More Than A Tree Is Growing In Brooklyn !

image; Untitled, the home series (c) Chris Coffin
15" x 60", digital C-print






Brooklyn’s BWAC Red Hook and Carroll Gardens open studios June 9-10, 2007 created a garden of art and dialogue through out the borough. I down loaded a great self guided tour map, which included 32 destinations and headed back to my hometown. Artists of all calibers and disciplines are leaving their marks as Brooklyn’s Open studios weekend made evident, they have found fertile ground in the borough to create innovative and interesting work.

On foot I navigated through myriads of studio buildings, galleries and artists project spaces. In a large warehouse building at 98 4th street in Carroll Gardens, I visited artist Chris Coffins studio, which he shares with fellow artist and curator Jennifer Burbank. Coffins intense personal connection to water and his urban environment are evident in his triptych photographic works, which seek a deeper understanding of the connection within the two “places”. They are contemplative images finding their own dialogue in which to converse. Abandoned buildings and underwater shots of jellyfish, which he shoots looking up from under the water find, and connect within reflective abstract space and color. Jennifer Burbanks large black and white wall drawing solicits conversation through line and form. A large black circle collaged to the wall seems to be in the process of moving out of the space and off the wall, grounded to it’s environment by thin elegant lines leading back through the work. Vince Contarino also in the 4th street building presented works on paper, which he may use for larger paintings. Contarino painstakingly collages tiny bits of colored and patterned paper into highly controlled lines, which are released into organic flowing gestures reminiscent of plant life, or a diagram of some strange unknown organism.

These artists capture your attention with a quiet ease, simply giving over something of yourself in order to sit with them for more time then you realize, suddenly hours go by... and your wishing you had more time.