"Dreamland Artist Club" at Coney Island

Art in America, Sept, 2004 by Sarah Valdez

For "The Dreamland Artist Club," a public-art intervention funded by Creative Time at Coney Island, graffiti artist Steve Powers selected 33 artists whom he saw as bringing something like street culture to the art world. Yet his dream team--a remarkably rowdy bunch, by gallery standards--makes only the tiniest dent on the eye-assaulting, perhaps impenetrably seedy, milieu of Coney Island's dilapidated amusement park. Locating the artworks (mostly signage for rides and games) proves challenging, even with a map, though they are relatively conspicuous for their esthetic and/or conceptual sophistication. (Half of them remain on more or less permanent display after their initial installation over the summer.)

Jack Pierson's project is the prettiest. Taking advantage of the sunlight, bold black letters shimmer against a hot-pink background of iridescent disks for a game pensively titled "Someday." Brooklyn-based artists Craig Costello and Nathan Smith contribute a mural-size sign for "Shoot the Freak," a game that entails firing paintballs at a live human target lurking behind a chain-link fence in a refuse-strewn gravel pit. The sign's aggressive black-and-white lettering stands out against a red background with multicolored polka dots--likely more legible and nicely designed than whatever preceded it. But is it such a radical departure from, say, the old sign for "Dunk the Creep" a few booths down?

Some artists strove to blend in, others did not. The most respectful intrusion came from Ellen Harvey, known for her little Hudson River School-style landscapes painted in oil on graffiti-covered public walls--her "New York Beautification Project." Here, she embellished the spiritual reader's booth with tarot cards and representations of chakras on pale blue walls. A suburban Joe might consider this good, "realistic" painting. The psychic was obviously quite pleased with her revamped stand, and Harvey signed one wall, "Love, Ellen."

Nicole Eisenman brings her customary first-rate painting and smartass humor to the mysteriously titled "Skin the Wire" game. Her sign shows a couple of ruddy-cheeked country bumpkins brandishing a pitchfork and an ax at a wire, personified with eyeballs and lacerated, sore-looking skin. A cow and a pig watch the chase disdainfully from a grassy knoll. Likely to fly over the heads of Coney Island regulars is the humor underlying Toland Grinnell's sign. Known for his tongue-in-cheek, stop-at-nothing constructions, Grinnell's lot was the "Dime Toss." True to form, he constructed a busy, over-designed sign of 24 different-sized circles bearing numbers and texts, among them his interlocking TG initials. Accustomed to making his mark in 24-karat gold, Grinnell proves with his sign, boringly painted black on gray, to be the worst at slumming, hands down.

For his part, Powers perfectly grooves with the atmosphere. With years of experience graffiti-tagging "ESPO" on walls--it stands for Exterior Surface Painting Operation--he has a knack for invigorating public visuals. He repainted the cars of the "Cyclone" roller coaster to pop like a candy bar wrapper and also made new, crisply designed signs for the "Eldorado Auto Skooter" bumper cars ("Bump your ass off," reads one text, alongside an illustration of a donkey's rear end).

Yet "The Dreamland Artist Club" mostly shoots itself in the foot. Out of their element, most of its members come off as much too refined--more, perhaps, than any of them might like to admit.

--Sarah Valdez