Artist Date - Summer in the City

An Artist Date as described by Julia Cameron – author of The Artist’s Way is “a once-weekly, festive, solo expedition to explore. something that interests you. The Artist Date need not be overtly. “artistic” — think mischief more than mastery. “

For this week’s date I took my exploration into the city (Manhattan) . For some people the energy of the city stresses them out but for me I thrive on it!

My first stop was Bryant Park. On Thursdays in the summer they do a free Broadway in the Park series so you can get a taste of the current Broadway shows. It was packed! This week’s theme was Disney on Broadway so they had cast members and numbers from The Lion King, Frozen and Aladdin. I absolutely LOVE musical theater!! It puts me in the best, most inspired mood so of course this was going to be part of my date day.

I also had an urge to do some street photography. Times Square is close to Bryant Park so that was my next stop. When I got there I wasn’t really feeling it. Maybe it was the lighting, the heat or whatever but I snapped a few things that caught my eye and made my way down to Soho.

I wanted to go to Soho Photo Gallery to see the 2 current exhibits. One was a National Show and the other was from B&H Photo. I was part of the B&H program for a few years and had my work included in 3 group shows. Yes, I have to say – it definitely was a thrill at the time. My friend Deborah Gilbert had a piece in the National show so I wanted to check it out.

A bit uptown was another gallery with a completely different vibe – The Lik Gallery as in photographer Peter Lik. His work sells for multiple thousands and even millions of dollars so I HAD TO check it out. Some people in the photo/art world are so annoyed that he’s selling his work for so much. I’m on the opposite spectrum. To me it’s super inspiring! There were a few pieces that I really liked. They almost had a 3d quality to them. As a photographer I looked at his work from a different perspective – noticing the technical aspects, the processing and framing choices. He definitely doesn’t have a starving artist mentality and I love that! No photos are allowed in the gallery so I took one from the outside as a reminder to myself.

What’s great about photography is how personal it is to the photographer. Walking around the streets of the city I stopped to photograph random things that interested ME that may be completely boring to someone else. I find it funny when I’m with someone and they say “oh look that’s so cool – take a picture”. If it’s not interesting to me, I don’t. We all see the world differently and therefore have unique interests.

One of my favorite brands is Free People. Aside from loving everything in their store, I think there’s so much to learn from them about branding and design so of course when I spotted one I had to stop in. Love!!!

I found out there was a small flower garden in the middle of the west village. Funny because I had been in that area a million times and never noticed it before. This is where my real camera came out! So excited to photograph flowers again! The park was so sweet! It was small yet nicely kept. It was quiet with a few benches scattered throughout. Definitely a great place if you need to recharge with some quiet time.