A little bit of Jackson Heights

The Veil, Jackson Heights, NY.

The Myths, Jackson Heights, NY.

The Groceries, Jackson Heights, NY.

Walking around and actually looking at my surroundings in Jackson Heights still bring new things to my attention. I'm trying out the diptych format and see if I should make more. I've been back in Queens for about two weeks and have been soaking up all the good ethnic treats NYC has to offer with good friends. I've been lucky enough to have had Japanese three times already! That more than makes up for the drought I experienced this winter. I just need to get some pizza into my system and I'm all set.

Industrial Chic

Mags and I loved the industrial decor of the AllSaints store in Soho.

Tourists

This is a month plus full of friends coming into the city and lots of dining out. I feel lucky to be surrounded by all these wonderful friends.

To the Park

Shots from a couple of weeks ago. Ross and me biked to Flushing Meadow Park to visit one of our favorite things in Queens- the panorama at the Queens Museum. If you've never been, it's definitely worth the trip.

Trick or Eat

I spent the first part of Halloween at the Jackson Heights Halloween Parade watching all the kids walk down 37th Ave. in the cutest costumes. Some of their parents were quite creative as well. The second part of the day was spent in Elmhurst going from restaurant to restaurant for Trick or Eat. It was a brilliant event organized by Jeffrey Tastes. It was a fun event and I got to try some places that I have not been to and would definitely go back to again for a full meal. Elmhurst is a gem in the rough for great food in New York City.

Revolutionary

One of the most positive things that is happening in NYC right now is the recycling bills that have just been signed into law. They will enable New Yorkers to recycle all plastics. It's a giant leap for NYC and I am so excited about it. Will composting come next???

Fortress of Solitude

Being here has been lonely but I've somehow marked my time with lots of walks through the town, eating twice a day with Morgan, talking to Ross via Gchat, taking some photos, and making some friends through Couch Surfing. The other day I hiked up to the fortress and got a good view of the town. The bottom picture is of the entrance to the court house, which was shown to me by a CS friend, Mats.

All of this brings me to a comment my friend Luba left here the other day:

In the “Way of the Traveler” Joseph Dispenza has written: "A friend told me ... (that) when she feels the call to journey, she consciously moves from one spot to another. That is all! She stands in one place in one room of her house and mentally calls that "home". Then she walks slowly and carefully into another room - to a spot that she has designated "the destination". ...the act of moving from one place to another - from "home" to "destination" - is a microscopic rendering of the entire journey. It changes your perspective on the world in a fundamental way: things look different from one place to another, and also along the way to and from places. Doing this activity with mindfulness is tantamount to taking the trip, at least in symbolic terms."

It would be really interesting for me to read your reflections on how being able to travel to all these far-away places has affected your work over the years. What inspirations, insights you have gotten from being able to work on your projects away from home, how interacting with another cultures has influenced you/your body of work – on a deeper level (beyond subject matter, beyond sight seeing and all other pleasantries that traveling gifts us with/any of us). I guess, what I am asking is what are you capable of doing, seeing, perceiving now (living/working, albeit for a short while, far away from home) and after traveling to so many diverse places as opposed to staying at home and working. How it has changed for you – if it has – as a photographer and as a person?

So Luba, I hope this answers your question-

As someone who has traveled internationally since I was seven, travel has always been something of a norm for me. And I suspect it is the same for many others who grew up bi or multicultural. My first big trip came when I was fourteen to Guatemala. In H.S. when we were sixteen, my friend Kai and me ventured down to Jamaica on our own.

In a way I've always been comfortable with packing up and going somewhere new, as we moved every year or so when I was a teenager, within Queens. And Queens being the most diverse place in the world has had a firm role in making me feel innately comfortable with diversity. I am very comfortable listening to languages I don't speak because it's that way on the 7 train, every day. I grew up with Salvadoreans, Thais, Peruvians, Colombians, Mexicans, Italians, Indians, Guyanese and didn't even know it (esp. in elementary school). I just accepted all these interesting names my classmates had as normal.

Travel has further helped me understand more about other cultures, isn't that always the case? My work is made mostly abroad because it is the time I have set aside for producing work. And it (Moving Forward, Standing Still) is mostly about looking, observing differences, moments that catch my fascination. I try to absorb and interpret what I see, and that is what I end up presenting to you, my audience.

The Lobster Roll

This is the perfect summer story. Can't wait to meet the lobster guy come August.

Irrelevant

I'm in an upcoming group show at Arario Gallery. It opens on July 1st and promises to bring lots of emerging Asian talent together under one roof. Unfortunately, I won't be able to make it but please check it out and someone take some photos of the opening for me! There will be performances and events through the length of the show. All details below.

(ps- I made it to Sweden safe and sound and am gobbling up lots of fish.)




Arario Gallery is very proud to present Irrelevant: Local Emerging Asian Artists Who Don’t Make Work About Being Asian, an ambitious survey exhibition featuring the work of nearly fifty artists curated by Joann Kim and Lesley Sheng.

Irrelevant wishes to highlight artists who are more American than Asian, based in New York, and embedded in an expansive community of emerging artists struggling to show and succeed in this cutthroat city. You will not find paintings about the Cultural Revolution or Mao Zedong that sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars. You will not find manga-infused characters performing acts of hypersexuality nor will you find decorative miniature drawings with motifs embedded within a specific cultural history.

What you’ll find is a surging flow of creativity where artists actively engage in their practice, exploring the absurd within everyday experience, the use and misuse of materials both new and found, and the curiosity of defining artistic practice. Food and consumption is considered within an urban agricultural environment, and social interaction is taken out of norm and reenacted in refreshing alternative ways. Pictured narratives gear toward a dark and isolated realm and obsession is the source behind abstracted images.

A major focus of this exhibition is to formulate a community, building a foundation for artists to gather and exchange ideas and experiences. There is an endless array of amazing underrepresented artists in NY, thriving yet unheard. Through this exhibition we get to see artists engaging with their given role and their interests within a particular medium, exploring on both conceptual and idealistic levels with painting, photography, performance, sculpture and installation. We get to see abstraction within the everyday and the everyday within abstraction. We get to see materials unfolded, manipulated, reworked and dysfunctioned. We get to feel self-conscious and hyper aware of our stance as viewers, where time and space is altered and questioned.

Irrelevant is a friendly and humorous, and somewhat ridiculous, rejection of a neurotic art market and its obsession with specifying artists to a particular culture and ethnicity. This exhibition purifies and de-labels the artist as Asian, by labeling the artist as Asian, to be shown inside a contemporary Asian art gallery.


Artists:

Seong Min Ahn, Shin Young An, Sophia Chai, Louis Chan, Karen Chan, Rona Chang, Gigi Chen, Yoon Cho, Micah Ganske, Hyoungsun Ha, Geujin Han, Takashi Horisaki, Jane V. Hsu, Hidenori Ishii, Hong Seon Jang, Kyoung Eun Kang, Heige Kim, Seung Ae Kim, Nancy Kim, Hein Koh, Shizuka Kusayanagi, Amy Fung-yi Lee & Caroline Jung-ah Park, JaeEun Lee, Sinae Lee, Soo Im Lee, Jiyoun Lee-Lodge, Pixy Liao, Juri Morioka, Tadashi Moriyama, Joel Morrison, Dominic Neitz, Christian Nguyen, Asuka Osawa, Eung Ho Park, Youngna Park, Jung Eun Park, R&D, Ruijun Shen, Satomi Shirai, Hidemi Takagi, Tattfoo Tan, Kikuko Tanaka, Jason Tomme, Mai Ueda, Kako Ueda, InJoo Whang, Mika Yokobori, Yejin Yoo, Jayoung Yoon, Seldon Yuan


Gallery hours are Monday thru Friday 10-6pm and by appointment.
Contact info@ararionewyork.com for more information.

* PERFORMANCES & WORKSHOPS
July 1st, 6-8pm
OPENING RECEPTION

Mai Ueda Local Emerging Asian Artists Who Don’t Make Work About Being Asian

Mai Ueda sees situation as art and personality as performance, she will be highlighting those Local Emerging Asian Artists Who Don't Make Work About Being Asian during the opening of the show to be seen as performance.



Takashi Horisaki Handmade Communication

Dimensions variable, 2004, Viewer interactive performance, Latex, powder, cotton, chair, table

A group of artists apply latex to participants’ hands and peel it off while discussing their hands, personal histories and personalities. After the hands are stuffed and labeled with a tag bearing the participant’s signature, they are installed on the wall of the site as a record of the performance and participants.



Jane Hsu What We Can Do in Florida

Single channel video, live voice & electronic music: Jane Hsu (video), Juan Calderon, Chia En-Hsieh (electronic instruments) Suzanne Gughrie (voice)

In a bright palette of anxious energy, a 7-foot latex Peanut man “What Can We Do in Florida,” is a video, voice, and musical performance based on the gestures of Mr. Peanut, who hops to the rhythm of humidity and decay in subtropical Miami. The piece reveals life’s unseen predators as we become highly mesmerized and hypnotized by terrible things. The vocal performance is a collection of found memories and record conversations from hotel holidays in Florida. Mr. Peanut is supported in part from the Peanut Pals, a global association of Mr. Peanut collectors and enthusiasts.



Hidemi Takagi Blender Project

Blender is a lens into New York's immigrant communities and cultures. The artist will have an interactive show using “Blender Cart” in which she gives out samples of various international food and culturally connected products with Information notes about immigrants and communities to the public to take home and to learn about that culture through these food imports.
July 8th, 7pm

Kyoung Eun Kang In & Out

The plastic back and cotton candy traverse the inside and outside of the artist in an act of swallowing, pulling out, and eating by herself and by others. Through the performance, the artist presents her identity as a shifting and moving state that is never fixed or preestablished.
July 15th, 7pm

Tattfoo Tan Composting Know-how with Master Composter Tattfoo Tan

Have questions about starting your own composting bin? Having problems maintaining a healthy bin? Learn from the Master Composter on duty.
8pm


Jane Hsu Platypus

Single channel video, percussion, bassoon & electronic music: Jane V Hsu (video), Juan Calderon, Chia En-Hsieh (compositions) Michael Perdue (copper pots), Annie Lyle (bassoon)
A group of platypus pups are born to the improvised music of the bassoon, copper pots, and electronic instruments. “Platypus, They Said,” performed by The Meanwhile, a New York based contemporary music ensemble that experiment with familiar harmonic language and unexpected combinations of instruments. The platypus is a venomous animal that finds its prey with electrolocation, the ability to sense electric fields. The title of the piece is derived from Duras’ play, “Destroy, She Said,” about the interactions of three strangers staying in an empty hotel amongst the possible chaos of war.
July 22nd, 7pm

Karen Chan Invisibility: Captured on Super 8mm Film

This workshop will introduce the art of super 8mm filmmaking by taking a look at some of the most provocative and important works shot on super 8mm from the 1960s-70s. Works by Vito Acconci, Dennis Oppenheim, and Bruce Baille, are amongst the pieces that will be shown, as well as select works by Karen Chan, who will be leading the workshop. An open discussion will follow on the concepts, styles, and techniques used, as well as the special characteristics of the super 8 medium that allows room for exploration. Super 8mm cameras will be on hand and participants will learn the basics of camera functions and shooting. The workshop will close with a group collaboration in the making of a film on the theme: invisibility. ($10 Suggested Donation)
8pm


Tattfoo Tan Conversation about Urban Gardening

Conversation with a round table of urban gardeners and artists that are involved in the green movement.
July 29th, 7pm

Kikuko Tanaka Tragic Bambi: A Mother’s Tears

As a part of the ongoing series of work, which evolves around a recurring motif of urination on Bambi, an interactive performance/installation, “A Tragic Bambi: Mother’s Tears” developed out of an image that persisted in the artist’s mind: the image of a mother in a Japanese traditional apron, who keeps gluing pearls on a decapitated head of Bambi. The attire worn in the piece is a stereotypical apron for Japanese blue-color mothers, which the artist didn’t have but wished to have had in her childhood. In the piece, the artist transforms herself into an object of love, merging the boundary of the self/other and reality/imagination. The idea of the fantasy mother, whose existence relays on its absence, resonates with the very concept of utopia, which manifests though out the piece in various forms, such as the Crystal Palace, the Museum on top of the mountain, androgynous objects, phallic mother, marriage, state of trance through repetition and symbiotic experience. The basis of the piece is “necrophilia.” It is based on my secret romantic/aesthetic affairs with dead writers, artists and artworks.

Furnishings

I have not been in a huge rush to furnish our apartment. I have things on the wish list and I can wait patiently until the right thing comes along. Well, after eating off my lap in the kitchen for nearly half a year, and staining more clothes than I really would like, I got fed up with not having a dining table. I threw a mini fit and declared it a mission for Saturday. We needed a small table, nothing too precious, just functional. Ross kindly whisked me away to Brooklyn Flea to launch our search. It was the perfect day. The Flea was totally packed with more vendors than I remembered and lots more food options. Unfortunately, there were barely any furniture vendors, or at least ones with a selection I preferred. So the only thing we walked away with was the table lamp above. I love the wood detailing and will use it as a bedside lamp.



We try not to waste our trips to Brooklyn (it's an effort). We went off in search of Brook Farm General Store in Williamsburg. It's beautiful in the "I wish I could be this neutral and serene" kind of way. I had spotted the solar powered radio online and coveted it. We immediately took a liking to it in person and scooped it up. It's compact and green, what's not to like?

The search did not end there. On our way back to the BQE, I spotted a store front that had some pyrex on display and then a sidewalk sale a block down. The pyrex display turned out to be a shop that sold cookware (new and used), some food items, and it had a butcher counter in the back. I didn't catch the name but I swear it was the hippest butcher counter I have ever laid my eyes on. The sidewalk sale turned out to be a diamond in the rough. I scored this round mid-century-esque formica table and the cute sewing box there. Both cleaned up nicely with some soap and water (The sewing box/stool was so filthy that I thought it would be a re-upholstery project). I was so giddy after finding that table it was ridiculous (some really basic things can make me so satisfied).



I'm trying to decide if I should find a pendant light or just install these double yellow lights I have (need to photograph them). I also need to hang something on the wall, it's a bit empty right now.



The sewing stool is now sitting by the entryway and will be used for storing hats, my umbrella and to be used when putting on shoes.



PS- We had a People's Pop's plum and mint pop at the flea. It was worth the $3.50 splurge and they also have a location at Chelsea market. I am on the hunt for a nice popsicle kit. Any suggestions?

Big Bambú @ the Met

I still go back to the Met about once a month. It's my absolute favorite place in the city. How can it not be? I have so many ties to the place, I can't help but love it. This time I went with Viv & Ross to see Mike & Doug Starn's Big Bambú on the roof garden. We signed up in the morning for a guided tour, which is free with museum admission (thank you Bloomberg!). Make sure to arrive early, there are only 15 spots every half hour so tours fill up quickly. Here are the Guided Tour Guidelines (there are many so read carefully). I have to say that it was the best way to see the sculpture and I hope to go back several times in the next couple of months to see it evolve.

A Throwback to Our Earlier Days

My good friend Vivian is in town and while we were trying to figure out what NY food she might miss most while living abroad in Shanghai, we came up with Mama's Food Shop. I can't remember exactly who discovered Mama's or when we started going there- High School or early college? But we (all my HS buddies that went to NYU + some) all loved it. Carlos and I couldn't get enough of that banana cream pie, and maybe that was the one dish that inspired him to become a pastry chef...





Anyway we headed there Friday night and were not disappointed. Everything is almost exactly the same (more paintings!) and the staff are still super hippie and ultra nice. Viv and I were thinking that we should have our get-togethers there in the future. They've since rearranged the space a bit and it's fairly roomy.

Ahh, our good 'ol days. (I love love my HS era friends, and don't mean to make us sound ancient!)

On the Spice Trail

While hurrying home one chilly night, we got hit with a warm wave of delicious smelling curry. The next night we were sitting inside Mehfil having a super cozy and delicious meal with Geoff. We ordered saag paneer (my go-to fav comfort Indian dish), Chicken Biryani, Vegetable Jalfrazie, Lamb Kurma, and a naan. Everything was so um um good satisfying. I am relieved to actually find an Indian restaurant two blocks from the new place that I can say is really good.

Candace and Nina, we should have go for the buffet one weekend!

BabyCakes

Em @ Babycakes, originally uploaded by plumandlion.

I finally made it to BabyCakes, the much hyped vegan cupcake joint on the LES, with my friend Emily. We tried a spelt and a gluten free cupcake. We agreed that we liked the texture of the spelt cupcake better but that wasn't the most noteworthy part of the cupcake. The frosting was really the icing on the (cup)cake for me. Not too sweet, creamy, and tasty. I think I can eat a bowl full of that goodness, and that's coming from someone who doesn't lick cake batter. I think I will have to buy R a copy of the BabyCakes book so he can make me some frosting. Next time I'm having a cookie sandwich.

And Meera, when you come back to NY, I promise to take you there!

Cambodian Sandwiches from Num Pang

Mackerel and Leek Sandwich from Num Pang, originally uploaded by plumandlion.

My love for Vietnamese sandwiches runs deep. My sister dated a Vietnamese guy named Do for years and we lived together when I was a teenager. Do would bring home Vietnamese Sandwiches often and I developed a hankering for them. So I was happy when I read about Num Pang, a Cambodian sandwich shop at Union Square in the archives of for me, for you. I imagined them to be close to Vietnamese sandwiches. After all, the Cambodians had the French running around their country too. Geoff and I stopped by one day after work. He had the pork brisket while I had the mackerel leek sandwich. While the pork sandwich was deemed too fatty, the mackerel sandwich was generous and tasty.

Pork Brisket Sandwich from Num Pang, originally uploaded by plumandlion.

View from Num Pang, originally uploaded by plumandlion.

There's even a bit of seating upstairs. I'd go back again and try some of the other options. There's also a bunch of choices for you vegetarians.

*Sorry for the poor pics, it was dim in there!

Sunset over the Hudson

Sunset over the Hudson, originally uploaded by plumandlion.

One really nice touch to the new job is access to real windows. Don't get me wrong, I still work in a dark cave, but I can now walk a couple of steps out of my black hole and see daylight. The icing on the cake has been the beautiful sunsets over the Hudson. My little digital camera does not do it justice. It's really wonderful to see such a great expanse of sky.

Ross @ Nick's, originally uploaded by plumandlion.

R and I also managed to scoot over to Nick's last night for our favorite pie. We were happily stuffed pigs, hence no after pics.