Mural on 7th street at Tompkins Square Park – Joe Strummer
1st Ave-St. Marks - minutes after Obama was projected winner
So, as I’m sure everyone in the world knows, Barack Obama will be our next president – yeah!!!
As over 130 million people did on Tuesday, I went and voted here in NYC. I found it odd and rather funny that besides the presidential candidates, I don’t think there were any other people on the ballots except for Democrats. Like, no one ran against the Democrats in my district because it’s so staunchly liberal. Yeah!….
The evening started over my friend and neighbor’s Chesley’s (who conveniently lives across the hall) – about 10 people got together to snack, chat and listen to the returns. (Chesley doesn’t own a television.) I, on the other hand, left mine on and popped back every so often to see the results (TV seemed to be a bit quicker than the Internet, mainly because we kept forgetting to refresh the screen….). I got rather obsessed with the large iPhone wall that CNN had. And what’s up with the hologram interviews – I forget what station that was on – but are we all turning into Star Trek?
But how exciting were the results? Obama just kept racking up the electoral votes. We went out around 10 – 10:30 to the Tile Bar – a bar right at 7th Street and 1st Avenue (like outside our door…). Unfortunately, the TV there was really small, but it seemed like the second the polls closed on the west coast, the stations projected Obama as the winner.
Deena, Diane, Chesley and Dan banging pots in celebration (and true East Village style!)
All of a sudden, all around outside, all we could hear was cheering. Cheering, screaming and applauding was coming from windows, rooftops, opened windows in cars. The entire East Village erupted in screams. As we looked over at 7th street, we saw one lone man walking proudly down the street, banging on a pot. I’d never heard of this until I moved to New York, but on New Year’s people tend to bang pots and pans out their window. But, tonight, it was all about Obama. Continue reading
I have to tell you, tonight I went to one of perhaps the most surreal experiences of my life. It involved an artist, a glockenspiel (like a xylophone), Bruce Springsteen videos of live performances – all from his Born to Run album, a hot sweaty air condition-less room, and an overflowing crowd of Brooklyn trendy art-types – somewhere in the bowels of Brooklyn. Wow! My head is still reeling….
To back up a bit – I mentioned a couple blog posts ago that I attended the Creative Capital artist retreat in the Berkshires a couple weekends ago. It was an amazing time and I met the greatest group of people – among them was Cory Arcangel, who a couple people there told me is an extremely popular, sought after artist. He’s a lovely person who focuses on digital media, including Internet and videogame hacks, digital art and video, and he’s currently working on a project called D.I.Y.W.I.K.I. – an opensource website that details what he does.
Anyway, I just befriended Cory on Facebook, and saw that he’d posted up an invite to an event he was having tonight at Light Industry, an artist space in Brooklyn – a part of Brooklyn I’d never been to. Just to give you a little background on me and Brooklyn – I’ve lived in NYC for 18 years (meaning Manhattan) and only just started going to Brooklyn in the past six months. I would joke that I needed my passport to cross the river. (Some day I’ll tell you how I got my Brooklyn phobia – it involves the band Pavement and their UK label, 4 in the morning, and not being able to jump on poles in the East River to get to a boat. Oh, yeah, and 3 foot rats….) Brooklyn also has a reputation for being uber trendy, etc etc, so it’s something I’ve sort of avoided (like, no one in Manhattan tries to be trendy…).
But! – Cory was doing a live performance on a Glockenspiel to Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run album. Being a huge Springsteen fan, having seen him live loads of times, and also having just met Cory and thinking he was good people, how could I pass this up? So I convinced my colleague at Sustainable Table, Dawn, to cross the waters with me (okay, she lives there so getting there was no big deal to her), but I convinced her that seeing a glockenspiel performance to Bruce Springsteen music really was what was called for two days before her 40th birthday. (Happy Birthday, Dawn!)
I’ve been on an artist retreat for the past three days with an amazing organization called Creative Capital, a nonprofit which funds different types of artists from around the world, and, I have to say, I’ve met the most amazing people and have seen some amazing stuff that’s being produced.
I’m rather honored to have been brought in as a consultant. I was a bit unsure as to why I’d been invited, but I’m doing consultations with some of the artists right now, and it seems that I’m not the only one who looks at art as a way to educate people about social causes. There are also people out there who are working on art installations and projects that deal with food, green space, and all things sustainable.
We found No. 1 in the Museum of Contemporary Art here. It’s angry and frustrated – has a different vibe that No. 31 in MoMA. Weird thing about the museum here is that there aren’t any benches to sit on, and they have this painting in a kind of entryway so it’s not conducive for sitting or standing in front of for long.
But JP is JP – and it was great to be able to see five of them in one day! I’ll try to post up photos soon!
I just found out that Jackson Pollock spent some time in Arizona. I’m in Arizona. I must see if there are any Jackson remnants around this state….
Am off to LA in a couple minutes – I found not one, but THREE JP’s in LA. Am hoping to see them all!!! Will take photos!
I have to go to Los Angeles this weekend for a meeting on Monday morning. I just found out that No. 1 in Jackson Pollock’s series of paintings (that I’m hanging with in NYC at MoMa) is in a museum in L.A.!
So there will be Pollock action shortly!
March 16 – I arrived at my Pollock painting at MoMA at 3:15. The museum seemed rather empty – except for the Pollock room! It was crammed with people. I scoogied myself into a spot on the bench and sat. At times there were so many people in front of me, I could barely see the painting. I wonder if Pollock, in his wildest dreams, could ever have imagined that his art would have such an impact.
Today I thought I’d get an audio phone to learn something about Jackson (I think I’ll start calling him JP). I found it funny that when they handed me the instruction guide, the sample painging in is was No. 402, the Pollock I’ve been looking at. (I might be rather naive, but I actually had no idea JP was so famous – shows you how much I know about art….)
The painting is called One: Number 31, 1950. It’s an oil enamel on unprimed canvas. The audio starts off with a quote from Pollock int he mid-1940s, “My painting does not come from the easel. I prefer to tack the unstretched canvas on the wall or floor. On the floor, I am more at ease. I feel nearer, more a part of the painting since I can walk around it, work from the four sides and literally be in the painting. I prefer sticks, trowels, knives, and dripping fluid paint. When I’m in my painting, I’m not aware of what I’m doing. It’s only when I lost contact with the painting that the result is a mess. Otherwise, there is pure harmony, an easy give and take.” – the artist Jackson Pollock in the mid-1940s.
This is one of Pollock’s large paintings – maybe 12′ x 20′?? I think to view it properly, you have to start from across the room, where you can feel the whole piece. And that’s what’s so cool about JP – you don’t just look at his paintings, you feel them. You should then walk closer to the part of it you’re drawn to, as close as you’re drawn, and then stop when you know you’re inside it. And then let go. Stop thinking, stop analyzing – just let go and let it wash all over you. Just be it.
When you get there, it’s like you can feel JP in the paint – his energy still flows from the canvas. Now that’s art.
This is No. 31 – I think he did 31 of them (or 30) – I’ll have to find out exactly. Maybe I’ll make it my goal to try to view all of them around the world, to see if together they tell a story or to see if you can feel different things in them.
I can already tell sitting here that there are people who get JP and people who don’t. A man just walked in the room with his family, 3 children and wife, and was visibly excited and said to his children, “This is Jackson Pollock. He is THE most important painter.” I love JP, but I didn’t realize there are people who consider him the best artist ever.
I was speaking with someone about coming to MoMA and sitting here in front of JP, and he said other people have mentioned or have done the same thing – that JP calms them down or that they just like sitting in front of it. I wonder what we all have that connects us like this?
And you can tell when someone really feels it. They’ll stand in front of the painting, usually directly in the middle, and just witness it. They stand still as a statue, like they’re in meditation, which they probably are.
What I found today is that when I first look at the painting, it seems really beige because the canvas is that color. But if I stare at it as if meditating on it, it turns black – all the black pops out and takes over the canvas, and it turns into a completely different painting. And one time it went all white – the white parts popped out and took over the piece. It’s really cool to experience.
Another thing I noticed this week is that the people who came through the room here mimicked the painting – it’s all a dance of chaotic yet symmetrical patterns of people making their way through the room. At one point it was like a ballet – people were coming in, turning, gliding, moving, even spinning – and there was a line in the painting doing the exact same thing. When they stopped, there was a splodge there to represent that also. At one point, the dance was perfect – everyone coming through the room was a perfect line of paint in the piece, and they were all moving in this perfect unison with each other – old people, college students, tourists, babies in strollers – all dancing together perfectly with each other and up in the painting. It was like the painting literally came to life. It was beyond surreal.
I’m off to India for a couple weeks, then Switzerland, then Sedona for a month, then Tennessee and Colorado, so I don’t know when I’ll be able to come back and see JP! Wish I could have stayed here longer today also – but it’s 4:20 and I’ve got packing, errands, and dinner plans. So, I guess it’s back to my other reality….
(This was written while sitting in my spot at MoMA, with a couple small edits when I typed it up. I couldn’t post it up here until early May when I got to Sedona – life’s been crazy busy – but all so good!)
Okay, I think it’s decided. I’m going to see if I can find where the 30 JP’s are and visit them over the coming years. And I’ll get photos of them all (to make it a little touristy….)
Hey – that was my idea!
I’ll let you know if there’s any increase in traffic this week…. I’m hoping some nuns show up.
I then thought, hey, I could even start up a Pollock blog – all about sitting in front of the painting. Could invite friends to visit, could even put up posts live while sitting there.
It then dawned on me that the Museum of Modern Art also has some Pollocks, so I checked them out yesterday and discovered there was actually a Pollock room. I heard the security guard in there tell someone that there were around $100 million dollars worth of Pollock in the room (and there were only about 10 paintings). (It’s a small room.) That in itself is worth sitting in – just to grasp the value of what was surrounding me.
I’ve put in a couple photos of what I made in 8 weeks – with never having done pottery like this before!
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