Dashwood Books announces Danny's Lot by Jocko Weyland

Dashwood Books announces Danny's Lot by Jocko Weyland

Wednesday, Aug 05, 2015 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

“Danny’s Lot is a compendium of color photographs taken over a two-year period of a truly remarkable temporary autonomous zone situated on the shores of the famously befouled Gowanus Canal, a domain benevolently and mischievously ruled over by the eponymous Danny Tinneny of the title. A ramshackle steel and concrete magical oasis behind barbed wire fences, hidden away from prying eyes, the lot had many lives, first as a car salvage business and then as the home to the office of a moving company, a woodshop, parking for movie stylist RVs, and from 2009-11, the period featured, host to Macro Sea’s Dumpster Pools and Glassphemy! There were also assorted punk shows, film screenings, and Danny’s “Things that Stay, Things that Go” art exhibition, and too many other fun and nefarious activities to name. Those are documented and alluded to in the long form essay that ends the book, a celebration and elucidation of what went on there as well a deeply heartfelt eulogy for Danny, who had made it all possible, and passed away in 2013. The writing is homage to Danny and other assorted lot  characters, including but not limited to trans-gendered boat-living punkers, Bulgarian performance artists, Dominican mechanics, zine makers, dyed-in-the-wool anarchists, ex-convicts, swimmers, and hot girls in bikinis. Meanwhile, the photographs concentrate on a gritty and occasionally sublime repository of readymade beauty, replete with sundry forklifts, custom-painted bollards, a backhoe, a Grove crane, unidentifiable rusted pieces of metal, oil drums, numerous ladders, stacks of wood, sandbags, tires, and shipping containers. Taken all together it constituted a not entirely accidental, deliberately ad hoc sculpture garden.  Set off by the big skies above the canal, the weedy domain with its semi-feral cats hunting amongst the detritus was evidence of a keen sensitivity on both its owner’s and portraitist’s part to the appeal of what many might consider junk. These objects and arrangements helped give the lot its unique character and often transcended utilitarian origins to enter the realm of the purely sculptural, combining undeniable formal qualities and socio-historical resonance. An accumulation of weathered, battered, and engrossing remnants of the Gowanus’ past and its more recent multi-use present, this aesthetically rich environment is the subject and raison d’être of Danny’s Lot.” Jocko Weyland