Stony Brook University SUNY Korea

Craving the Coney Island Boardwalk

Melanie Reim, MFA, Acting Associate Dean, School of Art and Design:

A day at the Coney Island Boardwalk and Luna Park feels like coming home to me. The bright sun, the smell of the ocean air, mixed with hot dogs and fried clams, and the roar of the bumper cars with the Parachute Jump looming from every view, all evoke vivid memories of my childhood, visiting my grandparents every weekend.

When I travel these days, it is always with a sketchbook by my side, documenting what I see and experience, creating new, vivid memories. The lure of drawing a crowd of people, set against the wild abstractions of shapes of the boardwalk, with those same seductive smells, have brought me to Coney Island over and over again. Every time, I see it a different way, with a different focus.

This body of drawings are some of those rich impressions. Culled from my sketchbooks, they are enlarged and printed on Hahnemuhle German Etching Paper, enhanced with gouache, graphite, and pastel, making each one a monoprint.

My love for line, and creating theatre with it, is inspired by the work of Picasso, Rico Lebrun,

Max Beckman and Ralph Steadman.

One cannot find better theatre than a day at the Coney Island Boardwalk.

The Art of Coney Island: A Juried Exhibition Exploring the Spirit of Coney Island, is on view at the Brooklyn Waterfront Artists, 499 Van Brunt Street, Door #7A, in Red Hook, through August 15.