All posts tagged: Front Room Gallery

WAGMAG Benefit Tuesday – Supporting Brooklyn Artists for a Decade+

This Tuesday night the annual benefit with work donated by 100+ artists will keep WAGMAG free for everyone. The local art guide started around the same time as the current street art explosion did in the early 2000’s – and the handy guide existed solely as a way to get the word out about openings at art collectives and galleries in the then-artist-neighborhood of Williamsburg. While gentrification has chased most of the artists out of Williamsburg now, Brooklyn continues to boom with some of the freshest ideas and talents and WAGMAG’s maps help you to find shows in 15 neighborhoods all over the borough.

The brainchild and labor of love of Brooklyn artist and gallery owner Daniel Aycock in those early years, WAGMAG now is run by Daniel and his artist wife Kathleen Vance. Together they own the Front Room gallery and regularly work with most of the players on the Brooklyn art scene, keeping it real and accessible. They are also big Street Art fans and have allowed the walls on the front of their gallery to be painted and pasted many times over the years by a parade of Street Artists.

Street Artist Noah Sparkes donates work to the WAGMAG Benefit (photo © Jaime Rojo)

In celebration of all the good work they do to enable artists to receive exposure for their work, and to encourage you to go to their fundraiser Tuesday, BSA talked with Daniel and Kathleen about WAGMAG and Brooklyn.

Brooklyn Street Art: How long have you been in Williamsburg?

Daniel Aycock and Kathleen Vance: WAGMAG, started in 2001 as W(illiamsburg) A(nd) G(reenpoint) M(onthly) A(rt) G(uide). Eventually the demand for listings in other neighborhoods throughout Brooklyn made it necessary to expand to include all of the art districts in Brooklyn. Then we dropped the Acronym and became WAGMAG, Brooklyn Art Guide.  We now serve the communities of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Boerum Hill, Brooklyn Heights, Bushwick, Carroll Gardens, Clinton Hill, Cobble Hill, DUMBO, Fort Greene, Gowanus, Greenpoint, Park Slope, Prospect Heights, Red Hook and Williamsburg.

Brooklyn artist Scott Chasse donated this piece “Keep Smiling” to the WAGMAG Benefit.

Brooklyn Street Art: Can you describe what WAGMAG is?
Daniel Aycock and Kathleen Vance:
It’s a free monthly art guide that promotes art venues and exhibitions in Brooklyn with a free listing service of art exhibitions and events, with locations and times, community maps and critical reviews.

Art venues are listed in community networks with adjoining maps and alphabetical listing of exhibitions updated monthly and circulated throughout New York. Guest writers present recommendations of exhibits to visit, with critical reviews for additional reference. WAGMAG, a Brooklyn Art Guide, is online at wagmag.org and in print with a free 16-page printed guide that is circulated throughout New York and surrounding areas.

 

Street Artist Gilf! donated this piece “Empower Equality” (62/200)  to the WAGMAG Benefit

Brooklyn Street Art: You have had street artists on your wall outside the gallery like Noah Sparkes, C215, Nick Walker. How do you look at street art in Brooklyn? 

Daniel Aycock and Kathleen Vance: The offices of WAGMAG are in The Front Room Gallery in Williamsburg, in a building that has historically been a fertile ground for street artists.  We love the public access to art, made available 24hrs, 7 days a week by street artists, which is unexpected,  sometimes challenging, and innovative in process and placement.

Street Artist Chris of the collective Robots Will Kill donated this piece “We are 138 ” to the WAGMAG Benefit.

Brooklyn Street Art: Are there any Street Artists donating to the WAGMAG benefit this year?
Daniel Aycock and Kathleen Vance:
Yeah, absolutely. We have Chris (RWK), LOL,  Gilf!, and Noah Sparkes.

Brooklyn Street Art: Why is Brooklyn such a vibrant lively place for artists to work and live?
Daniel Aycock and Kathleen Vance:
Brooklyn has been a magnet for artists for decades. The availability of studio space and relatively lower rents creates an oasis outside of Manhattan – making it into a huge artists’ mecca.  Brooklyn builds strength from its communities – which have a friendly and open attitude that fuels creativity and expands the boundaries of art-making today.

Here’s a piece in Bushwick Chris (RWK) did a couple of years ago (photo © Jaime Rojo)

WAGMAG benefit committee member and artist David Kesting was doodling the rules on a piece of paper during one of the organizing meetings and he came up with the de facto WAGMAG Benefit guide!  Good job David!  This makes it so much easier to understand how the benefit works. (© David Kesting)

Brooklyn Artist Ward Shelly is one of the better known names who have contributed art to the WAGMAG benefit. This print is called “the History of Science Fiction” (© Ward Shelly)

Street Artist LOL donated this “Love Soldier” to the WAGMAG benefit and will be happy to install it for you (photo © LOL)

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See a full list of the artists works and purchase tickets here:

The WAGMAG Benefit will be at The Boiler (191 North 14th Street) in Williamsburg. Additional info is at www.supportwagmag.org

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Fun Friday 09.10.10

Fun-Friday

Fun Friday

Group Show at Mighty Tanaka in Dumbo

The Fall Season Begins in New York! Feeling a bit anonymous in the big sea of fish that is New York? Go to DUMBO Brooklyn for a quick little blast of the hometown crowd and check out Iconography tonight on your way to the loft party/roof party/dance party/fashion show you are surely going to.  Showing new stuff tonight will be Matt Siren, Royce Bannon, Veng & Chris from RWK, 2Esae & SKI From URNewyork and Peat Wollaeger (stenSoul)

Brooklyn_Street_Art_Iconography_Mighty_Tanaka_RoyceOS GEMEOS SNIPPET FROM AN UPCOMING Project

See Subway Trains Before They’re Dropped in the Ocean

As part of Williamsburg’s Every 2nd gallery openings tonight, The Front Room is showing the amazing NYC subway train photographs Stephen Mallon shot in  “Next Stop Atlantic,” an exhibition of photographs by Stephen Mallon. The stunning series captures the retirement of hundreds of New York City Subway cars to the depths of the Atlantic Ocean.

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HAPPY ROSH HASHANAH – Street Shots

THE JEWISH COMMUNITY CELEBRATES THE ARRIVAL OF YEAR 5771.

School started this week and just as the last fast of Ramadan is breaking here in Brooklyn for our Muslim brothers and sisters, the Brooklyn Jewish community is celebrating the arrival of year 5771 which marks the creation of earth and heaven by God.

BSA would like to celebrate and honor freedom of religion in NYC and invite you to enjoy these images that mark the start of the celebrations taken at dusk last night by Jaime Rojo.

Rosh Hashanah 2010. Williamsburg, Brooklyn (Photo © Jaime Rojo)
Rosh Hashanah 2010. Williamsburg, Brooklyn (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

Rosh Hashanah 2010. Williamsburg, Brooklyn (Photo © Jaime Rojo)
Rosh Hashanah 2010. Williamsburg, Brooklyn (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

Rosh Hashanah 2010. Williamsburg, Brooklyn (Photo © Jaime Rojo)
Rosh Hashanah 2010. Williamsburg, Brooklyn (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

Rosh Hashanah 2010. Williamsburg, Brooklyn (Photo © Jaime Rojo)
Rosh Hashanah 2010. Williamsburg, Brooklyn (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

Rosh Hashanah 2010. Williamsburg, Brooklyn (Photo © Jaime Rojo)
Rosh Hashanah 2010. Williamsburg, Brooklyn (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

The Beat of New York

Visitor Thomas Noesner was in New York a couple of weeks ago for a media project and took some time off to hit the streets and subway with his video camera – always rich trolling no matter the time of day or night.  Combined with a drum sequence and soundtrack from sound designer Toussaint, they produced a rather slick video montage of NYC in the summer. It’s a fitting tribute to the spirit of the city.

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Fountain Art Fair All Weekend

  • Fountain, the independent art fair pioneered by cutting-edge galleries, celebrates its 3rd year in New York.

  • Location

    Pier 66 26th St Hudson River Park
  • Schedule

    March 5-8, 2009 11am–7pm
    VIP/Press: Thurs March 5th
    Reception for the Artists: Fri. March 6, 7pm–midnight

Fountain New York 2009 participating galleries include:

Ad Hoc Art – Brooklyn
Front Room – Brooklyn
Definition Gallery – Baltimore
Glowlab – New York
Leo Kesting – New York
McCaig-Welles – Brooklyn
Stuart Shepherd Gallery – New Zealand
Vagabond-Schmarotzer Gallery – New York

Fountain was launched in March 2006 in New York in an effort to leverage support for independent galleries overlooked by the larger, corporate-sponsored art fairs. The name “Fountain” is a nod to Marcel Duchamp’s controversial sculpture which shook up the art world when it was rejected by the Society of Artists’ exhibition in 1917. Similarly, in defiant contrast with The Armory Show, Art Basel Miami Beach, Pulse, Scope and the numerous other international art fairs, Fountain has received wide public support and critical acclaim for its experimental slant. In form and spirit, the artwork exhibited at Fountain reflects the avant-garde attitude of the Dada art movement, while attracting the attention of the international clientele and top collectors who attend the more traditional fairs.

Ad Hoc Gallery will be showing work by:

Armsrock, C215, Dain, Camilla d’Errico, Leslie Ditto, Eine, Ewelina Ferruso, Gaia, Imminent Disaster, Sarah Joncas, Dan-ah Kim, Hiro Kurata, Tommii Lim, Anthony Lister, LogikOne, Mijn Schatje

Imminent Disaster at the Ad Hoc Booth

Imminent Disaster at the Ad Hoc Booth at Fountain

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