08/30/12 6:13pm

The design and art studio spring is holding an open call for their LIVINGarrangements 2012 photography exhibition to coincide with the 2012 DUMBO Arts Festival.

This year spring teamed up with Debra Klomp Ching, the director of Klompching Gallery, who represents a roaster of fine art photographers. Together they will select the entries that will be exhibited for two weeks starting with the DUMBO Arts Festival and are looking for a creative interpretation and curios eye. This is a great opportunity for photographers who are looking for exposure during the arts festival.

Spring is looking for an inspired interpretation of LIVING ARRANGEMENTS in one or multiple images that demonstrate a creative view and a professional approach.

What is a LIVING ARRANGEMENT?
A still life of live flowers? An arrangement to allow people or ideas to co-exist?

Entries due by September 4, 2012, midnight: Guidelines and more info.

08/30/12 12:00pm

Water Street near Main Street, buzzing on Saturday Afternoon at the 2011 Dumbo Arts Festival

(Photo courtesy of dumboartsfestival.com)

The 16th Annual Dumbo Arts Festival will take place from September 28 – 30, 2012. Like the previous Dumbo Arts Fests, the event takes place in the entire neighborhood of Dumbo Brooklyn for three days, transforming its streets, parks, bridges, buildings, loading docks, galleries, and studios into canvasses, stages, exhibition spaces. There will be unexpected installations and interactive social experiments. The lineup for this year’s festival, which will showcase more than 500 artists, 100 studios, and 50 galleries and stages, will be announced in the coming weeks.

The festival organizers are expecting 225,000 visitors over the three days.

From the DAF12 press center:

  • First time this year, the festival will partner with the Children’s Museum of the Arts to expand its family programming, offering kids of all ages a variety of art projects, free-form activities, media workshops, and exhibits themed around the DUMBO Waterfront, including a carousel-making workshop inspired by the beloved local landmark Jane’s Carousel.
  • Returning for a second year as the Festival’s presenting sponsor, AT&T will once again sponsor a Signature Art Work, which will be announced in the coming weeks. Last year’s piece by artists Luke Skelton and Luke DuBois enabled anyone to text “love” messages, which were then projected across the historic Empire Stores building.

One of our favorite installations last year was Immersive Surfaces, which projected a video onto the Manhattan Bridge and in the Archway:

Festival hours are:

  • 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Friday, Sept. 28
  • 12 p.m. to 8 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 29
  • 12 p.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 30.

All outdoor projections are open from 6 p.m. to midnight all three nights. For more information on the Dumbo Arts Festival, go to their website at dumboartsfestival.com.

Related:
{Application for Dumbo Arts Festival 2012}
{Dumbo Arts Festival 2011}

03/09/12 10:16am

The application for 2012 Dumbo Arts Festival 2012 is online. This year, the Dumbo Arts Festival (DAF) will take place on Friday, September 28th, Saturday, September 29th and Sunday, September 30th. Application is due for projects in the artwork/installation or exhibition categories on April 1, 2012.

The Dumbo Arts Festival attracts 200,000 visitors over 3 days with participation from artists from a variety of disciplines, 100 studios, 50 galleries, and stages. Go to the Dumbo Arts Festival 2012 website for full details.

09/23/11 4:35pm

Welcome to the Dumbo Arts Festival! If you haven’t been here before, directions are below, courtesy of Dumbo Arts Fesetival. Full schedule of events are listed on dumboartsfestival.com.

If you’re looking for some food and drink choices, here are some suggestions:

Dining:

  • Almar (v.good Italian dinner and brunch), 111 Front Street
  • Bubby’s (American dining), 1 Main Street
  • Miso Sushi, 40 Main Street
  • Pedro’s Spanish American Restaurant, (neighborhood Mexican bar/restaurant) 73 Jay Street
  • Pub One (Pub dining and bar food), 5 Front Street
  • Rice (pan-Asian), 81 Washington Street
  • Water Street Restaurant, (Southern American), 66 Water Street
  • The Gallery Cafe (Mediterranean cuisine), 108 Jay Street
  • Superfine, (Local/organic American restaurant/bar), 126 Front Street

Pizza:

Coffee/Dessert:

Deli/Grocery:

Bars:

  • 68 Jay Street Bar, 68 Jay Street (at Water St)
  • Almar, 111 Front Street
  • Pedro’s Spanish American Restaurant, 73 Jay Street
  • ReBar, 147 Front Street
  • Superfine, 126 Front Street

The Dumbo Arts Festival spans the neighborhood of DUMBO, Brooklyn between the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges, including the Waterfront. Parking is scarce and public transportation is encouraged, though if driving, use 45 Main Street as a GPS terminus. Biking or walking over either bridge is also a great way to arrive from the West.

BY SUBWAY
F to York Street
Make a right when exiting the train station. Make a left onto York Street, walk 3 blocks to Washington Street and turn left on Front Street or Water Street

A/C to High Street

Walk downhill toward the Brooklyn Bridge on Cadman Plaza West to Old Fulton Street. Bear left on Old Fulton Street and follow it until it ends at the pier or make a right on Front Street

2/3 to Clark Street
Exit the station and make a left onto Henry Street. Turn left on Old Fulton Street and follow it until it ends at the pier, or make a right on Water Street.

BY BUS
Take the B25 to the corner of Water Street and Main Street.

BY FERRY
NEW YORK WATERWAY’S EAST RIVER FERRY operates to and from the Fulton Ferry Landing from several locations along the Manhattan and Brooklyn waterfronts and Hoboken, NJ. Also, the New York Water Taxi operates from South Street Seaport. Exit the Ferry Landing onto Water Street and walk north

09/22/11 12:45pm

This weekend, Dumbo Brooklyn is host for the 2011 Dumbo Arts Festival and will feature open artists studios, exhibitions, and outdoor projects throughout the neighborhood. This year’s festival will feature more than 500 artists, 120 open art studios, 40 live performances, family programming and more — all free of charge.

(Immersive Surfaces)


Friday’s performance art highlights include:

  • 8:30 PM – 9:00 PM: Janet Biggs’ premier of Wet Exit, a multi-media performance that combines projected video images and musicians with choreographed kayakers performing in the East River.
  • 6:00 PM – 9:00 PM: Carl Skelton and Luke DuBois’ Sweet Stream Love’s River gives guests the chance to text short love notes from their smart phones to be projected glowing in the rippling surface of the water at Empire Stores. Visitors to the festival are invited to send short love notes via SMS from their smartphones to 646-389-1766 to be displayed on the Main Street façade of the Empire Stores.
  • 6:00 PM – 9:00 PM: Immersive Surfaces projects video onto the Manhattan Bridge anchorage and surrounding cityscape to blur boundaries between perception, art and technology. (Locations: The Triangle at Pearl & Front St., Jay & Water St., Front & Adams St.

There’s also The DUMBO Underground, a benefit party for Free Arts NYC: “Help us kick-off the DUMBO Arts Festival on with a night of burlesque, music and raffles to help raise funds for Free Arts NYC, a wonderful organization that provides arts and mentorship programs to under-served children in NYC.” (on Friday, 9/23 10pm-3am. 1 Front Street, Corner of Front St & Old Fulton, Brooklyn, 11201) *Use code: DUMBONYC to receive $5 off when purchasing tickets online*

Below are some additional preview items you don’t want to miss.

1) Smack Mellon Gallery – Isidro Blasco

Isidro Blasco
Tilted

Madrid-born New York-based artist Isidro Blasco creates photographic sculptures and multimedia installations composed of images of places where he has lived, worked and visited. In Tilted, Blasco creates perspectival fragmentations of Smack Mellon’s gallery space alongside a prismatic recreation of a Dumbo streetscape. Photographs taken from multiple perspective points are combined to create mosaic-like patterns and are then mounted onto three dimensional ramshackle constructions built from repurposed wood. More info.

Exhibition Dates: September 24 – October 30, 2011
Artists’ Reception: Saturday, September 24, 5-8pm
Location: Smack Mellon, 92 Plymouth Street, upper level

2) Smack Mellon Gallery – Rachel Beach

Rachel Beach
Distance Trance

Re-imagining the basics of structure and image, Rachel Beach’s skillfully constructed architectonic objects curiously hover between sign and real, visible and invisible. Highlighting the tension between artificial and natural, Beach’s new series of sculptures methodically combine contrasting surfaces of trompe l’oeil veneers with salvaged construction beams left in their aged condition. Brightly painted edges carve out illusions of space from the chunky cuts of wood. In dialogue with the sculptures are new series of silkscreens in which monochromatic patterns of formal geometric abstraction become symbols of space. More info.

Exhibition Dates: September 24 – October 30, 2011
Artists’ Reception: Saturday, September 24, 5-8pm
Location: Smack Mellon, 92 Plymouth Street, upper level

3) Dumbo Arts Center’s video_dumbo

Dumbo Arts Center’s video_dumbo is a festival for contemporary video art curated by Caspar Stracke and Gabriela Monroy. The festival provides local emerging artists with an exhibition platform and is augmented by a number of established, international selections.

Location: 112 Water Street, Brooklyn, NY

4) Dan Wonderly’s PORTALS at 30 Washington St

From Dan Wonderly: “The inspiration for this body of work stems from years of looking at my surroundings, imagining how things might appear if I could shrink down to an inch tall and go exploring. For the series, I scoured the DUMBO neighborhood and photographed different PORTALS—defined as a doorway, gate, or other entrance—to create 16 macro or near-macro vignettes of drains, cracks, holes or miniature environments I envision as entrances into another world.”

Location: 30 Washington Street (dumboartsfestival.com/events/portals-dumbo)

09/20/11 10:40am

This weekend is the annual Dumbo Arts Festival. Each year, the Dumbo Arts Festival highlights the arts community by presenting the best in local, national, and international art between the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges. The festival will take place between Friday, September 23 and Sunday, September 25 and attracts 200,000 visitors and participation of over 500 artists from a variety of disciplines, 100 studios, 50 galleries and stages. The neighborhood becomes one big event of experimental art and music in unexpected places.

Festival hours are Friday 6pm to 9pm, Saturday 12pm to 8pm, and Sunday 12pm to 6pm, and 6pm – midnight for all outdoor art projections.

Go to Dumbo Arts Festival for the full program guide. The Dumbo Arts Festival is produced by Dalzell Productions and Two Trees Management.