Daisake Yamamoto - 1 week project

The Encampment: Roosevelt Island's Past, Illuminated

This October, artist Thom Sokoloski will build 100 white tents on Roosevelt Island, and the public will be able to see the illuminated tents at night as well as explore what's in them. The project is called The Encampment and here is a description the website:

The Encampment is a large-scale public participatory art installation. 100 - 19th century luminous tents will be erected as a work of optical art on Roosevelt's Island Southpoint. From 7pm to 7am each night, New Yorkers will be able to view the luminous symmetries of the tents from both sides of the East River, as well as visit the actual site and experience the installations in each of the tents. It proposes an archaeological dig as its metaphor; the search for artifacts is replaced by the search for a collective memory of Roosevelt Island.
Sokoloski told Metro that Roosevelt Island's past, filled with hospitals, lunatic asylum and other facilities, inspired him, "When you go deep the history is so fascinating. This will be a kind of digital archaeology, a model of exchange where the community will uncover the stories of the island’s past.” He also calls it "a metaphorical, archaeological dig into the history of mental health."

On his website, he is asking for both patrons to sponsor the project ($250 per tent) and other people to collaborate. The project will run October 5-7, during Open House New York. [This is also a good time to mention that this year's Open House New York is looking for volunteers; for more information, go to their website.]

And Sokoloski is also working on a 2008 project for Governor's Island. Called Babel Symphony, it would "re-discover that one language of humanity and to re-build the Tower of Babel through a choral and symphonic arrangement of New York City’s spoken languages."

By Jen Chung in Art

New York Artist Elizabeth Murray Dies at 66

New York artist Elizabeth Murray (who split her time between Tribeca and Washington County, NY) died yesterday after a battle with cancer at the age of 66. Her husband (with whom she had several children), Bob Holman, is the founder of the Bowery Poetry Club.






Moving to New York in 1967, she was inspired by work of many artists including Richard Serra. By 1973 she had her first solo show at the Paula Cooper Gallery in SoHo, with many accomplishments to follow (the NY Times has a good recap here). In 1999 she was the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant; and just last year there was a retrospective at MoMA covering her 40-year career, something not many women have been honored with.

Murray "reshaped Modernist abstraction into a high-spirited, cartoon-based, language of form whose subjects included domestic life, relationships and the nature of painting itself." In the '80s and '90s she brought her brand of art underground when she designed two large murals for the subway system, one at 59th Street and Lexington Avenue and the other at the 23rd Street-Ely Avenue Station.

Photos via t_a_i_s's flickr

From girl to anime

I this from www.animedesho.animeblogger.net/?p=2150 - awesome

Judith Supine Takes Over The Manhattan Bridge

Our sources on the Manhattan Bridge report that at 11:40am, Judith Supine dropped a massive 50' piece over the side facing south. This might be the biggest development in NYC bridge graffiti since Sane/Smith tagged the outside of the Brooklyn Bridge in the late-1980s! The best place to view the piece is from Empire State Park in DUMBO.

Artist Jeremy Blake's Body Identified

Late last month, after the death of his girlfriend Theresa Duncan, witnesses saw Jeremy Blake walk in to the water around Beach 102nd Street. The 35-year old East Village artist left a suicide note (along with clothes and a wallet) under the boardwalk at Rockaway Beach. His body was found on July 22nd off of Sea Girt, NJ, five days after he was last seen. Yesterday the body was identified as Blake's.



Police spokesman Paul J. Browne says the cause of death was presumed to be suicide. Duncan had also committed suicide just one week before, on July 10th - something Blake referenced in his final letter. While some are calling this a modern day Romeo and Juliet story, others are saying there is more to be unearthed, namely that the couple was adamant in their belief they were being stalked by Scientologists. This may sound "out there" until you read some of Duncan's blog entries documenting their encounters.

Blake asked Glenn O'Brien to write a final post on his girlfriend's blog after her death, which has now been published. Meanwhile, a new work in progress by Blake and Malcolm McLaren called “Glitterbest” was to be shown at an exhibit of his work at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington this fall. As of now, the older pieces will still be shown and it's unclear what will happen to the new collaborative piece.

Photo by Autumn de Wilde.