This find is courtesy of Corey, an employee at the Apple Store on Prince Street in SoHo. While on a recent visit there, our conversation turned from Macs to photography. Surprisingly, Corey was already aware of this Photoblog and asked if I knew of graffiti artist The Me Nobody Knows (TMNK), aka Nobody. He suggested that it may be a good subject for blogging. The alias Nobody leads to nice wordplays in his art messages, such as Nobody Cares or I am nobody – Art is My Weapon.

On a subsequent visit to the Apple store, Corey was gracious enough on a work break to take me through nearby streets and point out the various sidewalk works of TMNK.

Nobody has a multimedia website with the requisite rap music and non-intuitive interface, Myspace page, and ebay store. Since I do not understand the vocabulary and I am not part of this subculture, I will have to let the art, websites, music, and words speak for themselves…

If you want to do something controversial, it’s easy. Just create a series of themed sculptures and place dozens of them around the city. The last one that I recall was the Cow Parade.

Everyone seems to have strong feelings about such displays. Being that they are in public spaces certainly gives the populace a feeling of entitlement as to how such space is used. And, of course, the displays are seen by nearly everyone, including many who are not typically art goers.

The statue in the photo is one of 42 around the city, all quite varied in their appearance. To see all of the statues and a description, go to the CBS News link here. From their site:

“To mark the July 15 All-Star game at Yankee Stadium, 42 baseball-themed Statues of Liberty are on display in New York. The Stephen Holland statue, Pop International Galleries, 473 West Broadway, at Houston Street, in SoHo area of Manhattan, celebrates the artist commissioned to paint them all. Apparently, he was so intent on having 42 to honor Jackie Robinson, he made one for himself.”

Each statue is uniquely designed with bold graphics and colors featuring each of the 30 Major League Baseball clubs, the Brooklyn Dodgers, the New York Giants, the American League, the National League, four All-Star statues, and statues commemorating the final season of Yankee Stadium and Shea Stadium (this year is the final season of both stadiums). The 8.5-foot tall, 250-pound statues are made of resin and rest on a 530-pound cement base.

The opinions of this series of sculptures are quite harsh. Many bristled at the appropriation of the Statue of Liberty for this venture. An online search for Statues of Liberty Parade will show you what I mean…

I have spoken many times of pearls unseen right under my nose, but this is one of the biggest finds yet. I pass 101 Spring Street every day, frequently twice. It is a scaffolded which is in serious need of renovation. On August 14th, 2007, I wrote of a homeless girl, Stephanie, who was camped out in front of this building for some time. In fact, the posting struck a chord – it was one of my most commented.

Ironically, we are back again. I have observed this mysterious stack of bricks for years, the only occupants of the ground floor of 101 Spring, in one of the most expensive neighborhoods of New York City. See second photo here.

But if one looks carefully at the side window, in small red lettering you will see Judd Foundation. Ahhh – now the mystery is easily solved. The building is Donald Judd’s previous home. Judd, a renowned sculptor and influential artist, was an early pioneer in SoHo. He purchased the building in 1968 for $70,000, where he lived and worked on and off until his death from lymphoma in 1994.
The building serves as a house museum with works of Judd and other minimalists. The whole story is fascinating – I recommend this New York Times article.

How do they do it, i.e. how is this place supported? In 2006, the Donald Judd Foundation decided to auction 36 Judd sculptures at Christie’s and raise a $20 million dollar endowment.

Oh, and the stack of eight Empire bricks? This is the work of Carl Andre – the piece is known as Manifest Destiny.

Explanation of the photo: This exposure was taken from the street through the window, with a mixture of interior objects and reflected objects from the street. Note the outside sidewalk superimposed on the interior white wall. The dark braces are reflections of the supports for scaffolding being used in the exterior renovation work. The interior wood floor abuts the reflected image of cobblestone from Mercer Street.

Orange is usually associated with the warm and positive, but this bright orange bike was part of an enormously controversial campaign. Timed with fashion week, DKNY chained up dozens of these orange bikes (the logo on this one in the photo is only partly readable) around town. According to the DKNY website, this guerrilla marketing campaign was part of an “Explore Your City” program in support of NYC initiatives to help cyclists. You can see a leggy model riding on the handlebars of a bike on their website. The store was offering free maps in their stores and various bicycling links on their site.

Where’s the controversy? Well, many found it too similar to the national Ghost Bike campaign and considered the whole thing a cheap, tacky, publicity stunt (click here for my previous posting on a Ghost Bike in SoHo commemorating Derek Lake). I’ve skimmed hundreds of comments on numerous blogs and many in the biking community are infuriated (see here). Many of the bikes were illegally chained and confiscated by the police department. The Gothamist ran a number of articles with photos (click here). In one of them, they said, “In our opinion, DKNY has crossed the line from “edgy” to “despicable,” by co-opting grassroot memorials to dead people as a gimmick to peddle clothes.”

Others, however, feel the campaign was not intentional on DKNY’s part, just poorly thought out. A DKNY rep wrote, “We are very sorry if our well-intentioned ‘Explore Your City’ program offended anyone.”
Orange you glad not to be DKNY?

On May 23, 2006, the new 7 World Trade Center was completed. The developer, Larry A. Silverstein, presided over the ceremonies (which included a free, two-hour concert featuring Lou Reed and Suzanne Vega) and unveiled this sculpture: Balloon Flower (Red) by internationally acclaimed artist Jeff Koons. It sits in a fountain in a small triangular plaza outside 7 WTC, bounded by Greenwich Street, Vesey Street, and West Broadway. The park, designed by landscape architect Ken Smith (surrounded by azaleas, boxwood, and sweet gum trees), overlooks Ground Zero (seen in the background of the photo), where the Freedom Tower is being built.

Koons has done a number of balloon animal-inspired sculptures. In fact, the one shown in the night photo is identical to three others: a blue version at Marlene-Dietrich-Platz in Berlin, Germany, a silver one in the Max Hetzler gallery, and Balloon Flower (Magenta) at the home of Cindy and Howard Rachofsky in Dallas Texas. Although the 9-foot sculpture is made from stainless steel, the red color and balloon motif gives the work a light, playful feel, intentional on the part of Koons as a counterpoint to the somber nature of the setting…

Interesting note: For a time, Koons was married to Hungarian-born, Italian porn star Ilona Staller (stage name Cicciolina). She served a term in the Italian parliament (1987-1992), the first hardcore porn star in the world to be elected to a democratic parliament. During their marriage, Koons made a controversial series of paintings, photos, and sculptures entitled Made in Heaven, showing the couple in explicit sexual positions.