Gaga's Workshop at Barney's

You probably know that Lady Gaga has a workshop at Barney's.   The windows are simpler than those created by Simon Doonan in years past. Familiarity with Gaga's catalog enhances your appreciation of them.  Perhaps you're a Highway Unicorn who'd like to ride the Road to Love on the backseat of the Gaga mobile?

Fame and fortune means you finally can have your own budoir.

The lyrical significance of the Crystal Cave eludes me, but this mermaid sure is lovely (don't tell Bette).

No Gaga project would be complete without feedback from her window-shopping monsters. Tweet your Christmas wishes to #gagastars--Santa is so passe in our new wired world!

                                                                   

 

Is There A Sculptural Equivalent of Graffiti?

At least once a week I take a walk across the Pulaski Bridge from Long Island City to Greenpoint.

This tree hadn't dropped any leaves yet. I liked the contrast.

Instead of turning left near the Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory like I usually do, I took a right.

These sculptures took me by surprise. 

A couple days later, I noticed I could spot this guy from the other side of the water.  Doesn't he look powerful from this angle?  Kinda like the King of the 99% with his nemesis in the background.

The Long Island Railroad tracks and the Midtown Tunnel are just behind this view.

Industrial decay is an urban look.

This building was built to last even if the smokestack is a little rusty.

Sunday Brunch

Do you know "Put On Your Sunday Clothes?" from Hello, Dolly? 

Sure you do, if you saw Wall-E.

It's the song on the video that he plays over and over.  

Anyway, that's what Mao here did one unseasonably warm day this fall when I joined some friends for brunch in Chelsea.

Joe, Magda, Hilary and I ate at the Tipsy Parson in Chelsea.  I had a salad with bitter greens, figs, walnuts, apples and blue cheese.  No shit, it was probably the best and freshest I'd ever eaten.  Then again, I don't get out much.

We took a walk afterwards.  There was a Post-It shrine to Steve Jobs at the Apple store on 14th Street.  Pretty low tech, huh?  I doubt if he would have approved.

Space always needs to be filled in Manhattan.

It was so warm, even the bikers were wearing t-shirts.

I'm the guy with the camera.

Did you know there were conversation pits in Times Square?  I didn't stick around to chat.

Old and not-so-old buildings on 7th Avenue.

The Hearst Tower is new.  It plays peek-a-boo with the older ones from just about every angle.

Stumbling upon this scene in Central Park made me feel a little bit like a voyeur.  By the time I got to the other side, I realized that another photographer had staged it.

Lots of people had rented rowboats.

Doug In Roanoke

All my first cousins are a generation older than I am.  In adulthood, I got to know Doug best during Thanksgivings at his home in Reedville, on the Chesapeake Bay, during the nineties. He and Anne, his second wife, eventually moved to Roanoke, a charming city in southwest Virginia.  Not long after Anne died, I drove down through the Shenandoah Valley to pay my respects.

Our grandfather on my mother's side, a locomotive engineer, would have felt right at home in Roanoke. When coal fueled a rapidly industrializing America, the city was a major rail center.

Architects still pay homage to the tracks of the Norfolk and Western Railway in their building designs.

Mill Mountain offers wonderful views of downtown Roanoke, today a lovely, midsize city that a hundred thousand people call home.  Health care, government and education employ most of them.

We dined at the famed wiener restaurant.

For locavores, there's a farmer's market nearby, too.  Pretty as a peach, indeed!

H&C Coffee has a storied history in Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee.  The company roasted its beans in Roanoke until a flood wiped out the factory in the mid eighties.  Only the colorful neon sign survived.  You should see it at night!

Spring Art

Isn't it cool how so many artists think of New York City as their canvas?  By that I don't mean artists who paint the city, like this guy who seems to think he's on the Left Bank instead of Madison Avenue.

No, I'm talking about artists like Will Ryman who erected these huge roses, complete with insects, in the center medians along Park Avenue.  They're up through the end of this month.

They kind of remind me of The Day of the Triffids, a low budget, British science fiction movie from my childhood.  But these roses can't chase you, they're made of stainless steel.  The petals look as if they're sharp enough to cut you, though, and those thorns--well, let's just say I'd hate to be a drunken pedestrian.

You'll notice they come complete with bugs, too.  My favorites are the aphid in front of the Armory, and the bumble bee with the MetLife building further down the canyon.

A little farther east, at Grand Army Plaza, you'll find a more recent installation called Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads by Ai Wei Wei.

It's hard to get a good angle on the entire installation, especially if you don't want the police barricades that surround it in your shot.

Ai Weiwei is a Chinese dissident with a bushy beard who used to sketch tourist portraits across the street in the early 80s when he first moved to NYC.  He lived in the East Village and had an open-door policy for Chinese artists new to the City.  A good guy in other words. So good that the Chinese government has "disappeared" him.

His animal heads certainly aren't cuddly, and they conform less to the eastern signs of the Zodiac than to characters from Animal Farm.

From this angle, the demure maiden atop the Pulitzer Fountain looks like she's just about to step on a snake on her way to the rodeo.

Doesn't this rat look like a censorious politician in profile?

And check out the teeth on this wild boar--he must be the head of the secret police!

And finally, an angry dissident.  Free Al Weiwei NOW!

5 Pointz

5 Pointz is right across the street from PS1.  You can see it from the windows of the #7 train as it twists through Long Island City.  I may have been vaguely aware of it before but stumbling across it during a gray lunchtime walk produced a sense of delighted discovery.  Who knew where all the subway graffiti artists had gone?

There's even a credo which I'm pretty sure that posting these pictures may violate.

How amazing it it that these artists work only with spray cans?

Aerosol is King, baby!

Even the free parkers contribute some candy color to the kaleidoscopic scene beneath the elevated subway tracks.

The diversity of work is astonishing.  From the cartoonish . . .

to the bawdy . . .

to the socially conscious portraits of African-American artists . . .

to the simply incredible.  I'm no critic, but I think Pablo might have given this spray artist the thumbs up:

On the day I took these photos, an older artist was in residence.

I don't remember too many field  trips as cool--or as truly multicultural--as this one.  Go teach (and fuck those ratings based on test scores)!