Brooklyn Migration

Flamingo Parade, 2010 supported by Lower Manhattan Cultural Council

Amidst last weekend’s Jubilee celebrations here in Great Britain, I was ecstatic to receive news from across the pond on Saturday morning from good friend and Space All Over-curator Anna Lise Jensen that my public art intervention Flamingo Parade has found a home at Red Shed Garden in the community of Greenpoint in Brooklyn, New York City which hosts a Community Support Agriculture organic food distribution programme as well as a platform for education on nutrition for schools within the community.

For regulars to this blog, many will know this has been a long time coming – conceived when I was living in Manhattan in early 2009 when I was given the opportunity to participate in the artist-community initiative A Lot of Possibilities, that has seen a group of international artists working towards integrating contemporary art around the Upper West Side and Manhattan Valley, Flamingo Parade was directly inspired by the Community Garden at West 104th Street, whose charming green character I looked down on from my apartment window.

With the support of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council in 2010, Flamingo Parade was realized into a 31 x 9ft vinyl banner in order for the original illustration, that had been created in situ a year before, to be installed into the urban landscape within the rare, yet determined, green spaces of New York City. 

I must say a big thank you to both Anna Lise and everyone at Red Green Shed for their enthusiasm for my work and for helping to install it last week - those of you who are stateside can now see Flamingo Parade in the garden from Skillman and Kingsland Avenues – nearest subway Graham Avenue on the L line. 

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Red Shed Garden

264 Skillman Avenue

Brooklyn, New York

11211

More images and updates are due to follow in the run up to the installation’s official launch and community gardeners’ event in late June - from the very latest from New York follow @JMVELARDI

You can also follow Flamingo Parade’s journey with an archive of news and images from my time in New York, the Upper West Side community garden to the streets of New Jersey, Bushwick and Williamsburg, across Massachusetts and the work's migration to Greenpoint, Brooklyn over the last two and half years. 

Find out more about the early stages of A Lot of Possibilities by Anna Lise at spaceallover.org to see all the contributing artists and projects around the Community Garden at West 104th Street.

More From North Adams...

A Lot of Possibilities-extraordinaire Anna Lise Jensen has mailed over some more photos from the exhibition at MCLA Gallery 51 - I'm loving the Flamingo Parade floor shots during installation last weekend...

North Adams Update

Here are few photos from A Lot of Possibilities: North Adams that opened last Thursday night, including some installation shots of my 31 x 9ft vinyl banner, Flamingo Parade that made the four-hour drive from Manhattan to North Adams in Massachusetts State. I actually haven't seen the work yet hung in a large space since it was printed in New York last year, so it's great to see how impressive it looks in both size and presence due to its patterned quality. To learn more about A Lot of Possibilities by its creator, Anna Lise Jensen visit spaceallover.org to see all the contributing artists and projects from the last two years and click here for details of the exhibition at MCLA Gallery 51 which runs until the 27th March.

Flamingo Parade, 2010

Flamingo Parade has been supported by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council

A Lot of Possibilities: North Adams

25th February - 27th March 2010

MCLA Gallery 51

375 Church Street

North Adams, MA

01247 USA

Flamingoes Fly Stateside

I can finally announce that my animation, Flamingo Parade (2010), has been selected for the 6th Annual PIXEL POPS! exhibit, Urban Realities in Newark, New Jersey, USA. As part of the 35 selected short films, Flamingo Parade - which animates the elements of the original repeat pattern that was produced in 2009 while I was living in New York - will be screened every Wednesday throughout the month of October in several locations around the New York metropolitan area and will be projected like digital billboards onto the urban landscape to be made accessible to a wider audience and incite interaction with incidental viewers from the respective local communities

Starting on Wednesday the 6th October at 7pm, the schedule below details the neighbourhood areas with precise locations being released between 24-48 hours in advance of each screening:

October 6th - Newark, New Jersey

October 13th - Williamsburg, New York

October 20th - Bushwick, New York

October 27th - Jersey City, New Jersey

This is a great opportunity to see my inspiration from my time at the Community Garden at West 104th Street in Manhattan back in 2009, realised within these public spaces beyond the Manhattan Valley. For the new visitors to my blog click here to learn more about my work with Space All Over at WinterSpace and the artist-community initiative, A Lot of Possibilities, curated by Anna Lise Jensen, who is working towards integrating contemporary art within the context of these green sites around Manhattan. For those of you who are not stateside, below is a sample of Flamingo Parade - make sure to visit jonathanvelardi.blogspot.com for more details and updates about the scheduled screenings and visit PIXEL POPS! for information about this annual event as well as a statement from curators, Jeanne Brasile and Hiroshi Kumagai.

House & Garden

The quintessential English Garden has been in vogue since the early eighteenth-century, spreading across Europe with rolling lawns, architectural decoration and visions of arcadia inspired by Lorraine and Poussin. Having spent this year designing my own decorative interventions for the 104th Street Community Garden in Manhattan I am always on the look out for green spaces in urban landscapes and I enjoyed coming across this private garden terrace in the London Borough of Hackney over the weekend. The owners celebrate the beauty of nature in an effortless style bridging practicality with personality: the epitome of English Eccentricity. An Englishman's home may be his castle, but his garden is his own oil painting... click here to explore more public green spaces in the Borough.

East Coast Recap: Garden Edition

New York has become my second home - and 104th Street Garden my sanctuary. The project has picked up pace and it was a pleasure to meet the resident gardeners and other green-fingered creatives in the such a short space of time. As you can see the garden looks far from the snow-covered patch in the Manhattan Valley the last time I was there. It was great to see it in bloom just before the Autumn kicked in and we were able to discuss the location for my wallpaper design, which we hope to install in several parts throughout the enclosure.

Over the summer, the much anticipated High Line, opened to the public. The High Line park is a section of the former elevated freight railroad located in the heart of Chelsea - paired with the natural growth on the disused tracks, soft planting shapes the landscape with height coming from mixed-species of birch. The project was inspiring and although initial plans were met with controversy, it is great to see green-schemes being supported by Mayor Bloomberg's administration and brings a whole new meaning to walking the line...

While in Chelsea, follow the line to 22nd St and be immersed in the god-like spaces of PaceWildenstein with works by Maya Lin (below) as well as one of my favourite shows I saw by Anselm Reyle - Monochrome Age - at Gagosian Gallery on 24th St. When in Brooklyn, check out the current large-scale organic installation at DAC and Smack Mellon, where artists compete with not only the beauty of the space but the views onto Brooklyn Bridge (above).

NY Update

I just received some feedback from the last Open Weekend at Winter Space from across the pond and the event was a huge success. My proposal to install Flamingo Parade onto the surrounding walls of the garden was received warmly by the 104th Street community gardeners who attended and interest in my 'green obelisk' will see it placed in the garden - the idea being that I will make a template and instructions for the gardeners to make the skeletal obelisk themselves. Particular thanks must be given to Suzanne Charle who I had the pleasure of meeting at the opening of the show - she is on the Committee of Gardeners and her interest in the project has been very encouraging - her passion for the garden and invaluable knowledge of all things green will see the obelisks covered in vine instead of moss as I originally intended, due to the New York's weather temperament. The plan is also to include work form the other artists in the show with the intention of making the garden at 104th Street a landmark lot for gardeners and artists alike. We are still preparing a proposal for funding, but until then, you will have to make do with my impression of the garden above ...

Sunday 29th March 12-5pm

The show I'm exhibiting in, A Lot Of Possibilities, in New York is inviting everyone to the last Open Weekend at Winter Space. Host will present a day of invited speakers and talks about the participating artist's projects. Details of the exhibition's creative catalogue will also be available as well as an introduction to the following season's program at Spring Space by Jo Q. Nelson. My proposal for a wall installation in the community garden at 104th Street will be presented and discussed with the community gardeners - all are very welcome!

The exhibition will continue to be open throughout the year by appointment only. For more information visit SpaceAllOver.

The Work

Flamingos & Obelisks

Le Mur Végétal

Patrick Blanc = amazing. The Parisian Botanist has radicalized the concept of garden design by inventing Le Mur Végétal (Vertical Garden). What the 104th St. Garden lacks is height as apartment blocks tower above it from either side. I hope to incorporate a sense of vertical dimension as well as introducing evergreen plants for an all-season permanence to the garden.

High Maintenance Similarities

Clockwise from Top Left: Château de Villandry (France), Frederiksborg Castle (Denmark), Washington Old Hall (United Kingdom) and Château de Versailles (France).

Keep Out!

The more I explore the garden at 104th St. and the community gardens I pass while I walk around the city, I can't help but notice the use of wire fencing around their perimeters and how unwelcoming they are. It may just be a cultural thing - decorative, albeit mock-Victorian, wrought iron fences are favored more than wire fencing common for industrial use in England. Throughout America, thousands of miles of wire fencing is used to line baseball sports fields, school grounds, parking lots and prison yards. While decorative wrought iron bars mask windows and doors in urban neighbourhoods - I look down at 104th St. Garden in my apartment through such a myriad of iron.

There is no detaching such an image with ideas of security: does the threat of danger lie behind the fence or is the fence keeping the threat out?

West 104th Street Garden

A Lot Of Possibilities

Host presents, A Lot Of Possibilities, the first show at Winter Space. Based around a formerly abandoned private garden lot that was taken over and then neglected by the City, it was the initiative from the locals to turn the space into a garden and create a common interest within the community. The exhibition explores the idea and experience of transformation and transplantation through various interior 'lots' from participating artists: Nanna Debois Buhl, Laura Fayer, Sandra Eula Lee, Sandra Mack-Valencia, Kenneth Rasmussen, Mark Inglis Taylor and Jonathan Velardi.

A Lot Of Possibilities opens February 7th and on Open Weekends thereafter from February 7th to March 29th, 11am-4pm. By appointment only on 917-549-7285

New Year New York

I am in New York for a month working on a project with the artist collective Host. I will be researching the work of Patricia Johanson from 1969 when she was asked to create a proposal from the editors of House & Garden, to produce landscape designs for a garden for the magazine. 146 drawings were produced and dealt with metaphysical relationships between nature and humans. I will propose a landscape design for the community garden, 104 St. Garden, that sits in between Central Park West and Manhattan Avenue in the Upper East Side. While living in the neighborhood I will be sourcing inspiration from this area, known as Manhattan Valley, with the views from local residents as well as my own transplantation into the community from England that will lend itself to ideas of a 'British Garden'.

I will continue to document my research and the work produced up to the exhibition opening on February 7th.