Artists Without Walls’ co-founder Niamh Hyland along with longtime collaborator Michael Brunnock, are set to release their first album, entitled “Live to Love.”
Hyland & Brunnock will be holding an album release party at Rockwood Music Hall, Stage 2, on Oct. 25, 2018. Click here for tickets.
As most artists, with or without walls, know all too well, it isn’t easy nor is it cheap to produce art in this era. Hyland & Brunnock have kicked off a crowdfunding campaign to help offset the significant expense of professionally producing their new album.
For information on how you can help, please visit their Indiegogo page here.
For more, check out the following videos!
Cecil Hooker and Peter Nolan
Great artists have the ability to create with less, allowing us our own space to develop our own story: Francisco Goya, in his Tauromaquia series used blank canvas and shadings of grey and white to create the feeling of space. In this sketch, Goya uses empty space to dramatize the fury of a singular moment of horror during a bullfight.
right up until the crisis point or conflict resolution. The ending was perfect. I sent my friend a note. “I could see your character in the last scene and I understood his problem. I knew his motivations and I was there with him. You didn’t have to tell me the character was desperate or frantic, you’d done all the heavy lifting earlier. Your shorter words and shorter sentences built a moment of high drama. Your writing shows great respect for your reader; you allow them the space to be creative; you allow them the space to furnish the emotion. Less is more. In my view, that’s what often makes for great storytelling.”
As I feared, her death and burial, and the emotions that the story evoked in me, were still too raw. I bowed my head and my eyes filled with tears; I had no idea how I would go on. Finally, I looked up. I was astonished. The entire front row was crying. I regained my composure. I was able to finish my story.
As I studied “Firemen Playing Cards” in greater detail, I noticed that there was a similarity in style or at least a suggestion of Edward Hopper’s painting, “Nighthawks.” Deliberate and spare, each painting captures a singular New York moment in which three New Yorkers seem lost in their thoughts, anonymous and uncommunicative. The diner’s harsh electric light sets it apart from the dark night outside, as does the softer light emanating from the hanging lamp over the poker table. 
But then I look at the style in which du Bois painted hands and I wonder if Brady was familiar with du Bois? The hands are almost identical. Was Brady familiar with the school of painters who had studios on 14th St. and Union Square, a few blocks from Engine Co. 14, which is located on 18th Street. Did he take lessons at any of these art leagues?
I don’t remember hearing Edward Brady’s name when I was a child. I noticed his name on the painting after his art was bequeathed to me a number of years ago. Looking through old firehouse logs of Engine 14 I was able to determine that Brady and my grandfather were fellow firefighters. And now I stare at the painting every morning, grateful that my grandfather’s friend, a man with whom he risked his life fighting fires, captured this singular moment in my grandfather’s life.
