Pages

Wednesday, September 07, 2011

Yorkville - Cork Exhibit & Liss Gallery

La Casa Del Habano, a cigar store in Yorkville, hosted a "cork art" exhibition.  Intricate village scenes and nature are created completely out of wine corks.  There was even a huge cigar made of corks hanging from the store window.

The Chilean artist, Nacho Cartegena, was giving a demonstration in front of the store, slicing parts of cork with his knife and pasting them onto his new work with his glue gun.  Entire corks still displaying the vineyard are used as building walls, while slivers of cork become everything from window frames and doors to grass and flower petals.

While I was inside inspecting the various cork pieces, I noticed that Rich had disappeared and was actually across the street.  He was admiring another type of "art" that obviously interested him much more.  Parked on the street was a shiny Porsche 356 Speedster.   

Across from the cigar store is Liss Gallery which often has very interesting art on display.  Recently they were showing paintings of board games like monopoly and scrabble.

The current exhibit is a series of black and white photos by Henry Benson, a celebrated photographer known for taking memorable and iconic photos of musicians, actors, sports and political figures.  He seems to have a knack of capturing his subjects at important moments in their lives, resulting in spontaneous, vibrant and engrossing photos.

What made these photos especially interesting were the short commentaries accompanying each one.  Benson describes his personal memories of the photos, detailing the circumstances that led to each shot, his inspirations and feelings while taking them.

We found out that we had missed the actual exhibit, which  had a lot more photos on display and included a visit by Harry Benson himself.  Not wanting to miss more interesting exhibitions from this gallery, I signed up to be on the email distribution list for upcoming events.

La Casa del Habano - 141 Yorkville Ave
Liss Gallery - 140 Yorkville Avenue


No comments: