IMPORTANT QUEENS DIY VENUE REBUILDS AFTER BURGLARY

Wham City at Silent Barn, photo courtesy of SleepDeadNYC on Flickr.
Post reblogged from Hyperallergic.

Late Monday night, word quickly got around that the beloved DIY arts and music venue on the border of Queens and Brooklyn, Silent Barn, had been burglarized. $15,000 of musical equipment, handmade art and valuables was taken from the venue, and the place was violently trashed. New York indie media outlets reacted rapidly, passing on the information and waiting for updates, but rarely did I find a post that really tapped into the heartbreak felt community-wide after hearing the damage. 

Silent Barn, located in neighborhood Ridgewood, Queens, was founded in 2004. Launching the career of notable bands like Vivian Girls and Dan Deacon, Silent Barn has always maintained a rabidly all-ages show policy. Art covered the walls, it was rigged with sound equipment to capture some of the live music performances, and bands played in the kitchen. They housed a zine collection, one of a few in the area, boasting over 700 titles, in addition to their experimental video game arcade, Babycastles. I’ve had the pleasure to play among dirty dishes on a few occasions; most of my friends and colleagues can say the same.

Read the full story at Hyperallergic. I also recently wrote about Doodle Drag's subway drawing party.

PEN MEETS PICK: SCREAMING FEMALES & DOODLE DRAG

Last month I ventured to Hoboken to check out the Screaming Females & Doodle Drag show. I wrote about it for Hyperallergic, and the piece went live this morning!

When the time came to start the show, Screaming Females squeezed onto the relatively small stage at Maxwell’s, just to the right of a blank sheet on the wall, which served as a projection screen. “We’re Screaming Females!” Paternoster squeaked out, and as the lights went down, she introduced the first artist: Tiffany Cheng, who illustrated the song “Wild,” off of the band’s latest LP,Castle Talk. The work projected onto the sheet ranged from photograph-based and stop-motion animations to felt pen drawings, grotesque and beautiful all at once. The artwork suited the music — dark, jubilant, fun, neurotic — visual and audio codes that we forget to interpret because we’re so busy enjoying it.

read the full article here.

I'm really excited to have something up at Hyperallergic, I am a fan of the work they do. Here are some photo outtakes from the evening.