JEFFREY TRANCHELL . . . ‘LINDA’
OPENING: SUN MARCH 19, 2017 / 6 – 8 PM
the show runs thru APRIL 16, 2017
ESSEX FLOWERS, 19 MONROE ST, LOWER EAST SIDE
read more: JEFFREY TRANCHELL, ‘LINDA’/ ESSEX FLOWERS
yes, let’s consider that strangely profound photo.
a hand holds . . a fuzzy-surfaced, yet specific . . blue.
a hand-cut triangle.
a couple of . . . ‘remarks’ !!
1. ‘LINDA’ !!!!!!
I find that a very strange, yet oddly resonant title for an art show.
wasn’t there a computer os named Linda, or was that . . Lisa ?
well, Jack . . sure enough, LINDA has a title claim – in the computer world.
LINDA . . “in computer science is a model of coordination & communication among several parallel processes operating upon objects stored in and retrieved from shared, virtual, associative memory”.
it was developed in 1986.
source: LINDA – wikipedia
and I would say without irony, those communicative qualities – do belong to JEFFREY TRANCHELL, as well.
and most likely are part of his show’s ‘unwritten’ agenda / concept.
1a. as well, Further the simplicity, beauty & irony of this show’s title . .
is explained without irony, right off the bat, in the gallery text on the show,
“Named in appreciation of the very helpful accountant/sales person who made the partial roll of Pacifico Blue carpet available . . ”
can I be the only one – to so dig that ?!!!!!
2. IS THAT A FLYING . . DORITO CHIP ? he’s holding up as the ‘totem’ of ‘LINDA’ ?
albeit, blue instead of orange ?
2a. or: IS IT A TRADITIONAL ‘FLYING GEESE’ – triangular quilt pattern / piece ?
so, I guess when JEFFREY TRANCHELL curated a one-day / ESSEX FLOWERS pop-up at the Casual Art Fair (Hester St. Fair / Lower East Side, NYC / SUN OCT 2, 2016) about 6 months back, and which featured the ‘snack’ shaped ceramics of RACHEL DOMM, and, 2 hand-repaired & hand-pieced vintage cribs quilts by NANCY SMITH (ok, aka myself !!),
he really was thinking about the concepts & shapes of our work, in ways – I didn’t realize at the time.
yeah, for sure !!
Rachel’s small ceramic snacks & cookies, which became decorative units in her clay transformations – did resemble . . quilt pattern ‘parts’ – which are . . very simple, cut-out basic shapes, yo !! !!
so, yeah.
bless his deep conceptual / visual soul, if that sweet & curious triangle of blue carpet he holds up, isn’t just considering the triangle, a profound, but common Dorito shape, but also, as it imparted in carpet material – it also seems to be referencing the gnarly world of . . ‘quilting’.
it’s also got a . . quelle femme ‘sensual’ side, but that’s – for someone else’s essay.
hey, if ‘snacks’ and ‘quilts’ aren’t . . models of social ‘communication’ – then, what are they ?????
RACHEL DOMM and JEFFREY TRANCHELL, at the ESSEX FLOWERS table, The Casual Art Fair, L>E.S., Oct 2, 2016.
background quilt by NANCY SMITH, RACHEL DOMM’S ceramic ‘treats’, on the table.
PHOTO: NANCY SMITH
NANCY SMITH – CREATIVELY RE-STORED vintage ‘101 DALMATIONS’ CRIB QUILT / CERAMIC ‘SNACKS’ RE-IMAGINED – BY RACHEL DOMM
PHOTO: ESSEX FLOWERS / JEFFREY TRANCHELL via Instagram
see: RACHEL DOMM / ESSEX FLOWERS, CURATED BY JEFFREY TRANCHELL – CASUAL ART FAIR / artlovers archive
see: NANCY SMITH / ESSEX FLOWERS, CURATED BY JEFFREY TRANCHELL – CASUAL ART FAIR / artlovers archive
~JEFFREY TRANCHELL, ‘LINDA’ . . ESSEX FLOWERS / OPENING TO-NITE |
Posted in The Bomb | By Nancy Smith | March 19th, 2017, 9:43am
ANTONE KONST & BRIDGET MULLEN: ‘MARCH, MEANDER’
OPENS SAT MARCH 18, 2017 / 6 – 9 PM
the show runs MARCH 19 thru MAY 7, 2017
HOMETOWN GALLERY, 1002 Metropolitan Ave #21, BROOKLYN
HRS: SAT-SUN / 12-6 PM & BY APPOINTMENT
read more: click on press release / ‘MARCH, MEANDER’ – HOMETOWN GALLERY
ANTONE KONST . . . ‘Night Rider’, 2017.
oil on canvas, 36 x 24 in.
BRIDGET MULLEN . . . ‘Ideal Strains’, 2016.
acrylic and spray paint on paper, 39 x 27 in.
IMAGES COURTESY: HOMETOWN GALLERY
~ANTONE KONST & BRIDGET MULLEN . . HOMETOWN, OPENING TO-NITE |
Posted in The Bomb | By Nancy Smith | March 18th, 2017, 8:51am
MAS PAZ . . . AQUA ES VIDA / WATER IS LIFE
2 x 5 in. STICKERS / 3 STICKERS for $5
ALL PROCEEDS GO TO: STANDING ROCK SOUIX TRIBE / sacredstonecamp.org
ORDER: MAS PAZ – BIG CARTEL STORE
~MAS PAZ . . AQUA ES VIDA / SACRED STONE CAMP |
Posted in The Bomb | By Nancy Smith | March 15th, 2017, 10:10am
TUNA FLAKE vs. SNOW FLAKE ?
DO BOTH !! / TAKE A WALK TO HONEY’S . . TO-NITE !!
TAKE A WALK ON THE SWEET SIDE – WIN / WIN !!
HONEY’S TUESDAY – MARCH 14, 2017 / 8PM – 11PM
93 SCOTT AVE., BUSHWICK, BROOKLYN
off the JEFFERSON L STOP
Come Enjoy Mead, Food & Music !!
FOOD: TAKOYAKI / OCTOPUS BALLS BY YOKO NIPS
MUSIC: LOST CHILDREN (DJ SET)
@honeysbrooklyn: “it’s going to be a blizzard of dancing bonito flakes over delicious #takoyaki balls made by YOKO of @hard_nips (Tues) at Honey’s !!
DJ set by LOST CHILDREN 8-11 PM
image via Instagram @honeysbrooklyn
check out: HARD NIPS – OFFICIAL BAND SITE
listen: HARD NIPS – SOUNDCLOUD
CHECK OUT: LOST CHILDREN – FB
~HONEY’S . . SWEET & FLAKY – MUSICAL TUESDAY !! |
Posted in The Bomb | By Nancy Smith | March 14th, 2017, 10:59am
ANDY CAHILL . . will be screening some of his Instagram Videos
to-nite: SUN MARCH 12, 2017 / 6 PM
as part of the . . closing party for the ‘CLAYTON SCHIFF / ANDY ONDERDONX’ SHOW.
SAFE GALLERY, 1004 Metropolitan Ave, Brooklyn
@andycahill: “I’m screening some of my Instagram videos @safegallerybiz as part of a closing party for the @claytopia675 + @onderdonxx show, 6 pm.
Deep cuts.”
image via Instagram @andycahill
~ANDY CAHILL . . video screening at SAFE GALLERY / to-nite |
Posted in The Bomb | By Nancy Smith | March 12th, 2017, 10:42am
CHRIS WATTS . .. has a solo show in Charlotte, NC at GALLERY TWENTY-TWO – opening tomorrow night.
CHRIS WATTS: ‘Blahk on Blahk on Blak’
OPENING RECEPTION: SAT MARCH 11, 2017
the show runs thru APRIL 8, 2017
GALLERY TWENTY-TWO. CHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA
here are a couple of early install shots:
the stretched base fabric is sheer, silk. or a polymer blend.
those are – the wooden stretcher bars, you see behind the surface.
that painting is quite large, it’s interesting to note the . . matte ? Black ? . . dull metallic walls, as in / not shiny.
chrome-like, if chrome – was ever painted black.
all the better . . to play – off.
ALL INSTALL IMAGES: COURTESY of the artist
I finally got to visit Chris Watts . . .
in his Greenpoint painting studio – a few weeks ago, just as the work was getting ready for this show.
there’s that large painting – on some kind of sheer nylon, or silk.
this is a shot of the painting’s top center, an empty space. at rest for . . this moment.
transparency is – like . . . a full-on color for Chris.
so is . . .
violence. the red is for spilt blood, he told me.
esp that of a black man dying before your eyes, real time – on the car seat, shot by a cop.
photographed by a dear one.
streaming live on Facebook.
it’s shocking.
blahk on blahk: stands for . . hard times.
well, this is not Turner’s landscape.
it is more internal.
it is introspection, thought. given voice thru brushwork.
it is the Zen / about targeted race violence, the social storms that still blow cold & harsh.
a harsh colonial legacy – that’s hard to untwist / a fragile social fabric twisting us all this way and that.
in ways that aren’t always so obvious, but that still call out – if you listen.
Chris was working on a smaller piece for the show, while he was talking to me.
I would say his work is equal parts driven by thought and rage, history and sadness, identity / as it is as much by painterly concerns: surface, or lack of / colored primary pigment – or lack of.
sheer texture vs. conventional opaque background.
gestural expression vs. a graphic or pictorial narrative. it’s not that it’s even fictional, as much as an emotional space. stormy.
tension, shimmery, metallic, dull, matte, shiny. flat, velvet, silk, brushstroke, fade, shades of ‘chrome’.
shades of darkness. shades of ancestors, shades of ghosts.
the different background fabrics / the fragile social fabric of our ‘background’.
the metaphors are there, they don’t have to be, but there they are.
flimsy. like the same communal social fabric, we all trample on – usually without much thought.
as if it were: banal.
coppery.
copper fabric, is so strange, isn’t it ? – seen out of its usual fashion / context.
Blhak on Blahk, is so strange – how I hear it out of context / in Amy Winehouse’s plaintive cry.
so strange how the black man’s ‘blues’ traveled . . to come right back at us: full-throated, thru a slip of a Brit gypsy girl.
such is the fragility, and many layered-ness . . of 21st C. life.
that I can see Chinese landscape painting, and hear Amy Winehouse – in a young painter giving voice to his troubled concerns, and opaque heritage.
that I can see chrome, in what is surely: matte.
and, end of the line, dark, brooding ‘metallic’ . . emotion.
the one small throw-back to his earlier, more narrative graphite drawings, is this faint transfer image of a person, a woman – on an unfinished layer of super fragile, gauze.
is it 1940s ancestor ghostly ‘reality’ ?
it reads like a haunting, and . . sad history.
CHRIS WATTS was born in North Carolina . . .
but grew up bi-coastal / via San Diego, California.
he says he’s a ‘Southerner’ at heart – it’s those deeply embedded roots / that seem to have simmered throughout his life, rather than any sunny Cali waves.
Now Brooklyn-based, with his painting studio just off Lorimer, deep towards Meeker, he is also currently an artist-in-residence at the LMCC / Lower Manhattan Cultural Councils Workspace Program, in downtown Manhattan, where he does his video projects.
view more of his work: links on left hand-side / I AM CHRIS WATTS – PORTFOLIO & LMCC WEBSITE
CHRIS WATTS – STUDIO PHOTOS: NANCY SMITH. SAT JAN 21, 2017
~CHRIS WATTS . . . CHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA / & . . . a few pix from his Brooklyn studio |
Posted in The Bomb | By Nancy Smith | March 10th, 2017, 12:53pm
‘CLAYTON SCHIFF / ANDY ONDERDONX’
this . . .
SAT MARCH 11 and SUNDAY MARCH 12, 2017 – are the last days . . . !!
HRS: NOON – 6 PM / BOTH DAYS
SAFE GALLERY, 1004 METROPOLITAN AVE, BROOKLYN
read more: ‘CLAYTON SCHIFF / ANDY ONDERDONX’ – SAFE GALLERY
CLAYTON SCHIFF . . .
CLAYTON SCHIFF . . .
ANDY ONDERDONX . . .
ANDY ONDERDONX . .
ALL IMAGES COURTESY: SAFE GALLERY
~CLAYTON SCHIFF / ANDY ONDERDONX . . SAFE GALLERY / last weekend |
Posted in The Bomb | By Nancy Smith | March 9th, 2017, 11:47am
‘INVITATIONAL EXHIBITION of VISUAL ARTS’ – incl. WALTER ROBINSON
curated by SOUHAD RAFEY
opens to the public today / THURS MARCH 9, 2017
and runs thru APRIL 9, 2017
AMERICAN ACADEMY of ARTS & LETTERS
633 WEST 155 St., NYC
HRS: THURS – SUN / 1-4 PM
more info & complete list of participants: 2017 INVITATIONAL EXHIBITION of VISUAL ARTS
WALTER ROBINSON, ‘No More’, 2015
image courtesy: AMERICAN ACADEMY of ARTS & LETTERS
Press release
~WALTER ROBINSON . . OPENS TODAY / THURS MARCH 9 |
Posted in The Bomb | By Nancy Smith | March 9th, 2017, 11:27am
CHRIS DORLAND . . .
is showing some highly charged, almost cinematic !!
new works at the SUPER DAKOTA BOOTH . . at NADA, this weekend.
he’s calling them . . ‘MACHINE VISION’.
SUPER, SUPREMELY, YES !!!!
SUPER DAKOTA . . is a contemporary art gallery in Brussels.
CHRIS DORLAND, 2017. UV ink on Alumacore.
image via Instagram @chris_dorland
@collecteurs: CHRIS DORLAND / Untitled (Silicon Violence), 2017 (UV ink on Alumacore)
COLLECTEURS . . . posted this great photo of Chris’s work – from NADA, on Day One !!
apparently, they had no doubt about it – from the get go.
you can just feel the excitement pulsating from the red hot image.
the big adrenaline . . rush.
COLLECTEURS . . are / from their IG profile:
“The most advanced collection management solution and state-of-the-art social platform connecting the art world and its collections” – “created by collectors for collectors”.
see: COLLECTEURS.COM
image via Instagram @collecteurs
I got to do a studio visit with Chris – just as he was preparing for the Nada Fair.
I felt the same – rush !!
CHRIS DORLAND, outside his studio, in what was once a very old movie theater.
inside . . the high tech world / of lightning fast . . images, that is CHRIS DORLAND.
see: CHRIS DORLAND – PORTFOLIO WEBSITE
PHOTOS: of CHRIS DORLAND & HIS STUDIO: NANCY SMITH. FEB 21, 2017.
~CHRIS DORLAND . . SUPER DAKOTA, NADA |
Posted in The Bomb | By Nancy Smith | March 3rd, 2017, 7:14pm
