Personism

Hint

Design George Nelson, 1958.
Walnut, laminate top, plastic drawers, chromed steel tubing. Made by Herman Miller.

I'm still lying on my couch typing. We just leased some studio space around the corner from the gallery, and that studio needs a desk. Nearly a year after I first proclaimed my love for it, I remain convinced that this desk would be just perfect for me.

Go ahead, buy my love.

Words of Wisdom (Sort of)

Don't Put Off Your Happy Life by Linzie Hunter

I enjoy pictures made of words. I enjoy spam poetry (in small, well-curated doses.) Linzie Hunter has created what amounts to an awesome vintage commercial video link alert Reese's Peanut Butter Cup of illustration for me! (I enjoy peanut butter cups too.)

See more of Linzie's Spam One-Liners.

via Drawn

Early Signs of Insomnia

I start out most evenings with some resolve to get to sleep at a reasonable hour. The resolve gets chipped away by any number of circumstances and/or stimuli:
- Getting home later than usual. I need at least 2 hours to putter around both before and after sleeping, I am a delicate flower.
- TiVo (Shocker.)
- Eating dinner too late. I recently waited an hour and twenty minutes for take out to arrive! How is a girl supposed to get to sleep at a reasonable hour when she doesn't have dinner til after 11pm?
- Internet (Reeling from that revelation? Of course you are.) IM is a particularly egregious offender in this regard. Signs of a grave situation: my West Coast buddies are heading off to bed. Even graver: Friends in Europe are chatting with me from their offices, well into their next day, wondering what the fuck my problem is.

Signs that I'm actually heading into the zone come to me electronically. Sign one is if I've made it through that evening's TiVo'd episodes of Jon Stewart and Colbert. Hope is not entirely lost at that hour, however. At slightly past midnight on a school night, it's still early enough to sleep the sleep of the normal.

The first sure sign of danger appears in my Inbox. It's the MIT Technology Review daily newsletter. I never read it. I think I read it once and found something interesting. Usually it gets deleted immediately, unopened, because it's a sign. It arrives at approximately 1:05AM. My heart sinks a little bit when it shows up and I'm there to see it. It's confirmation of the very obvious, yet otherwise ignorable - I'm in front of my computer, past my self-imposed bedtime of sometime before 1am.

The useless yet guilt-inducing Tech Review is followed in short order by A Word A Day. Then, a barrage of Google alerts I've got set up to come in once a day. (Me and all my other favorite people are as-it-happens alerts.*) I know I'm in deep shit when Daily Candy NY shows up. Critical? Daily Candy LA, Today's Headlines from the NYT, hurtling towards me from tomorrow.

TV-wise, it's looking bad if staying up for a slightly buffered re-run of The Shield starts to seem feasible. (That hasn't been a problem lately though, as I ultimately deemed Vic Mackey too dark for my inner-Pollyanna to bear. I have since returned to the tamer arms of the anguished and misunderstood Vincent and Criminal Intent.)

Lately I've had some success at combating the insomnia, thanks to an amazing innovation: the alarm clock. It turns out that over-sleeping makes me feel worse than being sleep-deprived.

My walk of shame is the bed-headed shuffle to the coffee shop at *cough* 11am on a weekday. Say it's Tuesday, coming up on the noon hour, and you see happen to see a blonde-haired, light-sensitive fashion don't struggling across 2nd Ave, a stubborn dog of the most unlikely proportions in tow. That'd be me.

There is some small part of me that delights in my ability to do this - I'm pretty sure it'll always feel like I'm being bad because I'm not sitting at some desk somewhere like everyone's supposed to. But the fact is that sheet-marks across your face in the near-midday sun usually feels more bad-bad than better-than-everyone-else bad.

So, yes: the alarm clock! Lately I've been setting it for 7:15 and have actually made it out of bed by 8 most days, a record I am most proud of. (Someone laughed at me, hard, when I said this. You know you are. Shut up.) And the shuffle is so much less shameful at that hour - sure it's still a little late for the 9-5 suckers, but there are still many puffy-eyed dog walking comrades at this hour.

Even if I get to bed at 2am and don't actually sleep til close to 3, which is how it's looking for tonight, I've got a way better chance of making it through the day in reasonable spirits with an 7:30 wakeup rather than a 10:30 one. And after a few days of that, lo and behold, going to bed at midnight actually works. It's better than drugs!

*This is an awkwardly constructed sentence, the true sign of an insomniac. I have just spent my waking moments working through several alternatives to the clearly wrong "me" and the internet has been of no help:
I and all my other favorite people are as-it-happens alerts.
I, along with all my other favorite people, am an as-it-happens alert.
Myself and all my other favorite people are as-it-happens alerts.

I think the middle option is most correct, but sounds utterly nonsensical. Certainly my initial attempt above was wrong wrong wrong, as "Me am an as-it-happens alert" sounds like caveman talk. Still stumped, but also still too sleepy to come up with an appropriate alternative. My point is this: I have as-it-happens Google alerts set up for all my favorite people. I happen to be one of them. How's that? (Aside from astoundingly narcissistic?)

Pixy Liao

Resting on a Bush by Pixy Liao. See it bigger.

I am fascinated by Pixy Liao. A native of Shanghai, she's currently getting her MFA in Memphis, TN.

Also see:
her blog
her Tumblr page
her Flickr stream

Links: To Sleep, Perchance to Dream

• An Active, Purposeful Machine That Comes Out at Night to Play - New York Times
  sleep loss makes you more reckless, more emotionally fragile, less able to concentrate and almost certainly more vulnerable to infection.
  (tags: sleep insomnia health science)
• Sleep Drugs Found Only Mildly Effective, but Wildly Popular - New York Times
  Unsurprising : "While under the influence of most sleep medications, people have trouble forming memories. When they wake up, they may simply forget they had trouble sleeping."
  (tags: insomnia sleep health science drugs)

We ' ve Got Company

View Larger Map
A map of galleries and other arty venues on and around the Bowery

With the opening of The New Museum of Contemporary Art weeks away, we've seen lots and lots of new galleries springing up near Jen Bekman. When we opened in 2003 there wasn't a lot of art in the area - CANADA arrived before us in 2002, a photo gallery called Sterile Mind closed just as we opened, and while there were always LES galleries nearby, there wasn't much between us and then. I was super excited when Rivington Arms chose a location on 2nd St just off Bowery as their new (and gorgeous) location. But still, there wasn't a lot going on between us and them, aside from the unstopping construction of luxury condos. That's all changing very quickly now, and it's great to have all this new art energy in the area; I love being able to direct gallery visitors to lots of interesting art destinations that are just around the corner, or up the block or across the street.

What I don't enjoy is scrambling for a scrap of paper or finding a pen that I can use to write on a postcard, the latter being an exercise in futility because of the card's glossy surface. And of course, I often overlook stuff when trying to come up with this kind of information off the cuff. I've had a mind to get all this info together in one place for a while now, and being the nerd that I am, I looked to the interwebs to help make it easy.

A few weeks ago, with the help of Alice Wells, I put together a map of the Bowery Arts District. It plots all the locations in the vicinity, and the pop up windows include contact info and gallery hours. We're also working on a companion document that we'll keep in the gallery and also have available online, at... boweryartsdistrict.com. Right now it just redirects to the map link, but soon there will be more. Gallery assistant Niki Kriese is taking the lead on gathering up all the details, and Sarah Foley will use that info to create a pretty and easy to read document that will be downloadable as a .pdf.

We haven't gotten so ambitious as to add exhibition info - ArtCal has that covered! Also, right now we're focusing on trying to get the unchanging details down pat. Towards that end, if you notice errors or omissions on the map, please send an email to info AT jenbekman DOT com and we'll get it fixed.

You Call This Living

A cheeseburger deluxe by Maira Kalman, from The Principles of Uncertainty

Intrepid assistant Mike and I took a few hours off from our 20x200 toil this evening and went to Maira Kalman's opening at Julie Saul and God, I wish that all openings could be so nice. The heavy rain that came earlier in the evening washed away the throngs of hipsters (or maybe kept them indoors) so 22nd St. was nearly deserted. As we walked into the building, I wondered whether I had the wrong night, it wouldn't be the first time. But stopping at the sixth floor, the elevator opened to a din of voices and the air was warm with the presence of people.

The gallery itself was crowded enough to feel that buzz of being somewhere, but not overwhelmingly itchy and get me out of here even if I have to fall through the floor hot. The attendees were a perfect mix of people who loved Maira, people who worship her (I saw eyes shining with excitement upon meeting her, and really who could blame the owner of those eyes?) and people who work with her and I imagine inspire her and everyone there to wish her well.

A painting of Louise Bourgeois' sink by Maira Kalman, from Principles of Uncertainty

Principles of Uncertainty is a wonderful show, based on the yearlong series of the same name that Maira did for Times Select, now free to be viewed online by a select many, including you. (Go look.) And it's also a delightful book that you should buy.

I have the book, but oh I would so like to buy myself one of those gouache paintings hanging on Ms. Saul's walls. They are fantastic - sweet and playful and full of joy and humor and entirely authentic. And that is so very much the thing for me, the authenticity. No posture or pose, just an energy for living and for seeing everything around you and imagining those things you can't.

The Boiling Water

When I can't think of what to write and the internet has run out of news for me, which happens sometimes actually, or sometimes if I'm just looking for other people's words instead of my own, I dig up poems and read them. Sometimes I even read them out loud and my dog looks at me quizzically when I do. I'm not dramatic about it or anything it's just that anything beyond "Treat?" and "Ollie, NO!" are incomprehensible to her.

Right now I can't sleep and I still love this poem by Kenneth Koch, which I dug up a few months ago and go back to from time to time, one of those times being now. It just gets better and better too, so don't be all ADD - read it through to the end. It won't kill you.

The Boiling Water

A serious moment for the water is
when it boils
And though one usually regards it
merely as a convenience
To have the boiling water
available for bath or table
Occasionally there is someone
around who understands
The importance of this moment
for the water—maybe a saint,
Maybe a poet, maybe a crazy
man, or just someone
temporarily disturbed
With his mind "floating"in a
sense, away from his deepest
Personal concerns to more
"unreal" things...

A serious moment for the island
is when its trees
Begin to give it shade, and
another is when the ocean
washes
Big heavy things against its side.
One walks around and looks at
the island
But not really at it, at what is on
it, and one thinks,
It must be serious, even, to be this
island, at all, here.
Since it is lying here exposed to
the whole sea. All its
Moments might be serious. It is
serious, in such windy weather,
to be a sail
Or an open window, or a feather
flying in the street...

Seriousness, how often I have
thought of seriousness
And how little I have understood
it, except this: serious is urgent
And it has to do with change. You
say to the water,
It's not necessary to boil now,
and you turn it off. It stops
Fidgeting. And starts to cool. You
put your hand in it
And say, The water isn't serious
any more. It has the potential,
However—that urgency to give
off bubbles, to
Change itself to steam. And the
wind,
When it becomes part of a
hurricane, blowing up the
beach
And the sand dunes can't keep it
away.
Fainting is one sign of
seriousness, crying is another.
Shuddering all over is another
one.

A serious moment for the
telephone is when it rings.
And a person answers, it is
Angelica, or is it you.

A serious moment for the fly is
when its wings
Are moving, and a serious
moment for the duck
Is when it swims, when it first
touches water, then spreads
Its smile upon the water...

A serious moment for the match
is when it burst into flame...

Serious for me that I met you, and
serious for you
That you met me, and that we do
not know
If we will ever be close to anyone
again. Serious the recognition
of the probability
That we will, although time
stretches terribly in
between...

Beth Dow: Online + @ JB

Bags by Beth Dow

About a month ago, I was introduced to the work of Beth Dow via Mrs. Deane. About a week after I said here that I'd love to see the prints in person, a slim sturdy masonite sandwich arrived via FedEx. As expected, the photos inside were stunning and wouldn't you know it, I still hadn't figured out what to show at the gallery in November. (Bad, bad gallerist.) Beth and I traded email, chatted on the phone and hatched some plans.

Just a few weeks later, Bags (above) is this week's photo edition over on 20x200. A few weeks from now, on Friday November 2, Beth's first NYC solo exhibition, comprised of works from the series Fieldwork, will open at Jen Bekman Gallery. Back when I worked at Disney, they called this sort of thing synergy. Me, I call it satisfying.

You can read more about the edition and the upcoming show over on the 20x200 blog.

Today ' s 20x200

Birds of the Rockies by Laura Levine

Today's 20x200 is Birds of the Rockies by Laura Levine:

You can buy it here and read about it over here.