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Boys of Summer: Recap

I HOPE YOU ALL WERE ABLE TO STOP BY this past weekend for the Boys of Summer: Artwork from the Pines Nude Drawing Group show at the Leslie Lohman Museum. Opening night we saw around 300 visitors, alone! Saturday night was another big night as we hosted a special cocktail hour for one of our sponsors of the event, Front Runners New York. Throughout the weekend, I was in and out of the gallery and was excited to always find a few people checking out the art. All-in-all, it was a huge success!

Opening Night

Personally, this was an exciting weekend for me. This was my first gallery show in New York, outside of school exhibitions, years ago. I had about a dozen drawings in the show. I was overwhelmed by the support I received from friends and museum faculty. Thank you to everyone who showed up! I even managed to sell a few pieces! 

Special thanks to Carlos Pisco and Shungaboy, for leading a beautiful show!

Keith Haring At The Brooklyn Museum

Today I checked out the Keith Haring exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum. I visited upon the recommendations of some friends and was pleasantly surprised by the show. Honestly, I knew very little of Haring's work before the show. I was familiar with his street art, but hadn't realized it was part of a larger body of work, and that the street art actually came later in his career.

What I found was a much deeper body of work that included not only graffiti, but drawings, paintings, sound, and video art. An added bonus to the images were excepts from Haring's journals that illuminated his thought processes and the evolution of his work. It was quite impressive how across so many media Haring was able to use such a limited vocabulary. From start to finish similar characters were able to convey scenes depicting personal emotion, commentary on the art world, and satire on the commercialism of our society. It was quite eye-opening to me to see there was so much more behind Haring's work than a few pyramids and dogs plastered throughout NYC subway stations.

The above image is the largest image included in the exhibit. I didn't get the measurement of the piece but it had to be at least 30 feet wide by 6 feet tall. It's my favorite piece from the show. I simply cannot imagine creating a piece with such precision. With sumi ink, there is no erasing. All of these lines were created first try!! It is interesting to me not only because its size, but it is also an example of Haring combining the characters of his story-telling with the dense patterning he created in an initially separate body of work. So awe-inspiring!!

While I impressed by the in-depth display of Haring's process and evolving perspective on art and the viewer, I was disappointed by the lack of information on Keith Haring's personal life. It was obvious that Haring was drawing from his life experiences to create his work. Images of religious symbols, anonymous bodies, phalluses, and scenes of violence and sex carried throughout his body of work but no mention of it appeared on the walls of the gallery to explain why. The complete avoidance of the topic is quite appalling.


Despite this, I highly recommend the show. At the end of the exhibit is a little fun opportunity. Create your own graffiti! (Well, sort of.) You can see here Danny Jones and my Haring-inspired work. Go make your own!

Also, it was such a beautiful day today here in NYC, I couldn't help but take some time to sit outside in the sun. Here's a little sketch I did of the Brooklyn Museum and a shot I took on my phone.

Brooklyn, the Beautiful...

Oh Beautiful for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain, for purple mountains; majesty, above the fruited plain...

I've been working from home a lot lately and it gets pretty boring. Imagine not having to take the subway for work, to pack or go out for lunch, having any coworkers to gossip with or about and with everything you need in reach of your desk (including a bed...).

It's a bit lonely and I get stir crazy. So occasionally I'll take a break from work and make a point to get out of my apartment. I take a walk around the block, go for a run, do my laundry and sometimes just climb up to my roof.

Yesterday I took a trip to the roof and was greeted by this amazing sky. I'm actually working on a piece right now that is all about a beautiful sky so I was so happy to find such great reference right before me. Not wanting to risk missing the moment by running to grab my camera, I just took this shot with my camera phone. (God bless technology.)

It's a mix of the Brooklyn and Manhattan skyline with the Williamsburg Bridge right in the center. My favorite part by far though are those tremendous clouds.

Check back in a month or so to see the piece I'm working on...

Alice + Olivia Spring 2010 Fashion Show

It's Fashion Week here in New York! For most people not much changes this week until you find yourself standing next to a 6'2," 110 lbs, blonde girl on the corner near Bryant Park or in the Meat Packing District.

Last night I got to step a little deeper into Fashion Week by attending designer Stacy Bendet’s Alice + Olivia Fashion Show/Party. I got an invitation after being hired to create illustrations for the show. The show consisted of a Parisian theme for their Spring 2010 collection and I was asked to create pen and ink drawings of things quintessentially French: the Eiffel Tower, Pont Neuf, street signs, windows and then some fun accessories for the models to hold: balloons, ice cream cones, and flowers.






The show was a ton of fun to attend with a live performance by the french band the Plasticines, and I was super excited by the way the illustrations turned out. I was worried they might not hold up being blown up in size a couple hundred times, but they held together on the wall just as well as they did on paper.

I'm not very good at the whole celebrity sighting game, but I nearly brushed shoulders with Heather Graham as she strolled through the show. There was one girl everyone was taking pictures of that I had no idea was. Turns out it was Ashley Greene one of the vampire stars of that hit (that I haven't seen) Twilight. Also in attendance were Lindsay Lohan, Mena Suvari, Nikki Hilton, Jared Leto, Kelly Rutherford from Gossip Girl and some stars from the new series of 90210 and Melrose Place. I guess I need to catch up on my pop culture before heading to my next show...

You can check out some pictures of the celebrities (some posing next to my drawings!!) and the rest of the pretty clothes at the following links.
http://shop.lucidnewyork.com
http://www.zimbio.com

There's even a YouTube video!

This project was a ton of fun and I really wouldn't mind doing more like it (hint, hint, nudge to anyone reading).

Oh Deer!

This is also from the beach. Let's just say I have plenty of reference photos should any deer projects come up.