| © Stanley Bulbach, All Rights Reserved. |
"From Sumer
to Chelsea" |
hosted by |
| The foundations of today's medicine, science,
mathematices, accounting, astronomy, technologies, law and Biblical
religion arose thousands of years ago in ancient Mesopotamia. The
textile arts and technologies are millennia-old connections that
weave
together contemporary NYC with Sumer and our ancient roots. The woven works in this exhibition were selected for having themes and designs reflecting the island of Manhattan. For example, on the right hand side the exhibition features the Third Sephardic Cemetery, a carpet bed, inspired by the historic preservation site just two blocks north of the opthalmology office. The small cemetery is a surviving part of the oldest Jewish cemetery which was recorded back in 1656 then in the former Nieuw Amsterdam. |
 |
| As the city
grew northward and
built over parts of the earliest cemetery, some excavations and
gravestones were removed to newer locations in lower Manhattan,
often more than once, until burials in Manhattan
were prohibited around 1851. That small plot is tucked away on West 21st Street, just two blocks north of West 19th Street. Few passers-by notice it tucked between West 21st Street's large buildings. |
| © Stanley Bulbach, All Rights Reserved. |
| From right to left: Third Sephardic Cemetery, Sixth Avenue, The Hudson, Heat Lightning (upper), September Passages (lower), and Times Square. |
| Likewise, the next piece to the left, a prayer
carpet, is named Sixth Avenue, inspired by the nearby midtown towers
north of
Chelsea. The next piece to the left is The Hudson, another prayer carpet, the historic river which is the west boundary of Chelsea. Farther left (upper) is Heat Lightning, inspired by the increasing heat waves and their impact on our urban neighborhood. September Passages (lower), a flying carpet, reflects the monarch butterfly migrations that pass through Chelsea, Greenwich Village, and lower Manhattan and the tall buildings of The Battery. With climate change, those migrations are increasingly diminishing. On the far left, Times Square, another flying carpet, was inspired by a view from the 26th Floor of the historic McGraw-Hill building down on to 42nd Street, 12 blocks north of Chelsea. Between West 42nd Street and Chelsea to the south also lies the remnants of The Garment Center, especially along Seventh Avenue, a/k/a Fashion Avenue, where The Fashion Institute of Technology, a/k/a FIT, lies, all weaving together the many different threads of the Chelsea area of New York City in the modern era. |
| For more information and photos of the specific
carpets, please visit "The Art" section where each is described
in more detail. And
for more information on Chelsea Eye Ophthalmology, please do visit: https://www.chelseaeyeophthalmology.com/ |