I've ridden to museums, galleries, plays, poetry readings, concerts and other cultural events. It's one of my favorite ways to spend a day: I get to combine some of the things I love most.
The problem, though is parking. I know, I sound like a motorist when I say that. But only in a few venues can one bring in a bicycle. The Metropolitan Museum has bike racks in its parking garage and valet bicycle parking during certain hours. But at most other events and venues, you take your chances with parking on the street.
A couple of days ago, during a late-day ride, I came across a solution to the problem:
The 5-50 Gallery is located, as the name indicates, at 5-50 51st Avenue in Long Island City. More specifically, it occupies a garage--from what I can tell, a commercial one. Converting industrial and retail spaces to use for art and performance is not new, but this gallery's space is uniquely accessible.
No, that isn't a portait of Marlee on mushrooms. It's one work by Kyle Gallagher, the artist featured when I stopped by.
The paintings have a grab-you-by-the-collar quality, full of colors that flash with, at once, the energy of street festivals and the urgency of flashing ambulance lights. And the way cats and other living beings are rendered makes comics seem like a kind of mythology of the subconscious, spun from threads of graffiti, street portraiture and abstraction.
All right, I know, you didn't come to this blog for two-bit art commentary. But there was something oddly appropriate, almost synchronistic, about encountering those paintings on a bike ride through an industrial-turned-trendy neighborhood.
When I got home, Marlee didn't care. She just wanted to know, "what's for dinner?"
