cathedral of junk (austin)

oriana on 9 Apr ’12

neighborhood: south austin | space type: silliness | active since: 1988 | link: facebook

This is my first “honorary Brooklyn” post. I just came back from a trip to Austin with my sister & cousin, and although there were a half-dozen places I’d love to write about if I lived there and had more time—like the 21st Street Co-op, where we cooked for Food Not Bombs, or the massive, gorgeous “Graffiti Park,” where we clambered around in the dark taking photos, or Spider House, where we saw the amazingly creepy Boessi Kreh, complete with a woman erotically kneading bread dough onstage—by far the most spectacularly weird place we went was the Cathedral of Junk.

I was strongly encouraged to get to the Cathedral by Bk Spaces photographer Alix Piorun (read her post about it here), but when we brought it up to our Austin friends, everyone said two things: “I think that place got torn down,” and “It’s really really far away.” Neither of these things are true. Although the Cathedral has been threatened with dismantlement and cited for code violation several times, it’s still kicking. And it’s less than a half hour bus ride from downtown Austin.

The Cathedral is the project of Vincent Hannemann, a totally lovable curmudgeon who answered the phone when we called ahead, chided us for not banging the gong hard enough when we arrived, and then toured us around the Cathedral himself, scolding us for not being clever enough with our photo poses. He has “JUNK KING” tattooed on his knuckles, told us stories about a few of the bizarre items in the Cathedral (“Oh, that one’s really creepy; my ex-wife made it”), and tolerated our poking around his giant trash statue for a couple of hours.

The photos should speak for the Cathedral itself. The main structure is three stories high and has several little rooms. It is made of just about everything you can think of: bicycle parts, lawn chairs, decapitated Barbies, a rusted fridge, crutches, a diving board bridge, zillions of plastic trinkets, cement-filled tires, busted electronics, glass bottles, a box spring, road signs, bathtubs, CDs, broken toys, car seats, shopping carts, and countless knickknacks of all sizes that are a lot harder to identify. There are a bunch of satellite statuettes, a few junk shacks, and smaller sculptures. It’s altogether a fantastic mess, and so so so worth a visit.

Here’s a whole slew more pix, taken by me and my sis. Enjoy!

that's me!

that's my sis!

 

 

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Like this? Read about more silliness: Broken Angel, Idiotarod, Lost Horizon Night Market, Dumpster Pools

vaudeville park

oriana on 25 Mar ’12

space type: art & music venue | neighborhood: williamsburg | active: 2008–2013 | links: website, facebook, twitter

Vaudeville Park is a plucky arts venue with wildly diverse programming. It sits right on the borderline (at least, the current one) between Williamsburg and Bushwick. Run by experimental composer and multi-instrumentalist Ian Colletti, Vaudeville Park has shows nearly ever night, including all kinds of music (from synth to neo-chamber to ladies of experimental music), literature, film (from Noir Night to avant garde), dance and performance art, gallery shows, comedy, discussions, workshops (from yoga to circuit bending), and more. The space has been active for almost four years, and is now starting to get a lot of attention from the media, including regular mentions from the likes of Time Out New York, Brookly Vegan, Artcat, and Rhizome. Ian is one insanely busy guy who is also incredibly passionate and enthusiastic about the work he does. Check out my interview with him, and then please, go see something amazing at Vaudeville Park!

Ian Colletti, photo from Vaudeville Park's Facebook

brooklyn spaces: How did you get started with all this?
Ian: I’m from New York, born and raised, and I’ve been an artist and a musician pretty much my whole life. It felt like the early 2000s were a dark time for counterculture in Williamsburg. I mean, there was a lot of cool stuff going on for artists, but that was when groups like the Strokes and Interpol and Ambulance LTD, and really high-fashionisa galleries were huge. It was an appropriation of mainstream, cookie-cutter ideals into counterculture. It was like everyone who was in a band really just wanted to be a model in a Levi’s ad. Now artists have a chance to really represent themselves through their own savvy with the internet, but at that point there were just a few labels and magazines that promoted musicians. I was living with this guy from Fader magazine, and he was like, “Man, if you want to start your own weird art collective, you have to kiss these people’s asses.” I was like, No way. I just didn’t want to be part of this phony, arrogant, silver-spoon kind of thing. But I was really worried about the culture here, so in 2007 I stopped playing shows and performing, saved up as much money as I could, and turned my recording studio into an arts venue. The first show we had was Dreamtigers, by Brian Zegeer, who’s one of my best friends. He just headlined the Queens Museum “International 2012,” along with two of my other good friends, Ben Lee and Rachel Mason, both of whom have been really involved here. There’s an extreme synergy here that’s really important.

photo by Maximus Comissar

brooklyn spaces: Was it a nonprofit from the start?
Ian: Well, it was always nonprofit in its mission. We’re sponsored by New York Foundation for the Arts now; they picked Showpaper two years ago and they picked us last year. NYFA is good people, but we need our own 501(c)3, which we just went for, and we need to get larger grants.

photo by Maximus Comissar

brooklyn spaces: How do you pick your programming? Are you the only one who directs it?
Ian: Yes. Basically the mission of Vaudeville Park is to represent underrepresented artists of high craft. My goal is to pair the best minds and artistry and craft in music to the best visual and performance art. I really feel that people’s eyes have gotten bigger from constantly looking at things, but their ears have gotten much smaller. People don’t listen to records, they don’t really put effort into making records, and if they do it’s just ear candy, it’s less performance-based, there’s less heart and soul, it’s not as evolved. So I wanted to have a venue for counterculture music, like dark wave, coldwave, post-whatever, and new chamber and post-classical music. I felt that if I put the music in a gallery context, it would up the ante, like, “This music better be pretty damn good because these visual artists are so good.”

art by Alexander Barton, photo by Maximus Comissar

brooklyn spaces: So all the shows are music plus visual art plus something else?
Ian: Well, no. We have several different programs, and sometimes we combine them. There’s a gallery art program, with one show a month, either a group show or a few specific artists. Then there’s an archival film program, which includes one of our most famous shows, Noir Night. We’ve also had cartoon carnival stuff, we’ve had optics, we’re now working with the curators at Millenium Theatre and Anthology Film Archives, and we’re starting to have closer ties with the Kitchen. Then we have a TV program on Manhattan Neighborhood Network with my good friend Scott Kiernan, who does ESP TV. Then we have a performance art program. There are only four galleries and art spaces in New York City that host performance art. We’ve done a bunch of performances in the past, recently Esther Neff and The Penelopes and Performancy Forum. And finally we have the music program. We do workshops too, we’ve hosted a lot of extremely successful workshops, the biggest one that everyone constantly asks for is the electronics in music workshop for circuit bending. But we just can’t do it again without funding.

circuit-bending workshop, photo from Vaudeville Park's Facebook

brooklyn spaces: What about your own art? What kind of music do you play?
Ian: I do a lot of stuff, I’m a multi-instrumentalist, singer, composer. I was the first featured soloist in the Brooklyn Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra in November, and I made all these crazy handmade instruments and soundscape synthesizer stuff. I’ve done a lot of film scores, dance scores, music for fashion. I mostly do new works for chamber. The music that I’m doing now, the best way to put it is the orchestral coldwave height of pop that was never made. It’s like post-romantic coldwave blitz with eighteenth- to nineteenth-century post-classical music, and also a lot of Latin jazz and obscurities.

photo by Maximus Comissar

brooklyn spaces: Tell me about some of your favorite shows here.
Ian: One of my favorites was a Crystalline Flux installation, because one of the things I want to push for Vaudeville Park is doing something totally new, something that’s almost like a trip back to Bauhaus, or Kaprow’s Happenings, which were installations and events where a whole art space was transformed into a stage full of specific performers. So a bunch of my friends—Ben Lee of Beta Copperhead, Brent Arnold, Anthony Johnson, Caleb Missure, and Naomi Rice, who’s in a band Next Wave Festival—we transformed the whole space into a stage that would specifically fit one performer, kind of like a static music video. That was one of the most special art events I’ve ever been to. Also Noir Night is one of my favorite ones, I really think it works with the intention of the space. And I really like the Dreamtigers and Avatar Atavistic, and Myra Brim’s gallery show “April Sky,” and Christy Walsh’s dance piece, this flamenco classical guitar thing. I like pretty much everything here, it’s kind of a blur.

[below, from Ladies of Experimental Music: Leah Coloff, Meaghan Burke, and Valerie Kuehne; photos by Maximus]

brooklyn spaces: Let’s talk a little more about the neighborhood. Do you feel like being here on this weird cusp between Bushwick and Williamsburg affects the space?
Ian: Vaudeville Park is not a Williamsburg space, I’m not trying to make it “Williamsburg-y.” It’s the gateway to Bushwick arts, since we’re on the first block of Bushwick. During the last Bushwick Open Studios, the L train was down and we were the first place people saw. That’s a great festival, Arts in Bushwick works really hard.

brooklyn spaces: You’re getting a lot of attention from the media lately, but ultimately, this is a small space. Is there any worry you’ll get too well known?
Ian: No. Lots of shows here are really packed, but I’m trying to only do things that make sense in a smaller space. This is an arts venue, it’s done with no money but with the best programming and art possible. And by being good to people and treating artists well and believing in this community, you can go a long way. People who have run spaces like this, they do it for a couple years and then give up, and they have every damn right to, because it can be really hard and really frustrating. But what happens if you don’t give up? What happens if every time you think, “This is as far as I can go,” you’re like “Let’s go further”? What happens if we just keep expanding more and doing better? I’m really excited and happy to be doing this and to have all these special people involved. I’m really lucky.

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Like this? Read about more arts venues: Chez Bushwick, Gowanus Ballroom, Bushwick Starr, Monster Island, Bushwick Project for the Arts, Fort Useless

twig terrariums

oriana on 10 Mar ’12

neighborhood: gowanus | space type: makers, commercial | active since: 2009 | links: website, facebook, twitter, flickr, pinterest

all photos by Maximus Comissar

Yet another amazing maker shop in Gowanus, Twig Terrariums—the brainchild of Katy Maslow and Michelle Inciarrano—sells tiny gorgeous worlds. Their terrariums are housed in mostly found glass—like vintage gumball machines, cake stands, light bulbs, pitchers, and pendants—and they’re filled with lush mosses and other plants, complete with quirky little scenes. These include sweet things like wedding couples, hiking groups, zoos, and people reading or golfing or swimming, as well as more adult fare like naked sunbathers, fornicating couples, graveyards, zombies, graffiti artists, and axe murderers.

Michelle & Katy, photo by Lauren Kate Morrison

Katy and Michelle are a couple of seriously busy crafters: in addition to running their shop and offering lots of terrarium-making workshops, you can catch them at tons of fairs, like Bust Craftacular, Renegade Craft Fair, and Brooklyn Flea. Their amazing work has been featured all over the place, including NY1, New York Times, New York Magazine, Urban Outfitters, WNYC, Design*Sponge, and more. And they’ve even have a book: Tiny World Terrariums.

brooklyn spaces: Give me a brief definition of a terrarium.
Katy: It’s really just plants enclosed in glass.
Michelle: Terrariums were started back in the 1800s by Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward. He wanted a fern garden in his yard but he couldn’t make it grow because there was a lot of pollution where he lived in London, but he noticed that inside this little case where he was experimenting with moths, a fern spore had somehow taken hold and grown. So he started coming up with different types of cases and seeing how different plants did. And he experimented and got it right, and it actually changed the course of history. It’s the reason we have tea, coffee; it was indirectly responsible for penicillin and things like that, because they were able to take plants much farther than they had before.
brooklyn spaces: Wow! Did you know all that before you started making terrariums?
Katy: No way.

brooklyn spaces: So how did this all come into being?
Michelle: Katy and I were childhood hooligan friends, we used to hang out all the time and be crafty. We lost touch for several years, but then we met again about five years ago and went right back to making things together. And one day I pulled a cruet jar out of my kitchen cabinet and said, “I want to make a terrarium out of this.” Before we knew what happened, we had terrariums all over our apartments.
Katy: We got addicted so quickly! We had to choose between giving them to everyone we knew or trying our hand at selling them. When we went to the Brooklyn Flea for the first time we had an amazing response, and we were picked up by the New York Times. The first day! The second time we went we got picked up by Country Living. Third time it was something else, and then something else, Rachel Ray and Real Simple and all these awesome things. It was definitely a surprise.

brooklyn spaces: Did you think five years ago that this was going to be your lives?
Katy: Not at all. We were just presented with an amazing, unexpected, very charming response, and this became our livelihood. We’re hoping that it’s not a passing phase. I mean, terrariums have been interesting for 200 years, and most likely they’ll be interesting for 200 more. And we’re always challenging ourselves, looking for ways to make it bigger, better, cooler, more intricate, more elaborate.

brooklyn spaces: Tell me about some of your favorite terrariums.
Katy: My personal favorites are the graphic horror: axe-murderer scenes, post-apocalyptic scenes, wheelbarrows full of body parts, mass graves, zombies. One of the ones I have at home has a guillotine on a hill and heads rolling down. There’s an irony to it, this kind of fun, expansive space that can be filled with quirky little characters and inhabitants. One of our popular ones is a big beautiful terrarium with a little park, and then off in the corner there’s a couple doing it in the bushes. Of course, we also do a lot of unicorns and fairies. We really just go with our weird tastes and bizarrely varied interests and whims.

brooklyn spaces: Tell me about some of the specific moss. Which are the funnest to work with or look the best?
Katy: Well, there are like twelve, fifteen thousand types of moss in the world, so there’s a lot to work with. When we were researching, we found out that NASA was actually considering terraforming the moon with moss because it’s so hardy and adaptive. But we each have our obsessions. We love the sphagnum buds that happen in their juvenile form, and they grow in bogs, like six feet of mud, right alongside streams and ponds. Sometimes when we go mossing, we really suffer for our art. Michelle lost a shoe once.
Michelle: I took a wrong turn and sunk a foot and a half down in the nastiest, stinkiest bog you can imagine. And I lifted my foot up and my shoe was gone. I had to go home with a bag over my foot, and it stunk.
Katy: She reeked. And I laughed and laughed!

brooklyn spaces: Do you do your mossing in and around New York?
Katy: We have freelance mossers all around, and we’re always looking for more. If you guys ever want to go mossing—
Maximus: Oh my god, I want to do that. Can we do that?
brooklyn spaces: Yes!
Michelle: Okay, just don’t go to Central Park. You can’t take from public land or parks or anything like that.

brooklyn spaces: How does being in Gowanus affect you as artists and small-business owners?
Katy: We love it here. We’re both Brooklyn natives, and I think this is one of the best neighborhoods in the borough.
Michelle: Our neighbors are absolutely amazing. Ben, who runs Gowanus Your Face Off, he came in and introduced himself the second he saw our sign go up. Proteus Gowanus picked up some glass from us to house weird objects for an exhibit. There are so many cool things in Gowanus. We’ve got Film Biz Recycling, 718 Cyclery, and Littleneck right down the street. Everyone’s got such great ideas.
Katy: Everyone’s been really welcoming and supportive and really into what we do. We just love it here.

brooklyn spaces: Having grown up in Brooklyn, what do you think about being here these days?
Katy: I love what Brooklyn’s become. When I was growing up it was still grungy, and I do kind of miss the seedy underbelly of New York, which doesn’t really seem to exist anymore. But I very rarely go into the city, I rarely leave Brooklyn. I get my rugelach in Midwood and my latte in Gowanus and I’m a happy camper.
Michelle: I’ve always loved Brooklyn. Even though it’s stinky and smelly and all the trash and traffic, it’s still so charming.
Katy: Last time I had out-of-town guests, we didn’t even leave Brooklyn. We went from a barge museum in Red Hook to the best pizza in Bay Ridge to Green-Wood Cemetery, and it was the coolest. There’s so much here, it’s so quirky and fun. I fall in love with it every time I think about it.

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Like this? Read about more makers: Metropolis Soap Co., A Wrecked Tangle Press, Breuckelen Distilling, Arch P&D, Urbanglass, Ugly Duckling Presse

page not found (chaos cooking)

oriana on 26 Feb ’12

space type: event space | neighborhood: bushwick | active since: 2009 | links: website, facebook

Like Red Lotus Room’s Shanghai Mermaid, Page Not Found is best known for one of its recurring events: Chaos Cooking, “A continuing social experiment where up to 60 people cook 60 recipes in one kitchen, four burners, one oven. All dishes must be finished in four hours while everyone is drinking wine, socializing, and putting delectable food in their mouths.”

all photos by Maya Edelman

It’s every bit as fun—and delicious—as it sounds. The last time I went, I ate: bacon-wrapped dates stuffed with gorgonzola, pork & Brussels sprout shooters with pickled cauliflower chasers, nachos, Persian-spiced truffles, edamame hummus, tiramisu, beer & cheese soup, winter melon salad, and dozens of other delicacies—all made on the spot, all at once. I made endive stuffed with goat cheese, raisins, and an amazing sauce from the Brooklyn Salsa Company. The event, of which there have been more than twenty in a couple of years, draws all kinds of people, from all ages and demographics, including hipsters, foodies, neighbors, Burners, Couchsurfers, and the generally curious. Everyone is invariably kind and courteous and can’t wait to hear what you’re cooking.

my dish

Page Not Found is home to Joe and Margaret and their two cats, Baloney Gabba-Goo and Eddie Tuna Cupcake Mohawk Feather Teddybear Pancake Weezer Haiku (says Margaret: “We usually call her either Pupcake or Fatty Tuna or Haiku”). They used to host some wild parties, but these days they’re more likely to have art shows, modern dance performances, and bands in their space. But Chaos Cooking is still their pride and joy, and they’ve just launched a website to spread the word, and to encourage people to host Chaos Cookings in their own city, town, or backyard.

Joe & Margaret amid the chaos

brooklyn spaces: What made you decide to do this?
Joe: It started out of a longing for that feeling you get when you’re with your family during the holidays and everyone’s in the kitchen cooking at the same time, chatting and gossiping and catching up and laughing and asking each other, “What can I do to help?” It’s just a great feeling. So we tried it once, with eighteen friends, and it was wonderful. I think the second one had twenty-five, and we thought that would be crazy, but it still seemed to work.
Margaret: People kept asking, “Can I bring my friend to the next one?” And we were like, “Next one?”

brooklyn spaces: I first read about Chaos Cooking on Nonsense NYC. What made you decide to open it up to the community?
Joe: We like people, and we figure if someone want to come to an event like this, they’re probably someone we’d like to meet. Nonsense is an amazing list, it kind of changed my life. But listing there was a bit of a controlled experiment, because not everyone’s reading it.

brooklyn spaces: What are some really memorable dishes that people have made?
Margaret: One time Ryan did this seven-day marinated pork. David once made lamb with yogurt-truffle sauce.
Joe: There was this one guy, I wish I could remember his name, who was traveling in India, and there’s a certain type of tea that you can only get on this one mountain there, so he hiked the mountain and picked this tea and brought it back and made this chai concoction that was just amazing, like nothing else I’ve ever had.
Margaret: One time my brother and his girlfriend made chocolate lollipops with Pop Rocks in the middle.
Joe: There was chocolate-covered pomegranate, that was really good. I save all the sign-in sheets, which list what people made. There’s some incredible stuff. Baklava, peaches and pancetta, coconut-curry lentils… What we really like is that the concept is so simple, and people are so self-reliant. The more we got into it, the more we realized that anybody could do this. There are already Chaos Cooking communities that are bigger than the one in New York.
Margaret: There’s one in Winston-Salem, I recently learned. I think they most likely heard about it from the New York Times article that was written about us, or the NPR piece. Theirs seems a little different, more families, with a down-home kind of feel, but it looks like they have a great time.
Joe: Chaos Cooking is an idea that spans gender and age and really any sort of demographic, because everyone loves to cook, and most people love to do it together.
Margaret: Especially with people you don’t know very well. It’s really easy to get to know people through cooking.
Joe: It makes people feel comfortable, and I think one of the things that makes it work is that everyone has something to do and be proud of, something to share and something to receive, and something to talk about. It’s like all social barriers are resolved.

brooklyn spaces: I’m always struck by how calm and kind the vibe is. How did you manage to make these events where everybody’s just happy and wants to talk to each other?
Margaret: Everybody’s eating!
Joe: Yeah, I think that’s the trick. Also, if you’re a complete jerk, you’re probably not going to go to a cooking event.
Margaret: I think if you’re a jerk, you’re probably more of a taker. And if you come to a cooking event, you’re expected to do just as much as everybody else.
Joe: I never thought about that, that’s a really good point. I think you’re right, the people who are drawn to it are givers or contributors. But you’re definitely getting a lot also. You’re eating a lot.

brooklyn spaces: Do you feel like being in Bushwick has anything to do with the way this came about?
Joe: Well, we really like having it here. It’s great when the neighbors come over and cook with us. There’s a Puerto Rican family next door and the mom is really into it. And our neighbor Manny, a middle-aged African American woman, she brought a couple of her girlfriends once and they all cooked with us. I think that’s really cool. There’s a feeling of frontier here in Bushwick, and there’s a little bit of risk. But our neighbors love us, and we love our neighbors. We don’t hold ourselves in. The neighborhood around here is a little rough, but the neighbors are awesome.

Like this? Read about more food event spaces: Egg & Dart Club, Ger-Nis, Breuckelen Distilling, Treehaus, Grub at Rubulad

running rebel studios (formerly semi-legit)

oriana on 5 Feb ’12

neighborhood: bushwick | space type: commercial space | active since: 2010 | links: running rebel (website, facebook); proliferation publishing (website, facebook)

One of the reasons I started this project is that I was alarmed at how fleeting so much of the underground can be. The people who drive the creative classes are focused on creating, on making art and beauty and enhancing underground culture, which tends to result in less of a focus on trivialities like leases and fire codes and the law in general. I seem to be constantly hearing about the unceremonious demise of so many brilliant spaces—the 123 Community Center being forced out by their landlord, Bushwick Project for the Arts getting evicted by the city, House of Yes (in its original incarnation) burning down, Silent Barn being ransacked, Monkeytown and Change You Want to See defeated by endless rent hikes.

photo from Passion Faction

But there are other ways for a space to come to an end. Sometimes it’s intentional, for one reason or another, and in the best case it’s on the creators’ own terms. So it is with 6 Charles Place. The Bushwick warehouse used to be called Semi-Legit, and was known for underground events. Passion Faction threw dance parties with DJ Spanky spinning and Nicky Digital taking pix, Team San San had an art show, there were anarchist benefits and lectures, and plenty of musicians came through, including Nomadic War Machine, Rosa Apatrida, Shady Hawkins, Anchorites, Krunk Pony, Ash Borer, and Woe.

But those days are behind them now. Today the space is divided into two businesses: Running Rebel Studios and Proliferation Publishing.

photo from Passion Faction

Nick has been operating Running Rebel since October 2011. It’s a big, private, very malleable space, and they’ve done a lot of different work already, including photos for Nylon and Inked magazines, fashion shoots for Olcay Gulsen and Arrojo Soho, and music videos for Imaginary Friends and Rosie Vanier.

brooklyn spaces: What made you shift from throwing parties to running a business?
Nick: I thought we could make something profitable, since no one can get jobs now and you have to do everything yourself in order to survive.

brooklyn spaces: Was it hard to get it up and running?
Nick: It was a lot of work. I renovated the entire thing, painted the entire ceiling by hand, painted every single brick, twice, because the first coat got so disgusting and dirty. I built a bathroom and changing room. And I got all this equipment, including a nineteen-foot cyc wall.

brooklyn spaces: What’s your business philosophy?
Nick: I try to be friendly with everyone. I don’t think that pissing people off is the right way to go about anything, especially when you’re trying to develop relationships. I’d rather take a loss now and have someone come back again later, rather than ripping them off and having them hate us forever.

brooklyn spaces: Is running a photo studio something you always planned to do?
Nick: No. I have a degree in German. But I had the idea and ran with it. This is cool, it’s strange. It’s fine for now. I can live, I can eat. What else do you need?

photo by Alix Piorun

And then there’s Proliferation Publishing, New York’s only twenty-four-hour print shop, run by Adam. They use really cool old machines from the sixties and seventies that they’ve acquired at auctions and garage sales, including one that was used to print NYU’s diplomas for years. And they bought what probably amounts to a lifetime supply of ink for about $60. They print everything from take-out menus to wedding invitations to vinyl banners.

photo by Alix Piorun

brooklyn spaces: How do you know how to work all this stuff? Did you know how to use the machines when you bought them?
Adam: No, we just bought them on impulse. Then we found PDFs and guides and shit online and taught ourselves in our garage. We have this one incredible troubleshooting manual written by this hippie guy in the sixties. The book starts, “Around 1950 I was searching for Nirvana in the woods in New Mexico.”

brooklyn spaces: How do you find your clients?
Adam: We go and bother pizza places and shit and we’re like “Hey we can print menus for cheaper than what you’re paying now,” and they’re like, “Okay, cool.” And people come in to print album covers for their bands, business cards, political posters, stuff like that.

brooklyn spaces: What are your goals for the future?
Adam: I want to do books eventually, but not right now. We’ve got to get a book binder and a paper cutter first. We’re also going to start offering photo-printing services, so people can shoot photos at Running Rebel and then print them here. This could be a full-time gig, and it probably will be eventually. But we’re in it for the long haul, so we’re taking our time.

photo by Alix Piorun

Both Adam and Nick were kind enough to offer discounts for Brooklyn Spaces readers. At Running Rebel they’ll give you a full-day weekday photo shoot for $300, and at Proliferation Publishing you can get 1,000 business cards or stickers for $75. Go support Bushwick small businesses! Email them at runningrebelstudios@gmail.com or adam@proliferationpublishing.com.

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Like this? Read about other print shops & photo studios: Acme Studio, Gowanus Print Lab, Bushwick Print Studio, Werdink, Factory Brooklyn, Bond Street Studio

the muse

oriana on 15 Jan ’12

space type: aerialist venue | neighborhood: williamsburg, bushwick | active since: 2011 | links: website, facebook, twitter

Update, spring 2015: Last winter, Vice magazine took over two adjoining buildings on the Williamsburg waterfront, evicting several underground spaces in one fell swoop: Death By Audio, Glasslands, and the Muse, which actually got pushed out due to construction before the end of their lease. Undaunted, the Muse family Kickstarted more than $60,000, and in April 2015 they reopened an enormous new space in Bushwick.

***

The Muse is an aerialist performance and workshop space in South Williamsburg dedicated to fostering experimental creativity, and giving artists the space and time to try out new things. It was founded in late 2011 by Angela Buccinni, a dancer, acrobat, and aerialist, and Yuval Oz, a musician and acrobat.

Angela as a reindeer in Hot Frosty (photos by Maximus Comissar unless noted)

The space is a former garage for Domino Sugar, which Angela and Yuval built out from scratch—in only two months they did the living space with six rooms on two floors, an elevated stage, a bathroom, and a kitchen, as well as put in rigging points throughout the main performance area. They’ve gotten an outpouring of help from Williamsburg artists, and have a close partnership with Karen Fuhrman’s aerial dance company Grounded Aerial, of which Angela is also member. In addition to performances, the Muse offers classes and workshops in hand-balancing, acrobatics, silks, harness, trick ropes, kudayo, and lots more.

I was lucky enough to be invited over to the Muse for the dress rehearsal of Grounded Aerial’s first annual holiday show, Hot Frosty. I got to hang out with Karen, Angela, Yuval, and the rest of the incredibly happy and nice cast, plus Angela and Yuval’s collection of wonderful dogs.

 

Hot Frosty cast shot

brooklyn spaces: Karen, can we start with a quick run-down of Grounded Aerial?
Karen: Grounded does three things. We do corporate events, for companies like IBM, Microsoft, and H&R Block—the bigger the better. That tends to fund the second thing: our theatrical ventures, like Insectinside, which is an evening-length piece, equal parts dance, theatre, and aerial, and Hot Frosty, which is little scenes peppered throughout the evening, singing, dancing, aerial, over here, over there, above your head, on the stage, on the wall—it’s happening all around you as you’re hanging out drinking cocktails with your friends. The third thing we do is classes, which everyone should come out and take. They’re not only for dancers; anyone could put a harness on, even my mom. It’s an amazing workout, and it’s really empowering.

photo from The Muse’s Facebook

brooklyn spaces: What’s the link between Grounded and the Muse?
Karen: We support each other, we love each other. There’s a beautiful aerial community in Williamsburg, and Angela and Yuval having this space will really reinforce that community. It’s going to be an outstanding force.

brooklyn spaces: Angela and Yuval, what was your motivation for starting the space?
Angela: I think one of the main problems with trying to create art in New York City is that it’s so hard to survive financially that people can’t invest time in the creation process, to actually sit in your work, soak in it, develop it. With Grounded we do that a lot, we play with things, we improv, we throw things out, we get new things, we merge ideas. So part of the whole concept behind the Muse is that we want to support that kind of creation process, to ensure that there’s a place for people to do that.
Yuval: We really want to create an atmosphere for taking time for creation, for experimenting, a place when you can do everything and try everything. I think this is part of doing art.
Angela: We want it to be comfortable here, like you’re sitting in a living room, with no sense of judgment. We want that sort of calm energy, where it’s safe to go into the process and get lost in your art and feel okay, and to actually work off of the other things and people in the space.

brooklyn spaces: So tell me a quick history of the space itself.
Angela: That’s a long story. I had an outdoor dance studio in my backyard in Bushwick called Studio 43. We produced a few shows and then, do you remember the tornado we had last year? Well, it ripped up a tree from the lot next door and crushed everything. Around that time I was offered a tour that took me to Israel. One day while I was rehearsing there, this beautiful dog wandered into the theatre, and I jumped off the stage and just started hugging him. And Yuval came in looking for Shesek and found me. I think he had actually told Shesek, “Go fetch that girl.”
Yuval: That’s your version!
Angela: So Yuval and I hung out while I was doing the tour, and then I stayed in Israel. We almost opened the Muse in Tel Aviv; we were really looking, but we ultimately decided to raise some money with a Kickstarter and then come back do it here. A friend told us about this space, we came and we looked at it, and that was it. It’s amazing. There’s nothing in the cards to say we should be able to do this right now, but somehow we’re doing it. We have a long way to go, but it’s in motion. Whenever we don’t have enough money for the next thing, we have a show or a party to raise money. We had a ’70s disco party in November to pay for a hot-water heater.

Join the Circus Day (photo from The Muse’s Facebook)

brooklyn spaces: How many people are involved?
Angela: At least thirty, thirty-five people have popped in once or twenty times or a million times. It’s all artists, it’s like a big community. And it’s normally a social event; we cook together and then we build. Or I melt down and everyone hugs me and then we build. There’s a lot of that too.
Yuval: It’s a great way to discover new friends and good people.
Angela: We’ve had complete strangers come help us. People tease us that we’re basically building an artists’ kibbutz. And we’re always looking to expand it!
Yuval: Also we’re always searching for trades. People can come help us and then get free classes in hand-balancing, harness, silk, bungee, anything.

brooklyn spaces: Are you involved in the larger aerial and dance community in Brooklyn? Are people coming from House of Yes or Big Sky Works or Streb?
Angela: A lot of aerialists are involved, a lot of freelance artists. Yuval and I just received a grant from Streb to produce one of the pieces for his show. In my experience, aerialists are all allies, it’s not competitive or nasty.

brooklyn spaces: How has it been going with the build-out?
Angela: Demolition was a little harder than we thought.
Yuval: A lot of people ask us, like, construction is crazy, why don’t you just pay professional people for this? And we’re like, it’s not that hard. I mean, okay, it is hard, but it’s not that complicated, you just have to go step by step by step. Actually, we’re both glad that we didn’t know everything we would have to do before we get started, because we would have never done it.

photo from The Muse’s Facebook

brooklyn spaces: Do you think your creativity or your process is influenced by being in Williamsburg?
Angela: I think it’s more supportive here than it was in Bushwick. There’s more like-minded artists. I can call someone with an idea, and they’ll feed on it and fuel me. Or we know we’ll have the audience we need to fill the space.
Karen: Absolutely. Williamsbug just has a zest to it, a roughness, a rawness, a curiousness, a youthfulness that people feed off. It’s an amazing community. It’s really unique.

***

Like this? Read about more aerial and dance spaces: House of Yes, Big Sky Works, Chez Bushwick, Cave

greenroom brooklyn

oriana on 28 Dec ’11

neighborhood: bushwick | space type: apartment & party space | active since: 2010 | links: website, facebook, twitter

Self-described as “Brooklyn’s underground launchpad for performing artists,” Greenroom Brooklyn is run by violinist and dancer Johnny Arco, with help from Ryan Alexander and several friends. They’ve thrown nine parties in the last year, primarily on their roof, and they bring in lots of musicians and DJs to keep everyone dancing and to foster impromptu and spontaneous performances throughout the night.

the first party, photo by Dylan Hess

They invited me out to a party in September, and I got there as they were putting the finishing touches on the rooftop decorations. It looked amazing, full of lights and art, with instrument clusters in three corners. And then it started to rain. I watched the assorted crew go from skeptical to worried, and then, once the decision was made to move the party downstairs into the loft proper, I was privy to (and a small part of) the most organized, polite, un-frantic overhaul I could have imagined. With fewer than a dozen people, in less than an hour, everything was brought inside down makeshift ladders and through half-functional windows, all the furniture in the loft was rearranged, lights and amps and mics were all wired and hung and assembled throughout the space. By the time they opened the doors to a slightly restless and sizable crowd, it looked like they’d planned on an indoor party all along.

Check out this video they made to introduce their space, and then read on for my Q&A with Johnny!

brooklyn spaces: How did this all get started?
Johnny: It evolved pretty organically. We had our first party last July; it wasn’t planned very well, but all these awesome people came. I’ve been an active musician my entire life, so I got together with some other musicians and started doing jam sessions, which turned into live music and DJ parties. We started getting better at seeing what was happening, how to get a quality crowd.

photo by Dylan Hess

brooklyn spaces: So what, in your opinion, makes the party?
Johnny: The music’s super important, and the crowd. We make sure we have really terrific performers and DJs. And we invite people who are trying to do something, whatever it may be. That way, the ultimate goal of the party is to help people find other people who are doing things that could help them in their life, you know? People come to the party and become friends and start doing projects together.

photo by Alix Piorun

brooklyn spaces: What are some of the bands who have played here?
Johnny: They haven’t been set bands. We invite lots of musicians and they come together and play. It’s always kind of impromptu. I just make sure to invite people I respect, and say, “Oh look, there’s a microphone! There’s a guitar! What if we shine a blue light on you…?” and see what happens.

photo by Dylan Hess

brooklyn spaces: Why did you pick this neighborhood?
Johnny: Oh man, this neighborhood totally picked me. When I first came to see the space, I had already put down a deposit on a place in the East Village. But I came here anyway, just to check it out. It was massive, with nothing built out, completely open, two walls of windows. I got here at sunset, took one look around, and pulled out my violin. I was like, “I need to play in here right now.” And it was like the most chambery, echoey, cathedral-like tone I’d ever heard in my life—well no, that’s not true, but in my home for sure. Anyway, I had to live here. And it’s been incredible. I don’t have an expensive life, I get to play music all day long, and I’m surrounded by other artists and entrepreneurs who are doing what they love and want to do. Bushwick rocks.

Johnny Arco, Reuben Cainer, & Jeff Miles, photo by Alix Piorun

brooklyn spaces: As an artist, are you inspired by being in Brooklyn?
Johnny: I’ve been an artist and a performer for my entire life, but I definitely feel lucky to be in Brooklyn and have this type of space. It makes it seem like every time I pick up my instrument and play, I’m doing something special. Even if it’s just some friends hanging out, I feel like I’m performing in New York City, like I’m living and making it in the hardest place for a performer to make it. It’s not “I live in Brooklyn, now I’m inspired to be an artist.” It’s “I live in Brooklyn, and I am an artist. This is what people fucking dream of.” I think that’s what everybody here feels, whether they’re doing sound or lights or just hanging up a piece of art in an apartment. It feels so real, because it is real, the Greenroom is real, we’re really doing this. And there’s also a real responsibility, because we’re living in Brooklyn, being artists in Brooklyn, being inspired by Brooklyn. There’s an obligation to make something of quality, something we’re proud to have in Brooklyn.

photo by Dylan Hess

brooklyn spaces: What are your goals for the future of the space?
Johnny: We want to set up a system so that the Greenroom isn’t just the loft space itself, but something portable that we can take with us. We want to do a loft tour throughout the country, to get in touch with other people and say, “Hey, we have a cool loft space where we can do this stuff, you have a cool loft space where you can do this stuff, can we bring our crew and our equipment over and have a good time?” We’ve already got people onboard for Philly, D.C., and Boston. We’re trying to do the whole thing next March, from Montreal down to Austin. That’s the goal.

photo by Alix Piorun

***

Like this? Read about more apartment party spaces: Bushwick Project for the Arts, Hive NYC, Egg & Dart Club, Dead Herring, Jerkhaus, Newsonic, The Schoolhouse

ugly duckling presse

oriana on 14 Dec ’11

space type: nonprofit press | neighborhood: gowanus | active since: 2000 | links: website, facebook, twitter

Ugly Duckling Presse is a nonprofit letterpress printing and bookbinding studio with a pretty long and fascinating history, which you can read about over on their site here. In the late nineties the Presse was a zine called Ugly Duckling, and in 2000 the group started 6×6, which was put together in various living rooms and printed at a tiny Manhattan Valley letterpress shop whose primary business was making church newsletters. Since then UDP has lived in three states, four countries, the Nest Space in Dumbo, near a pier in Red Hook, and now at the Old American Can Factory in Gowanus. They’ve got twelve editors and have printed over 200 beautiful handmade books, not to mention dozens of broadsheets, tons of chapbooks, and all kinds of paper ephemera. They’re beginning to explore ebooks too, and they even have a podcast!

this & all photos in this post by Maximus Comissar

One of the cool things about a volunteer-run press is the amount of opportunities to let the community in. If you sign up for the UDP mailing list, you’ll get invited to their headquarters every couple of months for bookbinding, hand-stitching spines, letterpressing covers, and all manner of classy, functional arts and crafts. Maximus and I went by for a visit to help bind copies of the chapbook “Mr. Z., Mrs. Z., J.Z., S.Z.” with thick twine, met some lovely interns and volunteers, got to see the antique-looking machines in action, and hung out with Matvei, the Presse’s founder.

brooklyn spaces: How did this all get started?
Matvei: When I moved to New York in the late nineties, a bunch of my writer friends started making one-of-a-kind books for each other, little artist projects, simple things. Then we started to print larger runs of things like chapbooks, hand-bound books, zines, stuff like that. We started 6×6 in 2000, and just before that, we’d started putting Ugly Duckling Presse on the spines of all our little books, even though Ugly Duckling Presse wasn’t a place, it was just our living rooms. But it stuck. We wanted to publish our peers and poets we admired. There was a lot of labor involved, hand-stamping and rubber-banding and binding, so we already had that sense of making stuff, of zine culture and collage and hand-pasting and book arts and things like that.

brooklyn spaces: When did it become more a more formalized press?
Matvei: In the early 2000s, we moved in with a bunch of other arts organizations in a large space in Dumbo called Nest Space for eighteen months. We all got to be there practically for free; all we had to do was clean it up and build some walls. It was one of the early Two Trees buildings, and of course it was part of their plan, to bring in arts people to make the neighborhood more desirable and drive up the real estate values. Now there’s a crazy expensive boutique where our little workshop was.

brooklyn spaces: That’s so depressing.
Matvei: Well, it was fun. And there were lots of other arts groups there, some of whom we’re still in touch with, like Collapsible Giraffe, NTUSA, Paul Lazar Big Dance Theatre, Brooklyn Underground Film Festival. We had a huge common space that we used for events and performances and crazy parties, which was really inspiring. It helped people to know who we were and also helped us bring a certain kind of energy to poetry. Poetry’s really versatile, you can listen to it in a library in a stiff chair or you can go to a reading in some underground place and have it performed with crazy music. It was a very vibrant scene at the time, and that really influenced the way we wanted the to press work. It wasn’t just a publishing house, it was a place for people to come together, and to learn how to make books.

brooklyn spaces: Was it hard to leave that scene?
Matvei: In Red Hook we were holed up in one of the buildings near the Coffey Street pier, and it was a little lonely. But that’s when we were really making the press into something serious, so maybe we needed that kind of focus. And then we came here and became part of the Can Factory community, which has been really great. Issue Project Room is here, Rooftop Films is here, there’s a letterpress studio upstairs, Swayspace, they do beautiful work. There’s other publishers here too, One Story, Archipelago, and Akashic. There’s great energy, it’s a wonderful environment for us.

brooklyn spaces: Do you have any favorite books, or books that were a particular pleasure to make?
Matvei: We’ve done some very labor-intensive accordion projects, like 5 Meters of Poems, which really is almost five meters long. There have been a number of projects that I’m really proud of, like The Drug of Art by Ivan Blatný. He’s a multilingual poet who wrote in a lot of languages at once. Ana and Veronica, who edited that book, they put together pretty much a critical edition, with solid editorial backing, annotations, footnotes, all of it. It’s something that even a university press isn’t necessarily going to take on these days. And then on the other hand, we just did a chapbook called “Surprised by French Fries” by Joe Dailey, which is totally irreverent and funny, it just sings in a particular, ephemeral, non-serious way.

brooklyn spaces: I also noticed one called “Get the Fuck Back Into That Burning Plane.” That’s a great title.
Matvei: Yeah, I love that one, that’s Lawrence Giffin. We’ve working with him for years. We published his work in 6×6, then we did a chapbook of his poems, and we’re going to do a full-length book of his next year. That often happens. We like to have longer relationships with writers.

brooklyn spaces: Is there any overarching artist statement that unites all of the Ugly Duckling Presse books?
Matvei: Aesthetically we’re very eclectic, but some of that has to do with the structure of the collective. Each editor really has to want to do whatever they’re going to publish, and also it’s their choice; it’s not democratic, we don’t vote on which books to do. But we all come from similar sensibilities. We all want to publish books that no one else is doing. And there’s of course the handmade aspect. We’re not luddites by any means; sure, we’re a letterpress shop, but we also have two computers and we’re doing online books, exploring things that you can’t do in a print book. We just really believe in the book as a technology that works and that hasn’t been exhausted yet, one that is still interesting and immediate, and that it’s important how you make the book, not just what’s in it. I think we’re okay with the idea that we publish things that aren’t commercially viable, but we’re still engaged in cultural activity. It’s possible that our books will be read fifty yeas from now, and it’s possible that they won’t. But it continues an idea of culture that probably isn’t part of the general American or even global notion of what culture is anymore.

***

Like this? Read about more books and book art: A Wrecked Tangle Press, Central Booking, Books Through Bars

south oxford space

oriana on 26 Nov ’11

space type: rehearsal & performance space | neighborhood: ft. greene | active since: 2000 | links: website, facebook

A.R.T. New York (the Alliance of Resident Theatres) has been supporting nonprofit theatre groups for forty years. They provide all kinds of services to their nearly 300 member organizations, like technical assistance, real estate loans, and access to shared office and rehearsal space—which is where South Oxford Space comes in. A lovely old building in Ft. Greene, South Oxford Space rents office space to twenty different theatre organization, as well as larger rooms for classes, workshops, meetings, rehearsals, and small performances.

White Bird Productions' "Creative Theatrics" workshop, photo by Stephanie Bok

Check out their fascinatingly diverse group of tenants, and then read on for my interview with Stephanie Bok, South Oxford’s operations manager!

  • ActNow Foundation Develops, promotes, and produces works by artist of color in theater and film.

ActNow's "New Voices in Theater" reading series, reading of "Secrets of a Black Boy" by Darren Anthony

  • American Opera Projects Produces contemporary operas and commissions new work.
  • The Civilians Creates investigative theatre, developing new works based on contemporary and political topics.
  • Elders Share the Arts Conducts and fosters programs that honor and draw on the life experience of older adults and encourage their creative expression.

  • Elevator Repair Service Creates original performance pieces based on and around found texts, found objects, literature, and history.

Elevator Repair Service rehearsing "The Select," photo by John Collins

Jessica Cruz in Modern-Day Griot's "Lyrics in Motion"

  • Modern-Day Griot Theatre Company An interdisciplinary theatre company committed to moving the story of the African Diaspora forward via storytelling.
  • New York City Players Creates original work about people, relationships, and, above all, feeling.
  • New York Deaf Theatre Creates opportunities for the production of plays in American Sign Language.
  • Nia Theatrical Production Company Produces new works by emerging artists and provides arts-in-education programs to the educational community.
  • Page 73 Productions Develops and produces works of early-career playwrights who have shown commitment to the theatre but received neither wide public recognition nor substantial production opportunities.
  • Ripe Time Develops and produces ensemble-based performances that navigate the terrain between dance and theatre, word and image.
  • Shadow Box Theatre A children’s company that uses traditional Chinese shadow puppets to tell folk tales from many cultures.
  • Target Margin Theater Experimental theatre company that reinterprets the classics.
  • Trilok Fusion Arts A multi-disciplined company providing a forum for artists around the world to collaborate and create new and unique art with a focus on culture and tradition.

Urban Bush Women in their office

  • Urban Bush Women An ensemble dedicated to exploring cultural expression as a catalyst for social change, synthesizing contemporary dance, music, and text with the history, culture, and spiritual traditions of African-Americans and the African diaspora.
  • White Bird Productions Works with playwrights, composers and performers to develop and produce theatre that embraces issues of the environment and community.

 

brooklyn spaces: Do you come from a theatre background?
Stephanie: Yes, I’ve been in theatre all my life. I write and produce my own shows, and I work with several of the groups here. I’m a staff writer for American Candy, I work with White Bird Productions as a teaching artist, and my one-act plays have been produced by American Theatre of Harlem and ActNow.

Trilok Fusion Arts' FGA House Tour, photo by Stephanie Bok

brooklyn spaces: So you really understand the struggles theatre groups go through. Is there a lot of interaction between the different organizations in the building?
Stephanie: The tenants have certainly done collaborations, and there’s also sharing of resources—they’ll hire the same lighting designer or use the same actors. It definitely feels like a community, because these are really active go-getters who are at the heart of what’s happening in New York City theatre right now.

Music Together's "Babies Only" class, photo by Havalah Collins

brooklyn spaces: So when new tenants are coming in, do you look for groups that will fit the fabric of the community that’s already here?
Stephanie: They don’t have to necessarily “fit in,” but they do have to be a theatre-producing nonprofit organization that is a member of our network. We really value the diversity we have here with the different types of companies. We want everyone to feel welcome, and A.R.T. New York definitely doesn’t judge anyone’s work.

Rainmaker and Jessica Isa Burns in Modern-Day Griot's "Lyrics in Motion"

brooklyn spaces: What are some of your favorite groups that have been through here?
Stephanie: I can’t really pick favorites, but I can say that I’ve been very privileged to see some amazing theatre come from the groups that rehearse and have offices here. It’s really exciting to see snippets of the rehearsals, to get to know the actors as they’re coming through in their sweatpants, and then go see the show all put together, with great sets and everyone in their costumes and makeup. I just saw Ripe Time’s show last night, which was amazing, they do really beautiful work. I’m looking forward to The Tale of Frankenstein’s Daughter that Rabbit Hole Ensemble has been rehearsing here. I also really love when Christopher Bayes’ Funny School of Good Acting has clown classes here, it’s great to hear all the yelling and carrying on.

City Kids Dance! class with Dina Gray, photo by Andrea Ryder

brooklyn spaces: Do you feel like this neighborhood or Brooklyn in general has an effect on art and performance today?
Stephanie: This building has definitely seen a wider variety of uses than the other A.R.T. New York building, which is in Midtown Manhattan. We have someone who sells Mary Kay cosmetics, we have a woman who has a prom dress giveaway every spring, we’ve got a group that’s been doing a church service in the Great Room every Sunday for nine or ten years. The Greene Hill Food Co-op and Community Board 2 have used the Great Room for meetings. We have kids’ music classes here six days a week, Music Together of Ft. Greene and Music for Aardvarks; we’ve got a group called City Kids Dance! that does ballet and superhero classes. There’s such a variety of things that happen here, it’s kind of became a neighborhood institution.

American Opera Productions in their office

brooklyn spaces: What are your goals for the future of the space?
Stephanie: My mission over the past few years has been to try to get more and more theatre-type things in here, and to really focus on A.R.T. New York’s mission of promoting theatre in New York City. And just moving onward and upward, making sure that the rooms are in use all the time, promoting the space as somewhere to come and rehearse, to do a staged reading, a performance, that kind of thing. Just really having this identified as a space where theatre is made in New York.

***

Like this? Read about other theatre & performance spaces: Bushwick Starr, Brooklyn Lyceum, Cave, Chez Bushwick, Clockworks Puppet Studio, UnionDocs

gowanus print lab

oriana on 16 Nov ’11

space type: print studio | neighborhood: gowanus | actice since: 2010 | links: website, facebook, twitter

The Print Lab is deep in the bowels of Gowanus. It’s a nice stroll from the train, unless you happen to visit during a freak blizzard Halloween weekend like I did, in which case it’s kind of a cold, wet slog. But totally worth the trip! The space is huge and comfy and inviting, with great art on the walls, studio members hard at work at the many tables and machines, and incredibly friendly teachers and staff. I was invited to take the Intro to Screenprinting class, which (thankfully) covered all the basics, and though I’ve got no drawing eye whatsoever and had never even touched a screen before, I totally made a shirt that I’m not at all embarrassed to wear.

all photos by Maximus Comissar

The intro class is only one of many offered at the Print Lab; there’s printing classes for skateboards and posters and stationary, digital classes on Photoshop and Indesign and website-building, there’s classes for kids, classes for DIY weddings, they even had a class on how to jailbreak your iPhone. Of course, they could also do everything for you, offering all kinds of large-format and specialty-ink printing services for fancy projects. Or if you already know what you’re doing and want to DIY it, you can become a member, gaining access to all the tools, paints, supplies, computers, machinery, and anything else you could possibly need. So go print something! But first click through for my interview with Amy, the lab’s marketing director.

screens

brooklyn spaces: What are some of your more unusual classes?
Amy: There’s lots. We have one on printing in repeat, for making fabric or wallpaper, we have a specialty inks class where you get to use flocking and foils and glitter, we have digital classes that are geared toward helping you make your designs appropriate for screenprinting, all kinds of things.

sinks

brooklyn spaces: There are also events here, right?
Amy: Yup. Last weekend we had a Halloween event, where kids got to have characters screenprinted on their clothes. We also do collaborative events; we did a party with Sobe and a craft night with Etsy. About once a month we have an opening reception for the new art exhibit.

screens

brooklyn spaces: Is the art done by Print Lab members?
Amy: Sometimes, but this one was curated by the art collective Six Betweens. Next month we’re doing an exhibit with the Graphic Artists Guild, and after that is a student show called “The Art of Rebellion.” Screenprinting lends itself to protest so well, because it’s really affordable, you can make multiples easily, and you can really deliver a message.

paints

brooklyn spaces: What’s the screenprinting community like? Do you guys get together and talk shop?
Amy: Sure, we’re friendly, we’re fun, we like to get along with everybody. We’re buddies with USA Tees, we have a good relationship with The Arm, a letterpress studio in Williamsburg, and also with the Brooklyn Artists Gym, which is just down the street. It’s really exciting to be in Gowanus right now, part of the growing artist community.

oven

brooklyn spaces: Who are some of your exciting clients or members?
Amy: We worked with one Brazillian designer doing specialty printing, glitter and things like that, and we do some contract work with the fabric designer Scott Hill, who runs Old Village Hall. Two of our long-term members, Anthony Graves and Carla Herrera-Prats, are part of Camel Collective, and they were featured in Mass MoCA’s “The Workers” show. Some other great members are painter Jeremy Penn, illustrator Erin Gallagher, graphic artist Norm Ibarra, and printmaker Andreas Ekberg. The artists here do really amazing things.

our instructor

brooklyn spaces: What’s the best part of working at a printshop?
Amy: I just think it’s exciting to be a part of a space that encourages people to make things, and to work in a way that they might not be able to on their own. I mean, you can screenprint at home, but it’s certainly very difficult, especially in New York with tiny shoebox apartments. So I love being able to facilitate people having the space they need to work and create.

me with my screen

***

Like this? Read about more makers: Pickett Furniture, 6 Charles Place, Werdink, Bushwick Print Lab, A Wrecked Tangle Press, Metropolis Soap, Arch P&D, Gowanus Ballroom, Urbanglass, Better Than Jam, 3rd Ward