The Scene by Roger Bell

Red Hook Brooklyn has a tangled relationship with artists and musicians. A long time resident once confidently told me that he had found Herman Melville’s ink pot and coffee cup in an abandoned outhouse on Beard Street. Olga Bloom “discovered” these quiet shores while scouting a location for her Barge Music project from the deck of a tugboat she had hired  to survey the Brooklyn waterfront The year is irrelevant. Harry Chapin had already found the place by then  and in a couple of years the artists started washing ashore,  exiled from rising prices and workplace scarcity.  Red Hook, just barely escaping  the crack epidemic and the AIDS crisis emerged as a quiet but not quietly enough held secret outpost for eccentrics and other malcontents.  

And so on a beautiful recent Sunday afternoon capping a weeks long marathon of readings, concerts, art exhibits and heralding the start of a busy Summer calendar a space for sculpture was premiered. Entering at 113  Wolcott Street this newly minted landscape is home to  the monumental direct carved marble works of Ian L.C. Swordy, His works  holding court, like giant stone chess pieces with proud genitalia make some slick new moves on the history of the medium. Fresh energy from an ancient art form. If you listened carefully you might hear some of the Bayou classics that were part of Swamp in the City festival which swarmed the neighborhood at numerous local venues.

Elsewhere and literally across the street at The Kentler International Drawing Space (K.I.D.S. as in first came DaDa, then came MoMA, and then the KIDS!) a splendid full gallery installation of delightful monumental yet intimate wall drawings and collage pieces by the remarkably talented Sascha Mallon   which together capture the Rites of Spring in an inspired exchange. A short row down the street the Basin Gallery holds vital fluids that depict the “Power of Light,”a group show which continues the remarkable ascendant flight of a woman (and artist) owned gallery. 

The neighborhoods’ embarrassment of riches continues with this incomplete listing;  Artyard’s weekly inspirational collective art adventures in the ancient BWAC  space; also housing BWAC’s  major Works on Paper survey opening June 1st, Hot Wood Studios, sponsors of the annual Red Hook Open Studios, At the Andrew Logan Project space is an installation of a perennial local favorite holds court. The Realty Collective frequent inspired installations which most recently saw the premier of one of the most promising talents this reviewer has  seen in many years, Lenore Solmo . She made magic of discarded bottle caps. They looked like totems from a lost civilization (ours).

At the  Wall Gallery, segregated by a few industrial blocks from the hot center of Red Hook, is the exhibition of  East German artist Petra Flierl. This project is the result of cooperating forces between Berlin and Brooklyn.  And Petra is the priestess of  a new graphic and painterly tradition. She asserts that now all forms are now either of two types:  Norm and Max.

And June 1st brought to Valentino Pier The Red Hook Fest, an annual event bursting with talent. Steel yourselves and venture forth: Red Hook is a bounty awaiting your plunder, Culture served as an all you can eat buffet.  What’s needed is a neighborhood wide listing, a project that someone soon will achieve.

Meanwhile good hunting!

A Star-Revue Contributor