U.E.S. Subway sightings #22

I found this woman dangerously teetering in stilettos on the subway platform. Is she waiting for someone to push her or just loose her balance?

Another reason NOT to wear high heels in NYC.

U.E.S. Events #27 Oktoberfest

Got nothing to do tomorrow? Head down to the early Oktoberfest on 84th street between York and First for some fun. It should be a nice day!

Happy New Year to my Jewish Friends.

I just want to wish all my Jewish friends a very happy new year. I'm dipping a slice of apple in some honey right now!! (For those who don't know that act symbolizes the sweetness of the New Year to come). Everyone should try it...you can't go wrong.

And P.S. What a beautiful day! I'm headed over the museum with Peter.

U.E.S. Business Highlight #2

I stopped in my tracks when I saw this baby. Finally a mannequin that looks like me! Bravo Intimacy the hottest bra shop in Manhattan It's located on 91st and Madison.

U.E.S. Hot#19 Gift Ideas Star of David

This is a great gift idea for the Holiday Season. You can purchase prints from Peter G. Pereira from the Logos Bookstore 1575 York Ave. Check out the star of David a hot, original gift idea for the season. I've included a review of the show from one of the premier art critics in NYC. The great Ed McCormick from Gallery and Studio Magazine. He's been around since the 60's coined the term "puck rock" and hung out with Warhol. He raves about Pereira in the Sept/Oct issue. I'd take him seriously if I were you.

Remember this is a local artist and these works were inspired by the Carl Shurz Park that we all love so keep it real keep it local!!!!

Art Review. Peter G. Pereira Hydragea Epiphanies

Visual Alchemy: Peter G. Pereira’s “Hydrangean Epiphanies” by Hila Ratzibi August 10. 09

The latest work by artist Peter G. Pereira straddles genre and mediums to create a hybrid form dubbed by the artist as “surreal photographic paintings.”

Composited over a period of four years, these pieces were gleaned from roughly 10,000 photographs of hydrangeas taken by the artist at Carl Shurz Park, on the upper east side of Manhattan, which were later “painted,” modified, and reconstituted digitally. The result is a kaleidoscopic panorama of floral repetitions, in hundreds of shades of purple and blue, which draw the viewer in and hold the gaze in a kind of sustained hypnotic attention.

Appropriately, the pieces were exhibited in the backyard garden of the upper east side bookstore, Logos, run by Harris Healy, who had the unique vision to display the work among plants and flowers. The juxtaposition of real plant life with artistic representations of flowers added a layer of visual irony to the experience, highlighting both the confluences and contradictions between nature and art which were part of the artist’s vision.
What appear at first glance to be merely O’Keeffe-like photographs of flowers, doubled and redoubled in mechanical arrangement, become more than what they seem upon closer examination. Like a Rorschach test, strange images emerge between the surface shapes, out of the emptiness of negative space. Seemingly innocuous images yield sudden, minor terrors; black eyes peer out of the space where petal corners meet: eerie, yet simultaneously delicate and gentle. The eye travels between the foregrounded floral images and the shapes hidden in the background, as though journeying between consciousness and unconsciousness. Peel your eye for seated Buddhas, lotuses, alien-like faces, birds, and dragonflies. At times, images seem to randomly materialize, and one wonders whether these are visual coincidences or part of the artist’s plan. In other cases, the artist imposes more authorial control, by chiseling recognizable symbols out of the photographic compositions, such as crosses and stars of David.

This collision of the organic image of flowers with familiar human symbol systems represents the fundamental irony and contradiction inherent in this work. It brings to the forefront the human influence on nature, but without the obvious display of the artist’s immanence found in more painterly pieces. These are vestiges of technology’s cold yet consistent hand, its ability to reproduce, refract, and reassemble. But human vision, while distant and removed from these surfaces, is ever-present though unseen, like an omniscient, third-person narrator, more organizing principle than immediate presence.

The technological dimension of these pieces brings to mind mass production, the commodification of the natural world. Yet at the same time, the computerized reproduction of these botanical photographs mimics the very patterns in nature itself. Look closely at the leather-like texture of a leaf, its repeated lines and surface symmetries, and it is not unlike the repetitive patterns imposed by the artist. There is a harmony between the world of nature and the world of human technology, but an acknowledged detachment is required for the artist (and the viewer) to enact that relationship. Where realism attempts to represent an exact visual replication of nature, these abstract photographic manipulations attempt to mimic the underlying patterns that govern the natural world. The human witness disappears, the artist’s hand invisible, and what remains is the almost hubric desire to understand the secret processes of creation. These pieces are an act of visual alchemy, sometimes bizarre, but often wondrous and playful. They transport the viewer through realms where reality and imagination are blurred, where nature is simply a mirror of the human mind.

U.E.S. Business Highlight

You're not going to want to miss this one! Ever sit at home on the U.E.S.wondering what fabulous restaurant to experience only to end up with same old same old? Well.. Michael Frankel (that's him on the left) has solved all our dining problems. He has opened a company called Specials by Zip. That means you can sign up for FREE and you are emailed all the specials from the local restaurants... including full menus, pictures, and payment methods.

You can even channel the Julia Child in you and write and post a review!

It's free to sign up and there's lots of giveaways in December. So remember... http://www.specialsbyzip.com/