June 2, 2007
Last Chance! Don't Miss It
It's the last performance of an original play, and if you're not up before noon you will probably miss it. I've taken "remiss" to new levels in not talking about this, because there were only three performances, beginning Friday. The Haberdasher Theater Company have been performing "Tom's Dilemma", written by Adam Wier, directed by Arlyn Mick since Friday. Its run is unfortunately short and sweet. I actually know jack about what the content is other than the copy on a handbill I've been given.
Randy hasn't been very good at confrontation
Jezzy hasn't been very good at accepting her past, up until this point
Tom mst make the most difficult choice in life. One that will affect them all forever.
I do, however, know a few of the members of this theater company and have high expectations about the production. "Tom's Dilemma" is being performed for the last time tomorrow at the Times Square Arts Center, at 300 (btw 8th and 9th Aves.) West 43rd St., on the 5th Floor. Sunday's a matinee, so set your alarms and bring $15 for a ticket. Curtain rises at 3 p.m. Believe me, it's rare you ever regret going to these types of things.
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April 10, 2007
The Finiteness of Life & Art
Someone forwarded me an email this morning that gave me pause. My first reaction was one of urgency, as in "somebody should do something!" Considering all the circumstances, however, I wonder. The image above was taken on the rooftop of the Metropolitan Museum in NYC; it's of a piece called Splotch #3 by Sol Lewitt, who died Sunday at the age of 78. From his NYTimes obit:
Mr. LeWitt helped establish Conceptualism and Minimalism as dominant movements of the postwar era. A patron and friend of colleagues young and old, he was the opposite of the artist as celebrity. He tried to suppress all interest in him as opposed to his work; he turned down awards and was camera-shy and reluctant to grant interviews. He particularly disliked the prospect of having his photograph in the newspaper.
Typically, a 1980 work called “Autobiography” consisted of more than 1,000 photographs he took of every nook and cranny of his Manhattan loft, down to the plumbing fixtures, wall sockets and empty marmalade jars, and documented everything that had happened to him in the course of taking the pictures. But he appeared in only one photograph, which was so small and out of focus that it is nearly impossible to make him out. His work — sculptures of white cubes, or drawings of geometric patterns, or splashes of paint like Rorschach patterns — tested a viewer’s psychological and visual flexibility. See a line. See that it can be straight, thin, broken, curved, soft, angled or thick. Enjoy the differences. The test was not hard to pass if your eyes and mind were open, which was the message of Mr. LeWitt’s art.
I loved the post written by Jen Carlson that we ran at Gothamist because it had a large-sized crop of the above photo. It was interesting enough that in Monday's Extra, Extra post, I chose a picture of a young girl embracing LeWitt's art: literally.
So this morning's recieved email was a bit of a surprise, as it described some of LeWitt's wall drawings that exist inside one of the buildings slated for destruction at Brooklyn's Atlantic Yards development project. An excerpt:
644 Pacific Street is in the footprint of Bruce Ratner's proposed "Atlantic Yards" project, specifically in the footprint of the arena itself. In that building, once occupied by one of Mr. Lewitt's studio assistants, are at least two wall paintings by the artist. The building is in the list of the first round of demolitions the developer intends to begin in the coming weeks. These wall paintings should be photographed for historical documentation and the Sol Lewitt catalogue.
This is a fairly small request. The sender doesn't even seem to be calling for perservation of the works, just documentation before they are destroyed. I then remembered the closing lines of the obit that Carlson wrote for Gothamist, recounting LeWitt's lack of sentimentality in regards to his works' temporary nature.
LeWitt moved to New York in 1953 and had a variety of short-term jobs, including night receptionist at the Museum of Modern Art. His first solo art show was at the John Daniels Gallery in 1965 and his first wall drawing, part of a 1968 display, moved the gallery owner so much that she couldn't bear to paint over it and insisted LeWitt do it himself, which he did without hesitating.
Of course, LeWitt was only 39 then, just halfway through his 78 years. I'm sure the cavalierness of an artist with decades of productivity ahead of him may have been tempered as those years ahead diminished. In that respect, LeWitt treated his art as most of us treat life. And the end of both LeWitt's life and some of his work may intersect at Atlantic Ave. and Pacific St. in 2007.
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March 28, 2007
MAZEL TOV!
To the right is the winner of the inaugural Matzo Sculpture Competition sponsored by Manischewitz and hosted by NYU. Sophomore art student James Donovan won $1,000 for his unleavened rendering of the Arch at Union Square. Art talk abounded:
The official theme was "Home," contestant Eric Goldberg said, and his three little matzo dioramas were meant to represent his parents' home, his grandparents' home, and now (the one with the matzo futon), his own home, as an NYU student.
"They gave me a foundation," he said of his family, and you just know that somewhere out there, there are two generations of Goldbergs very proud that their boy is spending his $39,000 education gluing matzos together.
Don't worry Eric, they're probably just relieved you're not a performance artist.
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March 18, 2007
NAME THAT STREET, BUILDING , SLIP, AND/OR MONUMENT, NO MATTER HOW LONG AGO IT VANISHED
Almost exactly a year ago––perhaps a few days before––I went to the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers, NY. Hop on a MetroNorth train and get off one stop after Marble Hill and you're there. Cars are for suckers: just walk across the platform and some playing fields and you find yourself at the Hudson River Museum front door.
Inside the museum, one will find an interesting (alright, it depends on what your threshold for interesting is) overview of the entire course of the Hudson River. Other floors of the museum have some great displays on advertising and sublime 1950's marketing trends, including kitchen hardware. One of the best things about the Hudson River Museum is its planetarium. If you feel the computer-generated effects and real-time synchronized movement of the heavens was too overwhelming when you were at the Rose Center on CPW and 85th St., only the Andrus Planetarium can manage to pass off a filmstrip projected on the ceiling while simultaneously begging for funding and pitching b-day parties at the planetarium. It might have been the most interesting planetarium experience I've had in a while.
Anchoring the Hudson River Museum is the Glenview Mansion, one of dozens of family Hudson River manses surrendered to the State when the age of Robber Barons drew to a close. For as many of these examples I've been in, The Glenview Mansion is one of the better ones: full access, a working pool table, accessible art galleries upstairs, and some kickass curatorial commentary posted along the way.
One of the more interesting parts was the annex between the Hudson River Museum and the Glenview Mansion. It included a floor-to-ceiling mural of the Manhattan waterfront that I took a picture of in stages. Just yesterday, I stitched those pictures together; the above image is an excerpt. 19th Century photographers loved to architecturally conflate their images by cutting and pasting. I thought I was relatively familiar with NYC's architectural history, but I'm having a lot of trouble getting a bead on many of these larger late-19th Century buildings.
Drop a note if you can ID some landmarks. Check Flickr here for the largest versions available of the composite picture.
Super Bonus Points: What is that obelisk to the southwest of the Manhattan-side Brooklyn Bridge Tower? It looks like it has windows. Perspective would seem to place it further south than City Hall Park. What the hell is that thing?
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March 4, 2007
FUN WITH FONTS
While the typography here at Lexiphane.com is somewhat limited and not at all original, we do appreciate those that use not just words, but the shape of their words to get a point across. We recently came across a fantastic short film that employs not only varying fonts, but kinetic motion to convey a familiar movie scene's drama and emotion. Warning in advance of audible profanity and violence as Jules wants an answer to the question "What does Marcellus Wallace look like?" [via the John Nack at Adobe blog]
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January 20, 2007
A GRACIOUS GESTURE
The other week I was interested in a gallery show about a preeminent urban photographer, Philip Trager. The photographer is well reputed for his work with large format cameras and pictures of NYC, although that's not nearly his entire range. So I wrote a piece in anticipation and then wrote another after I'd actually visited the gallery.
A couple of weeks after that last post, I will admit that I was shocked/flattered/gratified when Mr. Trager [or his assistant?] sent me an email expressing his thanks for my interest in his show and the fact that I enjoyed myself viewing his prints. Yesterday, I received his latest book, titled simply Philip Trager
Objectively speaking, the book is gorgeous: photographs from Connecticut to Italy, with not a few pages of NYC architecture that could leave one reeling. If one is a fan of photography or architecture, I would have to recommend this volume as essential. If one is a phillistine rube with a big empty spot on your coffee table, go ahead and get it; trust me.
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SLEEPWALKERS
Weather can be a friend and a foe for an outdoor art installation and its visitors. Seasonable January temperatures and a spitting drizzle go a long way to deterring crowds from forming around a public exhibit. At the same time, it may necessitate some childish strongarming* to get a woman to agree to stand in an alley watching a silent movie with you on a weeknight.
This particular visitor was lucky enough to come prepared with a hat, scarf, and gloves while waiting for his friend--delayed momentarily by anti-foie gras protestors outside the museum's restaurant entrance. The view from 53rd St. is underwhelming. One is backed up against the museum store across the street, so the upward angle to watch the films is pretty acute. Also, I believe that particular screen is being projected on from the inside of the museum. How that will make a difference follows in the next paragraph.
Around the corner from 53rd St. is a rather odd-looking vacant lot. It's bigger than an alley, but smaller than a skyscraper footprint. Given the location, the museum could probably have shoehorned about $90 million worth of condos into the space. Nonetheless, viewers huddled under an awning to watch films of Tilda Swinton and Cat Power. Turning onto 54th St., one immediately is confronted across the street with the awning of the restaurant Il Gattopardo, which is strange because I just started reading that book. But I digress. 54th St. is where the whole Doug Aitken "Sleepwalkers" exhibition comes together. In the Rockefeller Sculpture Garden, multiple projectors throw Aitken's work onto three different walls simultaneously and the parallel action of the movies is synchronized with each other. The effect was more interesting in the alley view, when one could watch two projections simultaneously out of the corner of one's eyes, but the sculpture garden stole the show hands down. It could very well have been the result of the weather. With steam columns pouring out of open manhole covers and from the tops of buildings into a cold drizzly atmosphere, Manhattan looked like a movie set. Images spun by huge projectors and thrown from kilowatt bulbs materialized in the atmospheric ether inside the sculpture garden. The facade of MoMA wasn't the only canvas for Aitken's work. For an evening, the weather managed to co-opt the entire space with rays of flickering light. It was pretty goddamn cool.
Proceeding down 5th Ave. following our visit, it was remarked that NYC that evening--especially St. Patrick's Cathedral--was looking like Gotham City and ready for its closeup. A side trip into Brooks Bros. was necessary and I can advise that almost everything on the floor of that repository of "old school" is 50% off. So, if you want a $200 pair of gloves on the not-so-cheap, they'll only cost you a Franklin.
*"I know you said you didn't want to go if it's raining, but it is raining, but not really, so basically whether you come or not is based on how much of a baby you are when it comes to getting your hair wet."
[Actual voicemail left to instigate art participation]
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January 17, 2007
THE CITY THAT NEVER SLEEPS
For the next 28 evenings, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in midtown Manhattan has offered itself up as a canvas to visual artist Doug Aitken in collaboration with the public arts group Creative Time.
The Museum of Modern Art and Creative Time, the New York–based public art organization, have jointly commissioned Doug Aitken to create the artist's first large-scale public artwork in the United States. The project is also the first to bring art to MoMA's exterior walls. Eight continuous sequences of film scenes will be projected onto six facades, including those on West Fifty-third and Fifty-fourth streets and those overlooking The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden. Inspired by the densely built environment of New York's midtown, the artist will create a cinematic art experience that directly integrates with the architectural fabric of the city while simultaneously enhancing and challenging viewers' perceptions of public space. The project, filmed in New York City, will be shown daily from 5:00 p.m. until 10:00 p.m., and is intended to be visible from many public vantage points adjacent to the Museum.
The installation will show the stories of five different NYC characters' lives as they venture out into the night and features Ryan Donowho, Seu Jorge, Cat Power, Tilda Swinton, and Donald Sutherland. I am not familiar with any of Aitken's previous work, but this New York Magazine article makes him sound like someone I'd like to hang out with:
Aitken loves to scout for exotic new locations. To shoot one of Donowho’s scenes, Aitken and his crew broke into the abandoned nineteenth-century vault of the Atlantic Avenue tunnel, dropping in through a manhole, crawling across an endless dirt passage, then lowering themselves down a broken ladder into utter blackness. “It was like falling into a new world,” he says. Similarly, he used the heliport atop the MetLife Building, which has been closed off since a deadly crash in 1977, as well as a postal sorting center in Queens and an ice rink in Staten Island. Perhaps the most exciting discovery was the bowels of several giant signs in Times Square, including a Coke ad and the nasdaq scroll. “You’re climbing on massive catwalks and scaffolding surrounded by banks and banks of circuitry and flashing red and green lights,” he says. “It’s almost like 2001: A Space Odyssey in there.”
Visit the installation's web site with a Flash presentation here. "Sleepwalkers" will be shown from the present through February 12th. MoMA is fronted on 53rd St., which is probably the best place to start seeing the piece: in front of the museum, walking West and turning North through the open space between 53rd and 54th, then making a right to head East down 54th St., making a short jog in and around the Rockefeller Sculpture Garden, and then heading off towards 5th Ave. to discuss with your companion what you just watched. More complete viewing instructions are downloadable here.
For those who simply can't wait, here's the 60 second trailer embedded from YouTube:
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January 16, 2007
DRAWN TOGETHER
(photo by Ruth Fremson for The New York Times)
In the forward of the book The Rejection Collection, editor Matthew Diffee describes the weekly lunch get togethers of regular cartoon contributors to The New Yorker:
"On Tuesday, after all the batches have been dropped off, the whole gang usually ambles off to lunch together. People always ask me what we talk about, and as much as I'd like to nurture the illusion that I'm a member of my own sort of Algonquin round table, I have to admit that we're not really that witty a group. I mean, we are, but only as much as any other group. We spend most of the time talking about what we might order, what we saw on television, what we think about the news. It's only when we start talking about work that our conversation becomes unique. Because we can have serious, lengthy, occasionally heated full-table discussions about ridiculous things that are quite important in our business, such as how to draw duck feet or whether "Scranton" is funnier than "Cleveland" and why. Do dogs have hair or fur? What's the perfect name to use in a caption? Is Buford too funny? What about Doug? Or Edwin? What's the difference in technique between drawing a mustache and drawing an eyebrow? What is that fine line in the drawing of a cartoon that either makes the gag funnier or ruins it?"
In today's New York Times, a reporter tags along with the group to see what the scene is actually like. Of course, anytime a reporter from The New York Times is present and everyone knows it, it's reasonable to think that the banter and behavior are somewhat modified.
There is more wise to the wise guy than one might imagine, and just as much wisdom behind the pen as wit: Mr. Gerberg plays the piano beautifully; Mr. Gross knows opera, can talk Mozart as if he knew the guy; Mr. Harris could navigate the Morgan Library in the dark. Nor are they frozen in the past: Mr. Kane has just as many pictures up on Flickr.com as any self-respecting high school kid.
“There are more galaxies out there than there are grains of sand on a beach,” Mr. Harris tells us one afternoon. “Can you imagine?” He pauses a beat, then adds: “You can’t. Because our brains are too small to grasp this yet.”
On the protective paper atop the restaurant’s linen tablecloth — another excellent detail suited to this particular gathering — we draw what the edge of the universe might look like. “And what’s around it?” asks Mr. Le Lievre, a dark-haired Melbourne import. “Now here’s what I imagine.”
He takes up his pen and sketches what lies beyond the galaxies. Twin lines contract off into the distance; grass sprouts raggedly on one side. “It’s surrounded by a white picket fence,” Mr. Le Lievre says. “And there’s a gate in it.” He draws that next. “And it annoys the hell out of everybody.”
Peering at the drawing upside down from across the table, Mr. Gross says: “And on the other side, there’s a gated community. It’s like Florida.”
THE REJECTION COLLECTION, Cartoons You Never Saw, and Never Will See, in The New Yorker is a hilarious book filled with pieces that cartoon editor Robert Mankoff judged too off color to be included in The New Yorker.
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January 15, 2007
WRY PERSPECTIVE
Speaking of views of the city [see MODELS OF WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN, 1/15/07], The Museum of the City of New York is currently exhibiting the work of illustrator Saul Steinberg. Most readers will be most familiar with his famous New Yorker cover showing the city looming large in the foreground and the rest of the country west of the Hudson receding as if a national afterthought.
From his arrival in Manhattan in 1942 until his final work for The New Yorker nearly 60 years later, Saul Steinberg (1914-1999) was one of New York City's most creative and beloved artists. Trained in architecture, a satirist by nature, and a peerless anthologist of graphic techniques, he saw the city--its skyline, its people, its monuments and myths--as no one else ever has. A City on Paper: Saul Steinberg's New York brings together over forty of Steinberg's brilliant drawings, along with a selection of objects from the Museum's collection--maps, aerial views, postcards, posters, and more: "cities on paper" of the kind that inspired his unique vision. The exhibition coincides with a retrospective, Saul Steinberg: Illuminations, at the Morgan Library and Museum.
The Steinberg exhibit will be on display through March 25th. The Museum of the City of New York is located at 103rd St. and 5th Ave. It is open Tuesdays through Sundays, 10am-5pm, and closed on Mondays. Interestingly, it is open on Monday holidays, such as today's MLK Jr. Day. Adult admission fee is $9. For the cheap and or broke, admission is free on Sundays from 10am-12pm. And while this is not very public spirited to take advantage of, the Museum's admissions fee is waived to its neighbors in East Harlem. One can simply claim "I'm a neighbor!" and in you go for free.
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January 14, 2007
WILL PAINT FOR FOOD
Will Paint For Food was pretty much where the artistic community found itself during the Great Depression. Throwing them a lifeline was the federal government, which created the Works Progress Administration (WPA) component of the New Deal. As pointed out in a recent article in The New York Sun, the government support didn't just put food on the table and paint on the palette, it gave artists the breathing room to germinate a 20th Century community of American artists that would go on to supplant Europe as the epicenter of the art world.
Launched in May 1935, the WPA employed thousands of American artists, writers, musicians, and actors. For the first time in this country's history, large groups of painters and sculptors, often working together on major projects such as public murals, were guaranteed jobs and paychecks. No longer burdened by unpaid bills and empty stomachs, artists could afford to buy materials and to spend time in their studios; but, of nearly equal importance, they could afford to get away from the isolation of those studios — to meet after work in cafés and bars to socialize and to argue about art.
Those dialogues led to camaraderie, solidarity, and the founding of groups such as the American Abstract Artists and the "Ten." They also inspired heated disagreements and polarization regarding abstract vs. representational art; Stalinists vs. Trotskyites; American art vs. that of Europe. The WPA provided a lifeline that almost single-handedly gave birth to the New York art world, which, 15 years later, would supplant that of Paris as the art capital of the world.
Under the WPA's Federal Art Project, thousands of murals were commissioned to adorn this country's government buildings, including high schools and post offices, as well as hospitals, housing projects, colleges, music halls, night clubs, and museums. "For the People: American Mural Drawings of the 1930s and 1940s," which opens tomorrow at Vassar College's Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., focuses on the flowering of American mural painting.
The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center is on the campus of Vassar College in Poughkeepsie. It's open from 10am-5pm Tuesday thru Saturday, 1pm-5pm on Sundays, and closed on Mondays. The "For the People" exhibit will be shown through March 11th. A map with directions to Vassar's campus is available here. The FLLAC's Cesar Pelli-designed building is right inside the college's main gate and to the right. A map of the campus is available here.
Pictured above is not a WPA-era mosaic mural, but one of many recent murals installed in the NYC subway system to improve the environment. That particular mural is at the 42nd St. subway hub, where multiple lines converge beneath Times Square. Kevin Walsh has an excellent page at his indespensible Forgotten-NY site that details a lot of the art that's been installed over the last decade.
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December 31, 2006
NOTED WITH APPRECIATION
This past Thursday I swung by the John Stevenson Gallery on 23rd St. to check out the Philip Trager Retrospective. Trager is the architectural photographer I wrote about last week [see TOWERING TALENT, 12/22/06]. The Stevenson Gallery is a nice quiet intimate spot to enjoy some art on the quick and cheap. I mostly had the place to myself as I enjoyed Trager's photographic prints of buildings in France, Italy, NYC, and Connecticut, as well as portraits of modern dancers. Gallery personnel were present in the background behind room dividers, but were more than willing to let visitors browse at their leisure. The exception was the house docent, a patchwork-colored cat who dutifully followed me around the room like it expected me to steal something.
The standout feature of the Retrospective in my opinion is pictured above. It's an artist's proof of one of Trager's prints, fully notated by the artist to outline the compositional details of the picture as well as writing where dodging, burning, and other developing touches were necessary. It was a fascinating insight into what Trager was thinking while practicing his craft.
The John Stevenson Gallery is just a stopover for this particular exhibition. In the spring, the photographs will head to Oberlin College before finally settling in The Great Hall of the Thomas Jefferson Building at the Library of Congress in DC.
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December 22, 2006
TOWERING TALENT
Photography could be described as an effort to capture and freeze the ever-in-motion with a static medium. Nature, people, almost all living and even inanimate subjects are in some sort of motion, albeit of various speeds. One exception is architectural photography; the practice of taking portraits of immoveable objects most frequently with a tool that emphasizes light, dark, lines, shape, and detail.
The small-format camera — 35 mm or the digital equivalent — is terrific for capturing fast moving action and doing it inconspicuously. It is virtually impossible to use a view camera unobtrusively. They are big, maybe 8 inches by 10 inches, with a bellows that can extend for two feet. Because they are heavy, they have to be supported on a tripod. To see the ground glass properly, the photographer uses a black cloth that drapes from the rear of the camera to his waist. But they are ideal for certain types of photography, and one of them — architectural photography — was Mr. Trager's first enthusiasm. (He went on to become an important photographer of modern dance, but for that he used a handheld camera.)
The view camera, because it is fixed on its tripod, allows meticulous framing. The photographer decides with great precision exactly what he wants in his picture, and what he wants to exclude. It favors photographers with a strong sense of composition, Mr. Trager's great strength. The image the photographer sees on the ground glass is upside down and reversed, which gives him a sense of its abstract qualities. (Representational painters will look at a canvas upside down for the same purpose.) The bellows can be adjusted to eliminate parallax, the illusion that the sides of a building are converging. And the large negative size captures an enormous amount of detail. Mr. Trager used all these traits to great effect in his 1977 book "Photographs of Architecture." Six blackand-white vintage prints from it are at Stevenson.
The photographer mentioned above is Philip Trager, a lawyer turned photographer whose work is currently being shown at the John Stevenson Gallery at 338 W. 23rd St. between 8th and 9th Aves in an exhibit called Philip Trager: Retrospective. Some examples of Trager's work is available online at the Stevenson Gallery site here.
The New York Sun ran a great review of the retrospective in yesterday's paper.
Mr. Trager's impulses are not those of a documentarian, or even properly those of an architectural photographer, but of an art photographer. He uses his view camera to make a handsome picture that happens to have this or that house as its subject. His indebtedness to the Walker Evans of "American Photographs" is clear, but so is his difference. The simple two-story wood framed house in "Glastonbury" (1976) is shot head-on, as Evans might have taken it, but from farther away, to give a sense of its placement in a treerimmed field. It is winter and the two large trees on either side of the path leading to the front door are bare of leaves. Mr. Trager shot with the sun low so that the trees cast dramatic shadows on the front of the house and on the lawn, upsetting its symmetry. There is a calculated beauty in the image that careful manipulation of his view camera made possible.
Philip Trager: Retrospective runs through January 13. The gallery is open to the public Tuesdays through Saturdays, 11 - 6 p.m.
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December 21, 2006
HUDSON RIVER SCHOOLED
(Manhattan Bridge with Reflection, by Christine Lafuente)
While the holidays can be an exceedingly busy time, residents of NYC and visitors may want to take some time to catch an exhibition of a painter who successfully bridges the gaps between urban and natural mise-en-scenes. The Manhattan location of Frost & Reed Galleries is currently exhibiting "Riverscapes and Floating Worlds": a collection of watercolors situated around New York and the Hudson River Valley as painted by Christine Lafuente. From the gallery's description of the exhibition:
Riverscapes and Floating Worlds opening on November 30th showcases Lafuente’s unique vision of city views, riverscapes and still lifes. An award-winning artist and one of today’s leading exponents of American painterly realism in New York, Lafuente is known for the energy and excitement her dazzling brushwork brings to alla prima painting.
In painting directly from nature, Lafuente evokes the essence and the symbolic import of her subject. Her gift for unlocking the poetic potentials of everyday scenes can be appreciated in such works as View Toward Brooklyn Bridge, Winter, 2005 (image to the right) and East River Reflection, 2006 - a striking series of paintings of post-9-11 downtown New York. Views of the Brooklyn, Manhattan and Williamsburg bridges, the East River, Brooklyn waterfront and Manhattan skyline - with their rich color, dynamic shapes and sparkling light, capture the emotions and hopes for the future which pervade in this tremendously vital section of the city.
(Hudson River, Cloudy Morning)
Frost & Reed Galleries is located at 21 E67th St. between Fifth and Madison Avenues. Its exhibition of Lafuente's work runs through January 6, Tuesday-Saturday, 10 a.m.-6 p.m. If one can't make it in person, a selection is viewable online here.
As a personal aside, I believe that Christine Lafuente may be a daughter of Colette Lafuente, who taught Civics and my AP Government class in high school. Despite having to teach a class to second-semester seniors during the final period of the day, she always managed to hold my attention. Rightly so, considering that she was simultaneously serving as a multi-term Mayor of the City of Poughkeepsie. She remains one of my favorite high school teachers.
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