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Michael Jacobs
Morningside Heights Odyssey
I am filled with enthusiasm for color and the joy of creation. Self-taught, I have always created using my subconscious and ideas from the world around me. I created this work specifically for Art on the Corner. I felt an instant kinship with the idea of reflecting my community and my city.
Contact the artist: michael@mjny.net
www.instagram.com/mikejacobsart
Acrylic and ink on wood panel
18 x 48"
Sold
Yvonne Lamar-Rogers
When Mom Came to Visit
It was an absolutely gorgeous Sunday. My mother and I got dressed and went to church. After service, she wanted to stroll over to Frederick Douglass Circle. It was one of her favorite places to sit and chat, to admire the remarkable Frederick Douglass monument and read the quotes. That day, as we approached the circle, we were pleased to find a band performing there. We sat together, enjoying the gentle breeze, listening to the music, and feeling blessed to be able to share this time together. Whenever I pass Frederick Douglass Circle or go there to sit and sketch or contemplate, I remember that lovely experience I had with my mother and think of how much I miss her. This work reflects the beauty and grace I saw in my mother that day and how much I appreciate living in this wonderfully diverse neighborhood.
Contact the artist: yrema11@msn.com
Mixed-media collage on canvas
20 x 20"
$950
J. Maya Luz
The Casiano Women, Amsterdam Avenue, 2014
On a four-block stretch of Amsterdam Avenue is a neighborhood that, by Manhattan standards, has the feel of a village. It remains a thriving, organically diverse place, both culturally and socioeconomically. This is a photograph from “Good Neighbors,” a series I began in 2010 to preserve its memory in anticipation of inevitable change, showcasing longtime residents and business owners—my extended neighborhood family. The project is an homage to a singular neighborhood that represents all the places we call “home.” “Good Neighbors” relates my inner-city life to the vision of an idyllic village and confronts the simultaneous and opposing urban assumptions of anonymity and intimacy, public and private, physical space and physical closeness. Ultimately, it is a lens focused on the vitality of my home: its human presence.
Contact the artist: manosmessage@yahoo.com
Photograph on metal
16 x 16" framed
$1,500
Joan Menschenfreund
Rainy Saturday
I am a born and bred New Yorker and have lived on the Upper West Side for 50 years. The vibrancy, diversity, and life on the streets have kept me here all these years. My life has always centered on the visual, and after graduating from college turned from painting to photography, which I pursued for many years: as a photo and art editor for books and news media, and doing both editorial and fine art photography. Returning to painting, I now use photographs as inspiration. I work in oil and watercolor. Although I dabble in varied subject matter, my love of landscape, especially the urban scenes that surround me, takes first place. My style is figurative and gestural, and my colors somewhat impressionistic.
Contact the artist: joanmensch3@aol.com
Oil on canvas
20 x 26" framed
Sold
Rene Nascimento
Black Lives Matter
I am a Brazilian artist based in New York since 2003. My art interprets everyday city life from my point of view. It takes in the architecture, the life outdoors, the aesthetics of bicycles (my main theme) in an urban context, and the human figures of every ethnicity crowding the most coveted city in the world. In these challenging times, I’m embracing themes like the Black Lives Matter movement.
Contact the artist: fineartbyrene@gmail.com
Acrylic on canvas
21 x 25" framed
Sold
David Newman
Under the El, 125th St.
Many of my recent paintings are based on the public structures—museums, bridges, subways, tunnels—that support life in our city. In most cases, they include water, torrents of water that inundate these vital structures: a literal and metaphorical representation of climate change and the ways it threatens to obliterate the common good. The paintings grow out of my desire to bring the existential threat of global warming as close to home as possible, with an intense fidelity to the physical details of the objects and spaces. My hope is to tangle with the extensive uncertainties of communal survival and our collective responsibility to care for and preserve these public structures. This painting shows the elevated subway at 125th Street and Broadway, seen from below and looking north: a dynamic, substantial edifice that supports the city’s interconnectedness and energy.
Contact the artist: dnew83@gmail.com
Watercolor, gouache, ink, and oil on panel
18 x 24"
$3,500
Seth Robins
The Tank Is Half Full
I am a colorist and like to tell stories in my art that are about mood and feelings: joy, crisis, irritation, sadness. When I depart from realism, I try to leave the image better than I found it, often distorting and exaggerating lines, shapes, and colors. That may shift reality to lift the spirit of both the painter and the viewer. This painting explores a dream penthouse, a magical place unseen from the streets below. During the isolation of early quarantine, I was inspired by the figure in the painting. I saw him daily as he escaped to the roof to have a smoke, bang pots for the frontline workers, or just spend time in a safe space outdoors.
Contact the artist: sethrobinsaia@gmail.com
Oil on canvas on wood panel
24 x 18"
Sold
Peter Salwen
Social Distancing at the UPS Store
New York City, my favorite habitat and painting subject, offers up a kaleidoscope of shapes, colors, and impressions to the interested eye. Most of my paintings are urban landscapes that attempt to capture the sensations of one particular moment—the look of sunlight on a wall or the ordinary traffic of people and machinery at a street corner—and wrestle them onto the canvas where, with luck, others may enjoy them. A native Manhattanite and committed Upper West Sider, I find many of my subjects close to home. I returned to painting after a long career in publishing and environmental public relations and am also a registered New York City tour guide.
Contact the artist: psalwen@gmail.com
www.peter-salwen.pixels.com; www.salwen.com
Oil on canvas panel
18½ x 22½" framed
$750
Gabrielle Schertz
Pariah
I have been creating my own art for as long as I can remember and have written and illustrated three children's books. I grew up on the Upper West Side when it was a wonderfully diverse, up-and-coming place filled with artists, writers, and hard-working, middle-class families. Although back then it was harsher and dirtier—some would even say, seedy—there was something special about the area. The hardest times I remember were when AIDS hit. Many neighbors, including some friends, became very sick, and many died. That loss was hard enough; what really hurt was the ignorance of people who thought the victims of AIDS deserved it and who treated homosexuals with such disrespect. This image reflects that time for me.
Contact the artist: gabrielle.schertz@me.com
Drawing
24 x 15½"
$250
Gene Schull
From the Window
Gene Schull (1925–2008), who lived for many decades at 245 West 107th Street, took this photograph of a taxi traveling past Straus Park and the Broadway medians from his apartment window. As an amateur photographer, he always found city life to be an inspiration. Reconciling the speed at which the city moved with Henri Cartier Bresson’s idea of the “Decisive Moment”—trying to capture an image at precisely the right point in time—was the driving force behind all his photography.
Photograph
18½ x 23½" framed
Not for sale
Vikki Sheatsley
Cathedral Peacock
I’ve lived in Morningside Heights for most of my life and have always been involved with the arts. At various times I have felt moved to photograph some of the places I love and feel deeply attached to: Morningside Park, the Cathedral Gardens, my street, the view from my window. . . .
Contact the artist: vsheatsley@gmail.com
Photograph
21 x 17" framed
$50
Fedele Spadafora
Diner
The most distinctive aspect of my work as a painter is my ability to capture the essence of a place. My paintings of New York are straightforward realism; they capture the city’s many facets. Whether it is a quiet moment in a diner or the chaotic interior of the kitchen in a Chinese takeout place, I paint moments I consider typical scenes of my neighborhood, the Upper West Side, aiming to transmit a true sense of those places and the emotions I feel toward them. While never straying too far from realism and a resonant respect for tradition, I sometimes allow imagination to lead me. My use of color, for instance, moves my work from the pure observation associated with representational art toward memory and impression.
Contact the artist: spada47@yahoo.com
Oil on canvas
16 x 20"
$4,000