BY CYBELE POLICASTRO

WEST VILLAGE, NY —- Art on the Ave is a public art initiative featuring work by local artists in storefronts, both vacant and some occupied.

The second installment is “Awakenings” and will be on display in the West Village. The exhibition will kick off Live the Village which is a Greenwich Village Chamber of Commerce initiative with 2 other events planned—a reimagined Shop Bleecker, with events and promotions, and the Village Trip Festival, which will run from Sept. 18 to Oct. 2. GVCCC hopes the events will improve foot traffic and help business hard hit by the pandemic.

Art on the Ave was founded by a mother-daughter duo Barbara Anderson and Jackie Graham in the summer of 2020.  The first exhibition was centered on the Upper West Side. For the West Village installment, they are working with curators Susan Davis-Eley and Norma Kriger and all the money from the sale of the work goes to the artists.

The Lucille Lortel Theater located at 121 Christopher Street is one of the places art can be viewed, as well as a place to gain information about Art on the Ave.

BSB zoomed with Barbara to find out more.

This interview has been edited for brevity and for clarity.

How did you get the idea to do this project?

I guess the idea was born in Fernie, British Columbia. It's a small ski town up in the Rockies where my daughter Jackie lives. She's a teacher but she works at an art council and due to COVID, they closed down the gallery on a tiny little main street. They'd asked two of the vacant stores if they could put the art in there since the gallery was closed.

I saw it on Instagram, and I said, you know, I love that and you know, why couldn't we do that on Columbus Avenue? It seemed so simple then. And she was sweet. She said, you know what, mom? Yeah, that's a good idea. And so, I started doing a little research and I kept just plugging along and, and she was helping me. And we found some people who, you know, I think that inside they were laughing, but they were also being kind.

I think as a teacher, you're very used to solving problems or trying to figure out…I don't know, in my mind I was like seeing all this going on and I thought, you know what? That could be a solution. It could be something nice. And I just sort of something clicked in me for once. And I said, you know, what would I tell the kids? I would tell them, try it. What's the worst that can happen. We would get to one obstacle and someone would help us and point us in a different direction. And we would get to the next one. You know, people just help facilitated that. That's the nice story for me.

So how did you approach people? You live on the Upper West Side of New York?

I live on the upper West side and I haven't been here that long. We only moved to the city in the summer of 2019. I didn't know it that well, but I knew this neighborhood. I felt familiar with all the stores and I just saw one closing after the other and even the ones who weren't closed, they were struggling. I just kind of felt this idea, it could not only help the artists- to spotlight in particular underrepresented artists but also, I saw it as a way to kind of bring a little bit of life, energy and, and foot traffic to the area and that really actually happened.

I would sit somewhere and I would just watch people going up. And then, you know, another person would go up and they'd have a little conversation sometimes, or it would be a little cluster and they'd stop and you could see it with a family and they would have a chat and what people said actually was that they would walk by, and a piece would catch their eye. And then another time they would listen use the QR code and listen to the artists and it (the piece) started to feel like it belonged to them already, and that they weren't necessarily art buyers before. We ended up selling a lot of the art. 

What was the inspiration of about picking the Village as the next spot?

I have a colleague and she lives in the West Village and we would walk home sometimes from school. And there was one time we were in the throes of doing Columbus Avenue and I just walked down with her one day and I said, Hey, look at this and look at this.

And I think there must have been about 15 empty stores, at that point. And I said, wow, it'd be really nice to see some art in here instead of that paper, this, so that I kind of had the idea in the middle of doing Art on the Ave, even though I never actually thought we would do another one.

Did you do an open call to artists?

Jackie (Graham) puts out a call and then the curators spread the word. And Jackie was really very specific about trying to reach, west village artists actually.

Would you say you are bringing an art gallery to the streets? I

It is street level and it can speak to different audiences, you know? So, you could see kids just kind of stopping and being attracted by one piece or it was interesting to watch the different people that would stop. So, the whole kind of idea for the West Village one, was that it can just be about strolling or meandering or doing a little bit of everything and the art, becoming part of the fabric of the Village for a little while.

Art on the Ave “Awakenings” will be on display starting April 15 to July 8.

Find out more about Art On The Ave on their website.