BIG PUN’S DISTRICT: Hip Hop Narratives & the Political Designation of Place
Big Pun, Capital Punishment
Author: annemcray
If The People Have No Bread
Dear White Women in the Arts, Please continue eating cake in the corner with each other. I am using your Marie-Antoinette-havin-asses as something to look at while I stand in a group of boys clubs and discuss the new photographic prints which just came into The Gallery in large lead frames. Or, put your guns up and your cakes down, Ladies. (Source)
Conversations Pt. 1
My first question for you is why in the hell are you making songs about the projects? I’m sorry pardon me I believe you mean photographs. You are a rapper, yes? I’m making photographs of project buildings. My working with geometric square and cube shaped geometry has been consistent. I am entertaining the thought that I am imposing a spot into the structure which may open room for political consideration. What do you think? What Do You Mean, collaboration? Yes, I am speaking of something that may be possible for you. If you consider a culture to have a shape you must wonder of your own. Imagine two shapes, where are it’s points. What happens when a culture imposes a geometry on another? Yes, that is a good question . One I will consider in the context of public housing in New York City. I suppose the most obvious answer is discomfort . Another person should answer this as well . Discomfort meaning the opposite of comfort, or lack of? Both , a am thinking …
Louis Kahn @ FABRIC WORKSHOP MUSEUM
Louis Kahn: The Power of Architecture August 11, 2017–November 5, 2017 Opening Reception: Wednesday, September 6, 2017, 6:00–8:00 pm The exhibit of Louis Kahn’s architectural career on the 8th floor of the Fabric Workshop Museum in Philly presents an obviously male gendered and white notion of city planning and priorities. ‘A small boy walks through a city and sees something which will tell him what he wants to do his whole life . ‘ Ok, I will accept this premise with adjustments to the assumption of gender and race. Wondering, then, what I have seen which has told me what I want to do my (whole) life. One beginning note is that my (whole) life is a consummation of variant architectures and landscapes. The quote on the wall seems more applicable to one born and raised and died within the city. So, in order to consider its possibility, I will wonder within the context of my (whole) life in New York City. Then, specificity becomes necessary . I don’t believe I have seen much in Midtown …
Brooklyn Photographs : exhibit @ BRIC Arts Media
OPENING RECEPTION: Wednesday, September 6, 2017 ON VIEW: September 7 – October 29, 2017 CURATED BY: Elizabeth Ferrer A photo by Max Kozloff in the center of this series is astonishing. A young Jamaican girl slouches in a gold woven chair set against a palm background. Her head rests against her couched elbow and she gazes just left of the cameras 3ye, much like how I look at someone without looking at them. Someone next to her sees or decides to acknowledge the camera. A young child reaches for something in a middle aged mans hands. The series reminds me of an artist Osiris. The color palate is rich, the light is even, and the artist has not inserted himself into the details. V good. Max Kozloff, The Pensive Girl, Brooklyn, 1993
Dear Tech Employee Making 6 Figures and Still Finding It Necessary to Steal Artwork:
I understand that your 9 to 6pm guarantee of making more money than you’re realistically worth given the extreme economic disparity in this country has you feeling impervious to the same moral system that governs most of us, Allow me to remind you of the general code of ethics which has existed since the early centuries of patronage. Art-WORK requires time, train fare, and intelligence. It is impossible to support such intelligence and effort if we are not paid for our products and skills. Considering your relative cluelessness to the creative process, I assume you imagine that I simply sit down with a quill pen and a fireplace by my side and begin constructing drawings on the hide of dead lambs from last summer. These constructions of mine are simple, the discomfort of a cramped hand is easily soothed by the touch of a woman with her arms draped across my leather chair or by the clink of ice cubes under a splash of desert liquor after dinner. Allow me to break …
Re: The price of art/work
I assist classes at the printshop in Manhattan. My duties include gathering class materials, answering technical questions, and cleaning up after the class has finished. Tonight, after completing my tasks adequately for a Japanese Woodblock class, I settled myself in a corner and continued working on my own print which utilized the techniques taught in the workshop. As I was working, a student came to my corner and interrupted my drawing into soft ground to ask if I was paid to assist the instructor today. I put down my number whatever pencil, took out my headphones and spun in my stool to look at her. “No, I am not paid cash.” I said. “Oh, How Come You Get So Much Time To Work?” she asked. I assume she was bothered by my working on my own artwork, so I ignored her intrusion and politely informed her that “Class ended at 4:30, you are here because of the generosity of your instructor.” It was about 5. “You don’t work very hard,” she replied. SO I SAID LISTEN …
Power sanding panels with Marjorie Welish
Marjorie Welish hired me to sand 12 wood panels down from old paintings to new slabs she intends to paint on. Her work is concerned with a search for post-modern primary colors ; “what would be a post modern blue,’ she asks while we work together on the wood panels. The paintings I am sanding away are covered with black and white grids and areas of red, yellow, and blue paint. They are reminiscent of Mondrian’s color fields, interesting because of her use of shades; she has included two shades of red in one painting : I had an opportunity to briefly explain my practice to the artist, who quickly engaged me in conversation regarding the attentiveness of line. She referenced Hercules Seghers, who’s show of etchings just came down at the Metropolitan. “That man can think,” she says. ‘He is attentive to each line.’ I nod and tell her that “I find my attention comes and goes, I have areas drawn with a lot of focus and others where my mind wanders. I wonder, now, …
Assisting Michael Krueger
I kicked a s s today assisting Michael Krueger on a series of woodblock prints at the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop. Michael is an artist from Kansas who works in printmaking, animation, painting and drawing. He is visiting New York to publish a series of prints with the shop. The images are drawings which have been lazar cut into woodblocks and printed in multiple colors on Kozo #8 rice paper. We are printing three small editions, which will be divided between the printshop and Michael and sold. The drawings feature references to artists in the canon of art history which Michael says he is taking ownership of by including in his own work. In one image, Lee Krazer stands in front of a portrait of Edvard Munch with a paintbrush dripping red paint. Simple drawings without backgrounds, the referents float in a color field. I began on Tuesday by coating the Kozo paper with a methyl-cellulose glue. One side is painted with the wet glue and left to dry on large …
Sweetie
Beth brought a poppy seed cake to the printshop today for her birthday. Catherine Stack is teaching Sugarlift technique in Etching II, and devraj is printing lithographs of strawberry jam labels from 1941. I’m going to take a bath of acid.
