And ICYMI: Roger Clark featured Dina Leor's shop on NY1 back on Oct. 19.
Saturday, November 7, 2020
Today at La Sirena
Friday, November 6, 2020
Some kind of 'Wonderful'
Baltimore's War On Women released a new LP last week titled Wonderful Hell ... the video here is for the title track...
Free (and cool?) stuff alert
So here we are — it's outside 741 E. Ninth St., home of the Frank Alexander studio, an NYC event designer...
The event business is certainly hurting right now. Via a Frank Alexander Instagram post from Sept. 2:
Make no mistake our industry is on Red Alert — I stand in solidarity with thousands in the event/entertainment/hospitality industry who are out of work at no fault of their own. Most of us have spent our lives getting to a point where we can make a living doing what we love to do.
We have spent years building our business from the ground up. Time, money, more time, more money and constant grinding has brought us here. While we have survived recessions, stock market collapses, housing crises and natural disasters, this is something new and unexpected… being told you can't do large events at all. Period.
RIP Pastor Diane
The Rev. Diane Dunne, who helped feed the homeless in the East Village since the late 1980s, died in her sleep last Friday night at her Long Island home. She was 66.
Pastor Diane, as she was known, could be seen in Tompkins Square Park giving out free food on Wednesdays and Saturdays to those in need. “Tough love” is how one Park regular described her.
In her 20s, she worked as a regional sales manager for a cosmetics company, a job that she found unfulfilling. In 1982, she enrolled at World Challenge Ministries and later embarked on a life of street ministry. A Long Island resident, she first came to Tompkins Square Park in 1987.
She was the founder of Hope For the Future Ministries, based in Farmingdale, Long Island. In November 2009, a fire, suspected to be arson, heavily damaged the facility's food pantry, though she was able to regroup. The organization was said to serve 300,000 hot meals and pantry bags per year to people in need on Long Island and in New York City.
Funeral arrangements are pending. There is a memorial scheduled to honor her tomorrow afternoon at 4 along Avenue A at Tompkins Square Park.
The East Village Community Fridge can use some fresh-food donations
The East Village Community Fridge, up and running these past few weeks outside S’MAC on 12th Street and First Avenue, is in need of donations.
Available 24/7, the fridge — and the adjacent pantry — provides food for anyone in need of a meal.
The volunteer group East Village Neighbors posted this on Instagram yesterday:
Our pantry is full but we had very little food for the fridge today. Question for other community fridges — how do you keep fresh food in the fridge 24/7? Are there any distributors or vendors we could get a steady supply of donations from? The need is SO great in the East Village that our food goes in an hour or two.
If anyone would like to donate so we can buy more food you can at bit.ly/EVNFunds.
This service is a group effort that began when S’MAC owners Sarita and Caesar Ekya saw a post in East Village Neighbors Facebook group about setting up a fresh-foods community fridge.
East Village Neighbors is also in need of reliable volunteers to help manage, stock and clean the fridge, and purveyors, supermarkets, and local restaurants that may be able to help with weekly food and goods drop-offs. If you can help, please contact the group via email, here: EastVillageNeighbors@gmail.com.
Previously on EV Grieve:
Thursday, November 5, 2020
You rebel scum
Grant Shaffer's NY See
The next Avenue B Flea is Saturday, and here's how they came to be
Ahead of this week's sale, we asked organizer Lisa Marie a few questions about how the flea markets came to be along this corridor of the East Village...
What originally inspired you to organize Avenue B Flea?
Do you foresee it becoming an ongoing event? Are you thinking of carrying these over to the spring?
I organized and promoted events in the scene for years as a musician and also curated a few art shows. When I moved on from that, I still wanted to organize events and noticed how fast fashion was having a negative impact on the environment, so I started organizing large-scale clothing swaps. It was a way to keep clothing out of landfills and donate the leftovers to charity. My favorite place to have them was Lucky on B because of the great backyard patio.
When we couldn’t safely do my swaps there because of COVID-19, the owner, Abby, suggested a flea to increase some foot traffic to the struggling businesses. I took it from there. I called on the vast network of musicians and artists I know who wanted to share their creativity and needed money, so this became the perfect outlet.
Yes. I’d love that but now warm days are limited. I prefer to keep this an outdoor thing, so it looks like the last flea is Saturday, Nov. 14 — if it doesn’t rain. There might be a one off if we get a random warm day on a weekend in December too.
I plan on doing this again in the spring and I’ve heard nothing but positive feedback about it so stay tuned.
Several people have asked if they can sell stuff — residents with extra records and clothes. Can anyone show up or do they need to reserve a spot?
I love to accommodate locals, and I ask that they email me to reserve a spot.
I plan at least a week in advance since there is a lot of planning and organizing in order for this to run smoothly and not be a free-for-all.
I’ve carefully vetted these spots to bring new life to the dead zones created by the closed businesses on Avenue B. It’s unfortunate that there is no city, state, or government support for these local mom-and- pop shops and they have no choice but to close.
I assign locations according to what I think will work best in the area and what type of space a seller needs. Not every table or rack can fit into any space, so it’s crucial that I know who’s selling what and where. I position everyone strategically to make sure entrances and sidewalks aren’t blocked and it’s not an inconvenience to the neighbors.
Ultimately, I hope the extra foot traffic is beneficial to the local businesses and increases revenue for the neighborhood!
What has been the most rewarding part of Avenue B Flea for you?
It’s great to see how resilient New Yorkers can be. We always bounce back and it‘s because we’re community strong. We’re tough no matter what the world throws at us, but for the last few decades, the East Village has lost it’s magic. It’s become sanitized and a lot of the creative types have left.
What I’m seeing now is musicians, artists, and creative types reclaiming the street as a platform. It feels very guerrilla and that was the essence of downtown back in the heyday. I’m trying to preserve some of that, and I designed the flyer to try and capture that old-school aesthetic.
This flea is an avenue to showcase new energy by offering items from artists and sellers you don’t see in the homogenized chain stores. People are also coming out to hear local music, reunite with old friends, and a lot of young people are discovering independent designers, collecting vinyl, and getting a taste of what the neighborhood used to be about.
—> —> —>
Caracas Arepa Bar is closing its East Village outpost after 17 years
Co-owner Aristides Barrios made the announcement on Instagram yesterday (and Eater was first to report on it):
Thank you to all who helped build this place, we did it with our own bare hands. Thank you to those who helped us navigate these 17 years... Those part of the team, now became family and those supporting us over the years, also became family...
Caracas Arepa Bar will continue on with their Williamsburg location.
Barrios and co-owner Maribel Arauj started the business of selling the stuffed Venezuelan arepas here on Seventh Street in 2003. The original location at 93 1/2 E. Seventh St. suffered extensive fire damage in September 2016, and the owners were never able to reopen in the space.
And that storefront remains vacant, along with the former Luke's Lobster next door. This will make three consecutive empty spaces then after service on Sunday.
Previously on EV Grieve:
Veniero's has a temporary new space on 11th Street
Perhaps the NYC institution (since 1894!) is expanding?
Well, yes! But not permanently. Frankie Zerilli, a fifth-generation Veniero family member,
told us that they are renting the space temporarily for holiday storage... and for packing orders (hello cannoli kit!).
Wednesday, November 4, 2020
Noted
🙄
Spotted on the plywood at Target on 14th Street and Avenue A this evening ... photo by Lola Sáenz...
Gallery Watch: Crichoues Indignation at the Hole NYC; Vantage Points at GRIMM Gallery
Text by Clare Gemima
Crichoues Indignation by Caitlin Cherry
The Hole NYC, 312 Bowery: Showing through Nov. 15
The HOLE NYC honestly takes it up a notch with every artist they showcase.
Upon visiting this gallery, I was shocked to see that The HOLE had transformed entirely, with crisply painted walls, a huge amount of incredible new works and a fresh take on their whole space.
Transforming the gallery for Cherry after Cubed, their previous group show (14 international artists) that utilized the space in an entirely different means, allows viewers to understand just how important looking at art is right now, how passionate The HOLE is and how on board their team is with highlighting the current climate of technology and social media running rampantly hand-in-hand with civil unrest, the election and dismantling (or establishing) social hierarchy in 2020.
Cherry's oil on canvas works are engulfing in their larger than life scale, confronting the viewer in a familiar digital landscape with Black Femme figures at the foreground, her gazes highlighting the way social media appropriates this community's body image, sexuality and style without highlighting their skill set or expertise.
An image-run, surface level and vapid Instagram-esque landscape is expressed through Cherry’s undulating use of fluorescent colors, shapes and installation techniques. The artist’s hyper-sexualised characters are based on dancers, bartenders and Instagram models working at cabarets and as online influencers.
I would recommend seeing this show for an impressive take on its online origin (a misspelt tweet that Kanye West made) that expands into a gooey, delicious and psychedelic series of abstract paintings.
Cherry also includes a very large paintings vault, housing several canvases that gallery goers can engage with. The vault speaks to the value of archiving digital works (or lack their of) playing with online’s ubiquitous sugar-coating methods and the over-arching authenticity in the art world today.
PS. The HOLE also has a show on by Anders Oinonen
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Vantage Points by Letha Wilson, Sonia Almeida, Heidi Norton and Claudia Peña Salinas
GRIMM Gallery, 202 Bowery: Showing through Nov. 14
Although the gallery is dominated by a vast amount of captivating and rich work by a male painter, Tjebbe Beekman (Symbiosis), if you get to the middle of the gallery and turn to your left, you will see a small door leading to a descending staircase that you can go down for a refreshing take on (finally) an all women's show!
The work deals with the natural world, conceptually and physically, as the artists criss-cross and mingle with the use of plants, grass, fibre, wax, metal and paper presented in a range of autonomous sculptures, paintings and installations in their final form.
The work in this show is presented on the ground, wall, floor and even corners of the building, challenging conventional installation techniques that demonstrate how space can be manipulated by both delicate and less delicate forms. Nature versus structure, hard versus soft, digital versus organic, etc.
Wilson, Almeida, Norton and Salinas' work compliments each other as much as it highlights the differences in each piece. The most compelling work for me was Reverse timeline (2019) by Sonia Almeida, made out of printed fabric, screen print, fabric pen, cotton, polyester and wool hung from the ceiling, and The Museum Archive by Heidi Norton made out of five panels of glass, resin, plants, beam splitter glass, photo gels, photographic prints, film and an aluminum stand.
This is GRIMM Gallery’s final show before they move to Tribeca.
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Clare Gemima is a visual artist from New Zealand. New-ish to the East Village, she spends her time as an artist assistant and gallery go-er, hungry to explore what's happening in her local art world. You can find her work here: claregemima.com
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