Review - Gooberries

There is a nice variety of plants to grow, from Strooberries that look like strawberries to Tangeroons, which are the tangerine equivalent. There are plenty of fruits here to make your terrarium look as colorful and lush as you want.

The game takes a more sandbox approach and is less rigid about what you need to do. There is some nice freedom here, and its approach makes it more of a challenge early on. While there are tutorial tips that got me started, earning money was hard early on until I got the swing of things.

Happy New Year from the Art-in-Buildings team! Looking back on a great year of exhibitions in 2018, and getting excited for our upcoming 2019 projects!! See the full list of 2018 AiB artists and exhibitions on the Art-in-Buildings website!

Off-Axis: Yashua Klos & Kambui Olujimi

David Stein, Large Line of International Products

Christina Watka, The Lightness of Joy

Caitlin Cherry, Arctic Sovereignty

Jebila Okongwu, Manhattan Office

Jeff DeGolier, (If This is Paradise) I wish I had a Lawnmower

Sandi Slone paintings in Francis Greenburger Selects at Love Apple Art Space

Zach Wollard, Zero-Sum Game

Rachel Mica Weiss, Suspended Arches

Nooshin Rostami, Corner of my room

Tamar Ettun, Pink Horse with Warrior with Siilver Skirt in Venus Occults Jupiter at Love Apple Art Space

Claudia Chaseling, Radiationscape

Robbin Deyo, The Gathering (Assembly #2)

Ryan Frank, Unoccupied

Now on View at the West 10th Window | Ryan Frank: Unoccupied!

Ryan Frank's Unoccupied considers the physical space of the West 10th Window, the building in which it exists, the surrounding neighborhood, and conditions of inhabitation in Manhattan. Creating a light box in the West 10th Window, Frank presents two back-lit photographs arranged perpendicularly on the two window fronts of the space. The image depicts the Grotte de Sarrazine in France, a site made famous by Gustave Courbet's painting of the same name. The figure in the foreground is life-size and serves as an anonymous presence in the space, putting figure, ground, and viewer into confrontation with one another, almost forcing passersby to consider their own body in relation to the still image. With a persistent and ever-growing affordable housing crisis haunting Manhattan and its environs, the question of space and its value has never been more exigent. The neighborhood in which the project is embedded - the West Village - is one of the most sought-after in the world, and yet is plagued by vacancy: empty store fronts, unoccupied homes, and disused spaces are, ironically, the result of the very desire that characterizes the area. Unoccupied considers how these spaces are allocated, what purpose they serve, who they invite and reject, and how access is determined.

Learn more on the Art-in-Buildings website!

Every year near the start of fall, huts pop up around New York City for a week to serve as temporary places of gathering for practicing Jews. These sukkahs are built during the religious holiday of Sukkot, and while many New Yorkers likely encounter them, few actually enter the spaces, which are traditionally used for families to sleep or eat in. This year during Sukkot, a vibrant, mobile sukkah will traverse New York City’s five boroughs, inviting anyone — regardless of religious affiliation — to step inside and experience a moment of tranquility. Artists Danielle Durchslag and Ryan Frank, who make up Assembly Required, have created “A Wandering Sukkah,” a custom-designed, sculptural sukkot standing tall in the bed of a truck that is now visiting various sites around the city, open to all who wish to enter.

Days before Sukkot, as it sat temporarily lodged in the garden of Invisible Dog Gallery, an art space in Brooklyn, New York, spectators were marveling at a magnificent multi-hued sculpture—a construction of dibond (an aluminum concoction), vinyl and wood, complete with a prismatic bodice and spliced edges. It stood eight-and-a-half-feet tall, its dimensions stretching up like a Manhattan high-rise.

“What is it?” spectators asked aloud, innocently enough, as they circled it with curious finesse. At first glance, I couldn’t fathom the origins—or purpose—of such a strange looking object, either.

“It’s a sukkah!” the creators, Danielle Durchslag and Ryan Frank exclaimed.

A couple years ago, Durchslag, who’s Jewish, approached Frank, who’s Catholic, with a proposition: to build a sukkah. The friends, who had met years prior in a sculpture class, formed a two-person art collective; pretty soon, they were building a sukkah on the balcony of Durchslag’s apartment building. With wood frames and a thatched roof, the first iteration could nearly be mistaken for your run-of-the-mill sukkah save for the fact that it also displayed the artwork of local artists, a so-called sukkah salon. This year, the duo decided to take a different route, literally.

Inspired by the mobility of Chabad Lubavitch mitzvah tanks—those buses that serve as portable synagogues as it were—Durchslag and Frank decided to follow suit by bringing a sukkah to the the masses. Funded by the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) and a successful Kickstarter campaign, they created a project called, “A Wandering Sukkah.”

For eight days—from September 27 to October 4—the sukkah will be lodged on the back of a 2003 Chevrolet pickup truck (I’m told they bought it off Craigslist from a guy in Queens), with the plan to transport it through New York’s five boroughs so that the public, Jew and non-Jew alike, can enjoy what Durchslag calls “a moment of urban respite.”

“Part of Sukkot is the temporality of it and the fact that it’s about transition,” said Frank. “Our mantra is: We have to take this as it comes, and there will be challenges.”

One of these challenges, which any New Yorker with a car can relate to, is parking—a notoriously hard-to-find luxury in a city of nearly 8.5 million people. And after the artists find spots to park their installation they will tweet their exact location enabling people to more easily find their creation.

On Sunday, September 27, the rolling exhibition will be unveiled at the Invisible Dog Gallery, then travel onwards, making stops at a the Snug Harbor Cultural Center and Botanical Garden in Long Island, the Bronx Museum of Arts, Manhattan’s Jewish Theological Seminary, the Tenement Museum, and Hindu Society in Flushing, Queens, among others locations. (A full schedule of stops can be found here.)

A week before the grand opening display, the artists took the sukkah out for a trial run on the back of their Chevy. As they drove past a Yeshiva in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, boys stood in awe, quizzically staring at the outlandish structure. “What is it?” they called out, a question the artists would become familiar with answering. When told it was a sukkah, the kids jumped up, fist-pumped, and yelled, “Nice one!”

“It was somehow a real surreal and appropriate start,” Frank said about the incidence, especially relevant since the sukkah is about connectivity, one New Yorker at a time.

Back in 2007, I discovered Grapple, a really cool coatrack concept by Ryan Frank. I don’t know what happened to Grapple, but I was just informed that it’s back and better than ever. Collaborating with TAPEgear, Ryan has created a new hanging system for coats, hats, bags and such inspired by old, industrial crane hooks that’s a sustainable version of his earlier design. Not only is it eco-friendly – it’s an entirely new take on a natural material we all know and love: grass.