Howl! Happening: An Arturo Vega Project — Attraction in New York

December 22, 2019 @ 12:25 PM 35 Bulwer Place Brooklyn New York

I shaved off my beard Saturday afternoon before taking the J Train into the Bowery. I keep a trimmer handy for maintaining my facial hair, and it makes quick work of the two week beard. I scoop the whiskers from the sink to dispose of properly. Whiskers will jam a sink drain and I don’t want to leave a whisker on the porcelain. It all amounts to a tablespoon or two of short hairs, pepper and salt. I’ve thought of retaining to burn in a burning bowl, those bowls where people burn bad thoughts written on paper. Mixing with soil for an organic garden has crossed my mind.

I arrived in the Bowery and walked into the Howl Arts Gallery, and felt mild regret for the loss of my beard. The Howl Arts Gallery honors the work of Allen Ginsberg, who lived in the East Village and almost always wore a beard. Seated upon white folded chairs, I counted scores of men sporting white beards, men who could remember Ginsberg’s life in the Village.

The Bowery, the Lower East Side, the East Village and all these villages once belonged to a tribe of people who lived in rent controlled apartments and made art. Gradually, the people who make their living gentrifying and evicting have turned the tide in favor of the three-thousand dollar a month flat. Art collections that have taken a lifetime to accumulate have ended up tossed onto the street for the picking over. Vito had rescued more than a few items from the rubbish.

And the men didn’t sit alone, listening to the panel. Their companions dressed in every imaginable outfit from Annie Hall to Annie Sprinkle, making for a fashion overview of the lower end of Manhattan from the time of my birth to now. Annie Sprinkle wasn’t in attendance, but two performance artists named Penny Arcade and Marguerite Van Cook sat on the panel. I took a seat in the front row and snapped pictures of the panelists. The artist, Antony Zito, sported a white, flowing pair of mutton chops befitting a man who called his art show, “My Father Was A Satyr”. It was the wrong day to show up beardless.

Vito made the scene in Lower Manhattan in 1993, and he began painting portraits in a studio on Ludlow Street. I have started my day in Manhattan a few times with a small coffee at the Ludlow Coffee Supply, so I like the street. He couldn’t afford canvas, a problem experienced by Ree Morton, an artist who worked in celastic, which I guess she found at Naval surplus. Vito just started working on what he found on the street, any item that would take the paint. For the show, he painted on doors joined together to make a mural and even painted his portrait as a satyr on a mud flap cast off by a truck.

I missed the introduction of the panel, so I didn’t know the name of the man who looked like a long haul trucker, wearing a trucker’s cap embroidered with skulls. He snapped pictures of the audience when he wasn’t adding to the conversation. One man arrived late due to the Christmas season traffic. He looked a lot like William S. Burroughs, writer of Naked Lunch. He shared his knowledge of reindeer lore, focusing on how the reindeer eat hallucinogenic forage, leaving traces of the drug in their urine. An erudite and cultivated man to be sure, quite willing to say what needed to be said and clearly a friend to all on the panel.

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