Results tagged “lic”

Surely this Halloween will bring every era of Michael Jackson back to life in costume form, but this Long Island City local has put up a scarecrow tribute to the late performer. Apparently he wears two gloves in the afterlife!

Jennifer Aniston's co-star (and maybe-beau), Gerard Butler, is back in the news. Last we heard Butler's bodyguard attacked a photographer's car, and now the NY Post reports that the actor allegedly hit a couple's dog late Monday afternoon in LIC. While walking his own pug, Lolita (unleashed!), Butler encountered Fred and Maria Varecka and their greyhound, Mayfly (leashed). When Mayfly went for Lolita (Butler claims taking two bites at her neck), the couple says the actor "slammed Mayfly's head against a fence, screaming, 'That dog should be put down!'" The couple, in their 60s, said the encounter left them shaking, and when they told him he should put a leash on his dog, "he kept on going and going, ranting and raving... He was being verbally abusive." A police report was filed, but no citations have been handed out. Butler's PR spinderella says that he spent the evening at the vet's office, and even shelled out $3,000 for the visit of another family's pet he met there. Meanwhile, Fred Varecka tells the paper, "I thought a lot of him as an actor. And he might still be a good actor. But I don't respect him as a person." No word on whether there will be a ceremonial trashing of their Butler DVDS (Phantom of the Opera and 300).

The graffiti mecca of Queens is getting... buffed! liQcity has images of 5Pointz in LIC getting a fresh coat of yellow paint. The site says they are "merely getting a free canvas reset, as the owners of the building were required to repaint as part of the necessary renovations after the recent stairwell collapse." It was recently divulged that the artist studios housed inside will be vacated, following the stairway collapse earlier this year that injured one renter. But "5pointz will still exist on the exterior walls" and new pieces go up every night as artists try "to keep up with the yellow paint machines." An image of the very yellow front of the building is after the jump.

Is Queens screwing the pooch when it comes to giving dogs access to parks? Last year residents were begging for a dog run at Yellowstone Blvd, and now Long Island City dog owners are being told their pups are banned from Gantry Plaza State Park, which has long allowed them.

It's been over three months since jewelry designer Nicole Gagne was seriously injured during an external stairway collapse at 5Pointz. The LIC building housed her studio, along with many other artist's workspaces.

       

Gantry Plaza State Park: you had us at hammocks. Seriously, the people in charge of the Williamsburg waterfront park need to take a cue from the Queens West waterfront, which Curbed reports took a big step today from "casually-accepted planned community to, dare we say, desired urban oasis." Alongside the aforementioned hammocks are lounge chairs, a promenade, the Pepsi sign, and sweet lush green grass. Now if only the fireworks were on the East River this year, we'd suggest staking a spot out now.

       

With monsoon season seemingly on the wane, it's high time we welcomed P.S. 1's annual summertime Young Architects Program, wherein the Long Island City museum invites a design team to transform their giant courtyard into... whatever. This year's project, by the firm MOS, is drolly dubbed Afterparty, a sly nod to P.S. 1's popular afternoon "Warm-Up" music series.

Following the fall that Nicole Gagne took when the outdoor staircase at 5Pointz collapsed over the weekend, the graffiti artists who are responsible for painting the murals covering the Long Island City building have added a new one in tribute to her.

Even Coke fans probably appreciate the old Pepsi Cola sign that's been part of the LIC skyline since 1936. It may have moved from its old spot, but (for quite some time) it's been getting rebuilt not too far away, letter by letter. Just a couple of days ago it only had the P E I and C letters in place, and now the NY Times checks in to find "the 120-foot-long scrawl, a creation of the Artkraft Strauss Sign Corporation," has just one more letter to go. One source told them the original plan was to have it back to its original splendor by March 1st, “But they’ve run into difficulties and now say they don’t have a schedule." Perhaps Madoff's old papers got in the way.

Starting this weekend, Deitch Projects, which had a hand in the Keith Haring mural on Houston Street and Bowery, will host the late artist's famous The Ten Commandments series. This will be the first U.S. exhibit of the works; Deitch (PDF) notes that it is one of his "most powerful series of paintings. The works portray the Ten Commandments from Haring’s point of view, combining a traditional Biblical interpretation with the artist’s liberating spirit and apocalyptic vision. The Ten Commandments were painted for Haring’s first solo museum show, a 1985 exhibition at the CAPC, Bordeaux, a reconverted wool warehouse with a span of twenty-five foot high archways supporting the roof...Haring had the inspiration to order ten tablet shaped canvases to fit within the arches. While on the dance floor at the Paradise Garage the day before leaving for Bordeaux, he had a vision to paint The Ten Commandments." [via SLAMXHYPE]

With The Waterfalls ending, it's nice to know something will fill the void. Both Williamsburg and LIC have some new illegal artwork adorning their waterfront. Momo has announced that his latest projects are finished and they're "funny, big, wet, dangerous, illegal, & moving." The project is called PLAF (combined it includes seven outdoor and one indoor installation), and here's a cute video on the Williamsburg one.

Swoon has a new installation coming up that will take her work to the sea, or at least the Hudson River. Swimming Cities of Switchback Sea "is a flotilla of seven intricately hand crafted vessels that will navigate the stretch of the Hudson River between Troy and the New York harbor this August 15th - September 7th." The vessels are powered with alternative energy sources and will be making stops in towns along the way; those aboard will be bringing live performances to the sea and shore alike, courtesy of playwright Lisa D’Amour, the band Dark Dark Dark and circus composer Sxip Shirey. Their ultimate destination is Long Island City, where Swoon will have created an "invented landscape" at the Deitch Projects space along the East River. This is all somewhat similar to the Miss Rockaway Armada, which Swoon has been a part of in the past; last year Tod Seelie discussed the Armada experience, which takes place along the mighty Mississippi.

Another sad story of pet electrocution comes out of Queens; ABC reports that Cecelia Sing's Siberian husky named Sebastian died on his Sunday night walk in Long Island City. A lamppost is believed to have shocked him with stray voltage (not an unfamiliar story).

"As soon as he got to the lamppost, he jumped and he dropped," she said. "And he starting shaking wildly, and I'm like, 'Go on. Get up, Sebastian, get up,' And he wouldn't move. And he just shook. And then, all of the sudden, he stopped shaking and he was dead. My dog was dead."

Last night as Gossip Girl returned to the airwaves, it brought some real LIC artists with it. In the fictional Bedford Avenue Gallery, as Blair plots to ruin Jenny Humphrey, she pauses in front of some pieces -- one of which belongs to LIC artist Rene Smith, who told us about how her art landed on Rufus Humphrey's walls.

I heard that Gossip Girl rented art work for their "gallery" and I actually just stopped by Silvercup Studios, which is right across the street from my studio. The security guard was nice enough to let me in and I was able to show my portfolio to art department coordinator.

Continue reading "LIC Artist Gets Work on Gossip Girl"

The Queensbridge Theater said hello to the world via a post on their website earlier this year. It told the story of Michael Waldman, Robert Prichard and their 5,000-square-foot dream space located at 37-31 10th Street in Long Island City, Queens.

As mentioned late last year, Flux Factory (LIC's beloved art space) is being forced out of their home under eminent domain to make way for the MTA's $6.3 billion East Side Access project. They report on their (hopefully temporary) end online:

Now it must all be destroyed. Our entire block will be razed by the pitiless bulldozers of the MTA. Everything Must Go. Alas, such is the fate of all terrestrial things. So, to mark the end of an era and the beginning of a new one, we’re inviting artists to transform all of Flux into one giant installation.

Over the past several years The Chocolate Factory in Long Island City has distinguished itself as one of New York's important venues for adventurous theater, dance, art and multimedia performance. Productions such as Tere O’Connor’s Rammed Earth have won major critical praise and drawn sold-out crowds to Long Island City, a previously unthinkable destination for cutting-edge performance. Artistic Director and co-founder Brian Rogers answered our questions about how The Chocolate Factory has been able to produce such sweet stuff.