vernissages | Center for Book Arts

Two exhibitions at Center for Book Arts draw attention on the book as art form, beyond the analog object we are familiar with. 

The exhibition /mit ðə detə/: Source Materials Visualized presents "artists’ books, book-related artworks, and text-based new media that are visual interpretations, extrapolations, and recontextualizations of researched source materials such as data analysis, surveying, mapping, plotting, data mining, statistics, analytics, observations, and schemes." Here books as object include even the embodiment or visualization of digital data, where electronic quantified realities are presented with an aesthetic statement.

The exhibition Embraced: the International Community  is the fourth and final exhibition of the Center’s 40th anniversary year-long celebration; it "examines the influence the Center has had on the international book arts scene as well as the international artists who have come to the Center to study, exhibit, or teach".

performances | "Drawing Sound" at the Drawing Center

Last night’s Drawing Sound performance at Soho’s Drawing Center on Wooster Street brought together new works in drawing and music by Billy Martin and String Nose, as well as incorporated odors in a “scentstallation” created by Phaedra Martin.

While the images by Martin were projected on the walls, the performers reacted to, improvised on, or played pre-written music  on their music stands .  It wasn’t clear if there were direct intersections between the visual and audio, but the music was masterfully played, including Ned Rothenberg on shakuhachi and Martin himself on percussion. Fung  Chern  Hwei played a very warm, romantic violin, and John Zorn dropped in with his saxophone.

The concert ended with a three-minute, seemingly tightly-organized composition with strong ensemble playing.   The concert seemed a fusion of loft music and the always-energetic, improvisatory downtown scene.

Elizabeth Davis

camminando | July 5, Rockaway Beach and Jacob Riis Park

My first 2015 immersive encountered with the Atlantic Ocean has occurred on July 5, at Rockaway Beach. 
The beach outing turned into a five-mile walk, from Jacob Riis Park to the Rockaway Beach boardwalk, at 102 Street.
The yoga based practice "Finding the Axis Mundi" was located at 40.562584, -73.878594

Finding the Axis Mundi at Jacob Riis Park

vernissages, camminando, practice | NYC, June 24

The "Summer Group Exhibition" at Marian Goodman Gallery presents a cohesive mix of conceptualism and minimalism, blended in the gallery space. The works —ranging from geometry based murals of Sol Lewitt to subtle sculpture of Fred Sandback or large text wall writings of Lawrence Weiner— generated immersive spatial perceptions, where scale seemed to be the cohesive element.

:Summer Group Exhibition"

Niele Toroni

North Gallery hosted Maria Nordman’s FILMROOM EAT, 1967 – PRESENT and two Standing Pictures.  The press release also announced that "Nordman will also enact THE WHISPER in Central Park with ‘persons met by chance’, continuing a work that started several decades ago in different public spaces in cities all over the world." The work somehow reminded me of Michel de Certau "everyday practice" which is so close to my own heart —and practice. In these days of brutal attacks from my still legal husband and his lawyer, where greed overcomes any ethics and rationality, a rigorous art and movement practice has become an anchor to rationality and attempt to find meaning and beauty in urban places.

Maria Nordman’s FILMROOM EAT, 1967 – PRESENT

I ended my urban practice with a body prayer by the Hudson river waterfront while the sun was setting.

Celebrations | International Yoga Day and the June Solstice in NYC

Gāyatrī  Mantra

ॐ भूर्भुवः॒ स्वः ।तत्स॑वितुर्वरे॑ण्यंभ॒र्गो॑ दे॒वस्य॑ धीमहि ।धियो॒ यो नः॑ प्रचो॒दया॑त् ॥

Oṃ bhūr bhuvaḥ svaḥ

tát savitúr váreṇ(i)yaṃ

bhárgo devásya dhīmahi

dhíyo yó naḥ pracodáyāt

June 21 has been designated International Yoga Day by the United Nation General Assembly in 2014. In the northern hemisphere June 21 is also the date of the summer solstice, marking the longest day and shortest night of the year.

Several celebrations took place in NYC, in private studios as well as in public places.
I began my celebratory practice at Pure Yoga, in the Upper West Side. The practice lasted two hours and consisted of 108 sun salutations, introduced by a beautiful chanting of the Gāyatrī  Mantra.

The main celebration took place in Times Square, where the yoga practice spanedv twelve hours, from 7am to7:30pm, led led by yoga celebreties. I attended only the 6:30 practice, led by Rodney Yee and Colleen Saidman Yee. Honestly, I was not impressed by the teachings of the Yees who are among the yoga celebrities. There was no guided flow, or transition, from one asana (pose) to the following; modifications should have been offered, considering the broad range of bodies and yoga practice level amount the hundreds of practitioners. The main experience was for me to be able to isolate my self,from the crowds in one of the densest urban places in the world, sitting in a lotus pose with closed eyes. And of course being able to view from a laying down pose the towering buildings wrapped by ten-floor tall lit billboards was a quite unique, almost surreal experience.

Practice | Body Prayer by the Flowing Hudson River