In the midst of the galleries of Chelsea, on West 24th Street between 10th and 11th Avenue, an artist named Scot Kaplan built the tiniest, most whimsical park ever.
Kaplan took a 3 x 3 patch of grass, put a little fence around it, and called it Artists’ Park.
He had a ribbon-cutting ceremony for it, where people ate refreshments and, according to the article in the Post, took “the world’s shortest strolls in the park - one at a time.”
Kaplan placed a plaque on the park’s fence. The plaque read ”For those who struggle and achieve success, and for those who work in anonymity, this one square yard of green space is a place to put your feet in the grass as a respite from the surrounding tumult.”
Such a simple idea, but, oh, the beauty and humor of it!
They say truly beautiful women can look beautiful even if they are wearing a garbage bag.
Well, James Earl Jones’s voice and presence is the oral and theatrical equivalent. He is fantastic even when saying the alphabet really … really … slowly, as he does in this classic tape from Sesame Street.
The clip is at the end of this post. Hit play clicking the middle of the screen.
Pretend you are a child learning the alphabet. It’s AMAZING.
(I first heard about this clip from The Tipping Point, one of my favorite books EVER. Basically, it uses examples from fashion, public health, history, children’s TV, sociology, crime, and more to explain how fads and trends spread quickly and seemingly without explanation).
Connection to New York: He fought battles during the American Revolution here, and took his oath of office in front of Federal Hall. Washington Square is named after him.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED is a tour of the Morris Jumel Mansion in New York City, where Washington stayed in September and October of 1776.
Vote C in the comments section for Thomas Jefferson
Hooray! Culture for the Non-Cultured Meetup, the large social group I organize, is going to see the new show Life in a Marital Institution on June 28th at 8:00 PM. After the show, there will be a Q & A with the performer, James Braly, after the show. And then, the usual eatin’, drinkin’, & merry-makin’ at a to-be-determined location.
For anyone who’s ever been in any type of relationship, ever, this event is for YOU! I haven’t seen the show yet, but it’s gotten fantastic reviews from the New York Times and the New Yorker.
What do these 3 images have in common? They are images of polarities, or opposites. I’ve always loved pictures of opposites (one of the above is even mine).
There’s the big strong man, looking tenderly at his tiny, helpless infant (that I lifted out of the public domain at Creative Commons.)
There’s the tiny woman next to the larger-than-life Ron Mueck sculpture, In Bed, from the Brooklyn Museum. (If you missed Mueck, I’m sorry. It was fantastic. Go to the Brooklyn Museum now, though. I hear Utagawa exhibit of Japanese prints is really good.)
And then there are the stick figures, which are a reproduction of my own recurring childhood drawings: one with a big, giant head and a little bitty body, and one with a little bitty head and a big, giant body.
So, you ask where’s Aerosmith, that awesome, bad-ass rock band? Well, Steven Tyler, the lead singer: I have him on a YouTube video in a random church singing Amazing Grace for all he’s worth.
As I explained in an earlier blog, on the weekends, I like to take staycations: to experience New York City as if I was a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed tourist on one of those ubiquitous double-decker buses. This attitude is tempered, of course, with the knowledge of one who is lucky enough to call herself a New Yorker.
This weekend, I enjoyed a great staycation with members of Culture for the Non-Cultured, the social group I organize at Meetup.com.
We went Chelsea Gallery Hopping. Well, due to the heat, the hopping was limited to one building — 525 West 24th Street — which had about 5 galleries in it.
The exhibit had everything from a dress made of matchsticks to a deceptively simple depiction of the book 1984 to a thoughtful memorial to Holocaust victims.
Kudos to the The Alliance for Young Artists & Writers for shining the light on these young talents.
My other favorite exhibit: New Life, by Xue Song, at Chinese Contemporary. [One of Song's images is shown at the end of this blog.] What I personally found amazing about the art is Song’s story. In the 1980’s, Song’s studio burned down, and many of his works and other property were mostly burned.
Others, I suppose, would have wallowed in self-pity, but instead Song took the burnt pieces and made collages out of the ashes. And now that’s his trademark: art with strips of paper — newsprint and posters and magazines — that have been burnt and laid out in various ways.
According to the Chinese Contemporary Gallery website, the ashes are “a symbol of rebirth not only of Xue Song’s art but also of a civilization … His works form a continually evolving body of observation and assessment of his country’s adjustments in the post-Mao era.”
Amazing, eh? Out of those tragic ashes: art that shows the recent history of an entire country, art that is shown all over the world.
Anyway, I highly recommend the galleries in Chelsea as a staycation outing. The exhibits change often, are highly eclectic, free, and sometimes they have free receptions (with wine!). Before you go, check out the Chelsea Art Gallery website: they show you what is showing where and often give you a brief synopsis of what to look at. The people who work the galleries will also sometimes give you a little impromptu tour if you ask.
Here’s one of Xue Song’s paintings that was shown in Chelsea (image is from Artnet.com)
(Full cover and photo credits are given at the very end of this blog)
They say a photo is worth a 1,000 words, and this particular New Yorker cover, first shown to the world in 1976, does inspire at least that many. It depicts what the artist saw as a typical New Yorker’s view of the world, in order of its importance.
New York looms large, Jersey is a thin little strip, there’s a hastily written Mexico and Canada, some random square states jotted in, then the Pacific Ocean. Japan, China, and Russia are thrown in for good measure.
So, the question is: Is this how you think New Yorkers truly see the world? Is it how YOU see it? Be honest now, whadya think? Leave a comment!
**Do you have any cool New York photos for the blog? The only requirement is they be interesting enough to inspire a question and have something to do with New York. They don’t have to be of professional caliber. And you can just send in a photo, if you like, or a photo with a question.
**This pic is of a famous New Yorker cover created by Saul Steinberg for the March 29, 1976 cover. It was taken in a storefront window by Brian from the highly recommended blog New York Daily Photo**
OK, so everyone knows Wikipedia, the uber-popular, surprisingly accurate online encyclopedia that everyone around the world can edit and contribute to, right?
It turns out the collective wisdom of the masses is also …
Designing really cool t-shirts!!
This magic happens at Threadless, which holds contests for the best-designed t-shirt. Designers design. Everyone votes. The winning designers get a small cash prize. Anyone can buy any of the t-shirts for around $12-$15.
And Threadless is thriving, according to Inc. Magazine, where I found out about it. It’s 8 years old. It’s projected to make $5 million this year. Venture capitalists are knocking on the founders’ doors.
But the company is about more than money. It’s a true democracy. It’s better than regular democracies, really, because voting happens constantly and nothing is done without input from the site’s community.
And communication is never-ending and wide-spread: The designers talk to each other and to customers on the online forums. All the employees — from the CEOs on down — interact with the community tirelessly, both online and even at company headquarters, where Threadless devotees hang out for hours at a time.
Threadless is also about talented artists slaving away, not for the nominal cash awards they receive if they win, but for the chance to do something they love and get their name out there. The company kind of removes the corporate ladder with all its steepness and slipperiness and makes it easier for talented designers to reach greater heights.
While reading about Threadless, I was reminded of a quote from Suze Rotolo, who was Bob Dylan’s girlfriend and guru in the 1960’s. In a feature article in the New York Times, she said the following about the ever-present nostalgia for the artist communities of the ’60’s, “Everything occurs again, just differently,” she said. “There will always be creative people who feel that they’re different and create a community of some kind. Whether it’s a physical neighborhood or an Internet neighborhood, in Bushwick or in Greenwich Village, it’s not over.”
And that’s what Threadless is: an Internet, T-shirt making neighborhood.
And here are just a few of the neighborhood T-shirts.
When I went for ice-cream as a child, I would look out at all the flavors laid out in all their deliciousness, and be scared of making the wrong decision. I began to dread trips to Baskin Robbins.
Neurotic? Maybe. But recent research shows that this behavior is not that unusual, and not limited to children.
In their fantastic book, Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, Chip Heath and Dan Heath describe “decision paralysis.” Decision paralyis is the paradoxical idea that the more choices people are given, the less likely they are to agree to any one of them.
The authors describe a study where college students were offered the hypothetical choice between a great, once-in-a-lifetime lecture versus studying. 21% chose studying. Then they were offered the hypothetical choice between a great lecture versus studying versus a great foreign movie. 40% chose studying.
The lesson, I think, is as much as people say they like their freedom, sometimes they like to be told they have 2 and only 2 choices: A or B.
For instance, Red Mango is a big fad that’s hitting New York these days. It offers 2 flavors of frozen yogurt: original and green tea …
… And by “Little Tramp,” I mean Charlie Chaplin, so get your mind out of the gutter, Dear Reader.
Last year’s New Yorker had a wonderful little gem of a story about Chaplin’s work ethic (if you go to the link for the story, you need to scroll down to the end to read it).
The story goes that Charlie was on vacation with a friend, hanging out at a beach north of Rome. The two were waiting for heavy fog to clear so they could properly enjoy themselves and go in the water.
Hours passed, and still they waited.
Finally, at around 3:00, the fog lifted.
… And all Charlie wanted to do was leave.
When his friend asked him why, Charlie replied, “‘I’m going back to the hotel. Unless I write every day, I don’t feel I deserve my dinner.’”
In some ways, this is very admirable. Hooray for Charlie Chaplin.
As for me:
Dear Reader, as much as I love writing to you, if I ever wait half-a-day at a beach for the sky to clear — and that would be any beach, from the north of Rome to Coney Island — I’m not gonna go home until the rhythm of the ocean is beating like a drum from my head to my toes.
(And maybe then, I’d go home, eat dinner, and then blog about my day).
… Anyway, here’s a video of the Little Tramp himself. Enjoy.
Email This Post
C. Thomas Jefferson
