“Be-Bop OM” Exhibition

Planthouse

This event has ended.

Planthouse presents Be-Bop OM, a group show inspired by New York City’s artistic soul past and present. Vintage Tin Pan Alley ragtime era sheet music from Harlem historian John Reddick’s collection, a spirited photograph of Jack Kerouac by Allen Ginsberg from the 1950s, recent black and white kinetic cut-outs by Brooklyn-born street artist Katie Merz and new silkscreen prints by Brooklyn Hi Art! Machine all celebrate the city’s creative legacy as a home to musicians, painters, poets, and all-around noisemakers.

The gallery, located in one of five mid-19th century buildings, was designated as Tin Pan Alley landmarks by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission in 2019. The block historically housed the city’s music publishers, songwriters, and performers in the late 19th and early twentieth century. The exhibit is on view from April 17-May 15, 2021.

BROOKLYN HI ART! MACHINE
Brooklyn Hi Art! Machine is a project conceived by New York City artists Mildred Beltré and Oasa Duverney. They started making art together in each other’s apartments. As they shared stories and experiences while doing their work, they wondered if they could bring their neighbors a similar experience. In the summer of 2010, they co-founded a collaborative public art project exploring art-making as a community-building tool. Brooklyn Hi Art! Machine is a community-based, socially engaged project in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Dubbing themselves the Official Unofficial Artists in Residence of their block, they set up tents, tables, a banner, and art supplies on the street outside our apartment building and began working.

In conjunction with the exhibition, Planthouse is pleased to publish three prints by Beltre and DuVerney to commemorate Brooklyn Hi Art! Machine’s projects since inception: Ancestors, Silence, and Dear Friend. Measuring 18 x 24 inches and screen printed in Brooklyn at Kingsland Printing, each print is in an edition of twenty with six artist proofs.

MILDRED BELTRÉ is Brooklyn based artist, mother, and activist working in print, drawing, and participatory politically engaged practice, to explore facets of social change. She is interested in studying political movements and their associated social relations and structures.

Beltré’s selected national exhibitions include: Brooklyn Museum, NY; De Cordova Museum, MA; Ever- son Museum, NY; Fleming Museum, VT; International Print Center New York, NYC; Burlington City Arts, Burlington, VT; Five Myles Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; BRIC, Brooklyn, NY; Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, NY; Freedman Gallery, Albright College, Reading, PA; University of Colorado, Boulder, CO; Art in General, NYC.; and international group shows at Projecto Ace, Buenos Aires, Ar- gentina; Hollar Gallery, Prague, Czech Republic; Brun Leglise Gallery, Paris France, among others. Her work is included in the Special Collections of the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY, and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN, among others.

OASA DUVERNEY, a New York native, is an artist and mother. Selected exhibitions, and residencies: (2020) 2020 Women To Watch, National Museum of Women in the Arts; (2020) Twenty Twenty, Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT; BLACK POWER WAVE, BRIC, Brooklyn, NY (2019); Something To Say, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn NY (2018); The Window and the Breaking of the Window, Studio Museum in Harlem, NYC (2016); The Brooklyn Biennial II, BRIC, Brooklyn, NY (2016); Through A Glass Darkly, Postmasters Gallery, NYC (2012); Rush Philanthropic Foundation Artist Residency (2016), Smack Mellon Studio Artist Residency (2014- 2015); LMCC Workspace Residency (2012-2013). She received her BFA from SUNY Fashion Institute of Technology, and her MFA from CUNY Hunter College.

ALLEN GINSBERG ESTATE
The Allen Ginsberg Estate continues to fulfill its mission, honoring the poet’s wish to realize his unpublished writings as well as other uncompleted projects and to ensure that his works continue to be readily available to the widest possible audience. Since 1997 it has published 15 collections of writings, released & reissued over 10 audio collections, produced several films, and published two collections of photography (as well as arranging several major international photographic exhibitions). It has also maintained a robust and ongoing social media presence both on its website and with a lively and engaging Instagram page. Ginsberg left a trove of over 80,000 images (now in the archives of Stanford University), an extraordinary resource and a remarkable window into his life and his times. The extent of this work has yet to be fully explored.

Jack Kerouac wandering along East 7th Street after visiting Burroughs at our pad, passing a statue of Congressman Samuel “Sunset” Cox, “The Letter-Carrier’s Friend” in Tompkins Square toward the corner of Avenue A, Lower East Side; he’s making a Dostoyevsky mad-face or Russian basso be-bop Om, first walking around the neighborhood, then involved with The Subterraneans, pencils & notebook in wool shirt-pockets, Fall 1953, Manhattan. –Allen Ginsberg

KATIE MERZ
Influenced by Brooklyn, cartoons, architecture, and the kinetic structure of things, Katie Merz’s work ranges from delicate line drawings to abstract paintings and sculptures.

As a kid growing up in the streets of Brooklyn, Merz has always been interested in connecting art to the external environment. She currently works in a simple style that translates quickly into an easily read, pictographic language that looks like a classroom blackboard or a kid’s work on an asphalt street. It creates a convergence between graffiti, coding, and the mathematical deduction of everyday language that builds a two-dimensional architecture formed from words, signs, and symbols.

Merz earned her BFA from the Cooper Union School of Art. She has exhibited nationally, including at the Brooklyn Museum. She is a recipient of the Pollock Krasner Grant, The Oberman Center Collaborative grant and has been a fellow at the Chinati Foundation and the Macdowell Colony. She has re- recently been awarded The Augustus Saint-Gaudens lifetime achievement award from The Cooper Union School of Art and is in their Alumni Hall of Fame.

In collaboration with the artist, Planthouse is pleased to publish three T-shirts, Kings County, Brooklyn, and Turntable, to commemorate Be-Bop OM and New York City’s reopening after the Covid-19 lock-downs. Printed in Brooklyn by Kingsland Printing, the shirts are available through the gallery’s and the artist’s website.

TIN PAN ALLEY NEW YORK / CAKE WALK
Tin Pan Alley on West 28th Street in Manhattan was the birthplace of American Popular Music due to the many sheet music publishers based there in the late 19th and early 20th century. At the time, African American ragtime music was the Hip-Hop rhythm of the era, jarring and new; it was both culturally popular and politically targeted. With this in mind, Planthouse Gallery (which is located in a recently landmark-designated Tin Pan Alley building at 55 West 28th Street) is presenting sheet music focused on African American composers and performers from the collection of Harlem historian John T. Reddick.

In the 1890s, when the era’s leading African American theater troupe, the Williams & Walker Co., took to the stage, more whites imitated blacks on the American stage than African Americans. The company, led by Bert Williams and George Walker, sought to disassociate from that tradition and confirm their authenticity by titling themselves, The Two Real Coons. Their comic originality was supported by the leading African American performers, dancers, and composing talents of the day. They sought to present themselves in new ways, bringing into prominence black women and performing coupled in fashionable dress with mainstream concerns and a self-possessed dignity. This exhibition reflects on the role 28th Street’s Tin Pan Alley composers and music publishing companies played in that effort.

A Harlem resident and Columbia University Community Scholar, Reddick is currently researching a book on Harlem’s Black and Jewish Music Culture 1890-1930. His knowledge of Harlem’s culture and architecture has advanced several public art and open space projects, including the Ralph Ellison Memorial, Harriet Tubman Square, and Frederick Douglass Circle in that community. His scholarship and advocacy played an instrumental role in advancing New York’s landmarking of Tin Pan Alley. His love of architecture, African American culture, and history have been conveyed through tours, articles, and lectures for the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Museum of Modern Art, the New York Historical Society, The Whitney Museum, and other institutions.

The Tin Pan Alley American Popular Music Project commemorates and continues the legacy of Tin Pan Alley, American popular music’s birthplace. The project promotes appreciation for the historical beginning of American Popular Music and the modern music business on and around West 28th Street. By telling the stories of the songwriters, music publishers, and the songs that formed the sound and industry of American Popular Music in the first half of the 20th century, we connect people with music’s power as an essential element of New York City and American cultural history. TinPanAlleyNY.org