Wednesday, July 30, 6:30-8:30: Rooftop Drawing at Ornithology Jazz Club

Join Danial Pagan on Tuesday, August 5th for an unforgettable evening of figure drawing set to live jazz at Ornithology Jazz Club, one of Brooklyn’s most inspiring music spaces. Bring your sketchbooks, your favorite drawing materials, and settle in as live music fills the room. 

We will be drawing from a live model, starting with quick 1-2 min poses for warm up and drawing 30 minute poses for the remainder of the session. All skill levels welcome! Come sketch, sip, and vibe with us. This is more than just a drawing session, it's also a chance to connect with a vibrant community of artists, musicians, and makers across all disciplines and enjoy a thickly creative atmosphere.

Ornithology Jazz Club, 6 Sydam Street, Brooklyn NY Info

Last chance, Friday, August 1: Inès Longevial | Skin of a Storm at Almine Rech

Inès Longevial's oil paintings draw attention to the skin, layered in seemingly smooth swatches of ultramarine, crimson, slate, chantilly, and mauve. These self-portraits—composed mostly from memory, informed by a repository of textures and forms consulted prior to their emergence—are a method of situating the artist in herself and the world. 

They are painted with urgency and oftentimes completed in one sitting. In this flow-state, the female form becomes a surface littered with subtle footnotes, like an odd wrinkle in a pleated skirt or the deep crease of a dog-earred page. A cropped face with down-turned eyes, a punctuated nipple, and a scapula blooming like an iris are, at a distance, totemic. The stoic sitters are disassociated, fermented. 

Almine Rech Tribeca, 361 Broadway, New York, NY Info

Saturday, August 2, noon-4pm: Meet the artists | Summer Sunroom at Wave Hill
Noon: On the Glyndor Terrace Garden, SuRan Song and William William M. Weis III will activate their sculpture You’re Soaking in It! with a workshop exploring civic trust, Justice Sotomayor’s recognition of the right to sleep in public, and the Orphic philosophy of Parmenides. Inspired by their sculpture and the restored Glyndor Garden Terrace fountain, visitors are invited to create hand-sized diptychs from post-consumer packaging. 

1:15 pm: Join artist Jennifer Tobias for a conversation about her Sun Porch installation Fish Tank and a Bird Feeder Workshop, based on the corrugated cardboard used in her installation. Employing this material as an analog to steel body armor and the bony armor of prehistoric fish, participants will create simple bird house feeders—a kind of armor for birds. This workshop is open to all ages and ranges of abilities. 

2:30 pm: Join artist Monica Duncan in her Sunroom exhibition Breathing as a stone for Plant Contouring Workshop: Embodying Plants through Movement. Visitors will spend time observing the flora of Wave Hill through contour line drawings and using these drawings as maps for movement. Participants will be asked to share their scores, embody plant forms, and create collective plant choreographies in the garden. 

Wave Hill, 4800 Independence Avenue, Bronx, NY Info

Last chance, Monday, August 4: Dawn to Dusk | Realism at Forum Gallery

Whether depicting people or places, the works in the exhibition are imbued with the deep feeling each artist employs by painting the unseen elements that resonate in the surround.  

Works by Paul Fenniak [above] and Rance Jones depict solitary figures in urban scenes bathed in glowing light. Fenniak’s Rooftop has an eerie, uncanny quality of a mysterious narrative that is not fully revealed, a quality which inspired author Douglas F. Maxwell to observe, “Fenniak manages to push that button in the very place in us that touches on our vulnerability.” Vulnerability is also a theme in Rance Jones’ Night Shift, which depicts a lone security guard at the door of a posh Cuban hotel. Such works by Jones portraying the people of Cuba are character studies and small vignettes of daily life, each imbued with deep emotion and humanity.

DAWN TO DUSK is also an opportunity to see exceptional, precise realism in impressive paintings by Davis Cone, Robert Cottingham and Linden Frederick, and atmospheric, magical works on paper by Frederick Brosen, Anthony Mitriand G. Daniel Massad. Expansive landscapes by Robert Bauer, William Beckman and Tula Telfair are on view alongside paintings by Alan Feltus, Michèle Fenniak and Gregory Gillespie who illuminate the figures in their scene paintings with the light and shadow of day and night.

Forum Gallery, 475 Park Avenue at 57th Street, New York, NY Info

Tuesdays, August 5, 12, 19, and 26, 4–7pm: Poetry/Music Metup at Giiorno

The studios of poet and visual artist John Giorno is full of books, records, and eccentric personalities. It’s a place for people and conversation. You are invited to come by on Tuesdays, have a drink, listen to music, buy some records, browse the books, see the Burroughs bedroom, and learn about past and future events and projects. Shop at The Bookcase. Buy shirts and bags and past releases on GPS Records. And Introduce yourself! Everyone is welcome, so drop in—no RSVP required. 

The historical loft at 222 Bowery, home of John Giorno, AbEx titan Mark Rothko, poet William S. Burroughs and more, was an outpost of cutting-edge actions during the punk and post-punk era. Known as “The Bunker”, its denizens hosted a continuous flow of peer-to-peer artists’ interactions. The Giorno estate has recently opened the poet’s space for ongoing activities, with a view towards further public outreach. Info

Giorno Poetry Systems, 222 Bowery, New York, NY Info

Through August 12: Daniel Johnston | I Think, I  Draw, I am at Pioneer Works

This is the largest New York solo exhibition by musician and artist Daniel Johnston (1961-2019). Curated by Lee Foster, co-owner of Electric Lady Studios and Curatorial Advisor for the Daniel Johnston Trust, the exhibition reveals the psychological depth and formal inventiveness of Johnston’s comic-inspired drawings. Comprising over 300 drawings, it attests to the abundance of material he made during his restlessly creative life.

As featured in Hyperallergic: Displayed without titles in identical wooden frames, the drawings are pulled from the thousands of original artworks comprising the Daniel Johnston Trust, which is managed today by Dick Johnston, the artist’s older brother who also sits on the board for the Hi, How Are You Foundation, a mental health nonprofit established in his honor. 

“People caught on to this that Daniel was something …They didn’t know if he was going somewhere or not, but he propelled all kinds of people,” Dick Johnston told Hyperallergic.

Tinged with dark humor, the drawings range in tone and content, but tend to revolve around similar clashes between good and evil, hope and despair, and love and anguish, exemplified by heroic characters pitted against villainous figures. These include Johnston’s own inventions, like a flying eyeball known as Fly Eye; Jeremiah’s foil, the multi-headed Vile Corrupt; and a hollow-headed boxer named Joe, which reemerges throughout the drawings, offering commentary that alludes to the artist’s personal internal monologue. More

Pioneer Works, 159 Pioneer Street, Brooklyn, NY Info,