Helen Levitt: her photographs and movies 1 year after her death

all images by Helen Levitt

"Helen Levitt found magic on the grimy streets of New York. Her photographs from the '30s and '40s capture the grit and vigor and humor of the city. And she kept on shooting for much of her life."
excerpt from an NPR Interview

Helen Levitt passed 1 year ago this March, Laurence Miller Gallery will begin a month long screening of an extraordinary 15-minute film she made with Janice Loeb and James Agee, "In the Street". It will be open to the public and is free.

I'm sure there will be plenty of her work around the city this coming month so look for it.

20 West 57th Street
New York, NY 10019

A movie about dolphins at "The Cove"

If you haven't seen it yet, or heard of it:
Dolphins arguably are the largest, non-human, brained mammal.

Dolphins communicate through language.

Dolphins have been know to save the lives of humans, sailors drowning have attributed the aid of a dolphin in their survival.

Dolphin meat is sold, loaded with toxic chemicals in place of whale meat and to school children.

A flipper look-a-like sells for $150,000.00

During the Greek era, harming a Dolphin was punishable by death.

In Japan, at a Nature Reserve called the cove, the slaughter of thousands of dolphins is occurring. Their cries for help and their massacre was covertly filmed and recorded by evading the police, hidden cameras, unmanned helicopters and with countless hours spent hiding on the edge of a cliff.

"But in a remote, glistening cove, surrounded by barbed wire and “Keep Out” signs, lies a dark reality. It is here, under cover of night, that the fishermen of Taiji, driven by a multi-billion dollar dolphin entertainment industry and an underhanded market for mercury-tainted dolphin meat, engage in an unseen hunt. The nature of what they do is so chilling -- and the consequences are so dangerous to human health -- they will go to great lengths to halt anyone from seeing it."

This movie has won almost everywhere award available to Documentary film making

http://thecovemovie.com/

Music tonight-Dafnis Prieto in NY

Tonight Tuesday 2-23-10
Rose Live Music
345 Grand Street
Williamsburg, Brooklyn

The Proverb Trio with Dafnis Prieto on drums, Kokayi on vocals and Jason Lindner on Keyboard.

Dafnis Prieto's revolutionary drumming technique has had a powerful impact on the latin and jazz music scene. He studied at the national school of Music in Havana and by the age of 16 had toured with Carlos Maza, Ramon Valle, and with "Columna B". Most recently he has played along side Henry Threadgill, Steve Coleman, Chico and Arturo O'Farril, Dave Samuels & The Caribbean Jazz project, Michel Camilo, Roy Hargrove, Andrew Hill and many more.

He has performed at an array of renowned venues from the Lincoln Center and the Whitney Museum to the Red Sea Jazz festival.

This should be an great opportunity to see him in an intimate setting

Dafnis Prieto's website

Nonoo Lyons 2010

Below is a slide show set to music from the Nonoo Lyons Fall/Winter Collection 2010


Hair and make-up: Fumi Nagai
Location: The Explorer's Club
Models: Kim Green & Mila Filatova
Photography by Marlon Krieger

Thank you to Misha Nonoo, Deborha Lyons and everyone involved.

Please view with your volume on!

if you can't see the video please follow this link my blog

see see additional images please visit Flickr

W. Eugene Smith at the New York public Library Lincoln Center

The Jazz Loft Project at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center through May 22, 2010.

Photographs by W. Euegene Smith

In the early 50's Smith moved into a loft building on sixth Avenue, which had already become a hangout for artists, writers and especially jazz musicians, who rehearsed and jammed there. Among the visitors to the loft: Thelonious Monk, Zoot Sims, Bill Evans, Steve Swallow, Robert Frank, Salvador Dali, Norman Mailer and Diane Arbus and more. he shot over 40,000 frames on 35mm and recorded thousands of hours of music and sounds between 1957 and 1965.

This book is a stunning mix of New York history, jazz and photography. Check it out, there will be more than 200 images, several hours of audio, and 16mm film footage of Smith working in the loft. It's well worth a glimpse into history.

excerpt from the book:

January 29, 1960

W. Eugene Smith sits at the fourth-floor window of his dilapidated loft at 821 Sixth Avenue, New York City, near the corner of Twenty-eighth Street, the heart of Manhattan’s wholesale flower district. He peers out at the street below, several cameras at hand loaded with different lenses and film speeds. His window faces east from the west side of Sixth Avenue. The dawn light begins to rise behind the Empire State Building and other Midtown skyscrapers looming over the modest neighborhood. Three musicians stand together on the sidewalk below talking and laughing. One holds an upright bass in its case, another has a saxophone case slung over his shoulder, and the other is smoking a cigarette. It is six o’clock in the morning; the temperature is a moderate thirty degrees. The musicians are going home after a night-long jam session. Smith snaps a few pictures.

After a long radio silence a little art to warm back up

I've been off line for a while so I thought I'd get back into it by posting my newest painting and a table I recently finished:










Table I made:






I should be posting some new photography as well in the next few days