Edition Announcement #116 - Kevin Cyr

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!

Previous Newsletter : Edition Announcement #115 - Dorthe Alstrup