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One of New York’s most popular fairs returns with Sanford L. Smith & Associates’ 18th Annual Outsider Art Fair, being held February 5 through 7, 2010 at 7 W 34th Street, near Fifth Avenue in New York City.
Last year, enthusiasm for the unique Outsider Art Fair prevailed over the turn in the economy, a snowstorm, a change in dates, and a move to a new venue. This year, 38 dealers will gather again at the fair’s new home to bring together the largest and most promising Outsider Art Fair yet.
The fair began eighteen years ago showcasing an otherwise unrecognized market at that time. The fair brings international attention to art created outside of mainstream society—visionary, primitive, self-taught and intuitive in nature.
The American Folk Art Museum will be organizing events and lectures throughout the fair and that week as a part of Outsider Art Week. In a special awards ceremony the museum will honor fair organizer Sanford Smith with the Contemporary Center’s Visionary Award, which recognizes major contributions to the world of outsider and folk art each year.
Highlights include:
Galerie Bonheur (St. Louis,MO ) will feature colorful works by the late Bahamian artist, Amos Ferguson (c.1920–2009) including Bird Bath.
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Henry Boxer Gallery (England) returns to the fair highlighting works by the self-taught savant and calendar calculating whiz, George Widener of North Carolina.
Fountain Gallery (New York), the not-for-profit cooperative run by and for artists living with mental illness, joins the Outsider Art Fair for the second year. Among the works in their booth will be Girl with Red Hat by Dick Lubinsky.
Gilley’s Gallery (Baton Rouge, LA), specialists in Louisiana artists, will include in their booth paintings by Clementine Hunter (1886-1988).
Marion Harris (New York) introduces Carlos DeMedeiros. After living as a monk in Bolivia for 15 years, DeMedeiros left the monastery with his personal religious ideas in conflict with the one he felt obliged to follow. From this ambivalence, he creates small-scale confessionals accompanied by confessions in sealed envelopes.
Just Folk (Summerland, CA), newcomers to the fair, is pleased to bring a collection of 28 works by Bill Traylor (c.1854-1949). This is one of the largest groups available and has not been seen in the U.S. for more than ten years.
Outsider Folk Art Gallery (Reading, PA) will feature recent mixed media construc tions by Thorton Dial (b.1928) as well as rare 1970s paintings by Purvis Young (b.1943), with works by emerging artists such as Jim Bloom (b.1968).
Ricco/Maresca (New York) representing both the William Hawkins and the Martin Ramirez estates will bring fine examples from both, including Hawkins’s Historical Monument.
Luise Ross Gallery (New York), among a fine selection of drawings by Minnie Evans and by Violetta Raditz, will feature for the first time at the Outsider Art Fair metal collages from Colorcoat by the Icelandic Óskar Jónsson (1922–1997).
Judy Saslow Gallery (Chicago) will bring rare pieces from the Oswald Tschirtner estate that have never been seen before.
Galerie St. Etienne (New York) continues a tradition of exhibiting self-taught greats including Grandma Moses, John Kane, and Morris Hirshfield. The booth will include the painting John Kane and his Wife circa 1928.
For more information visit www.sanfordsmith.com.
Outsider Art Fair
February 5-7, 2010
Sanford L. Smith & Associates
7 W 34th Street
New York City
On Friday, January 1, 2010 at 2:00 pm, the Poetry Project hosts the 36th Annual New Year’s Day Marathon Reading, welcoming the New Year with over 140 writers, musicians, dancers and artists. Some of the poets/performers include: Penny Arcade, Yoshiko Chuma, Steve Earle, John Giorno, Taylor Mead, Judith Malina, Jonas Mekas, Eileen Myles, and Genesis Breyer P-Orridge.
Tickets at the door are $18, $15 for students and seniors, and $10 for Poetry Project members. All proceeds benefit the continued existence of the Poetry Project, currently in its 44th season. Seating is on a first-come, first-served basis. Refreshments will be available. The Poetry Project is wheelchair-accessible with assistance and advance notice (please call 212-674-0910 for more information).
Said poet Eileen Myles, "The New Year’s Benefit is living proof that every year the Poetry Project is a new community in process. The avant garde, the queers, the beats, the others, the riff raff, the radicals… it’s the apres New Year’s party you never want to miss. You just want to see what happens this year."
Founded in 1966 by the late poet and translator Paul Blackburn, The Poetry Project has been a crucial venue for new and experimental poetries for over three decades. Time Out New York, in its “Essential New York” issue, which listed the Project as one of “101 Reasons To Be Glad You’re Here,” says: “The Poetry Project remains a major forum for experimental poets, a meeting place for literary types and an important part of what remains of the city’s counter-cultural spirit.”
Now in its 44th season, the Poetry Project offers a Monday night reading/performance series, a Wednesday night reading series, a Friday late-night event series, three weekly writing workshops, the quarterly Poetry Project Newsletter, and an annual print journal, The Recluse.
Some of the most exciting and relevant writers and artists working today gather in the Sanctuary and Parish Hall of the historic St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery for a day and night of engaged and inflammatory performance—proving that works of nonconformist art and their attendant political hopes and visions still exist in our world.
The Daily News called the event “New York’s Other Marathon…not for the artistic faint of heart [but] for seekers of something wildly, jaw-droppingly different.”
And the Village Voice described it as “short attention span theater on a marathon loop, with a flotilla of deviant craft kicking out quick, hot flashes of dissidence in the age of prigs and punishers.”
Admission: $18, $15 for students and seniors, and $10 for Poetry Project members.
Subways: L to 1st or 3rd Ave / N, Q, R, W, 4, 5, 6 to 14th St – Union Square
The Poetry Project is wheelchair accessible.
For a full list of poets and more info go to: www.poetryproject.org
the 36th Annual New Year’s Day Marathon Reading
Friday, Jan. 1, 2010
The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church
131 E. 10th St. at 2nd Ave
212-674-0910
NYC
September is unofficially Juliette Binoche month at the Brooklyn Academy of Music: the incandescent French actress is featured in in a film retrospective and also appears in the flesh in In-I, in which she dances with co-director and choreographer Akram Kahn. If, like some of her films, In-I ultimately disappoints, it’s another daring decision in the career of a fearless performer.
The hour-long In-I, performed in front of an imposing wall designed by artist Anish Kapoor, is a “theater-dance piece“ that shows the continual tug-of-war in any relationship, from its beginnings to its eventual breakdown. Its hybrid aspect—there are dancing, miming, monologues, even awkward physical comedy—is likely the reason it doesn’t come off, since it’s trying to be too many things at once; its relatively brevity means there’s not enough time for In-I to be anything more than a highlights reel from some longer, more cohesive work.
Still, this collaboration between a daring actress and an adventurous choreographer-dancer has its pleasing moments (the actress Velcroed to the wall for her final monologue is a particular delight), and Binoche’s fierce determination to keep up with Kahn‘s graceful movements is most commendable. There was a scary moment on opening night, when Binoche audibly hit her head on the hard floor while executing a particularly difficult move with Kahn—there were several gasps from audience members around me, but the fearless Binoche just kept going.
The BAMCinematek retrospective of Binoche films, through September 30, shows the award-winning actress‘ range: you can catch her Best Actress (Cesar) turn in Blue on September 21 and Best Supporting Actress (Oscar) performance in The English Patient on September 28, but films she made with cinema’s most well-regarded directors are worth catching.
In Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s The Flight of the Red Balloon, Binoche is wonderful as a harried single mom whose young son wanders Paris with his Asian babysitter (Sept. 20), while Olivier Assayas’ elegant character study Summer Hours (September 27) contains one of her most indelible portrayals as a middle-aged daughter dealing with her mother’s death and the future of the family’s estate. There’s also her heartfelt turn as an actress playing Mary Magdalene in Abel Ferrara’s Mary (September 29), and her unforgettable performances in a pair of contentious explorations of racism, cultural insensitivity and terrorism by Austrian l’enfant terrible, Michael Haneke: Cache (September 26) and Code Unknown (Sept. 26).
Both onstage and onscreen, Juliette Binoche’s luminous presence lights up BAM this month.
In-I
BAM Harvey Theater
651 Fulton Street
Brooklyn
September 15-26, 2009
Rendezvous with Juliette Binoche
BAM Cinematek
30 Atlantic Avenue
Brooklyn
September 11-30, 2009
bam.org