A Closer Look at Tom Fruin's Neon Sign for Brooklyn's Wythe Hotel

If North Brooklynites haven't yet had a cocktail in the swank bar at Wythe Hotel, they've at least noticed the newest addition to the neighborhood: A fifty-foot-tall, glowing "HOTEL" sign mounted vertically on the corner of Wythe and N. 11th in Williamsburg. As it's virtually impossible to not see, we though we'd get a closer look and find out more.

The five-story, 72-room hotel, a turn-of-the-century factory and former cooperage (barrel and cask-making) that officially opened on May 1st, commissioned artist Tom Fruin to design and build a permanent sculptural installation for them. As source material, Fruin used old found metal signs from New York City.

"The signs, featuring hand-painted fruit and pizza, air conditioner repair advertisements, warnings and phone numbers, were found all over town from a demolished pizza deli in DUMBO to a converted paper supply warehouse on the bowery. Many were liberated from construction dumpsters or discovered in the street. One sign features 3D artwork by graffiti artist Dan Witz, dating to the mid-90s."

After collecting enough bright, text-heavy signage, Fruin hand-riveted the pieces together to serve as the base for red neon tubing. Fruin's previous work uses similar materials, most often collaged with other found objects.

Head over to Fruin's site to see more work--though might we suggest tackling its immensity for yourself by perusing a few of our Welding & Fabrication classes.

Your Daily Insight as told by Frank Lloyd Wright

An architect's most useful tools are an eraser at the drafting board and a wrecking bar at the site.

The Unabashed NADA Art Fair NYC Trend: Color Blocking

 

With each season comes a new set of trends, and in that respect, the art world is no different from any other market. Jerry Saltz--New York Mag's resident art critic--pointed out several in his recent, excellent piece on "How to Make It in the Art World." Amongst the listed trends: Trash, "Cindy Sherman-esque," neon words, candy-colored sculpture, video-game art, busted open canvases and art about the art market. Sure, there was a great deal of that on view at NADA NYC, but we'd like to add one more to the list, and that is: Color blocking.

In general, the showing at NADA was unexpectedly colorful, but these bright, blocky compositions were clear standouts. In particular, Sadie Benning's untitled Gouache works on collaged newspaper drew us into Vogt Gallery's booth. Benning had several pieces on view alongside the super-flat figurative paintings by Mernet Larsen, who took traditional color blocking for a spin with Sit Ups Leg Lift, a depiction of two people stretching on exercise mats (as featured up above.)

The showing from Galerie Christian Lethert continued the painterly take on the trend with Joe Fyfe's wood and acrylic Pursat. Fyfe's other work is similarly rough in technique but more involved and often incorporates a variety of media like fabric and large planks of wood. In fact, out of all his pieces, Pursat seems like the least representative of his work, but despite its extremely DIY appearance it attracted a flock of potential collectors. 

The Rome gallery 1/9 unosunove was the most direct in their boldly color block-only booth, with three pieces by Dan Shaw-Town and a smattering of Jamie Shovlin's take on the famous Fontana Modern Masters (above), a series of pocket guides on writers, philosophers and thinkers. First published in the 70's, the guides became better known for their cover art than for their content. Art director John Constable was one of the first to use a sans-serif typeface on his abstract and op art compositions. The last book was published in 1995, but from 2003-2005 Shovlin reinterpreted the 48 covers "as a series of flawed paintings" with missing titles and running colors. While he was working on these he discovered 10 titles that, for whatever reason, were never published; amongst them Fuller by Allan Temko and Sherrington by Jonathan Miller.

In related news, consider checking out our Color Theory course, in which we prep you and your work for imminent NADA dominance (or the actualization of your individual, artist-oriented goals, which we feel is probably more vital.)

Our Top 10 Most Essential Events To Check Out During Internet Week New York

With Mayor Mike pitching New York to startups and a new tech campus coming to Roosevelt Island, the 5th annual Internet Week New York, which kicks off today, should offer an especially exciting showcase of the latest developments in digital culture and NYC's burgeoning tech industry.

The festival is expected to attract more than 45,000 tech-savvy people from across the globe and will feature more than 200 events taking place throughout the city. Many of those events require a pass, but below we've put together our list of the 10 (we believe to be) vital events you need to check out for free (or, for just a few bucks.)

Here we go:

Art of Apps and Open House at Soho Gallery for Digital Art - An exhibition of creative design work for the iPhone and iPad, featuring designers from Behance, Mixel, Tweetbot and more. Monday, May 14, 10am-6pm. Free with RSVP.

ITP Spring Show - Students from NYU's Interactive Telecommunication Program show off their latest innovations. Monday, May 14 and Tuesday May 15, 5-8pm. Free. More info.

How Design & Technology are Changing the Education at Projective Space - Experts "take a closer look at how the roles of designer and educator are blurring with emergence of new technologies." Tuesday, May 15, 7:30pm. $10.

Etsy: Transforming Search in the Digital Marketplace at Huge Brooklyn -  Dr. Jason Davis, Etsy's Director of Search & Personalization, discusses the company's recent strategies and successes. Wednesday, May 16, 7:30pm. Free with RSVP.

I Heart NY Dating Services at WeWork Lounge - Panelists from popular online dating services talk about online dating and social media. Thursday, May 17, 6:45pm. $20.

NYC BigApps: Civic Hacking, Startup Success at The Space, Inc. at Chelsea Market - NYC's annual app competition hosts a panel of winners, judges, city officials and tech experts, who will talk about BigApps' role in launching new start-ups and promoting open data. Thursday, May 17, 5:30pm. Free with RSVP.

Walkabout NYC: An open house featuring tech startups throughout the city. Lots of big names (Facebook, Tumblr, etc) are sold out but there's still time to RSVP tours of many other exciting startups. Friday, May 19, 1-6pm. Free with RSVP.

The Webby Awards at Hammerstein Ballroom - The 16th edition of the annual awards is a private event, but you can watch it all live online. Monday, May 21, 4pm-8pm.

Baeble Music Video Exhibition at the World Financial Center Winter Garden - The music video site curates an exhibition on the Winter Garden's huge video wall. All week, noon-2pm. Free. More info.

#WDESIGN: A W Times Square Exhibit with Instagram NYC at W New York - Dubbed as "one of Manhattan’s first ever Instagram photo exhibitions," the showcase will feature work by six popular Instagram photographers as well as user-submitted images from around the world. All week, free. More info.

Bonus: Time Inc's "10 NYC Startups To Watch" - It isn't an event, but this annual list, which debuted last year during Internet Week New York, gives you the scoop on what local tech newcomers you should be keeping an eye on, like the design marketplace Fab, art discovery tool Art.sy and virtual personal assistant coordinator Fancy Hands.

-- John Ruscher

Your Daily Insight as told by Charles Kettering

We fully acknoweldge the anachronistic "his" and "he" and "him"-ness of this quote, but let's pretend that Mr. Kettering was applying this to both sexes (because we most certainly are):

An inventor is simply a person who doesn't take his education too seriously. You see, from the time a person is six years old until he graduates from college he has to take three or four years examinations a year. If he flunks once, he is out. But an inventor is almost always failing. He tries and fails maybe a thousand times. If he succeeds once then he's in. These two things are diametrically opposite. We often say that the biggest job we have is to teach a newly hired employee how to fail intelligently. We have to train him to experiment over and over and to keep on trying and failing until he learns what will work.

Call For Entries: Apply To Be One of Lady Liberty's First Artists-In-Residence

 

No, you won't get studio space in her crown, but the new Statue of Liberty National Monument and Ellis Island artist-in-residence program, which kicks off in July and is accepting applications through May 21, could give you the chance to get pretty close to Lady Liberty. 

According to the National Park Service, the residency "aspires to share with the public the scenic beauty and stories of Statue of Liberty National Monument and Ellis Island through the world of art" and will challenge artists "to make this park come alive for all—to generate excitement about it for visitors and strangers alike."

A jury will select between three and six visual artists, who can choose to participate in a two-, three- or four-week residency. This includes studio space in the New Jersey City University Visual Arts Building in Jersey City, campus housing, and "unparalleled access to the park's resources, including the museum, library, oral histories, and other places not normally accessible to visitors, such as our archives and extensive museum collections not publicly displayed." Don't worry, New Yorkers—local artists will have the choice of living at home and commuting. There's no stipend, but studio space, housing and bragging rights as one of the Statue of Liberty's first artists-in-residence sounds like decent compensation to us.

Work created during the residency will be exhibited as part of the Statue of Liberty's reopening in late 2012 (it closed last October for renovations), and artists will also be asked to donate two pieces and present two hour-long public programs and a three-hour workshop/demonstration.

For more information, including the application form, head over to the National Park Service website.

-- John Ruscher

Your Daily Insight as told by Erica Jong

You take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame.

The Abandoned "Wonderland" of Photographer Catherine Hyland

With our recent coverage of a deserted German themepark, preceded by a profile on Detroit's dilapidated train stations, you might think we suffer from some type of strange abandonment issues.

Truth be told, there just seems to be a surge in talented artists infiltrating and documenting otherwise discarded environments. Not necessarily a "new" concept per se, though when we come across work we find visually arresting, we naturally just have to share.

Which brings us to photographer Catherine Hyland's Wonderland--an utterly haunting, full-color take on an Asian themepark, abandoned before it ever even opened. 

As Hyland describes the work:

Trapped in limbo, a hybrid space between the ‘real’ and the artificial, this environment induces a sense of transformation or manipulation that appears to permeate and displace the realm of fantasy. Tamed by the locals, the uncompleted remnants of Wonderland become the antithesis of everything it was supposed to be, its value altered permanently.

For whatever reason, Wonderland's work makes us feel especially melancholy (which, as you can glean from Hyland's description is likely Mission Accomplished).

See for yourself here:

All Images: Courtesy catherinehyland.co.uk

Your Daily Insight as told by Golda Meir

I can honestly say that I was never affected by the question of the success of an undertaking. If I felt it was the right thing to do, I was for it, regardless of the possible outcome.

Around The World With Artist Kurt Perschke's RedBall Project

Kurt Perschke's RedBall Project, Pritzker Pavilion, Millennium Park, Chicago. Photo by Fuzzy Gerdes.

It's a giant beach ball...it's a weather balloon...it's RedBall. We feel the Superman allusion is warranted, as RedBall, a globe-spanning public art project by New York-based artist Kurt Perschke, maintains something of a superhuman presence. The first RebBall installation took place in St. Louis back in 2001 as a commission from Arts in Transit. With the money from that commission, Perschke took it to Barcelona. Sydney soon beckoned, and pretty soon it RedBall was rolling along, inflating its way into the hearts, imaginations and urban spaces of cities ranging from Chicago and Toronto to Taipei and Abu Dhabi.

For Perschke its not so much about the 15-foot inflatable ball itself, but the potential it represents. "The true power of the project is what it can create for those who experience it," he explains. "It opens a doorway to imagine what if?" Angela Melkisethian offers a similar take in Sculpture magazine: "RedBall's occupation of the spaces that are taken for granted briefly foregrounds the invisible backdrop of urban life. What used to be neglected space becomes a realm of possibilities."

RedBall's next destination is the United Kingdom, where it will tour throughout June. We'd love to experience its spherical red goodness right here in Brooklyn. It would fit in great alongside the epic work that's emerged from 3rd Ward's own Inflatable Sculpture classes.

Meanwhile, here's more from Perschke on RedBall:

-- John Ruscher