Notes From The City: An Abundant Life

A few weeks ago I went to a birthday party for Todd Monaghan, a wonderful Artist who I have written about in these pages before. It was an evening with rain on and off, but when I first arrived it was clear enough that we were able to sit out on Todd's rooftop, and there were some people around the table who I had met at other times and places, though in some cases I couldn't remember exactly when or where. As the group of us sat and talked and enjoyed the freedom of the feeling of being outside on a New York City roof, one of the best feelings for those of us who live in this beautiful but very populated place, I started talking to an Artist who I knew that I knew from somewhere, and as he began to describe his art and his life, I realized that not only had I met him years ago at a party at a space he had created for Artists on Manhattan's Lower East Side, but I had seen his art all over New York City and had always wondered who had created the amazing and unique pieces that adorned sign posts, fences and gardens. It's a strange and wonderful thing when I have those experiences, when the past of my life meets the present in a glorious richness of harmony and weaving together of the strands of people and places where I have lived out so many different parts of my life. To hear someone describe a place where I once went, people I knew or things that I used to do on a regular basis has almost the feeling of being miraculous because somehow those things and people and places, though at times many years in the past, seem to breathe their life into the present. The space that this Artist had created was called The Gas Station, and the Artist was Linus Coraggio, and because I am always interested in going to the studios of wonderful Artists who I am blessed to meet, and because Linus has such a rich history that in some ways overlaps with my own, I asked him if I could visit his studio and we made an appointment for the following week.

Before my studio visit with Linus, he sent me a link to a video that a Filmmaker friend had made about him and his love of creating motorcycle art out of found objects, and the night before I went to see him he told me that he might need to move our meeting an hour forward because he was going out to Brooklyn to chain one of his other found object sculptures to a fence during the Brooklyn Street Art Show "Beyond The Streets" as a Guerilla Art contribution to the event. Between the video and the description of his planned journey out to Brooklyn, I got an idea of some of the things that he did, but it wasn't until I walked in the door to his studio that I began to see a more full picture of all of the ways that he creates. His studio is an adventure for the senses, with carefully placed sketches, paintings, welded metal sculpture, motorcycle art created from found objects including Barbie dolls, intricate ink drawings, uniquely sculpted and welded chairs and other useful items for the home and garden such as mirrors and credenzas that have been found and modified with the addition of pieces of metal and machine parts that have been welded and arranged with a beautiful order. Nothing is wasted in his creations and everything has its own rhyme and reason that through his careful placement reaches its own golden mean. And just when I thought I'd begun to get a grasp of the scope of his work, he began showing me the history of the furniture he'd made, with photographs of some pieces that had been placed in public spaces and private collections, and others that were placed throughout the studio, in the room with his sculptures and paintings and in other areas of the space.

At one point he mentioned that he had made wood cut prints of his renderings of his sculptural pieces, and in many ways those to my eye were in their own special category. I loved everything that I was seeing, but when he opened the hand made box where the book of his woodcuts was kept I was captivated by the beauty of the pieces. The wood blocks themselves are works of art and each one of the prints he's created has been designed according to the Artist's interpretation and vision he had of each sculptural piece that he included in the book, and his translation from three dimensional sculpture to a one dimensional print has resulted in a gorgeous collection because of his own unique way of seeing color, texture and space. His inventive use of ink to create textures and gradations within each piece adds to the unique and beautiful mastery of this form. Twenty-two pages in all, each one is a stand-alone masterpiece, and together they create a work of art of the caliber I have rarely seen. There is something extraordinary in the art and vision of Linus Coraggio, and the fact that I had seen his work so many times over the years, chained to fences, perched high atop street signs and in his fabled but not forgotten Gas Station art space brought my own New York City history to the forefront and made the memories of so many long ago years become etched in stark relief. Linus Corragio is a treasure. An Artist who has been creating unique and visionary pieces since he was a child, he is an integral part of the history and vibrant creativity of New York Art from years ago through the present, and his unique vision and history of making art is something that needs to be shared and celebrated as an encouragement to other creative spirits to help keep their spark alive.

Linus Coraggio

In New York City

https://linuscoraggio.com/