UFA© Gallery Hosts P.S.8 1st Grader art show!

Urban Folk Art© is proud to present a show made up artwork from the first grade at P.S.8 in Brooklyn Heights in conjunction with an awesome organization Studio In a School. The work goes up this Friday the 5th and will be up through the 19th. 

HERE'S A GREAT ARTICLE ABOUT THE SHOW  FROM THE BROOKLYN BUGLE

The work looks awesome!

From the press release:

"1st Grade classes from P.S. 8 in Brooklyn Heights in collaboration with a not for profit teaching arts organization, Studio in a School, present landscape paintings and drawings called "How's the Weather?".  First grade teachers, Carolyn Saffady, Sjene Kendrick, Mackenzie Field, Sandy Long and Matthew Levy and teaching artist, Belinda Blum, collaborated during this fourteen week residency,

 to connect students' science (weather and cloud study) and literacy (vocabulary and writing) curriculum to their art making experience.  Through exploration students engaged in the creative process while having a professional visual arts experience.  

Students spent weeks exploring various types of mark making using drawing pencils and paint brushes to advance their visual vocabulary.  They expressed different types of emotions such as funny, scary or calm by using various marks and lines.  They learned how to make brush strokes that described different types of weather such as rain, snow or lightning as well as something that could only be felt or heard like the wind, midst or thunder.  Prior to painting their landscapes students spent time learning how to mix primary colors into secondary colors and how to make gray and other pastel colors mixed with white.  For most of the children, it was their first time painting a landscape with a horizon line.

Urban Folk Art© Curator Adam Suerte and the teachers think it’s an exciting idea to have the students see their work in a real gallery setting. There will be a signing book placed in the gallery so at the end of the shows run, the children can see the positive feedback from people who have come into the gallery to see their work."

"How's the Weather?" will be up from May 4^th  through the 19^th.

 "It is raining.  I used white and dark blue because it just stopped snowing and now it is raining.  The top of the sky is very cloudy."

Emma 

1-208

 "My weather is stormy.  I made the grays with black and white.  I used more white on the bottom than the top so the bottom is lighter."

Maddox 

1-208

" It is rainy and drizzly but also a little sunny.  There is a mist coming down.  I took white and yellow and put on thin strokes."

Sonia 

1-210

 Belinda Blum reviewing the project with the students

 Students and parents checking out their work

UFA® Presents Brooklyn Tattoo 10th Anniversary Party!

This Thursday April 19th we are celebrating Brooklyn Tattoo's 10th Anniversary at Littlefield in Gowanus, Brooklyn. It's been an insane road for us, but every year gets bigger and better. We want to thank all of our family,friends and clients by having this awesome blowout. Willie's band Activator will be playing, as well as UFA© Co Founders Jason Mitchell and Rich Moody's band Miscegenator, our old awesome friends The Brought Low and DJ Greg Poole will be playing. we'll also have some giveaways, some raffling, and some great drink specials from our friends at Hendrick's Gin and Sailor Jerry Rum! Littlefield is at 622 Degraw St. between 3rd and 4th ave in Gowanus. Show starts at 7pm. It's a $5 suggested donation, which gets you  2 raffle tickets that could win you a couple hours of tattoo time from one of our amazing artists, Shop merch, Urban Folk Art® Merch or art from the gallery, we Hope to see you there! 

Below is a shot of the amazing posters we got printed, silver lacquer on rubber coated paper! 14"X26" they are very limited edition and being sold at the show and online here.

Urban Folk Art® hosts a reading at BookCourt in March

Our Good friend Jake Austin, who we went to art school with, is having a reading/presentation on March 24th at Brooklyn's BookCourt for the release of his book 'Flying Saucers Rock'n'Roll'. It's a collection of some of the more stand out compelling interviews from the magazine. Started as a fanzine, Jake's music/comics magazine Roctober has been grown into an almost indescribable resource for way too many cool things to list. More from the release below. 

"For nearly twenty years, the much-beloved music magazine Roctober has featured work by some of the best underground cartoonists, exhaustive examinations of made-up genres such as “robot rock,” and an ongoing exploration of everything Sammy Davis Jr. ever sang, said, or did. But the heart of the magazine has always been the lengthy conversations with overlooked or forgotten artists. Flying Saucers Rock ’n’ Roll gathers the most compelling of these interviews. Eccentric, important artists—including the rockabilly icon Billy Lee Riley, the jazz musician and activist Oscar Brown Jr., the “Outlaw Country” singer David Allan Coe, and the pioneer rock ’n’ roll group the Treniers—give the most in-depth interviews of their lengthy careers. Obscure musicians, such as the Armenian-language novelty artist Guy Chookoorian and the frustrated interstellar glam act Zolar X, reveal fascinating lives lived at rock’s margins. Roctober’s legendarily dedicated writers convey telling anecdotes in the fervent, captivating prose that has long been appreciated by music enthusiasts. Along with the entertaining interviews, Flying Saucers Rock ’n’ Roll features more than sixty images from the pages of Roctober and ten illustrations created for the book by the underground rock ’n’ roll artist King Merinuk."

On our buddy Jake-

Jake Austen is an independent music writer and the editor of the magazine Roctober. He is the author of TV-a-Go-Go: Rock on TV from American Bandstand to American Idol, the editor of A Friendly Game of Poker: 52 Takes on the Neighborhood Game, and a founder and co-host of the cult-favorite dance show Chic-a-Go-Go, which airs on Chicago Access Network Television (CAN-TV).
Jake is a great speaker and alot of fun to listen to. He really gets into describing the things he's into. This is surely going to be a blast! 

Sat March 24th 

7pm-10pm

BookCourt

163 Court Street

South Brooklyn

718 875-3677

facebook event page

or contact the gallery for more info

info@urbanfolkart.com

Coming in March, 'Portraits and Pigeons' The work of Chris Arnade

Our next show in March is the amazing work of photographer Chris Arnade 

Click here for a great article that showed up in the NY Times

From the Press release 


"The Urban Folk Art® Gallery will be presenting photographs by Chris Arnade on March 9, 2012. Arnade’s work examines the lives of people living in the neglected areas of New York’s outer boroughs. His photos show street survivors—prostitutes, addicts, the homeless—as well as people who find their niche through shared obsessions such as pigeon keeping and bicycle clubs.

Not simply visual documents, the pictures are accompanied by stories told to Arnade by the subjects themselves. Prostitutes are shown in full as people with incredible histories of loss and suffering. The homeless are not anonymous....

A counterpoint to the portraits, the exhibition also presents Arnade’s series on pigeons, which rise above the scene on the street. These photographs depict an elaborate subculture of men devoted to raising pigeons for sport. The exhibit highlights the structures pigeon-keepers have built on rooftops, enclaves of care and beauty within the harsher urban landscape."

You can check out his Flickr site here

Facebook event page here

 Chris' proceeds from the show will go to HPAC (the Hunts Point Alliance for Children)

You have likely seen his work used in the Flickr pools of Animalnewyork.com, Gothamist.com, Brooklynheightsblog.com, and Brownstoner.com, or written up in on various urban media. 

Heres a couple links to some stuff involving Chris and his work

http://fortheloveofbrooklyn.com/archives/2011/04/chris-arnade-and-his-barbershop-brooklyn.html

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2010/08/bookspotting-booklyn.html

http://brooklynheightsblog.com/archives/tag/chris-arnade

http://www.brownstoner.com/blog/2012/02/another-side-of-east-new-york/?stream=true#arnade-01-1

2011 Gallery guide, Year in review

So we made a 2011 gallery guide that documents all the shows we had in the first year of gallery operations. It's a limited run, so if you want one email us and we'll send it out to you. info@urbanfolkart.com

Adam Suerte's solo show/ gallery anniversary show was awesome!

We had an awesome time at the anniversary show. Sold more work than expected, and had a bunch of old and new friends come out. Below are some shots from it, and check here for some pictures of the art, and here for some great shots from apprentice Sara,  here for some superb shots from UFA© pal Keith Thomson and check here for some amazing shots from Justin Anders Denmark, friend of Rising Dragon Tattoo, and now friend of us.

 "Escher"

 "Round Is Funny" SOLD

 Tattoo outlines Suerte has done

 "Cadman Plaza Looking down Court Street"

 Drawings made from actual tattoo outlines Suerte has done

 Katana (sword) and Bat Suerte painted

bat close up

Brooklyn Landmark Pint Glass collection designed by Suerte

 Photo by Keith Thomson

 Photo by Keith Thomson

Photo by Keith Thomson

Happy New Year, 1st anniversary of the Gallery celebration!

Happy new year everyone! It's been a little nuts over here, but just as we are getting ready to dismantle the Martha Cooper/Aiko Show, we are getting ready for the 1st anniversary celebration of the gallery with a show by the head curator/ artist Adam Suerte. It was a great year filled with meeting and showing some awesome artists, and we are happy to mark it with the collected works of one of our own. Check out his website for a glimpse of what may lay in store and spread the word!