Downtown ArtSpaces

Downtown ArtSpaces is a place-based revitalization program designed with three objectives; to provide an environment for artisans to curate, showcase and market their own work, bring cultural enrichment by utilizing otherwise dormant spaces, and lastly to create cultural destinations within the St. George, Tompkinsville and Stapleton areas. Through Downtown ArtSpaces, the Downtown Staten Island Council hopes to cultivate an environment in which artists in the area will no longer need to rely on off-island galleries and cultural centers to showcase their work due to lack of exhibition space on Staten Island.

The increased foot traffic in the area will benefit local restaurants, businesses and real estate resulting in the community taking ownership of the area and creating a vibe and sense of pride that will help to promote the neighborhood as a whole. Having significant cultural content will stimulate economic development and create an environment entirely unique to Staten Island and downtown.

Upcoming Show:

Urban Montage

A photo exhibition by Charlene Weisler

April 16, 2009 – June 11, 2009

Click Here to RSVP

Charlene Weisler’s photography of the ever-changing urban landscape reflects the transience and impermanence of street art. Concentrating on the evolving nature of layered graffiti, Weisler captures a timeline of competing artistic efforts and messages.

The result is a rich compendium of texture, color and form that showcases both organic energy and urban decay. This is a unique expression of environmental art as voiced by competing images and agendas, all of which are invariably undone and made all the more beautifully weary by time and weather.

The transitory impermanent nature of street art arguably stands as this generation’s art movement. Steeped in tradition of portraiture, landscape, collage and abstract expressionism, urban montage street art is, in fact, more than the sum of its historical parts. It is one of the few art movements that shifts its tactile physicality on a minute by minute basis. Street art has a limited lifespan and, more frequently, shortly after creation often changes or is totally destroyed. Weisler’s haunting photographs maneuver between these worlds doing so in a way that makes the viewer see something totally new and self-contained.

Her educational background includes a diploma in fine art from New York City’s Music and Art High School and a B.A. cum laude in Art from CCNY. She also completed a year’s study of Art Historiography and Criticism from the University of Essex, England and holds a MBA in the Arts from SUNY Binghamton.

Weisler is a New York City based photographer whose perspectives on street art have been featured in a video at The Wooster Collective’s 11 Spring Street exhibition. Her work is featured on Charles Saatchi’s gallery site, in New York’s MTA Image Registry, The Museum of Modern Art Library, as part of Chelsea’s SOHO20 Gallery 13th Annual International Women’s Exhibition, in several private collections and in a solo show in Kyoto, Japan.

The Kevin Barry Gallery Calender:

Jene Youtt’s “DANCE: bodies in motion”
December 6, 2008 – April 12, 2009

Charlene Weisler’s “Urban Montage”
April 16, 2009 – June 11, 2009

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