Sure it looks like that naked guy is about to jump off the top of that building in Manhattan but no worries. He’s not some crazy New Yorker with tons of issues (shout out to DMX, nobody lights up TMZ like him). Instead, this guy is art.
Confusing and alarming I know, but (more…)
Photo Credit: AP Photo
Laborers looking to help rebuild the World Trade Center are rallying to urge the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which controls the property, to make some progress in the rebuilding efforts. (more…)
My governor is going through a lot right now. Governor Paterson has been in the news every night lately and there are plenty who want him out of office even though the majority of the people would like him to finish his term. As a New York City resident and former NY State Parks employee it’s distressing to know that the scandal ridden governor still has tough choices to make like reducing funding for parks to balance the budget.
It seems the part of the park I worked at will be closing along long with other whole parks and historic sites on April 1st. This doesn’t seem to be a joke though. (more…)
Photo Credit: “Cylone Nathan’s Wonder Wheel Astroland” by Josh Goldstein
Today is the birthday of artist and bodega enthusiast Josh Goldstein. Josh has been doing some big things lately including participating in a huge Times Square ad for Target, museum exhibitions with fellow artist Gigi Bio and some new online treats at etsy.com.bodegaNYC.
You can get you very own (more…)
Photo Credit: “Return To The Batcave” by Jake Dobkin
It was once called “The Lavender Lake”. Sounds like a nice place to go right? Nah, it wasn’t. The Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn, New York was so named by the locals because it was so polluted with lavender tinged industrial waste.
After decades of all kinds of industrial wastes from coal tar, oil refineries, tanneries and chemical plants, raw sewage, heavy metals the Gowanus Canal is now in a federal clean up program.
The federal Environmental Protection Agency has declared the site a Superfund. This is a program created in 1980 that gives the EPA the authority to clean up the most hazardous sites in the nation, force the local polluters to clean the site or face stiff penalties including paying the EPA 3 times their cost to clean up the site. It also means the site has a shot at a thorough and comprehensive clean up. If not pollution of the groundwater and in the area can leech into places that can still make people sick. (more…)
Far as I know here you’re in trouble. Where it says about 30% are unemployed. That’s why I’m working hard to get this surplus food here.
Some of you say to me ‘Well I’m not like you. I’m not a congressman. Uhhh I haven’t had education. Uhhh I haven’t got work…Uhhh…’ But you’re a human being.
And do you know what you’ve got?
You’ve got in your hand the power to use your vote and to use even those few cents you get from welfare to spend them only where you want to spend them. ~Adam Clayton Powell Jr.
Adam Clayton Powell Jr. was the congressman who represented Harlem between 1945 and 1971. He was also the pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, New York.
While in congress Powell headed the powerful Education and Labor Committee which managed to pass a record number of bills including public school desegregation bills and bills that made lynching a federal crime.
At a time when congress can’t seem to get anything progressive passed it is that much more of an impressive feat that Powell was able to accomplish what he did while the country was still so racially polarized. (more…)
There are so many layers to Gigi Bio. She’s a painter, illustrator, a real deal fashion designer by day and “Urban Reconstructionist” photographer by night.
Layers are also a major feature of Bio’s work. In this part of the interview Gigi Bio explains where some of those layers came from by explaining where she came from. In case you missed it here’s Part 1. (more…)
The first time Gigi Bio showed me her work she said, “See, this is what it looks like in my head”. So what’s in her head are photos from multiple views, images of New York City’s urban landscape, herself, and those she meets in her travels. Each image layered upon each other is unique like the snowflakes that come together to blanket her adopted city in the middle of winter.
The single image formed can show anything from hard angles in architecture softened in a layered, 
loose, curvilinear composition or a reflection of the ever shifting energy of urban life swirling around a singular figure simply waiting for a walk signal on a street corner.
I told her my first thoughts were of cubism, specifically Marcel Duchamp’s cubist inspired “Nude Descending A Staircase No. 2″ pictured left, which depicts a woman at multiple moments while in motion through still images, abstract lines and planes presented all as one image. Gigi shut down that label with the quickness!
I set out to find out what the stuff in Gigi’s head is, how it got there and what she intends to do with it next. Oh yeah, and why she doesn’t want to be called a cubist! (more…)
