NEW YORK RAMBLES (page 47)
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November 2021
A ramble between Williamsburg and De Kalbia
I sometimes wonder if being an artist has less to do with talent and skill than possessing an unyielding desire to expel a personal experience that burns too intense to keep hidden inside. Some communities welcome this, others do not, forcing practitioners underground. There are all sorts of nooks and crannies in this big city where evidence of this compulsion lies; small temples to the art of being human.
November 2021
A loop between Carroll Gardens and Clinton Hill
Halloween has past but you would not know this walking the streets of Brooklyn. Homes remain decorated with cobwebs, spiders, scarecrows and jack-o-lanterns in numbers that surpass what I’ve seen elsewhere. Brooklyn is not an unknown quantity to me, but today I sense a unique vibe not found elsewhere. The new waterfront parks and growing number of skyscrapers may mimic development in Manhattan but they will never be interchangeable.
October 2021
A walk from Gowanus to Fort Green
Some recent media soundbites revealed that a top priority of the leading mayoral candidates will be to rid the city of graffiti. Really? Apparently they know the difference between art and crime or maybe they think they are one and the same. With real problems plaguing the city, why is this even on their minds? Maybe I’m the one who doesn’t know what art is. I do however know the difference between a New York mayor and a political hack or are they one in the same?
September 2021
A walk in Kissena Hollow
It has taken some time, but runoff from the recent flooding has given the lake the skin of a scaly reptile. Its base color is the green of an algae bloom but it has absorbed so much particulate that the ensuing hue can only be described as indeterminate. Leaves and feathers decorate it like a fancy cake that can appeal to nothing beyond the eye.
September 2021
A walk from Union Square to Hudson Yards
New Yorkers are nothing if not enterprising. Despite the difficulties in setting up a business, shops open like seeds blowing aimlessly across the landscape, taking root in any crack that can provide some nourishment.
August 2021
A walk across Flushing
I’ve been telling myself to pursue the grand, go after the spectacular, but my eye seems to have taken up a romance with the mundane, a relationship it refuses to abandon. There is no explaining love.
July 2021
A 12 mile walk from Long Island City to Williamsburg and up to Union Square
Traffic signs willing, the very layout of streets in New York tend to be partial. They direct traffic down preferred byways with no concern over where anyone wants to go. This is especially true when on foot. While choices may seem abundant, I often find myself on the same streets over and over before I ever realize a decision has been made. Sometimes I find it worthwhile to force myself into the new even when rewards do not look forthcoming. I have found countless treasures this way.
July 2021
A ramble about Chelsea
I’m not a big fan of the Vessel in Hudson Yards. There are just too many millionaires with more money than they can properly spend. Must we put up with watching them frolic in space like overaged adolescents? How many more trite and uninspired monuments must clog our public spaces? I do have to say I take some hedonistic pleasure in the Vessel’s reflective panels, memorized by how they fracture space, fracture the mind. Perhaps that is also their problem. There was yet another suicide, a teenage boy who threw himself off a high walkway. This folly may not inspire death, but it will be its legacy.
June 2021
A walk from Hudson Yards to the East Village
From the air, New York looks drab, like one giant hive built by mud wasps. From the streets it looks populated by Bower birds crying out look here, chose me.
May 2021
A walk from Long Island City to Sunnyside
I love the way modern glass and steel skyscrapers play against older highrises of brick and granite in downtown Manhattan. They are only different instruments playing the same song. Here in Long Island City, a much different tune fills the air, though it is one that has become all too familiar. Here there are two worlds, old and new that are not even on speaking terms let alone able to harmonize. It is as if two communities are taking up the same space, unable to acknowledge the others existence.
May 2021
A walk from Union Square to Hudson Yards
There is no less light heading toward evening than when morning arrives but its quality is quite different. I don’t mean in terms of warmth, which is often the case, but in the mood it strikes. Every strand of light cursing through the city’s canyons at the break of day is a sign of optimism. Now I find myself a poor beggar, scrounging for remnants that might make a composition.
May 2021
A ramble in the East Village
If Monet were alive today, would he be compelled to paint graffiti dappled walls with as much intensity as he gave to lily covered ponds?
May 2021
A walk across Flushing
Photographers never seem to lack advise when it comes to choosing the best light of day for shooting. I’ve always found the best light is that which suits my needs in the moment.
May 2021
A Midtown walk
In an ever changing city there is inevitably loss. How many times have I returned to shoot something only to find it missing from the landscape? On the other hand, subjects thought depleted can be surprisingly refreshed.
May 2021
A ramble through the Village
I suppose summer streets are more hot than they are now, but can they be any brighter. I feel as if I’m about to disintegrate under the unyielding sun as it is. Spring however comes with its own particular freshness, a time when anything seems possible and failure is exiled from memory.
May 2021
A ramble around Bushwick
Put the spray paint away. Fabric is no longer mere window dressing; it has spilled out onto the streets, turning fences and facades into provocative essays on color and pattern and defining what it means to be alive.
May 2021
A nine mile walk from Ridgewood to Greenpoint
Street art may not have an expiration date but it sure has a shelf-life. I don’t know why some have the incessant need to add their own tags to other peoples work. I have to admit, the cumulative effect can add up to something greater, but it too often seems like unbridled egos on the rampage, let loose by the injustice of exclusion. I’m not one to believe street art should last forever; I like the idea of turnover that these are our mandalas drawn in sand. They are an odd combination of our desire to be acknowledged while reflecting back on our own impermanence.
April 2021
A ramble in Kissena Hollow
I’m doing my best to sprint side by side with spring this year yet I just can’t keep up.
April 2021
A walk from the East Village to Hudson Yards
Sometimes it only takes one extraordinary tree to make a composition. Sometimes that chosen tree need not be more than ordinary.
April 2021
A ramble in the East Village
Some of the new outdoor dining pavilions springing up everywhere walk a fine line between creating a safe intimate setting and a space that inspires thoughts of prison.
April 2021
A walk across Flushing
The slightest nuance of light can be the ticket between heaven and hell.
March 2021
A nine mile walk down the East Side to the Battery then up to Hudson Yards
The spaces between some downtown buildings are barely an excuse for a street. Sidewalks, already narrow, are often shared with trucks. Claustrophobia is a real threat to those inclined to such things. I have no worries for my camera keeps me safe, allowing me to go places I would not otherwise go.
March 2021
A walk from the East Village to Hudson Yards
Up has become a relative term in New York. It is like so much that seems to have crept up on me. Each day I turn around and the familiar has been replace by the obsessive. Sometimes I just want to strike the mirror, but if it should shatter, what will I be left with.
March 2021
A loop between Midtown and the Lower East Side
I suspect that someday soon the streets will be filled with so much color and texture that walking down them will be nearly unbearable. My camera cannot wait.
March 2021
A loop between Ridgewood and Glendale
While the wearing of masks are a true sign of the times, I hate taking photos of masked people, just as I hate incorporating rooftop satellite dishes into my compositions. I can adjust to change well enough and have no nostalgic yearnings, it just seems that with each passing day there is something new that makes working in the landscape less appealing. Despite my complaints, the streets have a draw I can’t seem to resist.
February 2021
A walk from Midtown to Tribeca
Glare can be a problem any time of year but it seems very much at home in late winter when it is a constant in my eyes. I feel my steps are passing over a desert floor instead of city streets, as I hope to find something in this bleakness that can hold a composition. Balance comes my way easily enough though a true sense of place remains elusive.
February 2021
A ramble in Kissena Hollow
I heard the cries of geese passing overhead during the night. Three flocks of them in short order. It was still snowing when I went out to find them, the morning the darkest of grays. The light that held the day could not be more frail. I didn’t even know the sun came out until I turned around to find a yellow eye staring back at me. Its gaze was not piecing, but it still had the strength to lift me out from my footprints.
February 2021
A walk in Bushwick
There was no outward resemblance to speak of, but this snowy Brooklyn avenue suddenly sent a flashback of Norman Rockwell’s Stockbridge Main Street at Christmas racing through my mind. I first came across that painting as a child; a centerfold in a magazine. I was very taken by it then, before I was taught to know better. I can’t deny the scene’s reliance on a flurry of sentimental tropes, but they are not what has stuck in my mind. Its light spoke to season in a way that the deep blue shadows in front of me now evoke something beyond place. It tells me that it is winter and I am part of it.
January 2021
A ramble through the East Village
My camera is slowly building up an inventory of outdoor dining areas though I don’t have a conscious desire to accumulate them. I suppose that’s where the action is these days even when patrons are lacking; something new for the same old.
January 2021
A walk down to the Lower East Side
Is there such a thing as Post-Pop. I suppose there is comfort to be found in the recognition of cultural elements from one’s youth, I understand the draw, but is this onslaught of nostalgia the best that artists can come up with. When fundamentals are thrown aside for the sake of so called innovation and political relevance, it can only put an artist on a dead end road. Balance and harmony have come to seem trite in the face of feel good cultural concerns, but they are tried and true. They never lose their power to heal.
Copyright 2021 Alan Petrulis All Rights Reserved