Berenice Abbott/my obsession with historical images of New York

Over the last few weeks of summer, I created a project using historical images of New York City’s Lower East Side. After a few trips to the NYPL Image Library (great resource btw), I found images organized by street name and neighborhood that would work. I wanted to capture the timeless essence of the neighborhood by using historical images, and drew the details on rice paper.

I found an incredible book that documents many of the photographer Berenice Abbott’s works, and another called “Then and Now“, which compares images of the same location at the turn of the century and the mid-70’s.

The first image is the large sheet of rice paper with the images juxtaposed next to each other, but I see it as more of a book that you can flip through.






Observation drawings




I’m playing with the ideas of observational drawing and recording details of buildings and the inherent patterns in our surroundings. Also I started to create a personal geography of the Lower East side, so I roughly located points of interest in the area and recorded the most interesting detail I remembered from my experience. I worked on more abstract mapping in some paintings – one I included in my previous post.

Next I would like to do some more research on the historical importance of buildings to build more connection to the details, then draw and label them. The more delicate the paper the better, to represent the fragility of memory and physical history that surrounds us. I’m thinking this beautiful rice paper that I have might work.

A brief Lower East side tour in three parts


Lush Life Tour with Richard Price, Part I from INVISIBLE-EXPORTS on Vimeo.


Lush Life Tour with Richard Price, Part II from INVISIBLE-EXPORTS on Vimeo.


Lush Life Tour with Richard Price, Part III from INVISIBLE-EXPORTS on Vimeo.

This is a really interesting gallery tour. The art exhibition is based on the novel Lush Life by Richard Price, and incorporates nine Lower East Side galleries. The subject matter of the novel is about the various cultures in the LES coming together around a murder mystery. Chinese, African-American, Latino, hipsters, yuppies, and long-time Jewish residents unite to help solve the mystery, but I think they quickly go back to ignoring each other afterwards. At least ignoring is peaceful… it could be much worse.

Naomi Klein gets me so fired up

Every time I pick up No Logo I decide I want to write my thesis on something related to corporate greed. The thing is, we as consumers and human/environmental rights advocates can’t be mad at corporations the way we can be mad at individuals. Behemoth corporations have no soul and no conscience, whereas people do. The bottom line is the only motivating factor for large corporations so it brings to mind the saying ‘don’t hate the player, hate the game’. If it’s going to increase profits, it will probably happen. If choosing a not-so-ethical labor practice will reduce expenses, that option will definitely be on the table. The key to stopping human injustice and environmental damage is in regulation, and not just enacting a few laws and going to play golf. These regulations need to be strictly enforced with people on the ground/in the trenches that have actual power. Need I say that the disaster in the Gulf could have been prevented if stricter regulations were enforced upon the oil giants.

I learned a lot about the organizations Reclaim the Streets, which began in London, Critical Mass, a global bike movement with monthly events (that got some press from the cop who pushed the biker down in 2008 and didn’t get any punishment whatsoever), and also the New York City group Time’s Up! while researching into the topic of the loss of public spaces to branded environments. Reclaim the Streets is like the contemporary Situationist movement, fighting for public spaces like community gardens and against car congestion. Similar to a flash mob, they fill the streets with thousands of people blocking traffic, dancing, biking and playing music. It’s a huge unannounced street party, and cops sometimes just stand by and watch, unless they are forcibly breaking up the throngs of people. Some of these events have gotten ugly with rioting and injuries, but many of them have been successful and massively fun.

I paused for a while to admire the Time’s Up! posters from the 80’s.

What I am truly concerned about is our lack of independent media sources. Without sources such as PBS, Grist, Indymedia, and CIR all of our news sources come from a total of three corporations. These conglomerations like to keep Americans happy and obsessing over celebrities and reality TV (I can’t deny I’m guilty, no so much about celebrities but definitely reality TV). If no one reports on the atrocities happening around the world and in our backyards, no one will care and try to change anything, because no. one. will. know. The problem is exactly what Guy Debord predicted four decades ago: we are completely controlled by ‘the spectacle’, the one-way communication of mass media.

1960’s communes were since stigmatized, but there’s a new communal movement afoot that’s a lot more than nostalgic navel-gazing. The DIY and community living movement represents an active, passionate community that believes in progress and preserving the Earth and human culture. In this article, New York Magazine culls together many of the great sharing systems in our city. Simplification of our lives is a radical act. Human culture as we know it is at the risk of extinction under the weight of branded life and globalization, let’s not stand by and let it happen. The new collectivism is a great way to start reducing consumption, giving less power to the corporation and protecting the environment.

One cannot blame the corporation for their policies, but must work with them on a level of understanding to reach agreements on environmental and social issues. In business, you don’t just take something from someone – you need to reach a mutually beneficial agreement to maintain the relationship, which requires understanding the others needs. My undergraduate thesis was on the campaign contributions of corporations, and their effect on environmental policy decisions. Campaign contributions are a true tit-for-tat situation, which is now exposed in a comprehensive format on the website MAPLight.org (wish I had this resource for my undergrad thesis!). I am even more concerned now than I was then, about the corporate control of politics and it’s effect on our lives.

The thing is…

In my thesis I don’t want to put more printed matter into the universe or send more needless messages. I want to create something of value, that hopefully decreases the high concentration of visual stimuli in our lives. Today I sat and drew a lamp post in the Lower East side, and was so annoyed at the bar across the street for erecting this cheesy sign of photorealistic monkeys (and blasting bad techno). The reason I was so bothered by it is that they had absolutely no awareness of the historical building in which they occupied the street level space, and the architectural details were obviously not considered when hanging this sign, or the other hideous one that reads ‘Hungry? $2.95’ with a picture of an unappetizing sandwich.

I couldn’t bring myself to post the hideous signage from the bar, but this is the building I was admiring. What if there was a way for store signage to connect with the surroundings and incorporate historical detail? For a neighborhood like the Lower East Side with rich history this would add so much value to the area and connect residents and visitors to the place. This idea is related to the theme of localization because using local/historical patterns is parallel to using local materials for building, local food for eating, and local artists for murals. These are all ways to add value to the community and bring awareness to the unique characteristics of the neighborhood.

I could use the inherent patterns and designs on surfaces and from overhead (i.e. Google Earth) to create place-specific artwork (in many forms, one of which would be signage). Actually, this is a photo I took of the restaurant Spitzers across the street from monkey madness. They did a good job of connecting with the place to deliver the appropriate style of signage, but I wonder if there is more to it than just something hip/urban. I love the lamp posts by the way.

I really want to work with maps in some way. I’m always fascinated by the idea that we’re these tiny specks walking along, oblivious to our orientation in the greater surroundings. The awareness of the massiveness of our place/the Earth makes us realize that our lives are actually much simpler than they seem. An artist in Brooklyn seems to think along the same lines. We saw this cool mural, which was really a collage of many different artists, on the way to the Botanical Gardens.

Community Building

In the Spring semester I was awarded a Pratt Fellowship to work on community building activities with the Communications Committee, the Grad ComD student group. Camille McMorrow and I decided the best way to create community was to introduce skill-sharing workshops where people could also recycle all of their discarded prints to create beautiful art. The first workshop was a bookmaking event, and for the second one we did collage. We also threw in some great finds from Materials for the Arts, which I was actually interviewed for by PBS! In the video below my interview is around the 1:45 mark. It is such a fabulous organization because it provides art materials to schools and community groups absolutely free of charge. The only thing you need to do is write thank you notes, which admittedly was a big pain. Still, an amazing place.

Watch the full episode. See more SundayArts.



These are the collages I made to promote the Save Your Scraps collage event. Sasakisan is a huge inspiration.

I’m taking a studio painting course on the Brooklyn campus right now, and my professor doesn’t seem to like collage all that much. I guess the argument is that artists can hide behind collage, instead of showing their full selves with brush strokes. Ok, point taken. I still love collage as a legitimate medium, especially as a graphic designer who works with paper every day!

Community involvement is key to combat the loss of public spaces from branding and the loss of culture from globalization. I wonder if my thesis could explore the creation of an online blog template for communities to transmit real-time updates. This would of course include a large map of the area for organization on where events and meet-ups are taking place. I’m beginning to think that anything can be made into a map of some sort. I’m starting to have some interesting paintings that I will post soon, on the subject of abstract mapping.

Eureka!

I think I’ve been stressed out about how broad my thesis topic is, because when I had a eureka moment tonight when I decided to focus on the Lower East Side community it made me so happy. Ever since I moved to New York, I’ve been drawn to the Lower East side for walks during the day, to soak in the surroundings and details. It’s a unique place because of the character of the streets, architecture and environment. It’s also pretty fun for nightlife, between Max Fish and that bar that has $1 PBRs.

The Lower East Side is exactly the kind of community I need to focus on cultural preservation and to study the effects of globalization/homogenization. It’s a vibrant, fun, eclectic neighborhood that is at risk of completely losing its character and ‘grittiness’. What does this term ‘gritty’ really mean anyways? Dirty? The LES is definitely down-to-earth, not stuffy at all. However, the original community that has historical roots in the area can barely afford to live there anymore. Big-box condominium towers and celebrity chef restaurants attract a very different population than Katz’s Delicatessen. How did this trend begin? Was it the Rivington hotel or way before that?? And how can we as designers preserve the culture of the community by connecting residents and visitors to the historical roots?

This gives me some solid direction for primary research, starting with visiting the Tenement museum and NYPL to learn about the history of the area.

This guy was blasting music from the back of his scooter. You could literally hear him from 4 blocks away.

This is my new brain map of thesis ideas. I narrowed down the topic but it’s still comfortably broad. It’s scary to think that I need to focus in on one specific thing to focus on for the next 10 months, but it’s what I need to do. Now I feel like I have so much more direction.