A Walk in the East Village

By West Village Bill

Yesterday, my guy Tony P. and I had a wonderful walk in the East Village. It was initiated by a visit to the Michael Mut Gallery on Avenue C between 6th and 7th streets.

We know Michael because he's the partner of the piano teacher for our great friends Bob and Jen's kids. We went to the opening reception of his Look Again exhibit, which is a showing of collages he made that were inspired by works of Pablo Picasso. The collages incorporate fragments of photos of Michael's own paintings. Tony and I both favored Girl in Mirror, which was based on Picasso's Girl before a Mirror. At left is Seated Woman on Wood Chair, after Picasso's painting from 1941. The exhibit runs through April 7.

On the way back to our apartment, we walked west on E. 9th Street, purely by chance. What a charming little street.

We stopped in The Upper Rust, an antiques shop with many interesting finds.

Then we hit Pink Olive, which had lots of items I'd never seen before. I bought two issues of Uppercase, a new-to-me quarterly arts-and-crafts journal.

And finally, we went to Mascot Studio, which is having its annual show of dog art. I bought a couple of cards by New York artist Anne Watkins.

Cartocacoethes* - The Island of Siliconia

by baad lamb

“You love Henry, but you love his kingdom too. You look at him, and you see cities, acreage, coastline, taxes. All I see is Henry.” 

Alais Capet - to Eleanor of Aquitaine in The Lion in Winter 

I think I understand Eleanor’s mapular degeneration.

Equal to the pleasures of viewing the earth’s surface from afar  are those of viewing it up really close. It’s not the devil, or that other guy that’s in these details, but it may well be Dr. Seuess. Sure, Horton heard a Who, but what if he had eagle eyes instead of elephant ears? No doubt he’d have seen evidence of mini worlds everywhere. As do I...

An autumn leaf obeys its genetic code and pushes itself gently towards earth, its bright colors attracting the eye.

But a deeper look reveals the distinct diagram of a fantastical fallen city: Dense networks of once-ancient trails forming a Barri Gotic, whose dark narrow lanes eventually thicken into broad ceremonial boulevards.

These inscribed arterial lifelines point the way out of the crowded city center, and continually beckon photo-synthetic adventurers to unexplored worlds beyond their cellulose city walls.
Meet Evil and Alien after the jump...