Inside Out in Times Square

WHAT I’M WEARING // YASO Faux Leather Jacket // H&M Blouse // MAVI Jeans (Old) // CHINESE LAUNDRY Leopard Loafers (old, via Delia’s) // HURLEY Backpack // JUSTFAB Sunglasses

Last Friday, Jim and I took our friends Gina and Mark to MOMA and then headed slightly cross-town to Times Square.  The street artist JR currently has the Inside Out Project set up there and we wanted to check it out and hopefully get to participate.

JR is best known for his portraits, so as part of this project he’s taking portraits of New Yorkers throughout the 5 boroughs and installing them in areas around the city.  To make the process crazy efficient, they have a fully outfitted photography studio truck, so they’ve been moving the truck from neighborhood to neighborhood.  If you visit their Facebook Page, the portraits done around the Rockaways and other Sandy stricken areas are so powerful it makes me well up.  I highly recommend checking it out.

We had heard the photo truck was in Times Square so we took a quick walk over to see if we could participate.  Sadly, they weren’t there due to a 10k race being set up for the weekend.  But we still had a great time enjoying the incredible weather and checking out all the portraits pasted to the sidewalks.

Gina and I also wanted to take the opportunity to take our own portraits amongst the portraits.  How meta, right?

The Inside Out Project is supposed to be in Times Square through May 10th. Jim and I are still hoping to make it there one day after work to get ours done. If you participate you have the option to either have it pasted at the site, or to take it home with you. We’d love to have the portraits for our apartment, so fingers crossed we’ll be able to make it happen!

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Single Fare 3

On February 13th, Jim and a slew of other artists had work featured in the Single Fare 3 show at RH Gallery in NYC. Jim and I attended the opening and afterwards went out and grabbed a bite to eat. It was a fun, weekday date night in the city.

Single Fare 3 is unique in that it’s an open call art show. The only real criteria is whatever artwork you submit has to you the NYC Metrocard as the basis for the piece. It’s a really interesting show concept and as a result this is their third year holding the show and several well established artists submit pieces.

At the opening, during the first hour pieces sell at $200. After, everything sells for $100. We arrived during the first hour and were surprised at how many pieces we already sold during the first choice hour.

There were thousands of entries and each and every one of them as unique as the other. People painted on the metro cards, made sculptures out of them, or re-purposed them. These are some of my favorite images from this fun evening out.

Jim’s pieces at the show.

All this art talk makes me so bummed I missed Armory in March!

Go Brooklyn Open Studios

Last weekend, my husband Jim participated in GO Brooklyn Open Studios. The event is organized by the Brooklyn Museum, and the way it works is local artists throughout the borough open up their studios for the public to tour and view their art.

I helped Jim man the studio both Saturday and Sunday and the turnout was awesome! Despite the horrendous down pour on Saturday, we were really surprised by how many people still came out to view everyone’s art. Jim also had lots of our friends come out to support him and see his art for the very first time as well.

As a fun project, Jim took polaroids of a lot of the people who came through with plans to post them on the wall in his studio. It was a big hit. Everyone loves having their photo taken, especially polaroids. He also provided refreshments and snacks, which I thought was a nice touch.

Most importantly, his recent body of work is incredible, and I am so excited he finally had an opportunity to share it with the public. He’s so talented, and I can’t wait to see where he takes some of his series and concepts.

Chelsea Gallery Hop

The day Jim and I visited the High Line extension, we decided to check out a few galleries in Chelsea. There are literally hundreds of galleries in that small area, so there was a lot of art to see, both street art and traditional media.

I honestly went to so many galleries and saw so much art that I don’t remember the names of everything that I saw and visited.

The highlight of the day for sure was seeing Tauba Auerbach’s show at the Paula Cooper Gallery. If you’re unfamiliar with her work, it’s very technique oriented. She’s best known for her “folds series”, which are absolutely stunning in person. At this show she also featured some new woven canvases which were pretty incredible and intricate.

Other highlights was the Pace Prints gallery showing works from Shepard Fairey to Chuck Close, and an amazing Avedon photography show at the Gagosian Gallery.

I wasn’t allowed to take photos in a lot of the galleries we visited, but these are some of the best shots I was able to sneak.

Considering how hot it was that day (90+ degrees and humid as hell), this piece outside of Printed Matter was the highlight of my day.

Whitney Biennial 2012

Jim and I have been on somewhat of an art kick lately. The last day of the Whitney Biennial was last Sunday, so we decided to check it out.

All in all, I wasn’t blown away by any of the pieces in the show, but there was still a lot of great art to look at. In particular, my favorite piece was an installation with a room filled with baseballs and a very serene soundtrack playing. It was quite stunning, especially being it consumed you as soon as you stepped off the elevator.

Another highlight of the show was this installation of this animatronic dummy who would speak in this incredibly creepy voice. I for the life of me couldn’t figure out what the piece meant, but it was so creepy while I was in there a kid came in and was so terrified started screaming and broke down crying. Does that being the highlight make me a bad person?

Wythe Hotel, Vice and Faile

I can’t believe I went to this event and tool these photos almost a month ago! Time seriously flies. I’ve been so busy lately traveling for work that I’ve had zero time to post and edit photos. Makes me totes sad.

The Wythe Hotel very recently opened up in my neighborhood, and a few weeks back they held a party with Vice Magazine to show off the hotel, as well as to showcase some works by the very talented street art collective Faile. Jim and I had a blast, enjoying the free cocktails and making some new friends.

Jim and I both have been trying to make it a point to get out more and go to local events. There are so many in our neighborhood at any given time, it’s a crime for us not to check out at least one a week. It’ll be so much easier for me once I’m not traveling so much and my schedule goes back to normal again.

Armory 2011

Saturday this past weekend my husband and I attended the Armory Show in Manhattan. We luz our art!   If you’re not familiar with the show, it’s basically an art gallery expo.  Art galleries from around the world bring works from the artists they represent and display them in sort of gallery booths.  There are two sections to the show.  The Modern section featured works by more prominent artists as well as some older pieces (say 1930’s on) and the Contemporary section featured art that is “in now”.  We enjoyed the Modern section much more than the Contemporary one.  Highlights of the day included walking right past Robert DeNiro as well as tons of great people watching.  

I wish I had known in advance it was totally acceptable to bring photo equipment in to photograph the art, otherwise I would have brought my DSLR instead of my little point and shoot.  Here  are some of my favorite shots from the show.  As a disclaimer, there was so much art I really did not record or even attempt to catalog all the artists names of the pieces I took photos of.  If you see something posted here that I didn’t provide credit for, please let me know and I’d be happy to cite the artist/medium/gallery/whatever.