From my studio corner of the Flatiron Prow I have been watching for days as the trees in Madison Square Park turn color and spread a back drop of shimmering gold behind my suspended cups.
View from the Prow Artspace
Flatiron Building, November 2011
Photo by Gwyneth leech
I draw the trees every few days and hang the cups so that inside and outside play against each other kaleidoscopically. Add in yellow traffic light boxes and the constant parade of yellow cabs until I feel enveloped in gold.
View from the Prow Artspace
Flatiron Building, November 2011
Photo by Gwyneth leech
Now the leaves are falling and I can see further into Madison Square. From my chair I can just make out one of Alison Saar's sculptures perched in the high fork of a London Plane tree, a glimpse that draws me into the park at the end of my drawing session.
Alison Saar Sculpture, Madison Square Park,
through December 31st, 2011
There balances the black figure, head bowed, hair falling forward, covered with gun-metal butterflies. In an adjacent tree, an arborist on ropes is checking the canopy after a brutal, early snow storm damaged thousands of trees across the city. All seems safe and sound in the high branches and leaves drift down peacefully on Saar's totemic sculptures scattered through the park.
Checking the tree canopy
Arborist in Madison Square Park
Photo by Gwyneth Leech
Circling back towards the Flatiron Prow I bump into my friend Minouche Waring, a painter and glass designer, who lives on 6th Avenue at 26th Street. We go up to her loft to look at her latest glass pieces and drink Pu-erh tea with hot soy milk and Cardamom. My husband and I sublet her loft in 1993 while she traveled in India, our first experience living in New York City. Back then we recall, Madison Square was rat-infested and neglected. Concerted efforts by the Madison Square Conservancy have turned the park around and made it a brilliant showcase for public art presented by Mad. Sq. Art. It is my pleasure that Alison Saar's sculptures will be keeping me company until the end of the year, and that I will see more of them from my perch in the Prow Artspace as the trees go bare.
I knew when I hung my cup art installation in the Flatiron Prow that a lot of people would see it, situated as it is on a major intersection at the very heart of New York City. However, I hadn't really thought about how the current multi-tasking, hyper-connected, mobile public looks at art.
petra_mckenzie, Statigram, 11/11
Typical encounters with my cups go like this: Pedestrians are striding purposefully by, cuppa in hand, ear buds in, talking on their cell phones. They are brought to a halt in surprise by the hundreds of suspended cup drawings scintillating and turning in the windows of the Prow Artspace. They promptly get off their calls, take photos with their phones, apply some filters and load them to the internet right away.
Rula, Statigram, 10/11
A few keywords - #cups #flatiron #nyc- and the photos join a growing online archive on Statigram, Flickr, Tumblr, Tweetpics, Google+, Facebook and other photo blogs of the way each individual sees the installation.
They are consuming their art and making some of their own on the fly!
"Here’s a description of the process Leech goes through with each cup and why:
“Leech saves cups from her drinks — and occasionally from other artists
she meets for tea or coffee — washes, dries them and records on the
bottom the date, place, occasion, and drink it held, thus documenting
the social moment.”
Catch that last part? Each cup documents a “social moment”. Every single
cup suspended so delicately in midair symbolizes a personal
interaction, an exchange of stories or ideas, a connection with another
human being. All of these social moments are then made into art, and
displayed to hundreds of onlookers sparking new social moments, ideas,
stories, and connections."
Danielle_B, Facebook, 11/7/1
It is exactly as he says! And just as each cup is different, each viewer's photos are unique, sparking their own text-based responses and conversations.
"I love how simple yet magnificent and intricate this is all at once!"
chrysanthacakes, Statigram, 11.49 am, 10/21/11
Where will it all end up? Where will all this connectedness take us? I have no idea. I am excited by the possibilities.
"Contemplating Modern Art in New York City", chacoan, Statigram, 2.44 pm, 11/1/2011
As I watch it all unfold, there are many cups of tea and coffee to drink and many more drawings to do between now and the beginning of 2012.
See you at the Flatiron. And don't forget to bring your camera - or at the very least, your cellphone.
See the lengths to which we artists will go to make our art?
Ready to work in the Flatiron, Studio in the Prow Photo courtesy of Cecilia De Boucort
I am an active procrastinator. When my apartment is as neat as a pin, the cutlery drawers sorted, the filing cabinet in perfect order, that is usually when I have a pressing art deadline. When my painting studio was in my home, I became adept at Final Cut Pro video editing, Photoshop, Excel spreadsheets, and writing.
Eventually, I started renting a painting studio in the
Garment District in Manhattan with no internet access and no computer on
site. My children are in school all day, I had the time to paint
seriously and so I did, regularly and productively.
But I grew lonely.
Cup of the Day #91
Twining Vines by Gwyneth Leech
Colored India ink pen on upcycled white paper coffee cup
It seemed like a few committees would balance things out. But my active procrastinator took over and before I knew it two schools, various art groups and a lengthy turn on the co-op board of my building were keeping me from my brushes and glued to my computer again.
Then came the cups. Sitting still and listening at meetings, my hands needed to move constantly and without really being aware of it, my paper coffee cups were covered with drawings. These drawing intrigued me and I followed the thread. The cup form is the same each time, so I gave myself complete permission to draw anything I liked. This way, with pens at the ready, and an inexhaustible supply of something to draw on, I have managed to stay in a highly generative place.
Early morning, Flatiron
The Naked Studio before the artist arrives
September, 2011
Now all that was needed was a way to put art-making firmly center stage, the inviolable fulcrum of my day. My current exhibition at the Flatiron Building, Hypergraphia: Studio in the Prow is the perfect answer. Here I am, in a naked, glass-walled studio right in the center of the city, in the middle of my best and most productive time of day and days of the week. Everyone passing by is making me keep my commitment to my art-form, and the flow of visitors who come inside to talk livens the solo work of making my art.
Visitors to the Prow Artspace from
Saint John's University, NY and from
England, Scotland and California
Several artist friends have said they couldn't do this, they couldn't draw in public, couldn't commit to all these weeks. But it doesn't feel like a burden to me. The prow is quiet, the faces - especially those of the children - full of delight. What a privileged position to be in, to see how viewers react to our artwork!
And when January comes and I have to leave the Prow Studio? I am going
to remember the lessons I have learned about pacing myself, about
ring-fencing time for work, about being unplugged, about making art with
others.
And my cutlery drawer is going to be very, very neat once again.
So what is the hardest thing about being in the window of the Flatiron drawing five days a week? That coffee cart right outside on 5th Avenue. It is just so dang hard to draw! I have now tackled it a half dozen times. Three of the resulting cups passed my keeper test and are hanging in the window. Have a hunt for them.
Cups of the Day #90 by Gwyneth Leech.
Recent cups in the Flatiron window. India ink on upcycled white paper cups.
After that, it is the perspective of the buildings on all these converging and diverging streets. No, I don't have to tackle them, but it is an irresistible challenge. I peer up Broadway and 5th Avenue to the north and try to figure out that crazy skyline. Am I really seeing buildings as far away as 42nd Street? What a vista!
The view from the inside
the cup installation by Gwyneth Leech,
in the Sprint Prow Artspace, Flatiron Building, where 5th Avenue and Broadway Meet.
Visitors outside the plate glass, and those who find their way in through the Sprint Store are always welcome, as long as they don't mind that I usually won't be looking them in the eye - I have to keep drawing, it is nothing personal. Lots of kids come in on Saturdays especially, and don't want to leave. Thanks to Faber Castell and my now enormous stash of empty take-out cups from all over the five boroughs, there is plenty for everyone who wants to try cup drawing.
The view from Broadway.
Everyone knows about cups!
Usually mom and dad are too shy to draw, and while little Johnny tries his hand on one, two, three cups they cruise the Sprint store checking out the latest merchandise (which is the new I-phone, by the way).
The door is left ajar and will be locked again once I leave. I get myself situated: cell phone and camera out, coffee at hand, pull up the chair, take a seat and bam.... I am in the zone for the next three hours, drawing and looking and dreaming and seeming to float on the current of humanity outside the glass. The buzz and music from the Sprint store recede, people and traffic are a distant hum, there is the occasional low rumble of a passing subway train. None of it distracts me. I have to say, it really is a sweet spot for a studio, right in the heart of the city, and four weeks have flown by! I feel fortunate indeed to have another ten stretching leisurely before me.
I am sitting in the midst of my personal ever-expanding universe of cups and thinking about my high school friend, Saul Perlmutter, who just won the Nobel Prize in Physics.
Yep, I am going to say it; I knew him when...
Cup of the Day #89
Cosmological Cup by Gwyneth Leech
Colored India Ink on upcycled white paper coffee cup
It was 11th grade physics at Germantown Friends School in Philadelphia. I was terrified of word problems. Saul Perlmutter was a friendly kid in the class who happened to be super bright, generous and willing to help me. He had a way of explaining physics so that it all made perfect sense. I passed that class with flying colors and I owe it to him!
My favorite part of physics was undoubtedly all the space stuff - white dwarfs, red dwarfs, supernovae, black holes. Saul's too, I guess, since he went on to study astrophysics and become the supernova guy.
Hypergraphia cup galaxy by Gwyneth Leech
at the Flatiron Building, NYC
October 2011
Saul was (and still is) gregarious and funny. In our senior year we were a couple, which essentially involved going everywhere with a whole passel of his friends and mine - to the movies or piling into someone's living room to hang out and talk on a Saturday night. We went our separate ways in college - he to Harvard, then to Berkeley, I to the University of Pennsylvania, then on to Scotland to study art. But we kept in touch.
In 1988, with his freshly minted PhD in astrophysics and a job as a researcher at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, supernovae took his fancy. He wondered if he could devise a computer program to scan the heavens for this rare kind of astronomical event - a task hitherto done only by certain human sky watchers around the globe with extraordinary visual memory. There was great skepticism amongst the sky watchers and astronomers about a computer's ability to match their skill.
The goal was to use the light of supernovae to measure the speed of the theoretical slowing down of the expansion of the Universe.
The computer program worked; automated searches began to find more supernovae than the human eye. But his team needed a lot of these events. In Saul's hallmark spirit of openness and collaboration, he made the supernova search software public on the premise that the more teams working on the project the better the results would be and the quicker they would get them. He then embarked on many years of traveling to telescopes in far flung parts of the globe and coordinating scientists.
More and more supernova data was gathered but it took ten years to get what they needed. Then it came time to plot the data and see if it confirmed Hubble's theory about the decelerating expansion of the universe. In what Saul calls "the long aha" - a realization made over months - they could only conclude that this classic theory was wrong:
The expansion of the universe is not slowing, but speeding up! And this is a discovery which turns on its head everything scientists thought they knew about the nature of the universe!!
His wasn't the only team to make the discovery. Several teams of astronomers, using his supernova software and doing the same research, had come to the same conclusion. But they had cast themselves as his rivals and the race was on to publication. In 1998 they all published their results within weeks of each other - one group the first to present the findings at a conference, the other the first into a peer-reviewed journal. Last week three teams were honored with the Nobel Prize in Physics. Saul got one half, the other two teams split the rest.
Over the last ten years Saul has been on an elusive quest to fund the construction and launch of a space telescope devoted to supernova research. In tough economic times the Government funding keeps getting deferred, the telescope gets shelved again and again.
We had the rarest of opportunities to sit down together for coffee this summer when Saul and his wife, Laura, a professor of anthropology, were on sabbatical leave in Princeton and came into the City to visit art galleries in Chelsea. We met at Buongiorno Espresso Bar on 9th Avenue. To be precise, Laura and I had the espressos; Saul had orange juice. Nary a caffeinated beverage has ever passed his lips. Hmm, if I give up caffeine would I have a hope of thinking more like a Nobel Prize winner?
Talking about the telescope, Saul said that technological advances had lowered the price tag considerably. No longer a billion or so, but mere millions.
"Heck," said a mutual friend later when I shared this, "we should just pass the hat and buy the guy his telescope!" I'm game. I am more than willing to do a cup-drawing fund-raiser if it will help.
Saul, just let me know.
Ready to draw at the Flatiron
Hypergraphia by Gwyneth Leech, October 201
And as for his ability to help ordinary mortals understand physics, he still has it as can be seen from this recent video interview where he explains the science which made him a Nobel Laureate. Moreover, it is apparent that his enthusiasm for science remains undimmed; That is worthy of a prize all by itself.
23rd Street, where 5th Avenue and Broadway meet. I knew it would be a high traffic location; indeed people visit the Flatiron Building in New York City 24 hours a day. But for some reason, I hadn't reckoned on the photography. From giant SLRs to I-phones to videos, the cameras click around the clock, and then the images flow out onto the web.
I am loving seeing the installation through everyone's eyes and enjoy
daily e-mails and postings that bring new views taken at
different times of the day. I mean, I just haven't made it down there at 6AM yet, but how gorgeous the photo is of the windows before dawn!
I did try my hand at a little night time photography. Oh dear! I got a few lucky shots, just enough to know that it is not as easy as it looks, even with a tripod. So here is a big shout-out to artists and photographers who have sent images my way. Thank you, and keep them coming!
Gwyneth drawing in the window
High noon. Photo by Julann Gebbie
Wednesday and Thursday were filled with visitors. I was delighted when Scott Kahn, painter, and Dilys Winegrad, curator, both University of Pennsylvania connections, stopped in and lightened my drawing hours.
The street views in every direction intrigue me - up and down Fifth and Broadway, across into Madison Square Park, both ways on 23rd Street. I can see everywhere, the grid exploded in crazy cubist angles. What a vantage point!
I am getting the measure of the space as a studio, enjoying the light-filled circles of the display platform. I spread out my pens - a welcome donation from Faber-Castell. I discovered their Pitt brush pens with their saturated light-fast colored India Ink several years ago and have used them ever since. They give just the right balance of line and brush mark.
Thursday it poured cats and dogs and cups. Rain lashed the Prow and I felt indeed as if I were abroad ship, riding on waves of umbrellas.
Saturday the sun broke through in time for our reception in the Prow Art Space. I shared my art pens with visitors who tried their hand at upcycling their own coffee cups.
Heat built up inside, but we were kept afloat by a vat of iced Hibiscus tea with lemonade courtesy of Argo Tea. Argo Tea has certainly fueled all of Week One. I have thoroughly enjoyed each perfectly brewed cup - no tea bags there.
Week Two is upon me and I am heading out the door for another drawing session in the window studio. You will see me there Tuesdays - Saturdays 11 am - 2 pm, pen in one hand, cup in the other.
It was a grueling couple of days, but my cup art installation has taken flight at the Flatiron!
Cup of the Day #88
Flying Cups at the Flatiron
We got in Monday morning and lost no time sorting, untangling,
stringing and hanging. I was deeply grateful for everyone who helped hang, and for friends who stopped in with coffees and stayed for hours. The cups
expanded and took their suspended places. Who knew I had so many? The
hundred cups I did over the summer make a bright and breezy
contrast to the ones I drew last Spring on the rainy side streets of the
Garment District.
About noon on Monday the black drapes came down and the public began to
gather on the sidewalks outside. The space is filled with beautiful
light and the city spreads out beyond the glass. A veritable river of
humanity flows by and around the Prow. As I set out my art materials and
prepared to use the space as a studio I was filled with joy and
anticipation. What an extraordinary place to be drawing daily for the
next three months!!
Stringing cups all day Monday
The view from the ladder Monday afternoon - the installation taking shape
The curtains are down and the space is filled with light.
The finished installation as seen from the front
View from the East side of the Prow.
Just goes to show that if you build it, they will come and take photos.
Getting down to work in a new window studio.
I will add to the exhibition as the drawings are finished.
See you through the plate glass Tuesday - Saturday, 11am - 2PM, from now until December 31, where Broadway and Fifth Avenue meet at 23rd Street!
