Sunday, January 16, 2011

Dutch A/V: Reggie Watts and Tommy Smith

Doh, it's a little late to say so, but we were at LaMama Friday night for Dutch A/V, and it was a great evening.

And, you know, something about the sample video below?  It's all in the evening, and yet in a way it's only tone.  Everything counterpoints off of it.  Watching it now it sets up a frisson, but it doesn't tell the story.  Oh, la.  Trust me, if it comes around, be there.

Dutch A/V (sample) from Tommy Smith on Vimeo.  And Mr. Watts.  Uh, like this: Thus Far (Alternate) by reggiewatts

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Bobby Bare Jr. in DUMBO tonight and we plan on enjoying the heck out of it

BOBBY BARE JR. & SPECIAL GUESTS ROCK BROOKLYN, NY 1/11/11
MANHATTAN THE CITY THAT NEVER SLEEPS!?… HAVE YOU EVER BEEN DOWN UNDER THE MANHATTAN BRIDGE OVERPASS?
1/11/11 – WHEN NASHVILLE ROCKER BOBBY BARE JR. MAKES HIS DUMBO DEBUT – TAKING OVER SUPERFINE BAR RESTAURANT – THE PARTY REALLY GETS STARTED!
THE UNTITLED BOBBY BARE JR. DOCUMENTARY FILMMAKERS COLLABORATE WITH SUPERFINE TO PRESENT: AN EVENING SHOWCASING INDEPENDENT MUSIC & INDEPENDENT FILM
JOIN US IN DUMBO – THE CENTER FOR ALL THINGS ART AND ALL THINGS THAT ROCK
DOORS OPEN AT 8PM
PURCHASE ADVANCE TICKETS HERE – $10 ($12 AT THE DOOR)
*PRICE INCLUDES FREE DRINK TICKETS

Monday, January 10, 2011

The forfathersproject

Our friend, Marlon Cole, is the editor of 4fathers, forfathersproject.org.
And, if you happen to be near DUMBO this evening:

PIXOD STUDIO
55 Washington Street, Suite 451
Brooklyn, NY 11201 (DUMB0)

TIME:
6PM - 10PM

forFATHERSTM project invites you to the...

Intro Photo Exhibit / Meet & Greet

forFATHERSTM project Invites you out to the top of the year 4F meet and greet. The photographic project displays the importance
of having a Father in a child's life. It is a time for us to honor these Fathers we see pushing strollers, holding their child's hand across
the street and picking their daughter up from school.

Visually displaying these positive images will be the hope for better parenting and a brighter future for our children, with the roles of men taking on the responsibility of being an active father in his child's life.

Our mothers cannot do it alone, dads we need them and having you involved in this project will help make it more influential.

Sunday, January 9, 2011

25th anniversary of the destruction of The Garden of Eden

ADAM PURPLE AND THE GARDEN OF EDEN
PHOTOGRAPHS BY HARVEY WANG

FusionArts Museum (Gallery B)
February 2-20, 2011
Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday: 12-6 pm
Friday and Saturday: By appointment only
Opening Reception: Thursday, February 3 from 6-9 pm
57 Stanton Street, New York, NY 10002


NEW YORK, JANUARY 4, 2011 – January 8, 2011 marks the 25th anniversary of the destruction of The Garden of Eden, an earthwork created by Adam Purple that once spanned five city lots on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.  This selection of Harvey Wang’s photographs, for the most part unpublished and on display for the first time, documents the expansion of the Garden from 1978 to 1985.  Rare prints of a few of Adam’s 1975-76 negatives will also be shown.

In 1975, Adam Purple set out to plant a garden behind his tenement building at a time when the Lower East Side was a crime-ridden wasteland.  It was a massive undertaking – the site had been buried in rubble from the demolition of two other tenements. While clearing nearly 5,000 cubic feet of debris using only simple tools and raw muscle power, Adam began to create his own topsoil from materials he found at the site and around the city. In addition to traditional composting, Adam made the seven-mile round trip to Central Park on his bicycle almost every day to bring carriage-horse manure back to the Garden, carrying about 60 pounds on each trip.

His circular design had mathematical and metaphysical meaning: The Garden of Eden grew exponentially with the addition of each new ring of plant beds, and at its center was a double Yin-Yang symbol. By 1986, his world famous eARThWORK had grown to 15,000 square feet. Among the many crops and flowers were 100 rose bushes and 45 fruit and nut trees.

Adam “zenvisioned” the Garden expanding until it replaced the skyscrapers of New York. For Adam Purple—social activist, philosopher, and urban gardener/revolutionary—the Garden was the medium of his political and artistic expression. When the Garden was slated for demolition to make way for a federally funded housing project, many prominent New Yorkers wrote letters and delivered statements of support for Adam and the Garden.  Alternative designs that would have spared the Garden or incorporated it into the new structure were displayed in the 1984 exhibition “Adam’s House in Paradise” at the Storefront for Art and Architecture in SoHo.  Nevertheless, The Garden of Eden was razed on January 8, 1986, and the new housing project did not include an apartment for Adam or space for a new garden.

In terms of his revolutionary ideas about sustainability and living as humble members of the natural world, Adam was ahead of his time. He has not yet been properly recognized as an important environmental artist.  It has been 25 years since The Garden of Eden was destroyed, and this exhibition aims to ensure that Adam Purple and his unique, site-specific artwork are not forgotten.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
To hear an interview with Adam conducted by Amy Brost for the StoryCorps Oral History Project, visit http://www.harveywang.com/podcast.html or download the podcast from iTunes.  For the interview transcript, contact Harvey Wang at (212) 777-5918 or hw@harveywang.com.  A slide show of selected photographs along with audio excerpts from the StoryCorps interview is on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VfBvdzgQxY

TO HELP SUPPORT THE EXHIBITION, VISIT KICKSTARTER.COM BEFORE FEBRUARY 2.  Search for Adam Purple on the site or go to:
http://kck.st/ejHJg6

ABOUT HARVEY WANG

In the 1970’s and ’80’s, Wang was a resident of Chinatown and the Lower East Side, an admirer of Adam Purple, and one of several photographers and journalists to visit The Garden of Eden periodically to document its expansion.  His photography career has spanned more than 30 years.  Wang’s books include the critically acclaimed "Flophouse: Life on the Bowery" and "Harvey Wang’s New York." His photographs have been exhibited in museums and galleries across the country, including the Museum of the City of New York, the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., and the New-York Historical Society.  In addition to his work as a photographer, Harvey Wang is a commercial director and a filmmaker.  His short films, ranging in style and approach from documentary to experimental, have been seen in festivals all over the world. His film "Milton Rogovin: The Forgotten Ones" won the prize for Best Documentary Short at the 2003 Tribeca Film Festival, and "Triptych" was chosen as Best Experimental Film at the 2004 Rhode Island International Film Festival.  He recently directed his first feature film, "The Last New Yorker," which had its theatrical release in 2010.
# # #

www.harveywang.com

Friday, January 7, 2011

Swap. With beer. And charity.


Sunday 1/23 Swap Meet @ Southpaw
bring something..take something…

3-8pm
$5 cover includes a drink and free food, good music & cheap drink specials all day

Trade or donate your unwanted items in good, clean condition…
Clothing, housewares, books, records & electronics.
nothing to trade? purchase items for a small donation to NY Cares and Housingworks.
All donations and items remaining from the swap to benefit NY Cares and Housingworks.
…get the junk out of your trunk and come on over!

Sunday, January 2, 2011

Stumpy's delicious 23 month chicken liver sandwich, in 13 easy to follow steps

Step 1:  February, 2009, win old maple handled S. Richard (Southbridge, MASS) cleaver at silent auction to benefit Lucky Dog Farm, at Applewood.  Put cleaver in drawer, lose track of it.

Step 2:  June, 2009, Purchase a beautiful knife made by Roselli, from the fine folks at einmaleins in Oly, WA.  This knife puts all other knives out of my mind.  It becomes my knife.  The S. Richard cleaver recedes further into the drawer.

Step 3: November, 2009, another trip to einmaleins, and this time I come away with Michael Ruhlman's Ratio, which gets me to baking bread every week.

Step 4: January, 2010, I buy a very nice pair of poultry shears, all stainless steel, no plastic, so I can more easily cut the backs from chickens and pursue my current favorite dish of a spice rubbed, flattened chicken.  I adopt the habit of cooking the livers from these split birds as a cook's treat.  Lori need not know.

Step 5: May 2010, I have been experiencing bread ennui, and am reinvigorated by Thorne's Outlaw Cook.  But that doesn't last...

Step 6: July, 2010, damn it's too hot to bake every week and there's just too much good bread in the neighborhood.  I become a bread slacker.  I even stop making pizza.

Step 7: October, 2010, I decide to use the wine yeast and the must from this year's Primavera production to make, yes, purple pizza.  Flour is back in my life. 

Step 8: December, 2010, sculptor Frank Saliani describes to me how he makes a no-knead bread.  Hmmm.  I do the same.  And again.  And again...

Step 9: December 2010, I watch a video of Melissa Clark making a prime rib.  Her knife, her knife...  the lady uses a cleaver!  I rummage through our kitchen drawers.  There it is! Feels good in my hand...

Step 10: December, 2010, Lori buys so much nutmeat for baking Christmas cookies that it affects the futures market. There are bound to be leftovers.  There are.

Step 11: December, 2010, whenever we're at home on Christmas day we have a Polish meal of pirogi and kielbasa.  Usually we buy rye bread to go with it.  This year we forget to buy the rye bread, so I decide to make it.  I can only find 5 pound bags of rye flour on Christmas eve.  There is rye bread in our future.

Step 12:  January, 2011, I make New Years Day rye bread.

Step 13: It all comes together.  I buy a chicken for dinner and prep it just before making lunch.  There's the liver, in the little glass cup, waiting for me.  While Lori reheats eggplant leftovers for herself, I fry up the liver.  I butter two slices of our rye bread.  With my mighty cleaver I chop up walnuts.  Then mighty might cleaver minces the liver, smooshes it together with the nuts, and spreads it on the buttered rye.  Then back into the frying pan and pressed down a bit on each side to warm and toast everything just a touch.

And let me tell you, Sweet Baby New Year, it was totally worth the wait.  Delicious.
Happy happy, everybody.

Saturday, January 1, 2011