ArtPort Kingston, The Cornell Steamboat Building, 108 East Strand Street, Kingston, NY
On a quick visit to Kingston, New York this weekend I came upon a cultural haven overlooking Rondout Creek in the city’s historic waterfront district. ArtPort Kingston is a “destination for art experiences and unconventional interaction,” according to the website, introducing audiences to an eclectic array of contemporary art exhibitions, performances, events, and workshops.
Launched in December 2019 by independent curator/gallerist Laurie De Chiara and her husband, artist/educator, Stefan Saffer, ArtPort Kingston is located in The Cornell Steamboat Building, a massive structure built in the early 1900s to house and service tugboats that shuttled agricultural and construction cargo down the Delaware & Hudson Canal to New York City. De Chiara and Saffer are also the founders of ArtPod, a nonprofit that produces immersive group shows and educational programming.
The ground level of Art Port offers a pair of interactive works, including Sophi Kravitz’s Loquacious and Lovely (2017), two light-up rocking unicorns that visitors can hop on for a ride. The colorful creatures, symbols of “uniqueness and power,” according to the artist’s message, exude cheer and optimism, gathering negative energy into their illuminated horns as “a glowing beacon of comfort.”
Also on the ground floor is Saffer’s interactive installation ArtPark. A long red carpet—with Matisse-inspired cut-outs—leads to a series of suspended disks adorned with geometric patterns. Visitors are invited to toss ping pong balls at the disks which emit percussive tones when hit. Trying to get a consistent beat going on the mobile quickly becomes a fun and obsessive mission.
ArtPark bt Stefan Saffer
The vast, brightly-lit second floor showcased two group exhibits. Blossom Return, curated by Susan Jennings, featured nature-inspired works by eight artists. “While the world shuttered, last summer’s bloom was particularly poignant as something consistent, healthy and healing amidst so much that was not…. This summer the blossom return greets us both as it always has and also entirely anew,” the press release reads.
Blossom Return on view at ArtPort Kingston
Blossom Return on view at ArtPort Kingston
Blossom Return on view at ArtPort Kingston
The Other Side of the Rainbow, curated by De Chiara, features works that respond to the unprecedented events of this past year—illustrating how the artists experience life gradually returning to normal. “Often after a storm, comes an amazing rainbow, which can create an inspiring view,” notes the press release. Featuring neon-lit messages, ceramics, paintings, and knit art, the exhibit offers a panoply of reflections linked by a sense of hope.
Artwork by Julia Blume exhibited in The Other Side of the Rainbow
'Transit Portal' by MaryAnn Strandell features a 50-foot wall drawing and 3D lenticular artwork
Paintings by Jon Levy-Warren exhibited in The Other Side of the Rainbow
Knit Art by Jeila Gueramian exhibited in The Other Side of the Rainbow
Knit Art by Jeila Gueramian
Two works by Suzanne Wright composed with repurposed trees
Paintings by Ruth Rodriguez
Artwork by Jean Louis Frenk exhibited in The Other Side of the Rainbow
Outside, artist Maya Strauss painted a shed/mobile art studio, accompanied by the improvisations of bassist Evan Crane. Site-specific public art pieces are displayed along the waterfront as well. Both exhibitions, Blossom Return and The Other Side of the Rainbow closed on Sunday, July 25, but check out artportkingston.com for information on upcoming shows and events.
Be sure to stop by and visit this innovative creative hub if you happen to be in the Kingston/Hudson Valley area.
ArtPort Kingston, The Other Side of the Rainbow installation view
ArtPort Kingston The Cornell Steamboat Building 108 East Strand Street Kingston, New York
Marlene Weisman holds her Super Deep 3D Collage 'Cosmic Desert' (2020)
You may need to do a little dance when looking at Marlene Weisman’s Super Deep 3D Lenticular Collages, shifting your stance to examine the many layers that appear to waver and transform right before your eyes.
“It’s John Waters meets Robert Rauschenberg with a little Cy Twombly thrown in there,” Weisman said of her mind-blowing collages, currently on view in her exhibit Life in 3D at Blue Table Post. Composed with kitschy lenticular images (prints that appear to move when viewed from various angles), her Super Deep 3D series blends Waters’ camp aesthetics, Rauschenberg’s use of found objects, and Twombly’s signature scribbles.
Weisman recalled finding a trove of tacky lenticular images at a 99-cent store about three years ago. “I was mesmerized and I said, ‘how can I use these?’” After experimenting with the hypnotic images, layering pieces onto existing traditional collage works, she discovered that some of the lenticular prints were slightly transparent. “You can see type through the images.” She then began scratching windows onto the prints, removing portions of the images to reveal text and images underneath that she either creates or clips out of books, magazines, atlases, and advertisements.
“It all starts as kitsch images—puppies, landscapes, all kinds of camp images—which I take out of context and then work through destructive practices,” she explained. “Some of them look like something you’d see in nature and some of them are pure abstraction, fantasy, or science fiction.”
Marlene Weisman | Life in 3D: (top, left to right) Juvenile Heart (2018), Women in Danger (2018). Below are two recent Super Deep 3D Lenticular Collages by Weisman.
Forest for the Trees (2021), Geometric in Nature (2019) by Marlene Weisman
On Time (2019) by Marlene Weisman
Marlene Weisman | Life in 3D: (clockwise from top left) Now What? (2019), Portrait of the Artist (2019), Glam Rock (Reed, Pop, Johansen) (2019)
Portrait of the Artist (2019) by Marlene Weisman
Weisman titled the series Super Deep because “it brings you ‘super deep’ into the work” to discover the dreamlike figures, objects, and settings inhabiting the depths of her collages. The works give a “nod to the history of kinetic art,” according to the artist, since they create the illusion of movement and encourage viewers to move around and engage with the pieces.
Born in Brooklyn, Weisman grew up in Queens before her family relocated to Long Island in her teens. She studied graphic design at SUNY College at Buffalo, where she happily discovered a “great music scene” and started a fanzine with a friend. “I listen to a lot of glam rock when I work,” she says. “I love the energy—Bowie, T. Rex, Roxy Music…”
The music-lover moved straight to New York City after graduation and fulfilled her dream of working in the music industry, creating graphics for Stiff America Records and venues including Area, Danceteria, and Peppermint Lounge. Weisman’s work was also featured in two exhibits curated by Keith Haring that showcased Xerox Transfer Art.
“I was lucky enough to be part of the whole early ‘80s scene in New York,” she says. “I got to have the ultimate New York creative experience. I don’t think people today have had that. We would live on nothing. It was unbelievable.”
Weisman landed a plum position from 1988 to 1995 on the in-house design team for Saturday Night Live, creating on-air graphics and skit props for seven seasons. Demanding work schedules kept her from her art practice for several years until she signed up for a collage workshop in 2013. “When I was trained as a graphic designer it was a very hands-on craft and there was a lot of cutting and pasting,” she notes on the correlation between her design and visual art practices. “That whole cut-and-paste sensibility is really ingrained in me. I love it,” she continued. “The cut and paste, composition, and design, I really think it’s all one thing. I think that it’s just how you see the world.”
Ebb and Flow (2019) by Marlene Weisman. Below left is a recent Super Deep 3D Lenticular Collage by Weisman.
Marlene Weisman's Optimystics collages (left to right) Climatica (2021) and Global Conversation (2021). "I created these as the new administration came in. I felt like there was such hope when the former administration went out, and Biden went in," Weisman said of her recent mixed media collage series. "I felt like science was back, reason was back, and empathy was back. I was kind of ebullient and optimistic about the future."
Some earlier works by Weisman are also on view at Blue Table Post. (Left to right) Mod Shopper (2018) and her Pop Art Punchboard assemblage titled 170 Winners (2018)
Weisman moved to Brooklyn about 15 years ago and currently works from Ti Art Studios in Red Hook. “What I love is this art community in Brooklyn,” she said. “I love knowing the other artists. I love sharing the work. I love the feedback. I love going to other people’s shows. It’s so important.”
Weisman planned on debuting her Super Deep 3D Collages at The Other Art Fair in April 2020, but the pandemic shuttered the event, forcing it to take place digitally. The dimensionality of Weisman’s works are better viewed in person and do not translate well online, so she was thrilled when Blue Table Post’s founder, Oliver Lief, reached out to her. “These pieces are very hard to show online so I was so happy to have an opportunity to show them at Blue Table Post.” The post-production studio in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn regularly exhibits work by local artists. Weisman's Life in 3D opened in June.
Blue Table serves as “a place where the artist community and different filmmaking communities can meet and get to know each other,” Lief said. Though he typically attends the annual Arts Gowanus Open Studio events—as well as last year’s Atlantic Avenue Art Walk—to find artists to exhibit, Lief discovered Weisman online. “I was looking for someone…just digging on the internet and was just struck by the first images I saw [of her work],” he said. “The layering, colors…some of the themes in her work are really fun.”
Fragile by Marlene Weisman (2018)
Otherworldly Buster (2021) by Marlene Weisman
Influenced by Surrealism, Dadaism, Pop Art, Strategic Vandalism, psychedelic art, and more, Weisman’s vibrant, playful works are packed with artifice in myriad layers of hallucinogenic, otherworldly scenes. “It never ceases to surprise me to see the interaction between the layers,” the artist says. “I’m attempting to redefine collage for the 21st century.”
Marlene Weisman | Life in 3D Blue Table Post, 67 Dean Street (between Smith & Boerum Pl), Boerum Hill, BK To schedule a viewing of the exhibit, email oliver@bluetablepost.com. Exhibit on view through mid-August.
A preview of Artichoke Dance Company's Just Gowanus: An Interactive Performance Tour
This weekend Artichoke Dance Company will premiere Just Gowanus, a walking tour detailing the area’s past, present, and future, interspersed with dance performances inspired by the unique Brooklyn neighborhood.
The two-hour tour will highlight several noteworthy spots in Gowanus—the 4th Street Turning Basin, bioswales, recycling facilities, plant nurseries—making stops at significant sites including the Salt Lot, the Whole Foods promenade, and Sponge Park to discuss the impending rezoning of the neighborhood, the EPA’s cleanup of the Superfund-designated Gowanus Canal, and other environmental concerns in the community such as flooding, brownfields, the urban heat island effect, and combined sewer overflow (CSOs).
At each stop, four Artichoke dancers will perform short works and lead interactive experiences that illustrate the “geography’s significance” and encourage audiences to “reflect on the place and future.”
The tour kicks off at the Salt Lot, home of a DSNY salt shed, Big Reuse’s NYC Compost Project, and Gowanus Canal Conservancy’s (GCC) education and stewardship programs. Just past the towering mountain of salt used on icy roads during snowstorms (and from which the dancers make a dramatic entrance), visitors will find an oasis overlooking the canal—GCC’s verdant garden and nursery.
“This site is going to go away for a while,” Lynn Neuman, Director of Artichoke Dance, noted during a preview of the tour. As part of the Gowanus Canal cleanup, two CSO tanks will be built to hold excess rainwater during heavy storms to prevent overflow into the canal. One eight-million-gallon tank will be constructed at the northern end of the canal and one four-million-gallon tank will be built at the Salt Lot. GCC will need to find a temporary home for its outdoor facilities until the tank is completed in 2028 and the Conservancy can move back.
Walking through Gowanus Canal Conservancy's garden at the Salt Lot. Photo by Robin Michals (courtesy of Artichoke Dance Company)
Artichoke dancers descend from the salt pile.
Dancers presented flower bracelets made of recycled plastic to audience members. Photo by Robin Michals (courtesy of Artichoke Dance Company)
Artichoke Dance Company performs at the Salt Lot in Gowanus.
Artichoke dancers perform at the Salt Lot in Gowanus.
Across the canal from the Salt Lot is Public Place. If the city approves the Gowanus Neighborhood Rezoning, which is currently in the public review phase, a divisive development, Gowanus Green, is planned for the city-owned Public Place site, Neuman explained. If given the okay, a school, a public park, and six affordable housing towers rising as high as 28 stories will be developed. For decades, Public Place was home to the Citizens Works Manufactured Gas Plant, making it “one of the most toxic sites along the canal,” Neuman said. Though the coal tar contaminating the site is currently being remediated by National Grid, and developers vow to clean it up further, many in the community argue that it will never be safe to live above and that it is unjust to house low-income families on the land.
These are just some of the concerns that will be raised during the Just Gowanus tour. “There’s so much going on and so much controversy around Gowanus right now that getting the information out, I think, is really important,” Neuman said. “And trying to present it in a way that isn’t leading in one way or the other, but just gives the information, so that people can make informed decisions.” She added that while listening to public testimony during the community board hearing for the rezoning she heard “a lot of speculation about what’s actually going on.... I’m hoping to disseminate some facts.” Neuman would like audiences to learn more about important issues in the neighborhood and obtain “some sense of how they can get active…to know that activism is not scary. It’s very doable,” she insists.
Artichoke Dance Company performs by the Gowanus Canal at the Whole Foods promenade. Photo by Robin Michals (courtesy of Artichoke Dance Company)
A preview of Just Gowanus.
Artichoke Dance Company performs by the Gowanus Canal.
Neuman is a member of 350Brooklyn, a group that addresses the climate crisis, and the Gowanus Neighborhood Coalition for Justice (GNCJ) which fights to advance racial, economic and environmental justice in Gowanus. The dancer and choreographer first became involved in environmental activism about ten years ago. “It started with plastic pollution for me,” she recalls. “I adopted an older Labrador when I moved to Brooklyn, and I didn’t know this about Labs, but they try to eat everything. I was constantly pulling stuff out of her mouth and one day I realized it’s all plastic. [All the litter] on the street was plastic.” Neuman reached out to the Earth Institute at Columbia University and connected with Ph.D. students researching plastic pollution. With their help she organized a bus tour that took groups to see various trash and recycling facilities across the city.
A decade later, she’s organized another tour focused on Gowanus—seamlessly integrating performance, education, and activism. Originally planned to be staged last summer, the production had to wait a year due to the pandemic. “It’s been in my head for a really long time, and now we finally get to do it,” Neuman said. She spent a lot of time at the sites highlighted on the tour and worked with her dancers to “devise different improvisational approaches that illustrate what I see as happening there.” Bold gestural movements of limbs as well as powerful leaps and bounds beautifully evoke the natural surroundings. One dance portrays the “progression of the history of the canal from a salt marsh to industrialization,” Neuman explained, while another reflects cycles, those found in nature or the cyclic phases of city development processes. Some of the music composed to accompany the dances incorporates sound samples recorded around Gowanus, including birdsong and mechanical rhythms.
A preview of Just Gowanus at Sponge Park in front of the Gowanus Dredgers' Boathouse. Photo by Robin Michals (courtesy of Artichoke Dance Company)
Artichoke Dance Company performs at Gowanus Canal Sponge Park.
A preview of Just Gowanus. Photo by Robin Michals (courtesy of Artichoke Dance Company)
A preview of Just Gowanus. Photo by Robin Michals (courtesy of Artichoke Dance Company)
Lynn Neuman, Director of Artichoke Dance Company, and her dancers at the end of the Just Gowanus preview.
Artichoke dancers are known to perform in billowing skirts composed entirely of single-use plastic bags. “[The dancers] have been dancing in plastic bags—which are really hot, by the way—for about five years, until we passed the plastic bag ban legislation in New York State,” Neuman noted. “Now there’s a nation-wide comprehensive plastic bill that would eliminate single-use plastic bags and other single-use plastics that are not recyclable.” During the tour audiences will be given tips on how to get involved in the community and beyond, such as pushing NYS representatives to support the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act of 2021.
Even if you closely follow what’s going on in Gowanus, you are likely to learn something new during this enlightening and entertaining event. This innovative mix of dance, information, and advocacy showcases what makes the neighborhood special while highlighting the potential changes that might rob Gowanus of its charms.
Founded in 1995, Artichoke Dance merges dance, environmental activism, and civic engagement. Just Gowanus is the company’s third production that focuses on the Gowanus neighborhood and collaborates with residents and local organizations. In 2017 Artichoke produced Global Water Dances on the Gowanus Canal and in 2019 they presented the Gowanus Visions Festival of Art and Action.
A preview of Just Gowanus. Photo by Robin Michals (courtesy of Artichoke Dance Company)