Potrzebie
Friday, December 04, 2009
Zina Saunders' Overlooked New York
Zina describes her approach:
Click heading at top to read Zina's interviews with the New Yorkers I've posted here.
Zina Saunders' Overlooked New York makes a quantum leap from blog to book. Go here.
Yesterday, Utne Reader art director Stephanie Glaros reviewed Overlooked New York.
Yesterday, Utne Reader art director Stephanie Glaros reviewed Overlooked New York.
Zina describes her approach:
Overlooked New York is a collection of portraits and interviews with ardent New Yorkers about their joyous obsessions. It all started with the Puerto Rico Schwinn Club. I've seen them all my life, but I never knew why these old guys would be tricking out their bicycles with flags and horns and fox tails and mirrors. So I tracked them down and painted their portraits and interviewed them. That began my mission to discover the seemingly endless variety of enthusiasms pursued by New Yorkers, whether they were carried from immigrants' cultures from overseas or indigenous to the city landscape. These are real New Yorkers who have found fascinating ways to unleash their joy on the roofs and rivers and parks and streets of New York.
Click heading at top to read Zina's interviews with the New Yorkers I've posted here.
Labels: glaros, overlooked new york, utne, zina
¶ 1:56 PM 0 comments
Sunday, August 16, 2009
By the time we got to Woodstock
We are stardust, we are golden,
We are billion year old carbon.
And we got to get ourselves back to the garden.
By the time we got to Woodstock,
We were half a million strong
And everywhere was a song and a celebration.
And I dreamed I saw the bomber death planes
Riding shotgun in the sky,
Turning into butterflies
Above our nation.
We are stardust, we are golden,
We caught in the devil's bargain,
And we got to get ourselves back to the garden.
--Joni Mitchell
What better way to observe the Woodstock anniversary than by reading artist Zina Saunders' memoir, "Woodstock Flashback," accompanied by several of Zina's digital memory paintings. Here's one, somewhat reminiscent of nude motorcyclist Gilda Texter in Vanishing Point (1971). Click to enlarge full-screen width and full throttle blur in the wind of memories. And click here to read "Woodstock Flashback" followed by a variety of comments.
Zina captioned this "Woodstock Flashback #2: As we sped along, clinging to the back of that car, we were passed by the coolest girl I ever saw. She was driving a chopped motorcycle, wearing a miniskirt, looking tough and sexy and independent."
If you watch for it, in the movie Woodstock (1970) you can see a newspaper with a headline about the search for Manson. There was a raid at the Spahn Ranch on the second day of the festival. I remember walking through the Port Authority that week and seeing a long row of people who had left Woodstock and were now sleeping in a back hallway of the Port Authority.
I met Wavy Gravy in the Lower East Side that summer, but unlike his appearance in the film, he seemed totally down and exhausted. I tried to get him talk about his earlier life as the stand-up comedian Hugh Romney, having once heard a very funny recording some years earlier, but he seemed too wiped out to respond other than a few sentences.
To hear four minutes of Wavy Gravy as comedian Hugh Romney, click on the heading at top. This is from his LP Third Stream Humor (World Pacific), recorded at the Renaissance in Greenwich Village in 1962. It's oddly evocative of Ken Nordine, Lenny Bruce, Jonathan Winters and Dennis Potter all rolled into one.
We are stardust, we are golden,
We are billion year old carbon.
And we got to get ourselves back to the garden.
By the time we got to Woodstock,
We were half a million strong
And everywhere was a song and a celebration.
And I dreamed I saw the bomber death planes
Riding shotgun in the sky,
Turning into butterflies
Above our nation.
We are stardust, we are golden,
We caught in the devil's bargain,
And we got to get ourselves back to the garden.
--Joni Mitchell
What better way to observe the Woodstock anniversary than by reading artist Zina Saunders' memoir, "Woodstock Flashback," accompanied by several of Zina's digital memory paintings. Here's one, somewhat reminiscent of nude motorcyclist Gilda Texter in Vanishing Point (1971). Click to enlarge full-screen width and full throttle blur in the wind of memories. And click here to read "Woodstock Flashback" followed by a variety of comments.
Image © copyright Zina Saunders 2009, used with permission.
Zina captioned this "Woodstock Flashback #2: As we sped along, clinging to the back of that car, we were passed by the coolest girl I ever saw. She was driving a chopped motorcycle, wearing a miniskirt, looking tough and sexy and independent."
If you watch for it, in the movie Woodstock (1970) you can see a newspaper with a headline about the search for Manson. There was a raid at the Spahn Ranch on the second day of the festival. I remember walking through the Port Authority that week and seeing a long row of people who had left Woodstock and were now sleeping in a back hallway of the Port Authority.
I met Wavy Gravy in the Lower East Side that summer, but unlike his appearance in the film, he seemed totally down and exhausted. I tried to get him talk about his earlier life as the stand-up comedian Hugh Romney, having once heard a very funny recording some years earlier, but he seemed too wiped out to respond other than a few sentences.
To hear four minutes of Wavy Gravy as comedian Hugh Romney, click on the heading at top. This is from his LP Third Stream Humor (World Pacific), recorded at the Renaissance in Greenwich Village in 1962. It's oddly evocative of Ken Nordine, Lenny Bruce, Jonathan Winters and Dennis Potter all rolled into one.
Labels: crosby, gilda texter, nash, stills, woodstock, young, zina
¶ 5:16 PM 1 comments
