• Calendar
  • Contests
  • Villager Blog
  • Jobs
  • Our staff
  • Media kit
    • Contact advertising
    • Specifications and sizes
  • Current print edition
  • Home delivery
  • Previously published
    • 2011
    • 2010
    • 2009
    • 2008
    • 2007
    • 2006
    • 2005
    • 2004
    • 2003
  • Buy a copy of The Villager
  • Get email updates
  • Classifieds
The Villager Newspaper
  • Home
  • Editorial
  • SPACES
  • Global Village
  • The Angry Buddhist
  • Progress Report
  • COLUMNS
  • CARTOONS
  • Talking Point I
  • Talking Point II
  • Gallery Seen
  • News
    • Community
    • Police Blotter
    • Education
    • Obituaries
    • Politics & Government
      • District One
      • District Three
      • Borough Pres.
      • Mayoral Race
    • Villager Videos
  • Opinion
    • CARTOONS
    • Reporter's Notebook
    • Talking Point
    • Notebook
    • Guest Editorial
    • Columns
      • jack wells
      • Leaders
      • LENORE SKENAZY
      • Books
      • Eats
      • Technology
      • People
      • Pet Set
      • Spin City
      • Clayton
      • Jerry Tallmer
      • Ira Blutreich
      • Evan Forsch
      • Flashback
      • Horoscopes
      • History
      • Youth
      • Sports
      • Health
      • Poetry
    • Editorials
    • Your Letters
    • Scene
    • Publisher
  • Arts
  • Scoopy's
  • In Pictures
  • Real Estate
  • Villager Blog
  • Special Sections
    • Film Fest
    • Sponsored Content
    • Why Pink?
    • Art Corner
    • 80th Anniversay
    • Pride
    • Meat Market
    • Progress
    • Union Square
    • Volunteers
    • Literature
    • Downtown Directory
      • From the publisher
      • Community Listings
        • Handicapped & Disabled Services
        • Health Services
        • Hotels
        • Legal & Financial Services
        • Neighborhood Associations
        • Police
        • Political Organizations
        • Post Offices
        • Public Officials
        • Recreation
        • After School Programs, Daycare and Nursery Schools
        • AIDS Services
        • Business Associations
        • Cultural Organizations
        • Education Colleges & Universities
        • Educational Services
        • Libraries
        • Museums & Attractions
  • Jobs
  • RSS for Entries

Clayton Patterson at Howl Happening gallery

June 16, 2015 | Filed under: Villager Blog | Posted by: The Villager

Howl Happening is presenting “Outside IN,” an exhibition of Lower East Side documentarian Clayton Patterson’s photography and art. The opening reception is Fri., June 19, from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., at the gallery, at 6 E. First St., between the Bowery and Second Ave. The exhibition runs through Aug. 14. Also in the show will be paintings by Elsa Rensaa.

The opening will be streamed live for free at @howlarts.org .

clayton 1

“The exhibition goes beyond Patterson’s work as a documentarian to examine the full range of his artistic practice, including sculpture, photographs, fashion, and books, as well as paintings by his wife and life long collaborator, Elsa Rensaa,” a press release for the show notes.

Patterson has been documenting the neighborhood since he and Rensaa moved from Canada to New York in 1979. They briefly lived in Soho, whose art scene Patterson found to be all about money and status, before moving to the freer-feeling Lower East Side.

clayton 4

“Like the works of Jacob Riis and Weegee before him, his photos capture moments of real life as they’re happening, unglamorized and unromanticized,” the gallery notes. “The ‘Front Door’ photo-portraits on view at the gallery present a kind of mosaic of the neighborhood as it was, one face at a time: tenement kids and homeless people, poets and politicians, drug dealers and drag queens, rabbis and santeros, beat cops, graffiti writers, hookers, junkies, punks, anarchists, squatters, mystics and crackpots.”

Patterson refers to this project — in which he took photos of people in front of his Essex St. home’s front door — as “the people’s photography.”

clayton 3

Also in the show are sculptural cabinets crafted from artifacts Patterson found on the street. Toys, teeth, bullets and scraps of posters, postcards and other urban archeological detritus find their way into these sculptures painted in bright, pinball colors,

“As an artist, you have to use what life offers you,” Patterson said. “Making sculpture, taking photographs, writing, painting — it’s about remaining creative and following that path.”

clayton 2

Also on view are the distinctive Clayton Caps he and Rensaa manufactured.

In addition, as the old, outlaw Lower East Side recedes, Patterson has turned from documentarian to historian, organizing and editing massive, information-packed books on the neighborhood’s “tragic, glorious, sometimes depressing” history as remembered and explained by people who lived it and shaped it. These include “Captured,” on the neighborhood as an incubator for underground film and avant-garde video; “Resistance,” on its radical political and social history; and the self-explanatory “Jews: A People’s History of the Lower East Side.”

clayton 6

As the Chinese dissident artist Ai Wei Wei said referring to Patterson, “His work is concerned with the truth, with facts. He has relentlessly devoted himself to a kind of culture that examines authority.”

The Villager encourages readers to share articles:
Tweet

Advertisers from our print edition



Comments are often moderated.


We appreciate your comments and ask that you keep to the subject at hand, refrain from use of profanity and maintain a respectful tone to both the subject at hand and other readers who also post here. We reserve the right to delete your comment.

6 Responses to Clayton Patterson at Howl Happening gallery

  1. jose quiles June 21, 2015 - 03:57

    Clayton Patterson, a true legend… his archives needs to be preserved and viewed by young and old alike !!!

    Reply
  2. Write my essay June 23, 2015 - 03:34

    I have two photo galleries on the protect ground News web-page. regarding a pair of months ago the balcony section on their website won't open up.

    Reply
  3. paperswriter July 28, 2015 - 05:57

    For 30 years he was heaving archive of over half a million photos and hundreds hours of video footage and so one. His works are gorgeous, especially for young generation! Great taste in art and photography. This works must see all!

    Reply
  4. man of steel jacket August 19, 2015 - 10:51

    Great to see Clayton Patterson at howl Happening Gallery. Finest collections on display in this fine gallery. Very creative and imaginative work on display in this exhibition. I am looking forward to attending such type of exhibitions in the near future.

    Reply
  5. Jenney November 4, 2015 - 03:32

    Thanks

    Reply
  6. Kelly January 6, 2016 - 09:56

    best .308 hunting rifle
    Thank you for sharing this!

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published.


+ 5 = seven

Search The Villager


Share This Post

Tweet


Sponsors

Sponsor


ClickHereForCalendarButton
ClickHereForCalendarButton

RSS Gay City News

  • Can Three Parents Make a Family in New York?
  • Federal Court Orders Trial on Trans Military Ban
  • David Buckel, Passionate LGBTQ Rights Litigator, Dead at 60

RSS Chelsea Now

  • “Nico, 1988” at the Tribeca Film Festival: 2 Reviews
  • Back to Work We Go — But First, Some Back-Patting!
  • Seeds Planted for Rooftop Gardens to Feed Midtown Needs

RSS Downtown Express

  • “Nico, 1988” at the Tribeca Film Festival: 2 Reviews
  • High impact: Could ‘developmental impact fees’ ease Downtown’s growing pains?
  • Back on the beat: Community policing program comes to the First Precinct
  • Police Blotter: Week of April 19, 2018
  • Beware the Coarsening
  • We Are The Champions: ‘Bathtubs’ Compels Us to Respect the Art of Industrial Musicals
  • Tangible and Social: Virtual Reality at Tribeca Immersive

RSS East Villager News

  • Best in Screen, 2015
  • A Coney Island of the East Village at City Lore
  • NYCHA will build on ‘hot’ East Side, chief assures
  • After 50 years, famed fashionista Patricia Field closing Downtown store
  • God’s Love We Deliver is back and cooking again in its gleaming new Spring St. building
  • Scoopy’s, Week of Sept. 3, 2015
  • ‘N.Y. Corporate U.’ is crushing us, critics cry
  • Foodies steamed after wonton rent hike, taxes force out Charlie Mom
  • Crusty punk whose pit bull terrorized East Village is dead
  • Spring forward to fall festivals

NYC Community Media LLC also publishes:
The Villager • Gay City News • Chelsea Now • East Villager News


ONE METROTECH, 10TH FLOOR NORTH
NYC, NY 11201
Main Telephone: 212-229-1890
Fax: 212-229-2790
Advertising: 212-229-1890

© TheVillager.com (Copyright 2017). Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to TheVillager.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Log in - The Villager - Published by NYC COMMUNITY MEDIA