A little garden of artist’s imagination in the middle of Midtown Manhattan.
The lack of greenery in a very heart of Manhattan, is a commonly known problem. Many people colloquially refer this neighborhood as “stone jungles” and it is. Some architects, engineers, and city planners come up with different solutions such as High Line Park, glass-enclosed garden next to IBM headquarters, and underground park called “Lowline” is currently under construction. Many people place indoor plants in their offices, but the Guild of Jewish Folk Craftsmen came up with even more ingenious solution. The artists collected the best of their works, which depicts flowers and greenery, and organized a temporary exhibition in an office of JCRC, which is located on the 16th floor in 14 Penn Plaza building in the heart of Midtown Manhattan. Besides the flowers, there are some paintings which depict women and their beauty, which are the best counterpart of depicting flowers.
As a visitor gets in the venue of the expo, a small windowless yet modern rectangular conference room seems a Garden of Eden, even though the paintings are not living things unlike plants and flower which they depict.
Paintings by Inna Budovskaya
Looking on every painting we feel the breath of each flower or plant drawn. We feel the color of each one, we even recall the smell of each flower from our memory. Blossom is looking on us, they are lit with sunlight and we feel it.
Besides traditional paintings by Zinaida Kelebeyeva, Inna Budovskaya, Yelena Khazan, there are artificial flowers made of leather, by Anton Andreyev. His artworks are very original, they are 3D they can be seen both as sculptures and paintings. One of his paintings is so volumetric that seems like petals are real, not drawn.
Face of real woman, drawn by Zinaida Kelebeyeva, placed between two leather works by Anton Andreyev
Silhouette of Balerina’s by Anton Andreyev.
As one of JCRC employees told me, it’s necessary to look on a gallery as a whole, in addition to looking at each painting separately. Namely this make any visitor feel of seeing a little garden of Eden in the middle of the stone jungles of Manhattan.
May 2019
