Long Island City Restaurant Gives Local Art a Home

Dan Dougherty and his brother, Shaun — the owners of Crescent Grill restaurant in Long Island City — are proud to house local art in their eatery as part of the LIC Arts Open. The Crescent Grill — located at 38-40 Crescent St. — features its own art venue, known as Dougherty Gallery. 

As part of the LIC Arts Open, the restaurant featured five large acrylic paintings by New York City artist Suzanne Pemberton, as well as oil, acrylic and mixed media paintings and drawings by other city artists, including Joseph Meloy, Mike Serafino, Brandon Sines, and Paul Zepeda. They also featured actual New York City parking meters that were modified by artist Conrad Stojak. 

Dougherty said the May 16 event was a success and he was pleased to be participating in the LIC Arts Open for the fifth year as a gallery.

“It provides an opportunity for new people to come to Dougherty Gallery and Crescent Grill and further reach out to the community,” he said. 

For the artists, there’s an opportunity to display your art and build a connection with the community. Serafino’s connection to Long Island City runs through his work as a studio manager and assistant at a long-time LIC artist’s studio.

“I’ve been working in the neighborhood since 2006,” Serafino said. “My personal work has been exhibited at Crescent Grill Gallery in at least 10 shows over the course of the last few years.”

He considers his style of artwork to be experimental and adventurous.

“Most of my work has an element of chaos and chance in which I will try to find a moment of clarity and order,” Serafino said. “The works are often searches for a feeling rather than executed preconceived ideas. I use virtually every type of paint in my studio; oil, acrylic, watercolor, gauche, enamel, encaustic and ink are all found splattered on the floors and walls. Each has their own strengths that can be necessary for a project or balanced against one another to bring material contrast into a piece.” 

Two of his favorite pieces in the show are: “Antibes” and “The Whale Hunt.” Serafino cites traveling and a constant appetite for reading about science as the main two inspirations for his work.

“The visual component to travel impacts my subsequent art. Whether it is the new landscapes or the culture of the place I’m visiting, travel always affects a change in my mind which comes out in the studio upon return.”

As for being a part of LIC Arts Open, Serafino called it “an invitation to join and art community that isn’t captured by the commercial gravity of the nearby Manhattan art megalopolis.”

“There is a [do it yourself] aspect to the community — the sense that it is a place being created, with much opportunity available for whoever has the courage to seize it,” he said. “Additional­ly, I sense an esprit de corps among the Long Island City artists that we’ve all chosen this path for a good reason; that a life spent creating and expressing are worth the struggle in this city.”

Pemberton has been painting landscapes for many years moving to what she refers to as “more abstract interpretations of land and seascapes in the past few years.”

She said uses acrylic paint and acrylic inks to create layers that convey the atmosphere in and around the sea.

Pemberton has been working out of the Reis Studios in Long Island City for the past four years and said she is proud to be a part of the LIC Arts Open.

“The LIC Arts Open brings together fellow artists and the community which otherwise wouldn’t happen,” said Pemberton. “Arts should be an integral part of any healthy community.”

Meanwhile, Zepeda said that he considers his style of work to have roots in Modernism. He works in oil paint — often incorporating gold or silver leaf — and also dabs in watercoloring and an oxidation process that he says creates rust and patina on canvas.

“I am inspired by the beauty of the world around me which may be found in everything from the human form to flowers, seascapes and architectu­re,” he said. 

One of his pieces that he said he is particularly happy with is the rust patterns created in “Rusty Subway Car.” Zepeda has an “NYC Subway Token Series,” which he says has proven to be a popular one.

“Curating for and being a part of the LIC Arts Open for the last few years has given me exposure to the wonderful community of people in Long Island City as well as giving me the opportunity to meet and share the work of my fellow artists in the area,” said Zepeda. “The exhibitions I help put on at Crescent have grown to be a staple of the LIC events calendar with monthly receptions on every third Thursday.” Posted 12:00 am, May 30, 2018  ©2018 Community News Group

ANOTHER OPENING; ANOTHER ART SHOW

Art Historian and Art Critic Donald Kuspit presented the latest art display at the Rainforest Art Foundation, one of which is located in Long Island City.  Entitled 50 Years Creations On her eighty’s birthday 1937-2017, Marjorie Grigonis is the artist whose works fill the walls.   “This is a memorial exhibition for her,” said Kuspit. “She is known for works of painting on paper and various forms of art.  Along with Marlene Yu and one other artist there was supposed to be an exhibition of three women artists who turned 80.  However, Marjorie died just before her 80^th birthday and I wanted to have a separate exhibition dedicated to her. I want to show the range of her works that we were able to get a hold of as there are many others in private collections which were not accessible to me.” 

 

Kuspit had known Grigonis since the 1980’s as well as having met both Marlene Tseng Yu and her husband James.  Marlene curated this exhibition.  Kuspit is responsible for the catalogue, which includes his introductory and comments on the art.  “Marjorie was very much influenced by a famous artist Anton Ehrenzweig who wrote The Hidden Order of Art.” In the book Ehrenzweig had written, “Grigonis’s spontaneously applied form elements are fragile and subject to unpredictable changes of mood” and viewing her as a “creative thinker.”

Grigonis had spent part of every year the last three decades on the rocky coast of Maine and has visited other countries whenever it was possible.  This show in her works of repetition having visited Japan, France, Germany, Mexico, China and Italy along with  group of paintings inspired by her trip to Morocco and the Sahara.

Grigonis  writes, “My abstract drawings and paintings are the visual record of exploration, criticism, trial and err, and discovery. The process is both determined and spontaneous; it includes critical reworking and accident as I look for something I haven’t seen before.  There is pre-planning so the characteristics of the media are in large part responsible for the look of each piece.”  Grigonis tends to find unusual combinations and humor with her abstracts.  Collages are another style to view that she includes “material gathered from travels and at home” that refer to a culture “and may have more of the feel of a narrative.”

The catalogue divides the art work into the categories of: Unconscious color paintings; Linear tendency drawings; Prints and etchings, Collage, Portraits of artist; along with Poems by Donald Kuspit. 

Exhibition dates are from October 14 through November 30, 2017.  Rainforest Art Foundation is located at 36-48 37^th Street. Hours are: Tue-Fri 1:00pm – 5:00 pm. Phone: 347-242-2769.  www.rainforestfoundation.org.

ENVIRONMENT SIZZLES IN QUEENS MUSEUM SHOW

Temperatures may be back around freezing although at the Queens Museum in Flushing Meadows Corona Park things appear to be heating up.

In February, the museum opened “Raising the Temperature: Art in Environmental Reactions,” in conjunction with the Rainforest Art Foundation. The exhibition explores mankind’s negative influence on the environment.

“I arranged the artists in two trajectories in order to organize our discussion and aid the appreciation of these creations”, said curator Luchia Meihu Lee. “One section called ‘Conversation with Artists’ brings up the issue of the artists’ response to environmental senses.”

Works by nine artists are featured in the show. Jeremiah Teipen, Pey Chwen Lin, Ki Fei, Hai Zhang and Todd Gavin focus on technological changes that reinforce behaviors which contribute to the ongoing environmental issues. The second group of artists — Marlene Tseng Yu, Sarah Walko, Miya Ando and Kay Lin — share a more intimate or romantic approach in the second strand.

Ando’s works are titled “Obon” and consist of hand-painted leaves from Bodhi trees.

“This is an indoor installation of a traditional Japanese festival honoring the dead,” Ando said.

Using about 100 of the heart-shaped leaves from this type of fig tree, Ando paints them with a phosphorescene pigment that changes colors in light. The leaves are then placed in a clear, acrylic box containing water.

“Each fragile leaf appears clear in the light and becomes luminous in the dark,” Ando said.

In addition, Ando places her signature leaves atop the installation with a sign that encourages people to take only one. These leaves have been temporarily added to the museum’s City of New York Panorama exhibit to make them appear floating along the river.

Kay H. Lin’s piece is titled “Sun, Air, Water” and uses a balloon as the centerpiece of the work.

“The balloon is made from a collage of recycled plastic supermarket bags from different countries. The plastic recycled materials demonstrate conservation and waste reduction while also showing how immigrants from different countries join together in Greater New York as a hot air balloon that lifts us all,” Kay H. Lin said. “Below the balloon is a basket of living green plants growing in soil (earth) with their leaves trailing over the edge. They represent the greenery that provides oxygen and gives life energy.”

The mishmash of shopping bags and their placement in front of a large window reveals the Unisphere with its shape duplicated in Lin’s piece.

Pey Chwen Lin has called his piece “Eve Clone Revelation No. 4.”

“Eve Clone is a commentary on human civilization and its dependency on technology as the true cause for alienation and human suffering. The holy light surrounding Eve’s head is a golden metaphor for the all-powerful, metaphysical authority,” Pey Chwen Lin said. “Eve, both deceitful and sad, inhabits a space in ruins as it gradually fills with water. Eve Clone also sees the water level rise slowly while rotating, even dancing.”

This is one of two exhibits that use digital technology so the visitor can view this exhibit in motion.

“Photography has been the tool for me to investigate the context in which we all find ourselves,” Hai Zhang said about “Don’t Follow Me, I’m Lost!”

He displays the photos in a series as if the viewer were shopping for a poster.

“It is such an unsettling journey into the understanding of the tomorrow that the new China is leading its people towards,” Zhang said. “These revelations raise some of the most pressing dilemmas of our time. Since 2008, I have regularly traveled to China to photograph the ever changing and sprawling urbanized landscape.”

“Raising the Temperature: Art in Environmental Reactions” will be on exhibit through Sunday at the Queens Museum.

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