Second Saturday | Steve Lurkel Preview & Interview “Oh! You Pretty Things” Opening Feb 13, 6-9p
Forage Space: Describe your work to viewers that might not be familiar with it.
Steve Lurkel: My work stems mostly from a graffiti background. I started playing around with different imaginative characters some years ago and I decided to make stickers out of them. I grew from there. Learned to paint very non-traditionally; without an initial idea to build off so you can always find my stuff pretty random, mostly on found objects, like old windows, palettes, or doors. Bold bright colors and several different mediums make up the majority of my pieces usually accompanied by thick black opaque lines. I aim to provide a cutesy feeling mixed with a little harsh reality. Be it the little guy who always has a hand over his mouth, a baby narwhal, or an overweight bird it’s never too hard to decipher.
FS: Do you name your characters?
Lurkel: Funny y’all ask. My main guy didn’t have a name until about 3 years ago. Which is CRAZY because I’d already been drawing, cutting, and placing them in the streets of Boston and New London by the hundre
ds for years. Never once did I have a name or think of one. As for the rest of them, no I don’t have names for those dudes. I like to consider them all family though. Like, immediate family, not no step-kids.
FS: Favorite Mid-Winter Meal
Lurkel: Toss up between Dumplings and Turkey meatloaf.
FS: What should we expect for your opening on Feb 13th?
Lurkel: People should expect a very chill dude from South Eastern Connecticut trying to spread love with some cat-dog-mice and lots of vibrant colors. And lots of high 5’s and hugs! Or handshakes, whatever y’all prefer. People are so weird when it comes to hugs and that’s crazy to me.
FS: Do you think living on the East Coast influenced your work?
Lurkel: Absolutely. Especially, early on; over the years though I’ve gained influence from so many things and so many places from old pysch rock album covers to infamous European graffiti artists like “Horfe” and plenty of my close friends.
FS: What are you listening to while you’re creating this show?
Lurkel: Oooo. That’s a tuffy. My tables and record collection are always set up at the studio taunting me so I’m usually all over the place. Heavy rotation off the tops has definitely been a lot of Madlib, Electric Wizard, Howling Wolf, and of course, Bowie.
Art Talk: The Lodge Gallery
Video and host and editing and all that crap by me. Ethan Minsker.
The Lodge Gallery is proud to usher in the new year with Alterity, a group exhibition featuring works by Reuben Negron, Emily Burns, Curt Hoppe, Rebecca Goyette, Frank Webster and Ulrike Theusner.
As individuals we choose to keep our personal obsessions with physical pleasure close to the vest, under the table and sometimes in the closet. As a society we are a lot bolder. We build our public fantasies on magazines, advertising campaigns and big budget films but inside we all long for a deeper connection to our true selves. Anyone who has dressed up for a masquerade or is accustomed to a uniform knows the transforming effect that donning a costume can have. Useful as a largely positive mechanism for coping with social anxiety, we all dress up in our own self constructed costumes that mask our true selves in order to navigate the daily complications of our public lives. For some, the only way to explore more personal subjects such as desire, power, control and role reversal is to embrace an ulterior identity associated with a literal mask or costume to be donned as a shield of safety from judgement and public scrutiny. Sometimes these masks are literal and other times they are as subtle as an attitude or context. Each of us, in our own subjective way, learns to stitch together the necessary disguises we require in order to reconcile our pursuits of the baser instincts of human nature and to act out on our natural desires or secret fantasies.
“People seldom change. Only their masks do. It is only our perception of them and the perception they have of themselves that actually change.”
― Shannon L. Alder
The Lodge Gallery, founded by Keith Schweitzer and Jason Patrick Voegele, is located at 131 Chrystie Street on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. It is the exhibition venue of Republic Worldwide and serves as both an art space and a gathering place for hearty discourse and experimentation.
Tallgrass TV – ‘Self Medicated: a Film About Art’ Interview
My interview at Tallgrass film fest.
Trailer: Dwelling art show
Here is the first trailer for our Dwelling Project. We are looking for artists from around the world who want to build buildings at the scale of 5 stories to one cereal box and recycled elements. Then you ship it to Sydney when we get an address. You will not get it back. You will not get paid. And it might be destroyed as part of the project. If you do this its for the love of creating. We are making a film about the project so your work may live on. First let us see your work and we will give you more info. Please re-post or send this to artists you think want to take part.
Dwelling: art project. Sydney, Australia
We need your help on our next art project. Please go to our page on Iniegogo and donate. You can get our zines, books and films and more.
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/dwelling-art-project-sydney-australia#home
Short Summary
Over the past year my team and I have been looking to do a project in Australia. I am excited to announce that we have touched base with local artists in Sydney who are thrilled to work with us. However, as with any event in another country, there are costs involved. I need your help getting there in order to fulfill this project and to help provide spaces for young artists to do the same!
This will be the fourth overseas art project and film the Antagonists have created in the last 8 years. From New York, Germany, Portugal, and Ecuador continue to work with and develop the artists we encountered on past projects. We couldn’t have made those trips possible without the help from our supporters via Kickstarter campaigns . Each project resulted in a feature documentary film that continues to help the artists involved. We try to provide venues for artists, mentoring, job placement, and exposure, and we hope—with your help—we can do it again. We have everything ready for this event, but we need your help in covering travel, accommodations, and final production costs to build the exhibition and workshops. With your support, we will expand our reach and discover new art and artists.
Thank you
Ethan Minsker
Fanzine :CFA talk with Ethan Minsker
Surplus Candy – Street Art Documentary
Hanksy! One of my top graffiti artists is debuting a web series on street art October 1.
“There’s a bunch of art getting painted on walls between New York City and LA,” Hanksy noted in a statement. “And it’s my opinion that if a knucklehead artist like myself is randomly given some weird pseudo-serious spotlight, they use it for good not evil. Surplus Candy is a filmed continuation of the illegal show I held earlier this year in the East Village.”
Goat robot eats all the art!
Robot Art, Jakob Theileis: artist profile #001 Citizen for the Arts. from Ethan H. Minsker on Vimeo.
Jakob Theileis is an artist and engineer from Berlin. Currently based in New York City. He is part of the collective goat solutions and Antagonist Movement. jakob-theileis.com
filmed by Ethan Minsker
Horn Please
7 states. 45 days. A backpack trip.
Result: A documentary on Indian Truck Art
Horn Please is a documentary that encapsulates various aspects of an age-old folk art form of India — the Truck Art, an art form that makes journeys through the dusty highways of India, incredible in more ways than one. With a kaleidoscope of bright paints, motifs, typography and some unique couplets, these Indian trucks take you on a rather colourful journey of diverse cultures and beliefs of the country. The designs painted on the trucks do not merely stand for aesthetic purposes, but they also attempt to depict religious, sentimental, and emotional viewpoints of the people related to the truck industry.
This documentary focuses on the origin of truck art and its evolution since then. And also how it influences not just the world of art, but also the lives of its artists and the truckers who interact with it on a daily basis. Largely, it investigates on whether the once-accepted type of art as a unique form of expression, will survive the test of time in this era of capitalism.
Lodge Cast Iron
Four generations deep, Lodge Cast Iron is still going strong. They are the last American cast iron manufacturer. The metal chemistry and other aspects of the production process are monitored by workers during melting and and throughout the rest of the process. Cast Iron is one of the few things left in this era that can be a family heirloom, seasoned with generations of family meals. I recently bought a 5 piece set and am looking forward to making memories.
Watch “THE HUNDREDS :: IN THE STUDIO :: HANKSY” on YouTube
THE HUNDREDS :: IN THE STUDIO :: HANKSY: http://youtu.be/C8Nl8yPYlvw
Psycho Moto Zine: Dead Tech
Dead Technologies. If you are reading this fanzine in the paper form then you are taking part in a dead forgotten format, PRINT. We as a culture discarded technologies as if it were toilet paper smeared with our feces. In this issue we are going low tech and bring back a few memories of things we once loved but only when it was new. – Ethan Minsker
Artist Interview: Wonderpuss Octopus
ThePineConeGentleman: Let’s start off with telling the reader a little more about yourself and your work.
Wonderpuss Octopus: I grew up in Canadensis, Pennsylvania, which is heavily wooded, it felt like the middle of nowhere. But I was lucky to visit New York City often at a young age, since my parents are both artists who had lived on the Bowery and still had 
friends and exhibitions there. They were always bringing me to galleries and museums and teaching me about art – as a child it felt like torture but I really appreciate it now. They encouraged me to make art yet they were actually highly critical, it was not the normal parental encouragement of “Oh this is so wonderful my kid is a genius.” It was more like, “this is interesting, I like what you did here, but your technique could be better, these brush strokes, the shading, the composition, etc.” It was like having two art professors as parents! Having such talented, critical parents shaped my artistic foundation – but it also taught me how to rebel! In a professional sense I am ‘self taught’ because I walked out of my first class my first day of college at The School of Visual Arts. It was within the first fifteen minutes – the instructor was teaching us to sketch fruit, and I thought – “F*** this! I don’t want to sketch fruit I already know how to sketch fruit!” I realized suddenly that I already had my art education – my parents already gave me all the tools I needed, and I was not going to take out thousands of dollars in student loan debt to get that fancy piece of paper that says MFA.
Wonderpuss Octopus
PJ Linden explores texture fetishism with her intuitively detailed, multilayered barbed strata of 3D fabric paint, acrylic, and latex build up. Linden’s paint gestures bubble with machine-like precision yet remain abstract, reminiscent of patterns found in nature and in global folk art traditions. Controlled hues of technicolor are overlaid to sculpt hybrid animal pelts: Snakeskin, shagreen, and crocodile skin collide with mutations of coral, pearls, candy sprinkles, raindrops, and millefiori. These ‘pelts’ emit a sense of vibration and movement that Linden uses to violate luxury brands, technology, fashion, sex, and the human form. These ‘pelts’ become second-skins – avatars of subject and object. In 2008 PJ Linden formed WONDERPUSS OCTOPUS – a media based process brand reflective of appropriation, pop and anti-art movements.
Happy birthday Smokey.
Julianna Brazill
Q. What can you tell the people that are reading this about your work?
A. Drawing is my most favorite thing in the whole world. I started drawing in grade school in notebooks instead of taking notes or paying attention, but never really dreamed that I would still have such a strong desire to draw on everything, all the time. I have my Master’s of Fine Art in Ceramics, and while I do still work in the sculptural and functional realms of ceramics, illustration is my true passion. My work focuses on the whimsical parts of life, especially those in my imagination. While I do enjoy drawing from life, and am heavily influenced by narrative comics and biographical graphic novels, my interest lies in the images stewing about in my brain. I’m always striving to find interesting, unusual ways of making work, in order to instill a sense of imaginative play and curiosity within my artistic practice.
Sticky Monger
Joohee Park aka Sticky Monger is a fine artist, illustrator, and freelance animator in NYC. Joohee’s vinyl cut-out installations combine cartoon inspired characters, geometric designs, and surrealism. See more of her amazing work at stickymonger.com and find images of her latest installation at Bunny Cutlet Gallery.
Please stop “yarn bombing” from ff.
It’s gross. It really doesn’t come off as anything but a soggy spider infested mess. We’re all for expressing ourselves, but maybe consider making a sweater for a friend instead. Knit some booties for your nephew. It just doesn’t weather well. Maybe if they produced some gore-tex all-weather yarn or something (actually they do)… If you must “yarn bomb” please stay away from wool yarns since they absorb water, are flammable and can be a home for pests.
And stop covering up trees. We like trees. Bark is nice and pretty. Nature doesn’t need your help. FREE THE TREES
http://www.fecalface.com/news/2014/7/13/please-stop-yarn-bombing
Benjamin Adcroft
Forage Space: Please tell the readers a little more about yourself, your work and whatever you would like. Read more…
This Is Berlin Not New York. Watch the entire film here.
This is Not Berlin Not New York from Ethan H. Minsker on Vimeo.
This film will only be up for one year. Please pass it on.
This was the first in a series of films about art, travel and the Antagonist Movement. Look for “The Dolls Of Lisbon” and coming soon “Self Medicated: a film about art”
From Ethan Minsker
Plot Outline:An inspiring look at New York underground artists making art and friends on the other side of the world.
In 2007, ten New York-based artists traveled to Berlin for ten days with one purpose: to experience life artfully. They put on an exhibition in a local gallery, displayed artworks on the street, transformed an abandoned building into an original work of art, and connected with Berlin artists.
In this film. Arturo Vega (artistic director for the Ramones), Ted Riederer (exhibited at PS 1 Contemporary Art Center), Ethan H. Minsker (founding member of the Antagonist Art Movement), Richard Allen, Brett Farkas, James Rubio, Un Lee, and Crispy T.
Screenplay By:Ethan H. Minsker Directed By:Ethan H. Minsker
Produced By:Antagonist Movement.
“Original musical scores and animated artwork definitely enhance this provocative examination of western contemporary art and the ongoing tension between commercialism and creativity for its own sake.” – Juxtapoz Art & Culture Magazine
The Pine Cone Gentleman 