Thursday, March 30, 2006

New York art

Tonight was the opening of Joan Dreyer's solo show in the Phoenix Gallery in NY's Chelsea. Judy Langille, Rachel Cochran, Diane Savona and took the train into the City for the event. I seriously love all the gritty, urban stuff we pass on the way and I usually don't have my camera with me. Today, I pulled it out just in time to get this beautiful scene on camera. The specks all over the picture are dirt on the train windows. Thursday is open gallery night and the whole district was mobbed with art-goers. The poor people who live in this building have to defend themselves with this sign. On the way to Joan's exhibit, we stopped at the new Pace Wildenstein Gallery on 22nd St. to see an installation by Tara Donovan. Here are a few shots of it. It was huge, and we walked around it. This woman makes art from paper straws and other thing, including an installation made with 3 million plastic drinking cups. We also stopped to see some Rauschenberg posters and collages in a nearby gallery. I would like to go back because I might be winning the lottery soon and need to buy one. I really want the one made from shirt cardboard.Finally, we got to the Phoenix. Here is the lovely and talented Joan Dreyer. The piece behind her is one of a series of tree ring pieces that she discharged and mounted. Here is an installation made of stitched bark from a willow tree. And here is the installation of stitched fabric vessels that Joan made: quite spectacular all together as you walked into the gallery! There were some wonderful cloth pieces but my pictures didn't do them justice so I am leaaving them out. All in all, a great evening - but never enough time to get around to more than a few galleries.

3 comments:

Olga Norris said...

THanks for sharing some of the interesting and inspirational work you saw.

jenclair said...

Have to admit, I'm not much on the plastic drinking cups (well, except for the idea of handling that many), but Joan's work is fantastic.

Karoda said...

Rayna, when I'm out and about I often find myself looking for scenes/objects that project an urban landscape. I do love the pastorial landscapes but over all the urban imagery in quilts doesn't seem to be as frequent or well represented.

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