In addition to the art museums and art fairs, while in New York we also took the time to visit some art galleries in the Chelsea District, which is supposedly the trendy art neighborhood. The taxi dropped us off at the foot of the High Line, a city park created on the remains of the old above ground subway system. Chelsea used to be a meatpacking district, and some of the old structures were preserved in the park, making for an interesting vibe and unique visuals. We walked up the length of the park, enjoying soaking up the sunshine and arguing about what to eat for lunch. Then we enjoyed good cheap food at a little Indian spot and grabbed dessert from a little French Patisserie. In the afternoon we popped in and out of galleries, all impressive cavernous spaces painted a pristine white with really big soundless doors, usually devoted to one artist. The staff all wore sleek dark business suits, and very ostentatiously polite yet dismissive– I assume since we were clearly not buyers. Here is a slideshow of the High Line Park and of some the art found in these fancy spaces:
[slideshow]
Peter Bill is an Artist, Activist and Educator. He has, since learning photoshop v. 1.5, been interested in connecting under-represented communities with digital tools so their voices may be broadcast. He has been involved with large scale video projections, guerrilla art actions, and community building since the 90s.
Peter Bill's award winning paint and video landscapes have shown in such diverse venues as The Kitchen(NYC), the Henry Art Gallery(Seattle), FILE Festival(São Paulo, Brazil), and other international venues. He continues in his Oil paintings and video work to weave the painterly with the digital, pixels and paint, indigo and 191970 blue. He envisioned and realized the first time-lapse film festival in North America, the Gila Timelapse Film Festival and has curated and directed shows on three continents. "Art must be realized on the streets, as an agent of change and progress."
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Much of my art has been about creating a vessel, a space for meditation. Through my painting and video installations I hope to create a moment of quietude, a contemplation of this world we have built.
In my mural and documentary film work I have balanced a certain transcendentalism in my heart with my didactic scots-yankee bones. In the public sphere arts role is to inspire and provoke. Therefore in my mural projects I have attempted to involve the local community in the conception and realization of my projects. In my animations and short films I have attempted critiques of the bathetic apocalyptic culture we live in, the false utopia of the California landscape, the contested landscape of New Mexico, and tried to get to the situation on the ground in war torn Bosnia, among other subjects. The world is a complicated, granular place. We cannot oversimplify with our stories, but we can in their telling change opinions, and thus change the world for the better.
