banksy, beatriz and brooklyn

So last week food was politics. This week art is politics. I mean, art is food. And it's all interactive. Wait a minute. Here I am, totally confused by this, text messaging via a pack of Orbit Sweetmint.

I'm sending a message to my mom, who has been here for the past two weeks and now refers to SOHO as "my neighborhood," and only walks on Broome cause there are too many tourists on Spring.

Tom Slaughter took that photo. He tends to get his lines crossed as well. Click here to see his Obama poster and vote for it, if it's your favorite. You're voting for a poster, rather than a candidate at this stage. I told you it was confusing. This was a great article in the Times Magazine about artists and Obama, from a while back. Click here for that.

Tom knows that I looovvvve Beatriz Milhazes' work. Last week I brought my mom to her opening at the James Cohan Gallery in Chelsea. Go, go, go to this show. Color-therapy, that's what her work is. A visceral simultaneous embrace of and escape from all this stimulus, food, art, politics and what not.

And a bit of Brazil.

Here's another detail from the show below.

Mom was impressed. Sort of. (Moms are tough, you know?)
I'll tell you who she's really impressed with.

Banksy.

She feels he must be just about the smartest guy in the whole world.

We happened upon the anonymous ("genius!") artist's West Village Pet Store and Charcoal Grill the other night. Complicating matters further, these fish sticks are swimming around in front of another gallery owner (who doesn't know who hired him to sit at the Pet Store).

His gallery in Williamsburg, Artbreak, is also having an Art for Obama event in October. Click here for more information on that.

Banksy's New York ambush coincides exactly with my mom's visit to the city, leading me to wonder...no...

Mother Hen watches over her chicken little nuggets.

My sister and I are going to have to go a long way to beat mom's new favorite. Even Sara's own chicken-raising (click here) might not give old Banksy boy a run for his money.

I'm afraid I might have fueled mom's new art-crush, with the help of the New York Times.

My enthusiasm, and street cred (I'm talking in the eyes of my mom here) combined with the Times' credibility (see their article here).

I'd been thinking a lot about interactive art since I did my homework (here) about Maia Marinelli's piece Mocean.But what I've concluded after all this interactivity is that the point is that we all interact with each other, not just with technology. Especially now. Except for that I'm saying this online.

Paradoxical, I know. It all goes back to that pack of Sweetmint.

Tonight momma will move from her neighborhood to mine for the next couple of nights.
That's where I took this last photo, on Grand Street in my neighborhood...the same Grand Street where the pet storekeeper's gallery is.

green kiwis: the chook house

Happy Earth Day.

Don't roll your eyes at me, read on, this one's got a music video too.

Nothing says domestic bliss like feeding your own chickens in your pajamas, as Bella demonstrates below. So Sara asked Doug for some chickens for Christmas.

As you'll know if you've been following this blog, Doug's no ordinary dad. If someone's kid wants to go fishing he'll help 'em hook an ancient eel with rabbit for bait
(see http://jaybird55.blogspot.com/2008/01/saturday_07.html), and so on.

So, when Sara said she wanted chickens Doug elected to give them to her in style and went about converting the family carport into a chook-house.



He built the house out of entirely reclaimed materials, mostly from the farm.


Here, progress continues. That old red door is one of my favorites.


So, after a few months of after-dinner construction, the house was ready for its first tenants. Sara, Bella and I hit the road for Roxburgh, home of:

We got our first chickens at McLean's, three saucy redheads from Roxburgh.


Sara just went for it and stuck them on their perch as if she'd been chicken farming her whole life.


On the ride home from MacLean's we asked Bella what she thought we should do to make the chickens feel welcome. Without hesitation, she answered, "sing them 'Twinkle Star.'" So that's what we're doing here. I think it's actually a nice thing to do for any house guest or new roommate--sort of breaks the ice.

Eventually we added four more to the family, as Sara felt having three that all looked alike was pretty boring.

The shot below shows the chook-house in the background in its frontyard context, just to give you an idea. This photo was actually taken for http://www.blogger.com/www.scoopitupgirl.com, which Moose is using to try to compete with me for the distinction of having the slowest-updating blog.

Today the New York Times ran a story about the gross carbon footprint of food imported from far away. The cover girl for the article was none other than the kiwi, which is enjoying a longer selling season now that the Italians have poached New Zealand's national fruit. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/26/business/worldbusiness/26food.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

So Sara and Doug, my favorite kiwi-fruits, are totally spot-on as usual. Bella's not only collecting five eggs a day from "the girls," she's also bringing all the kitchen scraps out for them to eat. Neighboring kids like Harry (above) are totally into it too.


They're not doing it for the bragging rights (which are extensive), or even because Michael Pollan told them to: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/magazine/20wwln-lede-t.html?scp=2&sq=michael+pollan&st=nyt
It's just a labor of love and fun. What's more environmentally-friendly fun than hunting around for old hinges and singing lullabies to poultry? If you find something, especially something that I can do now that I'm back in Brooklyn, let me know.