It’s funny when you decide to do one thing, you can’t, you end up doing another one and in fact you fin dyourself getting really lucky because you would probably have done it but maybe not like that ou even you could not have done it. You understood?
We woke up (early), we took the subway (a long time) and we arrived (here).
First Corinthian Baptist Church
This morning, we should go to Church, pray, hug, listen to an awesome Gospel Chorus… Well no. In fact, Harlem is THE place to see a mass for the tourists. We arrived 15 minutes early, we knew it wasn’t enough but since we chose a church that was supposed to be less known, we thought it would be enough. WRONG. There was a waiting line, not as long as the Guggenheim’s one but still! We went at the end, we waited a bit, then somebody came to tell us it was useless to wait, there was not enough space.
So to comfort oursleves (and mostly to feed Gabrielle who didn’t take a breakfast), we ended up here:
At Make my cake. A neat café, where they do cookies, cupcakes, croissants, big cakes.
We took a Chaï Latte (Chaï is so good ❤ so good and this one especially). Gabrielle tried the croissant (and she was satisfied i think) and a peanut butter cookie. To accompany, i forced myself to eat a cute little cupcake ( that you can see in the gif). I also took a peanut butter cookie, but given the rest of the day, he is on my nightstand and he’ll wait for tomorrow morning.si bon et celui là était très bien). Gabrielle a tenté le croissant (dont elle a été satisfaite semble-t-il) et un cookie peanut butter.
Then we went to the Studio Museum Harlem. Founded in 1968 by a group of artists, activists and philantropists. It was created to promote black culture and take exclusively african-american artists. It is a big space, full of life and fun.
One of the temporary exhibit: Stanley Whitney.
He is a contemporary artist and it was his first solo exhibit. It’s called: Dance with the orange. Those paintings are arrangements of « squares » or « bricks », various colors. He is really influenced byt music, jazz especially (his paintings often have titles related to musicians). By the way, when we arrived, a young woman (a guide?) presented the works and suddenly she put a song from Nina Simone, Four Womens (One of the paintings is named « My name is peaches »). And with this beautiful music resonating in the museum, i appreciated the paintings. It is not what i love the most (i am really difficult with abstract art), but whith Nina simone’s voice i found it was mixing well, it was vibrating. (if you want to vibrate to, go listen and keep on reading).
« James Brown sacrifices at the Apollo »
« My Tina Turner »
And this is Whitney!
Those 3 pictures are not mine, they come from Here and Here.
We went upstairs. The works of 3 artists in residency in studio museum harlem were presented (they do residencies regularly, he,ce the name « stuido », and regularly they show their works off).
The 3 artists this time were: Lauren Halsey (whose girly, shiny, sparkly universe attracted me), Eric Mack and Sadie Barnette ( who is my firm favourite).
Sandi Barnette (i forgot the name of this work). She uses various materials (here it is a collage, but it can be objects, pictures), she deals with the everyday, fantastic and abstraction.
« […] In my work, what is at stake is the gravity of the urban as fantasy, extra-legal economies, luxury as drug, counterfeit capitalism, glitter as hypnotic, outer space as head space, the everyday as gold, family and lived identity experience, and the party.”
Lauren Halsey – Kigndom Splurge. She creates environments, inspired by ancient Egypt, Los Angeles, Harlem, outer space, technicolore and funk. First you go through a small hall, covered with restyled hieroglyphs, then you enter in pink, purple and sparkly bubble gum. Then a room, like a black cave, and inside, an installation of objects, dolls and others.
Bubble gum and cave’s wall
The cave and the walls around her
In the lower floor, there was a serie of photographs taken by New York High school’s students during an 8 months residency. And i must say some of them were really good! They worked on light, shadows. This museum is quite exceptional, its awesome this life, this movement, to be able to do workshop as long as this one, be able to exhibit.
Some of my favourites (the ones i could take on the museum’s website):
Amanda Gomez – Bubbles
Henry Figueora – Deterioration
Nola Nelson – Wall of hats
The last exhibit was a serie of photographs of a performance by Lorraine O’Grady. It wass called « Art is…« . O’Grady with 15 peoples, all dressed in white, went through Adam Clayton Powell Jr. boulevard in Harlem on a big decorated float. They had frames and they took picture of people (with them knowing or not) with those frames.
It seemed quite joyfull this performance.
To finish, we did a workshop in the museum. It was inspired by Stanley Whitney’s work. We had a white square. 3 transparent sheet of paper, a red, a blue and a yellow. We had to cut and glee as we wished.
This is Gabrielle’s work. It is nice no?
And there you can see my creative process. In other words, ouhhh i cut i cut ouhhh it is pretty ouhhh no it’s ugly i un-glue here here i have glue all over.
So, if you go to Harlem, don’t hesitate to enter the studio museum Harlem, it is really worth it, and it’s certain that you won’t see the same thing. We should have been to the mass, finally we ended up, it was free, and we did a wonderful workshop (i mean we liked it!). Probably it was what we were destined to do (we’ll go to the church in our neighborhood next sunday).
We went for a walk in Harlem (this time we didn’t meet this boorish Jean Claude to run our pleasure) and we could just slide in this neighborhood again quite different from the rest of New York.
We saw Hamilton Grange:
This is Alexander Hamilton’s country house, whose construction ended in 1802.
But first i have to friefly introduce this man. It is nothing less than a political man, a financier, an intellectual and a military officer. The guide told us he was an illegitimate child, it wasn’t allowed to have classes, do he was autodidact. At 12, he read Volaire, Shakespeare and others. At 13, he spoke fluently french. Not bad. He also created the federal party, so him and Thomas Jefferson didn’t like each other that much. He was very close from George Washington (he even had a big painting of him in his ling room, beacause even if it was his boos, they practically had a father-son relation ship. When Hamilton had an affair and everybody rejected him, Washington stood by him and it really helped him regain people’s esteem. Oh and if you hadn’t realized George Washington is just the first presient of the United States). And to finish, Hamilton died from a duel’s wound ! (Because there are certain things a gentleman can not accept, he must have apologies or a duel. And at the time Puppy! was an insult so…)
This is his house and his dining romm (once again, we got lucky. We arrived near the house, we took pictures, we thought oh there is light, we entered and guided tour had just begun. Visiting a house without the stories of a guide is not that interesting. Moreover, i’m not sure we could have go through the rooms without a guide… so LUCKY)
We kept on walking in Harlem, simply, looking up, down, on the right, on the left.
In Harlem’s streets, vivid colors and lively.
Adam Clayton Powell Jr. It’s a political man, first african-american to become an influential member of the congress. He was the Harlem’s representative at the House of representatives.
A funky church, at least it seems nice
Yes you can eat waffles with chicken or fish, this is not a problem.
There was also fire escapes!
Street art – Know your rights
Walk your horses . It’s in Striver’s row, few streets quite valued in the 1920’s. So there is some beautiful houses of whom date from the 1890’s.
And some even have their Halloween’s decorations.
There is a lot (but when i say a lot it is really a lot) of church in this neighborhood. More than in the others i find, which doesn’t seem weird due to the fervor in their masses and their parishioners.
Hamilton Heights, houses made of brownstones dated from 1866 à 1931. Do you recognize this one? It appears in The Royal Tenenbaum from Wes Anderson.
A church again.
A church in the middle of buildings
And that is a door leading to a tiny tiny campus.
The City college of New York. Once again, one of those universities where you must feel a bit cramped.
And of course, i didn’t forget, in the middle of our walk (hum nope at the end since it was around 17 pm…) we ate! At Charles’ pan fried chicken. A modest stall, and there were only peoples from this area. Few tables and we are served directly in polystyrene boxes (you know to take out).
The neon sign. During the meal, we had the TV out loud. We were able to watch a bit of Jason vs Freddy. YOUHOU !
My fried chicken, exquisite, well cooked, greasy, dripping, crusty. Some mac’n’cheese ( ic ould not decently leave America without having tried Mac’n’cheese at least once) and collard greens (before looking on google, i admit that i absolutely didn’t know what i ate! but it was very good, very tasty!). Gabrielle, with the chicken, chose Yams (it looks like sweet potatoes, it was sweey and i think there was some cinammon or something like that, it was really good and dense) as well as a mix of Gombo (the vegetable), tomatoe and corn. We even had cakes as gifts (they are, of course, on our nightstands, we still don’t have an American’s stomach! The dish was so well served!).
We did a little digestive walk and we went home! Now, Gabrielle is doing her nails and i’m gonna do the same (we were forced to buy more nailpolishes because we could not put the same one twice. We found them where? At the pharmacy of course!)
Sweet dreams (even awake) the little wolves!
Roxane
NYC Nostalgie 