New York, New York (and Newark)

Those of you paying attention to my mailing list, my facebook page, or any of the other myriad ways I find to plug my crap, will know that last month I had some work in a group show at the Paul Robeson Galleries at Rutgers in Newark. The show was called “Lift Off: Earthlings and the Great Beyond.” Basically it was an entire show about astronauts and space travel. I felt right at home. It’s not that often I go to the opening of an exhibition and the other artists know more about NASA than I do. So that was cool. I decided to take the opportunity to stay a couple of days in New York while I was there (no offense meant, Newark) and check out the galleries and see some friends. It ended up being a pretty great trip, so I thought I’d write a brief post here to summarize what went down and to post some pictures.

Most of you probably know that I do all kinds of stuff with Gawker Artists. Maybe you’ve seen one of my paintings in the corner of a blog you read (I mean, other than this one). That’s Gawker Artists. Maybe you’ve checked out one of my limited edition prints on Society6.com. Also through Gawker Artists. This time, they’ve paired up with Big Screen Plaza which is basically what it sounds like: a large LED screen smack in the middle of Manhattan at 29th and 6th Avenue. I knew they would be running an hour of Gawker Artists a few times a week. So I stopped by to check it out while I was down. Truthfully, I had limited expectations, but it turned out to be pretty damn cool. I stood around gawking at it (no pun intended) for some time. It had just stopped raining and there weren’t many people about, plus as you probably know, New Yorkers don’t give a shit. But I took a bunch of pictures, more than you will want to look at, all of which you can check out at the bottom of this post.

I was impressed by the show at Rutgers as well. Given, it took me a little while to find the gallery, even though I was in the proper building. But once I found it, I liked everything in it. I’ve already mentioned in a previous post that Jean-Pierre Roy (more on him in a future blog post), one of my favorite painters, was also in the show, and it was great to see his work in person. There was a great mix of painting, sculpture, video, and photography in the show, and it all had to do with space or space travel (FYI: I LIKE SPACE). Plus the catalog is borderline ridiculous. It contains an essay by Buzz Aldrin. It came wrapped in space age polymers (ok, plastic). It’s thicker than the last book I read.  Check this shit out:

All told it was a pretty successful trip. I saw some of my paintings 10 foot high in the middle of Manhattan. I road a train to Newark and saw some other artists dealing with interstellar subject matter (we should start our own secret club now).I caught up with some old pals and bumped into good friend and talented artist Patrick Hammie (also a future blog post waiting to happen) in Chelsea, even though he is also not from New York (it’s a small world, folks). And if you want to see it all in excruciating detail, check out the photos below.