“Even with an ocean between us, and a stay at home order, we can still groove together. Each musician – one live take!”

NYC recording artist Valerie Ghent was scheduled to be in France in May and on tour there in July. As lockdown kept all musicians indoors, in early May Valerie and her bandmates in France, Jérôme Buigues, François Gomez and Fred ‘Diego’ Alfonsi, decided to make a live recording of one of their most popular tunes, Get Funkay. Recorded in the South of France and NYC, each musician recorded one live take, videoing at the same time.

What do you do when you’re stuck in NYC and your band is in the South of France? “Make a live video!” Valerie exclaims with a smile. “We wanted to capture a real-time, live feel, no overdubs or punch-ins. It’s the way I make all my records, bringing great musicians together to record live. Though we couldn’t all be in the same room, or even same continent, we can still make music together! I was jumping around the house all day, playing with Fred, Jé and François was the most fun I’d had since being confined at home in early March.”

In April 2020, Jérôme started a video series of “Lockdown Sessions” with French musicians. Get Funkay is the first international video in the series. Get Funkay was written by Valerie and Jérôme a few years ago – and first released on Valerie’s album, Velours. It’s a fave at all their live concerts. “We wrote Get Funkay in about 20 minutes, the lyric/melody came to me while walking home one day, I heard this guitar riff in my head. When I got to France I sang it to Jé and he brought it to life!” Valerie explains.

“For this version, I was super excited that Fred could record drums at his home studio – Fred and I played together in Cannes, he’s great! – and François Gomez (bass) is the best, part of my band whenever I play in France. Jé surprised me by adding in the breakdown we play at concerts, and a killer guitar solo – and then sent the tracks to me in NYC to add vocals/keyboards in my home studio. What you see and hear is my first take! It felt like we were all together again. Keeping it live, fun, stripped down, and real. We hope this version of Get Funkay brings a smile and makes you wanna get up and move!”

More info at:Valerie Ghent.com

As artists, we had reasons we already felt were relevant in making “GANG” as concept, theme, content creation and final works.
We do not support violence & unfortunately our content continues to be relevant in 2020 forward. “Gang”’s content reflects a repeating situation of oppression, divisive politics.
The divisive nature of the current presidential seat is disgusting.
He is a danger to everyone.

THIS CANNOT HAPPEN EVER AGAIN.
OUR UPSIDE DOWN BLACK AND WHITE FLAG REPRESENTS THE CURRENT STATE OF AMERICA.
WE ARE NOT OK WITH THE CURRENT VIOLENT, DIVISIONIST, LYING, WHITE HOUSE ADMINISTRATION.

WAKE UP!!! THIS IS NOT GOOD!!!

THEY ARE BREAKING DOWN OUR UNITED STATES OF AMERICA & DESTROYING OUR RESOURCES, OPPORTUNISTIC BRIDGES AND GLOBAL REPUTATION EVERY DAY.
THIS IS NOT ENTERTAINMENT OF LOSS AND STRUGGLE, THIS IS REAL AND ENLIGHTENING TO A REPEATING REALITY!!!
ALLOWING IT IN AMERICA CREATES SIMILAR EFFECTS OF DISSONANCE & MISMANAGEMENT AROUND THE WORLD.

OUR RESPONSIBILITY AS INDIVIDUALS IS TO BE GOOD PEOPLE & HELP EACH OTHER!!!

OUR ARTISTRY IS HERE TO STOP DISCRIMINATION & VIOLENCE!!!

LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL.

LCKYxKXXNYCxBONNIEBLUExKBM GANG GOLDMASTER T11 G

Produced by: @LCKYNYC
VIDEO & MEDIA BY @LCKY.IMG
Video & Studio recordings: 10/31 – 11/04 2019
LCKYNYC, RRNYC, B&BMG

LYRICS BY:

@KXXNYC
@Bonitaazul
@BOYOKY22

STYLES BY:

@angrm_tokyo

THANK YOU:

@meganoke
@boyoky22
@delnyc
@brianayoga
@westbeth_artists_housing

Westbeth volunteers: Blanka Harper, Mar Reagon, Samantha Hall, Halina Warren, and others, plus Erik Bottcher, Chief of Staff for Speaker Corey Johnson

NYC Council Speaker Corey Johnson’s office distributed 2,000 pantry boxes to homebound seniors and families across Council District 3.

IAC and High Line together purchased $50,000 worth of Fresh Direct boxes filled with groceries.

Volunteers from an effort launched by Johnson’s office will deliver the boxes to residents. Volunteers called thousands of seniors to check that they had supplies. The boxes will also go to public housing complexes and other affordable housing buildings for distribution.

“When times are tough, New Yorkers come together and help one another,” Johnson said.

– Beth Dedman
Read complete article in AM New York

l-r Blanka Harper, Halina Warren, Samantha Hall, and Mar Reagon

At NYCHA Fulton Houses with volunteers and Westbeth ladies preparing 200 Trader Joe’s pantry bags containing a total of 600 meals for seniors for COVID relief.

Lorraine O Grady ART IS…Line of Floats 1983-2009 (Detail)

Lorraine O’Grady’s Art Is … (1983/2009) was a joyful performance in Harlem’s 1983 African-American Day Parade. O’Grady created the work as a rebuttal to an acquaintance’s assertion that “avant-garde art doesn’t have anything to do with Black people.” Putting avant-garde art into the largest Black space she could think of—the million-plus viewers of the parade—she sought to prove her friend wrong.

As the nine by fifteen foot antique-styled gold frame mounted on a float moved slowly up Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard, framing everything it passed as art, O’Grady knew she had resoundingly proved her acquaintance wrong. She watched the fifteen young actors and dancers dressed in white frame viewers with empty gold picture frames to shouts of “Frame me, make me art!” and “That’s right, that’s what art is, We’re the art!” She would later conclude, “[Art Is …] was to be about art, not about the art world … rather than an invasion, it was more a crashing of the party.”

Alexander Gray Associates offers these groupings of available prints from Lorraine O’Grady’s Art Is … as representative of the artist’s celebrated series.
Please note, prices are subject to edition availability.

See the entire Lorraine O’Grady’s ART IS

Continue reading →

An online exhibit of Stephen Hall’s recent work presented in Stride Arts’ virtual gallery.

EARTH MATTERS deals with the the irreparable damage we are inflicting on our world.

Stephen Hall, born in Scotland, is an artist who takes a traditional approach to a modern subject. Now living in New York, his work is indicative of a surging talent which has been refined over many years. Each of his paintings is a composition of numerous layers, executed without any modern trickery such as digital assistance or an airbrush and the resulting lush density of color and variation of light owns the viewer’s attention.

Through his work, Stephen explores the relationships we have with not just each other, but times, places and surroundings – couple this with a desire to portray the underlying order in our in-creasingly chaotic lives and you end up with vivid, yet somewhat intoxicating imagery, finished with a slick style and intense precision. Over the past several years has become more interested in the threat posed by man on our environment and the wildlife living in it.

Stephen has not only been exhibiting worldwide since the early 80’s, but his work also resides in corporate and private collections and has been featured in movies, music videos and magazines. On top of this he has also illustrated book covers for A.A. Milne, J.G. Ballard and Russell Greenan amongst others.

More information about Stephen Hall and Stride Arts HERE

Stephen Hall ‘s FAT FREE OCEAN featured in the EARTH MATTERS exhibit has been sold – July 2020.

Each year, Village Preservation honors the invaluable people, businesses, and organizations that make a special contribution to our neighborhoods at our Annual Meeting and Village Awards. On June 17th, 2020 we will be celebrating nine outstanding awardees.

George Cominskie is a beloved longtime West Village and Westbeth community activist, having lived in the latter since 1983. George was President of the Westbeth Artist Residents Council (WARC) from 1989 to 1992, from 2002 to 2010, and again from 2012 to 2018. Working with WARC and Village Preservation, George helped lead the charge for expanded landmark protections in the Far West Village, including of Westbeth, and to stop inappropriate development in the surrounding neighborhood. George has been a tireless advocate for the residents and artists of Westbeth, and for keeping Westbeth a an affordable and well-functioning community. Especially as Westbeth, which opened on May 19, 1970, celebrates its 50th anniversary, we are proud to honor George as a Village Awardee this year.

During the COVID-19 crisis, George is running the Emergency Response Committee at Westbeth. They have organized floor captains and food and pharmacy runs for residents who can’t get out themselves. This isn’t George’s first crisis, as he also helped lead Westbeth and its residents through the incredibly difficult recovery from Sandy, when the lower floors of the complex where residents’ artworks were stored were flooded and many apartments had to be evacuated for long periods of time.

– Sam Moskowitz
Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation
Off the Grid Blog
May 19, 2020

Read the full article HERE

Olive Ayhens “Comelid in the City” oil on canvas

“Ancient Critters was originally curated as a small exhibit at Russell Janis together with some of Olive’s drawings and paintings from Ur-Beasts. It had been scheduled for April 2020 but due to COVID-19, we moved the exhibit online, including audio of Olive speaking about how the series came to be.”

-Russell Janis Project Space

“Olive Ayhens virtuoso paintings in watercolor and oil could not be more embedded in our present moment of climate crisis. Yet, the theme of the collision of nature and humans, of the beauty of nature and our power to extinguish it, has been the main focus of Ayhens’ work for many decades.”

-Susan Platt (excerpt from Olive Ayhens 2019 catalog published by Brookstein Projects, New York)

To see the work and more information, click HERE

Olive Ayhens “Ancient Critters” Linocut print

In 2019, painter Olive Ayhens began conversations with printmaker Janis Stemmermann to make a print. This resulted in a single color linoleum block print, printed in March 2020 in an edition of twelve. Olive had been working on a group of drawings and paintings called Ur-Beasts, and this print, entitled Ancient Critters came from that series of works. Feeling extremely fed up with humans and their seemingly constant violent actions, Olive went deep into time to investigate the mammals that came before us, and no longer exist. We feel the immense weight of this project today.

We are excited to announce that 20% of the proceeds of each numbered print will be given to Project EATS, a Brooklyn based non-profit program founded by artist and activist Linda Goode Bryant. Using art, urban agriculture, partnerships and social enterprise, Project EATS works with Black and Brown communities to sustainably produce and equitably distribute fresh food and produce. It is time we usher in fundamental changes.

For more info on buying the print, click HERE