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Demolition Alert: Dreamland Artist Club Mural on Feltman’s Bldg

Posted in art, Redevelopment, tagged Coney Island, Creative Time, demolition alert, Dreamland Artist Club, Feltman's Kitchen, Rita Ackermann, Steve Powers on January 21, 2010| Leave a Comment »

In our recent post about Coney Island’s soon-to-be-demolished Feltman’s kitchen, one of the photos taken from Jones Walk shows the mural on the west wall of the historic building. Take another look because the Rita Ackermann mural is said to be worth $250,000 and the building is not long for this world. Yesterday the City’s contractors were observed removing the roof of the hot dog inventor’s kitchen.

Rita Ackermann Mural on west wall of Feltman's Kitchen Seen from Jones Walk. Photo © Tricia Vita/me-myself-i via flickr

Ackermann painted the mural in 2004 for the Dreamland Artist Club says the art project’s founder and lead artist Steve Powers.

“I co-curated the Dreamland Artist Club and have happy memories of working with Rita,” Powers told ATZ. “Although I would estimate the value of the mural at $250,000, it is but a fraction of what Steeplechase Park, Luna Park and a hundred other monuments in Coney Island have been worth. The mural may meet its doom but its memory will remind us how dumb progress can be sometimes.”

It’s ironic that public art which was created in response to real estate development changing the landscape and character of Coney Island is itself endangered by redevelopment. Powers teamed up with Creative Time, the non-profit public art agency, to bring artists to Coney Island to create new signage for the stands along the Walk and the Bowery. The first year’s funding was $80,000. When the murals and signage debuted in June 2004, Powers told the Times: “A large percentage of them will be up forever.” Powers own work, including the Cyclone roller coaster seats and “Bump Your Ass Off” signs for the Eldorado Bumper Cars are thankfully still with us and look like they’ve been here forever.

Detail of Rita Ackermann Mural and Wonder Wheel Signage.. Photo © Tricia Vita/me-myself-i via flickr

The Brooklyn Rail’s review of the Dreamland Artist Club included this description of Ackermann’s mural: “With an aura of danger and seduction, snake charmers, acrobats, and sword throwers return to Coney Island in Rita Ackermann’s 50-foot mural above Jones Walk. Graphically rendered in black, white, and golden yellow against the background of the Cyclone’s sweeping arcs, Ackermann’s femme fatales twirl and pose high above the crowds promoting a demonic carnival of darker, hidden attractions.”

ATZ contacted Rita Ackermann via her gallery, but we haven’t yet received a response. If you happen to know the artist, please tell her to get ready to add the word “demolished” to her resume.

Dec 12-13: Open Studio with Coney Island Artist & Banner Painter Marie Roberts

Posted in art, sideshow, tagged Brooklyn, Coney Island, Coney Island USA, free event, Marie Roberts, Open Studio, sideshow banner, tondo on December 2, 2009| 3 Comments »

Marie Roberts banners on facade of Coney Island USA Building, May 2009. Photo © Tricia Vita/me-myself-i via flickr

This is the post we were working on yesterday when we found out “TLC’s Cake Boss Sweet on Marie Roberts’ Coney Island Sideshow Banners.” We dropped everything to cover the cake artistry, but now it’s back to business…

Coney Island USA’s artist-in-residence Marie Roberts is an accomplished painter who is best known for her banners for the Coney Island Circus Sideshow. Her canvas advertisements for Donny Vomit, human blockhead; Heather Holliday, the youngest female sword swallower; Serpentina, the snake charmer; and guest freaks like the Lizard Man adorn the CIUSA building 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

The Coney Island banner line is a year-round tourist attraction and fave subject of photographers. During the off-season, the artist continues to produce banners for private clients as well as other genres of paintings. On the weekend of December 12-13, you’re invited to Marie Roberts’ Open Studio to meet the third generation Coney Islander and view her watercolor “tondos” of the old amusement district.

Astro Tower from Studio Window by Marie Roberts. Watercolor/gouache, 8 x 8" 2009

Astro Tower from Studio Window by Marie Roberts. Watercolor/gouache, 8 x 8 inches, 2009

“I received a faculty research grant from Fairleigh Dickinson University last summer,” says Roberts, who is a professor of art at FDU as well as at CIUSA’s Sideshow School. “The project was to compose in round, or “tondo” format. I intended to do invented figure compositions, but became enthralled with the views from the studio window.”

The artist’s studio on the second floor of Coney Island USA’s Building has a view of the Wonder Wheel, Astrotower, Old Bank of Coney Island and Luna Park … the furniture store! The studio location is 1208 Surf Avenue at West 12th Street in Coney Island. Open Studio hours are from 1- 4 pm on Saturday and Sunday, December 12-13.

The artist also paints banner portraits for folks who do not perform in the sideshow, but enjoy having their own banner at home or to promote their work. How does the Coney Island banner painter decide what kind of banner to paint for someone? “It depends on the client,” Roberts says. “Some know they want to be ‘The Feejee Merman’ and know the exact pose and what will be included in the painting. Some have no clue and I try to see what they want from their words. ‘Anything you want,’ said one client. It’s usually a collaboration of what they want and I can do.”

Banner Art by Marie Roberts. Photo © Norman Blake. All Rights Reserved.

Tommy Couteau, pictured above with Marie Roberts, won the “have yourself painted any way you want” package at Coney Island USA’s gala auction. He decided he wanted both a mermaid banner and a “Guy from Coney Island” banner.

Says Roberts,“I have had to make banners where I don’t know what people look like. In one for a photographer, I covered her face with a camera. In another, for a group of people, they wore masks painted to look like the cast of a sideshow they had seen.”

Roberts recently completed banner for artist and “photo reader” Stephanie Diamond is on display in Miami at the Scope Art Show’s Covet Garden marketplace through December 6th. Diamond’s art project is “Snap Sharing, which uses psychometry, an intuitive technique that involves holding or touching objects or photographs to gather information.”

You can visit with Marie Roberts and her Coney Island banners via Sideshow Picasso, a documentary by Marilyn Agrelo filmed earlier this year and viewable on YouTube…

Marie Roberts Open Studio, Coney Island USA, 1208 Surf Avenue at W 12th St, Coney Island. December 12-13, Saturday-Sunday, 1-4 pm. The Coney Island Museum, which is on the same floor as Roberts studio, is open weekends year round and will be open from 12 – 5 pm.

Rare & Vintage: Coney Island Sideshow Banner by Dan Casola

Posted in art, Artifacts, tagged armless wonder, art, Auction, Coney Island, Dan Casola, Johnny Meah, Millard & Bulsterbaum, sideshow banner on November 16, 2009| 1 Comment »

Vintage Sideshow Art: Armless Wonder by Dan Casola of 2525 Surf Ave, Brooklyn, NY

Vintage sideshow banners painted by Coney Island’s Dan Casola are hard to come by. In fact we’d never seen a Casola banner until we discovered The Armless Wonder–Lot #459 in the Mosby & Co. online auction of the late Bob McCord’s circus collection. We were wowed. In the late 90s, we had a cottage industry writing for Art & Antiques and other art magazines about collectors snapping up sideshow banners from the heyday of the midway. We learned that Coney Island’s Millard and Bulsterbaum, who had their banner painting shop at 2894 West 8th Street from 1915 until the end of the Depression, were considered the best in the biz. Their ads proclaimed “We Paint Banners That Get Top Money for Carnivals and Circus.” The banners that have survived are highly prized by collectors.

In a note on Mosby’s auction page, banner painter Johnny Meah says Casola was “a good artist, working mostly for the Millard & Bulsterbaum scenic art house in Brooklyn—–but largely unheard of.” He notes that the artist’s work was on view primarily in Coney Island and occasionally at fairs in nearby states where Dave Rosen, a Coney Island operator, fielded a sideshow. Rosen’s Wonderland Circus Sideshow was by the way in the building currently owned and occupied by Coney Island USA’s Sideshows by the Seashore. Casola was Meah’s favorite banner painter and he shares further reminscences in an essay “Cunning Crafters of Dreams.”

Now, thanks to Google Books, which has indexed selected issues of the Billboard, we’ve been able to find additional biographical info on Casola. In June 1942: “New on Surf Avenue is girl-underwater illusion, a 10-center operated by Dan Casola, designer and decorator. Dan is the one who designed the Atlantis Bar and Grille new last season on the Boardwalk.” The now-legendary Atlantis Nightclub was on the site currently occupied by Cha Cha’s and Nathan’s Boardwalk location at Stillwell Avenue.

In July 1942, in the Pittsburgh Gazette’s “Dimouts, Rationing Hit Coney Island Hard,” Casola is the talker for his illusion show and is said to have been in Coney Island for 25 years. “He says business is good at the illusion show he presents with ‘three nifty girls.’ ‘Ya only spend a dime folks and a ya get an eyeful, and ya got two eyes aintcha, so what are ya waiting for,’ he yells. That he said, gets em every time, dimout or no dimout.”

At the height of sideshow bannermania (1998), we actually did an unofficial “census” of banners in public and private collections. While Fred Johnson and Snap Wyatt were prolific artists and a body of their work has survived, other master banner painters have not been so lucky. We’d love to be able to close this post with a photo of another Casola banner. If anyone has more info about Dan Casola, please let us know. As for the marvelously gifted Armless Wonder, who painted pictures to sell to sideshow visitors, we’d like to identify him and see more of his paintings, too.

Mosby & Co Auctions, Fall Toy & Americana Sale, Lot 459, Circus Sideshow Banners, Armless Wonder, 92″ tall x 118″ wide, opening bid $750. Estimate: $1,500-$2,500. The sale end date is November 22, 2009 at midnight and on the 20th for liveauctioneers absentee bids.