Results tagged “swoon”

       

Following her trip on the Hudson, Swoon got a bit more adventurous and gathered up more than 30 other artists to help her take her Swimming Cities to the Adriatic Sea. Three handcrafted vessels navigated the waters, and ended up crashing the Venice Biennale in Italy. Luckily Tod Seelie was on hand to capture it all, and now his photographs will be on exhibit, starting tonight, at the Anonymous Gallery.

Sometimes slow news days are good when they allow for photos of two of the sexiest men alive. That's right! Javier Bardem and James Franco are both in town filming scenes for Eat, Pray, Love. Check out more images of Mr. Bardem on Smith Street here. According to this Twitter update, they'll both be filming scenes today (and tonight?) at Robin Des Bois restaurant in Brooklyn, along with Billy Crudup and Julia Roberts.

On January 3rd the Brooklyn Museum will launch a new "Socially-Networked Membership" at their First Saturdays called 1stfans, which will offer paperless benefits through outlets like Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter. Benefit numero uno: "Artists from Swoon's studio will be on hand to help launch the initiative...They will create prints on found paper to be provided that evening by new 1stfans." (Keep in mind that this will likely mean Swoon studio artists will be working off a stencil she created, but she may not be there herself.) Want one? Want to also get exclusive updates via the museum's new Twitter art feed? Gotta pony up 20 bucks for the annual membership fee first. TONY notes that the social networking platforms will bring "updates to your Facebook or Twitter accounts, and the possibility of corresponding with other members and museum staff through these sites." You'll also get the benefit of skipping the ticket line for movies.

      

A few of the vessels in the Swimming Cities of the Switchback Sea installation have dropped anchor at Riverside Park South's Pier I, much to the amusement and confusion of some parkgoers.

For a good six years, the mysterious Swoon has been pasting her evocative and eye-catching cut-outs on walls around town, slowly and steadily establishing herself as one of the more intriguing street artists in the game. The work eventually won her gallery showings at prominent venues like Deitch Projects, where she returns Sunday with a solo show at the gallery's Long Island City satellite. The installation is part of a bigger, collective project called Swimming Cities of Switchback Sea, a flotilla of floating sculptures that set sail from Troy, New York on August 15th.

Swoon's Swimming Cities of Switchback Sea officially set sail last Friday, and the fleet is slowly making their way to the final destination of LIC--where the artist will have an exhibit set up at Deitch. The NY Times checked in on Swoon and the collective joining her on the floating art adventure, consisting of "artists, carpenters, musicians, filmmakers, seafarers and hangers-on." She told the paper that the boats were built with the environment in mind, constructed with salvaged material ("plywood from construction sites, old two-by-fours and packing plastic foam") and are even powered by "recycled motors, one from a 1968 Mercedes, another from a Volkswagen Rabbit. One uses a gasifier, which burns organic waste materials." The seven vessels hold 9-13 people each, and will float back into town on September 7th. Take a look at their voyage thus far in this slideshow (more at Flickr, and in video!).

Swoon has a new installation coming up that will take her work to the sea, or at least the Hudson River. Swimming Cities of Switchback Sea "is a flotilla of seven intricately hand crafted vessels that will navigate the stretch of the Hudson River between Troy and the New York harbor this August 15th - September 7th." The vessels are powered with alternative energy sources and will be making stops in towns along the way; those aboard will be bringing live performances to the sea and shore alike, courtesy of playwright Lisa D’Amour, the band Dark Dark Dark and circus composer Sxip Shirey. Their ultimate destination is Long Island City, where Swoon will have created an "invented landscape" at the Deitch Projects space along the East River. This is all somewhat similar to the Miss Rockaway Armada, which Swoon has been a part of in the past; last year Tod Seelie discussed the Armada experience, which takes place along the mighty Mississippi.

      

Following her collaborative show opening at Honey Space, street artist Swoon adorned her hometown cityscape with some new pieces. Last year some of her work fell victim to the Splasher, which she responded to by redoing the pieces. Hopefully these new cutouts will stay unharmed for a while.

      

Last weekend the Swoon and Tennessee Jane collaborative exhibit, Portrait of Silvia Elena, opened at Honey Space (Suckapants has some nice photos). The installation is a memorial to Silvia Elena, a 17-year old girl who was murdered in Juarez, Mexico, in 1995 -- one of the many brutally killed there since the early 90s.

REMINDER: Don't forget to check out the World Science Festival, running through Sunday. And David Byrne needs your help Playing the Building.