September Comings & Goings (Artists, Fat Beats, Almanacs)

While on my way from one place to another, I happened upon a corner display of colorful, witty series of vernacular paintings and decoupages in SoHo that stopped me in my tracks. After a little bit of conversation, I learned that the pieces were the work of Patrick-Earl.com, who works in a range of media and whose deceptively simple imagery contains more than its sly share of political and social commentary. (That it was on display outside an empty storefront in SoHo only flavored my impression.)

I particularly liked the LLC-Storefront assemblages (I couldn't afford one on this go-round), which are visible along the bottom row of the two photos right below, but I did get a tiny $20 painting that had a delightful image (Gordon Park's famous "American Gothic, Washington, D.C.") collaged in. (Check out his hat in the photo below too; it's part of his Shotgun series, just as t-shirt was part of his Ties series of paintings.) All of the pieces I saw offered stories, both readily apparent and more complexly embedded in them, a few of which Patrick-Earl expounded on for me.

Do check out his site; all his pieces are for sale, at reasonable prices for original artwork in New York.

Patrick-Earl's display, in SoHo


The display from another angle


Patrick-Earl and an admirer of his work

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Though a fan of hiphop music, I never spent that much time in Fat Beats, the legendary underground hiphop music store on 6th Avenue, but I did stop in a few times over the years, and would often encounter the self-distributing, aspiring rappers as I passed below its windows on my way to NYU's campus, or in the opposition direction towards the PATH station on 9th St.

Like so much of 1990s New York City, and especially the West Village, Fat Beats has now closed its doors, in part because of the economic shifts in the music industry and because of the still-too-high cost of renting in Great Recession-era New York City. The store's closure underlines the impression I had of the very rocky state of affairs in NYC, despite all the official pronouncements. Just a few weeks ago I was on 8th Street, once the shoe bazaar to rival them all, and lighted up and lively well into the early hours, and not only was the block between 5th and 6th Avenues eerily dark, but it was somnolent as well. Yes, NYU has yet to start back up, but that wasn't a problem 5 and certainly not 10 years ago....