FOLKSIZHOME

    On Mother’s Sunday I attended a painting+ group show in Brooklyn, premier garden spot of these United States. Contained in this pop up extravaganza of many young and capable Creators were three outstanding works by my friend and co-co-co-collaborator Jinchen Lan, alias, “Slicky”.

    The space this one day presentation inhabited was a fallow industrial building. Maybe a warehouse, I don’t know. Part of the building is used by an excellent confection fabricator. The space I was in was, as Tina says, “rough”, easy then rough. The walls and floors are industrially painted concrete. Visible plumbing and power lines would never be in evidence in the perfectly manicured and LED lit galleries of Chelsea, my own neighborhood.

     Sounds from the D. J. bounced around the too reverberant  space like trapped birds. Clearly, this temporary environment was not assembled with me in mind. Suffice to say, Madame D. J. was not playing Mozart and no doubt someone asked,”Who does the old guy belong to?”

      The really great work of Art seen at this event, was the scene itself. The radiance and vibration and heat of this assembly at two in the afternoon on a slow Sunday might give Berlin or Paris between the wars a run for their money. In the nomenclature of its denizens, “Shit be pulsin’ like a muthafucka”. On this, I must concur.

     That discussed thus far is not the reason for my visit today. Where oh where did this flowering weed choose to germinate? Answer, Bushwick/East Williamsburg. I took the Ltrain to Jefferson st. and walked without guide to Scott ave. The area must have been roaring during the war, I guess. Few of the buildings I saw on my there and back from the subway seemed active. Maybe inactive but thoroughly alive, I think.

     The only flat surfaces not enhanced and un-signed, that I could see, were the surfaces of sidewalks and streets and some of those got the treatment too. To belittle this explosion of spirit and Art and call it graffiti just don’t work, not for me. This is monumental Art on high. Full of devotion, expression, beauty, chops, community, joy and rage and no small measure of social activism and issue. Did I mention pulse?

    Were someone now visiting from out of town and requested to be shown some not Times Sq, sites of NYC, bet yer hot patootie we’re going to Bushwick baby. I might have to blindfold them for the ride so they don’t reveal the location.

     An irony; how does one place a value on a thing not meant or even able to be sold? Well, you can’t if it is Art. Just imagine, an entire magikal kingdom dressed up as a living breathing organic work of Art. Sometimes it can happen. This time. it happens to happen in Brooklyn.

     Jinchen and I walked off a photo safari of this magikal place and now we share that with you.