After approximately 147,000 studio visits to 1,708 artists, and then 9,457 nominations, Go Art Brooklyn has gone public with the top ten nominated artists, the results of their big Brooklyn crowd sourcing experiment. In alphabetical order:

Aleksander Betko, Cobble Hill, painting and drawing

Jonathan Blum, Park Slope, painting and printmaking

Adrian Coleman, Fort Greene, painting

Oliver Jeffers, Boerum Hill, painting, illustration, and drawing

Kerry Law, Greenpoint, painting

Prune Nourry, Boerum Hill, photography, video/film/sound, and sculpture

Eric Pesso, Ditmas Park, sculpture

Naomi Safran-Hon, Prospect Heights, painting

Gabrielle Watson, Crown Heights, painting

Yeon Ji Yoo, Red Hook, mixed media sculpture

Go Art Brooklyn was an open studio weekend event sponsored by the Brooklyn Museum on the weekend of September 8-9, 2012, with an element of crowd sourcing and “beauty contest”.

It was their goal to have a mix of artists represented in this group, including painters, illustrators, sculptors, and installation artists. Painting clearly ruled with seven of the ten artists being self-identified painters.

At the same time, they noted an absence of design, fashion, and textile arts, and also that photography, video, and performance are represented only in Nourry’s work.

 The results were also a bit surprising in terms of the weekend activity, as was hinted at in Shelley’s post on unexpected traffic patterns. Nine neighborhoods are represented, but they are not the neighborhoods that most people were predicting to be the hot spots. Shelley will be delving into these results to show how visitation may have shaped nominations, so stay tuned as we report on this more.

Over the next month, curators will visit the  ten artists’ studios and begin highlighting them one by one on our website. By November 15th GO will announce the featured artists for the exhibition, which will open on December 1, 2012 during Target First Saturday evening.

The holiest day of the Jewish year is upon us. The Day of Atonement, the ritual fast. “For on this day He will forgive you, to purify you, that you be cleansed from all your sins before God” (Leviticus 16:30).

I always thought it was interesting and curious that atonement for the previous year came a week after the New Year’s holiday. Why not the other way around? Why celebrate first and not after?

The Jews, of course, knew what they were doing. We do not begin the New Year until the past year—its transgressions, its sins—have been atoned for.

Jews the world over acknowledge the holiday in different ways. Many fast, abstain from work, washing, sex, the wearing of leather, the “anointing” of the body.

Some don’t do anything at all.

For many, it is a day of prayer and meditation; a day of standing up and sitting down in synagogue. There’s Kol Nidre, the evening service with the hauntingly beautiful music that moves me to tears. There’s the morning service and in the afternoon, the Yizor memorial service, a time to commemorate those who have died.

It is a long day for all, a day of stomach pangs and fatigue, family and failed attempts at reading transliterated Hebrew. Finally, there’s the Neilah, the “closing of the gates” service at sunset.

During the course of the day, Jews confess their sins eight times and recite Psalms almost constantly.

Growing up in a reform Jewish family with leanings towards agnosticism, we didn’t belong to a synagogue. My mother rejected the Brooklyn conservative Judaism she grew up with. My father wasn’t interested in instituionalized religion. A philosophy major in college,  he read the Old Testament to us at supper. We were rapt at his sunset readings in our dining room on Riverside Drive.

Despite this (or maybe because of it), I felt drawn to the rituals of Judaism in a very private way. It’s interesting that a connection to spirituality can well up inside of you at a young age even if it is not enforced—or overtly discussed.

Oddly, I longed for ritual. Maybe as a reaction to its lack in my family life. So I would secretly fast on Yom Kippur, somewhat half-heartedly, because I wanted a part of it.

My Judaism was personal and private. Something that I grappled with alone.

For complex reasons, I have never joined a synagogue so I am a wandering Jew when it comes to the High Holy Days. I have tried many of the congregations in Park Slope. Each has its own flavor, its own style. Often I go to Congregation Beth Elohim, where my sister is a member and I feel very comfortable. I have also been to Kolot Chayenu, which meets in the big church on Sixth Avenue, around the corner from me.

Still, I always feel like an outsider because my Judaism is a private thing that wells up inside me. Maybe that’s where my synagogue is. Inside of me where it was when I was a little girl when I was grappling with these feelings in my very own way.

Phew. September, month of many events, is OVER. And now on to October, which is event-full as well. Look/see:

October 10 at 7PM:  Only the Blog at Two Moon Reading Series presents Emma Koenig, author of Fuck! I’m in my Twenties. Everyone has that moment—the realization that adulthood has arrived, like a runaway train, and there’s no getting out of its way. In attempt to express the contradictions and anxieties that come with being over-educated, minimally employed, mostly single, and on your own, Emma Koenig turned to the blogosphere. In this collection of her most popular posts from her blog of the same name, Emma harnesses the power of illustrations, graphs, checklists, and flowcharts to explore this twenty-something life

October 18 at 8PM: Brooklyn Reading Works Presents Poetry: A Cure for the Common Curated by Pat Smith with with three amazing poets, a soulful chanteuse, plus some new poems by Pat. He’s chosen artists that rocked the house at readings around town and he’s very excited to be able to present them for your pleasure. Five bucks at the door gets you wine, beer, snacks and the company of charismatic creators.

October 23 at 7PM: Only the Blog at Two Moon Reading Series presents “The Family Thing” with novelists Peter Wheelwright (As It Is On Earth) and Leora Skolkin-Smith (Hysteria) reading about complicated families. 315 Fourth Avenue at 3rd Street.

Tomorrow. Get ye over to The Bell House. Stat. To hear some fine music and to raise money for a fine church, Old First Dutch Reformed Church in Park Slope, the oldest church in Brooklyn. Their ceiling is falling down and they need to fix it.

From 3-7PM, actor Peter Sarsgaard will be on hand to emcee a great afternoon of music with Grammy nominee Tony Trischka on double banjo, Kenny Kosek on the fiddle and Jen Larson on vocals.

Klezmer legend, Andy Statman will also be in da house with his trio.

Also appearing: Chris Thile, Noam Pikelny and Chris Eldridge of the Punch Brothers; Aofie O’Donovan of Crooked Still and Goat Rodeo; Kristin Andreassen of Uncle Earl and Michael Daves.

It’ll only cost ya $45 now if you click here $35 for kids and $55 at the door. Note as of 5:00 on Saturday, pre-sale tickets are sold out. There will be tickets available at the door.

Brooklyn Bluegrass Bash, Sept. 23, from 3PM – 7PM at The Bell House, 149 7th St Brooklyn.

I was 15 minutes late for Friday night’s performance of Einstein on the Beach at BAM and had to stand in the back of the orchestra until the first “Knee Play” was over. I was then escorted to my aisle seat in row L.

There I sat next to a man who was not happy about the woman who was texting next to him.

“I would prefer that you not do that,” he told her without rancor.

I could see his point. Einstein on the Beach, the 1976 masterpiece created by Robert Wilson, Philip Glass and Lucinda Childs, is an epic experience that requires fortitude, focus and a meditative openness and calm.

Give into it and it shimmers with resonance and meaning. Tweeting while viewing could be distracting. And it was obviously distracting to the man sitting next to me.

Which isn’t to say that there was a rigid, church-like, sanctimonious atmosphere at BAM. The audience is encouraged to wander in and out, which is a good thing since the opera lasts four hours and thirty minutes. There is no intermission but during scene changes people raced to the restrooms and lobby for bathroom and/or wine and snack breaks.

Some of the audience didn’t come back. The show can be a tad minimalist for some theater goers.

EOTB is, roughly, about Einstein, the theory of relativity, time, space, trains, spaceships, clocks, the atomic age, life, love…

It’s a non-narrative opera with a euphoric score by Philip Glass based on repeating harmonic and rhythmic structures for singers, keyboards, saxophones, and a lone virtuosic violin.

Einstein’s violin. A violinist dressed as Einstein sits on the stage through much of the opera playing Glassian arpeggios.

Set design, staging and lighting are by Robert Wilson and it’s visually stunning. “As with all of my work, the images you see on stage are not decoration; they’re architectural. At the very start there is a vertical bar of light that appears three times. Then, in the second scene, you have a horizontal bar of light. Together, they represent the cross of time and space: time shown as a vertical beam, space as a horizontal line,” Wilson told The Guardian recently.

But it’s the singers, actors, and the dancers, the dancers, who bring this minimalist classic to life. In two sections, the stage clears completely and the dancers leap across across in intersecting patterns with repeated simple, almost folkloric movements by Lucinda Child Their skipping, turning, leaping adds splendor to the music and the overall experience.

I’ve now seen EOTB three times. I saw it at BAM with my father in 1984. He’d seen the premiere at the Metropolitan Opera in 1976, where it played for one evening, an unforgettable experience. I think he longed to recapture the excitement of that evening and he was not disappointed. Seeing it with him in 1984 was a very special experience for me. I saw it again in 1992, also at BAM.

I’d forgotten how funny the opera is. It is timeless—and about time itself—but also very much of its time, filled with a slew of 1970’s references: NYC radio stations and DJs, Carole King, Crazy Eddie, Patty Hearst, Mr. Bojangles The man I sat next to is a theater professional, an avant gardeist. He, too, saw the original at the Metropolitan Opera all those years ago.

“A lot of people just hated it then,” he said. “But I was like, there’s something here. I found it so interesting,” he told me in the lobby when we both happened to take a drink break.

I tried to imagine what it was like to see the show in 1976. I also tried to imagine what people will think of it one hundred years from now. And I believe it will be performed one hundred years from now. Because it is, among other things, a work that depicts our time.

“Do you remember what happens at the very end?” the man asked me while we sipped our drinks.

“No, I don’t,” I told him as we walked back in.

“Wait till you see,” he said.

I had forgotten the ending, a story told by a bus driver on a two-dimensional bus. Indeed, it’s a curious and sweet ending: a story about love, a story about connection. A story that  left the audience open to hope and transcendence as it exited into the Brooklyn night.

It was with inspiring words that Brooklyn Poet Laureate,  Tina Chang, introduced Brooklyn Reading Works’ Young Writers Night Thursday at the Old Stone House (a Brooklyn Book Festival Bookend Event).

The poet urged the young writers who participated in this evening of poetry and songs, to listen to their hearts and keep writing. “You never know where it will take you,” she said.

Chang, the author the Half-Lit Houses and Of Gods & Strangers and co-editor of an anthology of contemporary poetry from the Middle East and Asia, told the crowd that she started writing at a very young age. “I knew it was what I wanted to do,” she said. She now teaches at Sarah Lawrence College and lives in Park Slope.

Yesterday she sent me a lovely email:

Thank you so much for last night. Those performers! Wow, I was so
impressed by the maturity, the talent, and the charisma of all those
musicians and readers.

I also remembered the first singer’s line, “I was becoming something
unfamiliar” in referencing a bird and I was astounded when she said,
“Um, I wrote this when I was 14.” If this is our youth, then I was
overjoyed to think that this is the direction they are headed.

The Brooklyn Book Festival has an interesting line-up of events slated for the Main Stage, which is in Borough Hall Plaza. If you decide to plant yourself on the steps of Borough Hall, you’ll be in for some interesting—and some wacky events within eyeshot of the bustling marketplace of publishers who will fill Borough Hall Park on Sunday.

11AM: David Rees (How to Sharpen Pencils), the world’s only artisanal pencil sharpener, in conversation with Sam Anderson, critic at large for the New York Times Magazine. They discuss the artisanal culture of the Hudson Valley, Rees’ pencil business (he hand-sharpens pencils for mail order customers), and the artisanalization of everything in Brooklyn, from mayonnaise to soda.

12PM:  Only the Dead Know Brooklyn. And you thought Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn. Literary history comes alive on stage with readings by Troupe of works by revered authors who are no longer with us. I’m guessing they’ll be reading from the great Thomas Wolfe short story.

1:00 PM: I’d Like To Apologize To Every Teacher I Ever Had. Tony Danza in Conversation with Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz. As an actor, Danza conquered nearly every entertainment realm—TV, the movies, even Broadway—and he wanted to give something back. Inspired by a documentary made by Teach for America, he decided to take time out to teach!  Markowitz converses with Brooklyn born Danza about his career and his book about teaching high school.

2PM: Let’s Talk About Sex: Grappling with Gender in the 21st Century. Is biology destiny? What does it mean today to be a man, a woman, or to feel somewhere in between? Naomi Wolf (Vagina: A New Biography), Carlos Andres Gomez (Man Up: Cracking the Code of Modern Manhood) and Kate Bornstein (A Queer and Pleasant Danger) consider the role of sex and gender in culture today, how it makes us, and how we react to the trappings of gender put upon us by society at large. Moderated by Hanna Rosin (The End of Men).

3PM: When a character has a dark side or a painful history, how does an author write about it? AuthorsAmelia Gray (Threats), Dennis Lehane (Moonlight Mile) and Sapphire (The Kid) deal with violence in their work and discuss how they handle it. Moderated by Greg Cowles, New York Times Book Review.

4PM: Good Times – Different Times. Jimmie Walker (Dyn-O-Mite: A Memoir) and Bern Nadette Stanis (Situations 101: Relationships, the Good, the Bad and the Ugly) from the landmark TV sitcom, Good Times, in conversation. Moderated by Carolyn Greer, Brooklyn Book Festival.

For a full list go here.

And you thought Anne-Katrin Titze only wrote about West Nile Virus and endangered birds in Prospect Park. No, she’s a film critic, too. And she wrote a rave review of The Master, Paul Thomas Anderson’s tour de force starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Joaquin Phoenix and Amy Adams, for a British website called Eye for Film.

Seconds into the film, The Master director Paul Thomas Anderson already has a firm grip on you. His tour de force picture references an entire Hollywood archive of Second World War and post-war movies without a single explicit quote, because the archive is in our common pool of war imagery, manufactured by cinema.

And then Anderson turns those expectations on their head, and gives us the private side of the coin – the memories of grandparents, the faded family photos of Aunt Doris from Norway, the representations of a presumed reality that always mingles with the shared movie memory

In the beginning, there was water. The turquoise sea crests with white foam as watched from above, from a ship, perhaps. Then we see Joaquin Phoenix’s head in a steel helmet, partly hidden, crouching in a boat. And the audience begins to anticipate. D-day? Omaha Beach? A battle at sea?

The film will be playing in 70mm at the Clearview Ziegfeld starting Friday. It’s currently playing in 70mm at the Village East Cinema in the East Village.

This is the Brooklyn Book Festival Bookend Event you writers out there—and there are a lot of you—won’t want to miss. It’s called Pitchapalooza and it’s at the Central branch of the Brooklyn Public Library  on Wednesday from 7-9PM (in the Dr. Steven Dweck Center for Contemporary Culture). Sounds like it might be a good idea to arrive early to sign up because names will be randomly picked to participate.

The Book Doctors and a panel of publishing pundits will give aspiring writers the chance of a lifetime—one minute to pitch their book. Winners get introductions to an agent or publisher. The Book Doctors have helped hundreds of writers get published, so don’t miss this big opportunity. Brooklyn Public Library is offering the runner-up a chance to publish with its new Espresso Book Machine.

Rabbi Bachman on his blog, Water Over Rocks, reflects on Rosh Hashanah, which begins today, and the beginnings of Congregation Beth Elohim 150 years ago.

At sundown this evening, Congregation Beth Elohim joins Jewish community’s world-wide in celebrating the New Year 5773.

This is a special time for our synagogue, which commemorates its 150th year since it’s founding in 1862. Our Founders journeyed to Brooklyn from Central Europe and built a beacon of Learning, Prayer and Good Deeds in the midst of a nation that was at Civil War; African Americans were enslaved; and women were denied the right to vote. Whereas one founding family made buttons for Union Army jackets, future members helped integrate the U.S. Armed Forces, integrated schools, and today we remain active, as a Jewish community, fulfilling the Prophet’s vision that “Mine House Shall Be An House of Prayer for All People.” And finally, to celebrate our 150 years in Brooklyn, we are commissioning the writing of a new Torah Scroll–the first of its kind in the history of New York City–to be written entirely by a female scribe. The year of celebration begins on October 7.

 

There are SO many  Brooklyn Book Festival Bookend Events September 17-22 and so many of them sound interesting. How to choose? Author? Location? Venue? I just looked through the list and picked out ten that I think sound really interesting. In chronological order:

1. On Monday, September 17 at 7PM: I’m definitely taking the G-train to Williamsburg for the Free Opening Night Party for Brooklyn Book Festival Bookends. Three top literary web-based publications (and Tumblr super-users) invite you to meet your Internet friends in person for chatting, drinking, and dancing to kick off the most bookish week in Brooklyn. Guest DJs and free drink specials enhance the East Coast vs. West Coast faceoff, and everybody wins! Location: Public Assembly, 70 North 6th Street (between Wythe and Kent Avenues).

2. On Tuesday September 18 from 8-11PM: I’m psyched for the One Teen Story Launch Party and Homecoming Dance at Littlefield (622 Degraw Street between 3rd and 4th Avenues). Relive your teenage days with a homecoming court of YA authors, photographs, and a homecoming king/queen raffle. Take part in the festivities—which include dancing and homemade desserts—with the One Story staff! Price: $25, selling tickets in advance.

3. On Wednesday, September 19: I hope I can make it out to Fort Hamilton Parkway for this.  A Photographic Journey of Brooklyn. Photographic books by Israelowitz Publishing on Brooklyn’s history including author Leslie Arlette Boyce (The Glory of Brooklyn’s Gowanus) with special guest Ron Schweiger, Brooklyn Borough Historian. Location: Fort Hamilton Senior Recreation Center (Ball Room), 9941 Fort Hamilton Parkway (100th Street and Fort Hamilton Parkway) Time: 1:30 pm – 3:00 pm

4. Wednesday, September 19, 7-9PM: This is definitely the A-list event of the Bookends. powerHouse Arena presents a book launch for Salman Rushdie. Rushdie will discuss Joseph Anton, his memoir about life as a writer forced underground. Fans of the famed novelist will not want to miss this exciting event. Ticketholders receive a signed copy of the new memoir. Location: powerHouse Arena, 37 Main Street (at Water Street). $35.

5. Wednesday, September 19 from 7-9PM: This actually sounds really useful. How to Publish Book Reviews & Features moderated by Susan Shapiro. A lively, informative talk features book editors John Reed (Brooklyn Rail), Monica de la Torre (Bomb), David Propson (WSJ Book Section) and Rob Spillman (Tin House) spilling the secrets of how to break into book reviewing, profiling authors and discussing the future of book criticism. Moderated by NBCC board member Susan Shapiro. Location: Park Slope Barnes & Noble, 267 7th Avenue (at 6th Street)

Continue reading OTBKB’s Top Ten Brooklyn Book Fest Bookend Events →

File this under: I happen to love Greta Ghertler’s music, ambition and energy but I also love that we have the same last name except for an H. My maiden name was Ghertler.

More than a year ago, I raved about The Universal Thump’s concert of the entire All Things Must Pass. It was a night to savor and enjoy the song craft of George Harrison, the sometimes neglected Beatle as his songs were performed by some of the best and brightest of Brooklyn’s indie music scene.

The inspiration for the Thump’s latest album is Moby Dick. Pause. See what I mean about ambitious? I can’t wait to hear it and them.

Says the New Yorker Magazine: “The Universal Thump, a Brooklyn-based orchestral-pop band that is the brainchild of the Australian singer-songwriter and pianist Greta Gertler and the drummer Adam D Gold, swelled at times to sixty members over the four years it took to record its début release. The eponymous double album was inspired by “Moby-Dick,” and it comes out Oct. 2. The band marks the occasion with a residency at the Living Room on most Mondays in October. Guests from the recording sessions are expected.”

There you have it—and in the New Yorker, too.

I loved the tower of green, yellow and blue balloons outside the library, signifying the grand reopening of the Park Slope Branch of the Brooklyn Public Library.

The branch has been closed for renovations since 2009.

Three years is a long time for a neighborhood to go without a local library and judging from the crowd of  people who were pouring in last night to get a look at all the improvements, the library has been missed. There was lots of oohing and ahing at the beautifully restored, cleaned-up and modernized library.

Everything looked bigger, cleaner, better laid out and fresh. A huge crowd gathered on the first floor to hear Pete Hamill read from his memoir A Drinking Life. Frankly, it was impossible to hear him. I took a look at the second floor shelves and reading area.

It’s a small, cozy library: a perfect neighborhood library with a great kid’s section and a small and genralist’s selection of books. They also have CDs and DVDs. It’s not a hush hush type of library—it does have a large children’s section on the first floor—but it’s a wonderful place to read, to browse, do research, write and think.

One of the perks of living on Third Street is the chance to overhear a practice session of the Famous Accordion Orchestra out in front of one of the Limestone buildings between Sixth and Seventh Avenues.

The Famous is not your typical accordion band. They do their fair share of polkas, tangos and the like, but their repetoire ranges from Stephen Foster, Rossini, Bach, Offenbach, Guy Klucevsek, Lars Hollmer, Paolo Conte, Duke Ellington and Kraftwerk, waltzes, marches, and sound environments.

Tonight at 7:30 PM they will be returning to the Lounge at Dixon Place (161A Chrystie Street, between Rivington and Delancey). Admission is five dollars and the drinks are very reasonably prices. FAO member Bob Goldberg tells me that the group has been playing  Bob Marley lately. He urges everyone to “Come on down! Tell your friends! And your casual acquaintances…

My new friends over at Brooklyn Exposed have coverage of the upcoming Brooklyn Book Festival which really begins next week with a long list of Bookend events.

The one-day festival itself happens on Sunday, September 23rd. It’s an all-day, open-air event at Brooklyn Borough Hall in beautiful downtown Brooklyn (I’m not kidding).

The BBF is the largest literary gathering in New York City and reminds me of New York Is Book Country, an annual fair that used to be on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.

Well, this is now and Brooklyn is IT. And the Book Festival positions itself as “a hip, smart diverse gathering that attracts thousands of book lovers of all ages to enjoy authors and the festival’s lively literary marketplace.” Think  street fair with booths of books instead of socks and zeppoles.

The Bookend events take place the Monday through Saturday before Sunday’s Book Festival on September 23rd. For a full listing of events go here. Here’s a short list of some of the venues that are readings, panels, and performances: Public Assembly, Franklin Park, The Old Stone House, Greenlight Books, Bookcourt, The Bell House, BAM, Littlefield, JACK!, Fort Hamilton Senior Recreation Center, powerHouse, Park Slope Barnes and Noble, the Brooklyn Public Library and on and on.

Wow.

It’s way ambitious. Just about every literary and or music venue in Brooklyn is taking part. I am so proud to be included on Thursday, September 20th at 7PM with Brooklyn Reading Works Presents Young Writers Night at The Old Stone House.

Brooklyn Reading Works hosts Young Writers Night at the Old Stone House on Thursday, September 20 at 7PM. The two-hour program, a Brooklyn Book Festival Bookend event, will showcase up-and-coming teen authors from across five boroughs as they present everything from fiction to song.

And maybe the coolest part? The whole thing’s curated by Hannah Frishberg, herself a high school senior. This is an all-ages event.

The idea for this annual event started with novelist Jill Eisenstadt in 2009, who proposed it as a great way to celebrate young writers.

This year’s event is curated by Hannah Frishberg, a senior at Bard High School Early College and a poet herself. She asked a friend to design a poster and that’s what you see to the left. She’s also selected some wonderful writers and musicians, including two teenagers who are part of the NY Writers Coalition to be part of the evening.

Young Writers is a Brooklyn Book Festival Bookend event. Brooklyn Poet Laureate Tina Chang will introduce and will also read some poetry.

Hope you’ll join us at this FREE event at the Old Stone House, 336 Third Street, between Fourth and Fifth Avenues in Park Slope, 718-768-3195 or 718-288-4290.

As many of you know, I started a company called Brooklyn Social Media last Spring. The focus: social media and publicity for authors, artists, and entreprenuers. I have the good fortune to have the very smart Marian Brown PR as a partner and the two of us are quite a dynamic duo when it comes to spreading the word on behalf of our clients.

Peter Matthiessen Wheelwright is an immensely talented and intelligent writer. He also happens to be a client. I believe it is only possible to promote authors and entrepreneurs who I think are genuinely exciting and talented.

Indeed, Peter M. Wheelwright is exciting and talented.

This week marks the launch of his “gorgeous debut novel” As It Is On Earth (from Fomite Press), the story of Taylor Thatcher, a young college professor wrestling with his religious legacy and family history. Wheelwright comes from New England stock, a family of American writers descending from hardy Puritan blood. He also happens to be the nephew of the three-time American Book Award winning author Peter Matthiessen, author of At Play in the Fields of the Lord and The Snow Leopard. 

He was interviewed in The Brooklyn Rail by journalist Scott Cheshire, who found the book to be “lovely, meditative, and thoughtful.”

Peter Wheelwright is now officially a Renaissance man, a real triple threat. This is not to say he’s a song-and-dance man. Then again it seems there is nothing the man cannot do. Wheelwright is an accomplished architect, and an Associate Professor at Parsons the New School for Design, who also happens to have work in the Collection of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art.

He is tall, affable, and the sort of guy who wears his intellect well, like an old denim shirt, comfortably, with a cool and unassuming style. We talked over coffee at the Housing Works Bookstore Café about his love of philosophy, Walker Percy, Deep Time, the power of stories, and how designing a building is not so unlike writing a novel.

Wheelwright will be reading in Park Slope with novelist Leora Skolkin-Smith on Tuesday, October 23rd at Two Moon Art House & Cafe at 7PM. Prior to that , on October 4th, he will be reading at Parsons New School of Design, where he is an associate professor. You can find more information about these readings here. 

His first novel has already gotten a great response; it was even blurbed by Meryl Streep (yes, that Meryl Streep) who wrote,

“With a Yankee tap root breaking thorugh layers of granite guilt and miscengentaion , Taylor Thatcher’s family tree is a challenging climb…author Peter Wheelwright peers compassionately at a world inhabited by young survivors of extinct tribes and inherited griefs. Fascinating and absorbing and forgiving.”

Red Hook based artist Bettina Magi opened her studio as a participant in the Go Brooklyn Art open studio weekend  sponsored by the Brooklyn Museum. Here she stands with the sepia photograph of her father and a friend she based the painting in the background on.

Go Brooklyn Art is currently in the check-in grace period, which lasts until September 10, 2012 at 11:59pm EST. Nominations begin September 12, but during this interim period you can use the GO website.

You can still register as a voter:

Login to your account and enter artist codes to check in. If you were out seeing art this weekend writing down codes to enter them later, now is the time to get registered or login and enter the codes into the system.

Verify your phone. If you used text messaging to check in, you need to verify your cell phone and sync your text message check-ins. To do this, login to the website using your computer, click on the “Sync Phone” tab on your dashboard, enter your phone number (if it’s not there already) and click “Verify My Phone” – we’ll send a code to your phone that you’ll enter on a subsequent screen.

Confirm your check-ins. We suggest you confirm all your check-ins are properly listed and you can do this by logging in to the GO website; on your dashboard in the upper left corner of the left column, click on the “View Check-ins” button.

Any voter who visited at least five studios and used the artist codes to check in, will be eligible to nominate artists from the list of those they visited. It’s important to check in to every artist you visited so they will be on your nomination list. The nomination period begins on September 12; eligible voters will get an email with instructions.

If you find yourself having trouble, please file a support ticket or come to the tech support meetup tonight (Monday, September 10th) from 7-9pm @ The Mac Support Store (168 7th Street at Third Avenue, Brooklyn).

The  inaugural voyage of GO Brooklyn Art, the Brooklyn Museum’s ambitious borough-wide open studio weekend involving  nearly two thousand artists and many thousands of curious art lovers, was a true experiment in community art viewing and crowd sourcing.

Saturday began with a bang. Literally. There was a tornado in parts of Brooklyn and torential rains everywhere else. There was also a dearth of subway service to various parts of Brooklyn, which made subway travel very sketchy.

That said, the determined and the curious braved the humidity and journeyed to just about every corner of Brooklyn. In Park Slope there were more than eighty artists.  About 35 visitor came through our apartment on Saturday and it was a thoughtful and interesting crowd of mostly strangers.

On Sunday, a gorgeous day, the turnout was far better. We saw at least twice as many people in our apartment. It was a non-stop parade of visitors from 11AM until just after 7PM and Hugh nearly lost his voice from talking about his photographs.

But he loved it.

About the crowd sourcing element: GO Brooklyn was meant to be a competition of sorts. Visitors were expected to check in at each studio and, after visiting at least five studios, vote on their favorite artists. Those artists with the most votes will be visited by Brooklyn Museum curators who will then select a few for a group exhibition in December.

My observation was that many of the visitors did not bother with the crowd sourcing element. Some found the smart phone and computer apps too “difficult” and never even signed in. Some couldn’t be bothered and just wanted to enjoy a day of walking around neighborhoods looking at art.

I did notice that people who visit art studios are often passionate about art and really enjoy talking to the artists, learning about the materials and processes and have many questions about how things are done and what it all means. An Open Studio event truly attracts a highly interactive and dynamic group of people.

I’m sure there will be many lessons learned from this wonderful and ambitious experiment. I hope the Brooklyn Museum will do it again next year. Thanks are due to all those who organized and coordinated these wonderful and enriching days for thinking about art.

On Saturday,  Go Brooklyn Art, the borough-wide open studio event began with a torrential rainstorm and a tornado in some parts of Brookyn.

The weather (and the subway deficiencies) definitely kept some people away. But by the afternoon the weather had improved and we had a very generous turnout on Third Street .

In fact, a lovely group of people filled Hugh Crawford’s studio on Saturday. Thoughtful, curious, observant. Hugh had a nice day talking about his work with interested strangers.

It’s 11:09 AM on Sunday, we’ve already had one guest. Bernette Rudolph, a GO artist, came over to view Hugh’s work and to chat about GO. She had over fifty people in her studio yesterday and was quite pleased.

Saturday afternoon, I visited GO Brooklyn neighborhood coordinator Meril at Two Moon Art House & Cafe (on Fourth Avenue between 3rd and 4th Streets) which is the local Go Brooklyn info spot. She’s worked very hard to make this event happen and she deserves lots of credit for its success.

It’s a gorgeous day, no tornadoes in the forecast. Looking forward to another GO day.

Our couch was expelled from the living room because Hugh is using the living room, which is next to his home studio, for a display of his large photographs.

Today is the giant Go Brooklyn Art open studio weekend. Nearly  two thousand artists in Brooklyn will open their doors to the public. The hordes will begin to arrive at 11AM and at this moment. I don’t feel ready.

I better make some coffee.

I am excited to see what the day will be like. Go Brooklyn Art is almost like trick or treating for curious art lovers. As on Halloween, I feel like we should have something to offer those who come. Candy corn? Wine? Cheese and crackers? Hugh’s “business” card?

Hugh was up most of the night. He should wake up soon and finish hanging photos. So far, the day looks beautiful. I am optimistic and excited…

Hugh’s GO page is here.