KK Kozik
KK Kozik is an artist and writer on art and music. She lives in Sharon, Connecticut, with her family where she also runs ICEHOUSE Project Space, a venue for site-specific work.
Flying Woman: The Paintings of Katherine Bradford
By KK Kozik“Full circle” is the phrase that comes to mind apropos Katherine Bradford’s exhibition Flying Women at the Portland Museum of Art.
Preetika Rajgariah: Servicing Self
By KK KozikThe poetic potential of yoga mats, it's safe to say, has rarely been explored in painting. In the hands of Preetika Rajgariah, however, second-hand plasticky pads transcend novelty and become the underpinning for self-portraits that are a sexy brew of eye candy, conceptual smarts, and earthy physicality.
BILLY BRAGG: Content Over Style
By KK Kozik“The irony is that somehow I’ve built an entire career on working to change the world,” states Billy Bragg. Irony? That thankless job is what Bragg is known for.
TRIXIE WHITLEY’s Dot Odyssey
By KK Kozik“Team-building—I’m working on team-building.” Trixie Whitley is briefly at home in Greenpoint, on a hiatus from touring to support Fourth Corner, her first full-length album, and is spending it searching for a replacement drummer for the next leg.
KT TUNSTALL: Travelling Light
By KK KozikAs she came onstage at N.Y.U.’s Skirball Center, KT Tunstall gestured toward her platinum jacket and trousers and laughingly termed herself “gift-wrapped.” She sparkled in the spotlight as she picked up her guitar and began “Invisible Empire,” one of the two eponymous tracks from her recent album, the double-named Invisible Empire//Crescent Moon.
Howe Gelb: Smelling The Smoke Of A Future Fire
By KK Kozik“I can make this bold statement now,” pronounces Howe Gelb, “because I’m well over 50 and we’re allowed to come to conclusions: music in its most pure form is in a state of evolution constantly. I believe that whatever you are doing, however you are playing, it has to keep changing. It is always on its way somewhere. Whatever the music wants from you it will apply itself through you.”
Chocolate Genius: Next Wave Songwriter Resting at BAM
By KK KozikOn Valentine’s Day last year, former Mayor Ed Koch stood up at the Algonquin Hotel and declared, “I love Marc Anthony Thompson.” Marc Anthony Thompson, the creative drive behind the musical collective known as Chocolate Genius, had described what had taken place when he violated the unspoken etiquette of subway riding.
Time and Materials
By KK Kozik“Twenty-two stops to the city,” chants Garland Jeffreys in “Coney Island Winter.” Twenty-two stops. If you are reading this you may recognize the feeling this song evokes—I remember it myself—you’re living double-digits deep down a subway line to afford the rent while the flame of Manhattan burns in the distance.
Chris Whitley: Cultural Asylum
By KK KozikThe American expatriate of the quintessential Henry James kind is in flight from one reality to another, engaged in a hejira that may transcendentally alter the conditions of his or her life. Often the handcuffs are golden, a suffocating surfeit of material comfort: an unearned inheritance, betrothal to a wealthy suitor. Vulgar American currency buys entrée to high culture, but in the end the European sojourn creates conflict.
¡Divertido! Dan Zanes’s ¡Nueva York! Brings a Guerilla Groove to Family Music
By KK KozikFun is not a word commonly understood to spearhead subversive politics. Yet when Dan Zanes discusses life and music it becomes clear that fun is the sword with which he fights the good fight.
JIM WHITE: An Acquired Taste
By KK KozikThe conversation reaches an awkward pause when I tell Jim White that the Brooklyn Rail music editor wants him for an issue on “underappreciated” artists.
