When Pocket Utopia closed a year ago, Jason Andrew of Norte Maar for Collaborative Projects in the Arts, told me about Rouses Point, New York, and his 5 summers of dance festivals there and the community in the North Country. Together, we came up with the idea for a summer camp, based on the Black Mountain College model, called Camp Pocket U. The camp will take place the last 2 weeks of July 2010. Everyone’s invited, but pre-registration is required at nortemaar.org or by email at ats@toast.net.

For immediate release: contact, Austin Thomas: ats@toast.net - 917-400-3869

This is a good time to make your summer plans. Come to Camp Pocket Utopia - July 21st through July 28th - in Rouses Point, New York. Classes include: tennis, basic knitted structures, chess, swimming, ping pong, dance, and drawing with stick and spit.

Additional activities: pancake breakfast, film screenings, field trips,, a library and free time. Camp Pocket U will offer a variety of lodging options, including cabins, camping, dormitory-style living, and even more. Our meal plan will provide you with the nourishment you need for whole body enrichment.

For more information contact Austin Thomas directly, space is limited - ats@toast.net or call 917-400-3869

Saturday, April 17th @ 7:30pm information session and cocktail party at Storefront in Bushwick, 16 Wilson Street - L train to Morgan Avenue (Morgan turns into Wilson after Flushing Avenue. From the train walk four blocks on Morgan to Flushing Avenue. Cross Flushing Avenue to Wilson Avenue. Gallery located between Noll and George Streets.

Camp Pocket U. is based on a learning model started at Black Mountain College.

Featuring a selection of artists from Bushwick’s legendary Pocket Utopia with a group of artists from Lesley Heller. “Ocketopia” mixes and matches sculpture, painting and prints with a salon and a neighborhood gallery tour.

This show is at Lesley Heller Workspace 54 Orchard Street New York, NY 10002. t 212 410 6120. Gallery Hours: Wednesday – Saturday 11 – 6. Sunday 12 – 6

After closing the exhibition space at 1037 Flushing Avenue, in Bushwick, Pocket Utopia is initiating a publishing venture called PU Press and a school--based on the Black Mountain College model--Pocket U.

Pocket Utopia is pleased to announce the summer artist residency of Sharon Butler. After taking the previous and last show down, the exhibition space is empty, so Butler is ready and makes a return visit to the space for a 4-week residency. Butler, a painter and writer, maintains the art blog Two Coats of Paint, and is a Contributing Writer at The Brooklyn Rail.

Pocket Utopia is pleased to end its 2-year, 20-exhibition run with “Finally Utopic,” a group exhibition, and Bushwick Biennial venue, of artists from the neighborhood. As an artist-run space, Pocket Utopia is an extension of a social practice and is a social sculpture. It is also a gallery and a post-studio artist residency that blurs the lines between artist, dealer, gallerist, viewer and participant.

Pocket Utopia is pleased to present “Emotional Infinity (Subtitling Houellebecq's The Elementary Particles)”featuring the work of Maggie Michael, with Michele Araujo and Will and Mary Pappenheimer in the project space, and a new print edition by Brece Honeycutt.

Pocket Utopia is pleased to present a two-week international artist residency organized by Omar Lopez-Chahoud and culminating in a one-day exhibition. The participating artists are: Silvina Arismendi (Uruguay), Mauricio Limon (Mexico), and the collaborative team of Martin y Sicilia (Canary Islands). Pocket Utopia will be open daily allowing the public to view work in progress and meet the artists.

Pocket Utopia is pleased to present a solo exhibition of work by Adam Simon. By keeping a deliberately open focus between his painting and public projects, Simon has explored broad networks for the dissemination of art (Four Walls and the Fine Art Adoption Network) while simultaneously pursuing a personal poetry of painted subdued surfaces that both achieve and conceal evidence of the artist’s hand.

Pocket Utopia is pleased to present “Kayosities,” featuring the work of Kay Thomas with Elissa Levy and Björn Meyer-Ebrecht in the project space and a new print edition by Deborah Brown. Proceeds from the sale of the print will be donated to Women in Need, providing housing, help, and hope to New York City’s women.

Pocket Utopia is pleased to present a solo show of artist Fred Gutzeit. Paying homage, through a billboard-sized installation and painting, to the late artist Lee Lozano, Fred Gutzeit turns Pocket Utopia into a walk-in cosmology of wave, particle and worm hole. In addition, Gutzeit will display preparatory drawings and relevant sketchbooks.

Pocket Utopia is pleased to present a group show of artists Dana Gentile, Suzanne Walters, Bill Gerhard and Sophie Naess. By piecing, placing, molding, and making, all 4 artists address an active replacement, constructing collages, models, silk screens and passive solar printing.

Pocket Utopia is pleased to announce the summer artist residency of Matthew Miller at Pocket Utopia, a recent graduate of the New York Academy of Art and recipient of a Postgraduate Fellowship from the Academy of Art. Miller will exhibit at Flowers on Madison Avenue in August. He is the third resident artist to set up “studio” in the space.

Pocket Utopia is pleased to present an exhibition of three photographers: Luke Abiol, Eric Hairabedian and Kristopher Graves. All three artists document the landscape, their friends and the occasional still life in black and white and color, evoking traditional photographic subjects while preserving the polarity between the nature of photography and the nature of looking at the world.

Pocket Utopia is pleased to present an exhibition of artists Brece Honeycutt and Audra Wolowiec. In conversation with the physical space and with an acknowledgement of history, particularly the history of feminist art (materials, production, and execution), both artists create an open dialogue or a presence.

Editioning prints with artists, both emerging and established is one of the main programs of Pocket Utopia.

Pocket Utopia is proud to edition a 3-screen, 3-color print by Elissa Levy.

Pocket Utopia is pleased to present a solo exhibition of artist in residence, Libby Hartle. Since September, Libby Hartle has been transporting her materials and focusing her art-making to a small table at the back of the gallery, transporting her supplies and transforming her ideas to co-exisit with an exhibition program and a visiting public.

In Coast, Rubi shows a group of photographs (color prints and cyanotypes) accompanied by watercolors, drawings, and objects that illuminate the magic of where the water meets the land, and its effect on human behavior and mindset.

It is Gatson’s desire to modulate the conversation surrounding the iconic, the conceptually efficient and the articulation of identity politics through a series of sculptures, paintings, collages and video.

Pocket Utopia is pleased to present an exhibition of the Fine Art Adoption Network (FAAN). FAAN is an online network that uses a gift economy to connect artists and potential collectors. Pocket Utopia will function as a clearinghouse and will facilitate the adoption process. Post-studio artist and Pocket Utopia intern Audra Wolowiec selected the works on view. The adoption of artworks between the artist and collector will be finalized through the website (http://www.fineartadoption.net/); no purchases will be made.

Pocket Utopia is pleased to present a selection of artists from Etsy, an online marketplace for buying and selling all things handmade.

Pocket Utopia is pleased to organize an experimental salon of conceptual art's key figure Lawrence Weiner. The salon will feature a reading room, a re-creation (“A 36” x 36” Removal to the Lathing or Support Wall of Plaster or Wallboard From a Wall,” 1968) and a text piece. Weiner has long pursued inquiries into language and art-making and posits a radical redefinition of the artist/viewer relationship and the very nature of the artwork. Here too, the venue or gallery and its relationship to the artist also gets redefined.

Pocket Utopia is pleased to present the work of Los Angeles based artist Lucas Reiner. In Reiner’s neighborhood in Los Angeles there are trees from every continent of the world and as a result he has become fascinated visually by one thing often overlooked about them-curbside trees are trimmed. By visualizing the trees against a neutralized but smoggy background, Reiner finds subject for portraiture.

Pocket Utopia is pleased to begin its inaugural season with a selection of artists from the esteemed Pierogi Flatfile. Although there might be a Pierogi Show part 2 next year, this year Pocket Utopia opens the file and presents 20 artists and their various styles, all works on paper, and one site specific installation.

Pocket Utopia is pleased to present 6 brave photographers who courageously make a space within a raw and demolished storefront. Where some gallery’s present shows in recently renovated yet not quite finished interiors, Pocket Utopia is simply sweeping aside the debris and putting up work.

a site-specific installation and performance: open for special viewing, June 9th, 10th and 11th, 11-6pm