Talk In New York

Risk! Danger! Supreme skill! Independence! Confidence boosting! Bonding! Social impact! Global Community!

Supportive Leadership of Steve Vaccaro Saluted by Founder and Applauded

A forest of bikes outside the Unitarian Church showed who the main audience was for the selection of many shorts and some long movies about bikers around the world shown there last night, in dozens of well executed portrayals of bikers and their worlds which had been carefully chosen by a panel of three from a thousand watched from December through April. Maybe that sounds laborious but as one of the judges, the festival producer Mandy, said, “the process is rather like dating”, in that winners and losers are quickly identified, and the real work is choosing “according to the themes we want to present.”

We caught 18 shorts in the last two programs from 8pm onwards, all of them vivid and dynamic presentations with themes to do with how serious biking brings health, confidence, recognition, bonding, community, social responsibility and reform, and even cash among many blessings even in countries with limited early participation such as Nigeria and Nepal, not to mention the danger of crashes, injuries and inevitably some deaths that go along with speeding with very little protection..

As can still be glimpsed at BicycleFilmFestival in the BFF 2018 COMPILATION on the front page there were indelible images galore from Canons and GoPros closely following rash bikers going all out in fast traffic hanging on to the sides and backs of trucks and SUVs, racing through lethal gaps between buses and vans without pausing, turning sharply and slipping past cars cutting them off with deadly carelessness, stopping dead so that the bike can be climbed like a standing sculpture, driving backwards and forwards up and down hills with the front wheel at right angles (No Rest Dir Matt Reyes), speeding through crowded city alleys or hurtling through woods and over rocks and down mountains with sheer abandon, and much other evidence that competitive foolhardiness in bikers reaches extremes to match the powered skateboarders who race down Carnegie Hill on the Upper East Side through Lexington and Third Avenue cross lights as if protected by the Gods from inevitable self destruction.

Not that the videos left out the crashes and spills that bikers suffer in “the most dangerous sport of all” (Tenzin Dir Bob Blankemeier) which it seems their poor mothers often feel should be secondary to studying and looking for a job, including one in Nepal who desperately sold her teen son’s precious first bike for scrap but was unable to stop him welding pipes together to build another, on which he founded a career in cycle acrobatics and racing which saw him soon earn three times the most his parents had ever been paid (RJ Ripper Dir Joey Schusler).

But beyond all the fearless tempting of fate and tricks of consummate skill such as climbing half a tall wall as part of a show off trip around Lagos in Nigeria (Lagos BMX Crew Dir Fraser Byme) there were all the ways in which biking is enhancing and liberating the lives of young men and increasingly women (“Most people are more capable than they realise – we teach them to kick ass on a bike. We change their lives forever!” Ride Like A Girl Dir Jon Lynn) who might have no other worthwhile outlet for their energy and adventurism. All over the world it seems that expert biking is bringing social benefits to enhance the whole lives of dedicated participants. One group in London gets youths to put away their knives and join in biking to leave gang warfare behind (Knives Down Bikes Up Dir Dir Mike Dempsey).

Thus Nigerians pursuing BMX skills like climbing walls say “It makes me feel anything is possible! We have BMX to express our feelings. I feel real.” (Lagos BMX Crew Dir Fraser Byme); Indians find their city of Delhi beneath their pedals can be explored with unlimited scope – (“ganja cant show you the city, push the pedals and let your childhood take over!” Jimmy Jimmy Dir Anuj Khurana), and New Yorkers find independence and even international recognition in the bike messenger cultural scene (“I am not going to let the system stop me from doing what I want to do” – Speedwalking NYC Dir Matt Sezer)

Perhaps the most heroic figure of the night was Jacques Houotis, the 82 year old Frenchman who seemingly had nine lives and had broken every bone in his body at one time or another but surmounted all obstacles with merry laughter, supreme optimism and a catch phrase “No Problem” he’d use after every painful spill, attempted murder, heart attack and near drowning (caught in a car underwater he nearly gave up but his hand finally found the window lowering handle and his rescuers were able to press the water out of his lungs – “No Problem!”) who is just as Gung Ho at 82 to leap into the saddle and shoot off down a steep and snowy mountain side as he has been all his life, not to mention as likely to kiss or be kissed by every woman in his vicinity (The Frenchy Dir Michelle Smith). After all his close calls, he said, “everything I do is a bonus!”

In comments after the showings filmmakers expressed their appreciation of the risks involved in pushing bikes to the limit in traffic or mountainside but admired the achievement imnvolved nonetheless. “Yeah people risk their lives all the time but the worst last day of their lives won’t be meeting the person they could have been.” There was also blame for drivers: “Something I really fucking hate is losing friends to careless drivers”. White memorial bikes mark the deaths of bikers in New York City where 27 were killed in 2017. and there is a site at www.ghostbikes.org listing them (Fight To Live A Cyclist Story Dir Kenneth Sousie) But riding which can be “the loneliest thing in the world” is also the freest way to go or as one woman put it in that same video “I thought why am I getting paid nothing to sit behind a desk when I can get paid nothing and be on my bike!”

In a wrap up at the end the founder of the ever burgeoning festival Brendt Barbur said it was the best so far in 19 years and paid tribute to the lawyer Steve Vaccaro for his growing role in leading the biking community in New York as well as his role in fighting for compensation for bikers hurt and sometimes killed on their vulnerable trips around the city. But sometimes the injuries come without anyone to blame. We sat next to a young Jeff and his wife Canzia both cyclists who had had to deal with a faceplant by Jeff onto a road which had ruined his jaw and front teeth which had been very well repaired at Bellevue so no traces of the accident remained.

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Bike Movie Fest Coming Up

Are you a fanatic, obsessive or plain appreciator of the virtues of getting on a bike and finding the exhilarating freedom and scope involved in peddling two wheels over city roads and mountain landscapes?

Make haste and attend the upcoming 19th Annual Bicycle Film Festival of 2019 at various venues including the First Unitarian Church 119 Pierrepont St Brooklyn for the mammoth screening of films on June 15 Sat (6 to Borough Hall and walk).

One sponsor we hear who is supporting the festival is the noted law firm of Vaccaro and White, of active cyclists Steve Vaccaro and Adam White. The remarkably athletic Vaccaro like his partner is an urban and international cyclist whose legal talents in acting for cyclists in New York City, and winning them compensation when they are the undeserving victims of accidents caused by dangerous drivers and other road hazards, are celebrated by his clients and feared by the companies he sues on their behalf.

Among the offerings:

COLOMBIA – CYCLING OBSESSION
Colombia, UK 2018 11 min.
Dir. Flavia Cappellini, Mike Deppe

The country has a secret obsession: its love for road cycling. Featuring Colombian cycling legends Rigoberto Urán, Lucho Herrera, Cochise Rodríguez, Luis Fernando Saldarriaga and Raúl Mesa

THE IMPOSSIBLE RIDE
USA 2019 16 min.
Dir. Eben Hall

Who is the fastest cyclist on the planet? She is a woman named Denise Mueller. Great Big Story presents her journey to beat the land speed world record on a bicycle of both men and women.

I’M NOT STOPPING
Switzerland 2018 15 min.
Dir. Rugile Kaladyte

Lael Wilcox won the Trans Am Bike Race across the United States overall. She races her first ultra-endurance competition in Europe, the Navad1000, a 1000-kilometer-long self-supported mountain bike race that climbs 30,000 meters and crosses nearly the entire country of Switzerland

MOTHERLOAD
USA 2019 86 min.
Dir. Liz Canning

On her quest for a deeper connection in an increasingly isolated and digital world, director Liz Canning found an answer in cargo bikes. She shares this experience while exploring sustainability, consumption, and how something as simple as a bike can reshape ideas about transportation and freedom.

COLOMBIA – CYCLING OBSESSION
Colombia, UK 2018 11 min.
Dir. Flavia Cappellini, Mike Deppe

The country has a secret obsession: its love for road cycling. Featuring Colombian cycling legends Rigoberto Urán, Lucho Herrera, Cochise Rodríguez, Luis Fernando Saldarriaga and Raúl Mesa

Surprisingly original and interesting works are found at the Clio Art Fair, labeled as the “Anti-Fair for Independent Artists”. The event is worth knowing about since, without prominent advertising or publicity fanfare, it is devoted to works by independent artists, and mounted twice a year in Manhattan. Judging from the latest autumn edition it is something which all interested in art generated by individual passion and dedication, and separated off from the commercial engine of gallery and media-generated trends, should visit, with a good chance to notice and acquire works not yet on the publicity treadmill, which appeal to one’s personal taste and acquisitiveness.

At the entrance on 335 West 35 Street off Ninth Avenue, high white walls and ceiling surround the generous white partitions on which displays are hung in individual artist booths, stretching in two lanes to the far back wall

Among many artists there doing good and interesting work without a commercial gallery boosting their appeal, though not without hope of investment as well as emotional gain for buyers if bought from the artists before they are ‘discovered’, were these:

Slawek explains his selection of four of his thematic and story telling “Reflections” to fellow exhibitor Catherine Lee from faraway Sydney in a show who draws artists of all kinds and regions globally

One standout in terms of individual voice and imaginative technical flair was Polish born, Indianapolis resident Stanislaw Goc, who signs his photographs simply with his familiar name Slawek.

Slawek, Top, September 11th, Aluminum plate, 24.5″ x 33″, $1,700 and Old Jew, Aluminum plate, 24.5″ x 33″, $1,800

“Light is the master of my world” says Slawek, whose individual initiative in his work is one he announces as Reflections: one of a kind photography. The title marks a technique in which he follows his muse by seeking inspiring juxtapositions of sidewalk window displays, and sometimes windscreens, and the reflections of passers by and the architecture of the city that the glass simultaneously presents. To discover this theater of light and image he is constantly adventuring with his camera, shooting stills and short movies. “I can’t sleep at night wondering where I will go next!”

The dual compositions yield intriguing themes, uncovered by Slawek’s imagination, which are both culturally resonant and as evocative as any intentionally staged. This is true even though his open-minded search comes upon them unexpectedly, he says, in a voyage of discovery which is initially more serendipity than purposeful. Yet in being liberated from narrow expectation, in the manner of Henri Cartier-Bresson and other great photographers, he finds totally original and rather painterly compositions which he prints on aluminum plate with little cropping or alteration.

Networking with other independent artists is a big benefit of the Clio Fair – here Slawek explains his aims to fellow artist exhibitor from Sydney Catherine Lee

The pleasure of explaining one’s aims to a working colleague

Art market conundrum

Artists who have to make their own decisions about what to present to the public far from their working studio can be forgiven if they play their hand more cautiously than they would naturally like, since they are faced with the marketing problems which agents and galleries exist to take off their hands, especially in New York which is a dynamic market unlike any other.

Slawek seemed to be an example of this overly cautious approach to marketing his work in New York for when he opened his portfolio of his past years of work it revealed many images that at first sight seemed more striking and complex than the four he brought on this trip from Indianapolis, although the Old Jew and Dilemma (the two hung on the right) were distinct, but perhaps this was because the figures and faces in his portfolio selection were inevitably more immediate in impact.

Slawek shared his Reflections portfolio book of other examples of his oeuvre which seemed more immediately intriguing that the four he chose to exhibit

A closer look at the page opened above

On the left page, Slawek’s Dilemma, which he included in the Clio Fair, with his comment that the representation of 9/11 combines a face crossed with a stream of blood

Inappropriate restraint

Another artist who seemed to have held back her most powerful work was Catherine Lee, a painter with studios in Sydney and London, whose printed resume stated her aim was to produce “engaging and thoughtful provoking work … to amplify socially controversial and provocative topics that are often considered taboo”.

Catherine Lee from Sydney, Australia presented six works which some might have viewed as less dynamic and engaging than the works in her portfolio which she also had with her, though certainly less likely to be banned by the puritanical administration of her art school.

Yet her paintings at Clio were far from provocative. The problem may have been Catherine Lee’s experience in running into a provincial mindset at her art school in Sydney before she graduated. A bluenose administrator literally imposed a censoring curtain on her sexually explicit images in the school’s annual show, and this absurd event seems to have had the unfortunate effect of curbing her unrestrained exploration of feelings aroused by the electricity of sexual contact. Instead of more works in that line, her choice of paintings to display in New York leaned far into the abstract compared with her powerful earlier work, which was nevertheless readily available in her portfolio as above and below. Many more examples at at Rosestorm in the UK show that she has not been inhibited in the slightest in the years since graduation on any other continent than here.

Catherine Lee shows two of her works not shown in her exhibit, Pressures and their Places (right) and (illegible) on the left, in a series on the theme of sexual emotions that was to us far more developed and creative than the abstracts she hung on the wall at the show, a contrast seen in Slawek’s showing as well.

A single image of Pressures and their Places, in her portfolio of the dynamic and expressive series which perhaps clarifies why it won her a provincial minded censoring at her art school exhibition at the start of her international career

She was also able to show us on her phone an image of herself standing outside her exhibit in Sydney carrying a notice which expressed the strong exception she took to the untoward repression of her artistic instincts.

Catherine Lee’s answer to the banning of her strongly themed art from the annual show at her art school was to dress in appealing lingerie and stand outside her curtained exhibit with a notice that read “The university believes that you are not intelligent enough to decide what level of erotic art you want to see. I have therefore been forced to present a censored piece for this exhibition. This is my way of displaying my work in a free way and to add what they have tried to take away.”

There were other artists of note who did seem to have brought their most dynamic work, however. Among them were two whose methods involved a novel way to use materials. Bryant Small from New Jersey brought stained glass into the 21st Century by dissolving high pigmented dye in alcohol and spraying or using gravity by tilting his canvas of acid free paper made from plastic pellets, as he drops the transparent paint onto the surface in what he describes as a “dance” in which he channels the flow and “sometimes I win, sometimes it does!”

The resultant multi colored works have “the stability of a rock” he says once they dry. “I paint from a happy place, ” he says. “I am not one of those tortured artists. I listen to music when I create – dance, party music, or even slow in a good place. Art gave me the freedom of liberation, ” he added. “I am a cancer survivor from Hodgkin’s and non Hodgkins disease, and chemo, ten years ago, it was a disaster, a horrific year and a half. I was at stage three when I started, even though I was not a smoker or a drinker. But I was in fight mode.”

Bryant Small was exhibiting work with an unusual method to accomplish his canvases

Detail of the above work by Bryant Small

Bryant Small discusses his unusual approach to fashioning his work with an enquirer

Rachel Goldsmith creates her paintings with an electric pen that extrudes her chosen color in plastic onto a surface formed by an array of wires

LauraLee Franco beside her Storm Fear (2017) Oil paint charcoal 60″ x 40″ $2500

Surprise ending

Perhaps the most remarkable result at the fair was which artworks sold out completely. The whole group of photographs hung on the wall by Denver’s Amanda J. Armstrong emded up with red dot stickers, even though the nature of the images might have led some viewers to feel they were the least likely to find buyers of all the art in the Fair.

Is there a lesson in the fact that the entire wall of these grotesqueries by photographer Amanda J. Armstrong of Denver sold out? Was it a signal that New Yorkers seek emotional impact above all in their art purchases, and that even the sensationally ugly may fit their requirements very well?

A closer look at one of the works by which sold out from Amanda J. Armstrong, The Body Obscura #2, 2018, a photograph, 20″ x 16″, framed at $300

More

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Although she lives in Paris, art advisor Angel Guyot as the projest manager assistant ran the Clio Art Fair from the entrance tables during its four days from Thursday to Sunday Oct 11-14

Background
(Publicity) NY CLIO ART FAIR The “anti-fair” focused solely on independent artists, returns for its seventh edition.
“The Anti-Fair for Independent Artists (http://www.clioartfair.com) is waiting for you in its 7th edition, October 11-14, 2018, 335 west 35th street, New York; the NY CLIO ART FAIR is a curated fair created with the idea of discovering independent artists and showcasing the careers and achievements of already affirmed creative minds.”

A showcase for painters and other flat surface artists who are active professionals independent of galleries and institutions, the annual New York Clio Art Fair has for four years showed a variety of art free of group identity or oversight, and with a very wide range of techniques and topics, and offered many opportunities for artists to make contacts and to visitors to find uniquely appealing and innovative work to admire and buy.

With the huge array of choice tea blends on the wall, the three globes of AthleTeas are lined up for tasting on the counter of a crowded store

Tea lovers gather at Harney’s to taste Athleteas for athletes, latest three of over 250 blends

Harney’s in Soho is a rich resource for tea lovers, presenting for tasting, purchase or sit down enjoyment leaves from sources in India, China and Ceylon and as far flung as Rwanda or even Italy (dried olive leaves from the South) mixed into over two hundred and fifty inventive but rich and always tasteful blends from Sally’s Secret black tea with its notes of Black Pepper and Rosepetal to the distinctly earthy but still delicate Rwanden RuGeri, a tea benefiting from the slow processing possible in Rwanda which escapes the humidity and heat of India, to Osmanthus Oolong, with its tiny flowers from Fujian Province in China turned into a heap of particles which yield such a dense tea that it can be infused more than once as its flavor develops.

Tasting at Harney’s demands full attention to the subtleties of expert blending

This afternoon’s event marked the new partnership between Harney’s and Dr Mara Smith, the specialist in tutoring Olympic athletes how to train their bodies with the right mental attitude to reach peak performance, by presenting three different new ‘Athleteas’ for sampling at the tasting counter of Harney’s long and recently efficiently remodeled retail space which is on the south side of Broome Street just East of Broadway. The middle of the extensive wooden counter featured three glowing rosy round globes of AthleTea, one for ‘performance’ with caffeine (orange mango) and one for ‘performance’ without caffeine (Get Your Passion Berry AthleTea) and one for ‘recovery’ without caffeine (the soothing Go to Goji).

Dr. Mara Smith designed her new blends for Harneys to enhance athletes mindfulness of past and future performance

All this according to Mara, a warm, lively woman in sturdy black spectacles who believes that tea drinking is the way for high performing athletes “to carve out time for reflection on past progress and to focus forward” on future accomplishment, and is working with many athletes who now wish to move from health drinks toward tea. Of course this should appeal as well to all healthy people who are not actually athletes, she says, since as the Nike saying has it “If you have a body you are an athlete!”

Apart from the large canisters of specialty teas that line the wall behind the serving counter in a solid block of 250 teas, Harney’s has a small space at the back for people to sit with tea or even coffee (recently added) and a slew of intriguing extras to buy lining the wall opposite, including “Homesick” candles to remind one of home, tumblers with inscriptions like NEW YORK HOME, decorated mugs especially for “Little Miss Busy”, “Mr Grumpy”, “Little Miss Chatterbox” and other children, attractive leaf motif tote bags, and black baseball caps with legends front and rear (“Hello with “Goodbye”, or “Books” with “Join The Club” , or “This is Tea” and “Harneys”.)

Tea enthusiast Michele presents the three AthleTeas now available to make you pause and be mindful of past and future considerations in your athletic progress

Mousing the Google map of Harney’s location on Broome just East of Broadway in Soho (take the Lex subway to Spring) and you notice that there is no listing for thousands of Yelp or Google reviews as for other much less notable places. Yet there are often crowds outside the doors when it opens at 10.30am daily (closes 6.30pm)

Evidently Harneys is discreetly British in style in selling itself as well as its tea by relying on word of mouth to advertise its top tea level social and commercial presence, for as the cap says, truly “This is Tea, Harneys”. Yet in only seven years it has established this, still the only offshoot of its home base in Millerton, in upstate New York, as indeed the tea place in New York par excellence.

Emeric Harney has remodeled the store into a beautifully efficient system for selling his top teas, and plans to expand the seating for those who wish to sample them along with crumbly scones with clotted cream right then and there

One can only hope that, as Emeric Harney the third generation owner of this flagship in fashionable Soho now crowded with visitors from foreign countries where tea is often more established than here, says is the plan, Harneys expands the size and comfort of its restricted seating area to a level consonant with its leadership of what one hopes will be a continuing advance of the more enlightened and healthy alternative to coffee in too caffeine addicted New York City.

Freedom through music
An unobtrusive comedy much better than the simple description in the Soho International Film Festival program at Village East Cinema at 2nd Ave and 12th st, The Eccentrics: On the Sunny Side of the Street is an intelligent Polish mix of amusing social commentary, spy mystery, and political satire which is also a fine philosophical celebration of upbeat, soulful swing as a come together refuge from atrocious politics, in this case the wooden and dangerous absurdities of Communism in the fifties in beleaguered Poland.

This very accomplished film is a delicate, many petaled rose of good humor, satirical intelligence and unexpected takes on what would be in lesser hands a straightforward tale, but after a brief slow start when the underlying deadly seriousness of the Polish war and postwar experience is quickly established, every scene is made interesting by a skilfully provocative script by Wlodzimierz Kowalewski (it’s his original novel) and effortless acting by all.

A wholly interesting and amusing standout shouldn’t be blushing unseen on the festival program at Village East Cinema (189 2nd Avenue), where it will be run once at 8pm-10pm on Tuesday, June 20, and we advise anyone with a taste for worldly wit and emotional teasing of the most sophisticated yet pointed kind, the most achieved in Polish comedy that has been seen in Manhattan for years, should make sure to catch it.

For that will be the only chance here to catch what is the current cap from 2015 to director Janusz Majewski’s body of work which is widely admired in Poland and abroad. The Eccentrics unreels a deadpan saga where every scene is a pleasing turn and interesting surprise, from the unexpected bonding of official and suspect just returned from London exile over a piano which leads to the suspiciously easy recruitment of good players for his big band renditions of American Patrol and many other top tunes, to the romantic denouement where the uphill seduction by our hero of his personally challenging lead singer (“I won’t tell! – the less you know the more you’ll care!” is her reply to his post success inquiry as to her past life) crumbles catastrophically, revealing that it is political machinations behind the scenes which fill the story with intriguing off kilter interruptions.

Book Expo 2017 May 31 Wed-Jun 2 Fri: Nothing like this huge, multilayered annual celebration of books, the ultimate in handy briefings of the cutting edge on science and current affairs of every field. A great must-go event, bursting with books and book fans of every kind, booksellers, popular authors, and long lines for signed copies of current and future hits.

But key aspect is that it also contains academic press treasure troves of past, present or forthcoming individually polished gems of scholarship and independent research in science and other solid topics, works which unlike the daily or even weekly or monthly media news and talk shows benefit from authors who take personal responsibility for the accuracy and quality of their work, completed outside the confines of government and corporate walls where censors and pr spokesmen prowl.

So get excited about BookExpo coming up fast in NYC at Javits on May 31 Wed to June 2 Fri, its for all those interested in books on paper between hard or soft covers as the last easily available repository of the latest worthwhile information from independent authors that unlike the fleeting smartphone or desktop screen display does not vanish into virtual reality, but remains stationery on the page ready for reference with precise marking or emendation or query in the margin, inside real physical books placed within manual grasp on a nearby bookshelf, or displayed open on the desk next to the working screen, or on the bedside table to stabilise one’s last waking moment before peaceful slumber induced by the restful quiet of the night broken only by the turn of the page, that’s what we are talking about and looking forward to – Manhattan’s greatest annual showplace of ideas!

In our case, our particular interest is the state of the academic publishing industry as part of it gravitates to competing more significantly with the trade press, which renders a lot of deep data more accessible, and in the state of science publishing, especially in the first days of a new era where the new President of the US is apparently happy to remain in total ignorance of what science reveals about the state of the world and its future, and to contradict it whenever it conflicts with his personal interests and profit motive, or his belief in himself as the most admirable human being in the world.