Brooklyn, Thy Name is Beauty

Willoughby. Hoyt-Schermerhorn. Nostrand. Marcy.

I walk those avenues and their names sing to me! Although I came to life in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, I came of age in a Caribbean hamlet in Queens and on verdant Long Island.

Maybe I left something in BK (laughs)?

I suppose I still ain't found what I'm looking for, but I seek...

A recent jaunt to Fulton landed me at Restoration Plaza, where the newly opened Live To Change Something Through Art exhibit pulls into sharp focus the Brooklyn Arts movement.

Highlighting the curatorial arm of Nakeisha Gumbs (under the aegis of Coup d'Etat Arts Collective), the exhibit bowed with a mid-afternoon bash of beautiful art and beautiful people. Intricate woodcuts, collage, oils...

Kings and Queens - and I don't mean the counties - loom large in this show: For instance, Brooklyn MCs Big Daddy Kane (the original Smooth Operator) and the late Big get their due in imaginative ways.

And Livingroom Johnston's anthropomorphic Elephants (kings of a different variety?) are downright sexy and made me laugh out loud.

(Above, image by unstoppable lensman Kwesi Abbensetts. Through February 21, 2010. Skylight Gallery, 1368 Fulton St., Bklyn, NY)