A WALK AROUND THE BLOCK:
NEW YORKERS ON THEIR HOME TURF
BROOKLYN

September 11, 1999 through October 10, 1999.
Gallery Hours: 12:00 to 6:00PM Saturday and Sunday and Monday by appointment
RECEPTION: Saturday September 18, 1999 4:00 - 6:00 PM

A Photography and Text exhibition comprising an intimate portrait of Brooklyn. This is the second of five exhibitions -- one each in the five boroughs of New York City. The first exhibition took place in Staten Island in March, 1999. The overall goal is an intimate visual and textual portrait of the City.
Photographer Pamela McCormick is a professional photographer with a fine arts background whose work is exhibited, collected and represented by dealers in New York and California.
Author Jay Jacobs is a widely published journalist and author whose articles on various aspects of New York City life, history and cultural affairs appear regularly in Gourmet.

UNIQUE TO THE BROOKLYN SHOW
Local artists, who live within 15 walking blocks of the Center, are invited to participate by including a photograph of their work in the gallery and by opening their studios Saturday and Sunday, September 18th and 19th, from noon to 5:00 PM. A map will be provided at the Center.

Content
Forty-six photographs and accompanying texts documenting walks with six participants in the block or two around their homes. Style is interpretive and documentary.
Contacts
Yuko Nii, Director, 718-486-6012 Pamela McCormick, Photographer, 212-226-6771; Jay Jacobs, Author, 516-324-8754
Purpose
As city dwellers and artists, to explore the city's neighborhoods from the point of view of the residents in varous diverse neighborhoods, to identify themes among the reasons stated for living in the city and to identify special locations or sources of inspiration or energy cited by the residents, ie, their touchstones -- the support they feel in acheiving their goals by living in the communities they have chosen.
Background
This project is loosly linked to Urbanisto, a city mapping project originated by two London artists who recorded 64 intersections in London. They have invited artists in other international cities to develop their own city mapping projects and each artist team is free to develop its own interpretation.

How the Participants Were Identified
In London, Paddy Hamilton and Emmanuelle Waeckerele used a drawing of a headless camel - a 'found object toy' which they superimposed on the map of London to pinpoint the locations they would visit. McCormick and Jacobs have kept the camel as a starting point for their own city project, A WALK AROUND THE BLOCK: NEW YORKERS ON THEIR HOME TURF. Participants for each of the six sessions were invited at random, based on a drawing superimposed on the city map. The Staten Island drawing is of the head of the camel. McCormick and Jacobs wanted to "put the head back on the camel" - (the face, the personal) into their interpretation of the Urbanisto city mapping theme. Staten Island is the subject of the first exhibition and therefore the head.

Photographer
Pamela McCormick is a professional photographer with a fine arts background: M.A. San Jose State University; postgraduate art history studies Stanford University. Her wind and water activated site-specific sculpture has been extensively exhibited in the United States and abroad. During the years 1985-1988, she travelled on four continents as a team member of the Rauschenberg Overseas Culture Interchange. Her photographs have been the subject of one person exhibitions at Artopia Gallery in New York (1995) and the Elaine Benson Gallery in Bridgehampton, New York (1999). Her work was included in an historic photography show at Goldstrum Gallery in New York in 1998 and her work is represented by private dealers in New York and California. Her work is in the following collections: Henry Buhl, Patricia Stephens Lewinsky, Robert Rauschenberg, June Schuster, Carter Ratcliff, Bannan and Barnabas McHenry. She has received awards from The National Endowment for the Arts, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, and the Nancy H. Gray Foundation for Art in the Environment. She received and International Artist Grant from the Lila Wallace Readrer1s Digest Fund and Arts International.

Author
Jay Jacobs is a widely published journalist and author whose articles on various aspects of New York City life, history and cultural affairs appear regularly in Goumet. He has held upper echelon editorial positions at The Reporter, Portfolio, Art in America, ARTSMagazine, Horizon and American Heritage Publishing. His books include A Glutton For Punishment, The Eaten Word, The Color Encyclopedia of World Arts, New York a La Carte, RFK: His Life and Death and A History of Gastronomy. He was awarded first prize in 1986 by the International Journalism Competition, Parma, Italy, and was nominated for a James Beard Foundation award in 1998.