Newyorkamera.com

Last Tuesday I went into the city to see Ellen and deliver a sample for one of her clients.  Just outside the ferry terminal, I was stopped by this barrier. It was painted so completely and placed so well that I think it qualifies as accidental art.  Here are two shots. One from each side. The photos don’t do it justice, in the sunlight it was luminous, the whole thing looked as if it were made of a softer material than concrete.

Adi and Colman had already gone to the  antique show last week, I went with Colman on Friday to see it before it closed this weekend. Colman was surprised at the difference in some of the booths, a few items he wanted to show me had been sold and were no longer on display.  I went mostly to look at objects made of metal. and there was plenty to see. The first thing that got my attention was this old gilded sign with an eye.

This is a beautifully done copper tray. it makes me want to make one too.

This silver pitcher, with its simple shape and hammer marked surface makes me think I could make one of these too.

This is a French piece, made of brass with a pattern of inlaid silver spots.  This is an idea with which  to experiment.

This Italian mirror is a glorious piece of work.  Upon close examination I was surprised to see that the white parts were carved separately and then added to the framework. I would like to have seen the room for which it was made,  it may have been one part of a whole suite.

These pieces of Charles I and Charles II silver are attractive with their simple shapes with heavily chased and and punched decoration. I need to try and raise some shapes like this.

This is a Chinese gouache painting of stericula ceramica,  there was another picture of the same tree with its dramatic fruit in another booth. It looks like something to try and grow if it can survive in our climate.  Have to do some research and find some seeds.

We left the armory, on the way to the trains we passed a few doorways in a Hunter College building with these medieval style decorations.  I liked them all being designed with animals instead of saints and martyrs.

While in the city I often pass by an oriental antique store on Fifth Avenue and 27th street.  The windows currently have two Lacquer screen panels decorated with fish and waves made of mother of pearl, abalone and tortoise shell.  Each panel is about 4 feet tall and about 2 feet wide.  Here are some photos of  them taken through the windows, complete with some reflections of the street.  Couldn’t do much about the reflections.

In the second panel, the carp is made of tortoise shell.  I was surprised by the effective use of the natural mottling of the turtle shell to represent the coloring of a spotted carp.  Changing the color of the fish made the panel look completely different even though , as I see them again on my screen, the composition is nearly identical in both panels. 

We have been in a process of matting and framing a number of Colman’s paintings.  We entered three into the  annual Small Works competition at NY University about two weeks ago,  one of the two you’ll see below was accepted. In the show all works have to be 12 inches or less in all dimensions including the frame. This one is called Evening’s Advantage.

This one is Recovering from Prophesy. 

It was an overcast day last Wednesday when I had to make deliveries in Manhattan.  The errands carried me from 23rd street to 2oth along Fifth Avenue where I saw some of the usual renovating scaffolding on a corner building. The unusual thing about this site was that the safety screen stretched over the scaffolding had been painted to look like the building underneath it. A telephoto shot of the dome.

Here’s a shot of the whole building.

From there I went to  Roni Casting to pick up some pieces I ordered last week and then headed down Sixth Ave to pick up some ribbon samples for work to be delivered  next Tuesday.

There were bright lights in Bryant park behind the public library.

Adi arrived to spend the weekend late Wednesday,  on Friday, the three of us went into the city to meet Taybin for lunch and we found ourselves at Bryant Park again.  I went up to a guard because the place was a mess of lights, tents and stacked platforms, to see what it was all about.  The lady guard told me that this was where Rachel Ray on Ice was being shot and that this is where Fashion Week will be held in the second week of February. As we walked up the block there was a crowd of people waiting to be audience for the Rachel Ray Show.

On the South side of the park a building was sporting a recent renovation that involved a lot of dramatic gilding and black paint.

The deco figures are very sculptural, enhanced by the gilding, here are a couple of close ups.

On the way to meet Taybin I saw a wall in a store (BCBG Azria?,  ladies fashion) decorated with cut out metal. Had to go in, the whole wall is covered with these golden metal cut outs in a stairway that rises from below street level to their second floor. This is a close up of the piece.

After a really nice lunch at Salmon River, (their chowder is great, with tender clams in a rich creamy soup) we headed back to the trains on broadway passing by the NY Public Library, the skies were clear and the lighting at street level was beautiful.  Colman stopped to take pictures of this statue, Adi and I watched some break dancers performing in front of the steps.

A moment later the light changed and lit the lower part of the statue’s fountain. I couldn’t resist taking another shot.

The Library seems to be being renovated on the out side, it is wrapped like a Christo project, except that the windows and doors are still usable. PeekaBoo Christo?

In the next block, this is tower being finished with a green glass sheath. We were taken by all the colors, in the coating on the iron work, the glass and the construction walls and netting. I guess it makes sense to put glass onto the building from the top down, less breakage and that way and when you reach the bottom it’s done.

Here’s a test movie of Colman and Adi on the train.  I want to see how WordPress handles the Quicktime files.

Adi and Colman on the Train

We were in the city again on Saturday night, but this time in Brooklyn, to have dinner with Anja and Austin.  We walked to Tavern on Dean, had a really nice dinner and on the way back to their apartment,  passed this window that displays the works of one artist at a time in a building that houses a collection of studios.

This is still a little bit of a test to see how my new software works. Colman and I went to the Met  to see a Gilberti door panels and few other shows the day before they were closing.  We arrived at the 86th street subway station and noticed there were new, at least for us to see, mosaics in the stairways from the express to local tracks.  These were interesting to me because they incorporated slabs of granite with etched and stained windows representing buildings along with the expected glass tiles.   Here’s photo of the first one we saw

Here’s a close up to show the granite pieces.

As we left the station I spotted another one in thew other stairway.

We got into the Met, it was a Saturday and very crowded.  They weren’t allowing us to take photos in the traveling exhibits so there’re no photos of the door panels. It would have been near impossible anyway as there were so many people looking at them. I was impressed by the Garden of Eden the figures and garden were beautiful, the panels had been cleaned not restored or refurbished. There was an exhibit to the side of the gallery that showed a piece of the bronze molding that was untouched next to a piece that had been cleaned with lasers. seeing this explained how the panels looked ancient with the gold leaf worn off in places and weathered in others. The cleaned panels were resplendent with gilding, the uncleaned piece of molding showed how the doors had nearly completely blackened through the ages. In examining the molding, there was only a visible hint of the gold that lay underneath the caked on soot.

Next we went to see the Dutch Painting show,  that was really crowded. It was nice to see the familiar mixed with paintings by contemporaries of Rembrandt. But I really wanted to get away, the crowd was polite but the rooms were too congested for me.

From there we went to the new Greek and Roman  permanent exhibit.  Each time we go I search out more of the metal work that I am becoming more familiar with in my classes.  These little panels were probably cast in the lost wax process, both are of Heraclese, one as adult fighting a lion and the other as an infant with snakes.

Colman recognized this bronze as Hypnos, here pouring sand to put us to sleep.

I liked this silver filter.

and this silver vase with applied gold. It reminded me of the silver earrings I made for the last class. This gold looks thicker than the foil I was applying with heat and burnishers.

Here’s a shot of Colman with some sculptures of amphoras.

I also wanted to see the African Reliquary Exhibit.  I managed to get a few photos there, no one was in the galleries. The pieces were beautifully laid out and lit dramatically.

I’m still more interested in the metal work, here it is in copper and brass.  These heads are wonderfully abstract and imaginatively constructed.

My real quest was to see the pre Colombian Gold, on the way to those galleries we passed through the South Pacific collection and  African Bronzes.  Here is a shot of a wooden book  which contains ‘knowledge of rituals’. I really like the writing and drawings.

This is one of a couple of magnificent Benin Bronze Palace Plaques.

And a pair of Benin leopard heads.

I was mostly taking photo notes on the Pre Colombian Gold. Here are a few highlights.

The head on a ritual Knife with a spectacular filigree headdress.

A nose ornament, they must have had a different relationship with spiders than we have today.

And another Nose Ornament with moving parts.

And in closing here’s another mosaic from the downtown side of the 86th street subway.

I have put the archive of past entries here;

http://newyorkamera.com/oldblog_html

if you copy that into your location field you’ll have access to all the entries for the last 3 years.

My old  software just gave up after the new year, I spent some time looking for new blogging  apps and decided to go with WordPress which meant I had to take an upgrade on my server and learn a whole lot of things I’d been avoiding for some time.  Hope to be back to writing and posting photos soon. This is the first post with WordPress and is more of a test than anything else.