If you’re out and about at the art fairs in Manhattan this weekend, and still haven’t had the New York Close Up marathon viewing experience yet, then you’re in luck.  The (almost) entire series is going to be shown multiple times at NADA New York & Cutlog.

The good folks at NADA New York – now at Pier 36, between the Manhattan and Williamsburg bridges along the East River -  will be screening project films throughout the public run of the fair, from 10AM Friday May 10 to 5PM Sunday May 12.  Check out the monitors in the upper mezzanine level for the infinite loop.  Admission is free.  And while you’re there, you can also see the work of New York Close Up artist David Brooks; he’s suspended sections of his monumental “Desert Rooftops” public artwork (featured in the episode David Brooks Tears the Roof Off.)

And at New York-debuting art fair Cutlog, at the Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural & Educational Center in the Lower East Side, there’s two big viewing opportunities.  On Saturday, an indoor marathon screening from 10:30-2:30PM in the Little Theater.  And better yet (but weather pending of course) on Sunday night, an outdoor night screening in the back parking lot from 8PM to Midnight.  And better, better yet, my producing partner Wesley Miller and myself will be giving a talk before the Sunday night screening, at 7PM.

Hey, intrepid New York City art fair-goers:  if you’re taking a break from the Armory Show or are hanging around Chelsea for SCOPE, and have the completely understandable desire to watch every New York Close Up film to date (including trailers!), then drop by the Big Screen Plaza at 30th Street and 6th Avenue.  It’s between 1 and 4 p.m. this Saturday, March 9.  Hang out in the courtyard (actually looks like the weather may not be too bad) or better yet in the Eventi Hotel’s second floor bar/restaurant Humphrey Lounge (it overlooks the plaza.)  Rest your legs, grab a bite to eat, and watch all your favorite New York artists on the big, beautiful outdoor screen.  Or maybe just a couple of them.  We won’t say anything.

New York Close Up just made good on one New Years resolution:  see how we’re getting in better shape by checking out Tommy Hartung’s latest film, Tommy Hartung is Off and Running.

And I’m only partially joking.  While Tommy jogged, yours truly shot all of the interview from my bike – one hand on the handlebars and the other cradling a GoPro Hero brand camera.  It’s that little box Tommy is wearing on his head in the above pic.  Super compact and HD-capable, it’s become the go-to camera for any reality show car interior shooting (and the various real housewives are incessantly in their cars.)  It’s also become a standard part of the New York Close Up production tool kit.  Shooting POV in tight spaces?  Check.  See the spray painting shots in Keltie Ferris Spray Paints in Solitude.  Time lapse?  Check.  Watch Eddie Martinez’s antic moments in the Year Two Trailer.

And for don’t-try-this-at-home-I-am-a-professional mobile interviews we’ve got this latest episode.  The trickiest part wasn’t keeping Tommy in frame but not totally wiping out over the insidiously varied Queens terrain Tommy ran us thru.  From Ridge potato chip-like residential streets in Ridgewood to the uphill/downhill/dirt/sand/gravel/manure combination paths of Forest Park.  Fortunately no one was seriously injured in the production of this film.  But it was damn close.

CAPTION:  Artist Tommy Hartung in Forest Park (Queens, 09.11.12.)  Production still from the series “New York Close Up” © Art21, Inc. 2013.  Cinematography by Ian Forster.

is one of Keltie Ferris’ paintings from her latest exhibition at Mitchell-Inness & Nash (Chelsea, Manhattan.)  And maybe while he’s at it, Santa can throw in an Eddie Martinez work from his recent three-person show at Zach Feuer (also in Chelsea.)  Both New York Close Up artists are making big, hot, gorgeous abstractions at the moment.  And both shows are up til January 12.

CAPTION:  ++++****)))) by Keltie Ferris (2012.)  Oil, acrylic and pastel on canvas.  80 by 100 in.

No doubt many of you are aware of the damage Hurricane Sandy wrought on a significant number of Chelsea galleries.  Maybe a little less publicized but no less important (or sad) was the damage done to the Smack Mellon residency program in DUMBO.  It was bad.  Per the Smack Mellon website –  ”all the aritsts’ studios were flooded with six feet of water, destroying all contents including their artwork.  And the studio program’s media lab, kitchen, and wood shop also sustained severe damage.”

Fortunately, Smack Mellon resident – and New York Close Up artist – Shana Moulton came out relatively unscathed; she lost her work space there, but her art (video media especially) was safe at home.

And even more fortunately, the good folks at Art Fag City are dedicating this year’s Wienerfest & Fundraiser to Smack Mellon’s recovery efforts.   It’s this Sunday December 16, 3 to 7PM at Postmasters in Chelsea.  Fifty percent of full price ticket sales will go to Smack Mellon relief.

So if you’ve got the cash, Smack Mellon could really use your help.  Thanks.

Hey folks, I’m excited to announce that my New York Close Up co-producing partner Wesley Miller and myself will be part of a screening and discussion at the Apple Store Soho, New York City.  It’s this Tuesday, December 11 at 7PM, free and totally open to the public.  The event’s entitled “Creating the Portrait of an Artist: New York Close Up and Etsy,” and along with Etsy’s Senior Video Producer (and NYCU project friend) Tara Young, we’ll be talking about the pleasures and perils of producing short form arts documentaries for the web.  We’ll be screening films from the New York Close Up and Etsy catalog, and the discussion will be followed by an audience Q&A.

This is really the first public discussion of the New York Close Up series from the producers’ behind the scenes perspective.  So if you’re in the New York City area and want to learn more about the project’s whats, whys, and hows straight from the source, this is the time to do it.

And if you don’t already know about them, Etsy produces some great documentary shorts highlighting their (extremely large) roster of artist vendors.  Best way to check them out is to visit their blog.

Hope to see you there.

CAPTION:  Artist Erin Shirreff with Justin Martin in her studio (Greenpoint, Brooklyn, 04.20.12.)  Production still from the series “New York Close Up” © Art21, Inc. 2012.  Cinematography by Rafael Moreno Salazar.

Folks, our latest film is live – Erin Shirreff Takes Her Time.

One of the many pleasures in producing this one was getting to know Erin Shirreff and uncover her not immediately obvious Canadian-ness.  After our initial shoot in her Greenpoint studio – when she was still in the process of creating the video work Lake (the central focus of today’s New York Close Up release) – Erin passed along a YouTube link for a series of short films, produced and broadcast in Canada in the 80’s, that depict various Canadian national parks.  Films that Erin saw many, many times on television as a child (and judging from the YouTube comments, a whole generation of Canadians did as well.)  Films that are a loose but still significant inspiration for not just Lake but Erin’s general sensibility.

Un-Canadian as I am, I was totally hooked by the shorts’ instantly recognizable, early 80’s film to video texture, and the oddly melancholic tone.  Fortunately we were able to bookend our film on Erin with excerpts from a couple of the Parks Canada shorts.  But we were only able to include just a small portion of the interview detailing Erin’s unexpected history with these films.  So for the Canada-ophiles among you, below’s a more extended excerpt from our original interview:

ERIN SHIRREFF:  When I would get up on Saturday morning to watch cartoons with my brother, we would be lying in the family room, watching “Roadrunner” or “Dungeons and Dragons.” And in between the cartoons there would be these little vignettes that came out of nowhere and they had this very, very haunting music.  And it was just this sequence of images of the landscape in Canada.  And I remember one that had a loon, you know just floating along and this haunting loon call.  And then they were over and then we would go back to watching cartoons.

CAPTION:  Still from Parks Canada film, Point Pelee National Park, Ontario.

ES:  This was when I was five, six.  And I didn’t really think anything of them, but I guess they really lodged in my mind because years later I was living in New Mexico.  I was listening to this album by Boards of Canada (a band who’s actually from Scotland.)  And I heard this sort of strange echo of something that was really deeply familiar but I didn’t know what it was.  And I went online and was researching it and, and other people had kind of noted the same thing.  And they traced it back to the NFB, the National Film Board of Canada.  And then I started, started just trying to actually remember what those things were, those little pieces of TV.  And I talked to my brother about it and we both got super obsessed by it.

CAPTION:  Still from Parks Canada film, Kluane National Park Preserve, Yukon Territory.

ES:  And then actually just this past summer my brother sent me an email and the subject line was “this is going to blow your mind.”  And I clicked into it and it was a link to this amazing person on YouTube who had found all of these remnants [from the Parks Canada film series] and compiled them.  And when you click on them it’s like you’re instantly transported back to the carpet of my parents house.

CAPTION:  Still from “Degrassi Junior High” (circa 1989.)

ES:  The music [by composer Alain Clavier] ….  it’s very sort of disquieting music.  They’re very moody pieces and they, they to me seem really, really distinctly Canadian.  And Canadian of that time period.  They would not be produced now.  Just what that means is a hard question, because it’s sort of a cliché to say Canada’s identity is not having an identity.  I grew up with both Canadian culture and American culture and seeing both for themselves because they are so beside one another.  I grew up watching “Degrassi Junior High” and “90210,” two high school narratives that couldn’t be more different.  I always felt a certain amount of pride about being from the country that made “Degrassi Junior High.”  And I have a certain amount of pride in those shorts you know.  And it’s not a nationalistic thing, but they allow for an experience that isn’t necessarily happy or jingoistic or celebratory or triumphant, it’s just sort of there.  It pictures an equanimity with the wilderness.  Like you’re just sort of in it for a bit with your backpack and then you go back home.  It’s not like you are blazing a path down the middle of it or trying to colonize it in some way.  Here’s this hulking backyard that is out of anybody’s grasp.

Our first film with artist Josephine Halvorson – Close Encounters with Josephine Halvorson – just went live on Friday.  Please welcome her to the New York Close Up family by watching early and often!

When we first met with Josephine she was really excited about the kinds of story-telling possibilities that the New York Close Up documentary project can provide.  Especially the potential to tell the “making of” stories that are really central to her experience of her own work.  Well, in this first film we were able to tell the rather funny and vegetarian-alienating tale behind the making of “Carcass” (2011), a painting Josephine created on-site at a slaughterhouse in Iceland.  But over the course of a lot of conversations with Josephine, it was pretty clear that there was another on-location story that really needed to be told, the California-spanning saga behind her painting “Mine Site” (2011).  Unfortunately, it was just a little too intricately plotted and quietly tragic to fit inside the constraints of a happy-go-lucky 6+ minute New York Close Up episode.

So in the spirit of extending our films’ documentary spirit to the project website – and Josephine’s own search to incorporate the documentary into her practice – we present a fully illustrated, e-mail-original interview with Josephine about the creation of “Mine Site.”  And just as significantly, the painting she wasn’t able to make.

Josephine Halvorson:  In the video I speak about choosing objects to paint:  I am trying to have a meaningful exchange with something out in the world, where the painting is the medium between us.  But sometimes I choose a site to paint because I simply want to be in that environment.  And I think as New Yorkers we tend to idealize the idea of landscape anyway.  Openness itself is appealing.  Often my decision will be based on weather, light, or something as prosaic as being near a toilet.  Or I’ll just be stubborn and want to do a painting because I have my materials on me, even if I don’t have much inclination.  Mostly those paintings don’t work out, but I do tend to have a good time.  I find I make my best work when I’m neither a tourist, nor at home.

CAPTION:  Artist Josephine Halvorson painting “Tregardock” (2011) in Tregardock, England (July 7, 2011.)  Photograph courtesy Josephine Halvorson.

JH:  For years I’ve been going to coastal northern California to paint and visit friends.  I went out there about a year and a half ago, in the spring of 2011. I’d taken some time off from teaching and knew I had a chunk of time to paint.  But my excitement was dampened by an immense amount of rain.  And I enjoy painting in the rain.  I love the rain.  But it was the kind of rain you couldn’t even drive in; it came down so constantly and so hard.  And this was also right around the time of the Japanese tsunami.  I painted “Steam Donkey Valve” (which was in my show “What Looks Back” at Sikkema Jenkins & Co.) on the day after the tsunami, in Jackson State Forest in Mendocino County.  It was of a valve component of a larger machine – called a steam donkey – which hauled redwoods out of the forest. I encountered it only because I was rerouted due to road closures from the coastal flooding.

CAPTION:  Artist Josephine Halvorson painting “Steam Donkey Valve” (2011) in Jackson State Forest, outside Willits, California (March 14, 2011.)  Photograph courtesy Josephine Halvorson.

JH:  I finished this painting by putting up a plastic shelter over my set-up.  But in the next couple of days the rain became more incessant and refused to stop!  Because I desperately wanted to paint I ended up driving to the only place on the weather map where it was clear: Death Valley.  I drove, I guess it must have been 12 hours, until I found this tiny town, Tecopa, right on the California/Nevada border about two hours west of Las Vegas.  I had about a week remaining at this point, and was really surprised by how I responded to this area.  I loved it there and had a feeling it would be good for my work.

Tecopa, it turned out, was a defunct mining town.  I sniffed out the old mining camps which were south of town up on a mountain.  No one’s spending the money to mine the hills anymore, even though you can see the streaks of the ore that shoot through the mountains.  So there are very few jobs.  It’s very bleak economically.  And there’s no money for any kind of historical preservation.  I made a painting up at one of these mining sites, and at one point looked down at my feet and I was standing on bullet casings, a can opener and similar remnants.  People had just discarded stuff that might be in a museum if the site were in a different part of the country.  This was such a vibrant place for mining and for the American west and it’s just gotten completely forgotten about, put on hold, ignored.

CAPTION:  Entry from artist Josephine Halvorson’s personal log.  Courtesy Josephine Halvorson.

JH:  These are my notes about painting at Columbia 2 Mining Camp:  “I finished a two-day painting up on Columbia 2 mining site today.  Just southeast of Tecopa are several mining sites all within eyesight of each other. Talc depositories are also visible, as are so many peaks of mountains.  Every inch of horizon is filled with hills and mountains, layered against each other, changing colors.  The sun was strong and despite the sun block I felt tired, fried and sunburned.  And then yesterday’s wind was much fiercer.  I initially put my canvas on the easel and I guess the wind blew it over like a sail and ripped apart the wooden brace of my easel.  So I was able to put the canvas inside the car, which is how I ended up doing the painting.”  And this painting made it into the Sikkema Jenkins show.  I called it “Mine Site.”

CAPTION:  Artist Josephine Halvorson’s painting-in-progress “Mine Site” (2011) outside Tecopa, California (March 21, 2011.)  Photograph courtesy Josephine Halvorson.

JH:  Well the interesting thing is “Mine Site” looks exactly like a still life, as does the actual mining site itself – strewn pieces of metal, residual components of machines scattered around concrete foundations.  I went back and forth between calling this painting “Desert Still Life” and “Mine Site.”  But no, I didn’t place any of these things here, they were there.  They were found.  But it looks like I put them there, it looks like a still life.  And I liked that.  I also liked thinking about how they might have gotten there.  They were too heavy and awkward to have blown there.  So someone must have put them there.  But who, and why?

CAPTION:  Josephine Halvorson, “Mine Site,” 2011.  Oil on linen.  29 × 39 inches.  Courtesy of Sikkema Jenkins & Co.

JH:  But “Mine Site” was not the painting I originally wanted to make.  My intention was to paint this large machine, a diesel compressor, which probably provided power to operate the mining equipment.  The first painting I’d started was thwarted when the easel was blown over.  The wooden legs broke when it hit the ground.  I’d replaced the problems of rain with those of wind.  Instead I made “Mine Site” by half-erecting my easel in the back of my car, and reversing as close to the site as I could.

CAPTION:  Diesel compressor at Columbia 2 Mining Camp outside Tecopa, California (March, 2011.)  Photograph courtesy Josephine Halvorson.

JH:  So what ended up happening was six months later I went back to Death Valley to paint the compressor.  I had to wait until October, when the summer’s heat dissipated.  But when I returned with all my painting equipment and conviction for this object, it had disappeared!  After what could have been 70 years of being there, it was gone.  And this was probably a whole ton’s worth of steel.  I’m pretty sure someone stole it to make money from the scrap, which is understandable in the context of that economy.  But I couldn’t believe it because I’d come all the way back out to Death Valley.  I’d flown into Las Vegas and rented a car and made my way to Tecopa, then drove eight miles south of town and a mile up into the mountains where I risked puncturing my tires…  It was heartbreaking that it didn’t work out.  I guess you win some, and you lose some.

CAPTION:  Cement foundation (without diesel compressor) at Columbia 2 Mining Camp outside Tecopa, California (October, 2011.)  Photograph courtesy Josephine Halvorson.

JH:  The compressor was a great machine.  It had been pushed over onto its side, thousands of dried maggots beneath it.  It had a long face with a cylindrical “nose” that resembled Pinocchio’s.  And on its rusted side someone had spray-painted the word, “Shame,” S-h-a-m-e.  I hadn’t realized what that really meant until I returned six months later and it was no longer there.  To me it was such a shame that it was gone and I had missed my opportunity to paint it.  So in a way the word “Shame” anticipated my own disappointment.  I thought I should have known it was going to disappear because of the word.  Also because the “S” was slightly larger it looked like it was the machine’s name.  And I kept thinking about that 1950’s Western, “Shane,” when the boy continually calls out, “Shane, where are you? Shane, come back!”  And as I was driving up the rocky track up to the mining site, I thought just for a moment that it might not be there, like a premonition. And when I saw it wasn’t there I cried, and kept hearing my own voice calling out, “Shame where are you?”  It was just so sad and I felt like I had let it down, like it was dying up there and I didn’t return in time.  And I let myself down too. It was difficult.

I remember calling my father the next day and telling him what had happened.  He suggested that the machine might have killed or hurt someone.  These mines really are harrowing.  You look right down a 45-degree tunnel of darkness into the earth.  And these are huge machines without much safety protocol.  So I could almost believe that.  I hadn’t thought of that scenario until he mentioned it.  And then I thought, maybe this machine does have blood on its hands, that there was some reason why I wasn’t meant to paint it afterall.

CAPTION:  Columbia 2 Mining Camp outside Tecopa, California.  Photograph courtesy Josephine Halvorson.   

Well, with the housing crisis and all, he could only get the rooftops done. Check our latest video – David Brooks Tears the Roof Off – to make sense of it all.

David is a man of many words, many of which we just weren’t able to fit into the 7+ minute final film. So below is a more extended interview with David about his Art Production Fund-commissioned public artwork Desert Rooftops (the work featured in the film), south Florida as the “Sixth Borough,” and the importance of getting the skateboarders’ seal of approval.

Nick Ravich:  Why is south Florida so important for you? What’s the relationship between New York City and Florida?

David Brooks:  South Florida does receive an abnormal amount of traffic from New Yorkers, both in its heydays of development, and today with its proximity to New York as a getaway or cultural siphon. Thus, much to the chagrin of the locals, it is sometimes referred to as the “Sixth Borough.” Ugh. More importantly, south Florida is an extremely rare confluence of land, coral, freshwater, brackish water, saltwater – the nexus of the Atlantic seaboard, Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico and Everglades watershed.

It’s also the site of failed megalomaniac development (developers tried to drain the Everglades around 1904 to build hotels where Florida panthers once roamed), industrial agriculture, an active landing for Cuban raft refugees, a bottlenecked flyway for migratory birds, an economic gateway for South America, the only place on the planet where alligators and crocodiles cohabitate, the host of Art Basel Miami each winter, two of the world’s rarest mammals… I could go on, but I’ll save it for the book. South Florida has become the poster child for environmentalists. They say if we can resolve the problems that exist between nature and culture in south Florida, then we can resolve those issues anywhere on the globe since the situation in south Florida is so extreme on all fronts.

NR: …and the connection to Desert Rooftops, the public art project in New York City?

DB:  Even though Desert Rooftops is an installation that makes formal and conceptual comparisons between the building vernacular of suburban sprawl and the biological process of desertification (land degradation from over-development and over-cultivation, resulting in arid and depleted landscapes inhospitable to other life), it’s only natural that a discussion came out regarding south Florida when documenting the work. South Florida is a place that has gone through some the biggest population and building booms in the modern era. It’s highly sensitive to fluctuations in the housing market, and of course there’s the recession. These effects are very visible and impact the local ecology rapidly and dramatically, which I’ve been witnessing for the last 20 years.  And, this damn sprawl and desertification thing is such an old story, but one whose moral is forgotten faster than a lightening strike on a coconut palm.

NR:  What was it like working in Times Square?

DB:  Intense. We had some interesting “conversations” with the many unions in that part of the city, and eventually came to an “agreement” with them. We were scrutinized by every agency, public and private, within the first 15 minutes of the first day of work onsite. The dynamic of forces at play in such a hotbed of commerce and real estate is humbling. Also, the passersby’s’ comments were worth the whole project: Is this a roofing school? Are these roofs for an underground nightclub? Are these roofs for a new shopping center? When are you going to raise the rooftops? Or, my favorite, when the fire department wanted to do a controlled burn and drill on it… Even the skateboarders had their airtime, as the project’s skate-ability was critiqued on a skater blog site within the first week. That was fulfilling for me, as it finally united all my worlds at once: art, nature, and thrashing.

NR:  So what happened to the project after it concluded in February 2012?

DB:  We went to great lengths to make sure the piece could be disassembled to salvage its materials for reuse. The irony is that these construction materials were donated to not-for-profit organizations that supply building materials for real homes, like Build It Green and Habitat For Humanity. So there is a piece of the sculpture built into someone’s home right now, unbeknownst to them. Ha.

CAPTION:  Art Production Fund-commissioned public artwork Desert Rooftops by David Brooks.  Times Square, Manhattan (11.16.11.) Production still from the series “New York Close Up” © Art21, Inc. 2012.

Hot off the Mac Pro tower (well, hot off the Mac Pro tower yesterday), our latest film – Eddie Martinez Whistles While He Works.

I have to admit – shooting the material that forms the heart of this film, an afternoon in Eddie Martinez’s studio in Greenpoint, Brooklyn – was one of the more intense, enlightening, and privileged shoot experiences I’ve had on location for the New York Close Up project.

It was our second shoot day together.  The crew showed up – just myself, the very gifted camera man Rafa Salazar, and a compact HDSLR camera package – at the studio and Eddie immediately dived in to a new painting.  I really mean dived in, spray painting before the primer had time to truly set.  Before the shoot, Rafa and I had talked about a handheld, stalking, almost predatory approach.  The operative metaphor was a boxing match, and we were Eddie’s opponent, bobbing and weaving in and around Eddie as he in turn boxed against his painting.  I knew from previously shooting with Eddie that I wanted to visually dramatize Eddie’s very physical process with our own kind of pointed movement.

And Eddie certainly delivered the punches.  With spray paint, rags, spray bottles, scrapers, and thumbs Eddie literally attacked the painting.  And Rafa followed along with, establishing a darting rhythm in time with Eddie’s movements.  As a frustrated painter and in general, a plodding worker myself, watching Eddie was a liberating lesson in just getting your marks, literally your first thoughts down, and building quickly from there.  As a documentary producer, Eddie’s open-ness to us, the physical proximity he allowed us to himself and his process, felt like a very rare thing.   By the end of the day, Eddie was happy with what was really just a first stage in the long process of making a painting.  But I felt we had documented something complete in its own right.

There’s no doubt been a healthy supply of films depicting painters working in their studio over the years.  But despite the saturation, I had faith that an intensely focused portrait of Eddie in the studio would deliver something more than the norm, that it could add something new to the old experience of painter’s painting.  I hope it panned out.

CAPTION:  Artist Eddie Martinez paints in his Greenpoint, Brooklyn studio (2.23.12.) Production still from the series “New York Close Up” © Art21, Inc. 2012.