Jennifer Andrews “View of Astoria Blvd.” |
The Chocolate Factory is prepared for The Henrietta Project.
By THERESA JUVA
If you’ve ever walked down 41st Street between Fifth and Park Avenues, you’ve probably stepped foot on one the 96 bronze plaques created by Jennifer Andrews and Gregg LeFevre. “Library Way,” the sidewalk leading up to the New York Public Library on 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue, displays plaques inscribed with quotes from famous writers: Rene Descartes, Langston Hughes and Emily Dickinson are just a few.
Many of the 40 public commissions Andrews created with LeFevre, a Manhattan-based artist, are in New York City. While the plaques pay tribute to literary genius, she said most of the New York creations, like the Union Square Timeline, are infused with the history of the area.
It is through these projects that Andrews feels connected with the city she has called home since 1998, when she came to visit for a weekend and never left.
“Working on these commissions definitely deepened my understanding of New York City’s history and made me feel differently about my place within that history,” she wrote in an e-mail from Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam, where she is currently working.
The constant change of New York that fascinates Andrews is also what draws her to Vietnam. The transition of Vietnam from an agricultural country to a more industrial one interests Andrews, and her paintings juxtapose Vietnamese traditions with “the encroaching modernization.”
Andrews started a series of Vietnam paintings and will finish them when she returns to Queens because she likes to see the difference in depictions between her direct observation and memory.
“I also know from my past experiences traveling and returning home, that as my brain comes to terms with being in two places at once, the visual language of my paintings becomes equally complex,” she said.
This added layer of complexity is what separates her personal work from her public work.
Haggai Shamir, who met Andrews 10 years ago, recognizes the distinctions.
“Her public artwork is primarily a form or derivative of communication design; the focus is more on communicating a specific narrative, a historical narrative and connected to a locale,” he said. “Her personal work is much more open; it radiates the relationship between observation, personal experience and almost more importantly, the subjective absorption of the experience.”
While her public work seeks to convey a specific message, her personal work allows people to bring in their own experiences when they view it. It makes the work richer and deeper.
Queens often provides her with the material to achieve this richness and depth. She sketches the neighborhoods along her daily walk from Astoria to her studio in Long Island City and loves the details she discovers.
“I love the patterns of the elevated subway lines; the arched train underpasses; the puzzle of colored rooftops; and the business signs and graffiti scattered across industrial buildings in every language,” she said.
Even though much of Andrews’ work is inspired by her travels, opening her door in Queens transports her anywhere she wants to go.
back to menu
An enormous toono is burned in Baatar’s work. |
Artist Speaks As Voice For His Culture
By THERESA JUVA
A burning roof and a parade of galloping horses – some of Chaolun Baatar’s work can’t be placed on a gallery wall. As a performance artist, painter and sculptor, the Inner Mongolian native conveys his culture and ideas through innovative methods.
“What’s interesting is that he brings an old traditional art, and a rather obscure Asian country into the 21st century (and) into a modern form,” said Philip Gould, a retired art history professor who has taught at Columbia University. “He’s integrating two cultures.”
Gould is referring to Baatar’s usage of the traditional Mongolian house called a “ger,” which is marked by its distinctive open roof called a “toono.” Because it is an agrarian society, Gould said the open roof is like “an eye on the sky” that allows Mongolians to still feel connected with the outside world. Baatar puts a twist on the structure when he sets the “toono” on fire in his performances as a celebration of Mongolian identity, Gould said.
The professor of Asian art met Baatar at an art exhibition in Manhattan five years ago. He remembers first noticing the soft and swift brush strokes in his painting, an indication of Chinese influence.
Once he began talking to Baatar, who works out of a studio in Long Island City, he realized he is not only “an artist at heart,” but also “practically a one-man publicist for his country.” He seeks to bring an agricultural country into the contemporary world of art through the dynamic presentation of a magnified 15-foot “toono” and the movement of animals. Gould said his attempt to combine worlds makes him unique among Asian artists.
An integration of cultures works well in Queens, a borough that is always experiencing the convergence of people and places. Baatar’s work resonates with people in Queens, which is why it will be featured in Queensborough Community College’s art gallery next year. The director of the gallery, Faustino Quintanilla, said Baatar’s 14-foot sculpture – two interlocking circles modeled after the “toono” – is designed for people to walk through.
“The body has to be adapted to the space; you have to become part of the space,” Quintanilla said describing the sculpture’s structure.
It is symbolic, he said, for how immigrants come to the United States and learn to adjust to a new culture and become part of it. Just as people must adjust and morph their bodies to fit into the sculpture, immigrants are doing the same.
“It has big symbolism and especially in a community college,” Quintanilla said. “What better community than Queens? Here we are unified, but each of us has a tradition that enriches us.”
Both professors agree that Baatar’s vision has something special to offer Queens. He has taken the open roof of the traditional Mongolian home and used it as an entryway into the rest of the world. By letting the world in and tradition out, both are continuously transformed.
back to menu
Alan Bessen works on “Fuzz Boy. |
Fuzz Boy’s Creator Loves The Process
By ELLEN THOMPSON
Pressing his pencil to the empty white paper, Alan Bessen dragged its dulled tip towards the center of the rectangular sheet. As he hunched his shoulders forward, leaning his body into the sketch, Bessen maneuvered it across the crisp paper. Two eyes began to take shape as did a faintly disheveled beard.
There it was in graphite, a rendering of the first ever Fuzz Boy. It was practically identical to the one the Astoria cartoonist sketched five years ago, after a drive home from Long Island one afternoon. Bessen’s wife Stacy had been gazing out the car window when a man with a long straggly grey beard walking along the road caught her eye. “Look at that fuzz boy,” his wife said jokingly and the next thing Bessen knew he was in his studio, his pencil taking the lead.
“That was it, it stuck and we had Fuzz Boy,” the cartoonist said of the comic book persona, as he sorted through the dozens of sketches sprawled across his drafting table. “For a guy (Fuzz Boy) who pulls himself away from society, I sure do have a lot. Enough for the second book I’m working on, all the way into a third I’d say.”
The School of Visual Arts graduate and 3-D rendering freelancer explained that the Fuzz Boy sketches he has produced over the years is essentially a “piecemeal process” for him.
Grabbing his sketchbook from a smaller drafting table beneath a Lou Reed poster, Bessen thumbs through each and every dated page of the thick book.
“Here we go,” he said, stopping at a half-page sketch as he reached for an almost finished version of the exact strip inked onto velum paper. “See, it’s a lot easier and cleaner to do it this way. To place the velum paper on top of the sketch and then trace with pen, because otherwise, if I traced right over the pencil on this piece there would be smudges and… it just wouldn’t be right.”
There are times that the cartoonist even finds himself photocopying the sketches from his book and then transferring them onto velum, “only to make sure nothing is lost and the quality is there.”
“The computer would have a lot of advantages in this,” he said, gesturing towards a small computer sitting beneath a wall rack filled with cassette tapes of Joan Jett, Muddy Waters and Sonic Youth. “But I don’t like to use my computer as a crutch.”
For a while Bessen had been struggling with the technical aspects of Fuzz Boy, technical pens, markers, brushes and pen nibs had been in swift rotation at his drafting table as he scrapped together funds to self publish his work.
“This is just what happens when I touch pencil to paper,” the cartoonist said, running his fingers over a sketch of Fuzz Boy drawn with a brush and the rest with a pen. “Logic would dictate I should stop doing this. You know, stop drawing funny pictures, but I can’t seem to stop it.”
back to menu
Castro & Co. perform “Beacon.” |
Dancer Shakes Off Clear Definitions
By IMAN KHAN
Installation: the process of putting a piece of equipment or machinery in place and setting it up ready for use
art: beautiful or thought-provoking works produced through creative activity
installation art: an artwork assembled by the artist involving the arrangement of three-dimensional objects or the use of paint and other media directly on walls or floors creating beautiful or thought-provoking works through creativity
As a realm without concrete definition, art and artists are in positions where they are free to constantly reinvent the wheel, taking their viewing participants to new worlds created out of their saying so.
Yanira Castro is one such artist.
Upon completing her undergraduate studies at Amherst College in Massachusetts and with a previous summer in New York under her belt, Castro knew she would be headed back her to make her life in dance.
“Like all the other aspiring dancers, I wanted to get into a company,” Castro said. “Instead, I found myself getting together with friends and choreographing different showcases all over the city.”
courage: being afraid and acting on what is causing the fear regardless of it
In 1998 Castro, along with a team of others who she had already been working with including fashion designer Albert Sakhai, installation and lighting expert Roderick Murray, designer Dan Siegler and a variety of composers formed Yanira Castro and Company.
fusion: the merging or blending of two or more things, for example, materials or ideas
The company, an ensemble of dancers, designers, composers and technicians of various expertise, can best be described as ‘fusers’ of these elements who produce vivid, modern, and transformational original works of art.
“We were frustrated with theaters as a structures,” Castro said. “The work was not meant to be seen in a presentational atmosphere so we started using old sites as our stages instead.”
innovation: the act or process of inventing or introducing something new
One of the group’s more notable works, “Beacon,” which took place in the emptied pool of the Brooklyn Lyceum, a bathhouse from the early 1900s, required viewers to descend to the bottom and then be seated in groups of 15 inside of one of four Plexiglas pens designed by Murray. Viewers were required to enter their assigned pens from behind and once inside were greeted by red curtains blocking their peripheral vision. Without warning, the curtains drop and the show begins. The show was inspired by Castro’s recent emotional toil with beheadings that were taking place in the world.
“The guests were made to watch the performance from jury boxes or witness chambers since the piece dealt with violence,” Castro said. “Instead of having them get distracted about what they already know, I wanted to break through that wall and have them be a part of the show.”
transformation: the act or process of transforming somebody or something
Contemporary dance is a term in the dance world with quite a loose definition since it encompasses such a variety of work. While what Castro and company are doing definitely falls under the categorization of contemporary, more so, it is transformational, changing the audiences’ relationships to performance as well as changing the medium by which performances are made.
Transformation, of course, is only real in the sharing of it, which the group continues to do. Their next performance will take place at the Chocolate Factory Oct. 19-21, and is titled “fetus(twin).” The piece explores the loss a conjoined twin feels when separated from a sibling, which often leads to death for one, but also deals with emotions of loss, oneness, and separation felt in other relationships.
back to menu
A view of Cherubin’s “Venus.” |
Sculptor Turns To Brushes After Mishap
By THERESA JUVA
Scrawled in chalk on a column in Margaret Cherubin’s studio is the philosophy of her art: “Nothing leaves here that isn’t alive.”
Large slabs of white and gray speckled marble are transformed into mermaids, goddesses, and winged creatures.
A mermaid leaning back into the swirls of her hair exposes its lean, muscular torso. Cherubin carved the hair after seeing a couple of women on the train whose locks she admired.
“People always ask: ‘How do you know it’s done?’ I know because it feels like spaghetti. You put your hand here, and you can hear her breathe,” Cherubin said as she placed a hand on the mermaid’s stomach.
The chunk of rock sat in her studio for a long time before she said she saw a mermaid trapped inside waiting to be chiseled out.
The 68-year-old, who lives in Forest Hills, was 2 when she began exploding with creative energy. There was never a time in her life when she didn’t have art. She works full-time as a human resources consultant and looks forward to heading to her studio after work. Sculpture calls for patience, and it is a long process – especially while juggling another job.
A woman’s torso called “Venus,” made from the same kind of marble as Michelangelo’s “David,” is a piece Cherubin enjoyed making. She spent two years chipping away at it after work and on the weekend before it was finished. Last year, it slipped from its display and Cherubin tore cartilage in her wrist when she tried to catch it. She used the experience as a chance to improve her painting skills because she couldn’t sculpt.
What emerged was a project called “Postcards from the Past,” inspired by torn posters Cherubin saw in the subway. She took ripped up magazines and photos and meshed them with paint to create scenes of spring thaw, gardens and an underwater reef. Cherubin said each scene represents fragments of memory that sometimes pop up for a moment and then disappear.
Although Cherubin loves the movement of the sea and the grace of aquatic animals, she recently started looking to the stars. In her “Nebulae” series of paintings, she takes photos from the Hubble Space Telescope and uses oil pastels to paint the bursts of blue, purple and silver celestial dust. There are now 13 paintings from “Nebulae” and “Postcards” on display at the Joseph P. Addabbo Federal Building in Jamaica.
Tiny mystical figurines line the shelves of her studio and frame her marble masterpieces in the center. She has created hundreds sculptures and thousands of paintings, but there is always more work.
“People always ask me, ‘What’s your favorite?’ I will quote Pablo
back to menu
Desert Oak is a photo and paint collage. |
Can’t Take The Heat? Take A Picture
By ELLEN THOMPSON
If a butterfly flutters past her lens, she’ll snap it. If a ladybug happens to be crawling through her garden and her 35 mm is in hand, she’ll snap it.
Photography hasn’t always been Margaret Dreikausen’s medium of choice. For years she would be found standing before a blank canvas with a paintbrush in her hand, dabbing it against the rich palate.
“It wasn’t until I went to Australia for the first time in 1987 that I began to seriously take photographs,” Dreikausen explained. “Upon arriving home I realized they were better than I had expected, that they could be made into installations. So I did so.”
There was also the fact that the accomplished artist was tired of being holed up in her studio. She was tired of engrossing herself in the physicality of painting large pieces, in the monotony of mixing the oils until the ideal hue appeared, but most of all she was tired of the heat that what exhausting her creativity.
“You see, I love to be outdoors, it is just something I’ve always loved, which I suppose you can see in my landscape paintings,” explained Dreikausen. “During the summer its too hot to be in the studio, it’s better to be out photographing while everything is fresh. And when the winter comes I head back to the studio to work on my paintings. It actually works out perfect.”
Most of her wintertime paintings begin with the summer and her camera. Dreikausen has developed some of her most impressive landscapes while on her travels to Europe, Eastern Europe and Australia. The multimedia artist often takes her camera from her bag as the plane flies over the lakes of Nova Scotia, the green valleys of southern France and mountains of Turkey in hopes of capturing that perfect shot in which she can recreate on a blank canvas.
“There are even those occasions when I don’t happen to have my camera. Then I just have to look out the window and write down notes, while trying to sketch the scene,” Dreikausen explained. “It gets hard and when it gets tiring I switch back to the photography. On occasion I’ll even take the photograph and hot press it into the canvas so that I can paint around it.”
back to menu
Karen Fitzgerald stands next to “My Eyes, My Heart.” |
Bringing Children Into The Artistic Fold
By THERESA JUVA
Queens is the canvas of choice for Karen Fitzgerald. As the artist in residence at PS 99 in Long Island City, she works with kids, parents and teachers to make the borough a little more beautiful – one mosaic and mural at a time.
A five-foot fiberglass and mosaic face shielded by hands, called “Guardian Gargoyle for Peace,” is a protector of spirits at Maple Grove Cemetery in Kew Gardens. The project, which was dedicated last fall, took four years to complete and showcases the original work of more than 20 families from PS 99. Children and their families added symbols of peace in smaller mosaic patches.
At PS 193 in Whitestone, with the help of students’ drawings, Fitzgerald created a 28-by-56-foot mural called “Discovery of Dreams” that features a huge toucan, a spaceship, butterflies and dinosaurs. CITYarts, a program that commissions professional artists to work on public projects with children, funded the project.
“It was really fun,” Fitzgerald said. “The kids all came up on the scaffolding to help. I said, ‘Here, see this shape. I want you to take this color and paint that shape.’”
Fitzgerald is a Wisconsin native who moved to Queens 25 years ago and attended Hunter College and Columbia University for advanced degrees.
She is proud of being an artist and teacher, an important combination, she said, in a society that has minimized arts education. The arts do more than just help students think creatively.
“When you’re engaged, there’s a collaboration of all different levels a student functions on,” she said. “What happens is your thinking ability, your processing ability, (and) your communication ability get lined up into a well-oiled machine where everything is working together.”
Making connections is a theme that drives Fitzgerald’s work. Her signature round paintings combine various hues of blue, gold, gray and crimson to create an illuminated moon, a descending fog or a rising dawn. She is in tune with how the natural world is interdependent, something she emphasizes when teaching.
For one project, Fitzgerald helped students design and plant their own gardens that each had a theme and purpose. Fitzgerald said it was important for students to understand how their plant and flower choices would affect whether or not their garden would offer a pleasant fragrance or attract the animals they wanted.
But perhaps the biggest connection for Fitzgerald is the relationship between the arts and an approach to teaching. From hallway murals that depict American history to drawings of the human body that explain obtuse and right angles to a class of sixth graders, Fitzgerald said art can be used as an entrance into learning everything.
Most importantly, art is not something that just exists in museums and art galleries; it is something everyone can enjoy and participate in.
“There’s all this specialization in our culture,” she said. “Everyone’s a specialist. I really feel that the creative process is something that everyone owns… I value being close a community, and I value having people who are regular people look at my work.”
back to menu
Cora Jane Glasser (r.) observes Joan Rabinowitz’s work. |
Ex-Lawyer Harnesses Her Artistic Spirit
By THERESA JUVA
Wood panels painted with orange, black and blue shapes line the studio floor. A blank-paged easel sits in the corner near the window, and a rack at the end of a long table is filled with an arrangement of paintbrushes that look like porcupine quills.
Cora Jane Glasser, originally from Queens, looks over the shoulder of her student Joan Rabinowitz as she uses a blade to shear and scrape a maroon-colored wood square. She uses a material called encaustic, a beeswax, crayon-like substance that is melted and used for painting and sculpting. Glasser gives Rabinowitz a pointer.
“When you’re trying to show people technique, those are the rules, but rules are made to be broken,” Glasser told Rabinowtiz.
Glasser likes to cross her own boundaries, too. The 62-year-old practiced law for 20 years before giving up her practice in 1998 to spend more time painting and sculpting in her studio on 24th street in Long Island City. She says leaving law and devoting herself to art was the best way to deal with her creative urges.
“People would say, ‘You have courage, but I say, ‘If I didn’t, I would feel sick,’” she said.
Her work has been featured in galleries around the United States and New York. It has been shown at the NutureART Gallery in Brooklyn and Queens College in Flushing. She draws from her urban surroundings and is fascinated with construction sites and demolition. She studied anthropology at Queens College, and she views construction sites as a present-day version of ancient city ruins.
When she saw a building being torn down across the street from her Manhattan home, she incorporated it into her work. She said the destruction of a building with apartments and mom-and-pop businesses makes her mad, but she is awed by how the empty space is transformed into something new.
She usually takes a photograph of the site and recreates an abstract painting of the geometric shapes that characterize the unfinished building. Her current project combines 20 wood panels – all from different projects she is now putting together for one masterpiece. She fiddled with the different-sized panels to figure out the best organization.
“It dawned on me that it looked like a skyline,” she said. “At first, I thought it was too literal.”
Glasser likes to work metaphorically, especially with her art materials. She uses thick squares of compressed recycled paper that can be both carved and painted, which give her finished project the industrial, rugged look of a construction site.
Although she uses Manhattan for inspiration, working in her Long Island City studio has been positive, she said.
“I feel comfortable,” she said. “There’s a certain soul about it … it makes me feel at home.”
With the Manhattan skyline peeking in one corner of the window, Glasser said the peacefulness of her studio in the middle of the bustling city is a potent mixture. She has tried the solitude of a rural setting, but always finds the energy she needs in Queens.
back to menu
Lauren Lombardo lays out Pier Post Photographs. |
Finding Beauty In The Natural World
By JEFF FEINMAN
Blending her eclectic talents of painting, sculpture, and photography, Long Island City based artist Lauren Lombardo is slowly but surely bringing her art to the masses.
Lombardo, originally of Massachusetts, has had her creative engines churning away for quite some time, with a massive outpour of murals and other projects lining the walls of her apartment. On Sept. 22, she will open her first ever exhibit at The Chocolate Factory called “LIC Pier Post Photographs.”
“Each one is so different, but they’re all really the same,” Lombardo said of the pier post project. “If you are walking down the pier, you lean over the rail, and you’ll see them. I’ve gone in the morning with the morning light, and what I didn’t realize at first is depending on where the sun is in the sky, the posts take on a beautiful reflection.”
Lombardo’s exhibit will consist of the detailed photographs she took of the many pier posts along the Long Island City pier, focusing on the wide range of different colors and shifts of detail within each piece of wood. She has taken 85 photographs, and said she was not pleased when she tried to enlarge some of the frames, as much of the detail was lost in the larger shots.
Her artistic involvement certainly doesn’t end there, as Lombardo is also involved with many other forms of work. The petite artist’s little fingers have been constantly moving in many different methods of art. “I guess you could say I don’t have a set thing that I work with. I’m into texture,” she said.
Standing on one wall of her white-painted apartment is a rose canvas consisting of four large panels with a fifth on the way. Lombardo created each individual rose out of paper and engulfed the backdrop with them. Continuing on with her floral theme, Lombardo has also created a number of commercial-worthy paintings with shaded white backgrounds and portions of thin, white-bark trees. Cut out of each mural are finely edged flowers, which stem from what Lombardo called her own “rebellious streak.”
Keeping in mind the theme of finding beauty in all aspects of the world, Lombardo is also working on a photography series of animal death and road kill scenes. She displayed a picture of a dead pigeon that she photographed outside of her apartment, capturing a haunting image with her lens. “I took that and it was so amazingly beautiful and so disturbing at the same time,” she said.
Though her features are pure and a great deal of youth emanates from her face, Lombardo leads another existence as a woman in the working world, employed as vice president of customer service with a fabrics company. Her true and lifelong love, however, is still her art.
“My very first memory of art for me is when I was about 3 or 4 years old,” she said. “We had this really ugly patterned tile floor in the kitchen, and every once in a while, pieces of it would chip up. When that happened, I would run and get my crayon box and fill in the patterns as it was supposed to be.”
back to menu
Nancy Macina’s view from Ellis Island. |
New Perspective
Number Cruncher Makes Time To Paint
Nancy Macina started her art career unconventionally several decades ago: selling advertising for a Queens newspaper before moving on to accounting.
After she worked to raise her two children, Macina, 65, started getting serious about the oil pastels she dabbled with over the years.
“I started thinking, ‘I should show it to the world, I shouldn’t [just] do it for fun,’” she said.
Paris, through Macina’s artistic eye. |
Her daughter Tracey Schoenblatt said her mother wore hip-hugging jeans and sometimes invited her friends over to paint. But taking care of her family always came first, and now that her children are grown, Schoenblatt said her mother is making up for lost time.
She converted her small kitchen into an art studio, and today her Long Island City apartment is filled with oil pastel paintings of famous city skylines: Paris, London and New York. She has painted 500 cityscapes and more than 50 of New York.
“Now it’s almost like an obsession,” Schoenblatt said. “She just does picture after picture. She’s always motivated by going to different places, its scenery and architecture.”
One New York cityscape is currently on display at the Ward-Nasse Gallery in Soho. Macina wanted to focus on immigration, so the painting is a view from Ellis Island. The airplane and water on each side of The Statue of Liberty represent how an immigrant’s journey to the United States has changed.
Macina only paints places she visited, and she is inspired by urban life.
“I feel akin to civilization rather than nature,” she said. “Some time passes, and it all goes to dust. I wanted to record it for people.”
Her work has evolved, she said, from realistic representations of skylines to more imaginative interpretations. She calls them her “remembrance” or “impression” of a particular city. Key West is one of Macina’s favorite places, and she emphasizes its rich foliage and “Bohemian, ginger-bready-looking” houses.
She visits Key West a few times a year, and she will present her work at the Schacknow Museum of Fine Arts in Fort Lauderdale in November. Her work has been shown at the Viridian Gallery in Chelsea, and it’s also been exhibited in France and Galleria 74 in Italy last year.
Despite showing her art throughout the United States and Europe, Macina said there is little recognition. She still does accounting four days a week to pay her rent and said that with new technology, people would rather spend their money on iPods and computers than a piece of art.
“It’s getting difficult for people who are working like me,” she said. “The middle class tend to buy from me, and their income is diminishing.”
Life may be full of more distractions, but Schoenblatt said the mother who never wore high heels is happy by simply painting.
“Me and my brother envy her because she has a passion we don’t have,” she said. “It’s one of those things that gets you through life and the day.”
back to menu
Ann Miller designed this seven-inch stoneware vase. |
From The Earth
Social Awareness Grown From Pottery
By THERESA JUVA
Soggy socks and billowing sheets hanging from a clothesline is art for Ann Johnston Miller. The 61-year-old from Long Island City always finds ideas in unlikely places: she turned reflections from a whizzing 7 train into an abstract film of dancing platform shadows.
“Queens is so fascinating because of its mixture of industrial and residential areas,” she said. “Even graffiti is colorful. I have mixed feelings about taking graffiti away. It’s very rich.”
This stoneware set incorporates natural materials. |
Even though Queens inspires her, Miller spends about half the year in the Finger Lakes, where she works on her ceramic projects that require a gas kiln.
She started her career rolling clay 35 years ago and soon added metal pieces to the stone and pod-shaped pieces. She shows her work in her home gallery, which can be spotted by its sculpture garden. She doesn’t worry about how her work is viewed.
“I don’t think about what my work will do for people,” she said. “I make it from my own feeling.”
She said that everyone views her art based on different experiences, but that is what makes it interesting.
“I like to hear people’s responses because it helps me see into my work,” she said.
Miller is constantly looking into her work and evaluating its direction, which is how she saw hanging laundry as a new opportunity. She is interested in energy conservation and plans to use more natural materials, like stone and reed, in her work. But she also wants to convey a message about lifestyle.
“I want to focus on the daily activity that is taken for granted with people who hang laundry. I want people to see it’s a good activity for the environment and pleasurable,” she said.
She is currently working on a three-part project that includes a film of fabrics blowing in the wind; narratives from women about their memories of hanging clothes with their mothers; and sculptures made of dryer lint. Women have already sent Miller dolls, quilts and wall hangings – all made from lint.
Art has made Miller more socially aware, and it is beginning to seep into her creations.
“It has opened up my sensitivities, not just visually, but spiritually,” she said. “It helped me to look at things more closely.”
back to menu
The Chocolate Factory is prepared for The Henrietta Project. |
Never Look At Death The Same Again
By Ellen Thompson
The rooms could change. The set’s ceilings could be lowered so that they kiss the blades of grass growing from a pile of soil planted on the white floor below. Whether the rooms stay the same, or just one transforms into a likely grave, the audience will ultimately leave the Chocolate Factory never to look at death the same again.
“There’s no saying what could happen, essentially,” Brian Rogers explained. His black Adidas Sambas squeaked each time the rubber soles touched to the white floor. They squeaked as he walked towards the video camera that sat on a solitary chair and as he walked towards his computer situated in the back left corner of the performance space.
“It’s not like we have a finalized script. Ken’s been working on it, bringing us something new each night,” Rogers said. He took a seat in front of the computer, tapped at a few of the keys and got up to flip the projector on, his Sambas squeaking all along the way. “No ones to even say what these rooms are going to be,” Rogers continued as a walked towards the partially competed set for his latest video-performance piece, The Henrietta Project. He slipped behind the scrim screen stapled across the bare wooden beams just as a grayish image of Henrietta’s cloned cell flickered onto the scrim, his figure cutting through the cell as it slowly slid off the screen.
The set of Henrietta, a multimedia performance meditation conceived by Rogers and Ken Urban focusing on the beginnings and ends of life, has to interact with performers and the story line, which was inspired by the life of Henrietta Lacks – the first woman to achieve immortality at a cellular level. Urban and Rogers delve further into the beginnings and ends by incorporating material from the recent Terry Schiavo controversy, the ethical debates surrounding the death penalty, abortion and assisted suicide, and the burgeoning cloning and cryonics industries.
Rogers stepped out from behind the white scrim, his black faded T-shirt and jeans no longer present in the cameras angled into the anticipated hospital and dining rooms.
“Working on a project like this, where you have 12 months to collaborate with the director, playwright, designers and performers and attack the social or political question at hand using movement, video and text, you have the opportunity to create as you go. You get to take different perspectives into the picture as you go,” Rogers said. “And not one person interprets the meaning of death like the next and we’re looking to see how they deal with that in their lives.”
“I’m just glad it’s coming out now when Schiavo story isn’t being drudged through the media,” Roger said as his eyes fixated on the scrim, which was displaying images of men in suits on C-SPAN, The Daily Show and Fox News. “We wanted to capture the idea of her but not her specifically, we want our audience to step back and look at Henrietta for the bigger picture.”
back to menu
Adi Sagie flips through her paintings. |
Driven By Intuition, Flair For Design
By THERESA JUVA
When Adi Sagie is finished reading Vogue, she doesn’t toss it in the recycling bin like most people. She rips out the pages and cuts out random pieces of photos: a necklace, a woman’s arm, a pile of grapes. She takes the snippets and tapes them together to make two-dimensional collages that look like the smatterings of a dream.
Sagie said the several layers of clippings give the viewer a different picture every time they look at it.
“You look at it, and you forget it. You look at it again and say, ‘Oh, I didn’t see that,’” she said.
One collage hanging in her Briarwood apartment is called “Parasites” because the wrapped around magazine pieces look like they are consuming each other.
Last year, her work was part of a show organized by Long Island City Artists, and she is booked for a show in the East Village in September.
Sagie, an interior designer educated in Israel, said her architectural background motivates her work; she likes emphasizing the construction of the collage, which is why she leaves the tape visible. She also likes to play with dimension, and her collages can be flipped over to reveal a new conglomeration of pictures.
While her design background helps her create patterns in her work, it is also inspires her to be spontaneous. She is used to designing with a plan inside borders, so her collages allow her to work intuitively.
“The interesting thing about it is trying to [make] something you didn’t see before,” she said. “I don’t know how it’s going to turn out.”
Besides randomness, the overlapped and crowded spaces are the result, she said, of living in New York. One collage features a map of Manhattan with flowers inserted inside Central Park, a pair of legs swung over Lower Manhattan and an elephant peeking out one side of the island. The intricate fragments stuffed inside and around the map symbolize the real-life saturation of Manhattan.
Sagie also likes to paint tall buildings. One painting she created on photo paper shows two brown and narrow buildings standing next to each other against a pale blue sky. Inside one building, two squares that look like floors jut out with red drops trickling from them. Many people see a depiction of Sept. 11 – something Sagie said she never intended.
She works without intention, but wants to leave viewers with plenty to ponder. “You get to explore it again and again and again,” she said.
back to menu
“The Four Winds” features interchangeable sections. |
Vilardi Mixes Public, Personal Needs
By Iman Khan
Nature, the human form, the city, and the ways in which these elements strike harmony or toil in conflict with one another – that is what inspires the work of illustrator, sculptor and painter Chris Vilardi.
A native New Yorker, Vilardi studied at three different schools over the course of seven years before receiving his Bachelor’s of Fine Arts from Parsons School of Design in 1990. He has been exhibiting his paintings and sculptures in galleries and private collections all over the globe from America to Europe and Australia.
That Vilardi works with many different medium is something indicative of what he calls his inability to remain constantly focused on one thing, and also matches the diverse nature of the community he calls home, Long Island City, as does his actual artwork.
Vilardi has been commissioned to do a number of public works, including an eight-foot bronze statue of St. Ignatius Loyola in Lincoln Center and a 12-foot bronze sculpture of Arch Bishop Hughes at Fordham.
“I take what the community is about and find a solution to what they’re looking for as a public monument,” said Vilardi.
While sculpting has kept Vilardi busy, and involves serving both a public need as well as his own artistic vision, his paintings are something he describes as something that are wholly him.
Women are the most prominent protagonists in Vilardi’s paintings, constantly being re-invented and shown in new and innovative forms by the artist.
“I paint what I enjoy,” Vilardi said. “I enjoy showing women strongly, stylized and also broken down into what is interesting.”
One of Vilardi’s most spectacular works, “Four Winds,” displays both Vilardi’s affinity for the female form as well as the diverse nature of the community in which he is entrenched. True to Vilardi’s mission, the four separate paintings feature women of White, Black, Latin and Asian backgrounds all juxtaposed against one another all the while complementing one another. When the four paintings are placed in a grid with one another, the positioning of the paintings is inconsequential as they all fit into one another regardless of placement, echoing an ideal vision of society that often is true in places diverse as Long Island City.
“I paint what I see every day,” Vilardi said. “I couldn’t imagine living somewhere monochromatic and not as diverse as Long Island City—I love the place. I bought a house here and my studio is here. I’m on the board of the local civic association.”
back to menu
Elizabeth Ward (l.) dances around the room. |
Dancer Soars In From Oregon To Queens
By JEFF FEINMAN
Dancing her way from Portland, Ore. into Queens, Elizabeth Ward is a talented dance performer bringing her improvisational skills to the New York City artist community.
Ward will perform a dance show called “Love Cervere” in the Chocolate Factory in late September. This will be her first performance in the New York City area, and she is very excited about the opportunity. She said she appreciates being able to dance in a venue that is very supportive of artists and does not charge for rehearsal or performance time.
“It’s a really great space to make a dance in because it’s not a traditional space,” Ward said. “It has a carpeted floor, which is not something that is in the ideal of what you would want. I’ve always been interested in doing things outside of a traditional setting.”
Collaborating with saxophone player Heather Vergotis and dancer Jessica Ray, Ward said she feels that she has created a piece that effectively blends the beauty of motion with the soothing sounds of music. The two will be performing in a “dark, musty smelling” venue, but Ward said that is the way she likes it.
“Our pieces have always had something similar about them,” she said of her collaborations with Ray and Vergotis. “They’re really about adapting to space.”
As a dancer, Ward said she frequently works on an improvisational basis, allowing herself to experiment with different streams of choreography. Her brand of dance can also be called “spontaneous composition,” allowing the dancer to experience the moves, rather than just sludge through them. With an extensive background in ballet, she described her style as a mix of modern and contemporary dance.
Ward said she favors improvisation over choreographed dance. “To me, that’s not as alive as it is when you have the ability to make a choice and to be an engaged person in the moment, instead of having a robot dancer who can kick their leg up real high.
“I think it’s more about perception. To me, what is really interesting about dance is when you go see a performance and the people are really alive, and the ideas they generate are really alive. A lot of dance feels really bad to me. When you go and see it, it feels like people are just churning out steps and there’s no questioning of why they’re moving in certain ways.”
“Love Cervere” will be performed at the Chocolate Factory Sept. 28-30.
back to menu
Gloria Wong’s self-portrait. |
Following The Voices In Her Head
By iman khan
After not having painted for 10 years, Gloria Wong returned to her craft as a part-time venture last summer, and as a full-time venture only this past January, but has developed a notable presence in a short eight months.
Although Wong never really left the art realm, working first as a graphic designer and then in special effects for television, the work left her always longing to return to painting, a venture she began while in the first grade.
“On the surface the jobs I had were great,” Wong said. “But inside, my soul was dying and becoming invisible.”
Wong did admit that currently, she finds that her soul is a complicated mess, but at least now she has the medium for expressing whatever is going on in her life.
Originally, Wong’s expressions were realist in nature, but her work has now shifted to abstract expression because she loves the spontaneous nature of the form.
“My new abstract paintings are energetic. The shapes wiggle. The lines zoom. The colors glow. With saturated and bright colors, I hope to convey youthful vigor,” Wong said. “Sometimes the paintings remind me of kids, running around, horsing around, having a good time, declaring themselves individuals with opinions and personalities.”
Wong has also been very influenced by geometric shapes, which are very prevalent in her work – a fact she attributes to her fondness for mathematics and biology during grade school. She currently has a favorite shape she is working with.
“My current theme is circles,” Wong said. “I start with a grid of circles and just allow it to evolve into something. I name them once their personalities have finished evolving.”
The main sentiments Wong is seeking to convey in her paintings are her sense of happiness and also a sense of fun. Although there are times when the process isn’t always fun, Wong has a system of getting through those moments and allowing her work to progress.
“It’s a long process and sometimes you get frustrated or afraid,” she said. “Generally though, I thank the little voice in my head for sharing, and tell it to go away, which requires putting away my fear and judgment and being open and generous instead.”
Like many of her contemporaries, Wong has chosen to call Queens home for a number of reasons, foremost among them being community. She loves being able to walk around and just meet artists, or go to social events for artists such as those put on by B-QUACK, an organization that hosts monthly mixers in Queens, for artists of all kinds.
“I moved to the Long Island City, Sunnyside area for community,” she said.
For more information or to contact Gloria Wong, go to www.gloriawong.com.
back to menu
Jennifer Zazo’s “Currency.” |
Zazo Works To Keep The Arts Going
By JEFF FEINMAN
Jennifer Zazo is one of those people lucky enough to have the ability to blend her love with her profession. The 30-year-old native of Bayside works as the Director of the Castle Gallery at the College of New Rochelle, using her curator and artist instincts to bring a great deal of professionalism to the job.
Her most recent curator duties consist of a contemporary work by Native American artists to join an upcoming exhibition called “50 Years of Powwow,” scheduled to open to the public Sept. 10. Zazo also recently participated in the curatorial selections of YEA! an exhibition that was on view this summer at The Westchester Arts Council in White Plains.
“I have always been interested in the many different forms of visual expression at our disposal,” Zazo said. “As a child, I had a strong passion for dance and have always loved to make art, no matter the form. In my adult life, I continue to be amused by the many avenues in which an artist can give voice to our souls, allowing snippets of the inner self to become exposed.”
In her current position, Zazo works with guest curators at the Castle Gallery. Curators are responsible for every aspect of the exhibit, from the idea to its installation. Once she comes up with an idea, she said, she then seeks artists who are ideal for creating or submitting work for the exhibit.
Zazo’s interest in art has been a part of her throughout her entire life, as she attended the Mary Louis Academy in Jamaica Estates, where she majored in art. She then received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Manhattan School of Visual Arts. She became involved with the College of New Rochelle when she began a Masters Program in Communications Art.
“With my own work, I do a lot of artist books and interactive pieces. My curatorial work has really kind of taken the front seat as far as my creative projects over the past year or two.”
Zazo grew up in Bayside, where she was drawn to many cultural experiences, including park concerts, Bayside Historical Society events, and artist exhibitions. “I absolutely loved that neighborhood,” she said. “Growing up there provided me with a really nice atmosphere. The neighborhood had good people and many cultural opportunities.” When she was older, Zazo connected with the Long Island City Artists, where she took part in shows with other artists.
“I use my life experiences as the point of departure in my work and allow my interests and concerns to define the boundaries,” she said. “As a mixed media artist, I continue to experiment with various materials and techniques. This serendipitous approach to art allows me to see my challenge with fresh eyes, just as a newborn child would see the world for the first time.”
back to menu
