Essays and Articles

Occupy Wall Street: The 10th Anniversary

To be honest, I nearly fell over when I saw an announcement for a program at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York:  Occupy Wall Street: Its Impact 10 Years Later.  Occupy was an unforgettable experience for us. We went to every event in NYC in those heady months from 2011-2012.

Very different groups…across a wide spectrum…from artists and musicians to medical personnel and educators…all kinds of workers…had come to the same conclusion: The economic system that we live under is just not fair.

Issues from reproductive rights to 1st Amendment rights, from “too big to fail” to reminders as to how wars sap so much from so many…were clear and present in so much of the signage.

Enjoy!

$1.65 an Hour / Three Subway Trains / A Long Walk: Working at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in the Mid-1960s

I fell in love with art history in a flash of a second. There is more backstory, but for the moment, this was how it happened.

Democratic New York: The Vision of George Forss and His Collaborators in Pre-9/11 New York

As a street vendor peddling his artwork, George Forss describes the market of the streets: “For me, it was crazy people in the streets, and I was fascinated by odd doorways. But I didn’t find anyone buying them; I had to learn that the hard way. In my line, selling in the street, I learned a lot. You have a store, something sells, you get more stock of it. Something doesn’t sell, you don’t stock it anymore.”

Philippe Petit, September 11, 2004 … and George

Philippe Petit, it can be said, put the Twin Towers on the map.  In 1974, when he walked the wire between the two buildings, he brought a city, deep in the doldrums, a great deal of joy.  It was a CRAZY stunt, but just the ticket to spark a lot of attention to anything other than the economic conditions of the moment.

Twin Towers Logo Project

[Note:  to see a high resolution version of this poster click here (once the image has loaded in your web browser, click it to maximize for best viewing).]

A perfect, clear September morning.

Catastrophe.

Our hearts were broken. It was too impossible to absorb, and it seemed we could/would never recover.

The lost innocents…innocence lost… even the idea was incomprehensible, let alone the new physical realities we had to face. The destruction and the emptiness w ere overwhelming.

As we walked through the spaces of our gallery, the images of our city were all around us. At first, the tears ran and we despaired. Beautiful, majestic interpretations of New York City, done across a span of almost 80 years and all they evoked were tears. Then, inexplicably, one day, they didn’t. As time passed, what filtered into our brain spaces was the extraordinary wonder of this place that we call home.

The only way for me to work out the sadness was through some artistic process.

Thus was born The Twin Towers Logo Project 2001-2006…my story.

Everyone has a story…

Phyllis Wrynn September 2021

Art and Custom Framing Essays

In the old days, we published newsletters on a fairly regular basis. We wrote about gallery news…our artists, our exhibitions, our events. We also tackled issues specifically dealing with custom framing and conservation.

In the Shadow of Liberty, Mass/Mass, Machinery Devours

Early in 1936, Leon Bibel did a remarkable series of brush, pen and ink drawings that were politically charged in a stunning way.  Leon covered issues of racism, of workers’ rights, of poverty, of hopelessness. He dealt with the ruling class and its grip on power, the effects of the Spanish Civil War, the absurdity of war more generally. The images pulled no punches.

Intrinsic/Close to One’s Heart

My husband and I are starting our 37th year in business together as owners of our gallery and custom framing studio. We have experienced every economic upturn and downturn though the years, as well as the many different trends in styles and colors that changed through the decades.