LIC Arts Open 2012

Dropped by one of the LIC Arts Opens's "Nabe Nites" -- at 2 Gotham Center, right on Queens Plaza South. Great installations in vacant retail space; also pretty cool because it's an area with such heavy foot traffic -- people on the street couldn't help but poke their heads in to see what was going on, decidedly more democratic than many other city art events.

Tomorrow is the Vernon Boulevard Nabe Nite Out, and Friday's focus is Jackson Avenue. The festival continues through May 20, and there's tons to see. Just a few highlights if you plan on hitting the neighborhood this weekend: a Bill Bollinger retrospective at the Sculpture Center (44-19 Purves Street, on through July 30); the 10x10 benefit auction (Saturday) and exhibition at Art Plus LIC (43-01 22nd Street); a block party on 22nd Street between 43rd and 44th Avenue (Saturday, between noon and 6); and, of course, open studios at PaintCan Studios (10-10 44th Avenue, third floor) and Reis Studios this weekend.

From the free-for-all at Juvenal Reis Studios

We spent most of our time at the LIC Arts Open wandering around the open studios at Juvenal Reis Studios, 43-01 22nd St., Long Island City. The studios are open to the public again tomorrow from noon to 6 p.m., and I highly recommend taking some time to get lost in the mazes of the second, third, and fourth floors of the spacious building. LIC Art Center is also throwing its doors open tomorrow; I feel like going back and doing a bit of poking around there, too.

There were more than a hundred artists opening up their doors at Reis Studios (including Jaclyn Santos from Bravo's Work of Art -- reality TV meets reality!); the following are works from a few of our favorites.

Leah Reid, oil on canvas

Tet 7, Andrea Bergart, oil on canvas (Bergart also makes excellent necklaces with mosaics of Perler beads based on many of her paintings)

From Untitled or Relevant, Lilly Handley

  

Left: Page 86, Eric Rhein, wire and paper; right: a portion of an untitled work of ink on paper by Rena Teratani

Finally, although we only went to explore, we ended up taking home a painting: Locust Grove, 1998, by Paul Fortunato. Fortunato needs to expand and is moving studios; there are a number of great $50 canvases in his current space, which I think is on the fourth floor of Reis. Snap them up! Or just enjoy some of his large-scale pieces, like this cat smoking a cigarette.

To Long Island City with you!

There's one more day to enjoy the LIC Arts Open, and you, I assure you, should go (at left is a sculpture outside PU(I)NK!, by The Space artists, at 46-46 Vernon Boulevard). There are open studios all over the rapidly gentrifying Queens neighborhood, and the art of the street competes, in my opinion, with what is being created in the studios.

We started around the intersection of Vernon Boulevard and Jackson Avenue (although the 7 train is not running this weekend, there are shuttle buses from Queensboro Plaza, or you can get off at Court Square on the E). Then we made our way toward Queens Plaza, stopping at Ten10 Studios and a few other free-standing spaces before spending a few hours at Juvenal Reis Studios.

My next post will highlight some of the artists we enjoyed; the photos here are odds and ends we saw as we walked.

White heart, 44th Avenue near 22nd Street, Long Island City

Able Steel Equipment, faded painted sign on the side of a building off Vernon Boulevard, Long Island City

Obscured comestibles, Long Island City

Industrial cityscape, Long Island City