Now: 16:00 Greenwich Mean Time every Friday.
Here: A community of artists in Washington Heights / Inwood and the world meeting in this online gallery.
This: A piece of art created Now and sharing the most important thing on our minds.
Scroll down to view the exhibit below. Thank you for participating in and viewing Now: Here: This.--Peter Ferko, Project Director
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all work ©2004 by artists named
Now: Here: This is funded in part by the Puffin Foundation
Now:
Here: This
January 23, 2004, 16:00 Greenwich Mean Time
Dominik Lejman, Gdynia, Poland
Colour Study-Adult Webcams
I am sending you a 'Colour Study' - a sketch, which refers to my Waterlillies idea. It is a monochrome piece - which in fact is a colour study based on a biggest possible number of live personal adult webcams opened at 3:00GMT today. Lowered down to a single colour resolution, these live webcam images were arranged in terms of a colour reference as a monochrome 'colour study' and then 'streched' again in resolution. Most of all, this abstract monochrome 'painting' creates an overall imprint of this mass activity, consisting of so many individuals exposing themselves live at 15:00 GMT today. The only connecting reference is colour.
Anya Szykitka, Brooklyn
Albuquerque, New Mexico
This morning, the sun had just risen. I stepped out of the courtyard, and there were the Sandia Mountains, the familiar line of their crest and their dark mass below, against the blue sky. And the sweet smell of the air, the light, colors, everything the way it always was. How can I not feel these things? Old things.
My previous life in this place infuses it entirely. Now I have stepped into that life, the dream it had become is right before me, all around me. It will never be fresh for me, yet it is electric, alive, and I travel through, suspended and overwhelmed.
Laura & Aineki Traverso, Washington, D.C.
Aineki and Mama
Laura:
Most important thing: silence. and how much i value its power.
Aineki:
I'm thinking about a school dance that's coming up. A friend is trying
to persuade me to go to the mall with her. "Help me," I remember
her saying. "I've got nothing to wear!" Well, I do. I puzzle
over this desicion I must make while I take a picture of my mother.
Tim Folzenlogen, Washington Heights, New York City
Renee Tamara Watabe, Verona, NJ
Renee & Me & Tree
Renee and me are just like this tree.
We form its trunk, skeleton and flesh; completely united; with growth
in all directions, being our only desire.
Always reaching out; wanting only to understand more.
Wendy Newton, Washington Heights, New York City
Just Act Natural: Photoshoot with Peacocks
Waking up in Albuquerque
Something I didn’t know: the noise a peacock makes sounds like the honk of geese. They’re so beautiful, I always thought of them as silent, which somehow made them more regal and elegant in my mind, like a stylized decoration in a medieval painting. You can buy their tailfeathers on Canal Street and there are a few walking around in the garden of St. John the Divine, but here outside our window is a flock of flamboyantly colorful chickens who honk, beg for breakfast, and sleep in the trees. Albuquerque so far: purplish mountains floating invitingly, lightly, in the distance; crisp, cold, dry, air flattening out the expanse; a sky so bright and blue it makes my pupils contract involuntarily; the luxury of an unhurried breakfast with a friend; strong coffee. I can’t help but reflect on the impact that memory can have on an experience. I have no associations with this place, and that is a wonderfully pleasant feeling. Like a new day or a quiet mind.
Piero Ribelli, New York City
11:00 am
I ask so much from my wife. just as i did in the past from my partners.
this week i am really focused on trying to understand why i keep on doing
it, to the point where i actually sabotage my relationships.
hopefully this time i will have no success.
Rosa Naparstek, Washington Heights, New York City
Variations On A Theme (Untitled)
The Most Important Thing On My Mind Right Now:
I know more than I am able to live. Out of alignment between self and
self,
my friend tells me that "it's the same as it ever was, ever was,
ever was" and I wonder, picking up the pieces of color and shape
from the floor, cut outs from each Friday, if this is the only way I will
ever draw.
Do I work with the discarded to reclaim what's disavowed, ignored,__in
myself, in the world__ or am I just afraid to trust the blank and empty
self and page? I wonder what it will take to be.
Joel Adas, Brooklyn
Untitled
I'm thinking about the act of drawing, especially oneself. I draw self portraits again and again, becoming familiar with my features. I had my students do an exercise similar to this, a hand drawing a picture. I'm thinking too about being American and what that means, hence the pun "2B American". I must admit I swiped the idea from a painting I saw in a show in Chicago. But I think my art is very American in some ways; plaid shirts, jeans, baseball hats. These are the accoutrements that I like to portray myself in in my work. A very straight forward slice of my life...
Scott J. Plunkett, New York City
Untitled
I’m hungry, hey Smarties.
I just need a minute of quiet.
Can I get to yoga at lunch?
Trees/forest.
Firefly.
Cool, new Postal Service.
Another Mars landing in trouble.
There are a lot of Democrats.
Yeoaw.
I just need a minute of quiet.
Can I squeeze in a yoga class at lunch?
Maybe I should listen to some music.
That’s sad about Captain Kangaroo.
Pedro and Fred
What should we have for dinner?
Make the Anniversary card.
Does she have to talk all day long?
But did a photograph last week.
I could draw something.
Nothing is on my mind.
I don’t want it to just be pretty.
No more coffee today.
Didn’t get the slides out.
Maybe I’ll go outside.
My mind goes in all directions, too many at once. I think about
all the work lost because I made one choice over the other. Alternate
universes filled with perfect imaginary work. (Probably all boring
though.)
Peter Ferko, Washington Heights, New York City
'Does Bliss Show?' Portrait #4: Samadhi
I started teaching yoga last year after practicing it for two decades. My teacher training process and constant contact with our Yogiraj (translates roughly as Superyogi) has been a profound experience and yielded results beyond what I would have expected after so much previous yoga practice.
I always looked for those aesthetic moments that bring connections to bliss--hearing Coltrane's "A Love Supreme," the first time I saw the opening slo-mo scene of "Taxi Driver," communing with Rothko's god from a museum bench. Now that yoga is providing this (other?) connection, is there some focus shift on the horizon of my endeavors, or will the art simply shift to accommodate?
PP, New York City
Clues From Inside My Medicine Cabinet
I'm feeling the contradiction of being excited about being "a lesbian"
and not liking my soul being labeled. I'm exploring being the boundary,
being porous, being between worlds, being both worlds, being the edge,
being the channel, being between the differences, between the idea and
reality, between the motion and the act, between...
(Photo of woman from Art Forum.)
This Week's Guest Artists (How to join this project)
Anthony Gonzalez, Washington Heights, New York City
Jesus Comes For Grandpa
God is like an otter - a playful, mischievous carnivore. I make pictures because I am too neurotic not to. It makes me feel efficacious and special - zooming down that snow slide with a splash into the river's current, snapping up a tasty trout (unfortunate soul) - just deserts or just dessert?
Karen Greene, Washington Heights, New York City
191st Tunnel
This photo is about the beginnings of journeys, and somehow how hard it is to take those first steps.
Comments on Last Week's Now:Here:This
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From Joel Adas:
I'm enjoying this immensely. It does give one a sense of connectedness to know that other people are out there cogitating and creating around the same time and with a totally wide variety of responses. I loved Jacie's photo cataloguing her possessions before she goes out into the wintery streets. It's also good to read what is on each person's mind around the making of their work. It completes the process. There's alot of grist for the mill here.
From Tim Folzenlogen (regarding January 16):
Wendy. I think that intuition is to the universe, what a computer is to the internet.
Like Joel, I've often thought of doing a painting of the building across the street, one a day, every day, for a year - but then I'd have to do one every hour - every minute - because it is always changing.
Huckenpahler? What kind of name is that? (I wrote this with no pants on.)
I want to curl up and live inside of Jacie Lee's bag. I wouldn't mind waiting for a train with her.
Though I intuitively love, and always act on my intuition, unlike Rosa, I'm always afraid. I terrify myself.
I think poverty is a pretty interesting lifestyle.
Though I like the "ka-ching!" behind Peter's idea of having everyone do something at the same moment in time - and I am indeed aware of Friday, 11:00, as it approaches, arrives, and then passes - my contributions are more about that week's voyage, than they are about passing that particular buoy, bobbing in the middle of the sea.
Yo. Anthony. Don't you think of your grandparents as being somewhat quaint? Of your parents as being kind of old-fashioned? Call it psychotic, but this complex and fascinating world is the soil that your child grows in, and so it is the one that she is most comfortable with - which is why you will one day seem old-fashioned to her, and quaint to her children.
From Wendy Newton:
I had a really positive reaction to Tim’s work the first time I saw it hanging in the Monkey Room. I had the impression that the artist was really present. There was something about the combination of the words and the specificity of the perspective that drew me in. It’s a feeling I don’t often get looking at work, and it made a dent in my armor and I remember feeling like I wanted to know who this was. I just thought you might like to know that. I’m intrigued by your process, which seems to me to be very severe in the sense of being uncompromising. No soft edges. Some days I just have a bad reaction to red, and so I dress in blue. Other days, green is the only color I can tolerate and people wearing yellow on the subway seem stupid. I find it hard sometimes in the practice of living to be fully present without judging. Do you?
From Renee, Verona, NJ:
Regarding Rosa
Sometimes I think that artists are the nerve endings of humanity,
feeding back to us where it hurts, where it tickles , where it feels sooooo gooooood...
what adjustments need to be made.
Being vulnerable and permitting the vulnerability of another is a tremendous gift, I agree.
Separateness is an illusion, there is nothing to fear.
(and yet, how often am I scared shitless? Clearly, I need more artists in my life.
and more practice.)Regarding Wendy
I felt an immediate connection to your musings, which I find to be rather Chinese, in fact. I am half Chinese, and this metaphorical way of looking at life is very familiar to me. So much of life IS that pebble toss you describe. Perhaps our only real input is in the initial toss, in the intention of all we say and do, as they fly from our fingers, they "live", and so exist beyond one's control.
My friend has a child with Down Syndrome. She discussed how excruciating is the process of letting go of the expectation for him to have a "normal" life. Someone in our group said, "He IS perfect, he IS whole, there is always more than you think."
Surrender.
Why are we so afraid all the time?
And now I surrender my comment.
From Peter Ferko:
After posting my "most important thing" about portraiture, I'm enjoying the various takes on it coming from others in the project. Tim has a fascinating project on his website that flowed from the Nude project, including the commentary of the subject of the portrait that is really moving. Dominik's entry this week is a sample of just how much has not yet been done.
From Tim Folzenlogen (regarding January 9):
[these comments got a late post on the January 23 page
so are repeated here]
I wonder what Jacie's unanswered questions are.
I love Rosa's statement - the vulnerability of it. It made me feel me, like few things ever do. I could write oceans about each line.
I share few reference points with James, though I can relate to broke.
I'm not sure what Scott is talking about, but maybe that's his point.
Good luck with that, Peter.
Wendy's statement reminds me of my daughter. She describes her brain as buzzing bees. She likes the bees.
I don't think you ever get what you want, Piero, but you always get what you need.
Pat has creative block, yet has recently been shocked and awed. I'm not sure what Pat wants to be creative about, but, seems to me, shock and awe should supply all kinds of fertile ground to grow lots of interesting things.
Tim has a hot bod.
Jason's quick ideas say that.
Karen's photograph is beautiful. Heather Garden is the one in Fort Tryon?
I went to the opening reception for "Now: Here: This" and met a number of the artists. I told them that I hoped they would all comment a lot and have an on-going dialogue.
They said I should start, and provoke them to respond.
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Thank you, artists, commenters and viewers, for participating in Now: Here: This. -Peter Ferko
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all work ©2004 by artists named