Topic: Around Town
Posted by: Josh
After a wet, blustery Saturday, it was a pleasure to step out into the crisp, clear air on Sunday for the second half of the Annual Gowanus Artists Studio Tour (AGAST) (see my account of day one below). This time I was joined by my wife Jenny, and our first stop was the group show at location #23, on 9th St. between the Gowanus Canal and 2nd Avenue. In this maze of a building, which one viewer described as first-person-shooter-like, were over a dozen studios, as well as work collected from artists showing at different locations, making #23 AGAST's Magical Mystery Tour. It was also at #23 that we bumped into my friend Daniel — my companion on day one — and his fiance Sally, the two of whom joined us for the rest of our ramble through Gowanusy goodness.
I couldn't possibly do justice to all of the artists at #23, but I'd like to mention as many as I can.
![](http://hometown.aol.com/_ht_a/groganpaintings/gallery/smokinggun.gif)
The "assembled worlds" of Joshua Marks were another highlight. Constructed of photographs and figurines in tiny lighted boxes, they feel like windows onto a strange alternate world. In contrast to these jewelbox creations was what Marks called "My Albuquerque," a vast plateau of cracked earth punctuated by small slices of suburbia — model houses, plastic grass — under plastic domes. He declared that he would sell it at cost to anyone who had a place to put it, but at approximately 20 feet square, this horizontal work is likely to stay put for a while.
Olivia Valentine takes photographs of Avon perfume bottles that she collects, as well as large prints of photographs of her grandmother's old porcelain figurines, and others she collected herself, to surprisingly creepy effect. Julia Simon's entertaining horror-show included a big, campy Count-like vampire mounted on the wall, with fangs that dispensed vodka-spiked cranberry juice. (In a subsequent email, I was informed that he has since been dubbed "Count Drunkula," and that the artist's boyfriend, Erik Burns, helped out in the creation of the drink-dispensing demon.)
The dark emotion was palpable in Jessica Brommer's paintings of distorted faces and ghostly montages, and in her wall-mounted sculptures of dessicated pelicans. Kimi Weart's drawings were also unsettling, with images of animals retaking the human world. In one large piece, dear have taken over a rural parking lot, fighting and standing about in far greater numbers than the station wagons scattered about. In another, a wolf seems to vomit some kind of white glitter. Jim McGrath's fine paintings of giant worms against backgrounds of half-hidden words on Hiroshima and other subjects were similarly eerie. Conceptual artist and sculptor Saul Melman's gallery was largely filled by two big mobiles of tangled cardboard strips, but what drew people's attention was a cake encrusted with dust and grime. (Update: The artist has explained to me that the cake is in fact covered with dust from September 11, 2001, and was recently included in a group show of art relating to 9/11. The work now strikes me as an apt illustration for what that period felt like: the horror of 9/11 making us choke on the good times of the late 1990s.)
![](http://www.artincontext.org/images/ACB/0000/ACB0002D.jpg)
Other artists included Cynthia Winings, Annie Leist, Monique Davidson (who made blankets and clothes for babies), Katie Padden, Linda Tharp and Francis Sills.
Up on 3rd Ave. between 6th and 7th streets, we came to #24 on the tour — home of Third Avenue Clay — where we entered a second-floor gallery rich with incense and reggae sounds. The space was shared by Areta Buk and Abbyssinian Carto. Abbyssinian was the fellow with the dreadlocks, and his intricate paintings of hands and symbols that made me think of the Mithali paintings of northern India. Buk's paintings were complex and precise. The rest of the building was taken up with the pottery of Orla Dunstan and Adrienne Yurick and the whimsical ceramic sculpture of Geri Gventer.
Moving over to 4th Ave., we were struck by all the new construction: signs of the changes afoot now that 4th Ave. has been rezoned for high-density residential development. It's still a wasteland for foot travel, with its gas stations and vast taxi dispatchery. There was also, deep inside one of the inscrutable enclosures along the Gowanus, what looked like a pigeon coop. I can only hope it was not someone's food source.
On 2nd Street we came to #25, our first home of the day, where we saw the flower paintings (and extensive tie collection) of Bill Thibodeau in his densely packed studio. Buried in a corner was a sort of cartoony Madonna and Child.
From there we crossed to 5th Ave., and suddenly we were well beyond the Gowanus zone and into the gentrified realm of Park Slope. On the top floor of an elegant home on Carrol St. (#26), we saw the drawings and paintings of Elizabeth Reagh. My friend Sally was particularly impressed with her sketches of her baby (now an older boy, shown in a later drawing slumping miserably in his chair), while I enjoyed her Brooklyn landscapes, particularly one with a vivid orange sky. In the background we could hear her dryer going. I also enjoyed her homemade chocolate-chip cookies.
![](http://www.art-works.ca/myrna-dancingtorso.jpg)
The next studio, Gallery 718 (#10), was the only one housed in a proper storefront, on busy 5th Ave., and
![](http://www.wooloo.org/new/art/250-7325.jpg)
By this time I could stand it no longer. We had notions of taking some other route, but I insisted that we go straight to #9, the studio of Elyse Taylor, who was and remains my favorite artist on the Gowanus Tour. Climbing up the stairs to her studio, I was delighted to see again her pink neon RETRO sign, and then to turn a corner and find myself face to face with her extraordinary multipanel work "Growing," which had indeed grown since I last saw it. Taylor's imagination seems bottomless as she produces panel after panel of witty, precisely executed additions to this fascinating work. She was also showing a wide variety of paintings and drawings that shifted style and genre yet all somehow had the Taylor touch.
There is something about Elyse Taylor's work that makes people smile,
![](http://taylorgrowing.tripod.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/eldora_90kb.jpg)
Another thing I love about Elyse Taylor is that she sells art for cheap. I don't have the sort of income one needs to be a serious collector of art, but at this point I have six original Taylors, which cost me a grand total of $105.
![](http://taylorgrowing.tripod.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/communewithcrop.jpg)
In any case, I urge you to visit Ms. Taylor and not wait until next year's AGAST to do it. She's a very nice woman, and I would say that her personality is as good as her art, but it's not: the world has lots of nice people but very few artists this interesting. Give her a call and go. She'll be happy to see you, and you'll be happy to see her.
The sun was low in the sky by the time we left Taylor's studio, and it was clear that I was going to
![](http://www.jenniferbevill.com/albums/album03/art_for_website_nov17_023.thumb.jpg)
In the next room over, we found the installation work of Kenan Juska, who collects the fabulous junk to be found in New York — abandoned cassette tapes, matchbooks, advertisements, cans, electronic bits and pieces — and assembles it into compelling collages. I was reminded of something I realized while exploring the art scene in Korea: New York has really great junk. This kind of scrap art is something we simply never saw in Korea, probably because they've got a lot fewer scraps lying around than we do, having been bombed to smithereens some 50 years back. And then there's Italy, which had such exquisite junk buried about the place that it served to launch an entire cultural rebirth. I suppose my point is that the quality of the local junk has perhaps an underrated influence on a region's art.
Another unusual studio was that of stained-glass artist Ernest Porcelli, where you could see stained glass in every phase of its development, from the numbered sketches that show where each pane will go, to the raw glass in various colors and textures, to pieces that have begun to be laid out, to finished works with the seams filled in.
![](http://www.elizabethoreilly.com/images/SM_GowansExprswyByNight.jpg)
Carla Roley showed elegant photographs of Vietnam and the Western United States. I was charmed by Joelle Shallon's colorful abstract paintings in unusual shapes. Other artists included Robin Feld, Leslie Kushner, Marion Lerner-Levine and Margaret Neill.
![](http://www.melaniefischer.com/artpics/sheila.jpg)
Tucked into a corner, in a room painted a bright pastel pumpkin, were the Hindu-inspired collages of yoga teacher Esther Jyoti Larson. I also greatly enjoyed the sculptures and photographs of Jim Gratson, who constructed Chinese characters out of wood blocks and whose photos included pictures of a bundled-up kid half-buried in snow as he makes snow angels and another series of a little girl under water in a swimming pool.
Also unduly impressed by my notebook was Janice Everett, another charming English lady who did mostly design-oriented drawings in black and white (and who I happen to find totally hot, even though she's probably 20 years my senior). "Are you press?" she asked me. "You look very official."
![](https://www.angelfire.com/jazz/thetraveler/images/bush.jpg)
My apologies to the artists I've failed to mention, and those whose studios I failed to see (#11, #12 and #13). And to all the artists, thanks for opening up your studios and sharing your work, and for doing the work in the first place. See you next year!
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