Name: Paul KostabiJames Maher is a fine art and studio photographer based in the East Village. Find his website here.
Occupation: Musician, Artist, Producer
Location: 5th Street Between 2nd and 3rd
Time: 10:45 on Friday, Jan. 25
I was born in California and I moved here in 1984. I was 21, fresh out of high school and a college dropout. Music and art brought me here. I had sort of a music career in Los Angeles with a group called Youth Gone Mad and I came out here to chase the music dream. I landed on Rivington Street and opened a rehearsal studio since there were a lot of bands. It worked well and so I got another apartment on Ludlow street.
When I came here it was to play punk rock music and I was sort of shocked when I went to CBGB the first time. In LA, we had 2,000 kids at a show, sometimes 3,000, with helicopters in the sky and riots and all of this crazy stuff that I wanted to escape. So I came to New York and expected it to be bigger. But it wasn’t. It was very tiny. There were like 40 punks at CBGB, but they were important. It meant something. I felt like it had to be here because this is where the important stuff happened.
When I first got here I was like shit, there were like real nutcases walking around, like guys making sounds and hippies with long hair and grey beards and I was like, ‘Oh god, I don’t ever want to ever be that guy,’ but now I feel like I’m almost there. Oh god, I could get there.
On the Bowery we had the winos. It was their own doing or undoing. You’d just walk down the street and you’d have to step over people that were sleeping and passed out all night, with bottles of Thunderbird and Ripple. It had a very Bukowski type of feel to it. Saturday night was a big party because in New York you weren’t allowed to buy alcohol on Sundays and so they all stocked up. Sunday morning was incredible. The winos were all out and they all had their last take-homes from the night before. That was the Bowery and the Bowery Bums. Who would have thought a $200 million building would pop up next to the White House Hotel?
It was wild at the time. There were a lot of bands and a lot of groups. I was playing with them, starting a recording studio and recording them, and kind of discovering bands. One of the bands I was on was White Zombie in ‘85. In California, in the early 80s in the punk world, everyone was doing everything themselves. When I came to New York, even though New York gets credit for doing that, I didn’t notice that. Bands weren’t putting out their own records yet. But the East Village scene was doing that.
Fortunately, I have a music production career and I play in bands and have an art career. I’m still finding bands and producing them. I found this band called Sacco that I’m trying to sign to one of these uptown labels. I’m still in a band called The Damn Kids and I play all the time and it’s joyous. I joined this band in 1988 or ‘89. It’s the people I’ve been with for almost as long as I’ve been here. They were called Hammerbrain and part of the Tompkins Square Riot festivals. We played last [Thursday] night on the RBar on the Bowery.
My art is like a daily diary and past experiences. A lot of it is spontaneous. Now I’m doing these paintings about Hurricane Sandy that kind of destroyed my small place upstate. I’m doing switch paintings that are done with a bamboo branch. I cut one of those, dip it in paint, and literally whip the paintings. It’s flood energy and I’m painting on things that were destroyed in the flood. It’s a switch in style for me. Instead of the figurative expressionism, it’s abstract, although they’re kind of controlled. It’s a disaster series that I’m trying to turn into a beautiful show. The show’s opening on Feb 1 in Pennsylvania.
We used to always paint on the street all the time but you don’t see it anymore. It was good energy. Weather permitting I still do it all the time. The mural on the street last year was for the launch of the company called Bad Things. I’m making plastic device covers with them and the launch was in Colorado but I did the mural here and shipped it out for the event.
I’m at the point of saying, “Made in the East Village” for the covers. That’s where I got all of the inspiration. 30 years later, I go all over the world and travel and it’s sort of an East Village world. It’s influenced the globe. The world’s kind of more like the East Village than the East Village is now.
On Sunday, join us for a Super Bowl Party with pizza, snacks and drink specials. Watch the Baltimore Ravens battle the San Francisco 49ers on our two-story screen (the biggest screen on the Lower East Side!) $7 tix include free food.
Centre-fuge Public Art Project is proud to announce the continuation of murals on the trailer at First Street and First Avenue. Cycle 7 is the first installation of art in the new year.
In mid-2011 a drab, gray trailer, serving as a temporary office for workers on the 2nd Avenue subway line, popped up on the South side of First Street. For two years now Centre-fuge Public Art Project transforms the DOT trailer into a rotating street gallery. Artists create work on all visible sides of the structure with the art changing every other month. Anyone can propose an idea for work on the trailer.
The goal of Centre-fuge is not only to re-beautify an incredible block, but also to encourage the community to express itself in a public forum. With the closure of half of Houston Street, making underground way for the 2nd Avenue Subway line, the ever-growing presence of construction makes the area feel less like a neighborhood full of individuals and more like a work site full of barricades and jackhammers. Centre-fuge attempts to combat this effect. The project is dedicated in memory of friend, creator and Lower East Side neighbor, Mike Hamm.
Artists represented in Centre-fuge, Cycle 7 are Hellbent, Joe Iurato, Joseph Meloy, Matthew Denton Burrows, Nicholai Khan and Yuki. For more information on each artist, go to centre-fuge.tumblr.com/artist-bios. The recreation of Mike Hamm’s work is permanently installed on the eastern face of the trailer. A new Mike Hamm piece will be installed on the eastern face in April.
The seventh installation at Centre-fuge will be on view from February 10th until April 11th, 2013.
1) Food Protection Certificate not held by supervisor of food operations.
2) Sewage disposal system improper or unapproved.
Solas Fight - East Village, NYC Pt 3 from Solas Gone Wild on Vimeo.
