Description

The first book on the art-world legend who installed his ephemeral sculptures on the streets of New Yorks East Village

Curtis Cuffie (1955-2002) was an artist from Harstville, South Carolina, who found local notoriety in the 1990s for the thrilling and surprising way he adorned the streets of New Yorks East Village. His on-the-spot sculptures were woven into fences, hung from walls and sprawled along the Bowery and Cooper Square.
Making use of whatever he could find to fashion works that were imaginative and real, Cuffie took the street for all it could provide: materials, an audience, a rhythm and a sense of the strange unexpectedness of public life. He was unhoused for stretches of his life, and his sculptures were viewed near to his outdoor quarters. Cuffies art was often removed by city sanitation, but new work would spring up soon after. Though little of his art survives today, a trove of photographs documenting it keeps him in the present.
This publication, the first on Cuffie, seeks to honor the artist and rectify his omission by going backward to recover that which has been left behind. It places Cuffies own photographs and those of his companion Katy Abel alongside pictures that photographers Margaret Morton and Tom Warren took of Cuffie and his art on the streets.

Author: Curtis Cuffie
Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Blank Forms Editions
Published: 08/29/2023
Pages: 248
Weight: 1.8lbs
Size: 11.00h x 7.50w x 0.60d
ISBN: 9781953691156
Language: English