By Wickham Boyle
A visitor to “A Taste of Art” Gallery on Duane Street, observes a piece of hand-blown “sugar glass” made with real sugar. The piece is by Burr Dodd.
Tribeca is getting a new feeling, a new rhythm. There are sumptuous home decor stores on nearly every corner featuring couches so lush and snugly they may replace spouses. There are lamps with jeweled bases and curtains, pillows, candles and throws, somehow Tribeca has become the place to get upscale cozy. And as a further accouterment to that well-designed feeling the galleries are increasing.
A new gallery housed in a frame store is at 41 North Moore Street. Steven Amedee and his euphonious gallery, has taken a small, narrow space and redesigned it so that it appears nearly endless in its open possibilities. The store is where one would take your finest paintings or a photograph that you want to refurbish or preserve.
Maybe all the scrutiny necessary to frame fine photographs rubbed off on Amedee because the shows he has mounted this fall were of such finely distilled photographic art that one nearly gasps when walking in. His current show is called ‘Ethereal Landscapes’ by Ken Wong and to say that these are black and white photographs does them a disservice; they are silver, gray, smoke, moss, stark white, shimmering gold, sepia and soot. The landscapes span geography from Butan to Brazil, Yellowstone to Fort Tryon Parks.
Ken Wong prints his own work and some of the larger pieces are taken from the original work done on a Rolleicord camera from the forties and reshot digitally; these prints are then reprinted on water-color paper. The result requires a careful eye to dissect the image looking for brush strokes because the result is so painterly. The works are, of course, shown exquisitely framed and the prices are quite reasonable making this the place to go for an anniversary or holiday gift when what you are looking to illicit is a gasp. The show runs until December 31.
Further downtown there is another dual purpose gallery called, “A Taste of Art.” It has been at 147 Duane Street for nearly two years and according to the French owner and curator Ms. Laurence Asseraf, “I opened at the worst time at the worst spot. I opened in December 2001, near Ground Zero. So it will be two years we are here next month, but we are committed to staying downtown.”
The gallery has shows of contemporary artists with an accent on photographers and illustrators. As an aside there is also a small selection of fine chocolates, caviar and a bar.
At the opening this week, of the current show called FOOD ART there was a bar spouting absinthe, sans arsenic, and the art was eclectic. There were hand blown sugar globes in the window done by Burr Dodd. These other worldly creations conjure visions of a candy factory in Venice where the glass and spun sugar mingle. There are larger-than-life pastels of hanging Chinese ducks and sardines done by Alisoun Meehan and Virgine Sommet has made colleges using mini croissants, multi colored Indian candy featuring the Hindu goddess Laxmi and a pyramid made from marshmallows.
My favorite food artists (only in NYC can one utter that phrase) are Doug Fitch and Mimi Oka, Harvard grads who have been working together for decades. They both have self portraits made from hand rolled and opulently colored pasta. These dried noodles look as if they were strewn haphazardly into Plexiglas boxes until one backs up and the gentle visages really appear. There is also a video of a Fitch-Oka feast done last May downtown and a photograph now transferred onto wood where dinner guest’s heads peep through a table filled with food.
All the artists in the show have a fascination for food, and they all express a vivid creativity through may different mediums. You may leave hungry but you won’t be unsatisfied.
