"Pilgrimage" by Laurie Lebreton for Art in Odd Places Festival 2011

Laurie Lebreton's "Piligrimage" was on display at the window of 14th Street Framing Gallery located at 225 W 14th Street for the recently concluded Art in Odd Places Festival 2011. The exhibit consisted of about 300 figures 14” to 30” tall. She created the images with simple wire armatures that she covered with wet handmade paper. As the paper dried and shrank, the figures changed shape slightly. She ornamented them in various ways. No two figures are alike. They’re kind of generic spiritual figures that viewers interpret in many different ways. They can be viewed as spirits, ancestors, or as a depiction of community. The work was inspired by her visit to Laos on two pilgrimages.

Push Pops "Rainbagladybow" for Art in Odd Places Festival 2011

Rainbagladybow is a performance pilgrimage from the East River to the Hudson for Art in Odd Places Festival 2011: RITUAL. These images were made i one of their performance last weekend. The performance art is a three-tiered woman chorus exploring the necessity of magic, whimsy and ritual under the word salad banners of the trash adorned urban spiritual elite. Carrying East River Holy Water they will dump ceremoniously in the Hudson, The Push Pops will travel along Manhattan’s 14th st. a bustling place of commerce burying a historical canal once a rich source of natural resources. Navigating glitter trash and the porous boundaries of the commercial and chaste, secular and religious, the intelligible an unintelligible, the Push Pops dawn ribbons, coconut water bottles and otherwise odd baubles like precious totems. Part streetside shrine, gypsy caravan and consumer spectacle…Rainbagladybowstakes a proud claim in the power of ethereal sludge.
Information from the Go! Push Pops website.

Smiley Bag Project by Nobutaka Aozaki for Art in Odd Places Festival 2011

Smiley Bag Project is a participatory art project. Pedestrians are invited to sit as models for the artist as he draws their portraits with a Sharpie marker on the smiley faces of common take-out plastic bags. This project is inspired by sidewalk portrait artists in tourist places like Times Square.

Nobutaka Aozaki is an artist based in New York and currently a MFA candidate at Hunter College. His recent exhibitions include You Are Here: Projects in (de) Tourism at Hunter College Times Square gallery, Physical Center Brooklyn at Saint Cecila's Convent, Brooklyn, and Jamaica Flux at Jamaica Performing Arts Center, Queens.

Information from the AiOP website.

"Flower Bed" - a Photography Art Installation by Doreen Kennedy for Art in Odd Places Festival 2011

Flower Bed is a photo-based installation designed to appear in a public park environment. For this year's Art in Odd Places, the installation was at the lawn in the 14th Street Park at 14th Street and 10th Avenue. It was made up of aprox 600 photographic prints, placed upright in the grass to make up a ‘flower bed’ rectangular shape. Unfortunately, the installation was placed not on the actual lawn of the park but on a wood-framed plot. The exhibition took place from October 1 through 9. The idea for the installation began with an earlier piece that the artist did at the Electric Picnic Festival in 2007 ‘1,000 Flowers’. 1,000 flower prints were placed on to the bark surface of trees in a woodland area. While making it she began to think about the everyday action viewing of flowers / plant life in a public park over repeated visits. It's almost nostalgic. The work explores themes of the external environment, time capture and the process of recording time with the use of single or repeated images. The flower images can provide a type of evidence or findings from a location. The recreation of an artificial photo-based ‘Flower Bed’ in a public space aims to surprise the viewer and to reconsider the idea of what art in a public space can be. For more information about the artist, visit her website here.

"Human Rites", an Interruptive Spectacle by Edith Raw for Art in Odd Places Festival 2011

Art in Odd Places takes on RITUAL as theme this year. The festival features a wide variety of actions, participatory performances, theatrical presentations, public installations, and small and large-scale interventions all of which revolve around the concept of ritual. One of the participants this year is Edith Raw who  intends to stir up the energy of the snake: eroticism, death and rebirth, transformation and recreation of self in service of community, based on the Guaguanco spiritual and rhythmic tradition of Afro-Cuban culture. Captured in the images above were part of her performance yesterday along 14th Street. Interruption is essential to the task of being an artist in this era since society is routinely distracted and informed by pop culture. Raw's performance serves to remind us of our mortality, humanity and the universal law that links us.

The artist is orginally from Chicago. Her visual art, writing and performance have been seen in Chicago, New York City and Albuquerque. 


Information from the Art in Odd Places website.

Sherry Aliberti's "Cocoon", A Ritual In Honor Of The Sunset For Art In Odd Places Festival 2011

Last Saturday, a performance art called "Cocoon" was presented along 14th Street in Lower Manhattan. Part of this year's "Art In Odd Places" festival, this is a ritual in honor of the sunset. Traveling from the east side of Avenue C towards the Hudson River Park on the west side, the three Cocoons journeyed across the island to gather at the Sunset. The performance will be repeated on October 9. The Procession will start at 12 PM and the Liturgy will be at 5:30-8 PM. The Liturgy will take place at 14th Street and Avenue C. The Procession will begin at the Hudson River Park. The public is encouraged to interact with the performers.

Sherry Aliberti’s background in architecture and yoga inspires her to study the body as a structure. Influenced by Martha Graham and others, a fabric enclosure abstracts the figural form and provides freedom for the performer to become a morphing entity, expressing large gestures and movements for their own personal experience. (from AiOP website)

"Tourist-In-Chief" - George Washington Statue In Union Square Dressed As A Tourist

Brooklyn artist Leon Reid IV dressed up the George Washington statue in Union Square as a tourist last Saturday as a public art project. For one day only, George donned an "I ♥ NY" hat, a subway map, and local shopping bags. Reid says his project, called "Tourist-In-Chief," aims to: reflect the cultural atmosphere of Union Square, make George Washington more relatable to the public and educate the public about Washington's role in NYC history. The project is part of this year's Art In Odd Places Festival.

Listed as one of the “60 Innovators Shaping Our Creative Future” by Thames & Hudson, Reid has been on the edge of public art for over 15 years. Known for his humorous urban installations as seen throughout New York, London, Berlin and Sao Paulo, Reid is one of the few artists responsible for introducing sculpture into the genre of street-art. Leon Reid IV (born in Richmond, VA,1979) earned his BFA from Pratt Insitute in 2002 and his MA from Central St. Martin’s in 2004. He lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.