Brooklyn Artists Gym presents
Rockers & Posers
BAG Gallery
May 22 – June 5
Opening Reception: May 31, 6:00-9:00pm
168 7th Street, 3rd Floor, Brooklyn, NY 11215

The Rockers & Posers show features contemporary artists focusing their talent on portraits.

Represented in this show are the hated and the beloved. The dead and the living. The heroic and the unassuming. They all come together to speak to us the viewer. They stare at us head on. They passively look at their feet. There are also a group of tough broads, women who inspire us by their actions and their presence. All inspired the artists to interpret their essence.

Each artist was inspired in unique ways, by big acts of heroism and small deeds of kindness. They search for the meaning in a gaze. They capture a moment in time, one facet of their subject’s personality.

The artists in the Rockers & Posers show work to reveal the true inner life behind the everyday facade. They pay homage to the past and celebrate the future.

Participating artists: Bill Ades, Mary Ann Aitken, Eric Alugas, Arielle Angel, Gennadi Barbush, Brett Beyer, Christopher Boswell, Jordan Buschur, Nan Carey, Nat Castañeda, Fat Che, Head Clausnitzer, Caitlin Clifford, Erin Courtney, Lauren Denitzio, Michael Dotson, Rachael Gardner, Carey Garris, Basem Hassan, Spring Hofeldt, Hokuto Ichikawa, Nancy Johnson, Robin Kappy, Heather Kelly, Theodore Kersten, Richard Kessler, Aaron Krach, Erika Kuciw, Luiza Kurzyna, Naomi Leibowitz, Diana Leidel, Jack Lovell, Jennifer Lui, Paul Meinel, Rick Midler, Patricia Paludanus, Celeste Rapone, Geoffrey Raymond, Baseem Rayyes, Julia Rice, Jenn Romaniszak, Marshall Sponder, Greg Stephens, Mare Vaccaro, Lara Wechsler, Sheila White, Heidi Yockey and Grace Yung Ting Teng.

Curator: Michele Jaslow
Gallery Assistant: Spring Hofeldt

Saturday was lovely, so I took a stroll with the bf over to Red Hook to check out the spring show at BWAC. A few artists caught my eye:

Cruelty to Animals by Imelda Fagin

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Citizen by Russell Mehlman

.The Fox and The Marshmallows by Kristiana Pärn

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The Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition presents
Spring ahead
BWAC Spring Art Show XVI
499 Van Brunt Street, Red Hook, Brooklyn
May 10 – June 15, weekends 1 – 6 PM

• http://www.bwac.org

K: Hope you’re enjoying a fine prime numbered birthday!

“Even those of us who revere the work of Robert Rauschenberg have to admit that his mad esthetic output, while jovial and fearless, borders on being suicidal and squandering and can lead to art that peters out, turns theatrical or becomes formulaic . . . Rauschenberg is so convinced that all things in the world are equal that the work itself often equals out and gets slushy in the mind. He is a sort of artistic suicide bomber: a true believer who is unafraid to have his work look cruddy.” – Jerry Saltz

• http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/features/saltz/saltz1-11-06.asp

= = = Added Jan 11, 2010 = = =

“Every gay man comes out eventually – even if it only happens when he dies. Writing an obituary may be the first chance to tell the truth about a gay man’s life, but sadly this is not always the case. Even people who were out and proud can find themselves pushed back in the closet following their death. Lovers are often airbrushed out of the picture, in a way that would never happen with someone’s husband or wife.” – Richard Smith

• http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/artblog/2008/may/23/letsnotassigngayartiststo

Happy 51st.

Falls the Shadow
Collage, watercolor and ink on paper

Page from a mixed media book illustrating re-sequenced excerpts of various poems by T.S. Eliot.

From “The Hollow Men”:

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow

From “Ash Wednesday”:

Here are the years that walk between, bearing
Away the fiddles and the flutes, restoring
One who moves in the time between sleep and waking…

Redeem the time, redeem the dream
The token of the word unheard, unspoken

Till the wind shake a thousand whispers from the yew

And after this our exile