The things you see in Chelsea

Over the course of two relatively recent visits, some highlights:
Reflecting pools under subway gratings.
Tiny mushrooms growing out of a tree on 22nd Street. (Lovely to see, but probably bad news for the tree.)
Some lovely Robert Morris felt pieces at Sonnabend, and some lovely ladies looking at a Joan Mitchell painting.












I've never felt much for Joan Mitchell -- all those later American abstraction heroes kind of blend together for me the same way classic rock radio filler does. I would never seek them out the same way I would never intentionally listen to Steve Miller Band. But this visit to Cheim and Reid I rather liked these paintings. Maybe it was the two ladies sharing the gallery with me. Maybe it was because I've been thinking about paintings of plants. Maybe it was just the way suddenly you hear Tiny Dancer on a car radio and find yourself singing along so happy to hear it again. And you know every word.

Or maybe Joan Mitchell is just like Aerosmith, who I do truly adore.

My own private landfill

As many of you know, I've been collecting styrofoam from my friends and neighbors for a few months now. I could rhapsodize about the material forever, but right now I want to focus more on the accumulation. It's taking up quite a bit of real estate in my studio. It's pretty amazing that a few posts to a few yahoo lists can generate this much styrofoam.



I've always had a very local and personal response to the problem of consumer waste. Our apartment gets perilously close to being a collier mansion, not because I'm such a hoarder -- I don't really want the stuff, or picture a future for it -- but because I can't bear to add it to a landfill, or worse, send it off floating on a barge forever.

Now I read that (as usual) I've simply been a little ahead of the trend. This week's NY Times reports that as the demand for materials to recycle falls, cities and people are being forced to store their own paper, bags, bottles &c.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/08/business/08recycle.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

No time to blog...

...because of the baby.

Walking around the Lower East Side

fence on median park

water tower shadow projected onto blank billboard

There was a lot to see and a lot to forget. Mary Heilman's 1970s doors were exciting, as was the shadow of a water tower on a blank billboard.

Elizabeth Peyton made me want to vomit. Everyone who knows me know I have my impolitic moments, usually at parties, but sometimes in the ether. This may be one of them, but I doubt she's one of my readers. Way back when I was moved by the Kurt Cobain show. It seemed to capture the smallness of being a fan. Also I was 24 and a bereft Nirvana fan myself. But by now smallness doesn't even begin to describe the scope of this project. Which honestly seems to be just to make a marketable brand, and to excuse it by piggybacking on other marketable brands.

Art should be more.

But it was a gorgeous day.

President Barack Obama

Fall in New York

Some balcony Sukkahs in Satmar Williamsburg

Brooklyn Botanic Garden drain

Autumn in New York, both above and below. Happy Sukkot everyone!

Foreword

The pedestrian sidewalk on the Manhattan Bridge, seen from the Q

It seems it's not conventional to introduce, but to dive right in seems too abrupt. I'll try to avoid over-explication, so this doesn't end up reading like the pilot of a long-running series. But if I wasn't chatty, I wouldn't be starting a blog.

So. This is an open sketchbook. It's about sidewalks, and things on the sidewalk. About cities -- especially New York City -- and public space and personal space and how it's not easy being green. It's not an eco-art blog, but rather an art blog with urban and eco leanings.

Or at least that's what I think it is. What it really is, dear reader, we will have to wait and see.