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

Urban garden

The benefits of living in an outer borough: room to grow. We've been dilly-dallying in the garden, to ... well, strange effect.

In miniature

Peepworld, 2007

Alan Wolfson's detailed small-scall urban sculptures have been featured on a few blogs I frequent in the past few weeks, and I couldn't resist posting a close-up from Peepworld, which highlights one of my favorite New York haunts, the Subway Inn (at Lexington and 60th). The red-light attraction next door is a fiction, but this old dive is rather true to form! On his site, Wolfson discusses the legwork that went into creating this piece (which took 18 months to complete).

Shuttered

Near Astoria Boulevard and Steinway Street in Astoria.

Bright lights, smooshy city

Amazing plush sculpture of the Paris and New York skylines by French artist Emilie Faif. Not sure how it would be displayed, but if you, say, devoted one wall in your living room to skylines, a photograph of this fantasy would certainly be an interesting counterpoint.

Coffee. Books. Yes, please.

The new D'Espresso outlet (317 Madison Avenue, at 42nd Street, (212) 867-7141), just one block from the New York Public Library, offers a twist on the crowded bookshelf, courtesy Anurag Nema and his team at nemaworkshop. Fastcodesign.com reports:

The "books" are actually tiles printed with sepia-toned photos of bookshelves at a local travel bookstore that ring the room, including the floor, walls and ceiling. In addition to painting unusual surfaces with intriguing patterns -- whoa, you're standing on books! -- it gives an Alice in Wonderland-esque sense that the room has been suddenly upended.

Visualizing NYC

(Jelly NYC skyline by Liz Hickok.)

Super-cool art show alert: the Pratt Manhattan Gallery is hosting You Are Here: Mapping the Psychogeography of New York City, which runs through November 6. Descriptions of pieces that caught my eye:

• A “loneliness map” from Craigslist’s Missed Connections by Ingrid Burrington 
• A scratch-and-sniff map of New Yorkers’ smell preferences by Nicola Twilley
• A New York subway map in Urdu by Pakistani artist Asma Ahmed Shikoh
• The preliminary artwork for New Yorkistan, Maira Kalman and Rick Meyerowitz’s post-9/11 cover for The New Yorker, and Kalman and Meyerowitz’s culinary subway map of the city

Art and urbanity

Cast your vote in the urbancanvas design competition; make NYC (more) beautiful. About the program:

The urbancanvas design competition is a unique opportunity to challenge professional artists and designers to create printed artwork for temporary protective structures at construction sites that will beautify New York City's streetscape and promote maintenance of these structures. The competition seeks complementary designs for different types of temporary protective structures located on City-owned property: construction fences, sidewalk sheds, supported scaffolds and cocoon systems.

First snow of the season!

A great loss

The Free Library of Philadelphia is closing all branch, regional, and central libraries, effective October 2, 2009. I can't think of a greater loss to the community. Particularly as the economic downturn persists, libraries play an important role, acting as a gathering place and a resource for all those with few other places to turn. Interestingly, 10 library branches in New York have announced that they will open earlier and close later to meet growing demand.