Palmetto A.I.R.

So no, Visual Arts is not my forte' but, I had to post something about this really cool space right down the street from my apartment called Palmetto A.I.R. Palmetto A.I.R is an artist studio located at 130 Palmetto in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Just yesterday I met with Diane Smith one of the artists of the Palmetto A.I.R collective. Palmetto A.I.R is located in a commercial building (which also houses a wicker furniture manufacturer) with the entire 3rd floor dedicated to the artist gallery. According to Diane most of the group has been there for eleven years and everyone else has been there no less than five years.

Diane Smith (and yes that is her real name) is a very interesting gal. Smith is a performance/visual artists working primarily in video and performance. For BOS weekend Diane will be, “putting herself in an outlandish look in an ordinary setting.” She showed me this very cool looking alien mask that she made herself which she will be wearing with a fur coat for her performance piece. Most of her video installations involve this alien character. Her recent work involves lots of editing, abstracting and modifying of video.

Diane is from Pittsburgh, PA and came upon Bushwick, BK in a very interesting way. Back in ’97 she was just finishing grad school at Southern Illinois at Carbondale when she and her boyfriend at the time decided to pack up and move to New York. Diane knew very little about New York City and just before her and her boo hit the road they found out about a sublet in Bushwick (site unseen) and decided to throw caution to the wind and rent out the space regardless of conditions. Hey they needed somewhere to go; they had little money and no other temporary options for housing. Nonetheless, they came to the space, set up shop and the rest is history!

So a little bit about the other artists who will be presenting at Palmetto A.I.R…

Deirdre Synek will be showing some very meticulous watercolors of skinned rabbits.

Karin Minkin will be showing some two dimensional digitally generated works.

Shawn Kelloway will be showing some of his super toxic plastic medium with casting and color.

Jamie a jewelry designer will be showing some of her recent designs.

Edgar Lituma who is huge into surf boards will be showing some video of paddle boarding (fyi-Diane says this should be pretty cool-for all of you who’ve never seen paddleboarding it can look a bit grim reaper-ish like paddling into the darkside but cool nonetheless)

Sean-Michael Fleming (who is also a big community activist – yay Sean!) will primarily be manning the Art Circus happening on Sunday from noon-6pm. The Bindlestiff Family Cirkus will be involved and it sounds like it should be a really good time!

Chris Hicks (who was a SVA faculty member for quite some time) will be showing some of his small water colors.

Plus 5 other artists will be showing some video installations specially for Bushwick Open Studios. This Video Forum will be happening on Saturday, June 6 from 9-10pm. Artists participating in the Video Forum are Jeb Banegas, Matt Hayes, Joe Nanashe, Diane Smith, James Thatcher, Marina Zamalin and IVVVI.

FYI Palmetto A.I.R. is still looking for volunteers for their video forum. Help ‘em out there maybe a cool popcorn machine with free popcorn involved.

If you wanna check Palmetto A.I.R for yourself visit their website here