Jeanne Wilkinson: The Longest Spring, with City Trees, Art Giveaways, Shows and Summer Wine!

So what's been happening in the big city since the last time I posted?

(Canal Street t-shirt vendor)

Spring!

Okay, I know it's already summer, but it's been a long spring.

Spring busted out all over, for virtually forever.

The first year I was in New York, it was winter then summer, just like that. Overnight.
From a long dreary cold rainy winter, to summer city-oven. Just like that.

Turns out that many trees grow in Brooklyn. More and more all the time.

All blooming exquisitely slowly and gorgeously while spewing pollen in record amounts,

making for a lot of sneezing and red eyes.

On 6th Street in Brooklyn they're building crude wooden barriers around the trees for some reason,

Instead of cars bashing into trees they will instead bash into the barriers, perhaps?

This year a tree-counting program will map and count

every tree in the five boroughs. They need volunteers - only 2.4 percent are counted thus far, but even that small number has yielded almost 17,000 trees of 128 species in 3000 blocks.

The view from our window on 3rd St. and 8th Avenue goes from gray

to golden.

More Park Slope beauties, below.

While they're counting trees, they should also count those of artist Mary Hrbeck,
some of them hanging recently at CREON Gallery,

Mary, second from left, amongst the trees and people at the opening.

I recognize in her imagery a vision of trees that I understand - they embody

a kind of consciousness, not human, but sentient and sensual.

Trees in their rootedness migrate not individually but as a mass - there

are mass tree migrations going on today as the climate changes.

I love trees. I draw them often, like these three.

I find them to be extraordinarily generous in their life-giving processes.

If only humans were more like trees.

On my one and only mescaline trip, I sat on a hill in Golden Gate Park and watched

a group of trees on a distant hill lift their limbs in an exultant dance, swaying

back and forth, reaching for the sky.

More nature in the city is shown up in the Yonkers Van der Danck Park,

next to the recently "day lighted" Saw Mill River…

…where we see one of the amazing sidewalk mosaics by Haifa Bint Kadi of creatures

that used to call the river home...

The park on this lovely May weekend is also one of the sites of Yonkers Arts Weekend,

which features a "color run."

I get there to witness the telltale trail of color that follows these events.

I'm in Yonkers to participate with my four round paintings "Earth, Air, Water, Fire"

curated by Haifa Bint Kadi, who is curating this entire event!

A huge undertaking, and very successful!

My work can be seen on this colorful Yonkers street,

near the Claudine Maidique gallery space, which is showing the lenticular work of Miggs Burroughs

that, depending on where you stand, shows this fresh-faced young woman...

…growing old before our eyes.

The Journey is a journey that we're all taking.

You can see more journeys and more lenticular magic on her website.

Also during the Yonkers Arts Weekend, Fumero executes this color-filled painting

on the Herald Statesmen building.

On my way back from Yonkers, I shoot this picture of one of the bridges over the Hudson River.

The strong forms call out to me...

…and I turn the bridge and water into an abstract digital collage.

Back in Manhattan, the spring city's drama of light and dark…

…also wants some digital manipulation…

"City Symmetry 2" 2015

"City Symmetry 4" 2015

More city art: I visit Susan Luss in her SVA MFA studio space

where she's showing her color-filled latest work.

Above is a window weaving that shines through to the floor, below.

Much of Susan's work is gleaned from her city travels, picking up

this and that from the streets and corners of the big metropolis.

I love this one with its mysterious inner lights, like an electric jellyfish

conjured up from urban detritus and floating through our vision...

It reminds me of this Brooklyn "front yard" display in the spring blooming, blue lights twinkling

in the waning sunshine...

Then on to see Troyan Tecau's work at Gallery 210 where,

instead of inserting dots of light, he simply shoots at some of his paintings, like the two below.

This is wild and crazy art, wonderful in its fierceness, exuberance

and WTF? qualities.

This one seems like an homage of sorts, with a large pile of colorful plastic flowers

honoring its continuing existence, caught mid-drip.

Visitors from the West Coast are regaled with

amazing (and all true)

Troy stories at his studio/gallery space in the Sunset Park district of Brooklyn.

Below, Frank listens appreciatively to a Troy-tale at my opening at

the Dawn Hunter Gallery in the South Slope/Gowanus

area of, yes, Brooklyn.

We were fortunate to have a wonderful review/analysis of this show in HYPERALLERGIC

by artist/write Peter Malone!

The studio/gallery space is run by the most excellent Waylon Tait, also an artist,

who was a student in my Pratt Seminar class some years ago.

I've made some wonderful friends in those classes.

The Painted People are pretty pleased to be here, and they take the opportunity

to dance and party.

…and also spend some time contemplating Maya Suess's...

…fierce post-apochalypse women and the artifacts and objects that make up their existence.

In their next adventure, the People contemplate leaving it all behind…

…to explore the Hubble universe.

Closer to home, Waylon and I spend some time up on the roof

watching dark clouds gather, as they do so often these days…

Below, a brighter scene under the dark clouds:

if you look closely you can see the greenhouses and elegant windmills of

the new Whole Foods complex at 3rd Street and 3rd Avenue

right next to the Gowanus Canal.

Granted, the Canal is still one of the most polluted bodies of water on earth,

but if projects like Whole Foods keep cropping up, even that may change for the better.

http://ecowatch.com/2013/12/23/brooklyn-whole-foods-solar-wind-ev-chargers-greenhouse/

A few days later, the skies have cleared and my awesome b-in-law Brett

contemplates the skyline from the Dawn Hunter roof...

…while my also awesome sister Sherry relaxes after their long drive to NYC from Minnesota.

(Photo by Sherry Cook)

We stop by the gallery to see my show,
but the reason they've driven all the way out here 1000 miles in their van
is to pick up artwork as part of my

"Great Giveaway Art Project!"
How cool is that?

I have a lot of old paintings and assemblages stored in Frank's and my studio,

and I decided it was time to get them out of the darkness and into people's lives.

This wasn't a casual decision. As artists we're supposed to protect our "markets" and not
go around giving art away for free! But while some artists may be able to sell successfully, apparently I'm not one of them. And the New York gallery scene is so baroque and complex and opaque and difficult, it will erode your soul if you let it. So I'm setting this past work free,
most of it done over ten years ago, this work
that I made with such
care and love and good magic, and watching it
take wing and land in other people's lives.
If you want to see more about this project, there's a page on Facebook about it
HERE.

(Photo by Sherry Cook)

The work in the racks behind me is the stuff that's going.
We raise a toast to all the people who are giving my artwork good homes!

Thanks to you all!