Gas Water Nothing

New Prints for Sale

I’ve got some new prints for sale in my Etsy Store. These prints are really beautiful, made quite fancily with Epson Ultrachrome professional archival inks on acid-free 100% cotton rag Somerset Velvet paper. In quite a few cases (including all four of these new ones) the prints are actually superior objects to the originals (which are often bound into a sketchbook or on mangled scraps of paper).

Click on any picture to be taken to its catalog page.

My artwork is up at the Manhattan location of ‘sNice until September 30th. ‘sNice is located at 45 Eighth Avenue, at the confluence of Jane, Horatio, and West 4th Street (illustrated below). Big thanks to Mike for asking my to show my stuff there. I really hope everyone can go see some of my work in person!

Flier for 'sNice Show

Rashied Ali, 1935-2009

Rashied Ali, a great musician and one of the most emotionally intelligent drummers I ever heard, died last night. I did this paper stencil screen print based on a photo of him a few years ago (though the text was different in the original; I photoshopped it today to say his name).

Update: WKCR is playing his music in for several days straight… no idea how long exactly.

Update 2: Irena has produced a vector version if anyone wants to make their own stencil or lasercut (see comments). Please respect my Creative Commons License when reproducing my work from this site.

Rashied Ali 1935-2009

I got tired of cross-posting my stuff on multiple blogs (and I suspect some of my readers weren’t crazy about it either). As a result, you Gas Water Nothing readers have missed out on my more recent contributions to Urban Sketchers.

Of course all the other contributors to Urban Sketchers do wonderful work, but if you’re in a hurry, there’s a page with just my stuff , or you can subscribe to this feed for just my posts.

We’ll see how my efforts to minimize redundancy play out. Meanwhile, here’s a digest of the stuff I posted to Urban Sketchers in the last month and a half:

Park Slope Food Coop June Annual and General Meeting

As well as being a swell place to buy groceries, the Park Slope Food Coop provides stretches of obligatory downtime ideal for sketching. Usually I capture the street view while doing my shift as a shopping cart retrieval specialist, but tonight I attended a meeting with several hundred fellow coop members.

This was two meetings, Annual and General, rolled in to one. They occurred in alternating segments, each being adjourned so the other could be resume, until it was time to switch again. Of course, exactly the same people and equipment were involved in each, but Robert’s Rules of Order and the laws governing the governance of corporations demand a certain silliness at times.

Central Park South, Tuesday Evening, Late July

Prospect Park Sunset

Keyspan Park Storm Clouds

We tried to go to a baseball game—the Coney Island Cyclones versus the Staten Island Yankees—but it got rained out. (Thanks so much to my pal Rebecca for getting us free tickets to a luxury box!). I had to majorly rush on this once it became apparent I wouldn’t be sitting there for hours.

Sands Street Bike Lane in Action

I’m somewhat giddy that the Sands Street Bike Path (leading to the Brooklyn side of the Manhattan Bridge here in new York City) finally opened. The path was announced over 4 years ago, but the City took forever getting around to building it. It seems to have only taken a few months to build once they finally started.

The smooth, divided, lane is wonderful in many ways. It’s a real pleasure to ride, and a significant step towards New York’s becoming a truly bike-friendly city. But it’s also frustratingly condescending. Unless you’re riding between the bridge and the Navy Yard (which is hardly a common end-destination for cyclists), the new lane takes you far out of your way and adds a hill that wouldn’t otherwise be part of your route.

Also, the crossing from the Sands Street path to the bridge path is convoluted and confusing. I get angry when I think how much better it would be if they just built a ramp from the end of the path to where I was sitting when I sketched this.

I’m saving my real celebration for when we get divided lanes on Flatbush and Atlantic! Harumph.

I’m a longtime fan of this fountain. Fans of fountains, public art, and municipal history should definitely take the time to read about the Bailey and its colorful predecessors.

Grand Army Plaza Fountain

The Last Ten Things I Did (Cumulatively) With the Glass Bees or Posted on Thing-a-Day
or Urban Sketchers

Jerry Dammers

I'm quite excited to have tickets to the Specials show in New York City in April. It's too bad Jerry won't be there.

Looks like he keeps keeping busy with cool new projects, though--an 18-piece orchestra doing Sun Ra and Cedric Im Brooks, complete with props and costumes? Super!

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A window pane makes a wonderful framing device for sketching. Here's two sketches using the window pane as the border, one done at Pizza Plus last weekend and the other done at Bergen Bagel in 2006.

View from Pizza Plus

View from Bergen Bagel
Last weekend I went to Everglades National Park, at the southern tip of Florida's peninsula. It is a fascinating and wonderful place!

Flamingo Visitor Center

Everglades Endless Road

Anhinga Trail

Update: In defense of considering these "urban"--these all represent engineered, built, situations designed to get (relatively) large numbers of people and private automobiles into a wilderness that would otherwise be only accessible via canoe. I know that's not evident from the Anhinga sketch, but know that I did that on a walkway by a parking lot with dozens of other humans around.
A stretch of Kingsland Avenue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn bears the alternative name (of the sort that usually invokes dead community leaders) of Grandparents Avenue. There is a really excellent café called Boneshakers there. Here is a view from their window.

Grandparents Avenue

Bringing the Outside In

mp3 (5:57)

With special guest Ranjit Bhatnagar.

Japanese wind chimes, cymbals, chairs, cello, bowed Olson Reverberation Unit X-75, delay, amplifiers, etc.

Personnel: Chris Williams, Jason Das, Ranjit Bhatnagar

Download
Usually I have to wait a long time in a room with this view, although yesterday they moved me into a windowless room to do most of my waiting. So I had to finish this up after my appointment.

Is the Ashcan School still accepting applications?

View from the Sidney Kimmel Center for Prostate and Urologic Cancers, December 21, 2009
Quick, Flupke, and Sug

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