Friday, December 14, 2007

The last week has been busy...

Not only did we have a show to hang last week, we were part of the BAS sponsored open studio and we were finishing off a piece for a show Michael Defeo curated at Ad Hoc Art in Bushwick Brooklyn. But after picking up art in Brooklyn and getting daily deliveries from the mailman all last week, however by friday with the show radiply approaching it was time to hang the show. And if we didn't already have enough pressure, Kathleen Murray from the Poughkeepsie Journal wrote a great piece in the Enjoy Section about OPEN SPACE and our upcoming print and zine show, Limited Run.

I'd like to start off by mentioning that The entire week leading up to the show would have been impossible to manage without the endless help from our friend (and new gallery assistant) Nicole, and her son Hunter.



She did everything from helping us hang the show and watching our son Easton to making photocopies and packing art for people at the opening. her son, Hunter, was a big help as well and the weekend would not have happened without the two of them. thanks!

Our intern for SHERBERT Magazine, Charlotte Read, also came up from NYC to help out with the show preparations. thanks Charlotte!






Hanging the Limited Run was tough, because there was soooo much to hang, there are close to 100 pieces in this show from over 30 artists, so organizing it all was not easy. However, Kalene and Nicole, had a vision and the end result was nothing short of stunning!






Once Saturday came around it was time to enjoy the fruits of all our hard work.




The crowds started early for the open studio tour and kept coming as the day went on. It was great talking to people and finding out why they were there. Some people were there for the open studio, while others had seen the article in the Poughkeepsie journal, and others had just wandered in off the street to see what was inside. It made for a great mix of people and the occasional confused visitor posing the strange but obvious question:

" did you make all the art that is up front (in the gallery) back here? (in the studio)?"

confused as well as relived that the answer was "no" and that we were actually an art gallery showing other people's work, a graphic design business doing work for other people, and an art studio where we do things for ourselves.

As the start time for the opening approached we set out the wine and beer and the cookies my mom brought( thanks mom!) while jeff (el jeffe) from Beacon Art Supply set up his turntables to play for our guests.



The opening was a big success! So Many people came by! In addition to our awesome friends from Brooklyn who made the trip for our opening, so many of the amazing local people we have met over the past few months came by as promised. It has been so great to have so much support from the people of Beacon, many of which are new to the area, and some that have lived here for a long time. thanks everyone!







We even had a few surprise guests come to the opening. Ad and Ali from Skewville had been promising to make the trip up to the gallery for a while, and this time they came through and brought a crew! It was like a mini Wooster on Spring reunion: In addition to Ad and Ali, our friends (and super talented artists) bo and microbo who were in town from Italy for their show at the Jonathan Levine Gallery in Chelsea were with them, as was puzzle master , Gaetane Michaux from Belgium and the very tall and talented Jace from Reunion Island rounded out the vanload of visitors from NYC and beyond.



After the show, we decided to take our friends to the famous 84 Diner. For many of our overseas friends, this was their first ever American Diner experience outside of seeing them in movies, so as you can imagine the whole experience was pretty awesome.
everyone had a great time and all the Europeans ordered burgers: a slice of Americana - experienced.




We said our goodbyes and headed home. Althought we wanted to take a break and bask in the glow of our succesfull opening, we got right back into it on monday. For the past few months kalene had been spending every available momment on her amazing piece for "Behind the Seen"





She put the finishing touches on it late Tuesday afternoon ( the bottles are to press the wood down while it dries ), and although she didn't want to part with it she gave it to me to drive down to Bushwick just in time to get it hung for the Wednesday night preview showing.




With most of our work finally out of the way, we were able to go down to the Wednesday night preview relaxed and excited to see some o the other artists and pieces in the show. We even brought our son to the show. Suprizingly (or maybe not) this is the second show he has been to at Ad Hoc, and he's only 7 months old...




The show is really awesome, If you have the time definitely go over to adhoc to check out the show, there are so many amazing pieces from so many awesome artist, you have to see it for yourself.

Thursday morning meant the return of Kalene's brother, Keavan, from Hawaii, he has been living there working as a tattoo artist for the past 5 years and he decided it was time to move back to the east coast and be with his people.



After picking him up from the airport, we came home and got ready to go back down to the Ad Hoc Show for the official opening night, this time however, grandma was watching Easton so we could have a night out in NYC for the first time in a while and because of a Snowstorm upstate we took the train into Grand Central. After a quick stop at the Oyster Bar for some food and a beer it was time to go on to the show.



The show was great, as expected, we got to see a few more friends than the night before and it was great spending time with Keavan again. As the show closed and the crowds dissipated to the after hours party and elsewhere, the few people still hanging around were witness to something rather amazing. Someone had set off an enourmous stack of fireworks across the street from the gallery. the explosions seem as if they would never stop but after smoke settled and this is all that remained...keep an eye out for the video...



After that, we went over to the after hours party and hung out with some friends until it was time to head over to grand central to catch the last train back upstate.

Very Busy indeed.


thanks for reading.

For those that can't make it to the gallery for the "Limited Run" show, we will be putting all the work from the show online over the next couple of days.

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

weekend wrapup

Our Saturday opening / open studio went great! for those of you that came by thanks. for those of you that missed it there will be pictures and a full report up soon.

Thursday, December 6, 2007

getting ready for the weekend

Tuesday was a busy day. I drove down to Brooklyn to pick up work for Saturdays show and drop off art from our last show. It was a busy day that started off at 7am. I was in and out of traffic from Croton Falls all the way to brooklyn, I have no idea how people commute to the city every day in their cars....



After a one hour trip that took over 2 hours i got to Brooklyn and met up with Wayne Pate of Good shape design Wayne is a great designer / DJ / and all around good guy.



Then it was off to Mike Perry's to drop off the few pieces from "feeling it out" he didn't sell. Mike was off drawing type somewhere, But His lady, the talented Anna Wolf , let me int and I left his stuff for him and was on my way to Rad Mountain.



Rad Mountain was both a pick up and a drop off point. I was brining Garrett his work from "Feeling it out" and picking up some great Zines from Justin Fines's Zine class at Pratt. Rad Mountain is just that, Rad. In addition to being the studio of some of the best designers in NY right now, it also has a awesome screen printing studio and it is extremely clean. Thanks for the tour Justin.




After Rad Mountain I drove over to the train station, because it was too cold to walk, and as luck would have it I found a parking spot right in front of the union R stop.



I made a quick trip to Canal plastics on Canal street to pick up a few things for the show and for the studio. a trip that always takes longer than you think....



Back in Brooklyn I got in the car and headed over to Dan Funderburg's studio / house / library / observatory to pick up some prints and some old screens for a special project...


After a slice and a square and a tour of the local nail salons i got back in the car to head over to Jackson Heights to drop off one of Michael Perry's pieces to Amy Stein and her husband Jon, Amy is an amazing photographer and a super nice person, check her out.

After Amy's i headed on down to Skewville in LIC. Ad met me at the door with a blindfold and escorted me down a few flights of stairs through a few doors and finally into the skewville labs. As the pipefitters next door tapped away at their practice pipes, Ad showed me around their expansive studio, in a word, Skewville is awesome, it is wall to wall, floor to floor filled with so much awesome "stuff". everywhere you look is something you wish you had or wonder where they got it.... I took a bunch of pictures with the promise that I not show any of the photos, so all you get is a pict of Ad touching up one of their pieces for the show.



After a long day i finally got back on the road at about 8pm and rolled into Beacon at about 9:30, just in time to take a nap on the couch and get back to work....

it's been a long week....