Summer Lovin?

Doug Hall, Coney Island, New York, 2005

Can't believe June is almost over and i've only gone to the beach two times! If you spent the last 2+ months in NYC you would know how starved we are for sun and warmth. The only plus is that it makes it a hell of a lot easier to be in the darkroom getting work done when its pouring rain outside...

On Beauty and Being Wrong

Loving Zadie Smith right now. I really liked White Teeth but this was so touching, so poignant it brought me to tears. She weaves so much truth and beauty all about and together into a thick, heaping mass of humanity. The breakdown of relationships is heartbreaking and yet, something in the reader is somehow rebuilt. She gives us so much to contemplate: underlying politics of class and race, making the macro micro and vice versa.  Awaiting the moment when i pick up the next Zadie Smith novel.

Bushwick Open Studio and Arts Festival

Come celebrate Bushwick and stop by Eastern District to check out my solo show Home, Away from Home.

BOS Festival Events

The BOS 09 Map and Program is Now Available!

Check out our program listing all of the 250+ open studios, group shows and events that will be going on during the weekend of June 5-7, 2009! You can also browse the open studio and event listings online to get more information about the registered artists and events.

Home, Away From Home

Eastern District is proud to host Home, Away from Home, a solo-exhibit of photographs by multi-media artist Justine Reyes. 

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Opening Reception 7-10pm Friday May 15th 2009 sponsored by ASAHI.

EASTERN DISTRICT. 43 BOGART STREET

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Home, Away from Home draws on images from two bodies of work, “Home” and “Away from Home.” Ms. Reyes spent the past six years photographing her immediate family - her mother and two uncles. This series pairs their portraits with views of empty interior spaces in the house where they all live. In many of the photographs where the figures of her family are physically present a lonely emptiness and unease hovers, often more insistantly than in the vacant spaces. The family is seen engaging in the everyday activities of cleaning, eating, watching TV, doing nothing in particular. The viewer is forced to adopt Reyes' vision, incorporating the artist's own fears of losing her family and trying to capture the moments slipping by with increasing speed as they get older. Ms. Reyes' beautifully sad photographs focus on age, aging, loneliness and isolation, and the fragility of life and family bonds through her stark depictions of details such as her uncle's broken nose. 

Home follows the series, “My Uncle Vinnie” (2005), the image of the empty bedroom representing Uncle Vinnie and his absence. After Uncle Vinnie's death Ms. Reyes took numerous trips with her family. Away from Home documents the hotel rooms that became grand stages for dramas that never quite unfold. She focuses on the subtle underlying tension created by dislocation. By staging her family in foreign spaces, costumed to have the look and feel of domestic comfort, Ms. Reyes begins to draw relationships between “Home” and “Away from Home”, both literally and metaphorically, as if Ms. Reyes is preparing herself for her family's journey to the after life through depictions of anxiety and confliction. The images convey no sense of time or place, but only that there is a journey and that the journey requires preparation.

EASTERN DISTRICT. 43 BOGART STREET - L TRAIN TO MORGAN AVENUE.

Queens International 4 Closing Party!

Bring your bike and meet me at the Queens Museum of Art this Sunday from 12-6pm. Come celebrate, enjoy the gorgeous weather and get a last look at this amazing biennial of Queens artists!

Spotlight: Lars Fisk, Queens International 4

Its easy to miss Lars Fisk's The Triumph of Styrofoam, a marble sculpture made to look like a discarded coffee cup ( Look for it on the floor to the left of my work, Guayabera Series). This "finely carved marble sculpture asks us to take a second look at the garbage we usually ignore. As facsimiles of real objects, these decoys emit an effortless sense of life, asking us to confront our relationship to consumption and waste. 

Fisk employs traditional sculptural materials in unexpected ways."

Queens International 4 is on view at the Queens Museum of  Art until April 26th, 2009.

SUrreal

Crashed Laura Heyman's Grad Critique Seminar, work by Colin Todd

                                                          Studio visit with Chris Gianunzio
Went up to Syracuse University last week to give a lecture and do studio visits. It was my first time back since i graduated in 2000.  I kept having so many weird flashbacks of my undergrad days. It was a surreal experience to be lecturing there and remembering all of the visiting artist's that I heard speak as a young art student and the profound effect it had on my development. I was really honored to be able to come back to campus in this capacity and meet with the students and talk about their work. I met so many talented and intelligent individuals whose work and process is a reflection of the quality of the photography department and program at Syracuse. It was great to catch up with my old professor Doug Dubois and spend some time getting to know Yasser Aggour, both of whom are an inspiration both artistically and for their dedicated teaching style.  Also got a chance to spend some time with my old friend Eirik Johnson, who was by chance, also doing studio visits and crits with Laura Heyman's class.

 

"To teach is to learn again" - H.J. Brown

Big thanks to Doug, Yasser and Syracuse University for giving me this opportunity!