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TIMELINE: ► 2013 + 2014 + 2016 + 2017 + 2018 + 2019 + 2020 + 2021 + 2022
Seventh Acker Award
presented by ►Clayton Patterson
NOTE: The reason for the Dec 30th was to just get the award done in 2020. But was not really ready. So it took until into the 2021 to get the box and all the posters and so on. We are 2021... but this is the 2020 Ackers. The year for the virus. We will have to do the 8th in 2021. We will have 2 this year.
JOHNSON THEATER | 155 First Avenue | NYC 10003
Thursday June 10th 2021. Starts 7PM.
TAGGED: ►Prologue + Preview + Slide show + Poster
Zito's cups + Recipients + Book
Livestreaming on 12/30/20
ATTENTION: Please try to get there between 6-6:30 PM. Also, please note, the restrictions are that people must show proof of vaccination or a negative test within the last 7 days.
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STAFF:
Creator: Clayton Patterson | Catalogue cover design: Steve Ellis
Catalogue cover painting: Elsa Rensaa
Box: Mehdi Matin | Booklet: John Gagliano
Helping organize: Puma Perl, Peter Cramer and Jack Waters
Music: Burning Buddha for the NY ACKER slideshow
Sponsor of the booklet: Cossd Marte of CONBODY.
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PROLOGUE
By Founder & Producer CLAYTON PATTERSON
This is our 7th successful year of the ACKER Awards. The meaning of ACKER in the NY ACKER Awards is taken from an archaic Dutch word meaning a noticeable movement in a stream. The stream is the mainstream and the noticeable movement is the avant grade.
By documenting my community, on an almost daily base, I have come to understand that gentrification is much more than the changing face of real estate and forced population migrations. The influence of gen¬trification can be seen in where we live and work, how we shop, bank, communicate, travel, law enforcement, doctor visits, etc. We will look back and realize that the impact of gentrification on our society is as powerful a force as the industrial revolution was.
I witness the demise and obliteration of just about all of the recogniz¬able parts of my community, including so much of our history. I be¬lieve if we do not save our own history, then who will?
The NY ACKERS are one part of a much larger vision and ambition. A vision and ambition that is not about me but it is about community. Our community. Our history. The history of the Individuals, the Outsid¬ers, the Outlaws, the Misfits, the Radicals, the Visionaries, the Dream¬ers, the contributors, those who provided spaces and venues which allowed creativity to flourish, wrote about, talked about, inspired, mentored the creative spirit, and those who gave much, but have not been, for whatever reason, recognized by the mainstream. Contribu¬tors who have stayed on the grind for more than a couple of decades.
The NY ACKER recipients are developing into a large community as complex, diverse, inclusive, as the old Lower East Side used to be. The Award is made up of three parts: a poster, a booklet, and a box. The poster is a public way to mark the event. The booklet con¬tains past recipients, current, bios, photos, or in the case of postu- mous a Zito hand illustrated coffee cup. The box is like a time capsule, a treasure chest filled with objects that will give an indication of what the recipient contributed: could be a poem, a book, a photograph, a piece of film, a drawing, newspaper, and so on. All of the venues we have held our ceremonies in have deep roots in the LES.
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PREVIEW
Music for this slide show, "Morning"
composed and performed by @Burning__Buddha
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LIVESTREAMING
NY Acker Awards ceremony on instagram
New York, NY 10003 | Dec 30, 2020 at 6pm
The Acker Awards, now in their seventh year, are a tribute given to members of the avant-garde arts community who have made outstanding contributions in their discipline in defiance of convention, or else served their fellow writers and artists in outstanding ways. The award’s novelist namesake, in her life and work, exemplified the risk-taking and uncompromising dedication that identifies the true avant-garde artist.
Each recipient receives a commemorative box that contains original art works and mementos created by some of the 40 winners.
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Previous NY Acker Awards ceremony slide show
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Poster
Jerry Pagane created the appreciation for the Health Care Workers
Ray Felix created the LES NY ACKER Superhero
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Zito's posthumous cups
REVIEW by STAFF
Disposable Icons: Zito’s Coffee Cup Portraiture
in: Bowery Boogy on December 9th, 2020
Antony Zito has been a fixture of the Lower East Side art scene for decades. But it’s one of his more recent artistic pursuits that strikes a chord.
Discarded paper coffee cups are the canvas on which Zito imparts profiles of downtown luminaries. The effort began four years ago as part of the annual Acker Awards, the ceremony seven-year-old show founded by Clayton Patterson that honors the avant-garde of the East Village and Lower East Side. He was asked to contribute “small artworks” to the so-called “Acker boxes,” which are the physical award. The cups were a posthumous honor to those lost during the year prior.
When it came to inspiration, Zito fell back on a pillar of New York City life – the ubiquitous blue-and-white Greek coffee cup. It’s officially called an “Anthora,” which derives from the Greco-Roman amphora, an ancient container.
“I wanted something that just screamed ‘New Fuckin’ York!’ the artist told us in an email. “It had to be small, it had to be found, preferably dirty, and it had to be readily available. I was standing on a corner thinking about all this when I spotted a Greek diner coffee cup squashed on the street, I knew instantly that this would be the perfect disposable icon to represent New Yorkers.”
In 1963, the Sherri Cup Company created a standard coffee cup in an effort to appeal to Greek food vendors and restaurant owners. The company’s Marketing Director (and survivor of the death camps), Leslie Buck, added the message: “We are happy to serve you.” Soon thereafter, the Anthora became synonymous with to-go cups in New York City. (The trademark is owned by the Solo Cup Company since 2004, and licenses out the design.)
Sales hit a peak of 500 million in 1994, with The New York Times describing the cups as “perhaps the most successful cup in history.” In 2003, the a ceramic version of the cup was designed and then sold by the MoMA.
For the seventh installment of the Ackers, though, Zito is specifically avoiding the diner cup. “The variations in color and tone that I find on all the random cups I find can be really lovely to work with and these variations can strongly influence the direction I take in creating the image,” he said.
Zito sells these portraits outside of the Ackers orbit, too. There is a dedicated Etsy store, where customers can either purchase a one finished cup portrait (e.g. Lou Reed, Debbie Harry, David Byrne, Joan Jett) or custom order by submitting an image.
