The entrance to Kara Walker on Kent Avenue with Domino Sugar Factory sitting beyond the gate.

Kara Walker at the Domino Sugar Factory

May 23, 2014 in art notes, Artist, Brooklyn, Domino Sugar Factory, events, General Art, Installation, my pictures, New York

If you haven't made it out to the Domino Sugar factory, it's a good time to visit. The artist Kara Walker has infused the factory with thought-provoking confectionary sculptures. I visited last weekend to see the installation and revisit the space.

Roberta Smith writes in her New York Times column:

A powerful personification of the most beleaguered demographic in this country — the black woman — shows us where we all come from, innocent and unrefined.

Walker's A Subtlety or The Marvelous Sugar Baby an Homage to the unpaid and overworked Artisans who have refined our Sweet tastes from the cane fields to the Kitchens of the New World on the Occasion of the demolition of the Domino Sugar Refining Plant — runs through July 6 at the former Domino Sugar factory: 317 Kent Avenue at South 1st Street, Williamsburg, Brooklyn. It is open Friday 4 – 8 pm, Saturdays and Sundays 12 – 6 pm.

ten convenient stores

ten convenient stores in Ed Ruscha: Books & Co. at Gagosian Madison Avenue.

February 22, 2013 in art openings, Artist, events, gallery, my pictures, New York, Photography, ten convenient stores

BIG NEWS: my artist book,ten convenient stores will be featured in Ed Ruscha: Books & Co. at Gagosian Gallery, 980 Madison Avenue, New York. March 5 – April 27 2013.

Opening reception: Tuesday, March 5, 2013, 6 to 8 pm

ten convenient stores also features in Various Small Books, published this month by MIT Press:

Various Small Books: Press Release

In the 1960s and 1970s, the artist Ed Ruscha created a series of small photo-conceptual artist’s books, among them Twentysix Gas Stations, Various Small Fires, Every Building on the Sunset Strip,Thirtyfour Parking Lots, Real Estate Opportunities, and A Few Palm Trees. Featuring mundane subjects photographed prosaically, with idiosyncratically deadpan titles, these “small books” were sought after, collected, and loved by Ruscha’s fans and fellow artists. Over the past thirty years, close to 100 other small books that appropriated or paid homage to Ruscha’s have appeared throughout the world. This book collects ninety-one of these projects, showcasing the cover and sample layouts from each along with a description of the work. It also includes selections from Ruscha’s books and an appendix listing all known Ruscha book tributes.

These small books revisit, imitate, honor, and parody Ruscha in form, content, and title. Some rephotograph his subjects: Thirtyfour Parking Lots, Forty Years Later. Some offer a humorous variation: Various Unbaked Cookies (which concludes, as did Ruscha’s Various Small Fires, with a glass of milk), Twentynine Palms (twenty-nine photographs of palm-readers’ signs). Some say something different: None of the Buildings on Sunset Strip. Some reach for a connection with Ruscha himself: 17 Parked Cars in Various Parking Lots Along Pacific Coast Highway Between My House and Ed Ruscha’s.

With his books, Ruscha expanded the artist’s field of permissible subjects, approaches, and methods. With VARIOUS SMALL BOOKS, various artists pay tribute to Ed Ruscha and extend the legacy of his books.

Click here for sample page spreads.

Hardcover $39.95 Trade | £27.95 ISBN: 9780262018777 288 pp. | 6 x 9 in | 298 color illus., 55 b&w illus. February 2013

Copies of my book, ten convenient stores are available through my website here. I bound them in a limited edition of 100. See more images of the book below or click here.

ten convenient stores

New Work: Old Navy: The Fit for Fall Fashion Show for All in New York's Bryant Park

December 11, 2012 in events, my pictures, New York

This fall I shot a great event for Old Navy / Cripsin Porter + Bogusky – Fit for Fall Fashion Show for All. Old Navy gave away hundreds of pairs of Rockstar Skinny Jeans to women of all shapes and sizes. Each participant found their their perfect fitting jeans and rocked them on a runway shaped like legs.

The event was hosted by Jenny McCarthy with music support from DJ Clockwork. Models Katrina Bowden, Padma Lakshmi and Selita Ebanks also walked the runway in Old Navy Rockstar Skinny Jeans. After all the fashion there was a big finale concert by The Backstreet Boys.

I documented the event for Old Navy as well as their newly created instagram account. Take a look at the my edit below.