ESSENTIAL EVENT // THIS SUNDAY: Christopher Rini And BBOX Radio Team Up For Beastie, Biggie, And Beyond

 

Back during our Wind-Up mixer in June, artist and 3rd Ward member Christopher Rini met the folks at BBOX Radio. They both enjoyed each other's work, and four months later they're collaborating on Biggie, Beasties, and Beyond, an exhibition at BBOX Radio. It opens this Sunday, October 30 at 5pm with a lively mix of music and art.

Hit the jump to learn more about Rini's work and the exhibition.

For the show's inspiration, Rini turned toward to two landmark Brooklyn albums, the Beastie Boys' Licensed To Ill and Notorious B.I.G.'s Ready To Die. "I picked two iconic albums that have aged in complex ways," he says. "The Beastie's debut LP featured fold out album art, which I used to love as a kid, so I took the opportunity to address the entire image, with all of its 21st century implications. It's a joke from the past that now has a sense of foreboding."

"The Biggie piece is similar, though with a more somber, final tone," he adds. "The stark composition no longer announces the arrival of arguably the best MC we've ever heard. His predictions, boasts and stories are all we have left. The text that once announced his name and boasted of his fearlessness, now simply mark his entry and exit from the world."

Rini renders these images using "wood stained glass," a style he's been exploring and honing since 2009. "It involves mostly industrial items, where the wood is engraved & burned, and then stained & dyed, usually with a polyurethane finish," he explains.

Taking up a musical theme is natural, as Rini's long been an active musician, playing with Brooklyn's The=Equation for over a decade. During Sunday's opening he'll play drums with a new group, Resonance & Behavior, who'll be making their live debut. "The instrumentation is all electronic, drums, piano and cello, and our repertoire includes Chopin, Philip Glass, Portishead and a few original compositions by our cellist, Elizabeth Glushko," he says.

Check out Biggie, Beasties, and Beyond this Sunday at BBOX Radio, which is located at the Dekalb Market. It starts at 5pm and the music kicks off at 6pm. Rini's artwork will stay up through November 9.

-- John Ruscher 

OCCUPY ART // Occupy.Inside.Out Puts Faces With A Movement

image courtesy of Charles Meacham - http://www.charlesmeacham.com/

Last week we relayed a call from Brooklyn photographer Steven Greaves and the folks at TED.com, who needed volunteers to help wheat paste Greaves' 99 portraits of everyday people involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement throughout Downtown Manhattan. The project, occupy.inside.out, was staged as part of photographer JR's global Inside Out endeavor.

We're happy to report that the wheat pasting was a massive success. Greaves sent along some photos of the portraits going up and told us more about the project. "We wanted to offer people a way to share their stories," he says. "The Occupy Wall Street movement has been portrayed as a mob of discontent. While there are definitely complaints, that's not the whole story. What we've experienced is much to the contrary: veterans, priests, doctors, lawyers and other everyday people who are more than just angry. These people work every day of their lives and are starting to become empowered to do something about the injustices that they see around them and in the system."

Check out photos of the occupy.inside.out wheat pasting after the jump.

image courtesy of Charles Meacham - http://www.charlesmeacham.com/

image courtesy of Charles Meacham - http://www.charlesmeacham.com/

image courtesy of Charles Meacham - http://www.charlesmeacham.com/

image courtesy of Charles Meacham - http://www.charlesmeacham.com/

image courtesy of Charles Meacham - http://www.charlesmeacham.com/

image courtesy of Charles Meacham - http://www.charlesmeacham.com/

image courtesy of Charles Meacham - http://www.charlesmeacham.com/

-- John Ruscher

VOLUNTEER OPPORTUNITY TODAY // Help Wheat Paste Portraits For Occupy.Inside.Out

Want to help the Occupy Wall Street cause and be part of an awesome art project at the same time? Brooklyn-based photographer Steven Greaves is looking for volunteers to help put up wheat paste portraits as part of his project Occupy.Inside.Out, which features 99 photos of everyday people and one representing the 1%.

The project has been getting a boost from the folks at TED.com. "They have been instrumental in providing logistical support and outreach to my team for getting this thing put together," says Greaves. The studio of photographer and TED Prize winner JR, has also been lending a hand by printing out the images. JR's team includes 3rd Ward alum Gina Pollack, who has been working on the broader global portrait project Inside Out.

If you'd like to help Greaves with wheat pasting, get in touch with him ASAP: steven@stevengreaves.com. His team plans to meet up at 6pm TODAY, location TDB.

-- John Ruscher

ARTIST SPOTLIGHT // Nick Kuszyk's Robots: From Street Art To Children's Books

If you walk around Williamsburg much, there's a good chance you've strolled passed Nick Kuszyk's robots. The Brooklyn-based artist has been painting them for over a decade, filling entire walls (and often more) with these brightly-colored mechanical creatures. Kuszyk's work hasn't just been limited to the streets. His canvases are equally awe-inspiring--his colorful robots can be found on album covers for the No BS Brass Band, decorating an arcade case for DIY video game makers Babycastles and even in a children's book named R Robot Saves Lunch, which Kuszyk wrote and illustrated.

We caught up with Kuszyk to ask him about his work. He enjoys the balance between doing large murals and smaller paintings. "Both help life in different ways," he says. As for his influences, he tells us that there are too many to list, but they include fifteenth century European painters Hieronymus Bosch and Jan van Eyck as well as modern geometric abstractionist Josef Albers.

How did he end up publishing a children's book? Kuszyk says it was a fluke. "The president of Penguin's kids books is into pilates, and my friend is a teacher [and] dropped my name," he explains. Chance or not, his skill and style have led to many other opportunities as well. Right now some of Kuszyk's work is being featured in an exhibit at Oklahoma City's Womb Gallery, where he got to work with The Flaming Lips' Wayne Coyne, who co-owns the space; "[Coyne's] a sleeper visual artist and a generally inspiring person," Kuszyk says.

As of today, Kusyk's at work on another album cover, several commissions as well as a graphic novel.

We've got more of Kuszyk's work after the jump, so keep going--and keep your eyes peeled for his murals the next time you hit the streets.

-- John Ruscher

CALL FOR ENTRIES // Curate NYC Seeks Artists for Second Annual Citywide Competition

Visual artists, listen up:

Are you interested in exhibiting your work in NYC galleries and getting in front of the eyes of curators? Then you might want to submit your work to Curate NYC, a city-wide competition presented by the New York City Economic Development Corporation and the nonprofit arts organization Full Spectrum Experience, Inc.

Last year Curate NYC's inaugural competition received close to 1,200 submissions and recognized the work of artists like painter Jennifer Delilah and photographer Alexandra Henry. This year's competition will expand to showcase artwork in even more venues around the city and allow artists to sell their work through the Curate NYC website. A juried selection of the top 150 entries will be exhibited as museum-quality postcard reproductions at the Rush Art Gallery & Resource Center in Manhattan from December 1-10. After that, selected postcards, along with actual artwork by additional Curate NYC artists, will be exhibited at galleries in all of five boroughs, including Like the Spice in Williamsburg and Crossing Art in Queens.

In addition to those exhibitions, the artwork, profile and weblink for every applicant will be published on the Curate NYC website, where art professionals and the general public can check it out. There will also be a series of special online exhibitions selected by curators like Kevin Stayton of the Brooklyn Museum, Eric C. Shiner of The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, and Lowery Stokes Sims of The Museum of Arts and Design.

The submission deadline is October 31. For more info, head on over to the Curate NYC website now.

-- John Ruscher

ARTIST FOLLOW UP // Photographer Johanna Heldebro Takes Haunting Body of Work Global

Ed. note: You may have glimpsed this post quickly last Tuesday, though a couple minor corrections were needed so we pulled it down temporarily.

In the two years since her exhibit To Come Within Reach of You... hung at 3rd Ward's Fall Solo Show, photographer Johanna Heldebro has been busy showing the series around the world.

To give you the body's backdrop:

Heldebro and her father became distant after her parents divorced. He left to essentially live with a second family in his native Sweden. Heldebro traveled to Stockholm and (unbeknownst to him) follow him; taking pictures of his house, zooming in through his windows. She never took pictures of his girlfriend or children, only him. The resulting images are both incredibly intimate and heartbreakingly distant. And as of this month, the work reaches an even larger global audience.

In Moscow, she's showing To Come Within Reach of You... as part of an exhibition called Wrong Address, which opened on September 22 at the Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art and runs until October 31.  She tells us "It is curated by Anna-Kaisa Rastenberger (Chief Curator at the Finnish Museum of Photography in Helsinki) and Tero Puha (a Finnish visual artist) and the show also includes work by Tero Puha, Minna Suoniemi, Pilvi Takala, Jarkko Räsänen and Taus Makhacheva."

From there, Heldebro's work returns to Sweden; the Galleri Box in Gothenburg--running from October 13 until November 14. But don't expect her father to show up.  When asked if she's become closer with him since the show's become successful, her response: "Becoming closer to someone is different from developing a relationship with someone. Our relationship is that he is my father, I am his daughter." 

--Layla Schlack

CHECK THIS OUT // Loose Leaf: Hybrid Publication and Personal Art Gallery

"Looking at a beautiful work of photography or art at 500 pixels width doesn't really satisfy someone like me," says Tom Crabtree, the founder and creative director of San Francisco design studio Manual. "I like to live with images, not just scroll past them."

That desire led to Loose Leaf, a project that's mighty difficult to describe in a single word. In the words of Crabtree: "It’s a hybrid of periodical, poster, collectible archive and personal art gallery."

Each edition of Loose Leaf features a series of large-format, unbound prints. Unlike your typical art periodical or exhibition catalog, it's meant to adorn your wall rather than join that stack of magazines in the corner of your room. It even comes with handy aluminum push pins and pre-punched holes for easy mounting, a clever and simple system inspired by Crabtree's own aspirations to collect and display work in his home and studio. "Posters, photography, screen prints, drawings... all of which cost a small fortune to frame," he says. "I thought it would be neat to design a publication that allows the user to instantly hang it on their wall in a way that is very intentional."

More on Loose Leaf, including a gallery photos, after the jump.

Like its composition, Loose Leaf's editions are shaped by broad ideas rather than strict themes. The first edition features an array of prints tied to the San Francisco Bay area, including contributions from artist and designer Jeff Canham, photographer Michelle McCarron, painter Jake Longstreth and author, editor and artist Dave Eggers.

Crabtree founded Manual after working at studios like Spin and MadeThough in London and Apple in the U.S., where he designed packaging for the iPhone. "Throughout the years I've worked with some great people; photographers, illustrators, industrial designers, architects—largely on client related projects," he says.

"Loose Leaf is a great opportunity to keep working and collaborating with other creative practitioners whose work I admire, but in a freer way. While there's an element of curation and art direction in the way Loose Leaf takes shape, it's really just a case of us asking people to inspire us with what they do. At the end of the day that's what Loose Leaf is about. Inspiration."

Crabtree says that Manual plans to publish the second edition of Loose Leaf early next year. Order the first edition now from the Loose Leaf website.

Jeff Canham

Dave Eggers

Jake Longstreth

-- John Ruscher

GO HERE NOW // PBS's "Off Book" Shows You The Fringe

 We've loved us some PBS since back in the after-school-special days. But if you haven't been watching web series "Off Book" by PBS Arts, we highly recommend getting on it. The series does short documenteries about a wide spectrum of contemporary artists; from steampunks to hackers to typeface designers and beyond.

This most recent episode, focusing mainly on street art, is a must-see.

Watch the full episode. See more Off Book.

It opens with Olek, a Brooklyn-based crocheter ("Knitting is for pussies," she says) who creates sculptures that have been shown in galleries world-wide. Olek's done interactive exhibits at both the Brooklyn Museum and the Textile Museum in Washington, D.C. You've probably seen her work around the city, and her cover of the bull sculpture on Wall Street is particularly resonant these days.

The second half of the segment is devoted to Swoon, whomyou may recognize from Exit Through the Gift Shop. Her multimedia murals are inspired by the layered texture of New York itself, giving even her gallery shows a pleasantly gritty feel, even though her portrait subjects are often happy and smiling. It's hard not to do the same at this New York I Love You redux. 

--Layla Schlack

DRINK-N-DRAW SPOTLIGHT // Guno Park's Full-Room Compositions

A small rendering of one of Guno's Drink-N-Draw creations

From time to time, we like to spotlight one of the good folks coming to Drink-n-Draw (every Wednesday from 8 to 10:30pm). Today that attendee's name is Guno Park--an artist that finds an audience as captivating as the subject it surrounds. Guno spends his days working at New York Academy of Art, which is where he earned an MFA.

Guno was born in Seoul, South Korea, but spent most of his life in Ontario, Canada. "I moved to New York a little more than two years ago from Toronto," he says, "and, after trying out a few different venues for lifedrawing, I fell in love with the vibe of 3rd Ward's sessions--It's so convenient because I live in Bushwick."

With a slightly quirky sensibility an knack for details, Guno's rooms full of people can keep our attention for hours. Want to watch him in action? You know what to do.

--Layla Schlack

INNOVATOR RETROSPECTIVE // Renowned Artist Al Jarnow Keeps It Moving

Jarnow; 1975 -- Courtesy: The Numero Group

Chances are you didn't know it, but if you grew up in the 80's and were reared on 3-2-1 Contact and Sesame Street, then you grew up with Al Jarnow. A multimedia artist who's animated shorts became archetypal on public television, Jarnow helped define an aesthetic that nostalgists now pine over.

Though for Jarnow, his career has always been about motion--from early panoramic paintings and public TV animations to short films and software development.  We consider ourselves serious appreciators of Jarnow's work and recently caught up with him in an effort to (re)introduce you:

"To me it's always been about moving forward," he says. "I've worked with everything from 16 millimeter film to digital. It's all been a progression."

Jarnow claims art is something he's always done. "My parents thought I would be a lawyer, but on some level, I knew I'd be an artist." In the early '70s, he was putting that conviction into practice, painting landscapes of beach and cityscapes. "The paintings show the movement of time and light," he says. "And I always go back to the beach. I just found this great blank canvas in the beach."

POW 2 - gouache. 9" x 12", 1971

During the '70s, Jarnow also got his big break doing the shorts for public television. "That allowed me to get an education," he says.  

Here's one from 3-2-1 Contact you may remember:

Eventually, he created the experimental short film "Cubits":

Along with a series of "Splits," where he'd use snapshots and Xeroxes to create paintings with a perpetual, paneled feel:

One Hour Photo--gouache on Xerox transfer, 10" x 25", 1982

In 2009, Al's filmmaking got a boost when soul-revival label The Numero Group released Celestial Navigations. a DVD compilation of Jarnow's early work for public TV along with some of his more experimental short films. By then though, Jarnow had moved on to software and "beach sculptures." Using found beach materials, the sculptures reflect a primitive beauty that serve as a direct contrast to the patterns, games, puzzles and museum kiosks which inhabited his simultaneous focus on software. Though to Jarnow, this is all just part of his evolution. Most recently, he returned to film to work on a video with OK Go that's now destined for Sesame Street.

"I can't say why I've made a living at this while other artists haven't been able to," he says. "If I may be immodest, it's talent. But it's also continuous exploration. I tried writing for a bit, but that's best left to my son [the Brooklyn-based Jesse Jarnow]. There was a time when I thought I'd have to drive a cab, but I don't think I'd like that very much. I've been lucky that I've been able to make a living doing art, but I'd do art either way." 

Keep in tune with all of the mind-blowing work Jarnow continues to produce right here.

 --Layla Schlack