Last Cigarette

The next artist we’d like you to get familiar with is Robert Slawinski. He has studied electrical engineering in his native Poland and  computer graphics and 3D animation at Pratt Institute in New York. He has always been fascinated by classic cartoons, especially Tex Avery’s classics and Tom & Jerry series. Some of those classic animated tales inspired a story of a spider who tries to quit smoking, which materialized as Robert‘s thesis project, 4-minute 3D short “The Last Cigarette”. The film (which he he wrote, directed and animated himself) was subsequently shown at few international animation festivals, including Ars Electronica in Linz; it also won 1st prize in animation as well as the Audience Award at the New York Independent Film & Animation Festival.
In case you asked, he has never smoked in his life.

Ticket To The Moon

Cary Conover is a freelance photographer, working and living in New York City. His work appears regularly in the Village Voice and The New York Times, but his true passion is black and white street photography in the tradition of Henri Cartier-Bressson. Lately, Cary has been experimenting with digital technology, especially with time lapse technique. Combined with his utter fascination with cosmos, moon and its motion, he’d been going up to New York City’s rooftops, trying to catch the path of the moon and creating a beautiful, out-of-this world journey. It’s called “Lunar Motion Studies” and you can see it projected at Tom&Jerry’s bar on Sunday, June 7th.

Photographic Journey

Meet Aristide Economopoulos, who is a photojournalist and is kind enough to share with us his photographic journey to Cuba in 2001 on Sunday. He’s been a staff photographer at The Newark Star-Ledger since 2000 and covered local to international assignments, ranging from the 9/11 attacks in New York City, Athens Olympics, to hog wrestling in Indiana.

He’s an accomplished and well regarded artist – through his work, he has won numerous awards including World Press Photo, Pictures of the Year International and the NPPA’s Best of Photojournalism. Aris is also a three-time winner of NYC & NJ Press Photographer of the Year. In 2005 he was part of the staff that won the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting.
Aris resides in Jersey City, NJ, with his wife and fellow photojournalist Julia Xanthos.

Save The Date!

It’s that time again! We’re happy to announce: “Real Art For Real People, Vol.3” is happening this weekend! This time, we’re having a “Night of the Moving Pictures” – projection of picture and paintings slideshow, timelapse, animation and video art. Come by and check it out on Sunday, June 7th, at 6pm.

Art of Vulnerability

Finally, last but not least, we have a pleasure to present Vincent Bolognini, born in Los Angeles, the second of four children. His family moved quite a bit, finally ending up in Phoenix, AZ. He went to the Art Institute of Chicago and also studied in Rome, Italy, acquiring a BFA in painting and printmaking. Now Vincent resides in Harlem where he lives and works in a small studio. He says:
I deal with vulnerability. It is how I see myself and the world. Through my subject matter, the human form, I am constantly trying to understand the meaning behind my emotions and the environment we live in.
Most of Vincent’s work is done on paper with mixed media that includes charcoal, conte, ink, acrylic, oil stick and gouache. „The immediacy of my material allows me to capture the emotions that are prevalent at the time. As I pace in front of my wall with a predetermined size of paper, struggling with the next decision and watching it evolve, I realize my reasons for constantly creating. How else can I conjure up such emotions as sorrow, strength, brutality and weakness?“ – he explains. Indeed, his figures, drawn in broad, harsh strokes are emotional in their own quiet, intense way. Asked for a purpose of his work Vincent answered: I cannot know the whole world. I can only try to document what I see as truth.

Sharing the Moments

The second artist we’d like you to meet is Everette Clay Harley. He moved to New York in 1994 with ambitions of breaking into show biz. During that time he was enrolled at Pace University, but skipped most classes, opting to attend any audition that he knew about. After 2 and a half years of business courses, and several failed classes, though his acting resume was fattening up, he begrudgingly returned to Washington, DC in 1997. After a line of odd jobs he was able to return to the stage by doing a small East Coast tour of 2 original plays. It was when he first found interest in visual arts. As described in his own words: One evening, as we relaxed at a bed and breakfast, I stepped outside to get a hit of fresh air. As I stood out, I beheld a breathtaking view of nature; one that is not common to a city boy. I stood without words for 30 minutes, not wanting to leave… because I wanted this breathtaking sight forever. Forever to share with all I know. It wa that moment that I new I needed to get a camera. How many other moments could I share, and relive time and again? Everette bought his first camera within a month of that experience. A year later he took a course in film development at the Washington School of Photography, then returned to NYC and settled in Brooklyn. His work – street scenes, portraits and landscapes, photographed around the globe – is still driven by the same impulse he felt when he decided he wanted to be an artists: a pursuit of preserving forever the passing beauty of things, people and places. With one important twist: Everette enjoys digital alterations and enhancements as much as he likes finding beautiful frames. He says: The bathroom in my apartment is equipped with an enlarger, and a bottle of stop bath sat comfortably next to the cotton swabs. The freedom to experiment in the darkroom was important, and a process I came to enjoy more than capturing the photo. I bought my first digital SLR in 2008, and enjoy working in the controversial digital darkroom even more. As an actor intrigued by story telling, and filmmaking, I try the same thing with my photography. The darkroom is where I tweak the “script” before the final draft is released.

Save the date

We’re excited to announce: “Real Art For Real People, Vol. 2” is on its way.

When? May 3rd, 2009, 5-11 pm

Where? At Tom&Jerry’s Bar, 288 Elizabeth Street

Why? Because we present not one, not two, but THREE very talented individuals (You can see their work here) and it’s going to be a lot of fun again!

Seriously – put it in in your iCalendars, Blackberrys and iPhones a.s.a.p. And check us out often, we’ll post more info about young artists and their work.

Buster Black: “It’s the journey that counts”

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Buster Black is one of the artists we feature in our first edition of “real ART for REAL people” (just a reminder: April 5th, Tom&Jerry’s bar). He calls his bold, pure color silk-screens whimsical. He takes absurd over clever any day, and hopes people will see that in his work. We asked him some more questions about his art:

WHEN WAS THE FIRST TIME YOU „DID IT“?
Well, I’ve always been a drawer and and a doodler, but I guess a major jumping off point for me was when I was a kid, and I started painting a picture in my mom’s basement in Virginia. Nobody asked me to do it; there were just some canvases there that I guess my mom had bought, so I started painting a four-color design across a couple of canvases and stapled them together.  I was really pleased with the result, and I found that the act of painting and experimenting was really satisfying for me.  For me, it’s usually about the process and how I get to the final results.

WHAT YOUR ART IS ABOUT
The main thing about my artwork is that I just do it.  It’s just something that I make happen.  I don’t overthink it, and I never think about ‘can I sell this?’ or ‘will other people like this?’.  It’s the process that really counts for me.  I spend a lot of time drawing shapes on napkins, in a notebook, etc., and usually after I finish something like that, I’ll want to make it into something else: to blow it up on a canvas or make it into a silkscreen. A lot of time I go from a doodle to a painting that ends up being a silkscreen – none of it is fully thought out – I rarely come up with the clear idea of what I want to do, it usually just stems from something else.

DO YOU EXPERIMENT WITH DIFFERENT MEDIA?
Most everything starts with a drawing or a photo so I like to do both of those. I also build wood panels to paint on, which in itself is a type of art form I think.  The last couple of years I’ve really gotten into silk screening.  I really enjoy the several-day-process of building frames from scratch, outfitting them with silk, working with an image on the computer, transferring it to the silkscreen, and then finally putting ink on paper (or whatever else).  Building the screen is almost as important as the final result – the moment of transferring a final image onto paper, canvas, or wood….It is the process that counts for me.

HOW DID YOU GET INTO SILKSCREENING?
I’d always wanted to do it, but I’m not really a trained visual artist – no schooling or nothing.  A friend of mine told me she was working with silkscreens and I asked her to help me out to understand how it works.  I went over there and worked with her for a day and she showed me how to shoot a screen.  Our screens didn’t work out, but I was so fascinated by it that as soon as I got home I went and got the materials, so I could work on it myself.  It’s a very fickle process, and my setup is pretty homemade; a real “do-it-youself” type of deal, so my success rate was pretty low.  It still is pretty low, but at least now I’m to a point where I can experiment with new types of ideas like larger screens and bigger projects.

WHAT KIND OF ASSIGNED WORK DO YOU DO?
Usually I work for private clients through a word of mouth. I’m currently working on a series of posters which were intended as gifts for contributors to the new issue of The Minus Times, a small literary magazine published by a friend in Charleston, SC. Also, I just worked on an album cover for a band called Ocho, in San Fransisco, and a record cover for a local band, The Aamerican Tenants. Small stuff like that comes up pretty regularly.  I stay pretty busy.

WHY NEW YORK CITY?
I grew up in Winchester, VA, and I always loved coming up here as a kid.  A couple years ago I was living in Greensboro, NC, and I basically just had to leave.  It was that time.  I packed up my truck and went up to Chicago for a little while.  I worked for a small music magazine there, which was pretty fun. But eventually I ended up in NYC, and it’s been pretty ok.  I find it’s really easy to keep busy up here.  It’s a cliché, but the city has a lot of energy.  I mean, I could live on a farm in Virginia and I still would be doing artwork and building stuff, but there’s something in New York that makes me more productive. Maybe it’s the tempo or the pace of life here.  It’s not something that I’m entirely used to coming from the South.  Maybe it’s the juxtaposition of being the way I am and living in a place like this that can make a person require more of an outlet for creativity.

Art Stimulus

There are new kids in town, and they are just about ready to rock you! We are talking fresh faces of ART in the City. For the next months, we are going to present work and profiles of emerging artists, and try to fill the gap between them and their audience, without the “middle man”. We will keep you up to date regarding young artists’ work progress and send special invitations for their shows. If you are an artist – show us your work. If you are interested in art, we’ll keep you posted about our next event. If you want to write us about anything at all: milena@see-nyc.com, ika@see-nyc.com

For now, we can only say – it’s coming up. Get ready!

Memory Lane, NY

The video we want to share with you is an archival footage of Broadway in the 1930’s. We invite you to take a trip down memory lane, (not that you’d remember 1930’s, but everybody says it feels like the depression, so it might be a propos) and see if you can recognize any familiar spots (note the adorable cat with a kitten in its mouth):