Tenement as Art?

A while back, we were approached by Irish artist Jennifer Walshe about working together on an art project. Jennifer's work is fairly complex and conceptual and so a bit hard to explain - read more in this Village Voice profile.

For an upcoming exhibit at the Chelsea Art Museum, she wanted to photograph small sculptures - what she calls "sound reliquaries" - in the rooms of the Moore family apartment. The reliquaries are created with different found objects, and in the middle of each is a  bubble "containing" a sound from Ireland - ice cracking on the river, a voice telling stories by the fire.

At the exhibit are the reliquaries as well as photos of them in situ in the Moore apartment. With her work Jennifer is exploring traditional aspects of Irish culture in new ways.

The exhibit is up from April 15 - May 15, so stop by to check it out.

Chelsea Art Museum
556 West 22nd Street
Tuesday through Saturday 11am to 6pm
Thursday 11am to 8pm

Photos courtesy artist / Chelsea Art Museum

Art in the Essex Market Building

Essex Street Market, 1939. Corner of Delancey and Essex, looking NE.

The Essex Street Market building between Delancey and Broome once held various kinds of merchants, forced indoors in the 1930s by Mayor LaGuardia's new restrictions on street vending. The Markets were never as successful as outdoor stalls, and two of the three buildings closed down. Today only the building between Delancey and Rivington is operational, a spot for local residents to pick up produce, meat, cheese, fish, chocolates, or sandwiches.

But the building between Delancey and Broome is seeing some action once again. Over the last few years, the space has been taken over by various artists and art collectives to stage performance art, theater, and installations.

A new project from the Fragmental Museum opens Friday. Their own website (http://www.fragmentalmuseum.net/) isn't terribly up to date, but you can read more here. The Museum's mission is "to provide public access to cultural projects by creating interactions between fragments of time, space, and culture."

FEED, the exhibit opening Friday, explores the market as a site of various kinds of exchange - commercial, social, and cultural. Video screenings, performance pieces, and interactive walking tours will all be on offer. Check it out.

September 18 - 26, 9am to 7pm, closed Sundays.

- Posted by Kate Stober

Tonight's Tea Cart Stories: Rained Out

We're sorry to tell you that Tea Cart Stories, our interactive art project, is rained out this evening. Come by next week (provided it doesn't rain again, of course!) from 4-7pm to share your tea stories with artist Michele Brody. In the meantime you can check out images from an ESOL workshop she did back in May, as well as see an image of the tea cart itself.

-posted by Kate Stober

A New Art Exhibit in 97 Orchard's Windows

Later this summer, the grave markers in 97 Orchard's street and stoop level windows will be replaced with tea-stained strips of paper recording visitors' family histories. Artist Michele Brody kicked off her project with a group of ESOL students, offering them cups of tea and transcribing their stories onto paper that, steeped in the brown leaves, looked at least a century old. Starting tonight, passersby are welcome to drop by Brody's handmade cart (pictured below, while it was still a work in progress), which will be parked on the sidewalk near the museum. Rain date: Next Thursday.

-posted by Liana Grey