Latest news with #SamMoyer
Time Out
13-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Out
West Side Fest is back this July with a packed weekend of free activities
Head west this summer to experience some of the best cultural activities in the city—for free. West Side Fest is back for its third year with gratis fun for all ages at museums, parks, performing arts centers and cultural institutions across the west side of Manhattan. Programming runs from July 11–13 with a packed weekend of activities, including free admission to The Whitney, tai chi classes on the High Line, tours of Poster House, zine-making at Print Center New York and much more. It's hosted by The West Side Cultural Network, a group of museums, parks, performing arts centers and cultural institutions located within a half-mile portion of the city. The event is meant to highlight the west side as a cultural destination with a mix of history, fresh activities and open gathering spaces. West Side Fest highlights include: A Free Friday Night at The Whitney Museum of American Art with music by Public Records Curator-led tours of Fallout: Atoms for War & Peace and other exhibits at Poster House Art workshops focused on creating pieces inspired by the plants, soil, fungi and insects in the High Line gardens. Tai Chi and Afro-Brazilian Dance workshops on the High Line (Sunday only) A backgammon tournament on artist Sam Moyer's handcrafted boards at Hill Art Foundation Walking tours that engage with the local ecology of the Hudson River hosted by Hudson River Park A painting workshop at Manhattan's only beach, Gansevoort Peninsula A curator-led tour of the Steve McQueen exhibition at Dia Chelsea Collaging and zine-making using the LGBT Center's National History Archive with A mandala-making art experience hosted by the Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art Performances of Pilobolus's Other Worlds Collection at The Joyce Theater Zine-making workshop with artist Francisco Donoso hosted by Print Center New York Music, performances and readings at The Shed The Art, Craft & Vintage Market hosted by Westbeth Artists Housing A multi-day reading room at The Kitchen Tours of the exhibition "Stephanie Comilang: An Apparition, A Song," alongside servings of the Filipino dessert halo-halo ("mix-mix") at the Center for Art, Research and Alliances The full schedule is absolutely packed; be sure to check it out here. In a statement, NYC's Cultural Affairs Commissioner Laurie Cumbo said West Side Fest has "fast become a New York City tradition." "Manhattan is the cultural capital of the world, and the West Side is one of its most vibrant stages," Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine added in a press release. "From museums and parks to performance spaces and art installations, West Side Fest brings together the institutions that fuel our economy, strengthen our communities, and tell the story of who we are as New Yorkers."
New York Times
03-06-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
For the Artist Sam Moyer, Inspiration Was Set in Stone
In a world so full of distractions, Sam Moyer's art tricks us into paying close attention. The 42-year-old artist, the subject of two high-profile exhibitions in New York, once stacked dozens of hand-painted glass blocks in the window of a downtown New York art gallery to make it look like a solid red brick facade. From inside, backlighting brought each individual brushstroke into focus, revealing the material's masquerade. A few years earlier, at a gallery show in 2014, she affixed fabric dyed to resemble geological formations to slabs of marble. It was nearly impossible to tell which surface was which without walking right up to the wall. 'I don't want to say it was a gimmick, because it wasn't coming from a place of a gimmick, but it was definitely trying to pull something off,' Moyer, dressed in overalls and a T-shirt, said on a recent afternoon. In the front room of her studio in Bushwick, Brooklyn, stone slabs in shades of gray, pearl and peach lean against A frames; it looks more like a granite supply store than an artist's work space. Moyer is a trickster — but a very mild-mannered one. Over the past 18 years, in large-scale installations and modest objects, she has provoked a what's-going-on-there response from the viewer, to 'bring an awareness to the land or the space or the light or your body that you wouldn't have had before,' she said. She first drew the attention of art-world tastemakers in the early 2010s, when she began showing dyed canvases she had made by dragging a piece of fabric the length of a school bus through a field on Long Island and leaving it out to dry. Cropped from the huge swath, the final works evoked rumpled bedsheets, light-dappled surfaces and variegated stone. 'A lot of people said, 'It looks like marble,'' Moyer noted. On a 2013 visit to the Rothko Chapel, the nondenominational temple in Houston created by the Abstract Expressionist Mark Rothko, Moyer had a stroke of inspiration. She wrote herself a note: 'Put the marble in the painting.' Moyer learned about creating captivating illusions with light and material on movie sets, where her father was a gaffer on films including 'Risky Business' and 'Groundhog Day.' But unlike a moviemaker, Moyer wanted to draw her viewers' attention to the mechanics behind the illusion, not obscure it. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
