My funny feet 7-29-10, originally uploaded by hoongyeeleekrakauer.

From gallery, originally uploaded by hoongyeeleekrakauer.

Sent from my iPad

This post appears on the Queens Council on the Arts site.

I have been running around with Roz Nieves of QPTV and her camera crew grabbing footage of artist interviews, performances, readings, and garden tours happening this weekend on the Queens Art Express.

Dean Project

So far, we have spent time in Long Island City chatting with Reinaldo Sanguino about the quirky hand twisted mops from their exhibition, “Jack in the Space” at the Dean Project and meeting John Navarro, a young film maker screening his horror film at the LaGuardia Performing Arts Center.  After a full day of filming we topped off our day at Bistro Latino La Vuelta with mojitos and great food – a fantastico combination of art and food!

sign in tables for the garden tours

Saturday morning found us wandering through Jackson Heights starting with a garden tour with the Jackson Heights Beautification Group and art around the park featuring one of a kind pieces and one liners from local artists from the Jackson Heights Art Club exhibiting their work on the fence,

Me and two Jackson Heights artists

against the walls of buildings and inside a neighborhood jewel of a cafe, espresso 77, where the friendly girls behind the counter were busy restyling their Queens Art Express T shirts.

espresso 77 girls

art on the walls in Jackson Heights

In another garden, in another part of Queens, we walked into a jazz concert at the Louis Armstrong House Museum in Corona.

Shades of Satchmo and ice tea in a leafy garden was a very cool way to spend a Saturday afternoon!

For lunch, Roz brought us over to Pio Pio, a cavernous Peruvian chicken place on Northern Boulevard where we ordered something called the Maestro.  ”You get more than you can eat and you end up taking stuff home.”  she warned us as we scanned the menu.

She was right.  Instantly, a rotisseried chicken cut in quarters appeared with large side orders of yellow rice and beans, maduras, yellow plaintains and an avocado salad.  This is a family style place with a relaxed atmosphere, a place to come back to with a swarm of friends or, in our case, with a TV crew.

sitting with theater members of Adhikaar’s Arts & Activism program at the Jackson Diner

Our last Queens Art Express event for the day was a literary reading presented by a new QCA program, QUILL, Queens in Love with Literature, and the Asian American Writers Workshop at the Jackson Diner in Jackson Heights.

I walked down iconic 74th street talking about the neighborhood as Kevin caught some B roll and when we got to the diner, Manjit, the owner, brought out four tall glasses of mango lassi and a plate of vegetable samosas for us.

You would never have thought we had just devoured a Maestro platter at Pio Pio the way we savored this Indian treat!

Several local writers and members of a theater group presented readings in a glass enclosed second floor space above the restaurant to a packed audience.

Platters of samosas were served with two sauces – tamarind and cilantro with green chili – and hot masala tea.  I was struck by how much everyone loved the localness of this literary event and that they wanted more of it.  For me, to present writers of other languages and other experiences is a way to live in other worlds.  Local artists bring a passion in presenting their work that is both transcendant and transformative.

Add great food and atmosphere and you have a  true word feast.

Me, Koosuke Ikeda and Roz @ Subdivision in Long Island City

crazy T shirts

To wrap up our weekend, we set up shop in Subdivision, a boutique/gallery in Long Island City to talk to Koosuke Ikeda,  a local artist currently exhibiting there.  Here you will find unique pieces by emerging designers including some handknit pieces by Virginia, the owner.

“I have to really start working on stuff now that its summer so that I have things ready for the fall.”  Virginia smiled with a sigh.

“You are a knitting squirrel.”

She liked that.

Get more Wow!

If you want style notes and more for people who change the world, please check out:

Getting to Wow! to feel good, do good and look good

Nonprofit Knitwear for all things knit and nonprofit

Style Notes from me, your artspy

Hoong Yee

– Subscribe and get a little Wow! every day

– Forward the link to someone you think would be interested

– Link to a post on Twitter (follow me @hylkrakauer)

– Put a link to the blog in your Facebook status update

Thanks so much! I really appreciate your help.

Word of mouth is the best way to share, don’t you agree?

]]> http://hoongyee.com/2010/06/14/heres-whats-happening-on-the-queens-art-express/feed/ 0 http://hoongyee.com/2010/06/08/hop-on-the-queens-art-express/ http://hoongyee.com/2010/06/08/hop-on-the-queens-art-express/#comments Tue, 08 Jun 2010 08:29:55 +0000 hoongyee http://hoongyee.com/?p=1759

Are you ready to travel the world in one borough?

Jump aboard the Queens Art Express this coming weekend!

Join us for the kick off party!

Queens Art Express Kick-off Party 2010
Join us for the QAX 2010 Kick Off Party
Featuring DJ Velvet & set visuals by multimedia artist Renzo Ortega of Local Project

When: Wed, June 9th, 2010
Time: 5:30 PM – 8:00 PM
Where: L haus, 11-02 49th Avenue, LIC
Directions: Take 7 train to Vernon Jackson, Follow 50th Ave East to 11th St.

For more information and to RSVP, hop over to the Queens Art Express!

Get more Wow!

If you want style notes and more for people who change the world, please check out:

Getting to Wow! to feel good, do good and look good

Nonprofit Knitwear for all things knit and nonprofit

Style Notes from me, your artspy

Hoong Yee

– Subscribe and get a little Wow! every day

– Forward the link to someone you think would be interested

– Link to a post on Twitter (follow me @hylkrakauer)

– Put a link to the blog in your Facebook status update

Thanks so much! I really appreciate your help.

Word of mouth is the best way to share, don’t you agree?

I was talking to Jonathan Bowles, the Director of the Center for an Urban Future about why I dislike tube socks.

Tube socks? Feh!

To me the only time a tube sock is cool is when you fill it up with chalk and smack it on the sidewalk.  To spend time at a street festival dominated by tube sock vendors and zeppoli is not cool.   There are so many of them and really, who really needs to eat all that fried dough?

People have a finite amount of leisure time, disposable income, time and attention.  I respect that.  Any type of event, street festival, block party, has to be more than an exchange of a dollar for a zeppoli to be successful.  Deliver a unique experience, something niche, something they will want to bring their friends to.  A street festival pulses with the energy of the community.  It makes all of us locals while we are there and this is a great way to experience a particular neighborhood.

Hop on the Queens Art Express

From June10 – 13, 2009, we will be presenting the Queens Art Express, a subway/station/street festival that celebrates the artist communities along the route of the No. 7 train.  It will be four days of art events at over twenty venues with eighty local businesses participating so you can see some cool art and get a hot deal.  The thinking behind this is:  Let’s make it easy for the local commuter to transform into a curious cultural consumer by checking out what is going on “three stops down” .  Let’s put some business people, bloggers, artists,  community groups, and the MTA together and create some “artful business” – a seven mile festival that invites people to experience the unique cultural energy of Queens.

This is what I am offering in lieu of tube socks.

I see all communities as local and particular places with distinct energy.  I like finding the  artists and seeing how their sense of place comes through in their art forms.  I love when the room is filled with vocal locals and the project becomes their common vision.  For those of you who present street festivals, this approach may seem difficult to control and a little scary.

Welcome to the playground of the fearless!

This is network leadership.  You, as an organizational leader and creative visionary, can achieve far greater outcomes by growing the capacity in others to understand and work in networks or their communities.  Then you can steward these networks by creating conditions for them to emerge and thrive.  Experienced leaders know that the success of these types of events are dependent on the ecosystem of diverse groups that have found value in the relationships built around a common goal.

Think of this as a way to change the world, one street festival at a time.  Here’s how you get to Wow!

Bring people together

Ask them what they think

Listen thoughtfully

Be helpful

Give them what they want

Get more Wow!

If you want style notes and more for people who change the world, please check out:

Getting to Wow! to feel good, do good and look good

Nonprofit Knitwear for all things knit and nonprofit

Style Notes from me, your artspy

Hoong Yee

– Subscribe and get a little Wow! every day

– Forward the link to someone you think would be interested

– Link to a post on Twitter (follow me @hylkrakauer)

– Put a link to the blog in your Facebook status update

Thanks so much! I really appreciate your help.

Word of mouth is the best way to share, don’t you agree?

]]> http://hoongyee.com/2010/06/03/my-life-is-a-street-festival/feed/ 0 http://hoongyee.com/2010/04/28/my-sister-hoong-wei/ http://hoongyee.com/2010/04/28/my-sister-hoong-wei/#comments Wed, 28 Apr 2010 17:07:09 +0000 hoongyee http://hoongyee.com/?p=1436 Hoong Yee and Hoong Wei running along Boston Harbor

My sister Hoong Wei passed away late Monday after a four year battle with lung cancer.  It’s hard to believe….Hoong Wei was brilliant, beautiful, caring but most of all so silly;  she made me laugh into convulsions.

Hoong Wei leaves a beautiful family and so many friends.

She will be missed and in our thoughts forever.

I love you Hoong Wei.

Amazing, inventive, unapologetically innovative projects.

I smiled and said, “Hi, I’m the interactive cell phone cultural map designed to transform the #7 train into an art express. And you are?”

I’ll have to work on that.

Imagine, fifty intensely creative thinkers in a room.  My head was spinning.  A brain trust?  A transformative trust?  A passion trust?

Oh, to be a fly on the wall and hear all of the eager conversations and quick project updates buzzing throughout the room.  It was a gathering appreciated by all and captured on my trusty Flip video camera for you.

Sans doute, we had great conversations, some heard and some overheard.

Like this one.

“Oh hi!  How great to see you again, you always look so fabulous, what is that you’re wearing?  It is way too cool!  I never know what to wear to these things.  But you always seem to.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.  You look absolutely fine.”

“Do I?  I just walked into a boutique and said, ‘I have to be somewhere in 30 minutes.   I need to look like a noteworthy grant recipient.  Do something, please!’  And this is what they did.  Don’t you love that they didn’t put me in black? ”

“And navy is just as black, only its navy. ”

“I know! I was tempted by something she had in pink…”

“Oh please! Pink? No.  Pink is the navy blue of India.  What were you thinking?”

“You and Diana Vreeland are so right.  So now I don’t have to angst about what I’m wearing and I can concentrate on what everyone is doing.”

Style Notes:

1. I like striding.  It makes me feel au courant which is very important when you are among cultural smarty pants in large numbers.  Wear great shoes.
2. Opera length fingerless gloves look fabulous with a simple sheath dress.  Handknit, of course.
3. Stay away from anything with black poppy seeds.  They always end up as speckles in your teeth and will ruin your otherwise dazzling smile.
4. Look thrilled.  You should be, for crying out loud.  How wonderful it is to be among the cultural cognoscenti in this great city!
5. Do good, feel good, look good.

Over the next few weeks I am excited about meeting up with some of these intriguing folk for lunch where we can continue our conversations and figure out interesting ways to pool our creative energy.  I already know I want to wear something navy blue and will be designing a cool knitting pattern for opera length fingerless gloves.

“Conversation reveals all”

Agatha Christie

I have dinner with an amazing group of people once a year who come together at every Grantmakers in the Arts conference.  At first blush it looks like a roomful of Asian women and friends, which is how this gathering originated, but after a  few rounds of drinks and appetizers we become a roomful of Asian women and friends having a fabulous time and our true identity is revealed -

We are the Joy Bucks Club!

We are all involved in the nonprofit arts universe, we represent foundations, funders, artists, policy makers and government agencies and we can often figure out and talk through things together as girlfriends, and gourmands.

Early this morning I got an email invitation from the Rockefeller Foundation inviting me to attend a lunch for the NYC Cultural Innovation Fund Grantees.

“We are hosting this lunch in order to allow our NYC Cultural Innovation Fund grantees to meet one another, share their experiences with their projects and to advise the foundation on our efforts to catalyze innovation in New York’s creative community.”

The Foundation believes in supporting the creative sector in projects that “fire our imaginations, enrich our neighborhoods, and inspire us to envision and build a better tomorrow.”

What an amazing lunch this will be!  And  – clutch the pearls! – what a brain trust!

Imagine a roomful of gatejumping restless creative people connected to each other through the Rockefeller Foundation reconnecting to check in with each other and the progress of our projects.

The NYC Cultural Innovation Fund has supported 49 organizations.  Innovative projects that include an open-air festival celebrating the year’s innovations in architecture and urban design,  incorporating extreme action techniques such as high wire and skydiving to spark new dance forms and the application of new income-generation models to individual artists.

I am very excited about sharing the work we have done on our project the ArtXPhone and designing an interactive cell phone cultural guide to transform the #7 train into an art express in Queens.

But what fires my imagination is the opportunity to listen.

The Foundation will also be listening for advice from this group on their efforts in catalyzing true innovative creativity.  We will all have our ear to the ground for messages from the field.  Our field.  Our creative community.

Holly Sidford is a person whose passion for the nonprofit arts sector inspires me every time we meet.  Her company, HeliconCollaborative,  recently released a study about the arts and the recession which was the underlying theme of the recent Grantmakers in the Arts Conference which took place in Brooklyn this past October.

In her report, Paul Light of NYU suggest four possible futures for the nonprofit sector:

• the rescue fantasy
• the withering winterland
• an arbitrary withering
• transformation

Are you kidding?  Those choices are about as appealing as a root canal.

I would like to strongly suggest lunch as a contender for a nonprofit future.   We are a resilient, risk taking, fearless and creative field.  By gathering us purposefully and in a well catered way, Rockefeller will:

• gain invaluable learnings from us that will enable them to be more agile and adaptive in their support of the creative sector
• change the mindset from scrambling for limited external resources to harvesting inner abundances
• encourage us to build and support the passionate experiences of our work together

I will be bringing a healthy appetite and hungry ears with me to this lunch and I hope to take away a sense of what great stuff is going on among all of us.  But what I really want to do is give away as much as I can to be helpful and to be part of the answers.

Bon appetit to all!