Your Daily Insight // As Told By: Duke Ellington

Critics have their purposes, and they're supposed to do what they do, but sometimes they get a little carried away with what they think someone should have done, rather than concerning themselves with what they did.

Call For Entries // NYCDOT's Barrier Beautification Program Wants Artists to Add Some Color To City Streets

"Planes A-Way" by Almond Zigmond - 21st Williamsburg St W between Kent and Flushing Aves, Brooklyn - alll photos via nycstreets

While our streets could definitely stand to benefit from the rogue creative touch of a guerilla gardener like Steven Wheen, NYCDOT is also trying to add a little more color to some of the city's many swathes of asphault and concrete. 

In 2010, as part of its Urban Art intitative, NYCDOT launched the Barrier Beautification program in collaboration with volunteer organization New York Cares and Mayor’s Community Affairs Unit. The program commissions artists and designers to create murals for those ugly concrete barriers that often separate bike lanes from automobile traffic. The cost of all materials is covered, selected artists are also awarded a $2,000 honorarium for their work, and New York Cares volunteers assist the artists with their murals, which stay up for 11 months.

Want to give some New Yorkers a more colorful commute? Got an amazing mural idea in mind? If so, the open call deadline for Barrier Beautification proposals is February 24.

For inspiration, we've included some images of past Barrier Beautification murals after the jump. You can also check out more examples over on NYCDOT's Flickr archive and get all of the details in the program's application packet.

Tillary Street Barrier Art by Chris Beck and Tanya Albrightsen-Frable - Tillary Street north of Adams Street, Brooklyn

"Roots/Routes" by Julia Whitney Barnes - West 155th St between Edgecombe Ave and Harlem River Dr, Manhattan

"Reflecting Pond" by Corinne Ulmann - 97th and Centreville Streets, Queens

"Face to Face" by Debra Hampton - Furman St between Joralemon and Montague Sts, Brooklyn

"Antimacassars" by Jennifer Cecere - FDR Service Drive North between 35th and 37th Sts, Manhattan-- John Ruscher

Exclusive // Michelle Matson: Bravo Reality Star and Star Artist

If you (like some of us) were addicted to the second season of Bravo TV's art reality show, "Work of Art: The Next Great Artist" then you know Michelle Matson is a household name. For all those skeptics out there, don't let the phrase "reality star" turn you off. Matson--as well as the rest of her cast mates--are anything but the watered-down version of "real" artists you might expect to find on a reality TV show. For starters, Matson's preoccupation with motifs like bodily fluids (let your imagination run wild here) aren't exactly Bravo's typical mainstream fare. 

While Matson may not have made it to the final round, her singular point of view and dedication to craftsmanship make her something of a visionary. We caught up with her to talk about her latest show, "Cactus Milk," which opened last Friday at Youth Group Gallery in Brooklyn. 

3W's Perrin Drumm: Tell me a bit about "Cactus Milk." How did you choose the title?

Michelle Matson: There is latex sap within cacti--if you wound a cactus it oozes out of the plant. This sap is commonly called "cactus milk." It's not edible. It can actually cause skin irritation and blindness in its raw form. I like that the cactus is this armored, phallic thing, and that it produces latex when you hurt it. When I think of latex I immediately think of condoms. I like that the cactus is a vessel for latex, some sort of thorny vessel for protected sex. Maybe that doesn't make any sense at all, but somehow it makes sense to me! This exhibition is a sort of visual free-association on that idea featuring large0scale installation, sculpture and painting. 

PD: In general, your work seems to be the meeting point between the playful and the grotesque. Have you always worked in this vein, or have you seen your choices change as your style has evolved?

MM: I believe that it is impossible to separate a person from the art they make, and my personality is very evident in my work. I've made a concerted effort to allow myself to delve more deeply into my subconscious. I've stopped trying to censor or edit ideas that lie on the darker side.

PD: Materials are also a huge part of your work. When I look at your work, the materials are the primary focus, subject matter is second. How did you come to sculpt with paper? What is it about paper that you prefer over more traditional sculpture materials?

MM: I began to work with paper because of financial necessity and I continue to work with it because of its versatility and immediacy. For me it's like drawing in 3D. The works in this show are primarily made of paper but I have been experimenting with incorporating other materials; dried latex paint, foam, plaster, quail eggs, disco balls, needles, dead plants, synthetic hair...

Right now, I especially like working with synthetic hair. I love how temporary and delicate paper can be. There is inevitably going to be decay and destruction happening in my pieces the longer they exist in this world. Because of that, I maintain high quality photo archives of each piece so I can keep pristine reproductions of each sculpture. 

PD: How did you feel the opening of "Cactus Milk" went?

MM: The opening reception was incredible. It was packed wall to wall with friendly faces. There was only one art casualty. One of the sculptures got danced into and the plexi vitrine broke, but that's an easy fix. The exhibition will be open by appointment until February 10th--come check it out!  

PD: Lastly, are there any lessons you've learned from the whole Bravo TV experience?

MM: Absolutely. We are all capable of greatness, more capable then any of us can even fathom. We just have to give ourselves the space, time and permission to let it happen.

We'll toast to that.

For a "Cactus Milk" viewing appointment, call (423) 802-8831

-- Perrin Drumm

Your Daily Insight // As Told By: David Foster Wallace

It’s of some interest that the lively arts of the milennial U.S.A. treat anhedonia and internal emptiness as hip and cool. It’s maybe the vestiges of the Romantic Weltschmerz, which means world-weariness or hip ennui. Maybe it’s the fact that most of the arts here are produced by world-weary and sophisticated older people and then consumed by younger people who not only consume art but study it for clues on how to be cool, hip–and keep in mind that, for kids and younger people, to be hip and cool is the same as to be admired and accepted and included and so Unalone. Forget so-called peer-pressure. It’s more like peer-hunger. No? We enter a spiritual puberty where we snap to the fact that the great transcendent horror is loneliness, excluded encagement in the self.

Mail Call // Revisit The Past with February's Month of Letters Challenge

Remember pen pals? Those far-off friends that many of us wrote to when we were somewhere between 8 and 12 years old? Coming home to hand-addressed letters, such simple excitement.

Inspired by taking a vacation from the internet last Fall, author and puppeteer Mary Robinette Kowal is bringing that feeling back and challenging others to do the same:

The Month of Letters Challenge asks that you mail at least one thing for every day the postal service operates in the month of February. Write to your grandma-ma, your local newspaper, whoever you feel (replying to letters counts too, folks.) Kowal already has some people in mind to write to.

"I started mailed correspondence with some folks when I took a month off the internet back in September, and we've continued to exchange letters," she tells us. "I'll keep writing to them during February but also add people that I really should be in better touch with, like my nieces and nephew. I'm also planning on writing some fan mail to some favorite authors. Then, of course, there's the plan  to write back to everyone who writes to me."

Mary Robinette Kowal (C) 2010 Annaliese MoyerFor those of you with a bit of a thing for stationery (cough cough) or luxury writing utensils (clearing throat), this is your chance to indulge. Kowal gave us a few words of wisdom in that department as well: "I've recently returned to fountain pens for letter-writing. I use a FaberCastell fine point sepia for signing books, but it doesn't feel as nice on the page as a fountain pen," she says. "I am a sucker for papers, and it's hard to narrow it down. Currently, I'm using a classic laid in off-white, which is simple and clean. I actually prefer just a straight up cold-pressed 100 percent cotton but it is really hard to find stationery at all these days."

And if you move quickly, you can score some pretty snazzy Year of the Dragon stamps. Personally, we're  excited to bust out our recycled paper and colorful pens and catch up with some old friends, sans tagged photos and 85-character Tweets.

--Layla Schlack

Q&A // Artist Kate Neckel Conquers The Walls of NYC's Ace Hotel

Photo by Charlie Gross

Admittedly, we were a tad jealous when we learned of artist Kate Neckel and her being commissioned by NYC's Ace Hotel to literally draw all over one of the famed hotel's rooms. Flashbacks of parental scoldings shooting through our minds--the inevitable consequences of running through the house, taking creative license with our crayons and the living room wall. Our envy of Neckel only deepened when she was invited back to do it all over again, her drawings now becoming a permanent feature of the hotel.

We recently caught up with Neckel to talk inspiration (both musical and culinary) and the simple pleasures of taking a marker to a wall.

3W's Perrin Drumm: This is your second time drawing on the walls of the Ace Hotel. Did you have different goals this time around? 

Kate Neckel: When I worked on the first room I had notebooks filled with all things Ace: Stumptown coffee, Liberty Hall, every detail of the lobby, the Breslin--and I filled the wall from top to bottom. This time around, I wanted the piece to just flow like a conversation. I started in the middle of the wall because it felt right, and then I just hung out and moved from place to place on the wall.

PD: Do you have the wall worked out ahead of time? As in sketches you bring with you? Or is everything drawn spur of the moment?

KN: I checked into the hotel with some pretty vague sketches and ideas; mostly about music and patterns. I wanted this wall to just grow based on what happened during the weekend or things I found in the room. 

PD: From the photos it looks like it was mighty fun. Did anyone else get to partake with you?

KN: Patrick Phillips from the band Honduras dropped by with his girlfriend Emilie Laperriere. We ordered food from the Breslin, Pat played his guitar and I drew on the walls. Jác stopped on Sunday night and played a few songs (accordion, horn, guitar--oh yeah) while I put the finishing touches on the wall. Other friends included Jenna Menard, Michelle Buswell, Frederique Carme, and of course Tom, Brec and Maeve, my husband and kids, the most inspiring folks I know.

Hit the jump for photos of the process and more of our dialogue with Neckel.

PD: Your bio says "music makes my pen move around." What music soundtracked the drawing?

KN: We were taking requests. The Strokes, Tom Petty, Ben Kweller, Pavement, St. Vincent, The Rolling Stones Pandora station. Patrick Phillips played acoustic guitar, and, of course, Jác--quite a variety pack.

PD: What's going on in the pictures on your site of you drawing on people? (Photo below) Did you just run out of wall space?

KN: I've been drawing on people longer than walls. [Though] I would be a mess with a tattoo gun.

PD: You have a Master's in Drawing and Painting. Did you have to "prove" you could draw realistically before you honed in on your own style?

KN: When I applied to MICA for grad school, my portfolio was filled with photography, paintings and a few drawings. Nothing realistic. The program was multidisciplinary and I spent a lot of time chopping up skateboard decks and making mistakes. I loved it. In undergrad, the foundation classes drove me crazy. Draw a sailboat, draw a bottle, draw your hand, shade a cone with the light coming in from the right. I wasn't a big fan but they were good for me. 

PD: What have you got going on for upcoming projects--professional or personal?

KN: I'm finishing up a mural at Hudson Studios and I've just started taking photos of Patrick and his bandmates. I'm not sure what the piece will be but I think there will be drawings based on the photos and perhaps a video. I'm getting my drawings off the wall and onto sheets, fabrics and other cozy stuff. It's for an editorial spread in an Italian magazine...details to follow.

Meanwhile, check out a few shots of the Ace Hotel process, courtesy of Neckel:

Photo by Charlie Gross

Photo by Charlie Gross

Photo by Mark Andrew

-- Perrin Drumm

Your Daily Insight // As Told By: Sir Ken Robinson

My contention is that creativity now is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status.

Artist on Artist // Photographer Annie Collinge on Surrealist Nancy Fouts

All photos courtesy Annie CollingeFirstly, let's please take a moment to welcome our fabulous new writer to the 3rd Ward crew, Perrin Drumm. As you can see from her site, this is a woman with a resumé after our own heart. So with that, we bring you one of Drumm's first pieces:

Annie Collinge is a London-born, Brooklyn-based photographer whose work I fell head over heels in love with when discovering it last year via It's Nice That. If you visit Collinge's site you'll see one of the photos I was struck by--one that now hangs over my dining table and is actually far more vivid in person.

As it turned out, Annie and I were practically neighbors. In fact, she delivered the photo to me herself, arriving soaking wet after trekking through the rain from Williamsburg to Greenpoint. When she appeared on my doorstep, dripping and cold but smiling bright, I was convinced that this was a gifted, committed artist.

Recently, Annie emailed to tell me about her latest project: A Selby-esque photo tour through the home of surrealist Nancy Fouts. The images were so intriguing I required some backstory.

"I basically went to Nancy's house and photographed her, her art and her strange collections of things," Collinge told me. "She lives in an old vicarage in Camden Town, which is beautifully preserved and full of completely amazing artifacts.

"My friend, Sam Huntley, was making a little film about her work.  When he first went to her house he knew I would love it and suggested I come over and meet her--and as soon as I saw it knew it was right up my street. She has made and collected all these amazing things. She used to work making models for advertising. The giant scissors in the hall are from an old Silk Cut advert in the 1980's."

Though Collinge doesn't typically work this way, documenting other people's belongings, she noted that "the project fits into my usual work as I always seems to be drawn to people's relationship to objects."

Fouts' work is nothing if not object-oriented, though it's still difficult to describe. To paraphrase It's Nice That's acute take: "The work of Nancy Fouts smells like popcorn in a pool hall, sounds like the beating of butterfly wings and looks like something you might find in a wizard’s medicine cupboard. This brilliant artist can flip your expectations on their heads with her lookbook of visual puns both lovely and bizarre. A self proclaimed object hoarder, Fouts follows in the surrealist tradition of marrying unrelated items to turn the everyday into the uncanny. But it’s her knack for clean presentation which really helps these images pack a punch. Are we laughing? Are we cringing? Do we care?"

Meanwhile, take a moment to double-take on these:

See more images from this project on Annie's website and we highly recommend following her cheeky (and brilliant) blog.

-- Perrin Drumm

Call for Entries // The Tribeca Film Institute New Media Fund Supports Innovative Cross-Platform Storytelling

18 Days in Egypt, which launched this week on the one-year anniversary of the beginning of the Egyptian uprising, captures that historic moment throught an interactive collaboration that brings together citizen journalism and multimedia. This is the kind of innovative project that the Tribeca Film Institute is supporting with its newest program, the TFI New Media Fund.

"The ultimate goal of the New Media Fund is to push the boundaries of storytelling and take the audience beyond traditional screens," says 3rd Ward member Opeyemi Olukemi, who is part of TFI's Digital Initiatives team. 18 Days in Egypt was one of the first six projects funded through the program last year, along with others such as Map Your World, which encourages children to help improve their communities by mapping, tracking and sharing the changes that they are making. There's also an interactive online companion to the documentary film The Tillman Story.

"The Fund aims to support non-fictional, social issue media projects that engage audiences and challenge them to explore these stories in an innovative approach," Olukemi adds. Think you've got a project that fits those criteria? TFI will be accepting submissions for the fund through March 6, and this summer four to eight projects will be awarded between $50,000 and $100,000.

Olukemi recommends starting with an idea that inspires you. "I would advise each applicant to find an issue that is important to them—whether it be human engagement with wildlife (NFB's BEAR 71), black male identity in America (Question Bridge), or city life in dense spaces (NFB's Out My Window)—and think of how their community can explore it through a different fashion," she says. "Think beyond the film screen and start creating what you wish was being done!"

For more information, check out the TFI New Media Fund Wiki or get in touch at newmediafund[at]tribecafilminstitute.org

-- John Ruscher

Your Daily Insight // As Told By: Marshall McLuhan

As technology advances, it reverses the characteristics of every situation again and again. The age of automation is going to be the age of Do It Yourself.