The Maysles Cinema Kicks Off 2013 Pride Month With Staunch! A Gay Gardens Celebration V

5th annual celebration of the legacy of seminal cinema verite documentary Grey Gardens. This year we kick off Pride by exploring the classic through a queer lens and celebrating its long-standing gay cult following. Grey Gardens, the groundbreaking 1975 documentary by Albert and David Maysles, will assume the colors of the rainbow with Staunch! A Gay Gardens Celebration V, a weekend-long festival that examines the classic through a queer lens. The fifth annual tribute to the film and its pop culture legacy, originally conceived in 2009 by Rebekah and Sara Maysles, daughters of Albert Maysles and authors of the book “Grey Gardens,” will be held Friday, June 7th – Sunday, June 9th at the Maysles Cinema in Harlem.

This year’s theme of “Gay Gardens” is a nod of appreciation to the film’s iconic status within the gay community, and fittingly coincides with the beginning of Pride month. Featuring a heady, poignant mix of LGBT-themed documentaries, discussions exploring themes of queer presentation and kinship, along with screenings of cornerstones Grey Gardensand 2006′s Beales of Grey Gardens, theseries is curated by Ilona Brand.


The Staunch! A Gay Gardens Celebration V line up includes T.V. Transvestite - made before Paris is Burning and today’s more mainstream drag entertainment. Shot in 1982 by Italian filmmakers, Simone di Bagno and Michele Capozzi, the documentary captures a “House of LaBeija” drag ball at a Harlem Bingo hall emceed by legendary drag performance artist Pepper LaBeija. After initially opening in Rome and New York to wild popularity, the film “disappeared” and was not shown again for 30 years, until it was revived in a packed screening at Maysles Cinema in late 2012. There will be more to follow on the post-screening Q&A.


Grey Gardens will be screened on Saturday, June 8th along with companion film The Beales of Grey Gardens. Albert and David Maysles’ tour de force depicts the lives of reclusive, mother-daughter socialites Big Edie and Little Edie in their dilapidated East Hampton manse. A panel discussion with famed director Albert Maysles, Harlem historian and author Michael Henry Adams, Jerry “The Marble Faun” Torre, a character in Grey Gardensand Jack Halberstam, gender and queer theorist and author (via Skype) will follow.

Life means change, mine was constant. Hired as a model in The New School, my poses were twenty-one minute stands. Each minute passed ,and during that one minute, I had to prepare myself for yet another pose. The mere fact that a class room of students had seen me parade past them ,,took a great deal of courage. The courage needed was fortified when I had to think of new posses ,,for each new minute. Taking me into my first experience in an Art School, I had brushed shoulders with a wonderful sculptor. Chaim Gross was the instructor whom I worked for, his many sculptures left lasting impressions. His teachings have been a corner-stone to my own years of carving. From the years of which I had modeled ,surrounded by many artists, has been revisited. 

Off to the Pyramids was my request to my Taxi Driver. My hotel was as foreign as the land I had just begun to explore. Traveling through the streets of Cairo, it was with no effort that a tourist could imagine life centuries earlier , from the very streets. I imagine not much has changed in the section of Cairo I had chosen to rent a room . I ventured into a poverty, I had only seen in books. Let me name this child `Zena`, for her last name is long forgotten. I found this child sleeping in a stable ,built into the very house an entire family lived. Zena was sleeping under the Ass of  Donkey, huddled in as comfortable position as one lost child could hope to find comfort. Our little girl here is `Zena` it has been one week of exploration coupled with great sadness.  It was custom that males born in this household had greater status, in a poverty that felt in each wind off the sands. Humanity cried out for this little one,, it was a sound I had felt before, thus moving on my actions, set out to help.

That week we set out to hospital for dysentery inoculations, one of the obstacles that were common and often neglected. This child was female, and the promise that a photo might resurrect hope, is impractical. I like to think `Zena` is alive ,,and earning the joys all people seek. This photo is glance into the struggles of the defensless,it keeps my need for my own joys in check. It reminds me of the throw of the dice life is, and how we (I) should work towards a better future for all peoples.

~~The Art Students League of New York~~

~~215 West 57 St~~
~~7Th Ave & Broadway~~

~~TUESDAY APRIL 2nd 6PM Reception~~

Our annual class exhibition is the first week in April. Our reception is April 2 on the second floor.The Gallery on the 2nd floor is open to the public. I have two sculptures in the class show, Harvest &  Tower.
If you dear people care to , It is my pleasure to invite you !

Once in a lifetime a man has the opportunities presented, employed by the Royal Family in Riyadh was destiny unfolding.

Traveling exploring, seeing wonders of our world, presented themselves unexpectedly. As select, private, setting in the middle East, A chance for me at the young age of 20, opened doors for me that allowed me the good fortune to seek and explore, as it has always been my nature. A contract of one years one month was drawn up, approved by some high-ranking officials in the House of Saud. My only trade was that of a gardener’s assistant, and my ability as a laborer. My interview was in New York City, an upscale Barclay Hotel. From the very first interview the air of wealth and those whom I were to be employed by, was irrelevant. My chance of being hired to maintain the palace of a young King Fahd, on the opposite side of our planet, was the boldest of my quests for employment. One day after the interview in Manhattan I was hired and plans to fly me to The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia were underway. It was as specialized and as decadent a place, with riches most never understand. I certainly was blinded by the speed in which my job title was approved, and found myself in the living quarters of a prince. Once the trust was established, my friendship grew into companionship, given this garment as a token of respect for my humility while amongst the royal family of Saudi Arabia.

Vintage meaning for me ,untouched  since the previous raid on Mrs.Beale mansion, Edie home.

Finding the twin peaks of Grey Gardens soon after with nervous anticipation and with greater enthusiasm.

The vestibule was draped with years of cob web growth, nearly impassable footpaths to either front porch or rear to gardeners and housemaids entrances.

Lee had shown up ,at the time I did not know her relationship to my friends. I was told that a *film  about her childhood, in East Hampton filmed by Al and David Maysles was to begin.  It was also understood that I had a friendship with the very reclusive inhabitants, with whom Lee was hoping to  begin work.      Through they years I have been asked to explain the whereabouts of a film I have titled as *Vintage Grey Gardens would be ,as it was supposedly shelved after the conditions in which my friends lived was revealed.

This clip may be of interest to Grey Gardeners.

The raid had begun, ordering several rooms be cleared of debris.   They included the Kitchen, Library, and Maids Washroom.   These rooms were on the first floor.                        Aside Perfection, the Kitchen cook stove seen here, with wood being it’s fuel. It was ventilated through one of the three smoke stacks in the mansion. The lower right hand leg of ~Perfection was collapsing through the kitchen floor.

The Library was used for storing uncollected household garbage. It was collected there, then once reaching a height to great, the next room chosen for refuse was this room the Kitchen. There were two working kitchen sinks. slate. Opposite the wall seen in this photo was the dumbwaiter shaft; it was used as a causeway for Raccoons to each floor in the mansion.

Yet with all its faults, the haunted kitchen spoke silently of grander days. 

Impressions lead to ideas, the groundwork as subtle as a smile, a breeze off the Sea. It began for me at the 1964 Worlds Fair. although images from monuments if Greenwood Cemetery were my first impressions of stone sculpture. The Worlds Fair in Queens New York had many pavilions. Each pavilion was well thought out and planned, to be an enlightened example of cultures, and ideas manmade. All were and still have left lasting impressions in my memory. Then there was The Vatican Pavilion, a glimpse at the greatest piece of Art, in my view from any century. My dear Mother Helen, had clasped my hand, it was to have, protect, and guide me through many places. Once my dear Mother clasped my hand, I felt the moment had special meaning. We step onto the moving transport, which expedited the many visitors to the Vatican Pavilion. We stood near and my Dear Mother whispered in a voice that I have missed, and recall as the kindest, of voices. Jerry “Here is the Mother of Jesus, holding her son”. It was named the Pieta, a sculpture so divine, so delicate, that my eyes were as fixed onto this majesty, carved in stone. How did a man carve such delicate, almost heavenly beauty in such a difficult material? It was set in stone, as was my first passion that I have only begun to express.  Click on “Stone Work” to see some of my artwork.