161 East 104th Street

I love how this regular four-story home in East Harlem has been retrofitted into the Church of the Living Hope. How awesome is this entrance?! (Rhetorical question because of course the answer is "totally".) And why? The facade color and form of the doorway are striking, yet the building's proportions are in keeping with those of neighboring buildings. There are no bulbous formations, big signs, bright lights--no decorations of any kind at all and yet the structure stood out from all others on the street and told me immediately it was a church. Oh! And the windows! I swoon.

shadow patterns on asphalt

There aren't many redeeming things about riding one's bike under an elevated train line--trains screech above you and drip things onto you, the road is narrower and blocked by pillars that also obscure needed sight lines--but! I look forward to the days where the sun's position is just right and filters through the rails to create a lattice work of light on the asphalt below. It's like gliding through ephemeral lace. Just lovely.

The Work of Whimsy

I came across this bike after enduring a four-hour standardized test on a Saturday. I can't tell you what it difference it made to my day. The artist has created a series of bicycles wrapped in "hand-crocheted skins" just left on street corners. She even camo-crocheted the Bull in Lower Manhattan--check it!: She's Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's current Artist-in-Residence, so I can't wait to come across more of her work on my lunch breaks. She's also exhibiting with the light-artist Devan Harlan on a series of crochet-light-installations involving bikes. The pieces might look something like the photo above left: The exhibit will be up at LZ Project Space on the LES (154 Stanton St) until March 12 (More info: nystudiogallery.com.) I kind of can't get enough of Olek, either -- nor can I believe it took me this long to come across her work. Look at this past collaboration! Wish I could have seen it in person! Sigh. I share with you instead: (All photos courtesy Olek except for top left)

Casey Loose

Fred Tomaselli creates these works with detailed collages of paper images, leaves—even pills—suspended in resin. The Brooklyn Museum of Art featured a retrospective of his pieces, complete with a video demonstrating his work process. Yet nowhere in the exhibition was there mention of the man who has been his assistant for years, who has been the one to painstakingly photocopy and cut out all the images then layered and arranged by Tomaselli in his paintings. Art tradition though that may be, it's bogus.

cold fuzzies

I do cherish these moments of loveliness, before the grime and slush take over. I love how snow frames and magnifies the dark gnarliness of tree branches; its white fluffiness turns what could be stark and sinister into something delicate and poignant.

"I deal with the portrayal of space"

I recently toured the new expansion of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond. In addition to rooms upon rooms of British horse portraits (originally acquired by the Mellon family) was a small but lovely collection of contemporary art, including this painting by the West German artist David Schnell. The canvas mesmerized me with its harsh strokes of precise perspective. Schnell moved to Leipzig after the Berlin Wall fell to study at the city's Academy of Art. You can glimpse the hopeful dreariness of Leipzig's landscape peaking through the door frame of a barn busting loose of gravity.

Cast Forest

Shadows on curtains at an L.A. fish taco restaurant in the afternoon light.