The best way I’ve found so far to beat the heat is to hop the Governors Island ferry, bike in hand, and spend a Friday afternoon in a world apart. Last week, conditions were ideal for a picnic and a 1-hour urban farming intensive - optional, of course: you could just as easily loll about with some reading material or catch up on email while enjoying magnificent harbor views and a cool breeze. Or visit the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Building 110 Art Program. Or play miniature golf…

The first stop was Picnic Point, roughly half way around the island’s 2.2-mile circumference. Picnic tables and hammocks are placed in tree-shaded spots around a field that overlooks New York Harbor, the Statue of Liberty, and Ellis Island beyond. At the rear of the field are a group of colorful cabanas furnished with brightly painted Adirondack-style chairs where visitors were keeping cool in the shade. Nearby was a cart offering home-made ice cream from Blue Marble - the best I’ve had in the city, and a bargain at $4 for a single on a sugar cone.

The Added Value Farm on Governors Island, with downtown Manhattan skyscrapers in the distance.

But the main purpose of my trip was to visit the Added Value Farm, which is operated by the same group that has turned a dilapidated playground in Red Hook, Brooklyn, into a vital farming and educational component for South Brooklyn. Two years ago they started the farm on Governors Island and today, according to Ian Marvy, co-founder and executive director, the 1.5-acre plot annually nets about $60,000 in sales from its weekend market and CSA. “That’s enough,” said Ian, “to cover the salary of the project coordinator and pay for the stipends we offer to high school students enrolled in programs at the Red Hook farm.”

Dozens of blue-shirted volunteers were hoeing and weeding the crops, making ready for the Saturday market. In addition to vegetables, rows of sunflowers and everlastings were blooming at the western end of the plot. The entire farm is watered via a perforated T-Tape drip irrigation system that takes up very little space and squeezes out just the right amount of water to keep things growing. For information about Added Value’s programs, please visit the website

Across the road was a table offering earthworms for sale, and a hand-lettered sign announcing a composting workshop. The site is a small fenced in yard where Earth Matter, NY operates a zero waste program that engages high school students from the New York Harbor School in an island beautification program in which they turn food scraps from island concessions into compost used for growing flowers and ornamental plants.

Volunteers mix it up and test the pH value of compost at Earth Matter workshop. Photos: Peggy Roalf.

The demonstration featured a way to compost all discarded edibles (not just fruits and veggies) in a fermentation process that results in rich new earth ready to plant in roughly a month’s time. What’s amazing to me is the fact that there was no unpleasant odor. The stuff still undergoing the process smelled a little like beer - which makes sense, as one of the active ingredients is fermented malt. The process and product is ideal for a place like Governors Island, where a waste-to-table loop is completely manageable. The website http://earthmatter.org/ was not operating at publication time; please try again.

For information about Governors Island, including the Friday-Sunday ferry schedule, upcoming events, and the weekend farm stand, please visit the website.

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Just two months ago, Lincoln Center reopened its public plaza, designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfrew Architects. Some of the key features on North Plaza include a new reflecting pool that replaces the original Dan Kiley design, which suffered leaks so serious that, from the outset, the arts complex was known to insiders as “Leaky Center.” The new incarnation seems smaller, if only because the Henry Moore sculpture now seems even larger than before.

A new, slightly elevated seating area (called the Benenson and Barclays Capital Grove), with a pebble covered surface, a grove of trees, and Bertoia chairs with bright red cushions, is one of the nicest features amid the concrete that abounds. Even during this week’s heat wave, the shady area felt cool and breezy.

Left: Illumination Lawn on May 22nd, with Reclining Figure, 1964 by Henry Moore (middle) and Benenson and Barclay Capital Grove in the background. Right: Illumination Lawn on July 26th. Photos: Peggy Roalf.

Something entirely new, the sharply tilted, 10,000-square-foot Illumination Lawn, opened to rave reviews and massive crowds of people looking for some cool grass to sit on (above, left). Unfortunately, the sod was nearly trampled to death and the lawn, which developed large brown spots, was closed two weeks after it opened. According to a Lincoln Center spokesperson, the irrigation system had to be adjusted and a new granite stepping stone installed to buffer the tread of oncoming crowds.

The lawn is open again, but it’s hard to tell, due to the massive safety-orange barricades surrounding the terraced grass steps (above, right). In fact, the entire lawn appears to be under siege, with only a narrow opening onto the tilted green. The other day, it was sparsely populated, with just a few ballet students doing cartwheels and pirouettes on the upper section. There was no interference from security guards, who seem to look the other way when resident dancers are having a good time.

In a neighborhood so densely populated, you have to wonder what 10,000 square feet of open space can offer? Sounds like a lot, but compared to a football field (again, not so easy for a city dweller to picture in the mind’s eye), it’s pretty small.

Tomorrow night, 25 Chelsea galleries will celebrate the hottest summer on record with extended hours and special events as they host the first annual Chelsea Art Walk. In addition, local sponsors will offer food and drink specials throughout the evening. Wanting to find out more, I contacted art dealer Brian Clamp, who offered these details by email.

“The event was organized by Alyssa Menegat, who is the Gallery Manager at Jenkins Johnson Gallery, and Catherine Wyatt, who is the Gallery Manager at ClampArt,” he said. “Their idea was to try to draw people to Chelsea during the hot summer days when foot traffic typically slows down. Many galleries have excellent shows on view in July, and it’s a shame that they might be missed by people who assume the art market is in low gear for the summer.”

Left to right: Flood Street View; Gregory on Ladder; Blue Room. Copyright Dave Anderson, courtesy ClampArt Gallery.

I asked Brian how the idea of his gallery hosting a crepe-making evening with Les Gamins came about. “The idea,” he replied, “was also Catherine’s. Our current exhibition features photographs of New Orleans by Dave Anderson, so she thought the French tie-in made sense. Also,” he concluded, “the point was to involve other local businesses beyond the art world!”

Left to right: Michal Ronnen Safdie, Installation at Andrea Meislin Gallery; Soo Kim,
Untitled (Gold woods) 2008, at Julie Saul Gallery; Daniel Hesidence, Untitled (Autumn Buffalo) 2009 (left); Louise Fishman, Violets for My Furs, 2010 (right) at Cheim & Read Gallery. Artwork copyright the artists, courtesy the galleries.

Here’s the lineup as of today: B.E.S. (559 West 22nd Street at 11th Avenue) who will be hosting an after party to cap off the evening with drink specials from 8-10 pm, Le Gamin Cafe/Creperie serving crepes all night at ClampArt (521-531 West 25th Street), Three Tarts Bakery offering 15% off homemade lemonade and ice cream sandwiches and 10% off of giftware, and Tia Pol (205 10th Avenue at 22nd Street) is offering half priced pitchers of Sangria when two people come in for dinner. Also keep an eye out for Cupcake Stop Truck parked on 27th Street and the Van Leeuwen Ice Cream Truck parked on 24th Street.

Participating galleries: Andrea Meislin Gallery, AC Institute [Direct Chapel], Axelle Fine Arts Galerie, Barry Friedman Ltd., Benrimon Contemporary, BravinLee Programs LLC, Bruce Silverstein, Cheim & Read, ClampArt, Hasted Hunt Kraeutler, J. Cacciola Gallery, Jenkins Johnson Gallery, Joshua Liner Gallery, Julie Saul Gallery, Magnan Metz Gallery, Marlborough Chelsea, Michael Mazzeo Gallery, Mike Weiss Gallery, Morgan Lehman, Noho Gallery, P.P.O.W., Rick Wester Fine Art, Robert Mann Gallery, Sputnik Gallery, Stux Gallery, Sundaram Tagore Gallery, Witzenhausen Gallery, Yancey Richardson Gallery, and Yossi Milo Gallery.

The main exhibition now at Exit Art brings together all you could want in a show depicting the landscape in ruins. Ecoaesthetic: The Tragedy of Beauty presents work by nine photographers for whom terra firma is a battleground, taking the position that the tragic outcome of human actions - environmental degradation through deforestation, industry, and war, for example - becomes the aesthetic of the landscape image.

Several familiar series are on view, including work by Edward Burtynsky (Oil), Sze Tsung Leong (History Images), David Maisel (Terminal Mirage), and Mitch Epstein (American Power). With these images, Exit Art creates an informative setting to introduce a few less familiar photographers working along the same vein. Among them are Jo Syz (strip mining), Anthony Hamboussi (Illegal Settlements, Cairo), and Susannah Sayler/The Canary Project, whose 20-foot-long print of Mirror (Antarctica), 2008 delineates the west wall of the gallery.

Left: Anthony Hamboussi, Remains of the former Pepsi-Cola Bottling Plant, 46-00 5th Street, Long Island City, Queens, Looking West, 2001-2006. Right: Susannah Sayler/The Canary Project, Adaptation and Mitigation LIX: Water Storage, Lake Paron, Peru, 2008. Copyright and courtesy the artists.

A savvy companion show is Consume, a project of SEA (Social Environmental Aesthetcs) in which mullti-media artists take on the subject of industrial food production, distribution, consumption, and waste. Exit Art is also presenting a series of public talks, screenings and workshops that take up diverse food-related issues.

Ecoaesthetic: The Tragedy of Beauty and Consume continue at Exit Art through August 28^th. 475 Tenth Avenue, New York, NY. 212.966.7745. Please visit the website for information about the exhibitions and public programs.

The artists in ECOAESTHETIC: The Tragedy of Beauty are Edward Burtynsky (Canada); Mitch Epstein (USA); Anthony Hamboussi (USA); Chris Jordan (USA); Christopher LaMarca (USA); Sze Tsung Leong (USA); David Maisel (USA); Susannah Sayler/The Canary Project (USA) and Jo Syz (UK).

CONSUME features work by Prayas Abhinav (India); Elizabeth Demaray (USA); Jon Feinstein (USA); Jordan Geiger / Ga-Ga and Virginia San Fratello / Rael-San Fratello Architects (USA); Sara Heitlinger and Franc Purg (UK/Slovenia); Manny Howard (USA); Miwa Koizumi (USA); Tamara Kostianovsky (USA); Robin Lasser (USA); Lenore Malen (USA); Mark Lawrence Stafford (USA); Laurie Sumiye (USA); Andreas Templin (Germany); and Uli Westphal (Germany).

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Even with the centennial exhibition celebrating the life and work of Frida Kahlo (1907-1954), organized by the Walker Art Center in 2007, this quixotic figure still has been somewhat shrouded - both by the mystery she herself created as well as by the influence of others in her life, notably her husband, the muralist Diego Rivera.

Frida Kahlo: Her Photographs, a new book just released by RM of Barcelona, is sure to bring much wanted clarity to the this intriguing figure. The photographs, which were collected by Kahlo throughout her life, include family photos that read almost like film stills, for her father, Guilleremo Kahlo, was one of Mexico’s most celebrated commercial photographers.

Left to right: Frida In a Suit by Guillermo Kahlo; Frida Kahlo Rivera, 1931 by Imogen Cunningham; Frida Kahlo in Manuel Alvarez Bravo’s Studio, 1930s by Manuel Alvarez Bravo.

Frida’s childhood was as almost as dramatic as her two marriages to Rivera; she was born of Guilleremo’s second marriage, to Matilde Calderon y Gonzalez, an unhappy match made soon after his first wife died in childbirth. Frida had four sisters and two half-sisters; she was the heart’s delight of her father, a fact that only distanced her from her siblings and from her mother, making for a somewhat lonely girlhood. But it becomes evident in the early photos that from the outset, Frida was in command of her powers; in the many formal portraits of the family, it is always the girl with the bold eyebrows whose presence dominates the scene.

Later on, the Kahlo/Rivera sphere became a magnet for notable figures in the arts and politics. Among the photographers who joined that charmed circle were Man Ray, Brassai, Imogen Cunningham, Martin Munkacsi, Tina Modotti, Edward Weston, Manuel and Lola Alvarez Bravo, and Giesele Freund; their images are also featured in the book.

The book, which runs to 496 pages, came about when Frida’s photography collection was discovered a few years ago, packed away in a  boarded over storeroom in the fabled Blue House, now the Frida Kahlo Museum. There were over 6,000 photographs in the collection, which serves as a testimony to the artist’s individuality and to the tastes and interests of the famous couple, not only through the images themselves but also through the telling annotations inscribed upon them.

There’s hardly anything among the plastic arts more unbounded than book arts. A discipline so broad - sometimes arcanely scholarly and sometimes as giddy as a jack-in-the-box - the only thing an artist’s book might have in common with a commercially produced volume could be paper; or a printed impression; or neither.

This summer’s shows at The Center for Book Arts capitalize on the broad spectrum of artists’ endeavors in the field. From the more book-like side, you’ll find Poems & Pictures: A Renaissance in the Art of the Book, which explores relationships between visual and language arts. The exhibit features over 60 books produced between 1946 and 1981, as well as paintings, collages, periodicals, and ephemera. Poets, artists and collaborators include Wallace Berman, Joe Brainard, Robert Creeley, Jim Dine, Johanna Drucker, Philip Guston, Joanne Kyger, Emily McVarish, Karen Randall, Larry Rivers, George Schneeman, and many more.

Two from I will cut thrU, left by Janet Goldner; right by Anne Gilman, copyright the artists, courtesy The Center for Book Arts. To view an animated presentation of Collapse of the Home, Austin, by Railsmith, visit YouTube.

From the more free-wheeling side of the book arts world, I will cut thrU: Pochoirs, Carvings, and Other Cuttings presents wildly different ways in which contemporary artists slash through paper using pochoir (stenciling), relief printing, and altered books to present content, form, text, and image. The artworks featured in this exhibition include books, prints, woodblocks, linocuts, rubber stamps, sculpture, mixed-media installation, film and video, and performance art (including an installation by George Shortess that has noises made while books are being created as its soundtrack).

Tonight at 6:30 pm, three artists from I will cut thrU - George Shortess, Janet Goldner and Anne Gilman - will join curators Alexander Campos and Amber McMillan for a lively discussion about the state of the art.

Next Wednesday, July 28^th at 6:30, join Trevor Winkfield, Miles Champion, and Steve Clay of Granary Books (a notable element in the East Village underground) all of whom are represented in Poems & Pictures, for a discussion with Michael Basinski, curator of the Poetry Collection, University of Buffalo.

Both exhibitions continue through September 11^th at The Center for Book Arts. 28 West 27^th Street/3^rd Floor (west of Broadway), New York, NY. 212.481.0295 or email. The exhibitions are free and open to the public; suggested donation for events is $10/$5 for members. Please visit the website for information about classes and upcoming events, including the August edition of Book Arts Lounge.

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What has the impact of the past decade been on New York’s neighborhoods?

What did some of the world’s leading contemporary architects contribute towards making New York a more livable, dynamic, and sustainable city?

How can we balance the often-conflicting objectives of preserving the historic city while also allowing for new development?

Have the Bloomberg Administration’s efforts to reshape and invest in the physical city effectively positioned New York for continued dominance as a global city for the 21st century?

These are some of the questions that an exhibition called The City We Imagined/The City We Made: New New York 2001-2010 attempts to answer as it documents the past decade and the powerful forces that converged to transform large portions of the city.

Among them, the events of September 11, the policies and priorities of the Bloomberg Administration, the ups and downs of the global and local economies, advances in material and construction technologies, and a new interest among the public in leading edge architecture all combined to reshape New York in ways that may be impossible to comprehend in the near future.

Exhibition installation at 250 Hudson Street. Photos: David Sundberg/Esto. All rights reserved.

This exhibition - the sixth in an ongoing series of explorations by The Architectural League NY about contemporary architecture in New York City - has just moved to new quarters on Governors Island, where it will be on view through August 15^th.

In conjunction with the exhibition, tonight the League is presenting Conversations on New York 3 at the Great Hall, The Cooper Union. At 7:00 pm, architecture critic Paul Goldberger will engage New York City Commissioners Adrian Benepe (Parks), Amanda Burden (Planning) and David Burney (Design and Construction) in a discussion about how they have made design integral to the work of their departments; what today’s stringent fiscal constraints portend for the continuation of their efforts and the preservation of what they have already created; and what their agendas promise for the mayor’s final term.

Conversations on New York at The Great Hall, The Cooper Union, Tuesday, July 20^th at 7:00 pm. 7 East 7^th Street, New York, NY. Tickets are $15/free for members of the League. Click for more information.

The City We Imagined/The City We Made: New New York 2001-2010, on view through August 15^th at Building 110, Governors Island. Exhibition hours: Friday, 10-5 pm; Saturday-Sunday, 10-7 pm. Free admission. Click for information about ferry schedule.

The exhibition was curated by Gregory Wessner with Varick Shute and Matthew Storrie. Exhibition design by Moorhouse & Moorhouse.

The ongoing interest in photographs of vast and often toxic landscapes can probably be traced to Land and Environmental Art (Phaidon 1998), a book by Brian Wallis and Jeffrey Kastner - whose ideas segued into Ecotopia, the second triennial at the International Center of Photography, in 2006. A new edition of the book will be in stores this Fall. For now, a small but well selected exhibition in Nolita might whet the appetite for visions of splendid despoliation.

At the minuscule Jen Bekman Gallery on Spring Street, 28 images, often stacked two- or three-up, offer views of the human effect on, or place in, nature. An example of the latter is Ian Baguskas’s large print of Indian Beach Surf, Oregon, which is part of his continuing series, Search for the American Landscape. Framed from a high point of view, with massive erratics rising from the sea, the scene includes a small group of people, engulfed in coastal mist and surf, with a dog looking on from the side. While absolutely contemporary in its style and content, this picture also bridges time; it commands the kind of majesterial point of view shared by two opposite extremes in photography - for example, Stephen Shore’s 1979 Merced River, Yosemite National Park, as well as certain views of Yosemite by Ansel Adams.

Left: #6237 by Todd Hido. Right: Fort Yates, ND by Justin Newhall. Copyright the photographers; courtesy Jen Bekman Gallery.

At the other end of the spectrum is Housing Development at Different Stages, Las Vegas, NV, March 2005 by Alex Maclean, in which row on row of tiny plots in a tract development, lined up like scales on a fish, show the progress of building identical, featureless houses that stand just a few yards apart from each other. The only thing that differentiates one from another is the color of the roof. It would be interesting to see the way in which future inhabitants will put a personal stamp on these properties.

Work from some of the most visible shows in the last couple of years (such as Rotations: Moore Estates #5 by Matthew Moore and #6237 by Todd Hido) is joined by some surprising images to make for a lively mix. In Fort Yates, ND by Justin Newhall, a sturdy masonry building is “fortified” by rows of trees growing in narrow strips of land between the structure and the road. Sighting (Avondale Mall) by Andrew Scott Ross / Scott Lawrence, offers the kind of dreamlike scene that anyone who hates searching for a good parking spot at the Agway would love to encounter to relieve the boredom of small town living: a herd of bison galloping across the blacktop, horns down and hooves flying.

There’s plenty more visual stimulation here to relieve the weight of the current heatwave. My only reservation, and it’s strictly personal, is that I don’t like seeing paintings and drawings mixed in with photography in a single gallery.

Land Use Survey continues through mid-August, and possibly beyond, at Jen Bekman Gallery. 6 Spring Street, New York, NY. 212. 219.0166. Please visit the website, or  info@jenbekman.com for information.

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The Center for Land Use Interpretation (CLUI), as described on its website, is s a research organization interested in understanding the nature and extent of human interaction with the earth’s surface. It recently published some of its findings in Overlook: Exploring the Internal Fringes of America, which offers clues as to how to approach a subject as enormous as the North American continent. “Since the United States is just too big to get your mind around the whole thing,” reads the Introduction, “you have to look at it in pieces. One way of doing that is to take a basic, representative state like Ohio, and see what’s there. That is chapter one.”

CLUI publishes the results of its studies as exhibitions, which often take the form of on-site interpretive panels and guided bus tours of those areas. It also offers residency programs at its installation at Wendover Field, in Utah. This is where it’s programs and methods become incredibly engaging, in a serious and thoroughly off-the-grid way.

Images of Wendover Field from the CLUI archive, left: Volatile Gas Containment Vessel Test Area. Right: Southbase View.

The application page on the website begins with the disclaimer that “this is not the romantic West.” Wendover Field, formerly home to a massive U.S. Air Force installation for training B-29 pilots, is the place where the Enola Gray crew were trained prior to the U.S. bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II. Decommissioned in 1969, the land reverted to the town’s ownership in 1977. Located near the Boneville Salt Flats, inside the Great Basin desert region, Wendover lies 120 miles west of Salt Lake City. CLUI maintains a regional office and the residency program there, with exhibitions installed among the ruins of the former military base.

Applicants are informed that the facilities are rustic, though in a modern way, and the area has harsh and unpredictable qualities that do not suit all temperaments: “possible intrusive events in the area include aerial military activity, dust storms, drag racing, movie productions, etc.,” the website reads. “Although the ethereal, desolate salt flats suggest isolation,” it continues, “one should not expect to find an idyllic retreat away from civilization. The residence site is at the edge of a small but booming gaming town. On the Nevada side are several active casino/hotel complexes, a golf course, and new prefabricated homes for 6,000 inhabitants. The Utah side is poor, and is littered with weathered buildings, trailers, and debris from the old Airbase.”

People working in all disciplines and of every level of experience, and people working in teams, are considered on merit for residencies that are offered between April and November. Recent fellows include photographers Mark Klett and Byron Wolfe; Joni Sternbach; and Mark Ruwedel; and author Ginger Strand (Inventing Niagara: Beauty, Power and Lies).

The Center for Land Use Interpretation also publishes a newsletter called The Lay of the Land. Please visit the website for information about the newsletter and the residency program.

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As the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s destructive effect on New Orleans approaches, photography continues to be a defining force in the understanding of what’s wrong with disaster response and relief. In Dave Anderson’s documentation, it also defines what’s right - in the case of a tightly knit neighborhood that resembles a small southern town nested in the outskirts of the big city.

Left to right: Flood Street View; Gregory on Ladder; Blue Room. Copyright Dave Anderson, courtesy CLAMPART Gallery.

Photographs in One Block (Aperture 2010), which includes an essay by Chris Rose, a longtime columnist for the New Orleans Times-Picayune newspaper, portray the power of community as residents of a single block attempt, with limited resources, to rebuild their homes. Using portraiture, still life, and abstract images, Anderson documents the evolution of both the street and its houses as residents literally rebuild their lives, exploring the very nature of community while testing its resilience.

Tonight Anderson will present his work through a conversation with photo editor Paul Moakley at the Aperture Gallery. A series of exhibitions and events begins this Thursday with an opening at CLAMPART Gallery. For information about the block party in New Orleans on August 26th, and exhibitions and book signings in New Orleans and San Francisco, please visit the website.

Tuesday, July 13, 6:30 pm: Artist talk/booksigning with Dave Anderson and Paul Moakley at Aperture Gallery. 47 West 27^th Street, 4^th Floor. New York, NY. 212.505.5555.
Thursday, July 15, 6:00 pm: Opening reception at CLAMPART Gallery. 521-531 West 25^th Street, Ground Floor, New York, NY. 646.230.0020.

About the Photographer and Author:
Dave Anderson has been recognized as “one of the shooting stars of the American photo scene” by Germany’s fotoMAGAZIN and named a “Rising Star” by Photo District News. A multi-talented image-maker, Dave worked in the Clinton White House and at MTV before discovering photography. His acclaimed first project, “Rough Beauty” was the winner of the 2005 National Project Competition awarded by Center, Santa Fe and was published with an essay by Anne Wilkes Tucker. Anderson’s work has been featured in magazines from Esquire to Stern and can be found in the collections of prominent museums, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans; the Musee de la Photographie, Charleroi; and the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. As a filmmaker, Dave’s original video series, “SoLost,” shot for The Oxford American, was recently named a finalist at the 2010 National Magazine Awards.
Chris Rose is an acclaimed New Orleans columnist, whose harrowing and poignant essays following Katrina were collected in his widely lauded book 1 Dead in Attic (2005). Called the “Crescent City’s Bard” by the Huffington Post, Rose is an essayist for the Newshour with Jim Lehrer, a frequent commentator for National Public Radio’s Morning Edition, and a longtime columnist for the Times-Picayune, where he was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Rose currently writes for the Gambit weekly newspaper and appears regularly on Fox 8 New Orleans.

Correction: Apologies to Tom Wool, author of last Friday’s post from Arles, and for misspelling Les Rencontres. PR

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