May 6, 2013 1

Art as Commodity

By in Column, Photography, Writing

 

I always feel existential when I finish bodies of work and I’m in the pitching phase. Not only looking forward to making new work, but the angst of showing it to art dealers and gallerists. It’s exciting to be on ArtNet and work with Martha Takayama. I’ve also dropped off packets around town. I’m waiting. Hoping for a call. I really don’t know what I’m waiting for. I know I want some sort of gallery with some sort of sales record. I don’t just want to put up the photos on a white wall and find out later that nothing at the gallery has ever sold, or that the gallery doesn’t have any collector base.

Friends keep on reminding me that I shouldn’t be so focused on the business of art. I should just make the work. Yet I’ve constantly found myself in a place, where I can’t make the work, because I haven’t focused on the business.

Art is commodity. Now more then ever. I don’t even think anyone buys anything because they like it anymore. I feel like art just goes in drawers or hermetically sealed warehouses or in some magical vault somewhere after it’s been purchased from a jpg, does a collector even look at the work anymore or just listen to their blond hair, doe eyed consultant. This will be the year of Koons as New York Magazine points out. With two gallery shows and a massive retrospective. He was a Wall Street guy turned artist. He bought up old masters so he could study them and merge himself into the history of art. Almost like he’s afraid of being passed up by it. Creating plaster monuments that will, maybe – stand the test of time. I don’t think art should always have meaning. Or stand for something. It should be pretty. But I do think the artist should actually make the art. Koons always feels like an art director. From having someone else shape his balloons to a team running the CAT scan.

Yes, the eye is important. But sometimes I feel sidelined because I actually believe I should make the work. That I have to use my gumption to build and craft it – that I hit the very limitations of my reality and have to push them forward. Studios have always existed and even the old masters hated painting hands. Yet I feel like they never grew to employee hundreds of people, who all made the work. Then plugged it into the consumer behemoth. Read the rest of this entry »

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September 11, 2012 0

Ten reasons I miss Bryant Park

By in Column, Photography, Street, Writing

Lincoln Center for Spring Fashion Week 2013

Although I know the move to Lincoln Center was supposed to be better. I still miss fashion’s former home in the park. Call me nastoglic and brand me an aging fashionista (who would have thought?).

1) There was always an open bar in the lobby.
2) The pop burgers in the W Hotel Lounge.
3) It didn’t look like a car dealership.
4) It was closer to all the trains, not just the red line.
5) Downtown shows were easier to get to.
6) The fountain decked out in flowers.
7) Smaller branded kiosks.
8) An ample supply of free coffee.
9) Security guys yelled at you less and knew everyone.
10) The lockstep of fashionable editors, head down, paper invitations out and to the ready, walking up the tent steps.


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August 29, 2012 1

The Summer of Art – The Middle of the Great Recession

By in Column, Writing

I think I’ve always judged the art world by its worst art, never the good stuff. This has been a practice of mine for many seasons.

When I first used this metric, plastic bags and found art were the norm. On the flip side, I only judge fashion by the very best, because that’s the trickle down effect in culture. Art is all about capturing the new (sans Damien Hirst). Every imaginable variant on found trash bags; from the kind you find in grocery stores, to the simple black ten-gallon variety. Some formed into cars, others filled with cement. But in the end. Nothing could transform them, into more then just being – plastic bags. I have yet to see one of these pieces in a collection.

Article Title Slide

I love talking to art dealers, listening them describe their artists. The plastic bag phenomenon happened in 2009, a year after the world stood still. At one point, one was explaining the artist’s process; he looked down, almost bemused by his own description of how the sculpture foraged through junkyards. Anything can be made to sound luxurious. Yet trash is still trash.
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August 15, 2012 0

Slowly We Turn

By in Column, Well, Writing

Summary: An op-Ed about Paul Ryan.

It was midnight. When Merrill Lynch announced it’s shotgun wedding to Bank of America, I was in a bar with Sunday night friends. When Lehman Brothers announced it’s bankruptcy – I was in a taxi storming down Madison Avenue with a wealthy friend. We started talking about the collapse. I remember vividly aghast, stating “the street looks so alive, but all these stores will shutter in the next few months”. I walked down Madison months later and sure enough – “For Rent Signs” replaced luxury monikers.

In the past year, we’ve seen the real estate market bounce back with full force. Largely because cities and small towns across the nation have emptied out and people with hopes for a better job have come to the cities, NYC being a prime destination for those who’ve felt stuck in their small markets. I’ve seen this happen a lot, especially with ASMP and in dive bars where creatives’ huddle. During and after the Depression, the cities recovered quicker and faster then the suburbs.

“What happens when Editors and PR Girls reach a certain age.” I’m at Woodbury Commons having Margaritas at the Applebees chatting with a friend who’s just received a promotion, friends shop for seasons old sale items. We’re frank about salaries, pitching and possibilities. He’s just received a promotion. But at 40, neither one of us know where to go beyond Editor-In-Chief. A goal that seems almost unattainable to many, but will be in his grasp. Another friend works for a Gossip rag, churning out blog posts like a sweatshop worker makes cheap shirts. We both pop into IM almost daily, wondering about our fate as a freelancer. I realize at some point, that because a generation behind me, hasn’t gotten paid, rates stay the same, because as I develop more skill and savvy, it’s still not enough for salary comps.
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August 6, 2012 0

Picking Paper

By in Column, Photography, Writing

hahnemuhle

I’m excited to have finally chosen a paper for my show. This three month process has not only been daunting but frustrating. But I know a whole heck of a lot more about printing then I ever did. When I started working with still life. I didn’t think it was going to turn into a fine art gallery show. Over time it became one. I also knew color would become steadily important, so I wanted to work with vibrancy and contrast. You’ll notice a very strong and defined color palette in each photograph. [link to food section]

At the ASMP fine art review. I sat down with a collector and he wanted me to push color even further. I had actually muted it slightly for the presentation. A few months ago. That was the color trend emerging – I was also a bit afraid of pushing it all the way. Lastly – editor’s were responding to my glossy book of still life (my newest portfolio). They really liked it. But time and time again, I was told that collectors and the fine art world does not like glossy. So this unique bridge needed to be crossed.

Finally I had to actually find a paper that could hold and communicate the saturation strongly. After trying many print suppliers and choices – I have more 8×10 sheets from mills then I’d ever care to admit. I finally settled on Hahnemuehle’s Baryta FB. It’s odd that they consider it a glossy paper, for me it isn’t. It actually has less coating then other suppliers and the paper is brighter white as well. That means all my colors pop off the page and clean crisp lines are created. It has just the right amount of coating to really let the colors strike you. Which is what I wanted. The feeling of larger then life food staring at you, from colors to sculpture.

I really feel like photography is a lot more then just a camera and snap. It’s about the subject, capturing the subject, working with the photo itself. I really wanted to work with images that could only live in photography, that were so ephemeral that it can’t live in any other context.

So I’m excited I have my paper and can get to work putting the show together. Now I just have to find the right gallery.

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July 12, 2012 0

Interview: The Making of Gazelle

By in Column, Photography, Writing

Gazelle Paulo has been a fixture in the New York social scene for years. I’ve been watching him come up with creative creations time after time, season after season. He’s constantly colorful and I’m excited that he spent some time during Pride to answer some questions about his projects and creative process. I hope you enjoy this window into a New York stalwart.

Gazelle Paulo get’s dressed for Pride.

How long have you been marching in the Pride Parade? Why did you first march?
G: I have been marching since 1999. From 1992 to 1998, I lost some dear friends to AIDS, and these friends always asked me to march with them. I really didn’t care that much to do it then… but in 1999 another friend who was visiting New York invited me to dress up and go… so I thought “what the hell, why not? “…. so during the parade that year, I became really emotional during the minute of silence honoring people who have died of AIDS; I thought that I was having such a wonderful time marching, I regretted not having done it with my friends who were no longer around… so in a way I make it a personal event, I march for them.
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July 10, 2012 0

The 2012 CBGB Music Festival

By in Column, music, Photography, Writing

Major music movements have escaped me. I missed Brooklyn and the skinny jeans shaggy haired new wave. I’m not old enough to remember the hay day of the actual CBGB’s and its’ piss filled ambiance that spawned some of the greatest rock bands in America. Low lit black boxes that often act like Petri dishes of creativity.

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart on Summer Stage

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart on SummerStage in Central Park during the 2012 CBGB Music Festival.

I couldn’t help stop and have a silent moment in front of John Varvatos, as I went to the Bowery Electric – to watch a svelte black kid in tie-dye shorts screech about “Getting High” (Mykke Blanco). The store has now taken over the Morison Hotel: the rock gallery once next door.In Times Square, under the Mamma Mia sigh – Rockers play two stages, there’s the prerequisite food trucks, token shitless women; boobs out flaying in the wind, shirtless young men and wide eyed tourist. But the festival is a casualty of the heat as people watch a set and run to the air conditioning of the M&M store.

Times Square might not be cut out for a music festival, but Manhattan desperately needs one.

I still have David Johansen stuck in my head, from a few days before. One man – drummer and a stool, his lyrics voice and expression. In stark contrast to the over produced music of our day. I felt this massive connection to the past and loved it. I almost saw the sex, drugs and experimentation that birthed our modern culture.
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March 6, 2012 0

Notes on Photography

By in Column, Photography, Writing

“Can you make me famous?” a model insists, while trying to arm twist me into creating an image that will propel him to the fabled pages of Vogue and into a Prada campaign.

I tried to gently explain that it takes a lot of time and testing to get there, and models don’t always have the ability to control their fate; simply being “hot” is not enough.  I started working with food shortly after that conversation happened for the third time in a row, with three different doe-eyed faces. A model concerned with fame never makes good pictures, and they have yet to give me the look I need to move forward. It’s allabout the picture and I have yet to have a kiwi, pomegranate, or alligator claw be concerned with their own stardom.

cover picture for notes on photography

That being said, I’m ready to get back to testing and creating fashion images.  Working within the photo and working with single ingredients and patterns has taught me about filters and backgrounds, sculpture and transformation.  Food is ever patient and finding the prefect subject is as simple as going to the farmers market or grocery store or taking walks in Chinatown.

When I started reading Just Kids by Patti Smith, a book about her youth and relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe – her roommate and occasional lover – I thought the process of creating work would be wholly different and unique to a bygone era.  It’s not. Creating work, finding resources and models, discovering patrons and buyers, getting a gallery  – it’s all the same.

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February 21, 2012 0

Let’s Welcome the Architect Girl

By in Column, Well, Writing

It’s taken awhile but we’re entering a new age in fashion focused on modernism, architecture and sadly climate change. I talked to one creative director who pondered the almost ubiquitous looks strutting down fall’s runway of vests, bare arms and shortish skirts. After many seasons the spikes and armor are falling off and leaving behind maroon, burgundy and sometimes crimson in their wake – a fashion scab. Gold and red, are becoming the combined colors of the moment.

the architect girl

Start of Michael Bastian, Fall Fashion Week 2012

Shiny things, from bow ties and breastplates, are not just for the Blonds anymore. Marlon Gobel, sponsored by Swarovski did just that. Having handprints on your outfit might be a great way of flirting (DVF & Rodarte), but at any moment I expect Vidal Sassoon to rise to prominence and give us the five-pointed cut. Will a new version of The Factory begin and who’ll be our next Andy Warhol? Luxury is yawning ever so gracefully; trying to make it’s way back into a recognizable statement to differentiate the classes. Appliqué prints made to look like your grandmother’s couch are out.

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February 10, 2012 3

As Fashion Changes, So Do Bloggers

By in Column, Writing

The Huffington Post was a large part of my life, but things change and mergers happen. I was one of the first few bloggers to be invited in when the site moved beyond politics and one of the first to be allowed into the Bryant Park tents to report on the once rarefied world of fashion.

My lexicon and understanding grew, my desire to create better work with newfound partnerships increased. The site helped me grow as an artist; with an ever-increasing roster of readers and opportunities to connect.

Encouraged to write and cover anything that my heart fancied and editorial nose sniffed out, I listened to some great stories and was invited to important shows, watching a myriad of ateliers unfurl their latest work. The mystery of how hemlines rose and fell unraveled before my eyes. At the start, editorial freedom was encouraged. As Huffington Post grew, however, it became impossible to balance the needs of the site, my own, and almost impossible to read – ever changing tea leaves of the industry. In the end, I was offered a PR-funded trip to Toronto Fashion Week and Diesel wanted me to go to Milan. The site said no and made it clear this was simply a platform for self-promotion and press trips were no longer allowed. On the flip-side, if I had deep pockets and sponsored my own trip I could write about it.

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