August apartment sublet/share

I will be out of town more than half of August and I'm looking for someone who is interested in subletting my apartment for all or part of the month. I would be willing to rent it by the week to someone interested in spending time in New York in August, or rent it for the month to someone who would share it with me for part of the time. Please contact me to discuss possibilities and prices.

More info about the apartment:

It is located on Graham Avenue about five blocks from the Graham L-train (near Williamsburg/Greenpoint). It takes less than fifteen minutes to get to Union Square in Manhattan. It is a charming block with a laundromat, a bakery, a cafe, a nail salon, a hair salon, two delis, two vintage stores, a French restaurant, an Italian restaurant - everything you could possibly need.

The apartment is an older railroad on the third floor of a small building. There are three rooms - a kitchen, a living room, and a bedroom/office. Plus a little bathroom with a shower and a tub. The apartment gets sunlight on both ends and the general aesthetic is very retro.

There is a double bed in my bedroom as well as a futon that folds out into a double bed in the living room, so it is practical for extra guests.

Other amenities include: wireless internet, air conditioning, old tv/dvd player, stereo/music collection, art books, and photos.

I would love to find a friend of a friend to stay here, or someone who can assure me they are entirely trustworthy and responsible. Artists, students, international visitors are all great.

More good stuff in the mail

I love good things in the mail

Melanie

Melanie
Brooklyn, NY
January 2010

January brought a surprise visit from an old and dear friend, costume designer Melanie Ree. Melanie and I met in Minneapolis in May of 2003 and those wicked sexy eyes of hers cast a spell on me - perhaps you can see why. Now almost seven years later, we are keeping warm in my Brooklyn apartment - drinking pots of coffee and watching movies and sharing stories about our similarly rocky love lives (sometimes ex's make the best friends ever). Melanie brought with her from Minnesota a black wig, blonde wig, fur coat, fur cap, sunglasses and two suitcases full of accoutrements. Like everyone who holes up here for a while, she got her picture taken by the kitchen window, the only place where there is a stream of light.

Please see some of Melanie's wild and one-of-a-kind corsets, couture and fashion on her website: www.seamstrix.net

bye bye August

Craig Prehn

Cowboy, 16 x 23in, pen on paper
Craig Prehn


from Mobile Homes
Craig Prehn

I've been back in New York City now for nearly three weeks, still trying to settle into my life here and to reinvent things just a little. I turned thirty-six two days before Cancers turn into Leos, and have been contemplating the relentless sensitivity and melancholy that makes us what we are: open-hearted or broken-hearted brooders, for better or worse. I almost believe it since I know one when I see one.

I am also making efforts towards putting a twenty-year addiction to cigarettes behind me, which means I am clutching my coffee cup in the morning, sweating, crying, staring into space trying to focus my thoughts, sucking nicotine lozenges, chewing toothpicks, and furtively bumming/buying smokes from strangers on the street when I can't hang in there all the way. Asking everyone I know who might have some wisdom and experience how anyone does this, and some make it sound too easy and some make it sound too hard, but all advice is welcome.

My old friend from Chicago, Craig Prehn, who has succeeded in this area, was visiting this week from his current base in San Francisco. Our earliest memories together consist of printing in the darkroom at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago and cooking bbq and fries in the cramped kitchen of Smoke Daddy's on Division Street in the mid-90s. Our art lives have arrived at many junctures, including a photography exhibition at the Butcher Shop Gallery in the summer of 2000, A Great Midwestern at Heaven Gallery, and Best Midwestern at Jen Bekman Gallery in the summer of 2004, also including work by Peter Haakon Thompson, Alec Soth, Justin Newhall, Deborah Stratman and Susan Boecher. In fact, Craig and Pete took me out for sushi for my thirty-first birthday after we installed that show while I was still living in Minnesota and making trips to New York a half a decade ago.

Craig's "Cowboy" drawing above will be available in Daniel Cooney's next Emerging Artists Auction, and you can find a lot more cool work on his website: Craig Prehn. Besides his recent series of drawings, An American Western, which reference photographic snapshots and depict the sense of independence, severity and stark beauty of the American West; I am also a fan of his Mobile Homes. These simple snapshots of the exteriors of these colorful vehicles bring to mind the everyday Americana that seduced Photo-Realist painters in the 1970s - some of the only artwork I love as much as I love photography.

On that note, there are some fascinating observations about the art-historical context of the Photo-Realists and their influence on photographers in an essay called "Keeping It Real: Photorealism" by Philip Gefter in the recently released collection of his critical writings, Photography After Frank.

It is worth noting that Stephen Shore and William Eggleston, pioneers of color photography in the early 1970s, borrowed, consciously or not, from the Photo-Realists. Their photographic interpretation of the American vernacular - gas stations, diners, parking lots - is foretold in Photo-Realist paintings that preceded their pictures. (page 42)

"Not only do these artists have great technical skill, but they are the great depicters of pure Americana," says Barrett White, a former contemporary specialist at Christie's who is now the director of the New York branch of Haunch of Venison gallery. "This is not a gimmicky art but in fact a very important movement. It is the conclusion of Pop art in the same way that Color-Field painting is the conclusion of Abstract Expressionism." (pages 42-43)

If I were to win the lottery and to become an art collector, besides adding more work by artist friends to what I have traded with them over the years, I could imagine myself living with Photo-Realist paintings and not much else, except maybe some books and sunlight and a sexy hairless sphinx like the one I just cat-sat in Cobble Hill. It's a nice fantasy, in any case.

In the meantime, I am happy to report that I scraped up just enough funds through some much-needed labor last week and can finally take my film from my trip to Texas to the lab for processing tomorrow, so please keep your fingers crossed for me on all fronts.


The Butcher Shop exhibition postcard, 2000: Ian Adams, Aaron Brewer, Liza Queen, David Smith, Craig Prehn, Dara Greenwald, Tema Stauffer, Katherine Syroboyarsky, Sheila Manson, Suzy Poling, Tom Colley, Joeff Davis


Craig Prehn
Brooklyn, NY
August 2009

For Elsie

For Pete

For Kersten

For Oznur

June/July Sublet

I am leaving on June 11th to spend part of the summer in Austin and I'm looking for a good person or couple to sublet my apartment. I will return to New York on July 15th and I also have a place to stay in Brooklyn during the last week of July, so there are several possible scenarios.

My apartment could be available for one month from mid-June to mid-July, or available for both June and July. In the latter scenario, I could either share the space with the subletter for the beginning of June and one week in July, or I could potentially stay with friends if someone wants the space to themselves for both months.

About the apartment: It is located on Graham Avenue about five blocks from the Graham L-train (near Williamsburg/Greenpoint). It takes less than fifteen minutes to get to Union Square in Manhattan. It is a charming block with a laundromat, a bakery, a cafe, a nail salon, a hair salon, two delis, two vintage stores, a French restaurant, an Italian restaurant - everything you could possibly need.

The apartment is an older railroad on the third floor of a small building. There are three rooms - a kitchen, a living room, and a bedroom/office. Plus a little bathroom with a shower and a tub. The apartment gets sunlight on both ends as you can see from the photos above, and the general aesthetic is very retro.

There is a double bed in my bedroom as well as a futon that folds out into a double bed in the living room, so it is practical for extra guests.

Other amenities include: wireless internet, air conditioning, old tv/dvd player, stereo/music collection, art books, lots and lots of photos.

I would love to find a friend of a friend to stay here, or someone who can assure me they are entirely trustworthy and responsible. Artists, students, international visitors are all great.

Please pass this information along to someone who might be looking to spend part of the summer in New York.

Please contact me at my email address to discuss the dates and the cost of the sublet.

Graham Avenue

Drawing in Journal
October 2008
Karol Radziszewski

Pawel and Karol left for Poland today and they will be missed! I loved waking up to the sound of two boys murmuring softly in Polish in the middle room and all of us drinking coffee together in the mornings. Every year, I start a new journal with names and addresses and random notes, and my goal is to ask a different artist to decorate the first page with my own information in case it ever gets lost and someone is nice enough to return it to me. So Karol left me with this cool drawing to break in the journal for 2009. Karol covers entire walls of rooms and galleries and subway stations with these drawings, bringing to mind the work of Keith Haring.

Having Pawel and Karol as guests was so much fun, it occurred to me mention that I have a room to rent very cheaply to people passing thru New York City. So if anyone reading this knows someone who needs a place to stay for a few days or a few weeks at a time, and doesn't mind the limited privacy of a railroad apartment, please put them in touch with me!

Jonathon

Jonathon
Main Street
Johnson City, NY
September 2008

If anyone is a maverick, it's probably Jonathon. Jonathon struck me as the kind of guy who I might have gravitated towards as a cover boyfriend when I was in high school. The combination of his sexy rebel looks and inwardness, his gentleness and sensitivity. The kind of guy who fills cheap note books with private thoughts and poetry. The kind of guy who makes you want to hide out in a treehouse with a litter of stray puppies.

After I took his photograph, Jonathon actually thanked me politely and shook my hand. He was wearing those fingerless leather gloves that felt rough, except his fingers in contrast were super soft.

It looks like I am jumping on a bus tomorrow to head back to Binghamton in hopes of finding more sad young men and one happy girlfriend. If only it were warmer, and we all got to wear less clothes.

Fashion Week 2008

As fashion week kicks off in NYC, I got to be a fashion photographer this time around, and those super models below are none other than the gamut of employees who make up the strange and colorful world of Bergdorf Goodman. With the help of the new 5th Floor Visual Manager, Sarah Greene, I spent three days in front of a white back drop coaxing BG employees to jump, walk, dance, spin, punch, kick, juggle balls of yarn, read a newspaper, play with power tools, pretend they were in a Robert Longo drawing from the 1980's ... whatever it took to get them moving.

Thanks to the efforts of artist, Lynne Chan, also known to the art world as J. J. Chinois, the images arrived at a series of collages which were installed on panels on the 5th Floor of the store to celebrate the arrival of the new season.

If you just happen to find yourself on 5th Avenue and 58th Street, please drop by and check out the 5th Floor of the Women's Store, as well as the current windows, a tribute to New York Times Fashion on the Street photographer, Bill Cunningham.