Tomorrow I will be finishing my semester-long program with kids at the PS 16 YMCA After School in South Williamsburg.  We explored our neighborhood through technology and made a website.  Pretty exciting for fourth and fifth grade!  If you’d like to check our out site, where you can see our pictures and hear our podcast, go here.  We have a video as well, but I’m waiting to hear if we can post it online, because the kids star in it.

We called our project O.N.E. Williamsburg, for “Our Neighborhood Explored.”  Please feel free to leave (kid-appropriate) comments!

A picture by one of my students showing the urban renewal buildings and the older buildings across the street from each other, taken when we had a visit from Michael Freedman-Schnapp of NAG.

Thanks to all who came out to the opening!  It was amazing to see the way Attachment evolved.  Nathaniel and I were surprised and delighted to see people create things we didn’t even imagine.  The piece is up until Sept. 4, so please stop by The Center to participate and watch it grow (208 West 13th Street, near 7th Avenue, 2nd Floor, 9am-11pm daily).

I will post pictures throughout the summer.  A couple people took really beautiful ones at the opening.  Here are a selection of Megan Cronin’s:

…and some from Johnny Lowe:

Deep appreciation for the photographers!

The opening for Then and Now at the Center is tomorrow night, but I couldn’t resist posting a couple preview shots.  You can come by to participate in our installation and see the show all summer (9am-11pm daily on the second floor of 208 West 13th Street until Sept 4, 2009).

Casting another heart (photo by Megan Cronin):

We installed ATTACHMENT at The Center yesterday.  I am really happy with the way the piece is coming out.  The only thing missing is community participation, which will begin next Thursday, May 28th, at the opening gala.  I will post documentation as it progresses.  The work will be up all summer and I look forward to discovering how it will grow.  Please stop by 208 West 13th Street and visit the second floor if you are in NYC this summer.

Thanks to Mimi Smith for asking me to participate in this show, my collaborator Nathaniel Lieb, Chris Hanway and Ector Simpson at The Center, the lovely ladies who donated yarn, and everyone who offered input, especially my studiomates (Francisca Caporali, Laura Chipley, Pilar Ortiz and Mary Jeys) and my homies (Sabrina Lee, Rand Dadasovich, and Rachel Messer).

I will be showing ATTACHMENT, a new site specific installation at Then and Now: an exhibition celebrating the 20th anniversary of The Center Show at the LGBT Center on 13th Street this summer.  The work is a collaboration with Nathaniel Lieb, an artist I met at I met at Brooklyn College.

2009 year marks the 40th Anniversary of the Stonewall riots, the event that many consider the beginning of the gay rights movement in America.  I was  honored to be asked to participate in this show, as I have always felt myself a strong ally of the LGBT community.  This show also marks the 20th year anniversary of the The Center Show:

In June 1989, the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center hosted The Center Show, a legendary effort in which famous and emerging artists created site-specific works on the walls of the building in commemoration of the 20th Anniversary of the Stonewall riots. Several major figures in the art world such as Keith Haring, Leon Golub, Kenny Scharf, David LaChapelle, and Nancy Spero contributed to this groundbreaking event.

One of the artists from the original show, Mimi Smith, an inspiring woman who I met through _gaia, asked if I would like to participate.  This summer, site specific works from the new artists will be on display at the Center alongside the original works from the 1989 show.

Then and Now
an exhibition celebrating the 20th anniversary of The Center Show

June 1-Sept 4, 2009
@ The Center
208 West 13th Street (btwn 7th & 8ths Aves.)
New York, NY

There is a gala benefit opening to preview the show on Thursday, May 28th at 6:30pm – $20

There are two great events in NYC this weekend.  Friday night is opening for the annual show for my MFA program at Hunter.  I won’t be participating this year as I’m tangled up with the flu, my thesis and preparing for the Center Show (save the date: May 28!), but I am extremely excited to see the work.

On Saturday night it’s the third FEAST (Funding Emerging Art with Sustainable Tactics), a monthly dinner event I have been participating in here in Greenpoint, where we all pool $10-20 contributions, eat a delicious meal and vote for a project to receive a cash grant.  This time, my friend Mary Jeys is proposing her new project Brooklyn Torch, a local currency for North Brooklyn.

Hunter College IMA/MFA Spring Show:Medium of Exchange

MFA/IMA Student Group EYEspeak is holding their Annual Showcase of Interdisciplinary and New Media Art from Hunter College’s Integrated Media Arts MFA Program.

PLACE:  The Black Box Gallery
Hunter College North Building, 5th floor, Room 544N
695 Park Avenue (enter on 68th Street)
New York, NY 10065
DATES: May 8th–10th 2009
HOURS: Opening Reception, Friday May 8th 6–9 PM
Saturday May 9th and Sunday 10th 12–6 PM
Admission to the IMA Spring Show is free to the public. Light refreshments will be served.

Vote for Brooklyn Torch
@ FEAST!
Church of the Messiah
129 Russell Street, Brooklyn
6-9p; $10-20, no one turned away
Sat, May 9th

I heart strangers.

Congratulations to curators Maya & Chere, and to Iraq Veterans Against the War.  The benefit was really spectacular and well attended.  The curation used Powerhouse’s generous space beautifully.  As expected, the show is very moving.  If you would like to see it, it is open until March 22 during Powerhouse’s regular hours.

Thanks to all who came! It was wonderful to have so many friends, family members & colleagues there.  Check out Chris Vongsawat pictures on flickr.

(photo by my mom)

From what I’ve seen during installation, the exhibition will be very moving.  Arrive before 8p to see the art before the performance begins.

Saturday, March 7th, 2009
6-10pm (6-8pm reception/8-10pm performance)
2,191 Days and Counting
Benefit Exhibition for Iraq Veterans Against the War
at Powerhouse Arena
37 Main Street, corner of Water Street
(DUMBO) Brooklyn

curated by Maya Joseph-Gotteiner and Chere Krakovsky
$10 suggested donation to IVAW, food and drinks provided

I am showing my video installation LOOK INSIDE along with 40 other artists’ works engaged with war and a performance program.  My piece is on the ground floor in the back right hand corner of the room.  Great spot:)

You can find more details and a list of participating artists and performers at: www.2191daysandcounting.com

If you can’t make the opening, the show will be at Powerhouse until March 22nd.

Please feel free to post widely.

& THANK YOU so much to Neil for building the installation with me (and fixing and moving it), Maya & Chere for including me in this wonderful show, Mike for priming and painting for me (!!!), my family for traveling to see it, and all the Crosses of Lafayette creators, _gaia Wonder Women, and indescribably helpful studiomates & colleagues for inspiration and advice.

While working on my MFA thesis project, an outdoor video installation about Industrial Business Zone between Williamsburg and Greenpoint, Brooklyn, (planned for September 2009), I have come across several great films & projects that engage with commodities, manufacturing, circulation, and labor.  Here is a small selection:

I recently watched a great 2006 documentary called Marti Gras: Made in China. Director David Redmond traveled to China to meet the women who make the plastic mardi gras beads for which women in New Orleans famously show their ta-tas.  The film engages with the disconnect of the women’s reality, working for two dollars a day in unsafe conditions to make beads that end up in the trash after being part of a celebration the women cannot comprehend.  There’s also a great short in the extras about Emen Levy, an artist who make mosaics with beads he collects off the streets of New Orleans.

Jennifer Baichwal’s Manufactured Landscapes, a documentary about renown photographer Edward Burtynsky, who went to China to photograph giant factories,opened my eyes to how many products in Chinese factories are made by hand, rather than machine.  This film literally blew my mind and  forever transformed my concept of the word “handmade” and the way I look at manufactured objects.

The Story of Stuff with Annie Leonard provides a great explanation of modern production and consumption.  The narrator bugged me enough that it took twice to get engaged, but the animations a great and the research is solid.

The How Stuff Is Made wiki, a project led by Natalie Jeremijencho at NYU, encourages people to investigate everyday objects and share how they are made on the internet.

Johanna Unzueta, who I discovered through my friend Pilar, is an artist who makes handmade felt sculptures of industrial buildings, part of a body of work on the dignity of labor.  The relationship between the handmade movement and manufacturing is something I find both problematic and essential to our understanding of material culture, and Johanna’s projects seem to open up room for dialog.

The film that originally inspired my project is a documentary by my boss Isabel Hill from the early 1990s called Made in Brooklyn.  The film is simultaneously a fascinating argument about the vital role of urban manufacturing in a city that constantly undermines it and a beautiful tribute to the meaningful work provided by manufacturers on the North Brooklyn waterfront before the rezoning that forced many to close.

And finally, two books I’m in the middle of and can also recommend: The Craftsman by Richard Sennett and Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things by William McDonough and Michael Braungart.