology evolve. Several of them—the Mosaic graphic user's interface for the Internet, for instance—have truly changed the world. Design and the Elastic Mind is a survey of the latest developments in the field. It focuses on designers' ability to grasp momentous changes in technology, science, and social mores, changes that will demand or reflect major adjustments in human behavior, and convert them into objects and systems that people understand and use.

AUSTER'S BOOKSHOP IS FICTIONAL: 7TH AVENUE BOOKS AIN'T BRIGHTMAN'S ATTIC

But Auster's description of his fictional Park Slope is a fun mix of the real and the imaginary. Anyone who knows Park Slope knows that there's more than a little verisimilitude in this excerpt from Auster's Brooklyn Follie's. While Brightman's Attic may come from Auster's imagination, La Bagel Delight is 100% true.

It was early spring when I moved in, and for the first few weeks I filled my time by exploring the neighborhood, taking long walks in the park, and planting flowers in my back garden—a small, junk-filled patch of ground that had been neglected for years. I had my newly resurgent hair cut at the Park Slope Barbershop on Seventh Avenue, rented videos from a place called Movie Heaven, and stopped in often at Brightman's Attic, a cluttered, badly organized used-book store owned by a flamboyant homosexual named Harry Brightman (more about him later). Most mornings, I prepared breakfast for myself in the apartment, but since I disliked cooking and lacked all talent for it, I tended to eat lunch and dinner in restaurants—always alone, always with an open book in front of me, always chewing as slowly as possible in order to drag out the meal as long as I could. After sampling a number of options in the vicinity, I settled on the Cosmic Diner as my regular spot for lunch. The food there was mediocre at best, but one of the waitresses was an adorable Puerto Rican girl named Marina, and I rapidly developed a crush on her. She was half my age and already married, which meant that romance was out of the question, but she was so splendid to look at, so gentle in her dealings with me, so ready to laugh at my less than funny jokes, that I literally pined for her on her days off. From a strictly anthropological point of view, I discovered that Brooklynites are less reluctant to talk to strangers than any tribe I had previously encountered. They butt into one another's business at will (old women scolding young mothers for not dressing their children warmly enough, passersby snapping at dog walkers for yanking too hard on the leash); they argue like deranged four-year-olds over disputed parking spaces; they zip out dazzling one-liners as a matter of course. One Sunday morning, I went into a crowded deli with the absurd name of La Bagel Delight. I was intending to ask for a cinnamon-raisin bagel, but the word caught in my mouth and came out as cinnamon-reagan. Without missing a beat, the young guy behind the counter answered: "Sorry, we don't have any of those. How about a pumpernixon instead?" Fast. So damned fast, I nearly wet my drawers.

CON EDISON ANNOUNCES NEW ART GALLERY SPACE

Con Edison is announcing a new art gallery space in the corporate lobby of Con Edison, at 30 Flatbush Avenue Extension in Brooklyn. Brooklyn artists interested of being exhibited should contact the curator, Leon Nicholas Kalas, at (718) 797-3943.

This space was recently established with several inaugural art exhibitions, one in March of 2007, with works of Brooklyn artist-curator Leon Nicholas Kalas, and the second in April, with works by Brooklyn artist Audrey Frank Anastasi. Con Edison has generously given its lobby to the Brooklyn art community, so Brooklyn artists will have a place to exhibit free of charge their work.

Artists in Brooklyn command a unique place in the world, and our borough hosts one of the highest concentration of resident artists anywhere. Brooklyn used to be considered an “outer borough” and sometimes of a backwater when compared to Manhattan.

This “outer borough” edge provided a unique perspective on the art world and offers Brooklyn artists the ability to develop a body of work that is less dependent on the marketplace and more in keeping with the individual artist’s point of view. Brooklyn artists tend to be more individualistic, creating work “of the heart.”

Brooklyn curator-artist Leon Nicholas Kalas came up with the idea of using Con Edison’s corporate lobby as an art gallery, and it started on an experimental basis in late 2006. This experimental gallery was so successful for the few months that was in operation that it was made permanent this year.

The gallery will operate during business hours, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday with monthly art exhibitions.

ETSY LABS: TOOLS FOR THOSE WHO CREATE HANDMADE GOODS

In a 7,000 square foot warehouse in downtown Brooklyn, Etsy Labs is a communal work space  knitters, weavers, jewelers and silk screeners,.

Membership costs $20 dollars a month. That fee includes free materials like yarn, beads and paints for silks screening and the use of the equipment. Members also get advice from the pros who work at the lab.

Artists can also sell their wares on the Etsy Web site, a computer marketplace for handmade goods. Members sign up for a fee and get their own Web page.

Etsy Lab has free open houses on Wednesday evenings for folks who want to check it out.

THOSE DINNERSTEINS: PARK SLOPE FAMILY OF ARTISTS

PARK SLOPE PIANIST SIMONE DINNERSTEIN WILL BE PERFORMING AT THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM ON SUNDAY NOV. 19th AT 3 p.m.

Copland Piano Variations
Schumann Kinderszenen, Opus 15
Beethoven Sonata No. 32 in C Minor, Opus 111
Bach—French Suite No. 5

Call 212-570-3949 for tickets.

She began her career with a flourish by winning the Astral Artistic Services auditions in 2000; Astral then arranged for her Philadelphia recital and concerto debuts, which the Philadelphia Inquirer termed “remarkable.” Since then she has performed at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center and the National Gallery in Washington. She played works by George Crumb and Gerald Levinson on the Kimmel Center’s Fresh Ink series, and she has performed Bach’s Goldberg Variations in Texas and New Mexico venues, as well as at Queens College in Flushing. Concerto engagements have taken her to New Jersey and elsewhere, and chamber assignments at Bargemusic, Skaneateles, Marlboro and Princeton have shown the range of her capabilities. Her recording ot the Mendelssohn cello repertoire with cellist Simca Heled was in Fanfare’s Top Ten list for 2002; that magazine wrote of her Beethoven cello sonatas with the same cellist that “they raise the music to a rare spiritual plane.” She has been praised by such pianists as Emmanuel Ax (“remarkably musicianly”) and Peter Serkin, with whom she studied at Juilliard, as ”a real artist.” Her many recitals have taken her to Europe, particularly London (Wigmore Hall and the Purcell Room) and South America. Currently she lives in New York City with her husband and son.

SIMONE'S DAD, PARK SLOPE PAINTER SIMON DINNERSTEIN IS HAVING AN OPEN STUDIO: THE PALETTE PAINTINGS, INCLUDING THE FIRST VIEWING OF A RECENTLY COMPLETED MAJOR WORK ON SATURDAY DECEMBER 2, 2006 AND SUNDAY DECEMBER 3: 1-7 p.m.

RSVP Simondinnerstein@aol.com

TABLA RASA: TODAY: MUSIC TO MY EYES

Audrey & Joseph Anastasi, the couple who run TABLA RASA GALLERY IN SUNSET PARK, emailed me to say how happy they are that MUSIC to MY EYES was listed this week in TimeOutNY.

"In conjunction with the exhibition, we are pleased to host a presentation this afternoon, Saturday, November 4, 2006, at 2:00 pm, by Brian Young entitled, "With Thee I Swing, Poetry and Painting."  I hope you will join us for this event."

Brian Young is a published poet and oil painter. Through humor and his bold use of color, Young paints an absurdist vision of the world that resonates with quirky innocence and pathos.  In his unique artist's presentation, Mr. Young will discuss the inspiration of his painting, "With Thee I Swing," and also read poetry related to the painting.
 
CURRENT SHOW at Tabla Rasa Gallery
MUSIC to MY EYES
through November 19, 2006

Gallery hours:
THURSDAY through SATURDAY
Noon - 5:00 pm
Additional hours: by appointment

718. 833-9100
718. 768-0305
audfa@aol.com
http://www.tablarasagallery.com/
TABLA RASA GALLERY
224 48 Street
Brooklyn, NY 11220
North end of "R" train to 45th Street exit.  Street parking is available.

HILTON ALS ON SUZAN-LORI PARKS

I love Hilton Als' writing in the New Yorker and I'm interested in playwright Suzan-Lori Parks, who won the Pulitzer for Top/dog/Underdog, a MacArthur "genuis" grant, and wrote 365 plays in 365 days (soon to open all around the country). This week's New Yorker has Als' profile of Parks. The first two paragraphs are here:

Down in the gray-green gloom of the New York City subway system, anything can happen, and frequently does. A bit of hucksterism. Alms for the poor. Sometimes, even unsuspecting critics have to field questions from that rarest of birds, the black female playwright. Late one night in 1987, on the way home from an event at Franklin Furnace, an avant-garde arts center, the writer and theatre critic Alisa Solomon was riding the subway, minding her own business, when a young black woman approached her. “I saw you at the theatre, so I was kinda hoping I could ask you a question,” she said, and sat down next to Solomon, who described the encounter in the Village Voice two years later. The woman leaned in “uncomfortably close,” before adding, “I’m trying to ask anyone who might know. I’m a playwright. Do you know where I can send my scripts? They’re kind of unconventional.”

That young woman—Suzan-Lori Parks—has since become renowned for her audacity, both on the page and in the world. The author of nine full-length plays, most of which are taught at drama schools across the country, and one of the founders of a wave of multilayered, historically aware, and linguistically complicated theatre, she aims to defeat what she calls “the Theatre of Schmaltz”—“the play-as-wrapping-paper-version-of-hot-newspaper-headline.” Parks was the first black woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for drama—for her 2001 play, “Topdog / Underdog”—after having been short-listed for “In the Blood,” her 1999 reimagining of “The Scarlet Letter.” A writer who crosses cultural boundaries, as well as social ones, she has had her work produced everywhere, from the smallest avant-garde stages to Broadway. Her voice is both idiosyncratic and eerily familiar, one of few in the popular theatre to fully exploit the power of spoken black English. (A typical passage from one of her plays reads like this: “In my day my motherud say 16:15 and there wernt no question that it was 16:15 her time. Thuh time helpin tuh tell you where you oughta be where you oughta be lookin and whatcha oughta be lookin at.”)

SUMMER SHOWS FOR DAVID KONIGSBERG

David Konigsberg's paintings will be upstate and in Seattle this summer. If you happen to be in either locale, check out these shows.

Opening June 10: Carrie Haddad, 622 Warren Street, Hudson NY.  He has 7 paintings in this 3-person show and he'll actually be at the opening  from 6-8 pm.

June 16: A solo show opens at Ballard Fetherston Gallery in Seattle, 818 East Pike St. (opening  6-8 pm).  "Alas, I can’t make it out there, but my spirit will be in attendance."