Art and the Lower East Side

When I was asked to speak at an event about art in The Lower East Side, my first thought was, "I might piss a lot of people off."   I have strong feelings and opinions about this neighborhood and the how it's changed so dramatically over the past decade. Its generally been pretty difficult to watch and sometimes even traumatic.  But through it all I've learned a lot.  I've learned how important it is to accept change, to roll with it and even thrive in it. 

It's interesting to me that I have a chance to speak on the themes of Art and Home at a venue in the Lower East Side.   This is my home and art is my life.  So this should be easy for me.  But honestly, when you're so close to something, so surrounded by it, it can appear overwhelming to assess.  There are so many thoughts, so many feelings, ideas and opinions that it seems difficult to arrange them into a cohesive presentation.  It's sort of jumbled up in my head and piled layer upon layer, stacked and packed-in onto itself with ideas shooting off at every angle of color, sound, form and emotion.  A lot like the Lower East Side itself. 

Anyone you ask - from the jaded homesteaders to the trust fund newbies - can tell you, this used to be a different kind of place. Ask the Latinos what has happened.  Ask the Orthodox Jews, the Ukrainians, Germans, Irish and Italians who all came before the Latinos.  It's never been anything but a shifting stage. It is a place that personifies Change.  Ever since the Dutch showed up trading with their fingers crossed behind their backs, this place has been all about "out with the old – in with the new".  There has been little regard for history or what came before.  It's always been about new creatures coming to nest in the trees of the older ones.  It's a lot like the early European settlers and their approach to the Native Americans.  We all come here, year after year and - after a while – we end up saying, "This place is mine now."  And in order for someone to feel at home, maybe that attitude is necessary. 

In a city as vast and complex as New York, there can be no true gauge of its activity.  The circles of influence and creative flux seem to overlap in infinite patterns in all directions.  So what do I know about the Lower East Side and its art scene?  Only what I've seen and been a part of myself.  I actually consider myself a latecomer to this place.  I've only been in the neighborhood for 17 years.  And when I arrived, it was pretty real and pretty raw.  It still had the whiff of the Wild West about it.  I came to NY because I didn't have anything else to do – not because I'd always dreamed of it.  I was in a band in Massachusetts and my crazy guitar player had landed a job at his uncle's button and zipper factory in Midtown.  Glamorous, I know.  A very bored and somewhat loyal rhythm section, we followed him here.  I looked all over New York for a place to live and the cheapest rent I could find was in the East Village.  I'd never even heard of The Lower East Side or Avenue A or Ludlow Street or Alphabet City or Loisaida.  But it didn't take me long to realize I had discovered the heart of town.  It also didn't take me long to realize that I had arrived a little late and had missed the real action.  All I had to do was chat with anyone who looked remotely interesting and I would be regaled with stories of the old days.  In the same way that I'd always wished I'd been here to experience the culture of the 60s – to hear Hendrix play or to meet Picasso - I began to wish I'd been a part of the art and music scene in New York a decade earlier.  But that never made a real difference to me. As far as I could tell, this was the craziest place on earth and I loved it. 

Everywhere I looked were wild characters, with freaky hair and tattered clothes – brilliantly and effortlessly styled.  I loved the fact that I could sense the level of someone's creative intelligence by the way they looked.  I felt like I could very clearly see an indication of what they were about by the way they dressed and the way they spoke.  It was a sort of tribal affiliation that was worn on the sleeve that said – "I'm free.  I do things my own way and I fly in the face of the establishment."  There was the pervasive air of anarchy – of complete disgust with the status quo.  Everyone seemed to live outside the norm, on the fringes of society – out of the box and out of reach. 

With this passionate rejection of the system as we saw it, came adherence to another code of ethics.  Our insistent non-conformity caused us to be attached to other ideas and burdens.  The saddest aspect of youthful rebellion and the reckless punk rock lifestyle was the particular monkeys that we allowed to crawl up our backs.  Lots of people were on drugs, which you could buy on the street if you wanted – anytime night or day.  I was never interested in the hard stuff myself because to me it was obvious that the folks who were, didn't seem to be having the easiest time of it.  But a lot of truly brilliant souls did get caught up in it and it was really difficult to watch them become strung out, and end up in rehab, in jail or dead.  Heroin was particularly popular in the 90s for some reason.  It was everywhere.  I hated the stuff because I saw what it could do.  I watched people's faces sink, teeth fall out and their bones begin to crumble.  I learned some hard lessons during that time.  I watched too many potential geniuses fade away to nothing. 

There were lots of people squatting back then, living in abandoned buildings – which weren't too hard to find.  Those of us that were paying rent weren't paying much – but we complained about it none-the-less.  It was a culture of getting by on what you had.  There was the air of invention and resourcefulness that I suppose a lot of us inherited from our depression-era families.  We could make art or music out of anything.  We could make a party out of anything.  All we needed was some space, some things to make music with, some fire, some fire-water and some good company.  It was about turning nothing into something – about turning trash into art.  It was about churning up new ideas and flipping things inside out to see what they were made of.  There was an almost entirely pervasive element to art and fashion at the time.  Almost every painting, sculpture, fashion statement or musical experience you encountered was an inspired organic occurrence – it was always something that had been haphazardly, often effortlessly arranged into art from everyday stuff.  We used whatever we could find to make whatever we wanted and lived in a funny little bubble where everyone seemed to be on the same page.  Everyone I knew was an artist or a musician who was just squeaking by on a mission to keep on doing whatever they were doing with a passion that ranged from lazy to feverish. 

It also didn't take long for me to realize that I myself was a newbie and that I was part of this big change that was happening in the cultural landscape of the neighborhood.  And it wasn't all good.  We were from Massachusetts, Connecticut and Philly.  We pow-wowed with freaks from all over the globe but a very small percentage of them were actually born and raised in New York City.  Sure, it was the melting pot but that didn't mean everyone was welcome everywhere.  Even so, we felt like we were at home and as time went on, we paid our dues and did our time until we became convinced that this place belonged to us as much as it did anyone else.  I've always known to respect those who've come before me and I was generally pretty careful not to step on anyone's toes.  I made friends with the old crazy coots who ranted and raved on my block.  I lived next door to Eddie Boros, the nutty old guy who built the tower of junk and toys that used to stand in the 6B Garden.  He was in his late sixties when we met and we had a lot in common.  He, like all the other artists in the neighborhood, was into collecting junk and making stuff out of it.  He made insane unplayable instruments and wobbly unride-able bikes.  They tore his tower down recently - immediately after he died – a real sign of the times.

As I said before, I kinda missed the whole thing – only caught the tail end of the 80s art scene, but I was there for some of it and I became part of it instantly.  Around 1993, I started booking shows at the Gas Station that included art exhibitions and bands. I don't know if anyone had the foresight or the means to shoot any video during these shows but they're still alive in the memories of all who were there for it.  For me they turned out to be the reason I had come to the city after all.

I started my NY art career by hanging my paintings in the Mars Bar and eventually moved on to staging exhibitions and rock shows at CBGBs and CBs Gallery.  I put together a thing called The New York Rock Circus, that featured bands, performance artists, film projections and even a freak parade from Tomkins Square Park.  When we hung our work at the gallery, we didn't care if we sold it – we just wanted to hang it up and see what it was about.  It kind of blew our minds to see our paintings up on such big white walls.  We really just wanted reactions and opinions.  We thought we might find some encouragement, although no amount of criticism would slow us down.  And when we did sell stuff, we went wild.

As we became more involved in what was going on in our neighborhood, we noticed more and more artists and punks coming around to be part of it all.  Great bands were playing every night, small theaters were hosting insane performances, art shows were being thrown up in crazy places.  It was all pretty radical, experimental and unpredictable.  There were the brilliant drag shows at the Pyramid and art shows at Bullet Space.  There was the absolute insanity of the Rivington School and the Gas Station, Gargoyle Mechanique and Collective Unconscious.  There was Surf Reality, Todo Con Nada, House of Candles and ABC No Rio. The most damning incident – the defining moment that made it clear to me that things would never be the same again – was when they tore the Gas Station down.  It broke my heart. 

The Gas Station, for those of you that don't know, was this amazing construction of scrap metal and junk that had been welded together in the most insane and beautiful way.  It was a corner of a city block – on B and 2nd street – that had been turned into a bewildering cage of rusty bars, fences, cars and motorcycles up in mid-air, with cat-walks and archways spanning the space.  It was a wide-open yard with a little workshop in the back.  During the hardcore shows there were barrels of fire burning out in the yard with all sorts of freaky looking maniacs climbing over and perched up in the criss-crossing metal structure.  It's actually impossible to describe.  But suffice it to say that when I discovered this place I knew I had arrived at my determined destination.  And one day a wrecking crew came and tore it all down.  I was destroyed.  I watched in absolute shock as over the next few months a bland, lifeless brick structure went up in its place.  I couldn't hate any building more than I did that one. 

That experience left me pretty jaded and bitter.  We had hardly seemed to notice as all around us rents started going up.  But at one point we did suddenly notice things had begun to change rather dramatically.  Things were always changing but this time it was different.  Who were these people moving into the neighborhood that didn't seem to fit?  They weren't artists or musicians and they certainly weren't Latinos or Ukrainians.  As if out of nowhere, our little bubble was burst with the dawn of the yuppie.  Who were the yuppies and where did they come from?  And what was it about them that bothered us so much?  I did have friends that lived very conservative lives but most of them lived somewhere else.  Why did it make me so angry to see these Young Urban Professionals moving into my precious little neighborhood?  The answer was simple.  I knew it meant the gradual end of our lifestyle as we knew it.  To me this was a place set aside for immigrant families of various ethnic backgrounds and for people who lived and breathed creative and expressive lives.  Around here you were either old world or old school and these people were neither.  It was about the time when the slogan, "Die Yuppie Scum!" started to appear sprayed on the walls and sidewalks.  In retrospect, I guess these folks were actually pretty brave to move into our neighborhood but in essence we had made it easy for them.  Where there was once the volatile threat of drug dealers and addicts, prostitutes and violence, there was now also just a bunch of artists and musicians.  And who could feel threatened by that?

I suppose in some sense we were more afraid of them than they were of us.  We knew that their appearance spelled the end of our cultural renaissance and we were pissed off about it.  The story is always the same... the neighborhood is dangerous, over-run with crime and no one wants to live there.  The artists and musicians don't care – they just want cheap rent – and besides they like the look of the old buildings and consider the rough parts of the neighborhood an adventure.  As more and more creative people move into the area, it naturally starts to look and feel different.  It gradually becomes a bit less dangerous and a lot more colorful.  A cultural shift occurs with art as its pivot-point.  The small-time media picks up on it first.  The fanzines and independent papers start to report on what's happening until sooner or later it becomes the center of attention.  As the technology of media began to evolve with the growing popularity and functionality of the internet and more information began to spread, the inevitable use of a new word arose.  The "G" word.  Gentrification.  Who knew what that even meant just a few years earlier?  But there it was, suddenly rolling off of everyone's lips... gentrification, gentrification, gentrification.

Then came another nasty "G" word: Guiliani.  And along with this very pleasant and presentable individual came his "zero tolerance" cops.  They were here of course to reinforce what they liked to call the "Quality of Life".  He was casually referred to at that time as "Adolf Guiliani".  Suddenly everyone was getting arrested.  If you were drinking a beer or smoking a joint on the street you got locked up.  If you were selling your art on the sidewalk without a license, your work was confiscated.  Bars and clubs were fined and eventually shut down all over town.  People were getting ticketed and fined for dancing or performing without a cabaret license.  They came with cranes and wrecking balls in the middle of the night and started knocking down the squats.  People who lived in these buildings lost everything they owned and were forced to stand and watch as their buildings were torn down without notice, their lives and posessions being destroyed and their pets being crushed to death in the rubble. 

Now everything was really different.  You could get stopped on the street and thrown against the wall with a gun to your head for no reason at all.  It happened to me one afternoon while I was walking down the street carrying a book.  They said it looked like a gun.  Rents continued to go higher and higher as mom-n-pop shops were shuttered one after another to make room for corporate chain stores.  The mohawks and leathers on the streets were swapped out for suits and ties and the pervasive style that drove the new culture became one of flip-flops and baseball caps.  All the freaks had left town.  They had lost their dirt-cheap apartments and squats and had no applicable job skills.  They either had to get a job, become an entrepreneur or move out.  Most of them just moved out.  And those of us who found a way to stick around became bitter.

Things had gotten so weird, so fast that none of us knew what to do.  We were shocked and angry at the way things had gone.  A lot of us worked doubly hard at maintaining our fragile lifestyles but we were forced to change the way we approached everything.  One of my favorite jokes is this one... "How many East Villagers does it take to screw in a light bulb?"  The answer is, "Ten.  One to do the screwing and nine to stand around complaining about how much better the old light bulb was."  And it was true.  It was a pretty goddamn great light bulb – and we missed it.  Here I had found my sort of art school dream – an entire community in the heart of the greatest city on earth, where everywhere was a twisted genius of some kind – mad scientists of all ages and genders, working away deep into the dawn on wicked creations – passionate echoes of truth and grit, my tribe, my people... and suddenly it was all being swept away.  Who wouldn't be pissed off?  And so for a while I became one of those curmudgeonly old cranks who pined for the old days.  Everyone and everything seemed to rub me the wrong way.

As time wore on, I slowly began to lighten up, but it did take time.  And the fact that I came from an Italian background didn't help with my grudge-dropping technique.  But after a while, I realized I wasn't one of those people who could ruin my own life because I didn't know how to let go of the past.  I knew life was all about change and that this was a tough lesson for me but one I needed to grow from.

A few years back I saw Clayton Patterson's footage of the Tompkins Square Riots of '88 and his videos of GG Allin's last show at the Gas Station in the early '90s.  It was a huge shock for me to watch this film because all at once I realized that I had become so accustomed to what the neighborhood had turned into that I really forgot how raw and insane it used to be.  The weird thing was that I had changed a lot over these years too - not nearly as much as my beloved neighborhood had, but enough that it was suddenly very apparent to me.  If you didn't live here back in the day and you haven't seen the film "Captured" by Clayton Patterson – you need to.  Clayton is the guy with the long beard, the embroidered skull on his hat and a camera in his hand 24/7.  Somehow you will see Clayton whenever anything important, interesting or controversial is happening and he'll be filming it.  Do whatever you have to do to see a copy of this film.   This is the most accurate and concise history that exists of the East Village and the Lower East Side in the past few decades.  I hope that one day Clayton's entire library of photos and films will be made available to the general public.  He has thousands of hours of video and even more photos of what has gone on around here over the years.  It's a brilliant archive – one deserving of its own museum. 

The culture of the Lower East Side seems to ebb in a certain way.  Of course so much of the way things appear, depends upon one's perspective.  And as open-minded as we all may think that we are, we only have our personal experience to fall back on as the basis for our own individual bias.  But one thing is particularly clear to me in taking an overall measure of the area.  It has always been a sort of energetic vortex where art, craft and creativity have thrived.  No matter how it changes, it always seems to reinvent itself in a new and unexpected way.  No matter how many corporate and impersonal establishments bring their brand of commerce to the neighborhood, there are always a handful more of entrepreneurial shops and interesting projects that pop up, as if in defiance.  Although it clearly is coming from a different angle than it once was, there are still multitudes of little places open to the public where you can find someone working away at bringing their own personal expression to the world.  And now we see a flood of new galleries opening on every quiet little block.  They seem to be flocking around the New Museum as if begging to be included – asking to be accepted as a valid part of this new swell.

Its true that Iggy Pop has moved to Miami and Lou Reed isn't around anymore.  Allen Ginsberg, GG Allin and Quentin Crisp are dead.  It's true that Jasper Johns' former studio is now a cheesy nightclub featuring chip-n-dales dancers.  Its true that all but a few of the old tenement buildings now exist in the shadow of some new hotel or condo and their windows and floors shake with construction tremors every weekday morning.  It's true that there is no more Rivington School or Gas Station.  Its true there is no more CBGBs – no more Johnny Thunders.  But we still have Jim Jarmusch, Taylor Meade, Penny Arcade, Kembra Phahler, Debra Harry, Patti Smith and so many of the other old school folks who helped make this place what it is.  Many have left but so many still hang onto their fragile leases with defiant hands.  A lot of them have learned how to make their talents pay off and are doing really well in spite of the change.

The intense energy of this particular part of Manhattan will never really die because it always has been and always will be a cultural center.  Wherever they still exist, we have the beautiful carvings on the old buildings that our immigrant ancestors worked to create, which seem to hum to us as we hurry past on our crowded agendas.  But for someone like me, who feels caught in between what once was and what now is, the trick is to respect the past and acknowledge its heroes, while keeping the spirit of wonder and discovery alive today.  The challenge is to accept all that is swirling around me as the entire state of the world changes and to do whatever I can to create for myself and for those who appreciate it, the kind of artwork that reflects this reverence.  Reverence for the irreverent heroes that walked these same streets.  So much has changed but their energy remains paced into the sidewalks and floors, steeped into the walls and the very air we breathe. 

The trick is - of course – can you live your life and do what you do best, without altering it or watering it down to please someone else – and still live comfortably?  Can you do what you would do for free anyways and still get paid?  For me, it's pretty easy.  I love to paint.  I know that.  I like people and I like to paint people.  I love to collect junk off the streets of the Lower East Side and, whenever I can, I paint portraits of people on the stuff I find. 

My great grandparents showed up at the docks of Ellis Island in 1890.  My grandfather left the Bronx for a better life in Connecticut during the Depression.  My father, my greatest teacher and strongest creative influence, was a classicist.  He painted sprawling canvases more or less in the style of Titian and he created classical sculpture in stone, clay and bronze.  I inherited a strong sense of tradition from him and I carry that through in my own painting.  Of course, a generation makes a difference and my brushstrokes can cross over from stark and graphic to loose and expressionistic, from refined realism to pure abstraction and my use of materials found on the street take it to another arena entirely.  But I will never shake what he instilled in me – this respect for history and antiquity.  I work on found materials because I appreciate the historic narrative that certain objects inherently exude. 

After ten years in NY, I was lucky enough to have opened a small gallery on Ludlow Street – just on the heels of 9/11 – and this turned out to have been an indispensable catalyst for my career.  I shut down Zito Studio Gallery in September 2006, yet as we speak plans are underway for the next incarnation. 

So what do I know about the art scene on the Lower East Side?  It's hard to say.  Right now, not much.  I don't read the right magazines.  I never make it to the important shows.  It's always seemed to me to be a bit too much work.  I go to see works by people I know and visit the old school galleries that still exist.  And I pop in and out of the new ones once ina while too.  Downtown is my home and no matter how much it changes it has a heart and a pulse that I hope will never fade.  But sometimes, after so much change, I wonder if the heart of the LES is truly gone.  Then every once in a while it will catch me off guard and prove me wrong all over again.  Although it feels a bit awkward to me at times, I do appreciate that it has become a new center for art.  And sometimes some of it can be pretty great. It certainly makes for a better stroll than the cold industrial streets of West Chelsea.

I don't fear change.  In fact I love it.  I revel in it and I know it is the essence of everything that this reality is based on.  What I hate is bad architechture – what I refer to as visual pollution.  Maybe my greatest fear is that the whole world will someday look like Midtown and there will be no more villages.  This is a village and its being trod upon.  I look forward to a time when art and development will see eye to eye.  I hope I will live to see the day when assimilation and respect for local culture will become a part of profit and commerce.  It is too easy for some folks to overlook art and beauty as a luxury, when in actuality it is culture, and the true center of this life while all other things exist in response to it. 

So I guess what I've been trying to say is that things have changed around here.  Soon enough my point of view will become entirely irrelevant – if it hasn't already.  On days when it gets too crazy in NY sometimes I wonder if there will actually come a day when I pick up and leave for good.  I know NY is addicting and I know I'm kinda hooked.  I've always known that just like in a Grimm's fairy tale, this is the place to come to seek your fortune.  I know I can't do what I want to do in a small town in the middle of nowhere.  But who knows.  Life is full of surprises.  Our ideas change.  Perceptions change.  Circumstances change.  Neighborhoods change.  Styles change.  Values change.  Buildings change.  Tastes change.  Our bodies change.  Our minds change.  Our friends change, our families change. 

This neighborhood has taught me to accept change and to do my best to understand everything as it evolves around me and through me.  Clinging to the past or the way things are is a sure way to a miserable life.  I may not be in love with all that I see around me but I can do my best to remain as one with change.