ARTISTS
This project is dedicated to the main female contributors of the Rivington School Art Movement, women who did much to distinguish themselves with edgy, twisted, outstanding art
apropos for this 80s time period.
ANGEL EYEDEALISM
JD FLEISHMAN
THERESA RODRIQUES
MELANIE TOMSKY
ARLEEN SCHLOSS
APOCALYNN
CHRISTA GAMPER
LITTLE ALEXIS
MAGALIT BERRIET
RACHELLE GARNIEZ
Click here to read Angel's Artist Statement
ANGEL EYEDEALISM
In 1984, not knowing shit about fuck, or fuck about shit, I stumbled upon the Rivington School, a mythological Art Movement in NYC's LES. Ravaged by illness and youthful irreverence, I expressed myself in bold and flamboyant means. Searching thrift stores, I came up with kooky costumes, mismatched textures and fabrics. Local fashion designers asked me to do runway shows, and I ended up in People magazine for a fashion show I did at Danceteria.
Using the tag Angela Repellant, juxtaposed with edgy glamour and barely clad in diaphanous rags,I hit the runways. My face became canvas, as I painted it daily with neon eyeshadow and hot pink lipstick. Expressing this angst proved cathartic, as I screamed the words I'd written at ABC NO RIO, doing Spoken Word. At 8BC, I did my first Performance Art show, on the struggles of women in art. It was at 8BC that I met DAB: David Andrew Bennett. We started fucking and started Womb Service, my first NYC band. We played at CBGB, The World, and Sculptures Gardens, and hung with Sonic Youth ... more.
www.wikihow.com/Author/Angel-Eyedealism
MELANIE TOMSKY
Melanie Tomsky is a multi-disciplinary artist from Brooklyn, New York. She has performed in various classical music ensembles as a violist throughout the US and Europe. She is also a classically trained pianist. Tomsky’s expressionist paintings have been exhibited in several galleries in NYC. Melanie is also a performance artist and model.
ARLEEN SCHLOSS
Arleen Schloss (born December 12, 1943 in Brooklyn, New York) is an American performance artist, video/film artist, sound poet, director and curator Schloss was a co-producer of A's – an interdisciplinary loft space that became a hub for music, exhibitions, performance art, films and videos. In the 1990s A's became A's Wave where website works and other forms of digital media were shown.
Concurrently with A's, Schloss established herself as a curator, co-organizing shows at Danceteria and The Storefront of Art and Architecture, now an architectural venue in New York.
Schloss started her career in the galleries of SoHo and the Lower East Side of Manhattan as a painter and performance artist who performed and showed her work in the U.S., Europe and Asia at venues such as the Franklin Furnace, Betty Parsons Gallery, Bykert Gallery, Construction Company, Max Hutchinson Gallery in SoHo, Lenbachhaus Galeria in Munich, La Nuit Parcourt La Ceil in Belgium, Cafe Einstein in Berlin, The Kitchen and the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
In subsequent years she performed her media opera "A.E.BLA BLA BLA" at Ars Electronica in Austria and was a featured guest on Willoughby Sharp’s Downtown '86, which showcased 1980s performers, artists and musicians.
Additionally, during the 1980s, she began to get noticed for her sound poetry work, mostly for the audio piece "How She Sees It By Her." Schloss' sound work is included in two publications and anthologies, "Just Another Asshole "Text-Sound Texts" Edited by Richard Kostelanetz.
Schloss was awarded an 8mm camera from Canon to experiment with 8mm video. With the camera, she created the travelogue video “Sun Daze Away,” which showed at Central Park's Summerstage and at various venues in Europe and Asia. In 1990 Schloss directed and produced the video documentary "FromKepler2Cyberspace", with Hi8 equipment loans from Sony. During the same period, Schloss filmed a series of interviews with John Cage and included those interviews in a series entitled "Windows of Chance/Change."
In the 1990s Schloss continued her work with new forms of art and media. She exhibited her electronic work "Marbelize" at the international digital and technology show at ISEA, in Rotterdam, the Netherlands and showed multimedia work on the digital art, radio and Internet program ArtNetWeb.
In 2012 the New Museum showcased her video and film work in a presentation titled “Arleen Schloss: An Evening of Super 8 Film an Hi8 Video,” and she was included in the New Museum’s group exhibition “Come Closer: Art Around the Bowery 1969 – 1989.” Additionally, the White Box Art Center included her work in “Coded After Lovelace” in 2014, and she was a featured artist in the SALTS Gallery’s “The Printed Room, Works Off Paper,” in 2016.
JD FLEISHMAN
JD Fleishman is a Multi-disciplinary Performance Artist hailing from Fluxus,Dada
and Arte d'Povera. As a Tantric Shaman,she explores healing through sound,effortlessly creating Lucid Dreaming with singing bowls and gongs.She exhibited her visual and Performance Art in solo shows at Nada,and Freddie The Dreamer Galleries,as well as group shows at No Se No.This WORS is in Collections at MOMA and Gemente Museum
,Netherlands,and privately with Mike Bidlo,and Donald Baechler.
MARGALIT BERRIET
Born in Tel Aviv-Jaffa, Israel, living in Paris since 1988. She is a painter with a Master of Fine Arts from New York University and has been exhibited internationally in solo and group shows. Since 1984, she has published several essays and a book, and has initiated multidisciplinary arts events and conferences in the USA, Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, promoting, via the arts, a better
knowledge of cultural diversity and fostering intercultural dialogue. In 2003, she founded Mémoire de l’Avenir. She has collaborated with public and private institutions, including UNESCO, CIPSH, Musée du quai Branly, Centre George Pompidou, Musee de Louvre, Dapper, Musée d’Arts et d’Histoire de Judaism, the Institute de Monde Arab, and Musée de l’Homme.
APOCALYNN
A ubiquitous presence in the East Village, LES of NYC, Apocalynn had a unique style unto herself.From her ginger dreads, to her painted toes, she was pure Art.Her medium was acrylic on canvas, and she also used spray paint for guerrilla street art.Her art is instantly recognizable, with her signature asymmetrical animals amidst odd textures and bold patterns. Just as she was a striking person visually, so is her art distinctive. She studied the dark arts of witchcraft, and spoke often of spells. Her art cast a spell on me, with its edgy characters, and strange elements. She lived on Clinton Street ever since I met her in the early 80's, always with black cats at her feet, and walls covered in paintings. The dear girl passed away in 2016, just before the release of the Rivington School book, and Toyo's opening at Howl. A fond remembrance of spending Christmas Eve with Apocalynn, and buying a small painting, still haunts me. Apocalynn's memory lives on in her exquisite art. She was a WORS,and she is honored here for she greatly contributed to Rivington School.
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Rachelle Garniez
Native New Yorker, multi-instrumentalist Rachelle Garniez has been described as a “diva with a difference” (Billboard Magazine) and a “certified free spirit” (The New Yorker).
Her original lyrical and melodic story-songs have been described as “romantic, rhapsodic and casually hilarious” (The New York Times). Over the years she has played music in many bands of many kinds, including Rock, Blues, Tango, Country, Latin, Klezmer, Jazz and Tin Pan Alley classics. Her unique sense of song draws from all of these influences and “…wanders through genres, leaving behind nothing but sweet wreckage” (The New Yorker).
A longtime fixture of the New York music scene, she tours most regularly in Europe and is at home on all kinds of stages from theaters to rock clubs throughout the world.
Rachelle recently appeared on the HBO television programs “High Maintenance” and “And Just Like That”; her songs can be heard on several film soundtracks and have been recorded by artists including Catherine Russell, Karen Elson, and Ingrid Lucia of the Flying Neutrinos. She was a performing member as well as a musical director of the Neo-Cabaret troupe The Citizens Band. For several years in the early 2000s, Rachelle was a member of the TED house band led by Thomas Dolby; she was invited in 2019 to perform at a reunion of hand-picked TED alumni. She’s performed/recorded with artists including Sven Ratzke, Weimar New York, the Marvin Sewell Group, Tigresa, Rufus Wainwright, Dan Zanes, and Mumbo Gumbo. In 2009, Rachelle composed the music for Taylor Mac’s visionary Obie-Award-winning epic five-hour theater piece “The Lily’s Revenge”.
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THERESA RODRIGUES
The mid-’80s were a wild, promiscuous time in my life. Working at Guerra Paint, an East Village artist supply shop. I had access to acrylic and pigments to experiment with and mix my own paint. It was at that store that I discovered the Rivington School, as members of RS invited me to wild parties and performances that would last all night. We partied so hard there were mornings that I woke up not knowing where I was. No-Say-No, the Sculpture Gardens, the Gas Station, and Mars bar were my RS hangouts. My art was spontaneous and raw. Inspired by Art Guerra, I used acrylic paint pushing it to its limits mixing it with interesting objects that I gathered from around the city. Found objects were preferable to bought objects being a broke-ass artist. Making sexy sometimes transparent clothing out of scraps I became my own art. Wearing bright make-up my face became Art. Coloring and cutting my hair into asymmetrical shapes, my hair became art. It was at this time, I met and started sleeping with Monty Cantsin. Monty was a performance artist and I often assisted him during his shows of blood, fire, and propaganda. My art was hung as part of Rivington School at Fusion Art, Mars Bar, Gas Station, No-say-No.Rivington School was an artist community of like-minded people who were freely expressing themselves. Sex, drugs, puNK rock and roll, without the rigid structure of the Soho Art World. It was an artist community, unlike anything I have ever experienced. Members were Painters, sculptors, performance artists, photographers and we made towering sculptures of steel and found objects in abandoned lots around the East Village. Currently, I live in Brooklyn with my family working as a Special Education High School teacher. Presently my artwork is mixed media collages with photographs, silkscreen, and acrylic with found objects. From 1985 to the present I am a Woman of Rivington School.