November 2008 Archives

Happy Monday Morning collectors. 20x200 artist Todd St. John will be showing new work at 222Gallery in Philadelphia. The show will open November 7 and run through December 5.

222gallery Philadelphia presents a selection of new works by artist, designer, and filmmaker Todd St. John.

The show will be comprised of works on paper and wooden sculptural work that St. John has been developing over the past 6 years. The work combines elements of industrial design with sign-based and abstract forms. Much of the work contrasts the representation of similar forms in flattened and dimensional space. Another section of the show is devoted to animated shorts and some of the handmade characters and sets created for them.

Read the full press release here.
Also check out this interview with Todd by Meg Wells on Flux.

Below is a still from Todd's video Circle Squared: A Tale of Giving

Watch it here.

222gallery Philadelphia
222 Vine St.
Philadelphia, PA
Opening reception November 7th 6-9pm

Todd's 20x200 edition print;
Untitled (Black Blocks)
Todd's site

Totally Historic Election Day greetings, my collector friends. How exciting is today? SO freakin' exciting! Photographer, patriot, activist and all around awesome guy Michael David Murphy suggested this image to us a while back, when there was more hope than certainty. I'm glad we went the hope route, because it's the perfect edition with which to commemorate this momentous day.

Super Rally, So Help Me is one of my favorite images from Michael's amazing and inspiring work done during the presidential campaign. His exhibition, So Help Me, is on view at Opal Gallery in at Atlanta, and online too.

The gallery is hosting an election night party and it looks like there will be cause to celebrate. I've got my fingers crossed that the ebullient mood of the image will be turned up to 11 tonight, at Opal Gallery and all across the country.

It's not time to pop the cork just yet though! There are ballots to be cast and returns to be tallied. Speaking of casting ballots, have you cast yours yet? Be a part of history — get out and...

VOTE!

Triumphant Wednesday greetings collectors! Oh what a night last night was, wouldn't you say? Really incredible. People were whooping and hollering in the streets into the wee hours and my various online haunts were percolating with excitement and relief.

All the electricity in the air seems well expressed by Brooklyn-based artist Marcie Paper's exuberant edition Untitled 76. It's not just its energy and the ways in which it's an excellent, albeit slightly off-kilter, pairing with yesterday's Super Rally photograph by MDM. It's also because Marcie's work is informed and inspired by the present moment, memory and personal experience. The contemplation of memory — its influence on us, and ours on it — seems a worthy endeavor during this most memorable and momentous of times. Marcie writes:

How much of our long-term memory is a sum of small insignificant events? Is this whole greater then the sum of its parts? How do short and long term memory influence each other...When do our daily experiences transform into our recollections of the past? And ultimately, what is the impact of memory on our concept of our selves and our placement within the world?

My own memory of last night is proving to be shaped by the mundane. Exhausted from my travels, which only allowed me a few fitful hours of sleep before heading into a hectic day at the studio, I was useless by the day's end. I headed home and ensconced myself on the couch, with Ollie at my feet and my laptop on my lap. An evening of home alone channel-surfing might seem an ignoble commemoration of the night's historic events, but in reality I wasn't alone at all. It was an experience shared virtually, via Facebook, Twitter, IM and text messages. A late night chat session with a West Coast pal, a fellow dog lover, went like this:

Jen Bekman: PRESIDENT OBAMA
Not THAT Sarah: YESSSSSS!!!!!!
JB: Yes.
NTS: i was just clicking over to read your post :)
JB :D
NTS: i like the photo more now :)
JB: I'm so happy.
JB: Hah
NTS: i was too nervous to love it this afternoon!
JB: HAH.That's funny. We were cocky to choose it, but there you go.
NTS: i was glad you did
NTS which coast are you on?
JB: I am back in NY already
NTS: are people in your hood loud and happy?
JB: yes they are
NTS: nice
JB: Cheering in the streets and horns honking etc
JB: It's super
NTS: so SO great. i'm all weepy
JB: I am excited, it's really amazing, but it hasn't really hit me yet.
NTS: i don't know why, but it's nice to like the first family
JB: totally
NTS: btw, michelle and barack told the girls they'd get a dog after the election
NTS: whichever way it goes
JB: :D
NTS: so we'll have a first puppy :)

Barack and Michelle: I'll send you the 20x200 print of your choice, just so long as you promise me that the nation's First Puppy comes from your local SPCA. I suggest you do your window-shopping on Petfinder, but forewarned is forearmed — it's bound to make you teary.

Untitled (Nymphenburg) by Summer 2007 Hey, Hot Shot! winner Gregory Krum

Hey, all you bright and ambitious photographers! Next Tuesday, November 11th, 2008 is the last day to upload your photographs for our panelists! Don't forget: each winning photographer of the Second Edition of Hey, Hot Shot! 2008 will be awarded a $500 honorarium!

Check the Hey, Hot Shot! blog for daily contender updates!

Hey, Hot Shot! website

Image from Birthe Piontek's Sub Rosa series

Congratulations to Birthe Piontek! Birthe will be opening a solo show at Gallery Kominek in Berlin today. The romantic series, Sub Rosa will remain on view through December 13th.

From the press release:

Sub Rosa reminds us of a time, a stage in one's life which could not have been more intimate, and nevertheless exists as a romanticized blur in our mind today. No period in life is so comprehensively enriched with emotions, frustration and high expectations as the stage between our youth and adulthood. Adolescence, the loss of prolonged innocence and the desire to belong and to be different at the same time, seems to be an unconquerable obstacle in the journey of discovering our identity...

Gallery Kominek has also published a book of the exhibition available here.

Birthe's gallery images on JenBekman.com
Birthe's edition print: Untitled
Birthe's website

Image from Nina Berman's Homeland series

Hello Collectors! Those of you lucky enough to live in NYC should swing on by the gallery this evening to hear documentary photographer extraordinaire Nina Berman talk about her current exhibition and sign copies of Homeland, her newest monograph published by Trolley Books. Nina will be at the gallery Saturday, November 8th, from 5pm-7pm.

Image from Nina Berman's Homeland series

Jen Bekman Gallery
6 Spring Street
(between Elizabeth + Bowery)
New York City 10012

Nina's 20x200 editions:
9-11-02
G.I. Goat

Nina's portfolio on JenBekman.com

Collocation No. 7 (BLOOD), 2008

Hey, Hot Shot! winner and 20x200 superstar, Mickey Smith will be opening her first New York solo exhibition, You People, this Friday, November 14th at Invisible-Exports in the Lower East Side. The opening reception will be from 6-8pm.

Mickey Smith is a cultural archeologist and You People is her reclamation project. The books and bound periodicals she photographs are a fossil record the 20th century unknowingly left behind. In their own time, these periodicals represented to their readers a concrete and tangible common culture — each reader knowing that there are thousands, perhaps millions, of people around the country reading the very same things — unifying communities of subscribers around shared interests, shared standards and shared identities. But looking at them past their expirations dates has the opposite effect: the publications seem insufficient, the audience for them a universe of disparate and disunited lives, only loosely bound. They become something else, the meaning shifting from their content to the viewer’s own inherited history.

MICKEY SMITH | YOU PEOPLE
November 14 – December 21, 2008
Invisible-Exports
14A Orchard Street
Wednesday through Sunday, 11-6:30pm

Mickey's 20x200 edition prints:
WORD STUDY
MORE BOOKS
A 20x200 interview with Mickey
Mickey's site

Tuesday greetings my collector friends! I apologize in advance if my ramblings seem at all fantastical. I've been woozy all weekend (and then some!) with a low grade, yet vexingly persistent cold-flu thing. All this is rather inconveniently timed, I must say. With the deadline for Hey, Hot Shot! tonight (tonight!) at 8 p.m., preparations underway for a photo shoot tomorrow morning and editions to introduce to you, my lovelies, I really would prefer to be in top form. Alas, I am cotton-headed and perhaps not capable of producing my best prose ever. Apologies in advance if my lead is hard to follow.

It's a good thing today's editions are such lookers! Who needs coherence when you have such gorgeous shapes and colors to gaze upon? In One Ear and Out the Other and Cascade come to us from the talented Bay Area painter Jessica Snow. Jessica and I met briefly in person when we had our collectors' gathering at Crown Point back in July, but I'm still looking forward to visiting her sure to be colorful South San Francisco studio on a future visit.

As you might imagine, my job requires a whole lot of looking at art, in person, online, in original and reproduced forms. I'm on aesthetic overload a lot of the time, but there are always a handful of images that percolate at the top. Right now my A-list mental image playlist has a very West Coast flavor. In One Ear and Out the Other and Cascade are in heavy rotation alongside Chris Johanson's out of this world This is a Picture of Space from Paulson Press.

Also in the mix is Todd Hido's stunning Untitled 6426, which you can see in SF at Wirtz Gallery right now. A Road Divided opened recently, is on view through December 20th, and oh my God, you'd be crrrrazy to miss that show if there's any chance at all of seeing it.

Other top hits of the moment? Basically anything drawn by the fabulous Mr. Tucker Nichols and Tauba Auerbach's mesmerizing Yes and No and/or Yes or No, also printed at Paulson Press. (I kind of hate Jamie at Park Life for making me aware of its existence, but I suppose I'll thank him in the end.)

In case it's not obvious, it's awfully crowded up here in this noggin of mine, making the aforementioned cotton-headedness most unwelcome. As for Jessica's pieces, I encourage them to settle in and stay awhile. The saturated, multi-hued palette, always a draw for me, is taken a step further by Jessica's ever-so-slightly offbeat color combinations. The bestest, freshest part of these particular prints? They were done full bleed — printed right to the very edge, that is — making the impression that these colors and curves continue on through eternity.

Apparently they're not the only things going on for an eternity right now. How'd this email get so long? I blame the Nyquil. I'm going to continue with my rest while catching up on some reading (and seeing.) Hey, Hot Shot! entries are arriving at a fast and furious clip in these final hours before the deadline, meaning that a feast for the eyes awaits me.

I'll spend the afternoon perusing the contenders posted on the HHS! blog whilst downing hot liquids. I'm back tomorrow with this week's photography offering, another colorful double edition by someone who happens to be a Hot Shot herself. See you then!

*Requiring no small amount of effort on the part of our fabulous printers.

Image from Joseph O. Holmes' workspace series

Here's some good news: 20x200 photographer Joseph O. Holmes was awarded an Honorable Mention from the Silver Eye Center for Photography's Fellowship 2008 competition. Joseph will be in a exhibition in early 2009 with the rest of the Silver Eye award winners, and I'll let you know when and where as soon as the schedule is announced.

Joseph's 20x200 edition prints:
Prospect Park
amnh#30
amnh#10
amnh#62
Joseph's gallery images on jenbekman.com
Joseph's site

Architecture's Internal Logic
by Jessica Snow

Hello darling collectors. This week's fine art edition print artist, Jessica Snow, will be opening a solo show entitled, Incident in the Territory of Invention, December 4th at Merge Gallery, so mark your calendars!

Merge Gallery is thrilled to present California-based artist Jessica Snow’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. Her East Coast debut will include a series of 6 medium and small scale paintings.

Opening reception:
Thursday, December 4th, 2008, 6:00–9pm
The show will run until January 10th, 2009.

Merge Gallery
205 West 20th Street
New York, NY

Jessica's 20x200 edition prints:
Paradigm Shift
Cascade
In One Ear, Out the Other

Jessica's site

Wednesday greetings, collectors! I'm composing this email so early that Ollie's skulked off to the bedroom, pouting at being disturbed from her foot-warming spot at such an inhumane hour. Apparently she's not fond of getting up during pre-dawn hours either. That's my girl!

As it does everyday, the sky will inevitably brighten on its own. My mood is another matter entirely; I usually require a little outside inspiration to burn off the gloom. Chocolate, fresh flowers, and happiness in the form of a warm puppy often do the trick. This morning, my cheer arrives in photographic form — Juliane Eirich's Fishline and Balloons are just what Dr. Feelgood would order for a girl like me.

Bright colors, faraway lands and balloons — all neatly composed in a square — these images are a double dose of photographic bliss. It also doesn't hurt one little bit that Juliane's work is reminiscent of the captivating contradictions I find in Rinko Kawauchi's work — gentle yet brutal, feminine but not girly, domestic without being mundane, quiet yet exuberant. It takes a keen eye to find the remarkable in the everyday, and I have a hunch that an ability to do so is another prescription for happiness.

Speaking of which, Sara Distin's blog post sent some brightness my way this morning too, photographically with Justin Visnesky's imagery and poetically. Naomi Shihab Nye's So Much Happiness is the sort of thing you might want to keep folded up in your pocket:

It is difficult to know what to do with so much happiness.
With sadness there is something to rub against,
A wound to tend with lotion and cloth.
When the world falls in around you, you have pieces to pick up,
Something to hold in your hands, like ticket stubs or change.

But happiness floats.
It doesn't need you to hold it down.
It doesn't need anything.
Happiness lands on the roof of the next house, singing,
And disappears when it wants to.
You are happy either way.
Even the fact that you once lived in a peaceful tree house
And now live over a quarry of noise and dust
Cannot make you unhappy.
Everything has a life of its own,
It too could wake up filled with possibilities
Of coffee cake and ripe peaches,
And love even the floor which needs to be swept,
The soiled linens and scratched records...

Since there is no place large enough
To contain so much happiness,
You shrug, you raise your hands, and it flows out of you
Into everything you touch. You are not responsible.
You take no credit, as the night sky takes no credit
For the moon, but continues to hold it, and to share it,
And in that way, be known.

Geetbets #1 by Bert Teunissen

Buongiorno collectors! Photographer Bert Teunissen will be showing his Domestic Landscapes series at Witzenhausen Gallery next Thursday evening. Bert's 20x200 edition print, LA ALBERCA #6 1/3/2005 12:56, was from this series and is just about sold out.

Teunissen documents interiors that are oriented around the natural light that falls in through the windows, that find their origins in the era before electricity. Where the table is situated under the window, because most of the light can be found there. Where it is still impossible to work in the basement, because it is simply too dark. Teunissen realized all this at just the right moment. Now he is trying to keep up with rapid developments and struggling to document as much as possible of what has been the norm for centuries, but will soon not be found in our modern interiors.

Reception for the artist:
Thursday, November 20 6-8pm

Witzenhausen Gallery
5th floor, Suite 530
547 West 27th Street

Bert's 20x200 edition print:
LA ALBERCA #6 1/3/2005 12:56

Detail of Collocation No.4 (Today) by Mickey Smith

Happy Friday! I know I let you all know about Mickey Smith's opening this evening at Invisible Exports, but did you see that she also received some accolades over on the New York Magazine website this week? 'Tis true! Three cheers for you, Miss Mickey!

MICKEY SMITH | YOU PEOPLE
November 14 – December 21, 2008
Invisible-Exports
14A Orchard Street
Wednesday through Sunday, 11-6:30pm

Mickey's 20x200 edition prints:
WORD STUDY
MORE BOOKS
A 20x200 interview with Mickey
Mickey's site

Homeland Security Advisory Billboard, Country Club Hills, Illinois 2008*

It's a rainy weekend for us New Yorkers, so if you are in the mood for some gallery hopping (and I believe that looking at art is a surefire way to shake off the rainy day blues), slide on over to Jen Bekman Gallery. Nina Beman's Homeland exhibition has been extended until November 29th.

Check out this Google map of the Lower East Side produced by Jen Bekman Projects to help steer your gallery hopping course.

Jen Bekman Gallery
6 Spring Street
(between Elizabeth + Bowery)
New York City 10012

Nina's website
Nina's 20x200 edition: 9-11-02
Nina's portfolio on JenBekman.com

*Curiosity got the better of me. I looked up today's Homeland Security Advisory, and learned that the threat level in the airline sector is High or Orange. Seize il giorno!

Piñata Carnival, 2007 by Fernanda Cohen

Happy Monday once again, collectors! This weekend I was taking a stroll through many of our 20x200 artist's websites, and was delighted to read this on Fernanda Cohen's:

I'm the coordinator of Special Events at the SOCIETY OF ILLUSTRATORS OF NY, including lectures and workshops. The fourth and last event I'm coordinating in 2008 is a lecture I'm moderating with NICHOLAS BLECHMAN, the art director of the Book Review section at THE NEW YORK TIMES, and MAX BODE, art director at THE NEW YORKER.

Lecture: Art Directing and Illustrating
with Nicholas Blechman and Max Bode
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Begins at 6:30pm.
$15 non-members, $10 members, $7 students.
RSVP tara@societyillustrators.org

I also learned that 20x200 star and Summer 2006 Hey, Hot Shot,! Kate Bingaman-Burt, signed a book contract with Princeton Architectural Press. Drawings from Kate's ongoing What Did You Buy Today? series will be edited down to 650 images, bound and preserved for all eternity. The only sad news is that we'll have to wait until 2010 for the book to be released.

Congrats, Kate!

Tuesday greetings, collectors! I am nearly, mostly 100% recouped, which is a good thing indeed. I'm relieved to be heading into tonight's Hey, Hot Shot! panel review with a sharp mind and clear vision. (As are the contenders, I'd imagine.) I'm looking forward to an evening spent evaluating entries with some of the smartest people I know, Ms. Sara Distin among them. Sara proved herself to be the most able of email understudies when asked (at the verylastminute of course) to introduce Clifton's edition last Thursday. So big thanks to Sara, and on with the introductions!

David Corbett's editions, Untitled (blue) and Shill, are richly layered abstractions with sturdy roots connecting them to figure and landscape. Bill Gross, director of his Chicago gallery, 65Grand sees a bit of 19th century romanticism a la David Casper Friedrich, but filtered first through the influence of the San Francisco Mission School, JB fave Chris Johanson in particular, then later informed by Thomas Nozkowski when David was at Rutgers. He also sees a glimpse of Philip Guston in David's practice, and he's got a good point.

David's own special sauce worked into that formidable mix is what makes his works unique — enamel paint is assertive, weighty, and as he describes it, increasingly risky when poured in layers. The interplay of colors is enhanced by the unfamiliar and irregular densities of enamel on canvas. His accumulated layers of color and influence belie a weighty intellectual investigation of painting via practice, but one that's ripe with pleasure and beauty.

Exploring and enjoying David's work has led me to create connections of my own, with other artists in the 20x200 archive. Whether it's color, composition or subject, this process of understanding why I look at one work and see something of another's leads me to a deeper understanding of why I like what I like. I'm still in the process of putting it all into words, but the journey to forming them is part of the fun. Here are a few editions that David's paintings brought to mind:

Space and Illusion by Carrie Marill

Balloons by Juliane Eirich

In One Ear, Out the Other by Jessica Snow

Flying Colors by Ann Tarantino

The Mountain of Tomorrow's Sunrise by William Crump

Many Mountains by Ky Anderson

Untitled (Hanoi no.2) by Kelly Shimoda

Radar by Aili Schmeltz

With this newsletter running long and my time running short, I'll leave you on your own to connect the dots. 'Til tomorrow, my friends!

Untitled (Hanoi no.2)
by Kelly Shimoda
Buy one now

Forbes.com selected 20x200 as its ForbesLife Find of the Day! According to their review, buying art on 20x200 is $20 better spent than "a mid-afternoon splurge at the vending machine". It is also much healthier for you.

Thinking about $20 editions, here are some prints which I am truly surprised to see are still available:

Cul de Sac
by Michelle Weinberg
Buy one now

amnh #62
by Joseph O. Holmes
Buy one now

Paradigm Shift
by Jessica Snow
Buy one now

Panda
by Charlie Crane
Buy one now

Wednesday greetings, collectors! NYC is brisk and bright today, the first day that calls for a proper coat and scarf and hat and gloves. A few short weeks of this weather, the kind that makes you scrunch your shoulders up to cover your too cold ears, and we'll all be wishing for a little warmth and greenery. For now though, it's kind of nice — festivity is in the air as people are stopping in the street to chat about Thanksgiving menus, and the snap of the climate is appropriate for the season. (It also ensures that we needn't stop and chat for too long.) Ollie's frisky too; that fur coat of hers keeps her toasty and suddenly there are loads of leaves to snuffle through.

Today's photography editions, Untitled, Swamp #1and Untitled, Swamp #2 are our second set of prints from Dorthe Alstrup, one of the many talented Hot Shots who've done editions with us. Her first pair of images, Max and Arika, have an obvious narrative thrust, what with the balloons and the children and all, but Dorthe's landscapes are also bursting with narrative potential.

This particular duo sent me off in search of a fitting poetic accompaniment. I didn't need to look too far, or long, before finding the perfect match: Robert Frost's poem, The Wood-Pile. Here's how it starts:

Out walking in the frozen swamp one gray day,
I paused and said, 'I will turn back from here.
No, I will go on farther—and we shall see.'
The hard snow held me, save where now and then
One foot went through. The view was all in lines
Straight up and down of tall slim trees
Too much alike to mark or name a place by
So as to say for certain I was here
Or somewhere else: I was just far from home.

You can (and should!) read the complete poem on The Poetry Foundation's website.

That's it for the week, but you'll be seeing me again sooner than usual. With next week being shortened by Thanksgiving, we'd hate for those spending their Wednesdays in planes, trains and/or automobiles to miss out! So look for fresh editions, and some other 20x200 news of note, on Monday and Tuesday.

Bonfire
Platinum Palladium
16x16" Image

Happy Friday! I am pleased to offer you this snappy little interview with photographer Beth Dow. Beth recently won a Grand Prize from Photography.Book.Now for her book In the Garden:

Ms. Dow's photography is truly outstanding. Her elegant images of the cultivated natural world, her devotion to a traditional photographic process, her ability to make work that feels contemporary, and her intelligent use of the book form to showcase that work is what ultimately separated her work from an impressive field.

And now on to the questons!

Do you have any guilty pleasures?
While I try not to align pleasure with guilt, maybe: loud, fast, music that freaks out my kids (and husband). And singing! Especially while I cook.

When did you decide to be an artist?
I couldn’t have been older than four. I was obsessed with drawing and was always good at that.

Can you remember your first photograph?
My dad was a photographer and it was a part of my life so I don’t remember the first. When I was very young, I drew pictures on blank slides and ran them through a projector in the basement. Family lore says that some of those slides scandalized my grandmother, but that’s a story for another time.

Standards, Blenheim Palace
Platinum Palladium
18.5x16" Image

Where would you like to live?
I’d sometimes like to move back to London, and I (nearly always) like New York, too. My husband and I both need to have one foot in the city and one in the the country, and I’d hate to give up our weekend place in Wisconsin. Minneapolis works for now.

Your favorite painter?
For different reasons: Claude Lorrain, Pierre Bonnard, John Singer Sargent,

Your favorite photographer(s)?
Aleksandr Rodchenko, Josef Sudek, P. H. Emerson, Alvin Langdon Coburn, Lee Friedlander, Sally Mann, Berenice Abbott, Frank Gohlke, Pentti Sammallahti, John Davies

Girl and Boy
Sissinghurst, 2001

Your favorite musician?
My musical taste is famously broad, but Nick Cave came to mind.

Your favorite author?
As in music, my tastes are eclectic. I like the cinematic qualities of Graham Greene and Raymond Chandler. Mayhem and moral ambiguity.

How do the above influence your art (if at all)?
I hadn’t thought about that before, but there is, perhaps, a similar kind of noir aesthetic, tempered by dark humor.

The Stable Pond
Powis Castle, 2004

Do you collect art?
Of course! Mostly photographs, but also paintings and prints.

Any favorite fellow 20x200 artists?
Keith Taylor (because I married him)

How important is it to you to keep art affordable?
“Affordable” is a relative concept for someone who works in platinum! We all need to recognize images that have meaning for us. Some of those pieces will stay with us throughout our lives, and others pass through as our needs change. While I’m a firm believer in the connoisseurship of photographs as artifacts, I also acknowledge the power of images as ideas. It would be a sad world if all ideas were expensive.

What are you working on?
A project about fake ruins that I’m super excited about, and two collaborations

If you didn't make photographs what would you make?
Excuses.

Witty and talented. Who could ask for more?
Beth is represented by Jen Bekman Gallery.
Images from her last solo show, Fieldwork, can be seen here.
Beth's 20x200 edition prints:
Bags
Clearing, Wakehurst Place
Beth's website
Beth's book, In the Garden

Just-before-the-holiday-and-you-can-feel-it-in-the-air Monday greetings, collectors! Turkey dinner with the family is only a subway ride away for me, but I know that lots of people are counting down the minutes before hitting the road. In anticipation of your travels, we're rolling this week's editions out a day ahead of our normal schedule, just like we said we would. Today's print from the talented Kevin Cyr will be followed with a photo edition tomorrow, allowing you all to unplug with confidence before starting your Thanksgiving travels.

Koolman first caught my eye in the early days of September, via Ffffound. I sent a link to Ms. Kate Bingaman-Burt then and there, and said "Wouldn't it be great if he'd do an edition of this painting with us?" I love it when the answer is yes, don't you?

Koolman is one of the many amazing paintings Kevin's made to document the beautiful decay of the urban industrial landscape. In his statement, he writes that he places "them on a solid color field giving them portrait-like importance... Isolating these objects allows me a chance to document a time and place, and to make still a part of the ever-changing urban environment."

Kevin is documenting the here and now, but his work also recalls the New York of another time for me. I grew up here, commuting in from Queens to Stuyvesant High School, back when it was still on East 15th St. The F train took me to 14th St and an L train, very different than today's uncomfortably overpopulated-with-hipsters version, carried me east to First Avenue. That I took the subway each day was a source of major anxiety for my parents, but I loved going to school in the city.

Back then, the L train was rickety and graffiti-covered, and riding the line into Brooklyn was considered an unthinkably risky adventure by the mother of a girl from Queens. "Graffiti is a crime" was the conventional wisdom, and ridding the city of its scourge was the raison d'etre of the day.

Even then, I found the beauty that Kevin describes in a lot of what I saw. Little did I know, I'd be hosting exhibitions of what would come to be known as street art a few blocks south, just off the Bowery. Like the L, the Bowery of today is a different beast entirely. The more things change though, the more they stay the same. Subway cars might be cleaner and shinier, and luxury hotels have risen with alarming speed along the Bowery, but the grit and character of the city hasn't been erased entirely.

There's a lot of talk these days about the city returning to some version of what it used to be. That's another topic entirely and while it's not one that I'm able to get into here and now, it's something I plan on coming back to later. For now, I'll leave you with Kevin's Koolman as a tasty bit of eye candy, and the promise of a second course of aesthetic delight around this time tomorrow. Look for me then!

Ruurlo #7, 9/6/1999 10:45

Hello! Recently I mentioned that photographer Bert Teunissen opened a solo show, on the road, at Witzenhausen Gallery. ARTmostfierce has beaten me to the punch and posted this interview with Bert. My favorite part? His words of wisdom to aspiring artists:

Sing your own tune! Initially it has to come from the belly. And never give up!

Never giving up is perhaps the best advice on the planet, and it also reminds me of this song.

Witzenhausen Gallery
5th floor, Suite 530
547 West 27th Street

Bert's 20x200 edition print:
LA ALBERCA #6 1/3/2005 12:56

Tuesday greetings, collectors! A lot of New York seems to be checked out for the holidays already. The streets are quieter than usual, the most persistent racket (if you can call it that) being the whoosh and splash of car wheels as they drive through fallen, rain-soaked leaves. It feels like Thanksgiving - cold enough for a coat, but not winter wonderlandish.

It reminds me of one of my favorite movies, The Ice Storm — a bummer movie, perhaps, but absolutely stunning visually and oh, the pathos! I highly recommend adding it to your Netflix queue, but not before snapping up one of today's prints.

A Man and His Horse is our second photography edition from Hot Shot Alison Grippo and its subject and setting make it a fitting follow-up for yesterday's Koolman. Alison captured her cop not that long ago, but the photo has a certain timelessness to it, in part because it's black + white, but also because mounted police officers seem more nostalgic than practical in these modern times. (Shouldn't they be on Segways or something by now?)

As with Kevin's commemorations of decay, Alison's lens is often focused on the gritty, everyday city. A city girl like myself, she too finds beauty in what might be dismissed as ugly or overlooked entirely. Unlike me, she's brave enough to be a street shooter who doesn't just survey the landscape. I'm always impressed by someone who's brave enough to take a stranger's picture. (And this one a cop no less!) He seems at ease too — while he is obviously aware that his picture is being taken, the moment captured is private and tender. Such incongruities afoot! Aren't cops tough guys? Aren't the streets mean? Not always, just sometimes.

And with that I leave you to your Thanksgivings. We've got a lot of great stuff cooking for the gift-giving season. So much, in fact, that I'm not quite sure when and which order to tell you about it all. We'll leave it at this: you'll be hearing from us frequently and often in the month of December, and you're likely to be delighted every time that you do.

Noah Kalina, Untitled

An Emerging Photographers Auction curated by Daniel Cooney Fine Art is currently accepting bids through December 10 over on iGavel.com. 20x200 photographers Noah Kalina and Dana MIller are in excellent company.

Bid, baby, bid!

If you'd like to see the work in person:
Daniel Cooney Fine Art

511 West 25th Street, #506

New York, NY
Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Saturday 11 – 6

Still from Jason Polan's latest video

Ciao collectors!
Yes yes, it is Jason Polan news time again!
Jason has a made an orientation video for the Criterion Collection. Unsure of what the Criterion Collection might be? Well, this is precisely why Jason made this video! Click on over and allow yourself to be illuminated and charmed by Jason (again).

november 27, 2008, columbus circle by Joe Holmes

Happy day after Thanksgiving to you, dear collectors! Today is a fine day to relax and learn more about photographer (and Esquivel fan) Joseph O. Holmes, don't you agree? Joseph has been part of the Jen Bekman family of artists since he was crowned a Hot Shot and Ne Plus Ultra in 2005.

Most recently Mr. Holmes had a second round of edition prints on 20x200, both of which are still available:

Left: amnh #10
Right: amnh #62

And now on to my trusty interview questions:

When did you decide to be an artist?
I always wanted to be an artist, as far back as I can remember. I went through serious periods of songwriting and performing and recording, graphic arts, and fiction and screenwriting, with varying amounts of success in each, before settling on photography.

Can you remember your first photograph?
Not at all, but I do remember my first cameras -- in high school I used my family's Miranda Sensorex SLR, and then as I headed off to college, I bought my own Yashica rangefinder.

Where is the best place to live and work?
I already live there: Brooklyn, New York! But maybe I could answer a different question: WHEN would I like to live? I've always thought it would be a thrill to live in the West Village in the 1950s, a time of incredible experimentation in theater, music, and art -- and what a great scene to photograph.

Image from Joe Holmes' workspace series

Your favorite painter?
I'm a sucker for Basquiat. Closer to home, I love the paintings of my friends Shawn Dulaney and Nuala Clarke.

Your favorite photographer?
The photos of Thomas Roma, a friend from my neighborhood, have been a tremendous inspiration. It took me a long time to understand and enjoy Lee Friedlander's work, it was something I had to work at, but all of a sudden one day it all fell into place. And, of course, Alec Soth.

Image from Joe Holmes' CBGB: Noiseless series

Your favorite musicians?
My son exposes me to his favorite bands and musicians, and I'm convinced that we're in a period of really wonderful, fresh new music. I really enjoy Battles, Marnie Stern, High Places, and Aa to name just a few. But if you ask me to pick one favorite musician, I'd have to say my son Julian, drummer for Fiasco. (Though if you'd asked me for a favorite songwriter, my daughter Sophia would be a contender.)

Authors?
Flannery O'Connor, followed by Don DeLillo, Martin Cruz Smith, Elmore Leonard.

Do you sense the above having any influences on your art making?
When I read or hear or see great art, I get filled up with an irresistible impulse to create. I used to read Don DeLillo, for example, and then immediately feel compelled to start writing, short stories pouring out of me. It was the same way with songwriting, and it's the same with photography: Alec Soth's Sleeping by the Mississippi powered me for days.

Ludlow Street by Joe Holmes

Do you have an art collection?
We have paintings and photos from friends on our walls, but I don't consider us art collectors in any way. The term "art collector" suggests to me certain investment motives. This is exactly the kind of attitude Jen Bekman is battling with projects like 20x200.

Any 20x200 favorites?
I really enjoy Jason Polan's delightful drawings; Eliot Shepard has the freshest eye I ever knew; I'm really envious of every photo I see by Brian Ulrich; and Bert Teunissen's mission is wonderful and his photos are gorgeous.

How important is it to you to keep art affordable?
On the one hand I want to share my prints as widely as possible. On the other hand, I like to earn something of a living taking pictures. Affordable art seems to be able to serve both purposes.

Second Avenue by Joe Holmes

What are you working on?
I've always got three or four projects in progress at the same time -- a mix of long-term series, new ideas I'm testing, and casual experiments. But I don't discuss them. I need to take an idea through a nonintellectual period of percolation and marination (to mix a metaphor) without outside evaluation.

Chibi by Joe Holmes available here!

If you didn't make photographs what would you make?
I sometimes miss writing short stories -- I found it extremely satisfying to work in a medium that let me control intertwining layers of meaning, bringing a reader slowly through a journey to an emotional payoff. Photography works in a much more immediate and less intellectual way, at least as I practice it, though it's rewarding in its own way.

Lastly, do you have any guilty pleasures?
Guilt plays no part in my pleasures, though I do have a hard time admitting to my friends how much I love tacky, overproduced 70s pop tunes like The Baby's "Isn't It Time" and Andy Pratt's "Avenging Annie."

Thanks, Joe!
Joseph's 20x200 edition prints:
Prospect Park
amnh#30
amnh#10
amnh#62
Joseph's gallery images on jenbekman.com
Joseph's site
Joseph's daily photos

Ladies and Gentleman, the dream we've all dreamed of is about to happen at Jen Bekman Gallery: Artist vs. Artist in the World Series of Drawing! Get out your drawing materials and mark your calendars because Thrilla in Manilla is coming!

Thrilla in Manila, a Jen Bekman Project to benefit 826NYC

Jane Mount vs. Jason Polan in a no holds barred draw-a-thon at Jen Bekman Gallery

Drawing Hours:
Wednesday, December 3 - Saturday, December 6, 2008 | Noon - 6pm

20x200 Benefit Edition for 826NYC:
On Tuesday, December 9, 2008 @ 2PM, a unique 20x200 edition will be released exclusively to 20x200 mailing list subscribers. (Collectors can sign up here.) The edition will feature a blind selection of 222 original drawings created by the artists and special celebrity guests, hand-picked by Ms. Bekman and priced at $20, $200 + $2000 each.

Reception and 826NYC Benefit Sale:
On Monday, December 8, from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., the gallery will host a reception and sale to benefit 826NYC. Work will be available to take right off the wall at affordable prices from $50 to $1,000.

For more information:
info AT jenbekman DOT com or phone +1.212.219.0166

Press release available here.

Wowee zowee. What fun news to start the week off with!