Archive for July, 2007

Be like the Beckhams: eat cupcakes.  Sugar Sweet Sunshine is your best bet for your cupcake fix. Last week, The New York Post broke the news that the latest installment of Zagat rated Sugar Sweet Sunshine as the winner of its new Best Cupcake category.

My sister, who is obsessed with all things cupcakes, has long extolled the virtues of Sugar Sweet Sunshine, and I have to agree it takes the cake. She likes the Sunshine (yellow cake with vanilla buttercream) and I like the Ooey Gooey (Chocolate cake with chocolate almond buttercream) because not only is it yummy in my tummy but it’s also fun to say. Pumpkin (Pumpkin cake with cream cheese icing) seemed to be the crowd pleaser on our most recent indulgence, and we’ve noticed that the Red Velvet and Pistachio are also ordered a lot. Cupcakes are $1.50 each.  We don’t like the coffee, though, which is unfortunate.

Nestled in at 126 Rivington Street (between Essex & Norfolk), the store has a vintagey seventies vibe that is more chic than kitch. It doesn’t have a lot of seats, but there are a smattering of chairs and ottomans. There’s also art by local artists hanging on the wall.

One of the best things about Sugar Sweet Sunshine is that they’re open late. Here are their hours: Monday-Thursday, 8am-10pm, Friday 8am-11pm, Saturday 10am-11pm and Sunday 10am-7pm. Sugar Sweet Sunshine is a delicious alternative to the bar scene that’s so prevalent on the Lower East Side.

Free admission I mean, to the Summer of Love exhibit, the blend of late 60’s music, art, and literature that’s on display now through September 16 at the Whitney Museum.  Admission is usually $15 dollars for uncoolkids but if you hit up the Whitney between 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. on Friday nights, you’re just asked to give a donation. 

The exhibit occupies the third and second floors of the museum and its suggested you begin on the third and work your way down.  There we were greeted with a brief written explanation of the collection, which names San Francisco, New York, and London as the centers of the counterculture era.  The first artwork on display is an array of old concert posters from the Fillmores East and West.  The friend who joined me at the museum works in the music industry and is also involved in a film right now about the life of Brian Epstein, who managed the Beatles, so he was alot more knowledgable about the “Bill Graham presents” collection.  Apparently these posters were given away for free at the end of the shows and now are worth some money. 

The San Francisco section of the exhibit was a spectrum of colors coating political agendas, with a few key phrases thrown in for good hippie measure, like “Plant a flower child” and “Turn on, tune in”.  There were pictures from protests hanging next to photos of colorful Victorian homes (some call them “painted ladies”).  Also shown were Jefferson Airplane albums, multiple portraits of Jimi Hendrix, an homage to Janis Joplin, the advent issue of Rolling Stone. 

It was also rich in anti-war parephernalia, beginning with the large haunting oil painting of a Vietnamese woman being raped by “white boy soldiers”, and working its way towards flower children flashing peace on rally posters.  It was a fitting representation of the dichotomy of carefree appearances and underlying anxieties - a motto of peace mixed with the irony of the fervor of protest.  One of the rally posters asked: “Haven’t we learned from our past mistakes?”

On the lighter side, if you’re into nudity, because who isn’t, you should spend a little extra time checking out the San Francisco displays.  There are as many naked bodies in the artwork as there are dandelions.  There’s even an orgy film, complete with headphones and a “Warning!  Sexually Explicit Content!” placard.

The New York section focused primarily on Woodstock, with several great photos from Bethel, NY, back when the Boomers looked suspiciously…like us today.  There were several Exploding Plastic Inevitable albums produced by Andy Warhol on display (the museum is also showing Warhol films in the Kaufman Astoria Studios Film and Video Gallery; check the Whitney schedule online).  The literature of the era included pulp about psychedelia and guides to tripping out, as well as off-beat papers like the East Village other, the cover of which chronicled poet Allen Ginsberg’s arrest for possession of pot.

The London section featured photographs of a very young Mick Jagger with his full lips and lineless face, and his most notable leading ladies like Marianne Faithful and his ex-wife Bianca; Keith Richards with cocain drawn up to his nostril; Eric Clapton in all his red-pants, big-hair glory.  We watched a video of the inflation of the massive pillow at Altamount.  There was a how-to guide for swingers in England, black and white photographs from poetry readings in Hyde Park, and a cloth-covered, Epcot-center-like display, a weird little room which we could enter only after removing our shoes and which gave me a foot cramp because of the rolling surface inside (I still can’t figure out the point of that thing).

If you’re really into trippy stuff you’ll probably enjoy the strobe light displays, swirling circles and amoebas pulsating on the walls in dark rooms. 

And there are several photos, portraits, and album covers of those buggy little guys who sang “All You Need is Love”. 

So the exhibit shows that the summer of love was celebrated differently in different parts of the world, whether it was through sexual, spiritual, political, or artistic liberation.  Some call the participants non-conformists; others laud them as visionaries.  The artwork leaves you with a wealth of information, a heady feeling, and a few more curiosities about an era which we as Gen X or Y kids can’t really understand.

There are parellels though.  There were musicians that lived hard and died at twenty seven, there was unabashed nakedness which has translated to a naked fear of AIDS, racial tensions are still rampant, there are still school shootings and alot of the drugs have remained the same.  And the one thing we’re still digging, unfortunately, is the uncertainty and unrest festering like bacteria in the petrie dish of a seemingly senseless war.  Which begs that question: ”Haven’t we learned from our past mistakes?”

If you’re at all into the music and pop culture of the late 60’s, check out this exhibit.     

Batman is one of the oldest comic book superheroes to still reign at the top of Comic Book popularity. Nearly 80 years in the game, with innumerable writers and artists behind the cape and cowland possessing one of the most frightening and enthralling rogues’ gallery ever concieved (and their own home to boot: A haunted Asylum named Arkham) and to top it off: No superpowers whatsoever.

And as far as I’m concerned, Batman is the only Classic DC book worth reading.

Of course, that all depends on who’s at the helm. Batman in the 1960’s and 70’s was a campy joke. The Adam West TV series immortalized that foolish, goofball take on a man who was supposed to be The Dark Knight. Everything was bat-gadgets, and excessively complicated and hoky schemes to kill him, instead of just riddling him with bullets or chopping him into pieces when he’s unconscious. (Two-Face once tied him to the back of a giant coin that he flipped with a crane. And these are the people running the Gotham City criminal empire?)

In 1986, one man restablished Batman as the once and forever Dark Knight, and that man (a comic book legend in his own rite, rising in the world of film as well) was Frank Miller. In The Dark Knight Returns, Miller’s showed us his dark future in which a 50 year old Bruce Wayne, 10 years retired as Batman returns to the cape and cowl with a new, female Robin to take on the mutant-gang menace threatened his precious city.

I personally consider Frank Miller as the comic books master of violence. Real-world violence, the stuff that results in splatters of blood, bruises that swell with pus and shattered bones that never truly heal right. Decades ago he rose above the average serial scribe (a writer who’s locked in to a regular comic book serial) and produces works that are wholly his own. The most famous, mostly due to their green-screen Hollywood adaptations are Sin City and 300.

But in the spirit of Dark Knight Returns (and the heavily hyped, and thoroughly disappointing sequel: The Dark Knight Strikes Again) Miller has returned with one of the best modern Batman artists, the genius behind Batman: Hush Jim Lee, Miller has taken on All Star Batman & Robin, which is a much more complex retelling of the origin of Robin: The pre-teen circus star Dick Grayson of The Flying Graysons whose parents are murdered in a corruption scandal.

In expanding and evolving the Robin origin, Miller has incorporated other Batman characters (the original Batgirl, Vicki Vale, socialite reporter and early Bruce Wayne love interest, and other DC heroes who discuss what is to be “done” with this troublesome Batman who possesses no powers, but has the gall to put on a costume and fight crime!)

But what makes the irritatingly late-releasing All-Star Batman & Robin such a joy is that Miller, with his penchant for blood and bruises is that he sinks himself fully, trully into the most villainous edge to Batman’s nature.

His sadism. Batman is a sadist, and has no qualms about acting on that irrepressible need to cause pain and injury. This is the vow he made on the night his parents died: not to bring an end to the criminal element that took his parents lives, but to inflict unfathomable pain and anguish and crippling injury to those who choose it. In Miller’s newest take on the Big Bad Bat, he relishes, (not unlike a serial killer) in the rush of adrenaline and endorphins he gets in mangling would-be criminals:

“I took out a trio of woud-be RAPISTS and left them with enough broken-bone pain to last them a LIFETIME.”

“I fed a drooling mugger his teeth by the dozen. He’s probably still coughing them up.”

But the line that every Batman writer is forced to walk remains intact: Bruce Wayne, as Batman- never kills.

Perfect to compliment Miller’s true-to-spirit re-telling of a piece of Batman’s past is another one of the 6 great comic writer’s who I will worship and follow until the end of my days: Grant Morrison.

(Who are the other four? Mwah-hah-hah. . . wait and learn. . .)

Morrison is not quite in the same Pantheon as Frank Miller and another elder statesman of DC comics: Alan Moore (The Watchmen, V for Vendetta, Batman: The Killing Joke) but he writes with maniacal predictions of a near apolcalyptic future, often leaping into a Dark New World and forcing his audience to pick up on the clues he drops a dozen-to-a-frame and get a general idea at the story arc’s he’s applied to a pre-existing universe that seemed positively sleepy before Morrison grabbed hold.

His last grand evolution (entendre intended) toward a comic book universe with its own epic mythos was his run on X-men from 2000-2003, changing the title to New X-men and making the book much, much darker and science-fiction-rich than the recent writers who made it nothing more than an endless soap opera with predictable plotlines. He concludes his run with one of his classic post-apocalypse visions title: Here Comes Tomorrow
Now Morrison is taking a thoroughly Batty (oh yes, intended) idea to the Batman Universe: SURPRISE! The Son of Batman! born to and raised by Talia, daughter of Ra’s Al Ghul, he is the perfect human being: trained from childhood to be a fighter and assassin and heir to Batman’s mantle. Morrison’s run on Batman (the book title is Batman, not Detective Comics, or any of the Batman offshoots, just: Batman) has just hit #666, and the end of civilization is rich in the air.

News reports talk of a record-breaking 123 degree weather with talk about a dirty bomb detonating in Mecca, and a health epidemic in China claiming 18 million lives. Bruce Wayne is dead and Damian Wayne has taken on the cape and cowl. Problem is, he’s not the only one out there who claims to have inherited the right to wear the pointy ears. Another Batman out there claims to be the Anti-Christ and has teamed up with the new scum of Arkham Asylum (who we learn only by names and images, no powers, no origins) to bring about death and destruction. (Big surprise.)

It’s a Dark new future with a new Dark Knight. And as Damian Wayne, the new Batman lets us know early, he struggles to live up to his father’s greatness. He fears no harbinger of the devil, he has met the devil before and gave his soul to him long ago. He tells this Ant-Christ Batman, as he breaks his neck:

“If your father wants me, tell him to come and get me.”

This new Batman kills.

It’s ballsy, to introduce a son-of-a-famous character as the new heir (It worked for Spider-Girl) but if anyone can do it, it’s Morrison.

I’m very excited to see what becomes of Damian Wayne: The Batman

Atrocity. The word alone conjurs up brutal horror laced with sadness. The Atrocity Exhibition crashed into Thierry Goldberg Projects (5 Rivington Street, NYC) on June 28 and will continue to break you out of your sense of disillusionment until August 28.

For Ahmed Alsoudani, atrocity is the violence of war going on in his homeland of Iraq.

For Ben Grasso, it’s an explosion.

For Molly Larkey, it’s the atom bomb.

For Wendy Heldmann, the aftermath of an atrocity can be just as devastating as the actual event.

As if to extend their disparate examples of atrocities, the artists use different mediums — drawing, sculpture, painting — to make their statements. Some are brutally lifelike, others are abstract. No matter what the subject matter, method, or style, the result is always the same: the works underscore our own humanity in the face of terror.

Its good to be on top.

Is the central message in AMC’s new, heavily hyped and well-worth the buzz drama “Mad Men” the most important line in every marketting ploy is: “By Writer/Producer Michael Weiner of The Sopranos” And Mad Men is all about advertising, and makes no qualms issues or petty feints about it.

Because in 1959 (or thereabouts. The general message seems to be leaving the prudish sensibilities of the 50’s, but before the outright social revolution of the 60’s.) We were on top. The Depression was our parents’ woe, The War was drifiting comfortably into the nation’s memory, and we had WON. It was a victory like we hadn’t seen since the birth of America, and the men on in the advertising industry were reaping the benefits of our macho, modern, swagger a good fifteen years later.

On top of the economy, on top our vices, (cigarettes, booze, and sex being the trifecta of choice) and mopst importantly, they were on top of whatever America wanted. It was up to the Men of Madison avenue to decide what America wanted.

At the height of the American Advertising Industry, Madison Avenue was the beating heart. Television, Radio, Magazines and Movies were all America had to concern itself with in the well-earned salad days of the 20th century, and someone had to send out the message to America, telling all the fellas and dames what they were supposed to buy. It’s no surprise then that the machismo, arrogant nature to these men is what feuled the industry.
And at the center of the story is Don Drapper, or it seems more fitting to drop the R and call him what he is: Dapper. Slick black hair, chizelled jaw, exactly what America was buying in the silver age of cinema. He is however, smart and comlex enoguh not to be overconfident. The opening scene is of Mr. Drapper jotting ideas down on a cocktail napkin on how to sell more Lucky Strikes. He asks advice of the silent, aging black waiter, who is then chided for being too “chatty”.

It’s not easy to keep one’s balance at the top, and Mr. Drapper is down-to-earth, cautious and wise enough not to get too confident and rock the boat. A lesson his piggish, smug, and about-to-be-married , and still chasing skirt 26-year old co-worker Pete could bear to learn from.

At the other end of the spectrum is Peggy, played by Elizabeth Moss. (Whom I’ll always remember fondly as President Jedd Bartlett’s youngest and most beloved daughter Zoey) She’s the new secretary at the Sterling Cooper Advertising Agency, assigned to Mr. Drapper. She’s shy, demure, but in no way naive, simply ready to work hard and achieve. Her new “friend” and supervisor Joan, a heady, fire-haired dame who wears her curves tight to her dress is ready to give her all the advice she can handle in one mouthful, including what types of gifts to give to the receptionists, and what parts of her figure she should “advertise” most. Joan, it seems, knows how to move up in the world, if you’re of the “weaker” sex.

If you’re already disgusted by the sexism, it gets better. The (male) gyneocologist who smokes in the examining room, and spends most of his time telling Peggy the virtues and vices of contraceptives without becoming “one of those types of girls.” Peggy’s so overwhelmed by the new normal, she simply nods and complies.

By the end of the first episode, Mr. Drapper rises to the occassion of holding on to his clients at Lucky Strike, in sight of Readers’ Digest’s ludicrous claim that smoking cigarettes is linked to cancer and without resorting to the psycho-babble suggested by a German psycho-analyst that humankind, deep down has a desire for danger and all things dangerous

While also just barely holding on to a troublesome, yet intriguing client: Troublesome partly because she’s Jew, trying to branch into the WASP market and troublesome but also intriguing because she’s a She.

Sure, Mad Men gives us what we know is bad for us. (Alcoholism, sexism, racism, anti-semitism, cigarettes, chauvanism, capitalism, and the list goes on. . .) but like any good advertiser, it knows the number one rule: Give the people what they want.

Tune in, you might learn something about how to sell a good show.

American Movie Classics, Thursdays at 10pm

Only at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre can you start a show 30 minutes late & nobody gives a damn! My only guess is that everybody knows they’re about to see a raunchy, hilarious show- and this was no exception.

UPLATE! with Lord Voldemort was a Harry Potter spoof in the form of a late night talk show to celebrate the long awaited release of the final Harry Potter book. This “live taping” was complete with Lord Voldemort as the host with his trusty sidekick Wormtail at his side and (of course) the obvious late night talk show band.

The costumes & makeup were horrible & atrocious in the BEST possible way- smiles were beaming at the campy & half-assed quality of it all.

So, Voldie was convinced that the Harry Potter series was his own biography (not a story about our beloved HP) & he hasn’t even read the books! He must be the only one in the entire world (including Muggles & Wizarding folks). He & Ms. Rowling had a little disagreement over who’d been through the darkest times.

According to He Who Must Not Be Named, the studio set was actually IN Hogwarts, but “it was enchanted to look like a comedy theatre set in a grocery store basement”. The audience was seated in the four houses of Hogwarts. (I was in Slytherin- gulp!) The show’s producer kept having to interrupt the Dark Lord to remind him that the word Mudblood was not politically correct and, of course, to keep giving airtime to the important corporate sponsors of the wizarding community.

Special guest stars included J. K. Rowling, The Boy Who Lived (aka Harry Potter), Ron & Hermione, the Weasley Twins & Professor Snape. Oh & guess what?!- Sirius Black had a makeover into a dancin’ pimp daddy & was working for the show as a bodyguard.

A few crowd favorite moments were:
1) The sorting hat, which was rigged on a simple rope & pulley system & just ALMOST worked. A few lucky audience members were selected to be sorted into the appropriate Hogwarts houses.

2) Erotic Reading by Professor Snape, which believe it or were dirty stories taken from real internet postings of X-rated adventures betwixt our Hero Harry & the despised Draco Malfoy. It’s kinda funny to see what people write about on the internet, a bit disturbing, but quite funny nonetheless- crowd was groaning, grimacing and smiling all the way through.

3) Those jokester Weasley twins were at it again with their own rendition of Who’s On First, but of course the sport in question was Quidditch. What’s on the Quaffle?! And, Who’s the Seeker anyway?!

And I can’t forget…

4) The Video Tribute to Albus Dumbeldore set to Boyz II Men’s “It’s So Hard To Say Goodbye to Yesterday”, detailing his life through the familiar JK Rowling inspired events & then some epic events that I didn’t remember him attending, but I’m sure were completely accurate (MLK speech, Tenement Square, Abu Ghraib & so on)

Overall, OMG, seriously- why was it one night only? It was so funny I would see it again. Do it again! Do it again! Do it again!

When an art exhibit gets extended, it’s worth taking notice. That’s the case with Sarah Peters’ Being American. The exhibit was supposed to close at Winkleman Gallery (637 West 27th Street, New York) this Saturday, but it’s been extended until next Friday, July 27. For her first-time having a solo exhibition in a city that eats, sleeps, and breaths art, that’s a noble accomplishment.

What makes Being American impressive is Peters’ ability to look past herself as a comtemporary American artist to argue that it took a lot of bad art to get to where we are today in the art world. She question the very foundations of art in the United States as she considers the failed aesthetic ideals of the eighteenth century.

Through a series of hurried black-and-white drawings, Peters shows the rejected, castaway works of time gone by. It’s a landscape of passionate yet abortive attempts to create beauty that was based on European eccentricities. She even includes a bust that although is a self-portrait actually references William Rush, America’s first classical sculpture.

Being American has been getting rave reviews from critics, so go see for yourself what all the fuss is about. And we want to know what you think: Apart from its critique on early art, does Being American aesthetically hold up its own values?

Here are a handful of truisms for the current state of the Classic Marvel Universe:

Civil War is over.
Captain America is dead.
Spider-man is outed as Peter Parker, and superhumans are federalized under Iron Man’s, Iron-clad, all-seeing eyes.
And, things are attempting to settle back into normality, only its a compeltely new, and unfamiliar normality.

The only way for comic books to stay fresh is to shake things up heavily while trying to stay as true to the nature of the characters and their shared history as possible. It’s the nature of comic books, and most fantasies rearrange histories, bring characters back from the dead, erase and re-write things that happened in order to take a story in a very different direction.

The problem is the sense that’s nothing permanent. And the only thing that’s more permament in the world of our readers, its death.

And as any experienced comic book reader knows, characters don’t stay dead.

It’s often been the mainstay of DC comics to regenerate dead characters more than Jesus on a bender, but in Marvel, for a long time, death meant something.

Norman Osborn, the original Green Goblin died in 1973. In the 2000 marvel shake-up, that was undone.

Same goes for Bucky Barnes, Captain America’s sidekick, dead since 1945 and Returned in: 2002 as a brainwashed Russian spy. In the case of Magneto (dead more times than Kenny it seems) they don’t even bother explaining how he comes back anymore. Same goes for the most recent return of the Avenger Hawkeye: Died during the devastating Avengers: Disassembled story arc, and now joining all his newly fractured Avengers buddies trying to catch up on what just happened.

So when Marvel has a world-changing event like the death of Captain America, complete with a 5-part “Fallen Son: Death of Captain America” funeral story-arc that follows the 5 stages of grief: Shock, Denial, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance, it’s supposed to convey a strong sense of permanence. I’m sorry to say, that considering Marvel’s recent track record of character rebirth, I don’t know of I trust them.

Anyway, Marvel’s realized that the whole Marvel U is just one big funky dysfunctional family, with characters hopping back and forth between teams and alliances like a super-powered swinger party, they’re coming back around with their NEXT big crossover story: WORLD WAR HULK!!

Which I’ll explain in Hulk-like terms.

Hulk bad. Hulk smash Las Vegas. Bad Hulk.

Big-brainy guys send Hulk away. Far, far away to bad planet, where Hulk beaten down, weakened, made into a slave and then a Gladiator, tortured by his cruel alien masters.

This make Hulk mad. When Hulk mad, HULK SMASH!!!

Other slaves like when Hulk Smash. They make Hulk General. Hulk lead rebel warriors against mean alien masters and Hulk win. Hulk fall in love with hubba-hubba alien hottie, and make her his queen.

Hulk finally happy.
Then Big-brains send Big Bomb. Smash Hulk’s new home. Bye-bye alien hottie. Bye-bye unborn child. Bye-bye new home, new throne. Bye-bye new world.

Now Hulk really mad.

Now Hulk really smash.

It’s Marvel doing their inverted morality ploy again. The Illuminati, (the big brains behind each corner of the marvel universe who decide what is and what shall be in their world) were only doing what was best for the people they’ve sworn to protect. Even if it meant slaughtering possibly over a million other livin things that stood as a potential threat.

Does that make them evil? Or just making the necessary compromises that a sap like Spider-Man or Captain America couldn’t be trusted with?

All I know is that it’s fun when Hulk Smash

Then again…I dove head first into Civil War, last thing I need is to spend all my pocket scratch on another “world-changing crossover saga.”

Marvel, I think we need to take a break. I’m sorry but. . . I’m going back to Vertigo. Perhaps we can still catch-up now and again. I’m sure you’ll be fine without me.

Bye-bye.

Off with their heads! …Okay, so Bastille Day isn’t actually about decapitating people. On July 14, 1789, the citizens of France had had enough of Louis the 16th’s tyrany. They stormed the Bastille, a prison that held people who were outspoken enough to oppose the French monarchy. (Imagine all the American citizens that would go to jail today for criticizing Bush….) As it turned out, there were only seven people in the jail at that time, and none of them were famous. Still, it was a symbolic gesture that marked the start of the French Revolution.

Bastille Day celebrations were held around the world this past weekend, and New York got in on the action with a “Street Fair with French Flair” on Sunday. Unfortunately, that’s about all it was. Held on Sixtieth Street from Fifth to Lexington Avenue, it was your typical ethnic street fair. The main draw seemed to be the food tents, which had long lines. They served up typical French fare, typified by crepes and pastries, including the decadent and pricey chocolates by Payard.
There were also a few French bands — The Penelopes, Poni Hoax, and Frustration – along with DJ sets. The acts that were playing whenever I walked by were really unimpressive. They were loud and looked very indie — not the cool, we’re signed to Saddle Creek or French Kiss type of indie, but the “will play for food” type of indie. They looked cool from their promotional photos, though, so maybe I’ll check them out on MySpace next time I get bored.
There were also some sports things, which I ignored. If you’re interested in soccer and cycling, check it out on your own time.
The radical, activist spirit of Bastille and the beautiful culture of France were missing from the street fair.

Anyone else attend the Bastille Day street fair? Were the bands any better when you saw them? Did you see the Cancan dancers? What was the best crepe?

There was also a celebration in Brooklyn? Any feedback on that one?

Last night’s opening for No New Tale to Tell marked not just an impressive, thought-provoking exhibit, but also 31GRAND’s first show in their new gallery at 143 Ludlow Street in Manhattan.  And the masses came out to celebrate.

Whether they knew about the event beforehand or just happened to pop in to see what all the fuss was about, the downtown twenty-something gang was out in all its glory.  It was a calm, cool crowd that packed the multi-room gallery.  The type that sprung one self-absorbed guy who thought it would be okay to light a cigarette in an oppressively hot room filled with sweaty bodies, when common gallery-going experience clearly dictates otherwise.  Backs practically pressed up againts the paintings, well-dressed people stood obstructing the view of the artwork.  Networking, flirting, socializing, the masses spilled out onto the sidewalk and across the street.

The crowd gathered with good reason: the rather large collection of works clinging to the walls inspire the imagination.  Anthony Pontius’ The Great Rescue drifts towards the surreal if not postmodern in its collaging of reality and the illogical.  Ryan McLennan’s Gather and Adam Stennett’s Underwater Mouse 2 evoke auras of fantasy through its soft, mesmerizing style even though they are clearly rooted in perillous realities.  Ursual Brookbank’s BR.FLR. has a captivating movie-like quality of beautifully capturing a moment in time.  Alessandra and Alex Exposito each paint animal skulls bubble-gum pink as if they were designing wall adornments for a bratty teenage girl in the Southwest.  Meanwhile, Magalie Guerin’s Montreal/Afternoons  and Damaged seem ripped from a Victorian leatherbound book.

Those are the highlights, but there are many other multi-media artworks on display. There was enough there to intrigue me that I would go again to get a better look when the crowds are busy at some other opening.