Pre game cheer! Go Rachel! Go Nora!

A Vegetarian Friendly Animal Dinner!

Friday, January 25th Like the Spice hosted the latest in its monthly dinner series, the Animal Dinner. Mariyam Nayeri catered the event for a great crowd. The food was delectable from the apple and fennel salad to the sea bass with salsa verde and the chestnut honey pear upside down cake.


Adding to the enjoyment of the evening were Allison Edge and Tatiana Kronberg who each talked about their pieces in Deer Art, why they are drawn to animal imagery and why they think so many artists are using animals in their work at the moment.

Capping it all off was Sharita Star who told us about Chinese astrology's use of animal symbolism, made predictions for a few lucky guests and told us about the coming year based on both Chinese and Western astrology.




Pernod, sponsor of our dinner series, was there again pouring delicious cocktails including Absinthe Minded, a crowd favorite. There was even Pernod dessert made by Mariyam...Pernod affogato with espresso!



In the end it was a wonderful and stimulating evening. Join us for a future dinner and you'll see for yourself how truly wonderful these events are.

Ain't No Party Like A Puppet Party.

As a part of January's Williamsburg Every Second, where galleries in the Williamsburg Gallery Association stay open late on the second Friday of the month to host parties and events, Like the Spice was psyched to host the Castle Critters. These fuzzy trouble makers and their ringleader David Marin entertained and informed gallery visitors as they visited Deer Art: Animal Imagery in Contemporary Art. (Show closing February 3rd...don't miss it!)

We learned about puppet performance, showmanship and a little about life. Then the puppets rocked a little to some of their favorites including Lou Reed, Christina Aguilera, Macy Gray and The Eagles. Not a bad range for felt and craft fur! Check out the video of some of their performances.

Claw, Claw, bite, bite Dinner it is!

At Like the Spice, we've got a history of making guests feel at home. This month is no different, as we host a dinner fit for the king of the jungle! Come enjoy our Animal Dinner, themed to match our current show, Deer Art. This month's dinner is catered by Mariyam Nayeri, who included a mission statement with her menu. She writes, "Our approach to food is rooted in creating beautiful and simple dishes using fresh, seasonal and local ingredients that are served with passion and style." We've seen the menu and it looks delicious (here's just a little preview: pan roasted sea bass with salsa verde, roasted chicken with lemons and herbs, and sweet onion tart with rosemary ... plus more!)

Our Animal Dinner offers you a night that's positively soaked in art. As you dine you'll enjoy a talk by Tatiana Kronberg and Allison Edge two of the artists participating in our current group show, and then 2008 is the year of the rat in Chinese astrology our very special guest will speak about what is to come in the new year! Served family style in the gallery itself, our dinner series is designed to let you enjoy a scrumptious meal while having a thoughtful conversation with strangers. Let yourself be inspired together by the stunning array of animal imagery hanging on our walls. Just $50 per person covers dinner, drinks and entertainment. Dinner is served at 8:00pm. Sponsored by Pernod.
Reservations are required, so make your reservations before Wednesday, January 23rd. Call us at 718.388.5388 or email info@likethespice.com.

LTS = star

Take a hike
By Daniel Goldberg
for The Brooklyn Paper

A walk through Williamsburg —
“Second Fridays are not just a specific date to bring the art world together,” said Marissa Sage, director of Like The Spice Gallery, “but also something really unique to get a large group out.”
Naomi Village: In the heart of the Poconos

In addition to the jovial atmosphere that a late-night gallery walk fosters, artwork is often unveiled as a treat for “Second Friday” participants; for example, Like the Spice will be showing “Castle Critters” (pictured), a two-hour puppet musical starring artist David Marin’s owls, eels and deer.


Click here to read the whole article.

Its a neighborhood affair! Pacing Tiger and friends.

Visible from dusk 'til dawn, Like the Spice brings some wildlife to our asphalt jungle in the form of Johnna MacArthur's Pacing, a site-specific video installation in the gallery's newest show: Deer Art: Animal Imagery in Contemporary Art. Like the Spice, which is just as much about community as it is about art, once again entices the average passerby as much as the seasoned connoisseur as we all take delight in glimpsing the tiger for the first time. Whether a surprising discovery during a walk home from running errands, or part of a well-planned evening stroll

Flip out@ Like the Spice opening Feb 8th

Flip: Rachel Beach and Nora Herting
February 8th – March 29th 2008
Opening Reception Friday February 8th 6:30-10:00pm
Armory After-Hours Pep Rally Saturday March 29th 7:00-11:00 pm

Who rocks the house? Like the Spice rocks the house and when Like the Spice rocks the house, they rock it all the way down.

Like the Spice is pleased to present the work of two artists working with ambiguity. Rachel Beach creates wall-mounted sculptures that burst the boundaries between real and illusory visual perception. Nora Herting’s flocked photographs rest in the space between truth and fiction, celebration and expose. Any attempt to resolve the contradictions in these artist’s work rests on shaky ground.

We take in an overload of sensory information and process most of it automatically, we rely on neurological and linguistic shortcuts for almost everything. Enter the finely crafted work of Rachel Beach with its shortcut short circuitry tripping up our tidy perception. Each of her sculpture/paintings is designed to collide our visual perception of three-dimensional form with our perception of the illusory space created by the pieces’ painted and veneered skins. These visual acrobatics are more than Jedi mind tricks though. The perceptual flip-flops these works create sensitize us to our flawed biological circuitry; we know our brain is being hacked but remain powerless to see what is right in front of us. Usually we rely on the logic of “seeing is believing” but when viewing Rachel Beach’s work we can do neither.

Nora Herting’s Spirit series is also premised upon a meticulously controlled presentation of space but the performative space is transformed into social allegory. Based on photographs taken during cheerleading competitions, these works conflate distinctions between documentary and fantasy, public and private space as well as the viewer and creator. These photographs are unmanipulated documents of the performers they depict; each tableau was created in real time as part of a routine. Removing the backgrounds and therefore the context both introduces ambiguity and an extreme focus on the cheerleaders themselves. The girl’s expressions of fierce determination and practiced smiles become archetypical. Placed in front of colorfully flocked backgrounds patterned with hybrid cheerleading-floral motifs the subjects become stand-ins for their competitive, athletic and stage-managed worlds. These photographs straddle the genres of sports documentary and social portraiture. Both staged and candid, real and constructed the cheerleaders are both specimens from another world and symbols of it simultaneously.

Born in Canada in 1975, Rachel Beach received her BFA from NSCAD University in 1998 and her MFA from Yale University in 2001. Rachel has shown her work across both the USA and Canada. She is a past recipient of the Ontario Arts Council Exhibition Grant and the Canada Council for the Arts Production Grant and was a 2007 nominee for the Louis Comfort Tiffany Emerging Artist Grants. In the past, Like the Spice presented Rachel’s work as part of Deer Art: Animal Imagery in Contemporary Art and was pleased to represent her work at the Fountain Miami Fair in December 2007.

Nora Herting received her BFA from the University of New Mexico in 1999 and her MFA from Ohio State University in 2005. Nora has showed her photographs, installations and performance works across the country and internationally. She was an artist in residence at the McColl Center for the Visual Arts and was a winner of the Vermont Studio Artist Scholarship both in 2007. This is Nora’s first show at Like the Spice.