Fluxus and Friends with Art Shows: Queens College, Bontecou, Pneumatic Trash Systems

In April, two friends curated shows for the first time, and I taught Business School for Artists in Maureen Connor's "social practice" class at Queens College.  First, a preview of Veronica's show:

Maureen Connor is a former Fluxus artist who has taught at Queens College for years.  She also has an interesting body of current work, one project in particular called Personnel (the fifth segment of which is called Casual Friday).  I met Maureen because she learned about Trade School but couldn't go, and so asked if she could barter something for me to come speak to her class.  She arranged a small honorarium and offered to videotape the lecture as an exchange.  When I met her for my ride out to Queens and saw the video equipment she was lugging, I realized the likelihood that a former Fluxus artist is also an ace videographer.  Here's Maureen:

Here's her class:

I gave the original "what do art and business have to do with each other?" lecture that kicked off Business School for Artists, and then did a round robin to hear about their own projects.  Maureen had structured the class where a social agenda or idea would become each person's artwork.  Then she explained to me that this is in fact a field of artistic practice called "Social Practice."  Fair enough.  I was impressed by how many people had full-time work outside of school, and the age range might have been twenty to sixty, and included people unafraid to give pushback (E.g., when we collectively realized the ways in which Porter's Five Forces does not suit social work.  For instance, are your competitors the other people championing your cause, that is, your peers, or the people championing your adversary's cause, that is, the pollutors or whoever else keeps you from realizing your mission?)  It was really fun, and seemed both energizing to them and to me to see them get tools they might use.

In a resurgence of museum-going post-Museum Legs--now that it's not a working holiday--I went to Friday at the Met with Billy.  I almost successfully jumped high enough to photo Temple of Dendur event causing it to be closed:

And then we got a better angle, and earshot of the chanting, from the Japanese big wooden table room above.

As last men standing when the museum closed, we were officially part of the "guard sweep" of the hallways, raking all remaining visitors to the front doors.  I can't say they were psyched to have their picture taken.  

It was an exciting week of Friends with Art Shows.  In this case, friends who are curators.  1. Veronica (Roberts) curated her first show, a collection of Lee Bontecou's work at MoMA.  She was chosen as both a Critic's Pick in Time Out and a best upcoming exhibitions (presumably in the world) by Artnet.com.  The night before the opening, she invited a group of us to a private walk through.  It was as if there is a Newton's second law of equal and opposite reactions re the guards above, as we all walked in to the empty, closed galleries, unencumbered:

Here's the assembled group in the elevator (me behind the camera):

Veronica and me in the gallery:

The installation shot of everybody just sort of taking it all in, before V gave us a guided tour:

The gentlemen overlooking the garden:

Lee Bontecou (bon'-teh-cue) was one of the only women represented by Leo Castelli Gallery, alongside the big boys of Pop and Abstract Expressionist art in the 1960s.  She then became reclusive.  Several years ago, a curator discovered her in her rural studio in Pennsylvania, and was shocked to learn of ethereally beautiful sculptures she had been working on, uninterruptedly, over an eighteen year span.  (As Veronica put it, anticipating her audience, a curator's wet dream.)  This centerpiece of the exhibition is one such work:

And check out the shadow cast on the base.  

I have to think Veronica's work lighting a Calder mobile show once (the early wire coat hanger mobiles) helped here.  Here's Veronica giving us a talk on the work -- the usual combination of passion and good humor and easy erudition, to say nothing of the speaking presence and charm and ability to project that makes her a popular lecturer in the octogenerian set.  

I was wishing I could recall everything Veronica said.

The second show was Juliette (Spertus)'s "Fast Trash" on the pneumatic trash collection system on Roosevelt Island, where I had never been.  The buildings near the F train (an astonishingly short 90-second ride from the office, which seems a world a way) are modern, but with a wall of appealing green on the Manhattan side.

Here is the inside of the gallery( Juliette in the middle, back toward the camera) watching a video Greg Whitmore made.  The clear tube snaking around the wall is a pneumatic demo, more on that in a second.

In all seriousness, it's possible some of these people are very senior in the Department of Sanitation.

Here's Emma, juliette's sister with her boyfriend Mark who had named her "the motherfurker" on account of a particularly involved Tofurkey at Thanksgiving a couple of years ago.  They were in from California for the occasion.  Emma's an artist (and also click here for her blog).

Small children were enthralled by the pneumatic tube (think ATM teller at the drive-thru) that went around the gallery:

It was pretty great, with an uncanny, swooshing uptake noise and roller coaster trajectory.  Some general installation shots:

Darby and Galen, husband and son of the curator, with Jerusha:

Gallery visitors, including a radio host and Roosevelt Island resident and friend:

Jerusha with Lindy:

I had to leave early to go to a Cowboy Junkies concert I had long promised Adrian I would see.  I was stand-in since his wife Bader was traveling.  (I think he unabashedly jokes, "fake wife.")  How much did I appreciate the signage at the venue, the Society for Ethical Culture:

I had no idea and was cheered to learn that the Cowboy Junkies are a family band -- two brothers, one sister -- and a Canadian family band at that.

On the way there, I didn't appeciate so much, but found remarkably striking, that Whole Foods started offering plastic cutlery, wrapped in plastic.  

Does that seem tone deaf re their mission?  I can't tell if this is one more sign people have generally stopped noticing things.  How else would it be possible at the Brooklyn Half Marathon weeks later for so many eleven-minute milers in headphones to hang out in the frontrunner lane, after a race official had cleared traffic for the front runner starting to lap people?  Do you not notice you are being passed by someone running twice as fast as you?  Over and over again, sometimes by groups at a time?

Noticing often repays effort, as in the Antony Gormley installation "Event Horizon" at Madison Square Park, men on buildings:

Apparently enough people did notice the men to call 911 about building jumpers.  Here is what they look like closer up:

I visited the men this time en route to an Op-Ed Project refresher.  I heartily recommend!

Postscript, Op-Ed Happy Hour:

And picture from after the Brooklyn Half Marathon, Christine and Adrian at Steve's Key Lime Pies in Red Hook:

The Memphis Wedding in May, the Yale Event in New York, and Girls' Dinner

When my mother was in New York at Christmastime, we made an express visit to this lobby (below) to photograph (endlessly) this Jeff Koons balloon dog, so imagine my surprise when my Yale School of Management Museum Legs talk was scheduled to take place in the same building.

As part of the school's "Salon Series," I was invited by Jorge Maldonado (of the alumni board) and Jeanne Hayes (head of alumni relations) to give a talk on creativity, art, and public institutions.  Here are my kind hosts:

A few less than exciting, but still scene-setting photographs I took:

Jorge is a consummate host of the, "of course you're having wine before talking, but would you prefer red or white?" variety.  The first two guests to arrive where this charming couple, she an alum and he an art-interested trustee of the Norman Rockwell Museum.  They were extremely funny and had just returned from a scuba trip.

The room filled up, and we ended up with a good crowd whose work lives spanned Davos, the Bronx Zoo, green venture capital, education reform, and--thanks to my colleague who came--my own outside-of-writing work.

Here's Dean, Bader, and Andie, with big thanks to Andie, also of the alumni board, who introduced me to Jorge and Jeanne to make the program happen:

I joined in, somehow blurring the photo:

Afterwards, we went for burgers at P.J. Clarke's, from left: Dean, Andie, Billy, Christine, Adrian, me:

The next morning, I left for a family wedding in Memphis, joining brother Jeff, Alexi, and Jack on his first airplane trip:

Fortunately Jack finds extreme turbulence fun, so when I looked to my brother, a seasoned flyer and airplane expert, to gauge any panic (as people often look to the flight attendant but I couldn't see her), Jeff was looking nonchalant, as he might have anyway, and also downright happy.  

I enjoy that I keep calling it a family wedding because technically it's not.  Hugh, my brother's oldest friend, and his family are like family though.  The Friday was my sister Stacey's birthday.  She and Paul had gone to Jazzfest the weekend before in New Orleans and road tripped, via bourbon distilleries and the like, to Memphis.  Here they are with Stacey's birthday cake, an inspired recommendation from Mark of the Memphis museum project -- Sugarees caramel cake:

A crack-like proper, original, Southern caramel cake: (www.sugarees.com)

After the cake interlude, we went to Beauty Show, a restaurant and bar where I could probably have ordered everything or anything on the menu, had we not been headed onward to the rehearsal dinner.

Paul and the Birthday Girl:

Me with my mom and Martha O'Neill, childhood bestie I still call Crabtree:

(Me and Crabtree:)

Here's a feel for the place overall.  If you're in Memphis, I highly recommend (South Cooper neighborhood):

And, the peanut machine in the hallway near the ladies':

The "wedding eve supper" took place at the same spot where Martha had had her rehearsal dinner, which didn't stop me from getting lost and overshooting it by half a mile.  Here's a feel for the party, the out of doors toasting part, after a delicious catfish fry at which I uncannily matched the dinner napkins:

The Mallorys, our hosts, including Hugh's sister Virginia and her husband Brett, along with Albert and Penny and Hugh's now wife Lisa:

Just a photo of my mom and brother together:

Early in the evening, one of the bartenders had been pointed out to me as a Memphis fixture -- "the B.B. King of bartenders," someone who had tended bar for fifty years and who would sit in a folding chair to pour drinks.  Toward the end of the toasts, he got up unsolicitedly and spoke on Hugh's behalf.  

I can't imagine he does that very often.  It seemed a high compliment.  Even when part of his advice was to pass along from his father to "remember, son, always keep the cook happy."  (Other toasts might have covered that Hugh in fact loves to cook.)

The next morning, we surfaced for the wedding itself:

My brother and Alexi:

Re the outfit, true to Hugh's hospitality, he had recruited his friends--save one man to stand with him at the front of the church--to be ushers, as if they were all helping Hugh host the party that was his wedding.  (As a side note, am I the only person to whom it was news that Men's Wearhouse has that unusual spelling of "Wear"?)

Stacey and Paul:

Me and Mom:

A series of Jack with his father and godfather (aka the groom), after he made his entrance at the reception:

For the afternoon, we headed over to Crabtree's.  Her husband Barry graduated from college that morning, leaving Martha "just sick" that she had a conflict with Hugh's wedding, but otherwise in the midst of a fantastically elating, happy celebration.  Here's Martha with Margaret, with cookie:

And the three Carr Avenue best friends, me Crabtree and the lovely Fones:

Later that night, we also celebrated at Hugh and Lisa's party with Barry, the graduate:

I had the pleasure of being a reader of his final paper, an inventive take on the importance of basic skills training and upkeep for firefighters -- a mix of original empirical research and drawing in models of skills practice from fields as varied as art, sports, military, and music.  He got a perfect score.

Between Martha's house and that party, we took Alexi for her first Corky's barbeque:

Here's the crew waiting outside, with valiant patience especially considering the combined prior night's sleep for the new parents in the middle could probably have been counted on one hand:

The morning after Alexi was welcomed into her first Corky's barbeque experience, Jack was welcomed into his first mother's day, a double header of a celebratory brunch, kindly hosted by J and A:

Having a later flight back than everyone else, I hung out with Fones for the afternoon.  We went to Target where I was treated to the reassuring "you should totally buy that!" school of shopping with her.  (Memphis has more on offer in the Zac Posen for Target category than the New York Target would unless you were there the first day.)

Back in New York, I brought a little bit of the South with me.  On an excursion with Billy to spend time with some of his oldest friends, I got to shoot a BB gun for the first time. (Surprisingly fun! Who knew?)

With Veronica's dad and stepmom visiting from California, I got to go to ladylike, idyllic tea that next Sunday afternoon.

And midweek, I hosted girls' dinner.  Mo, fellow Southerner, helped me make shrimp and grits for the first time.  If this number of slightly repetitive photos from dinner seems excessive, you should see the amount of repeat pouring of the half-and-half the recipe called for:

As a postscript, some things in New York are cliche, but still charming.  For one, fountains in summer:

Two, silhouetted birds on a lamppost below Central Park (best appreciated from a distance, even if backlit):

And, three, Carnegie Hall, where I heard the magic of transcendent piano playing, of Baroque pieces I was surprised to love, by a woman with a withering stare I had to get on board with because it enforced the old school norms I love of audience quiet and kind attention in the face of the newfangled idea that the curtain call does not mean game over for latecomers and that it's okay to shift noisily while someone is playing: