OPEN STUDIO HERE I COME

First off I'd like to congradulate Akira for being awarded the new york studio space for winter quarter. What a great opportunity this will be for him. CONGRATS BRO. Ok so my open studio is tomorrow and I'm a little nervous but not to bad I've worked really hard this semester and have learned a great deal and met so many wonderful people and have had opportunities that I never thought possible so even if nobody shows up then it will still be totally worth every moment. Started workin on building all my boxes for my art work to be shipped back in tonight with Justin and it's been alot of work but everything should arrive safely back in TN or so I hope. Gonna buy some beer and cheap wine tomorrow and hopefully have a grand evening with new friends and hopefully some artists. Hope all is well wherever you may be and I will let you know in pictures and words how everything went.

MORE REVIEWS OF SHOWS I'VE SEEN AND PEOPLE HAVE REVIEWED

So it has been a little while since I have talked about shows that I have seen and I thought I would atleast highlight two that have gotten reviews in the Brooklyn Rail and a few that I thought were standouts in my adventures. So here goes.

First up we have Dawn Clements solo show at Pierogi. As I have said before I have met this artist on several occasions and she is absolutely amazing. She does both large and small scale works but what I find most compeling are her large scale room sized drawings. I shit you n ot these things are enormous and it's interesting how her process first started. In an interview with Eve Aschheim of the Brooklyn Rail Dawn answers this process quetion by stating " In 2000 when I was a in residence at Middleberry College. I started with A chair. I liked the way it was drawn but didn't like it as a drawing. It seemed like just some dumb little thing. So I thought if I add onto this then maybe I'll draw the whole wall. And then thought, oh, this is interseting, I could do the whole room. After four months I had drawn the entire apartment". Dawn's work is monumental. When you stand infront of one of her pieces it's like standing in front of whatever room she happened to be drawing at that time. However perspective is skewed at times and the way her compositions melt together it's as if you are caught in a memory of what that room was. In a follow-up review of her show in the Brooklyn Rail Cassandra Neyenesch says " Dawn Clements seems to be operating in the expanding realm that Proust chartered, the project of depicting the three deminsional quality of memory". This distorted view of reality doesn't take away from the majesty of her drawings and the intersting way she incorporates folds and wrinkles of the giant sheets of paper that are connected to create her scenes.

Aleksandra Mir's recent show Newsroom 1986-2000 chronicles her perceptions and experiences right up to the tragic events of 2001 while living in NYC. She presented these accounts as large scale black and white ink drawings on paper thaty were roughly the size of a Michael Scoggins drawing. As you entered the gallery it was almost as if you had been transported into a mid-80's newspaper room with a dozen or so of her assistants dutifully filling in Mir's newspaper coverish drawings. Each assistant would have several sharpie markers in hand tediously filling in letters and images whil listening to ipods or trying not to fall asleep againts their table supported arms. It was quite a sigth to behold. Unfortunately this exhibition was taken down before I could get any images. As Jen Schwarting accounts of the show "Mir's drawings recapitulate and resist the press's numbing mechanisms with personalized, messy, comix-style lettering. But her social model is her more significant message, and the collective organizing, colaborating, photo snapping and dialogue that go into it are the strengths of her operation.

Been Gone All Weekend

So I haven't written a blog in a few days b/c I had to fly down to Memphis for a good friends wedding. I was a groomsman so I kinda had to be there. It was a nice break from my hectic life up here and I'm kinda running out of supplies this late in the game anyway so I decided what the hell. It was a beautiful wedding. Back to the NY front. I got my cards printed for my show up here and handed them out to some of my studio mates and left some at Pierogi as well as in the front lobby of the EFA building. A few of the artists that are represented by Pierogi are planning to attend and hopefully a hand full of others as well. Keeping my fingers crossed atleast. I'm going to finish up my last piece tomorrow and then start cleaning this mess that I call my studio up so that its presentable come friday. Hope all is well and I will post agin very soon must try and recover from the shinanigans of this weekend first.

Starting to wind down

So I've only got three weeks left. This has been a truly amazing experience. I still have some photos and shows I would like to post but still really busy at the gallery so I will get to that soon (hopefully tomorrow or the next day). I'm almost done assisting Joe with all his work as well and that has meant more to me than anything just hangin out with him in his studio and havig dinner and shootin the shit has been more valuble than anything. We're going to star ttalking real soon about Miami Bazil and what I am going to be doing for them and getting down there and I just can't wait. I'm starting to slow down a little with my work and will probably end up with anywhere between 16-20 pieces that I will be bringing back with me and over 100 cutouts from the wall installations that I wil use probably on pieces over the break or next semester. If any of you are reading this and have the time to participate in this program I encourage you to do so b/c it will be one of the most unforgettable things you will have the opportunity to do. Hope all is well whereever you may be and until next time........

New cut outs!!!!

Hey guys here's three new pieces I've just completed. I've actually had some time lately to work on my own work. Enjoy!!!! The first two are really small the pink one is 10"x7" and the orange and prurple one is 12" square. The last one is kinda big about 4.5' x 2'.

WHAT A LONG FREAKIN DAY!!!!!!

So I went to my internship today and worked for six hours. I finshed photo documenting the flat files as well as assisting with some sales and routine gallery tasks. Well as I am a painting assistant to Joe, the owner of the gallery and professional artist himself, I worked another 6.5 hours in his studio painting letters and mixing colors and things of that nature. It's really nice how much he's allowing me to do with his own work. But man o' man was it a long day. Now I'm in my studio getting ready to work on my work. I've started some really small delicate cut out pieces that are all constructed from card stock and I really like the way they are going. I'm just trying to get as much done as possible in the studio b/c I have a studio visit with Joe on the 31st of Oct. Well back to work hope all is well wherever you may be. Until next time................

Another Splendid Gallery Day

So first off it's been awhile since I've written any reviews for the shows that I've seen but I've been working so much at the gallery and for Joe in his studio that I've barely had enough time to sleep let alone spend an entire day in the heart of Chelsea. However, yesterday I was fortunate to have a day to myself and saw some great shows. Theres alot of them so I may break this blog up into a few since I've not done one in a little while.

If any of you have ever seen a Ryan McGinness piece then you know how he tries to bridege the precarious gap between fine art and graphic design, low and high art, installation and painting. In fact his work not only bridges this gap it embraces the best of all these genres and blends them into a cohesive world of his own making. Walking into the space one notices how McGinness's pieces are not only on panel and other supports but they also bleed off onto the wall making the entire space an environment in which to inhabit. His quirky hyrogliphic language is inscribed on every surface making the viewer itch with the desire to desypher his cryptic code. McGinness uses vynel cut outs, graphiti like stencils, and a number of technological processes to create his work taking full advantage of these tools. At times his work can be overwhelming in color and repition as well as the monotony of his imagery but none-the-less McGinness's proliphic work makes for wonderful eye candy.







Since Halloween is close approaching, and since it's one of my favorite holidays I must tell you of a quite humorous exhibition I witnessed at Moti Hasson Gallery. The Artist is Jillian McDonald and the name of her show was Waking The Dead This was not only a great exhibition but it was absolutely hillarious. As in most horror movies their is often a female victim who becomes the fixation of the ominous monster, zombie, or what have you who innevitably screams that blood curtling scream we love to hear in any horror movie. In most cases this scream is a declaration of terror and fright but in JIllain's video pieces this scream becomes the voice of reckoning. Jillian interjects herself into numerous well known horror movies such as ZOMBIE 2(ZOMBIE), FRIDAY THE 13TH, and THE SHINING, to name a few, and uses her scream to repel and at times destroy the foul thing that has vowed to destroy her. Along with her video she also has lenticular photographs of herslf and others that require the participation of the viewer to transform their images into horrific zombies. I must say even the youtube esgue presentation of her video The Screaming only added to the flavor of these memorable horror movies. This was an extremely fun show I just wish she was there performing in the gallery.





Thats it for now. Hopefully tomorrow I will post about a beautiful video installation called SCUM and Mayumi Sarai, a wonderful sculptor/installation artist.

I'm so tired!!!!!!

So I only got maybe one day off this past week b/c we just took down Jim Turock's show and hung Dawn Clements show. I volunteered to help just to get a better understanding of what goes into hanging a show. It was quite labor intensive and busy b/c the daily maintinance and buisness of the gallery was still going on. So the opening was last night and thye had me running around the full length of Manhattan to pick up and drop of pieces that had been sold or were on loan for other shows, this took almost three hours by subway b/c my first stop was on Canal St while the other stop was on the farthest east side of 86th St. After that I helped clean up the gallery and then we recieved what seemed to be a 500lb shipment from LA. It was a gigantic crate of sculptures from one of their artists whom had just had a show out there; needless to say it took four grown men to muscle this crate into the gallery. By this time it was time to close up shop and prepare for the opening. I got picked to do bartending and I worked for tips. Made a sizable amount of money for those BUSY three hours. At around 10pm Joe started to gather his friends to occompany him to his appartment upstairs for an after party and I stayed downstairs to clean and lock up. After that I was invited upstairs to the party where I got to meet Jane Fine, John O'conner, and Darina Karpov. It was quite a night. I was at the gallery from 10:00am until 11:00pm and I was exhausted and was back there today at noon. It's been great though, several of the artists have even expressed interest in coming to my open studio which is an amazing thing in itself. Tomorrow I start assisting Joe in his studio which should be alot of fun; I'm a littl;e nervous but I'm sure I will settle into it just fine. I appologize for no reviews of shows or articles I've just been so super busy with the gallery this week that I haven't been able to find the time. I will do it soon though. Maybe tomorrow I will review Dawn Clement's show and have excerpts from here interview in the Brooklyn Rail. Until then............

Another New Piece

Check it out another cut out piece completed. Each one of these pieces takes about 15 to 20 exacto blades a helluva lot of sanding and close to three days of work to complete. Well worth the time spent. Also I just finished helping Pierogi hang Dawn Clement's show. She is a large format artist who mainly works in pen and ink and watercolor. Here pieces, often times take up 20ft or more the largest one in the gallery at the moment covers the expanse of almost two walls. Dawn is a wonderful artist to work with. I've visited her studio twice in preperation for this exhibition and she has been nothing short of delightful. If you haven't seen her work find her website or check out her page on perogi's website.

What a week

Hello all,

So I've been really busy this week with the gallery and my own work. The gallery is switching out shows this week and to get the full experience of my internship I voluntered to help out with taking the show down preping the space and helping install the next show. I'm really excited that their letting me help out and it's great experience. I'm also getting ready to assist an artist with his work to help him get ready for several shows coming up. This is going to be a tremendous opportunity and I can't wait to start. All in all I'm exhausted and going on very little sleep but I don;t think I would trade it for anything. The opportuntiy to do the things that I have been a part of don't come along to often so I am trying to take advantage of every possible moment. Hope all is well where ever you may be and until next time.........

Charles

NEW PIECE

Hey here's another new piece. Its all cut out. Hope you like let me know what you guys think. It's rough not havin formal crits with fellow artists.

Shows and How They Stacked Up Against Reviews

Hello all and welcome to another installment of my NYC blog. I've read a few reviews from the Brooklyn Rail and the Village Voice of shows that I have visited recently and would like to add my two since worth.

The first review comes from the Brooklyn Rail and it is in regards to Ingrid Calame's show Constellations at the James Cohan Gallery. John Yau, the author of the review, comments that Calame has developed a style in which concept and process go hand in hand. No truer words could have been spoken for the Pollock like work of Calame. Her process is her work. She routinley goes to areas of the country such as the drainage canals in LA and most recently the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and traces the things that we would encounter everyday but choose to ignore and disregard such as tire marks, graffiti and stains on these surfaces. She then painstakingly transfers these to enormous sheets of mylar and strips of aluminum paneling assigning each layer or stain a certain color creating a field of mesmerizing color. When seeing these paintings from afar they appear to be abstract screen prints of brush strokes but upon further inspection each shape has been individually painted with short staccato strokes done with enamel paint. As intriguing as I think this process is, something is lost when you can see the artists hand in the finished product. The images cease to be stains and tracings, instead they transform into a highly conceptualized paint by number. I think they would have been much more successful as stencils or perhaps even screen prints or etchings further detaching the artists hand from the tracings themselves. Even John Yau writes "I find this extremely disheartening because it is obvious from her work that she could do something far more engaging and idiosyncratic, and that she need not straitjacket herself". What I did enjoy about the show however were the large mylar tracings of the LA river system. These were enormous tracings about 15'x5'. They overwhelming in size as well as composition. If this sounds familiar she was included in the drawing exhibition at the Jepson this summer.



The Laura Battle and Sarah Lutz show titled Recent Works was a best in show recommendation by R.C. Baker from the Village Voice and rightly so. Baker playfully writes "Buy someone a drink for pairing this disparate duo-they're opposite sides of a beautifully funky coin. No truer words have been spoken about this show. It was probably the oddest pairing of artists works that I had encountered upon first sight. Laura Battle appears to be a schematically inclined geometric slightly op-art artists working with numerous straight lines emerging and converging in such a manner to create depth and order out of an anally constructed chaos. And yet here pieces have a meditative quality unlike any I have seen before. Each graphite line is perfectly engineered and mechanically precise but at a distance dissolve into a wondrous conglomeration of harmony. Sarah Lutz's work, on the other hand, engages the viewer with texture and a vivid yet soothing color palette. Baker describer her work as "pungent vegetation and torpid creatures that coagulate into a chromatic loam at eh bottom of her 30-inch-high canvases, the atmosphere above ripe with humid blues and smoggy pinks". Her paintings seem to be creating themselves out of these organic mounds of color letting off noxious gaseous emissions into the smoggy back rounds as they grow and pulsate with life. Together Lutz and Battle create a cohesive bond between mechanical and organic, chaos and order.

I was also lucky enough to see the Sol Lewitt show at the Paula Cooper Gallery. I haven't been able to find any reviews in any magazines or newspapers as of late but let me tell you this was an amazing thing to behold. He has, dispersed throughout the gallery small studies and sketches of straight lines that are in almost every conceivable combination. These were a nice addition to the main installation because it gave you a glimpse into the inter-workings and process of Sol Lewitt's mind. The main feature however was a site to behold. Situated in the massive back room sits a 16 x 16 x 16 ft cube and on each face there is a pattern of lines completely constructed out of meandering lines; it's almost as if the line was a continuous mark a thread of string wrapped around the entirety of the wall. It was amazing see that the dark bands of graphite were hundred and hundreds of layers of scribbled lines nothing was shaded or blended it was all done with the simple form of a line. I wish I had pictures of this I may try and go back next week and get some if I can but it was an amazing sight to behold.

I also visited the MET this past Thursday but I am going to hold my reviews for the next blog because I don't have the newest Artforum and I believe there is a review on the Neo Rauche exhibition which was quite amazing. Hope all is well wherever you may be until next time........

Charles

These are two new pieces just completed in the last three days or so. The pink and brown piece is composed of a matt board backround with card stock cut outs of simulated trees layered on top. The creature is cut form bristol paper. It is roughly 4.5ftx1.5ft. The orange piece is cut mainly from matt board except the creatures which are cut from bristol paper. It is roughly 3ftx3ft. Tomorrow I am visiting the MET so I'm sure I will have plenty to say about Frank Stella and Neo Rauche.

New Cut Outs

Two new smaller pieces just playin around with more cut outs and different ideas. The Backrounds are cut from matt Board I'd like to do them out of MDF or balsa wood but I don't have access to a scroll saw up here so matt board works fine

What a Gallery environment!!!!!!

Ok so for those of you who don't know I am doing my field internship with Pierogi Gallery and I have met several of their artists all of whom are extremely fun people to hang out with. Just the other day Justin, one of the gallery workers, and myself delivered a piece to Dawn Clements studio. If you guys don't know who this artist is you should check out her stuff she is an amazing artist. You can see some of here pieces on the Pierogi website. She is an extremely friendly person to be around and is quite cordial. Her studio overlooks Manhattan from the shores of Brooklyn and is full of works in progress. I've also met Jim Turok and speak to him on a daily basis bc he comes to the gallery to hang out and reply to e-mails as well as give talks about his current exhibition. I let him use my phone today and that sparked a whole conversation about Verizon wireless. I told him I used to work for them and offered to help him figure out a plan if you chose to go with that company. He's extremely friendly and very funny. Just thought I'd fill you in on the day to day goings on of my internship; tomorrow I am planning to visit MOMA so another blog will be coming soon. Hope this finds you well and until next time.................

Charles

These are three of my new pieces no titles yet but soon. All of them are around 5ftx3ft or bigger.

Gallery Visits PART TWO

So just an update on a few things. I just finished my 3rd large scale wall painting and I am super excited. They are going better than I had hoped and a lot faster as well, of course I've spent a great deal of time in the studio as of late. I hope to post some pics of the new work soon. As far as my internship goes things are going very well. I'm still photo documenting their flat files, which is exciting bc of all the different artists I get exposed to. It's also extremely helpful to see different resumes and how each artist presents their work as well as themselves. I met a few more artists that are represented by Pierogi, Ati Meir and Kim Jones. They are very interesting people. I remember the first time I met Kim Jones he was assisting one of the gallery workers in bringing up a huge box that was filled with 500 rubber rats for a project he was working on.

I've tried to go to some shows that were reviewed in Artforum or Art in America but haven't found any of them thus far. I will try again either tomorrow or next week; but many of the shows that have adds in Artforum I have attended. A few that I found this week were VucVidor's Even Superheroes Can't Save Us Now (The American Quartet: Part 2) at Cueto Project contact@cuetoproject.com and Emilio Perez's Emilio Perez: New Paintings at Galerie Lelong art@galerielelong.com. These were the two shows that really stood out among the shows that I visited on Tuesday.

Vuk Vidor's show focuses on the political turmoil of the United States through fallen superheroes such as Captain America, whom recently was killed off in the Marvel universe, and Spiderman. The show was full of paintings depicting the presumably indestructible superhero being crucified, shot, and beaten proving that even superheroes can fall. Now it's not hard to make the connection between the impervious superhero and the image we hold of our nation. Along with the numerous paintings were several metal cutouts of silhouettes of each superhero and the American flag bleeding or falling apart. The cutouts were flawless and painted a stark black as if the artist himself were creating the image out of an act of mourning.




Emilio Perez's show was most impressive. I was stunned when I first walked in because his large scale paintings reminded me of intimate abstract graffiti. On closer inspection they seemed alive with movement and an organic flow that I have never seen. According to Emilio's press release he applies layers of paint to a wood panel and then using a knife cuts out intricate shapes from the top layer to reveal the single color base coat. I was completely taken aback and spent a great deal of time investigating his surface textures and the line quality he achieved with his knife. These paintings were truly astounding.

Well that's it for now I'm going to make a few more posts but they are just going to be images and video. The video is going to be awesome because it's Daniel Rozin. I talked about him last week with all the mechanical works he's done. I will also post a video of Daniel Freid, I also mentioned him in a blog he has the marble ball piece that is activated by sound. Hope all is well where ever you may be. Until next time.............

Charles

Studio Day For Me

Hello all, hope everyone is doing well. Not a whole lot going on in the Big City today just doin some work in the studio. I've started 3 rather large wall paintings and finished one the other day. They are comin out really well and are going to lead me in a fun direction. I'll try and post some pics up soon haven't gotten my camera yet probably going to get it later today or maybe Monday. I picked up the new Artforum last week and surprisingly I've been to at least ten shows that have an add. It's inspiring to know that I can flip to any page (pretty much) in Artforum and say I've not been to that show yet I can check it out tomorrow.

I'm going to make Tuesdays my gallery visiting days unless there's an opening I can attend on the weekend. There's also a Paul Noble show coming up that I really want to check out. I'm also going to revisit some of the galleries I went to last week because I'll have a camera and can show you guys what I'm seeing rather than just telling you about it. Hopefully I can post some videos up as well. Well I'm going to get back to drawing but hope all is well wherever you maybe so until next time.................

Charles

WOW What a Gallery Day

So as I have several days off in a row from my internship I decided to take the opportunity to go down to Chelsea today and see what their galleries had to offer and may I say I was not at all disappointed. The one show that I simply had to see, being a fan of pop surrealism, graffiti, and street art, was Storm Clouds, a solo show with new works by Jeff Soto at the Johnathan LeVine Gallery. I have been keeping an eye on this artists since I saw his debut in Juxtapoz magazine a few years ago. This is his second major show at the Johnathan Levine Gallery. The work is mostly acrylic on panel or canvas and deals with politically charged themes such as the war in Iraq and our degenerating environment. He presents this material through playful creatures half organic and half machine in a surreal environment where clouds become ominous villains and rainbows become a symbol of hope. The highlight of this exhibition, for me at least, was a giant wall installation mixing wooden cutouts and paintings done directly on the wall. The image appears to be the United States being consumed by a noxious animated cloud formation engulfing almost 75% of the country with pollution and destruction. As the viewer I almost felt claustrophobic as I was devoured by the sheer size of this piece. Storm Clouds was everything I hoped it would be and more.

As I walked past the Pavel Zoubok Gallery I almost embarrassed myself with pure ecstasy as I peered in the windows and noticed they were showing Aaron Noble in a solo show titled Rainbow 6 Warsong. Holly Crap I said to myself and hurried in. I first saw Aaron Noble in the magazine Beautiful Decay and they were doing an article on his enormous wall paintings. He has an intriguing style where he clips out pieces of superheroes from old comic books, an arm here a pony tail there, and then recontextualizes them into amorphous abstract forms keeping with the comic book coloring and inking. To my surprise he also does smaller watercolor versions of these behemoth paintings. I was like a kid in a candy store only with no budget that would allow me to purchase a piece, the cheapest one they had was $5000.00. His line quality and attention to detail is astounding along with his convex canvases. What a pleasure it was to actually behold these images first hand.

One of the first galleries I visited after the Johnathine Levine Gallery was the Bitforms Gallery and man oh man this must have been my lucky day because right there in the gallery were three of Daniel Rozin's electronic video capture pieces in a show called Fabrication. If you have never seen this guy look him up and try and find a video because you can't really get the full ambiance of his pieces if you don't. Basically his pieces are video capture based, what I mean by this is there is a camera strategically placed in his piece and when you step in front of the piece whatever he is using, anything from dowlrods with the ends cut at a 45 degree angle to laminated c prints mounted on wood, will realign to form your image and where ever you move it follows you and changes to fit your new position. I must have spent 30 min or more in this gallery just playing with his pieces.

I must say I visited almost 40 galleries today and that's not even half of them. I will elaborate on other galleries such as the Paula Cooper Gallery which had an amazing Sol Lewitt installation and the Johnathan Levine Gallery who also featured Jim Houser, at later dates it's just to much for one blog. If I could give a day out of all the days I have left up here to my fellow class mates believe me I would because it has been a real eye opener. Hope this finds everyone well and until next time................

Charles

Hello once again from the big apple

It's been a few days since we last spoke and I would like to take this opportunity to update you on all that has happened in the past few days. I'll start with my internship which is amazing. For those of you who don't know I, am interning with Pierogi gallery, located just inside Brooklyn off of Bedford St. If you haven't heard of them I encourage you to go to their website www.pierogi2000.com, they represent some amazing artists, most of whom have been featured in Artforum and Art in America. Anyway I started work this past Friday and immediately they had me entering artist information into their flat files database. This is a massive database with over 2000 artists represented. I must interject some advice for all aspiring artists; it might be a good idea to put the title and date on the back of each piece that gets into a gallery that has flat files because it can be a pain to match up a title with a work only using dimensions or visible characteristics that are given away in the title such as untitled (blue) or untitled (red).
I'm only supposed to work six hours, but their featured artist, Jim Torok, was doing a performance of low tech animation that evening and I volunteered to stay and help out. The animations were extremely hilarious b/c they depicted alot of his characters in scenarios of extreme violence. Jim called them low tech because they were shown on a slide projector. He explained that he did several hundred drawings on note cards and then photographed each one and then developed them as slides, so depending on how fast he advanced the slides the animation would unfold rather dramatically.
Jim's work is satirical mainly in regards to politics and life but through his daily experiences. His current show, Jim Torok: New Work, features his childlike comic strips depicting his everyday life along with his hyper-realistic small scale graphite portrait work. When viewing the show for the first time I had no clue that they were the same artist until Justin, one of the main gallery employees, advised me that they were indeed all done by Jim.
Currently, my main job at the gallery is recording and photo-documenting all the work in the flat files. This is an exciting experience because I have to go through each flat file and pick three works that are representative of the artist record them in an excel document and then photo-document the work. It's nice to know the trust me with such a task.
Today I explored NYC trying to find the nearest Home Depot and art supply stores. Just in case you were wondering they are all they way down on 23rd st and between 6th and 7th avenue I think. The Utrecht store is on 23rd st as well and is located between 8th and 7th I think and then their is DaVinci's Artist Supply on 21st between 6th and 7th. I still have yet to visit Pearl Paint but I've heard wonderful things about this 5 story art supply mecca. Surprisingly they are extremely cheap up here on supplies, case in point: I use alot of exacto blades and a pack of 100 in Savannah would cost me close to $40.00 at Utrecht they only cost me $12.99 WOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOW. I will definitely stock up on supplies while I am here. Paint is fairly inexpensive up here as well.
On a complete side note. I was on the subway yesterday coming home from work and saw the most amazing thing I have seen here outside of the numerous galleries I have visited. I will expand on the galleries later this week after I visit a few more. I was on the L getting close to the A train transfer and 3 gentlemen commanded the attention of the car. The fella upfront announced who they were and then his colleague cranked up an old school boom-box. The three of them proceeded to perform the most astounding break-dance show I think I have ever witnessed. They had a space no bigger than 6ftx6ft and they were doing back-flips and one armed helicopters, and handstands where they were lockin out on their necks pushin back up and lockin out on their necks again, mind you the subway was still moving. It was amazing. On that note I will let you guys go for now. Hope all is well where ever you might be. Next time I will expound on my gallery visits and what I have found as far as reviews in Chelsea Now and The Village Voice. Until then.................

Charles

My Experiences thus far

Hello All,

I flew into NYC on Wednesday and I've got all my stuff settled and am eager to start my studio work. The cab ride to the studio was somethin else. I don't know if I've ever been in a car doing 70-80 mph in traffic that was bumper to bumper. I've ventured into the subway a few times which is an adventure but they're not to difficult to figure out. If I get lost I'll just ask the mammoth rats for directions........they seem friendly enough. Still waiting for my disbursement so I can go and get painting supplies so I can start my work; until then I will be drawing alot and seeing the city. I start my internship tomorrow at Pierogi 2000 Gallery and am looking forward to meeting my co-workers. Well I guess that's it for now nothing really eventful has happened thus far may go out tonight and visit some galleries with Stephanie. Hope all is well where ever you might be. Until next time.......

Charles