IT IN place

Sweet Victory

alex — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 19:08:05 +0000

You know suddenly sometimes there is God, or a shout in the street, a girl from California and whatever that magic lightening is, it changes you and you are no longer the thing before god, or the shout in the street, or the beautiful girl. You are you, but somehow changed. Somehow new again… like a scarab beatle, but I digress….It’s that little souvenire of a terrible year that makes my heart go…..

California Dreaming

alex — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 08:40:13 +0000

Doctor Feel Good In The Morning from Alex Itin on Vimeo.

Victorious Open Mic

alex — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 17:42:09 +0000

Victorious Open Mic from Alex Itin on Vimeo.

A quick no edit upload of last nights Noah’s Flood-like open mics. This whole town is under water and they keep swimming to the layer, the warmest layer….

Everyone sounded particularly good and we showed video from California and Paris. What a long strange trip it’s been.

Disposable Gold Rush

alex — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 09:56:35 +0000

Disposable Gold Rush from Alex Itin on Vimeo.

Chuck

alex — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 02:00:49 +0000

Thoughts on street art and thoughts on my street, etc. from right before I left for Cali.

Underground Man

alex — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 22:31:13 +0000

An improv from the last Zipperhead rehearsal. Mostly for the archives, but enjoy if you care to watch the process of writing some new parts using video instead of a pen. I was watching Orson in Touch of Evil and I DreWrote this. Boy was he good at playing bad.

Fin Again

alex — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 20:48:09 +0000

Fin Again from Alex Itin on Vimeo.

Another mundane epic.

Fibonacci

alex — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 13:29:14 +0000

Spiral Up from Alex Itin on Vimeo.

Fanacht Open Mic

alex — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 11:21:56 +0000

Or you could call it Winter Olympics Part 2. Both things were going on… and the music. Lot’s of art to show… but I haven’t gotten around to dealing with the photos.

Art + Faith = Commerce

alex — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 15:58:22 +0000

That is the name of the show we will be doing at Frost Street in the Spring to coincide with Zipperhead. But it also seems to describe “My Lunch With Hadi”…. like André The Giant and His Graffiti Posse.

Back Story:
I know Hadi from my old church in CT. He is about the only guy I ever met at the church who seemed like he actually belonged there…. I mean he is a smile. Big Heart. Big Head.

He imports stuff from China and if you ever bought things in a 99cent store in NYC there’s a good chance that he imported it.

He took me to Bamonte’s around the corner from 17Frost. One of the oldest Italian restaurant’s in Brooklyn… and taken very seriously by those who are serious about Italian food.

Further back story:

THe waiter from Croatia is relatively new. The last time Hadi had fish there it was not so fresh… and the waiter was apologizing up and down. When Hadi forgave him, the waiter kissed him on the head. Thus Hadi’s joke.

Today the fish was so fresh and so perfect that I have to confess that I have never eaten a better piece of fish in my life. Heaven at the end of your fork. A naked lunch.

this and the Reverend Al Green

Valentine Olympia

alex — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 07:51:22 +0000

Frozen Frost Valentine Winter Olympic Open Mic from Alex Itin on Vimeo.

Someone remind me to fix the aspect ratio if I ever get a minute. This one goes out to the ones I loves.

ha

alex — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 08:07:43 +0000

A Grey Valentine from Alex Itin on Vimeo.

Purrr

alex — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 07:59:44 +0000

A Frosty Valentine from Alex Itin on Vimeo.

Super Fish Bowl

alex — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 16:41:30 +0000

Zip A dee Do Daa Zip A dee Day

alex — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 17:01:50 +0000

Workin. Li Po on my lap. Tired of being loud.

Leopold Lion King of the Mountain

alex — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 13:41:12 +0000

Leopold Bloom looks like a Lion King, or Fantastic Mr. Fox depending on the ears. The dude has many faces and the dude is getting many names, but the dude abides.

Santan Klaus

alex — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 02:53:20 +0000

Post Festivus For the Rest of Us from Alex Itin on Vimeo.

LEOpen Mic

alex — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 07:43:50 +0000

So much to say… so little time to say it. Hello, I must be going….

Cooking Without Women

alex — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 16:53:24 +0000

My buddy Tom thought he should have a cooking show. I thought I should have dinner. So we traded.

2B or Z2N2

alex — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 19:04:27 +0000

Half Empty Half Open Mic

alex — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 22:54:01 +0000

A strange day of dogs and wine and women and song. They’re all just crazy and I love them so. I for one am Open To The Hound.

Zipperhearsals

alex — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 07:01:36 +0000

Z1A1 from Alex Itin on Vimeo.

ZipTING from Alex Itin on Vimeo.

Mash it up if you dare. You are a dj and you have believers.

Aim aim aim

alex — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 06:01:39 +0000

TING ting S again. Maybe better? Worse sound. Worse visual…. BUT SO MUCH BETTER WITH THE CROWD. Who are the ting tings? Aliens. Or is it just the song? Good Vibrations meets Johnny Cash?

Imagine

alex — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 04:55:28 +0000

Another crazy hectic week at Frost Street and the Hobbit House. We’ve been underground Trying to build the Sexy Speakeasy and also contend with the outrageous fortune of various recordings and shootings and nervous breakdowns. No rest for the wicked even on Sunday and the open mics were rare form… more later, but here’s the dance card:

Artist’s Wanted

alex — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 23:49:54 +0000

I am the son of an abstract painter and graphic designer from Basel, Switzerland and an actress/fiber artist teacher from Long Island. I have always felt that I have one foot in the old world and one in the new. In some very real way my work and life have been an attempt to make a synthesis of the dialectic that is my parents both as people and artists.

I made my first film in the fifth grade and won several national festival awards by high school. I had planned on going to NYU film school, or something when I accidentally discovered writing (a perverse combination of screenplays, Paris, and Hemmingway by way of High School English).. Writing seemed so much cheaper than film and you didn’t have to get all messed up with actors. I spent the better part of five years trying to finish my first novel, “Heroes.” Those characters still live on in some of my projects (though the novel never did get published).

At Brown U., I started to feel that writing was removing my brain from my body and when I started to paint, I fell in love with it, .even though it was a thing my father had quit quite dramatically in my youth. For me, Painting seemed to live between the act of writing and the act of filmmaking and maybe even the act of acting, or at least dancing. It seemed like neutral territory… like Switzerland.

I have spent the better part of the new century trying to make these phases of my life into something of a coherent artistic practice… a new sort of multimedia authorship. I mean to say I want to tell stories. I have managed to get several great platforms in which to experiment: It In Space So Ho, IT IN place (A.I.R at the Institute for the Future of the Book), A.I.R. 17 Frost Street Space. But after spring I am homeless. My dog died, my woman threw me out. It sounds like a joke, or a country song, but

Which Starts Out As A Kiss….

alex — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 20:33:37 +0000

I was sitting on the toilet yesterday trying to pass something that didn’t feel like excrement so much as an angry snarling black dog - a demon wolf, or a great angry sadness called despair. I reached in back of me for the scroll off paper on the tank and found instead The Oultaw Bible of American Poetry. I opened it up to this Jim Carrol poem for Kurt Cobain. Rather than read it, I washed myself and went into the Hobbit House had Dave crank up the P.A. and read the poem aloud to Natalie and Foxy Lady. So what you hear is the first time I ever read this poem. Forgive me the screw ups… I’m going to try to read it again at open mics on Sunday… and I may keep changing this as the Zipperhead animations come on line. This is only a mash up test.

reOPEN mic

alex — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 22:33:14 +0000

Dave is so dragged out from construction and has so much back logged video to get up that he threw in the towel as far as shooting Sundays Open Mics go… SO thinking that the first real Open Mic of 2010 might be a thing we would want to have a record of, I took the opportunity to bust the whole thing up to HD and shot with my flip and HV-30 a bit of each show… Sound is wonky and the whole thing is raw, but I’m sort of raw and wonky too! So F.U. if you don’t dig it and Shout out to Ms. Thing for the lovely glass to look through….it does make the world look rosy.

In My Life

alex — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 00:44:42 +0000

It is a New Year’s Tradition to have a fabulous bottle of wine with the Cohen’s. We ate, drank, sang, drew and generally played around while eating kalbi, cheese and dried fruit, while talking of future plans. That morning I had danced to the same song as was in this video I made with jacob in warmer times and younger years:
Uncle Alex And The Muse

My New Year’s resolution is to literally dance my ass off… but I still like to eat well. Thanks Madame Choi, wherever you are. The drawing is a portrait of Yours Truly by nephew Jacob Cohen.

ReOpen

alex — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 06:10:47 +0000

Catch

alex — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 22:20:13 +0000

One for the archives anyways.

A Frosty Wind

alex — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 07:43:32 +0000

Well 17 Frost Street has been earning it’s frigid name this week and while it would have been nice to stay curled up in bed, we opened the mics for the New Year and we will keep on doing it. Come by any Sunday after seven and sing, dance, recite, joke, draw, and giggle. I’ll be your M.C. and this fellow, Dave Scarborough will be the man on the sound and vision. We record every set and promise to post to Vimeo so you can download the big file. This is just me playing with my Flip HD… not the master shot.

I’ll Be Your Mirror

alex — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 16:16:27 +0000

New Year Reflections from Alex Itin Happy New Years all… This decade has got to be better than the last one… right? Anyway the music in my life sure is better… here’s some of the more reflective moments of what was mostly a loud and rocking New Year’s Eve. The sound on my new little flip HD camera get’s a bit blown away by The Habit’s volume… but we have a better recording for the vaults… this is just the Clown filming himself while acting the Fool.Open Mics at Frost Tonight

Cheers!

alex — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 17:55:12 +0000

Ring in the New Year at 17 Frost Street tonight. I’ll be showing some paintings and videos and making live art and there will be a whole bunch of bands:David Scarborough, The Royal Wylds, Hayday, Mitch Raftery, Bridget & the Squares, The Habit.

Head Ache

alex — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 15:17:09 +0000

Scanning and drawing on Zipperhead. Here’s some thoughts.

Navidad

alex — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 00:23:54 +0000

This year’s Chirstmas Card for Novitaz. I did about 22 drawings… ten or so were combined to make this image.

The Tree Man Takes His Last Tree

alex — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 14:15:22 +0000

After 20 years, Tom the Tree Guy says he is hanging it up after this Christmas. He is taking his last (and smallest) tree into his house and decorating it Charlie Brown Style. The Wife may be gone. She may have taken her fancy ornaments, but you can’t take his Christmas Spirit. It’s not for sale. Only the trees… and he is sold OUT! This is just hanging out. My old friend Scott Poulson Bryant foud this version of Darlene Love on Letterman in 2005…. it kills me. ENJOY! PAXalex!

Earth

alex — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 00:57:54 +0000

An Inheritance for the Meek from Alex Itin on Vimeo.

Ex Requiem Mass

alex — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 16:32:23 +0000

This is a strange account of my life of late… nothing but the creative foment of destruction and upheaval leading one hopes to some greater clarity, order and good. My ex went down to Mexico and let, or asked me to watch her place, move the car, sign for packages, etc. I ended up quite sick and bed ridden in a midnight fever sweat of memories good and bad and the crazy sense that the dead dog was following me around the apartment. Haunting. Meanwhile the studio is nearly as broke up as my love life. Still I know the new year will come with order and a biting cold. Pax

A Woman Under The Influence

alex — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 16:40:52 +0000

Sorry for the silence. I went offline for a week to morn my dog, or my life, or my love…. any ways it occurred to me in between intense bouts of diarrhea, that I haven’t felt “offstage” more or less since Paris… My life and work are so close now that I am always walking in and out of the theater and so all of life feels slightly theatrical… a sort of infinite series of entrances and exits. So I went home… or whatever it is as the X was off in Mex and the whole experience put the zap on my head pretty bad… ended up in bed for a few days just reading and watching movies and feeling like total hell. Still it was a warm, cozy sort of hell with big t.v.s and mixed memories.

Grey Piano Fortissimo

alex — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 19:48:09 +0000

By appointment of her Highness Slyvania.

“No man is poor if he has friends,” George Bailey in “It’s a Wonderful Life”

Thoughts After Nude Graffiti

alex — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 05:39:49 +0000

I’ve always been fascinated by the relationship between the avantgarde art of the the turn of the century and the line that dominates street art from the seventies on…. Here is thoughts on graph and caligraphy and deKooning, etc. I was drawing nudes (from memory of course and sadly… volunteers?) and had a sort of satori that the line could be known by the collison of anatomical drawing with architectural drawing… in other words the circle meeting the square in a sort of orgasm of broken tangents and curves…

I mean to say: typography is sexy.
This is a monoprint from the Poveda drawing seen yesterday.

Snow Falling
I skip barefoot through puddles
dog shit before my cozy shack

Absinthe Drinkers.

alex — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 02:26:54 +0000

The first oil painting I ever made was in an Intro To Painting class at Brown taught by Greg Little. The asignment was to copy, or be inspired by a painting you admired. I did Degas’ Absinthe Drinkers. Later in Life I left a a few things in gratitude at Degas’ grave in Montmartre Cemetary.

Spinning Grey

alex — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 01:52:21 +0000

Whatever…. a love song… first try. blah blah… plus Pittsburgh coming assure.

A Muse of Fire

alex — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 17:35:13 +0000

I’ve been elfing X-mas illustrations for the last few days. I figure my many variations will lead to some nice stocking stuffers for a few selected good girls and boys out there. Here’s another cut of last Sunday’s post Pot Luck Open Mic jam. Also a drawing of S. sleeping after our tete a tete thanksgiving dinner and couple of Loxy Fady heads which I’ve decided is a sort of Hansel and Gretal portrait of A and S but I digress.

Pot Luck

alex — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 05:38:27 +0000

Press the photo to see the play list for Sunday’s Pot Luck Open Mic. It was our biggest turn out and this time people brought food and drinks (a behavior I really want to encourage people!). Lot’s of old friends and new friends and many perfect strangers. I painted one singer, Carly Howard with ink on piece of scrap sheet rock while other people created a slew of drawings. I hung some on the wall.

The Streets of Perception

alex — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 22:38:14 +0000

Open Myk

alex — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 18:45:50 +0000

PosterBoy IT IN 2009

Sunday
17 Frost Street 11211
Williamsburg, Brooklyn
7pm-9pm Music, Poetry, Short Films
All sets under 15 minutes,
Bring films on DVD
info@17frost.com
718-551-4771

From Wall Street To The Tombs

alex — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 23:22:41 +0000

Wanted to try a traveling time lapse. I jerry rigged a tripod with a counter weight to try an make a sort of steady cam jib. A bit more wobbly than I’d hoped. Maybe do it right and do it HD, but I like the idea. We wanted to go from power to prison, but it turns out they will try and take your video if you shoot a NY prison. Luckily me and my partner in crime threw around a whole lot of charm and rescued the shot.

Music Psychopop by Javier Hernandez-Miyares.

Wyld Kings

alex — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 18:28:51 +0000

Here’s Collabamation of Loxy Fady, IT IN, and Poster Boy. Feeling quite the Feral, Ham-Lear(let) as all around me the kingdom is in flux and being torn to pieces… Demolition and Deconstruction abound around… There’s only oneplace where I can go:

Under CountryStruction

alex — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 21:27:15 +0000

We were Under Countrystruction for yesterday’s Open Mike. We honored Joe T. by using Posterboy’s cartoon of him from last week as the poster for this weeks event. We also let him open the show. It was a great evening again peppered by unknown talents coming out of the vapor to steal the stage. I drew a few of Joe T. myself… and everyone else too.

Vimeoffline With Essie Jain

alex — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 23:36:38 +0000

Inspired to shoot a little still camera vid at the offline show. Inspired by one of Blakes Videos I screened at the last offline, I hoisted the Pentax by its lanyard and whipped it around for a verse. Another great night of Vimeo at Monkeytown. Life is good even if the sound on the Pentax leaves a lot to be desired.

To Give a Love, You have to Live A Love

alex — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 21:07:36 +0000

To Live a Love You Have To Be Part of…..

Something? Some recent Zipperhead shots and time lapses I wanted to play with.

Dream A Little Dream of Me and You and You and Me

alex — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 05:04:25 +0000

POSTERBOY ‘09

Sunday marked a great Dream Open Mic at 17 Frost. Here is the stage list from the show, but one of the fun things that seems to happen at open mics is a lot of visiting artists using my animation drawing table to stretch out a bit on the old ink and brushes. New York’s beloved Posterboy stopped by and drew a fabulous Fraud JMB style portrait of yrs truly and so did Brooklyn’s own Painter, Golfer, and Ranconteur Extradinaire, “Can’t Contain Ya” Tom Catania… also drawing yrs trly. Yep thats me playing some of my three (count em) power chords and trying to sing “Helpless”. Also apearing is IRT theater and the always lovely Little Dorit having a swell theatrical style birthday. Yep… I cried a lot this week, but I also wrote my first ever song and showed it at Open Mic… More to come on that.
Tom Catania ‘09

Fetish

alex — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 21:59:46 +0000

My mom sent me a snap of an old painting of mine up at a musem show in Maine about the Allan Stone collection. This bad boy hung next a deKooning in Allan’s office during the mind blowing retrospective they put on years ago. They almost sold it and I almost sold it… but no one ever bought it. It just is. Body and Soul. It is made out of several years worth of empty paint tubes. It was heavy… in many ways.

In Dreams Only In Dreams

alex — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 19:14:24 +0000

ELIZABETH from 17frost Here’s a special moment from The Wild Open Mic two weeks ago. The sound is iffy, and it takes a while to get going, but it was magic for anyone who was there.

Wide Eyed Beauty - floating (through it all)

alex — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 18:50:20 +0000

Last Friday’s rock show at 17 Frost as documented by one of this band’s awesome parents. It’s so nice to draw my animations while all this awesome music floats around.

Close Curtain and Scene

alex — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 20:34:32 +0000

Cryptic Open Stage turned into a beautiful night. Video to come. Dave and Natalie Fell asleep in eachother’s arms and dreamed of Cuba by way of Alejandro’s cigar boxes and a groovy gold couch.

Crying a Lot 49 Open Mic (Cryptic)

alex — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 20:49:22 +0000

Sunday
17 Frost Street 11211
Williamsburg, Brooklyn
7pm-9pm Music, Poetry, Short Films
All sets under 15 minutes,
Bring films on DVD
info@17frost.com
718-551-4771

Enlighten Me

alex — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 21:09:47 +0000

Here is my lamp for the Enlighten Show out in L.A. It was made from moleskin collages I did in Paris with UU.

Tornado Design Hosts Art Exhibition Titled Enlighten!
One Night of Light
Over 85 limited-edition artist lamps for sale to help support Inner-City Arts

Los Angeles, CA — September 28, 2009 – Tornado Design will host an exclusive one-night art show
called Enlighten! One Night of Light at the Helms Bakery Building in Culver City from 5 p.m. to 11 p.m
on Saturday, November 21st. Enlighten! is an innovative group exhibition of table lamps featuring printed
shades with artwork by an eclectic roster of over 85 fine artists and illustrators working together to
support arts education for children in Los Angeles. Each artist’s lamp design will be sold in a limited
edition available for one night only. The lamps can be previewed and pre-ordered on the website at
www.enlightenshow.com. The event is free.

Al Quattrocchi and Jeff Smith, co-owners and creative directors of the Los Angeles-based graphic design
studio Tornado Design, curated the exhibition. “Enlighten! is a fun and unique way to bring our artistic
community together. This event will raise some money to help support Inner-City Arts, an organization
planting the seeds of creativity in young artists of the future.” says Quattrocchi. “Whether you are a
participating artist or a patron of the arts, supporting events like Enlighten! will make a difference for
many underprivileged kids!”

A portion of all sales will benefit Inner-City Arts, an organization offering opportunities for at-risk
children from Los Angeles schools to build artistic self-expression, enhancing their ability to perform
both creatively and academically in challenging environments. The lamps are produced by Lamp-In-ABox
in Culver City, California. Owner Daniel Cytrynowicz believes, “A table or desk lamp should reflect
our personal taste, desires and lifestyle, similar to all the other accessories that surround us.”
Participating artists include Lou Beach, Alex Beard, Sandow Birk, Calef Brown, Dave Burke, Jimmy C,
Sarajo Frieden, Tom Fritz, Makoto Kobayashi, Lili Lakich, Joel Nakamura, Saelee Oh, Martha Rich, Paul
Rogers, Souther Salazar, Bwana Spoons, James Victore, Keith Weesner and dozens more. Music will be
provided by The Icy Hot Trio and catering provided by Louise’s Trattoria.

Enlighten! One Night of Light will take place at Helms Bakery Building, 8723 Washington Blvd., Culver
City, California on Saturday, November 21st, 2009 from 5 p.m. to 11 p.m. Free parking provided directly

across the street. For more information regarding the event or Tornado Design, contact Al Q or Jeff Smith
at info@tornadodesign.la or 310-202-1020, or visit the website at www.enlightenshow.com.

Where The Walden Things Are

alex — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:57:37 +0000

Here is the little Hobbit house where I lay my hairy feet. If ever you feel like voyaging in and out of days - over and under rivers to where the Walden things are, we will be certain to Rumpus.

WHEN I WROTE the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labor of my hands only.(1) I lived there two years and two months. At present I am a sojourner in civilization again. -Thoreau