A Special Beer Week First Friday at our Gowanus taproom this month will feature the artwork of Frank Parisi.
About the Collection
"Reclamation" is a collection of photographs from the Gowanus Canal by Frank Parisi.
Reclamation: noun:
the process of claiming something back.
The photographs in this series were taken during and directly after the lockdown when the Gowanus Canal and the surrounding areas struggled to reclaim their natural foothold. The noxious fumes that permeated the neighborhood began to disappear and the quality of the water began to improve. On certain days, you could see schools of fish swimming beneath the surface like great shadows and clouds moving left and right. At times these little silver fish would leap from the surface as the larger predatory fish swam through looking for a meal.
Wildlife of all kinds began to come back. A family of great blue herons nested in a dead tree in front of the still abandoned powerhouse arts center. Cormorants, cranes, and seagulls began feeding on a regular basis. I saw soft-shelled turtles swimming close to shore and crabs scuttling among the rocks. But it wasn't just this natural beauty that struck me. I began to see beauty in the reflections on the water's surface, and I experienced a serenity not often associated with this once toxic waterway.
About the Artist
My name is Frank Parisi. I received my BFA from the University of Buffalo in 1985, and my MFA in 1992 from Brooklyn College with a focus in photography. My first job was in a vocational school teaching photography to emotionally disturbed and learning-disabled adolescents. I then spent a year as an Art Therapist in a day treatment center out east, before finishing my career teaching art to elementary school kids. I recently retired after 37 years as an art educator, but never stopped creating my own work. Over the years I have dabbled in print-making, painting, ceramics, glass design, and photography.
In 1990, I moved into the outskirts of Park Slope to escape a bad relationship. $600 got me a one-bedroom apartment on Carroll St. between 3rd and 4th Aves in a ram-shackled 3 story building with blue shag carpeting in the living room, faux brick walls in the kitchen. Termites were eating almost every stick of wood they could get their mandibles on.
This mess would eventually become my home in 1998 when I bought it from my absentee landlord for $175,000.
Carroll St between 3-4th Aves was one of the safest neighborhoods in the area. Everyone living within a 2-block radius was either related to someone, or was the 3rd generation to have grown up in their homes. I was the first outsider to buy in this insular Italian neighborhood.
On warm summer days, groups of silver-haired ladies would sit out in front of their houses in lawn chairs and house dresses, talking the dirt about everyone who walked by. The men gathered out in front of the Glory Social Club smoking cigars, and talking about the game. On the 4th of July, fireworks displays in the center of 3rd Ave created a crater in the middle of the block as a result of the intense heat. When they were done, the sanitation trucks would clean up the debris, the black top trucks would come to fill the holes, while the cops sat watching.
At the time, the area around the Gowanus Canal was not developed. It was the perfect place for your dog to "unload," the perfect place to throw out a mattress, and the perfect place to dump a body. It also has become the perfect place to live.