A safe and healthy morning to you. I’ve been looking how to vary my newsletter intro, and am following Picasso’s line “good artists copy, great artists steal”. My alternative came courtesy of a press release in my inbox this morning — it said “good morning” has called in scared until 2022!
Walking along W42nd Street yesterday, I discovered new street art at Playwrights Horizons. They are doing “what theater, what all art, does best: to disrupt routine traffic; to imagine alternate realities and offer new perspectives; to make the world a little less knowable” with a rolling display of art until at least June.
This piece by Jilly Ballistic presents the scale of the pandemic through a single dollar. She said: “It’s difficult to conceptualize such large numbers, especially when those numbers are linked to something so tragic as these deaths. What better way for a politician to understand our pain than using money as a metaphor?” The bubble on the bill says: “Imagine 399,053 of these. Now imagine they’re bodies.”
After taking the picture, I chatted to this guy. He was intrigued. He recalled that a President is paid $400k … and I wondered if Jilly will be coming back to modify the number again…. Meanwhile, a friend texted to say she saw our social post and thought it was a tribute to “Dollar for a Coffee” guy, Camacho!
If you are more of a performing arts person, you can support MCC Theater (pay what you can) and enjoy Marisa Tomei and Oscar Isaac’s reading of Beirut this evening at 7:30pm.
“Set in a dingy New York apartment in the 1980s, Beirut follows the story of a young man who is in quarantine after testing positive to a nameless disease. His girlfriend refuses to leave him isolated alone” — sound familiar!?
What we’ve been reading
New York’s bodegas — by the numbers and by definition… (Grub Street)
There’s a Margaritaville resort opening soon in Times Square. (Curbed)
Your questions about the vaccine answered. (Democrat and Chronicle)
Hey LA! “New York is Dead, Don’t come back.” (NBC)
Seizures of fentanyl and meth have surged in NYC. (Brooklyn Eagle)
Freeze Frame
Sean Kelly Gallery (on 10th Avenue and W36th St) has a wonderful exhibition of Hugo McCloud’s work — Burdened — running until February 27. The images are “meticulously composed of hundreds, even thousands, of small cut-out pieces of varied hues of plastic — the “paint” that comprises his palette — collaged one by one”.
If you don’t feel safe visiting the gallery, Sean and Hugo are doing a virtual tour and conversation at 3pm this afternoon. Register here…