Beatnite: Bushwick

James writes:

You don't need a passport to cross the border into the vital arts scene of Bushwick, Brooklyn, but it can help to have a guide. That's why Jason Andrew, the co-owner of Storefront Gallery and the director of the Bushwick nonprofit Norte Maar, organizes Bushwick Beatnite. For these semi-annual events, usually on Fridays, Bushwick's galleries stay open late. Jason and his co-sponsor, Hyperallergic.com, issue maps listing all the venues. The gallery crawl then concludes at a bar starting around 10. In this case, the Cedar Tavern of Bushwick is a place called Bodega.

Here's what the scene looked like at Friday's event. Katarina Hybenova of Bushwick Daily has more. Most of these shows just opened, so there's still time to see the art over the next few weeks. 

Beatnite poster by the singular Bushwick assemblage artist Andrew Hurst

Jason Andrew (driving, in trucker's hat) took the VIPs around by minivan. In the flashbulb, Hrag Vartanian and Veken Gueyikian of Hyperallergic.com  Not pictured, Jason's dog Fern, sitting on my lap. 

Some of the work on view at Fortress to Solitude, the gallery run by Guillermo Creus, who seeks out an eclectic range of artists. The center two pieces are by Jenna Bauer.  

Paul D'Agostino of Centotto talks with Jason Andrew. Dove-tailed sculptures and rope made of styrofoam and acrylic by artist Zane Wilson.

Artist Ashley Zelinskie is the co-founder of the ambitious new Bushwick collective Curbs and Stoops, an "art accessibility think-tank." On the wall is a painting by Angel Otero, whose inaugural New York show is now on view at Lehmann Maupin. I write about a studio visit with Otero in my next column for The New Criterion, out March 1.

Gwen Skaggs of Sugar shows paint skins by the artist Erika Keck.

Much of the party centered around Norte Maar, Jason Andrew's home gallery. Here Austin Thomas has curated a group show in the living room. Austin's t-shirt references her newest venture, Hippie Potluck, a regular symposium of artists and writers hosted at the offices of Hyperallergic.   

Not pictured, but also on my rounds, was Meg Hitchcock's obsessive text work of Biblical proportions at Famous Accountants (check out this James Kalm Report for more), the closing party for Mary Judge at Storefront, and the gallery Laundromat in its new location across from Norte Maar. 

My thanks to Jason, and all of the participating artists and gallery owners, for keeping the lights on and allowing us to see a creative neighborhood in its prime.  

UPDATE: Hrag Vartanian has published a "personal beatnite in photos" at hyperallergic.com. Caught on film is the author (left) on assignment with Paul D'Agostino (right) and Fern Dog (center), the unofficial mascot of Beatnite. 

/ hv

A Beautiful Mind

PROTO MAGAZINE
Winter 2011

A Beautiful Mind
by James Panero

It was the hippocampus as no one had ever seen it, illuminated in radiant hues. The image is called, aptly, a Brainbow, the colors serving a scientific purpose by highlighting specific neural structures. Yet their choice also reflects an artistic bent; scientists display the brain not the way it is (an undifferentiated gray) but the way we want to see it, “painted” with bursts of fluorescent color.

This image, created in 2005, is one of many that Carl Schoon­over, a doctoral candidate in neurobiology and behavior at Columbia University, has collected in his recent Portraits of the Mind: Visualizing the Brain From Antiquity to the 21st Century (Abrams). As science has probed the brain’s structure and function, scientists have had to rely on art to translate their discoveries to visual form.

Leonardo da Vinci created a notable example around 1500, borrowing the techniques of statue casting to inject wax into the ventricles of a freshly killed ox. After the wax cooled, he carved the brain away to create an impression of the cavity, then sketched this casting of the void, rendering it from multiple angles.

The arrival of powerful optics during the mid-nineteenth century enabled scientists to penetrate the brain’s microscopic dimensions. Soon another Italian, Camillo Golgi, inaugurated modern neuroscience by successfully staining individual neurons. In his 1875 drawing of a dog’s olfactory bulb, Golgi records his observations while also somewhat imagining the process of smell, with bulbs in the shape of root vegetables penetrating a layer of neural connections, depicted in fanciful wavy lines.

Whereas Golgi mistook the brain for an uninterrupted web of cells, the Spaniard Santiago Ramón y Cajal correctly saw it as a network of discrete neurons. Cajal had an interest in the Eastern practice of composing ink on paper in a way that stressed negative space. Using this spare approach in a 1903 sketch, Cajal took note of synaptic boutons, which are partly responsible for intercellular communication.

Even after micrographs came into use, artistic intervention continued. In portraying the brain’s vascular system, scientists chose minimal white to create an image as haunting as snowbound woods, with detail conveyed through contrast rather than color values.

“Orientation Columns” (2006), meanwhile, is ruled by overlapping primary colors, as in op art. The piece was created by tracking the activity in a monkey’s visual cortex as the primate observed lines at different angles, each color denoting the angle that certain neuron groups “preferred.” The very act of seeing has created a compelling image.

The Neighborhood Classics concert series

James writes:

Dara and I recently had the privilege of hearing pianist Simone Dinnerstein perform Bach transcriptions from her new bestselling album. For a better understanding of her work, listen to Simone's appearance on WNYC's Soundcheck.

At dinner following the performance, Simone told us about an organization she founded in 2009 called Neighborhood Classics. This group organizes classical concerts in New York public schools. These concerts are family-friendly and raise money for the schools' students. Tonight, February 4 at 7pm, Simone will host a concert at PS 142 on Manhattan's Lower East Side. The performance will feature violinist Maria Bachmann and cellist Wendy Sutter playing the premiere of a work by Philip Glass. Tickets to this one-hour concert are only $15--and tickets are still available, online or at the door. This is a great cause, a great concert, at a great price. Check it out!