maximus comissar – brooklyn spaces

fivemyles

oriana on 14 May ’15

[I’m counting down to the release of the Brooklyn Spaces book by doing one mini-post per day, sharing teasers of some of the places you’ll find in it.]

neighborhood: crown heights | space type: gallery | active since: 1999 | links: website, facebook, twitter

“Everyone in the neighborhood knows, if you need something, come to FiveMyles,” says Hanne Tierney, founder and artistic director of the Crown Heights gallery, performance venue, and community gathering space. Hanne opened the 1,500-square-foot nonprofit gallery, which is dedicated to showcasing the work of emerging, under-represented, and minority artists, in a former garage in 1999. FiveMyles presents six formal exhibitions each year, and close to half the artists shown are African American. “We’ve always stood with Africa, East Africa in particular,” Hanne says. “And it’s very exciting for the kids in the neighborhood to see contemporary work from Africa.

pix by Maximus Comissar

This year, a 172-unit luxury condo will open two doors down from FiveMyles, which Hanne fears could mark the end for the community. But she continues to fight for her neighbors: screening documentaries, hosting talks, writing letters to Albany about police harassment, and, of course, curating more and more exhibits, showing the work of more and more artists. “Hanne is so important to this community,” says Francelle Jones, whose work has been featured in the gallery. “She brings people together, and she allows people who live in this neighborhood to feel as though they’re still part of something. That’s so important.”

Want to learn more about FiceMyles, and 49 other incredible Brooklyn Spaces? Buy the book!

pioneer works

oriana on 15 May ’14

space type: nonprofit, skillshare, gallery | neighborhood: red hook | active since: 2012 | links: website, facebook, twitter, wikipedia

Pioneer Works is huge. It’s around 27,000 square feet with 40-foot ceilings, which is just truly, absolutely enormous. The building dates back all the way to 1866, and for more than a century was home to Pioneer Iron Works, one of the largest machine manufacturers in the country.

Prominent Brooklyn artist Dustin Yellin bough the building in 2010. As he told the New York Times, “My crazy dream is to create a kind of utopian art center.” And Pioneer Works is something pretty close to that dream. The nonprofit has several elements, including a massive exhibition gallery and event space (one of the biggest in the city), classes and workshops, a science lab with a powerful photographic microscope, artist residencies, institutional residencies (currently the Clocktower Gallery), a radio show, and a modern art periodical called Intercourse Magazine.

all photos by Maximus Comissar

The events range from open studios to lectures (“How to Fake Your Own Death” is popular and recurring), from Hackathons to concerts, with musical acts like Spiritualized, Ariel Pink, and Omar Souleyman. And the classes are equally varied—some recent examples include “Physical Storytelling,” “The Alchemy of Light,” “From Tesla to the Transistor,” “Homebrew Kimchi,” “NY Theremin Society Workshop,” and “Lock-Picking and Open-Source Security.”

So get out to Red Hook and learn something! But first read the Q&A with David, Pioneer Works’ Director of Education.

brooklyn spaces: Tell me a bit about the history of this building.
David: Okay! I know this because we had a Red Hook history class here recently. It was built in 1866, then in 1871 it burned down, and it was rebuilt in 1872. It was originally Pioneer Iron Works, one of the biggest iron works in the country. After that it was a tobacco-drying warehouse. Then they were doing something manufacturing until the 1950s; whatever they were making was super heavy, so they had this system to move it all around in here, and rollers set into the floor to roll it out the door. And then since the 1960s it was used to store financial records. When Dustin bought it, there was no heat, no running water, minimal electricity. The windows were all bricked up, the floors were wrecked, the staircases were terrifying. It took about a year of heavy work to get it into shape.

brooklyn spaces: I love that uniquely artist vision of walking into a completely decrepit space and saying, “I can see what this is going to be.” It’s like that quote about sculptors, how they look for the piece within the marble and then let it out.
David: Exactly. Dustin was like, “All right, this building is my next piece of art.”

Dustin Yellin sculpture

brooklyn space: How did you become involved?
David: I was teaching high school and really wanted to quit, so when Dustin presented me the opportunity to start a teaching program here, I thought I’d give it a shot. So we started, and it went really well in the summer, and then it went really well in the fall, and then Hurricane Sandy happened, and it just totally knocked us out. This whole building was like shoulder-deep in water. We tried to keep doing classes even though we had very little power and no heat—I bubbled in the classroom, like in ET, just encased it in plastic curtains, and we put in as many heaters as we could without blowing the circuits, but it was still so, so cold. We didn’t get heat until March, so that’s when we finally started doing classes again. Since then, we’ve just been growing and growing and growing.

brooklyn spaces: How would you classify the different kinds of classes offered here?
David: They’re pretty different, but it’s basically stuff that’s either really new or really old. We do cutting-edge stuff like microcontrollers and 3D printing and upgrading the firmware in your camera; those are for artists, designers, software developers, to demystify the process of new technologies that everyone wants to know how to use. And then we do old stuff, like paper marbling, or wet-plate or tintype photography, which is Civil War era. It’s to a similar aim as the newer stuff: giving artists a new vocabulary and a specialized practice.

brooklyn spaces: Do you come up with an idea for a class and then go out and find a teacher? Or do people bring you ideas?
David: Both. The lock-picking class, which is super popular, came about because I saw a lock-picking tent at Maker Faire—although tracking down someone who picks locks for a living was really hard. Then on the other hand, a woman came by the other day who wants to do a bread-baking class. We were like, “But we have no ovens, we have no flat surfaces, we don’t have anything.” And she was like, “It’s okay, we can make it work. How about we cook the bread on sticks over a fire?” We’ll try basically anything if it seems cool and the teacher seems competent.

brooklyn spaces: There seems to be a strong movement in Brooklyn for these kinds of classes and skillshares, as evidenced by the extreme popularity of places like 3rd Ward and Brooklyn Brainery. Why do you think that is? Do people just want to have more hobbies?
David: I think it’s deeper than that. Demystifying processes is so enabling. There’s a huge movement of open-source hardware and software in the tech world, and I think part of that is because we’re so controlled by the companies that make the technology we use. The fact that you can’t just open an iPhone and replace the battery is a conscious choice on their part. It’s not because oh you might do it wrong; it’s to keep you under their control. The open-source movement puts the power back in the hands of the individuals, and I think people are used to that idea now, so by applying that model to education, we’re unlocking it a bit. And I think it’s going to continue to grow.

brooklyn spaces: With so many choices, do you think they’re beginning to overlap? What makes Pioneer Works’ offerings unique?
David: I mean, maybe there’s some overlap with what 3rd Ward was doing, but we have something that they didn’t have.
brooklyn spaces: Integrity?
David: Oh yeah, well there’s that. But also we’re a nonprofit and they were a for-profit, which makes a huge difference. We’re an arts institution; it’s just a very different kind of space. Plus we have the nicest building. Once people come here once, it’s not hard to get them to come back.

brooklyn spaces: Do you think being in Red Hook has had an influence on how the space has developed?
David: Sure. There’s such a strong community here, and a real neighborhood feel, like I’ve never experienced anywhere else in New York. We’re trying to find ways to use this space as more of a community center. At the end of April we did a twenty-four-hour hackathon that was Red Hook themed. Business owners from the neighborhood gave us challenges, and all the tech people competed to make apps to address those issues. Pizza Moto catered the event. I love those guys—after the flood they came down to Van Brunt Street when nobody had any power and just started cooking pizzas for free, out on the street under the police lights.

brooklyn spaces: What are some of your future goals for the space?
David: We’re building a lot of relationships with terrific groups like Invisible Dog and Generally Assembly and Fractured Atlas. We don’t know what we’re going to do with them yet, but we’re kicking around ideas. We’re also starting to collaborate in a bunch of ways with Brooklyn Museum, which is perfect because they want to be linked to a gallery and we want to be linked to an institution. Obviously we don’t want to be a museum, but the way they’re organized and the integrity they have, I think it’s a really great model for us.

***

Like this? Read about more skillshares: Brooklyn Brainery, Exapno, Time’s Up, Ger-Nis Culinary Center, Lifelabs, UrbanGlass, 3rd Ward

exapno (metropolitan exchange building)

oriana on 14 Oct ’13

neighborhood: downtown brooklyn | space type: music coworking | open since: 2010 | links: website, facebook, twitter

Founded by husband-and-wife composers Lainie and Jascha, Exapno is a coworking space for the musically minded. For a very low monthly fee, musicians (primarily “new music” composers) can rent desk space, giving them a quiet place to work on their music, network with other musicians, and give and attend performances. It’s built on the concept of a writers’ space, inspired by Paragraph in Manhattan, where Jascha was once a member.

Qubit performing; photo by Lainie

Interestingly, Exapno is just one of myriad small businesses currently residing in the fascinating Metropolitan Exchange building. The massive MEx—a 45k-square-foot, seven-floor former bank—is owned by designer Al Attara, who is striving to make it a creative startup hive. Attara has owned the building for more than three decades, but for years it was on the city’s “urban renewal” chopping block, meaning that it could be reclaimed and torn down at any time. About six years ago the building came off the list, and since then Attara has invited in a wide universe of creatives, from avant-garde furniture designers RockPaperRobot to bio research lab Genspace. The sixth floor is all architects; the fifth floor has several food importers, from chocolate to tea to fish; and the fourth floor is media-oriented, with groups like Seed Magazine and Good News Planet, a website that only prints good news. (To read more about MEx, check out this New York Times piece from back in 2011.)

MEx fifth floor, photo by Maximus Comissar

Working within this amazingly diverse community of creative entrepreneurs, Exapno is thriving—as much as it can. With a cap of around 20 musicians monthly, and restrictions such as the inability to leave instruments overnight or to put up walls or soundproofing, Exapno may have reached its growth capacity. Ultimately they may relocate to a space where they can have more control and freedom, but in the meantime they’re happily staying put. Exapno, a 501(c)3 nonprofit, is always seeking donations, and the group is open to new members—find out more on their site. But first, read my Q&A with cofounder Jascha and musician member James.

Jascha & James on left, photo by Maximus Comissar

brooklyn spaces: What does Exapno mean?
Jascha: My wife Lainie is a huge Marx Brothers fan, Harpo in particular. In his biography, Harpo talks about how when he toured Russia in the ’30s, he would see posters advertising his show, with his name written in Cyrillic, and it looked like “Exapno Mapcase.” I think we’ve only ever run into one other person who got the reference.

brooklyn spaces: How did the space get started?
Jascha: Since at least the early 2000s, Lainie had been wanting to create a performance space that was cheap to rent out, and that could function as a community nexus, a meeting place for young musicians, a way to get into the scene. Eventually we met Al, the wonderful man who owns this building. He’s incredible; instead of turning this place into condos or office space and making millions of dollars, he has filled this sort of ramshackle building with startups and indie businesses and nonprofits, just because that’s what he believes in. Anyway, Al agreed to rent us the space for whatever we could pay, so it’s sort of by his good graces that we’re here at all.

Wet Ink, photo by Lainie

brooklyn spaces: What’s it like being a member here?
James: It’s an amazing resource and access to a great community. All musicians needs space where they can make noise or quietly write music that will one day become noise, and it’s awesome to be able to get that for such a low monthly fee.

photo by Maximus Comissar

brooklyn spaces: What connects all the members? Does everyone write or make a similar kind of music?
Jascha: We rapidly discovered that with a really cheap rehearsal space, we had to find artful ways to deflect requests from garage bands or that sort of thing. That’s what’s nice about “new music”: occasionally it’s a little loud, but usually it’s like a string quartet, or a vibraphone and singer. It’s much more manageable in terms of neighbors.
James: It’s somewhat self-selecting. You can’t leave equipment here, you can’t make a lot of loud noise, so that disqualifies, say, a punk band that wants someplace to rehearse every night. Plus almost everyone I know in the “new music” community tends to be project-oriented, as opposed to in a definitive group. Which is why a resource like this is so important: we don’t have a whole band where each member can pitch in $20 a month for a space.
Jascha: There are a lot of things about music and musicians that are really quite antisocial—making lots of strange noise, leaving stuff everywhere, taking up lots of space with pianos and drum kits—so we’ve had to modify things. There’s a lot more we could be doing if we had a space we could control, but then we’d have to pay an awful lot of money. And actually, it feels like the people who mainly used the space two or three years ago are starting to move on to other things. Now I feel like the people who need the space are people we don’t know, so we need to work on getting the word out.
James: I’ve noticed a lot of new younger composers here. Suddenly there’s this new generation of really positive, spirited people doing all sorts of weird stuff, and a lot of it’s happening here.

String Noise, photo by Lainie

brooklyn spaces: Do you have any famous alumni?
Jascha: Within the modest world of the New York new music scene, sure. Dither is quite well known; they’ve been around for years and get props from major composers. They do an event every year called the Dither Extravaganza [this year’s is on October 26th, at the Gowanus Loft]. Our artistic advisory board also has some heavy hitters in it, like Morton Subotnick and Paul Lanksy.

brooklyn spaces: What’s your relationship to the neighborhood?
Jascha: The location is awesome, it’s a great hub for music. Brooklyn Academy of Music has been here forever, and recently two major venues moved in around the corner: Roulette and ISSUE Project Room. But we’re proud to say we beat them here.

Sweat Lodge, photo by Lainie

brooklyn spaces: What are your thoughts on being an artist in Brooklyn these days?
Jascha: Well, when we started this space, Lainie and I were living in Chelsea, but most of our music friends lived in Brooklyn, and increasingly the concerts we were going to were in Brooklyn too. The center of gravity for our scene—and so many other artistic scenes—has been shifting here more and more. Brooklyn is incredible right now; there’s just so much creative activity here.

Exapno rooftop, photo by Maximus Comissar

***

Like this? Read about other coworking and skillshare spaces: Time’s Up, Pioneer Works, Bushwick Print Lab, Arch P&D, Urbanglass, 3rd Ward, Brooklyn Lyceum, No-Space

acme studio

oriana on 31 May ’13

space type: photo studio & prop house | neighborhood: williamsburg | active since: 2010 | links: website, facebook, twitter, tumblr

Listen, I’ve been to a lot of wacky spaces through this project, but Acme is one of the wackiest. It’s just teeming with the wildest array of things—figurines and furniture and statues and taxidermy and instruments and tchotchkes of all shapes, sizes, and hues. Even the bathrooms are like tiny stuff galleries! And the most amazing part? It’s the most organized chaos I’ve ever seen.

photos by Maximus Comissar unless noted

Acme is a one-stop shop for your film and photo needs: run by industry veterans, they can do everything from designing and custom-building a set, to supplying a dizzying array of props, to shooting the whole thing. And they certainly have done all that, for increasingly high-profile clients, from Missy Elliot to Zac Efron to Heidi Klum. They shot the David Cross cover for Brooklyn Magazine, hosted the secret premier of season two of Girls with HBO and Flavorpill, and throw fabulous fundraisers for the Burning Man camp A Cavallo. And they also hold benefits, parties, lectures, classes, and more, and are always open to new ideas for fabulous uses of this fabulous space. So hit ‘em up with your ideas, and go check out an event or two! But first read my interview with operations manager Brian Colgan.

"Girls" screening, photo from Acme's tumblr

brooklyn spaces: How did this all come about?
Brian: It was started by Shawn Patrick Anderson, a set designer and prop stylist. He had a storage and workspace down by the Navy Yard that was full of all this crazy stuff, and people kept wanting to do photos and videos there. He had a series of kind of high-profile shoots there, like Sonic Youth and the band Chairlift, and finally he was like, “What if this could actually be a thing?” Most studios are just a big empty white box with a cyc, that big curved white wall that you do the photo shoot in front of. They’re totally sterile and boring, and you have to bring everything in with you. So the beauty of Acme, what Shawn realized people were responding to at his studio, is why not have a crazy amount of stuff in the studio that people can use in their shoots?

brooklyn spaces: So are you guys actively amassing more stuff?
Brian: We’re always amassing more stuff. There’s so much stuff! It’s really a question of deciding what makes sense to keep, which is always tough.

brooklyn spaces: Especially when you’re trying to impose order on such an eclectic collection.
Brian: Exactly. For instance: we have a lot of taxidermy, which is hard to get in the city, because it’s really expensive and fragile. So we were like, “Okay, let’s be the taxidermy people.” Now we’re always looking for more. There are definitely holes we can fill in the New York City prop world.

brooklyn spaces: I had no idea there even were prop shops, let alone so many that you have to make an identity for yourself among them.
Brian: Oh yeah, there’s a bunch of places. A lot of them specialize in modern, clean, white stuff, because so many people want that. We’ve decided we want to have the most unique, weird things. When someone’s like, “Where can I get a furry armchair?” someone else will tell them, “You’ve got to go to Acme.” I get the craziest requests. Like, “Do you have ten person-size Mountain Dew cans?”

brooklyn spaces: What?! Do you?
Brian: No, but I usually know who does. The film and photo community in New York is small but growing, because the city seems to have realized that there’s a lot of money in this. If you go out to LA, there’ll be a guy whose entire operation is, like, John’s Life-Size Mountain Dew Cans. But in New York, with real estate at such a premium, no one can afford to store all that. Someone called the other day to see if we had a log cabin. An entire cabin! It’s definitely a wacky world.

brooklyn spaces: If a band comes in here and is like, “We want to use the life-size disco ball, that taxidermied deer head, and the paint-covered inflatable baby,” would you be like, “Ooh, Sonic Youth used those same props”?
Brian: Nah, we’d just let it go. Even if things get reused, the application is going to be different or the lighting is going to be different or whatever. And anyway, if you brought twenty people in here and had them pick the coolest object, they’d pick twenty different things. We’re all inspired by a different taxidermied animal.

dressing room

brooklyn spaces: Who are some of your favorite clients you’ve had or favorite projects you’ve worked on?
Brian: It’s always fun to travel, which we do a fair amount. We just did probably our biggest job ever, a Diet Coke commercial down in Nashville with Taylor Swift. As for things we’ve done here, one of our most ambitious projects was building a huge multi-level snow cave for a Heidi Klum fashion project. When Heidi got here, she was like, “This place is crazy!” She made her mom come, she told her friend to cancel her flight, and they all just stayed and hung out. All types of people come in here and are like, “Whoa, this is so amazing! You have the coolest job ever!” and I’m like, “Oh, right, I do.”

Heidi Klum set, photo from Acme's tumblr

brooklyn spaces: And you guys have other kinds of events here as well, right?
Brian: We do. We have this awesome space, and so many people need space, so I’m really excited to share it. We’re open to anything, for the most part. Well, I do get a lot of calls where people are like, “Okay, we’re gonna have sixteen DJs, five bars, and six thousand people!” Which: no. None of that. But we’re pretty open to reasonable things. We had a writing group in here recently, like fifty folks writing in total silence. We’ve had swinger sex nights, we’ve done underground dinner parties, we had a big Ethiopian coffee ceremony with Bunna Café. After Hurricane Sandy, Observatory, the event space in Gowanus, got flooded, and they called and were like, “We’ve got this lecture coming up, the speaker is on a plane from London right now, and we don’t have a space.” So we had that here, which led to Observatory scheduling other things here, including some taxidermy classes. Basically, we have this cool space, so why the hell wouldn’t we share it?

wood shop

brooklyn spaces: I love that! That seems like such a Brooklyn ethos. What are your thoughts about Brooklyn these days, especially this hyper-gentrifying part of Williamsburg?
Brian: When we first opened Acme three years ago, we got a lot of resistance from people about shooting in Brooklyn, but now celebrities want to come here, sometimes more than Manhattan. Not to knock studios in Manhattan, but why would you want to shoot there? Just trying to load things in is impossible. And this is such a thriving area; right on our block we’ve got Mast Brothers, the Brooklyn Art Library, About Glamour, and there’s new stores opening all the time. I definitely love being in Brooklyn. The creative class has absolutely moved over here, so it seems like a natural place to do creative things.

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Like this? Read about more film industry spaces: Film Biz Recycling, Running Rebel Studios, Factory Brooklyn, Bond Street Studio

gemini & scorpio loft

oriana on 20 May ’13

neighborhood: gowanus | space type: art & events | active since: 2011 | links: website, facebook, twitter, flickr

G&S Glitter Ball, NYE 2013 (photo by Linus Gelber)

For ten years, Gemini & Scorpio have been throwing huge, immersive themed parties, consistently positioning themselves at the forefront of the NYC underground art-party world. Along with a few other beautifully creative affairs—Rubulad, Dances of Vice, Shanghai Mermaid, Cheryl, various Winkel + Balktick shindigs—Gemini & Scorpio curate the most creative, daring, and over-the-top events that Brooklyn has to offer. Whether it’s jazz bands in a Russian banya, a steampunk Burning Man fundraiser, an old-meets-new electro-swing dance party at Lincoln Center, or a New Year’s Eve glitter explosion, Gemini & Scorpio bring together dancers, music, and performers around lavish themes to create unforgettable occasions, party after party after party. And that’s not all: G&S also curate a weekly events listing that is second only to NonsenseNYC for finding the most fantastic things to do any day of the week. Sign up here!

After years of being nomadic, Miss Scorpio found a permanent home for G&S in a repurposed Gowanus woodshop. Now, in addition to lavish monthly parties, the loft hosts lectures, dance classes, plays, photo and video shoots, and more. And after spending months on demolition and build-out of the new space, Miss Scorpio reached out to the community she has provided with so many fantastic experiences to ask for help with the next stage of development of her space—and successfully raised more than $32k through Kickstarter. In the short term, this will mean new floors, walls, and ceiling for the loft, and in the long term it will allow G&S to keep bringing us all the best, most magical affairs—the uniquely beautiful experiences that make Brooklyn the most spectacular place to be.

photos by Maximus Comissar unless noted

brooklyn spaces: Let’s start before this space: tell me how you became one of New York’s most creative party mavens.

Miss Scorpio, photo by Linus Gelber

Miss Scorpio: It was a pure accident that started with a website about online dating. This was ten years ago, when online dating was mostly considered weird and sad, but Miss Gemini and I wanted to show people that it was actually this fabulous thing, like eBay for dating. We thought you should never just do dinner and a movie with your online date; you should do something interesting, so that even if the date sucked, at least you’d have had a cool night. So every Friday we put out a list of unique things to do with your online date, and then we started throwing “singles parties that don’t suck.” Well, they didn’t suck to such a degree that we couldn’t keep couples out! We started with a Valentine’s Day party, then we did one for Halloween, and another one for New Year’s, and now it’s ten years later and this is all I do.

brooklyn spaces: What elements are necessary to make a Gemini & Scorpio party?
Miss Scorpio: First there has to be a theme, something a bit off-beat and unexpected that gives people an excuse to dress up. Live entertainment is another factor that’s really important: there’s generally a whole evening of programming curated to the theme. A G&S party isn’t one you drop into casually on your way to something else; our ideal party guest is one who leaves the house knowing that they’re coming to see us, dresses to the theme, and stays with us for the whole night.

brooklyn spaces: Tell me about some of your favorite parties.

banya party, photo from G&S

Miss Scorpio: I always enjoy the Lost Circus steampunk party, and also the banya parties, which we’ve been doing since 2006. A fantastic recent party was a sci-fi mashup called Cantina at the End of the Universe. It was a Star Wars Day party—I’ve been wanting to do that party for four years, but I had to wait until May 4th fell on a Saturday. One of the headliners was Big Nazo, this incredible alien monster funk band. They played the Masquerade Macabre Halloween party that I co-produced with Rubulad in 2010, which had one of my favorite moments of any party I’ve ever done. Big Nazo was onstage being joined by the five-piece Raya Brass Band, and I was leading a parade from our other party location, headed up by Extraordinary Rendition, a fifteen-person brass band. Big Nazo and Raya were supposed to be done when we got there but they weren’t, so we had like thirty people onstage jamming, along with these enormous alien monster puppets, and the crowd just lost their shit. It was beautiful. [Video of the madness here.]

Big Nazo, photo from G&S

brooklyn spaces: Who are some other favorite performers you’ve worked with?
Miss Scorpio: There’s definitely a family of performers that I book again and again. Sxip Shirey is an absolute genius composer and musician, and every time he plays I’m excited to hear it, especially when he performs with the incredible beat-boxer Adam Matta. The Love Show dancers are wonderful, they combine classical dance training with a cabaret attitude and fantastic costumes. Shayfer James is a terrific dark rock musician who deserves a much bigger audience than he’s getting. Sometimes I take on artists as a personal cause, and keep booking them until people realize how incredible they are.

G&S piano

brooklyn spaces: Have you ever had someone get so big that they outgrow your parties?
Miss Scorpio: Yes! After I booked the Hot Sardines for my Lincoln Center Midsummer Night’s Swing two years ago, their career has exploded and they are now booked constantly. That’s happened with a bunch of circus people I used to book as well. But it’s a good problem to have. I’m very proud of my talented friends.

brooklyn spaces: Okay, let’s talk about this space. How long did you spend looking for it, and what shape was it in when you found it?
Miss Scorpio: Four years of constant searching, and in the end it was a random Craigslist find. The moment I walked in, I knew this was it, even though it was completely wrecked. There was plywood over all the windows, the floor was rotted in multiple places, there were strange pipes everywhere, the ceiling was half rotted out, there were signs of a recent fire. It was terrible.

a few months after move-in

brooklyn spaces: How long did it take you to get it into shape?
Miss Scorpio: First there were two months of just demolition. Everything you see, all the walls, we did it all. We re-laid much of the floor, using wood repurposed from other parts of the space. Once we got bathrooms up—with walls—I knew I was ready to let people in. The first party we did here was Swing House, one of my 1920s remix parties. Everybody loved it, but it was a party in a construction zone.

fixing the rotted floors

brooklyn spaces: Tell me about some of the non-party events you’ve had here.
Miss Scorpio: We’ve hosted a few lectures in conjunction with Observatory that have been great fun. We had one called “How to Trespass” with Wanderlust Projects, and another with my boyfriend, lexicographer Jesse Sheidlower, called “Sex in Dictionaries.” We just had a storytelling event, “I’m Tawkin’ Here,” which was all New Yorkers and New York stories. Brooklyn Swings does a weekly swing-dancing class. We hosted an immersive, participatory version of Midsummer Night’s Dream staged by Shakespeare Shakedown. I’m always looking for people who are doing innovative, interesting things and could benefit from having access to an affordable art space.

Meet Me in Paris Cabaret, photo by Binnorie Artwork

brooklyn spaces: What’s your relationship like within the rest of the underground arts community? I feel like, of everyone I’ve interviewed, you really know every single person in the creative class in Brooklyn.
Miss Scorpio: It’s an extremely tight-knit community. It’s not just me; I think we all know each other. But because I do the event listings, I have a good sense of what everyone is up to. Even if I don’t know someone personally, I can tell you what arc their work has taken over the last ten years.

G&S rooftop view

brooklyn spaces: Last year when you and I were doing Occupy Sandy volunteering together, you told me you once did the listings on your phone from Paris.
Miss Scorpio: Oh yeah. Another time I did them from a tethered connection in an RV on the way to Burning Man. Everywhere I’ve traveled, I’ve brought the listings with me. I consider it my community service, a way for me to give back to the people who trust me and honor me with their presence at my events.

G&S rooftop art

brooklyn spaces: What advice would you give someone who wanted to do what you do?
Miss Scorpio: I’d say definitely don’t get into it for the glamour! Ninety percent of what I do is spreadsheets and emails. Maybe by 11 or 12 on a party night I’ll finally get to get into costume and have a few hours of fun, but for the most part it’s a job like any other. For me the payoff is conceiving something and then seeing it become a reality.

brooklyn spaces: What are your plans for the future—ten more years of this?
Miss Scorpio: Oh gosh, I don’t know. It does seem like I’m pretty committed to the New York cultural underground, but I couldn’t tell you what will happen in my life in the next ten years. I hope it’s big and exciting.

***

Like this? Read about more underground nightlife: Rubulad, the Lab, Red Lotus Room, Newsonic, House of Yes, Gowanus Ballroom, 12-turn-13

dead herring

oriana on 23 Jan ’13

space type: apartment & music | neighborhood: williamsburg | active: 2007–2013 | links: myspace, facebook, twitter

For most of its run, Dead Herring—an apartment that sometimes doubled as a DIY music and occasional theatre space was fairly averse to any sort of press. That’s just part of the fun of running an underground apartment venue—some measure of paranoia is often called for. But Dead Herring closed Feb 1st, 2013, right after an amazing commemorative closing show, featuring the Immaculates (a band that was formed at a Dead Herring party), Moonmen on the Moon, Man (who broke up and then reunited just for this show), Necking!! (one of the Dead Herring creators’ band), and special secret guests.

Cuddle Machines, photo by Nicki Ishmael

Read my interview with housemates Liz, Nicki, Jeff, and Andrew, which took place on the eve of the end of Dead Herring, below. For more pix from Nicki, there’s a terrific six-year DH photo retrospective at Impose Magazine. And be sure to check out their new space in North Williamsburg, Cloud City!

show posters, photo by Maximus Comissar

brooklyn spaces: Tell me a quick history of how this all got started.
Jeff: Liz and I went to college together in California, and we both lived in this co-op called Cloyne Court Hotel in Berkeley that used to have shows in the kitchen, in the basement, wherever. The first time I went there Nerf Herder was playing, and I was like, “Whoa, this place is awesome! I’m moving in here next year!”
Nicki: My band played there once, it was like nothing I’d ever seen before. There were kegs in the quad, there was a room no one could go into, there was the most disgusting bathroom I’d ever seen in my life, it was covered in graffiti, and just everyone going crazy and hanging off pipes. It was so cool.
Jeff: And then years later I wound up living across the hall from Liz and Nick in the McKibben Lofts.
Liz: Nick and I are the ones who started Dead Herring. We had a couple of shows at McKibben, and when we heard about this space, we thought it would be great place to continue to do that. Nicki moved in six months later, and Jeff moved in in 2008, and Andrew moved in two years ago, in 2010.

Bare Wires, photo by Nicki Ishmael

brooklyn spaces: What was the first show?
Nicki: It was Maneguar, Pterodactyl, Golden Error, Marvel & Knievel, and Nonhorse.

brooklyn spaces: Do you all book shows?
Liz: I don’t. Nicki books all the music now, Jeff does the variety shows, and Andrew has brought some plays in.
brooklyn spaces: Nicki, is there a succinct way to characterize what kind of music you book here?
Nicki: No, not really. We used to have a lot more experimental noise shows when Nick lived here, because he was into experimental noise music and he booked that. I’m more into punk and rock and indie pop. I don’t know, it just depends on what comes together. If there’s a band coming through that we know, we’ll book around them. Or if we see a band we really like we’ll tell them to come play here. It used to be easier for bands to find us when we used the MySpace page, but that just became too much, we were getting like fifteen emails a day. None of us is a full-time booker, you know? When I have ten minutes I’ll IM people, like, “Hey, you want to play a show?”

photo by Maximus Comissar

brooklyn spaces: Tell me either the coolest or weirdest thing about living in a place where there are shows.
Nicki: A funny thing is that people don’t realize that we live here. People come here for shows and then they’ll come over for a potluck and be like, “Oh, wow, it looks so different. I didn’t know you had a couch.”
brooklyn spaces: I think that’s part of the charm of these spaces, that you know while you’re watching this band you’re sitting on the roof of someone’s closet or washing your hands in their kitchen sink.
Jeff: Did you read the article about the new Silent Barn in the Village Voice? They were saying how most DIY spaces are illegal, like no one can talk about it, which has kind of been our thing. But now the Silent Barn is like “No, this is completely legal.” They’re going to get a liquor license and whatever. One of our old roommates, Joe, who’s part of Showpaper, he lives there now.
Andrew: I had a lot of conversations with Joe when he lived here about this whole thing, about how all these spaces are somewhere along a continuum, like how much are they a house, and how much are they a venue? Silent Barn has always been basically a venue, even though people live there. We’re really a house that has shows once in a while.

Golden Error, photo by Nicki Ishmael

Nicki: We have to tell people all the time that they can’t have their birthday party here, or their mud-wrestling party. We’ve gotten a lot of weird requests over the years. But overall it’s fantastic, this house pretty much made my life in New York. I met all these people, I found something to do and a community to be in. I had no idea there was a music scene that was this small and this amazing here. You have these moments where you realize this is happening in your life and you created it and you’re a part of it. It makes me so happy. It’s so great when you have a whole bunch of bands come in at the beginning of the night, you’ve never met any of them before, and at the end of the night they’re all giving you giant hugs and saying this was the best show they’ve ever played. It’s so amazing that we had the opportunity to do this.
Jeff: People really appreciate us just trying to make an awesome, fun night, and when everybody’s stoked on it, it’s a good feeling. It’s great when really talented, amazing people have a great time performing here.
Andrew: We just had a theatre show that did a three-night run, and It was like we were living in this little theatre that everyone was a part of. I don’t know if you could achieve that in any other setting.

photo by Maximus Comissar

brooklyn spaces: Do you think that being in Williamsburg has affected the space?
Nicki: I really like that Death By Audio is so close, and 285 Kent, and Glasslands. It’s nice that there are still a few really good spaces around here. And I feel like living off the L and the J is convenient, a lot of people can come out to shows here. I don’t always want to go all the way to Bushwick, but people seem happy to come all the way out here, which is awesome. Jeff’s shows get put up on the Nonsense NYC list sometimes, and people come here from wherever because they’re like “Oh, I know where that is, I can get there.”
Andrew: For a performing arts venue it really makes a difference if it’s in a part of town that people want to go to.

Teenage Nightwar, photo by Nicki Ishmael

brooklyn spaces: And it’s nice to see that there are still places like this in Williamsburg. A lot of people think that all the creativity is gone from this neighborhood, but that’s not true. It’s just a little harder to find. Anyway, tell me about some of your favorite shows.
Nicki: My favorite “I can’t believe I actually pulled this together” show was when Forgetters played here, Blake Schwarzenbach of Jawbreaker’s band. So many people I know have loved his music since we were like sixteen years old, and he played in my living room! And we had this band called Leg Sweeper come, they played with our friends’ band Sleepies, and they were so excited about playing here, and we were so excited about having them play, and after the show we all hung out until 5 in the morning, and everybody slept over, and we made waffles in the morning, and it was magical. Or another one, after The Men played, we had a limbo contest with the guys in the band, which was so ridiculous and fun. I think the craziest show we ever had here was Calvin Johnson and Chain and the Gang. When I introduced Chain and the Gang, everyone just freaked the fuck out.
Liz: That show was my teenage dream come true. I was so thrilled, I couldn’t believe he was in our house. He got here early, and we were trying to set up, and our old cat was sitting on the bar, and he sang a song to the cat! It killed me. My other favorite moment was when Social Studies, our friends’ band from San Francisco, played last year. Right before they started to play my favorite song, someone cut in and said, “We just found out the Giants are going to the World Series.” The whole crowd was full of people from California, and everyone was so so so excited.

photo by Maximus Comissar

Andrew: I’m from Minneapolis, so when our friends’ theatre group came from Minneapolis to do their play, it was really exciting for me to get to share this space with them. They used to live in a space like this in Minneapolis, and one of them had a space like this in Baltimore before that where my theatre troupe performed, so being able to return the favor was really gratifying.
Jeff: I like all the variety shows, I guess. Oh and Reggie Watts, that was awesome. And Corn Mo.
Nicki: And the ventriloquist! And the magician who sawed a woman in half! And the guy from Cirque de Soliel who took all his clothes off and climbed all over the entire audience! And the lady who juggled with her feet! I know it sounds like we’re making this stuff up, but we’re not.
Jeff: Yeah, we’ve had some crazy stuff.

Hunters, photo by Nicki Ishmael

brooklyn spaces: What advice do would you give to other people who want to do something like this?
Nicki: Be nice. That’s something we try really hard to do. Now we’re friends with all the bands and performers and other DIY spaces in the city. That’s why we’re not super nervous about going into the new space. We feel like we’re not going to be alone, because all these other people are going to support us. All the DIY spaces are kind of in it together.
Jeff: Yeah, it sounds cheesy but we really feel like we’re part of a community. And we’re good at welcoming people in and having a positive vibe about everything.
Nicki: That makes it a lot more fun for everyone. We want to have fun too!

***

Like this? Read about more apartment performance spaces: Silent Barn, The Muse, Cave of Archaic Remnants, The Schoolhouse, Greenroom Brooklyn, Newsonic, Jerkhaus

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.

***

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

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

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.

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

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

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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