Ricky Clifton: Design Minotaur - Part Man, Part Myth

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Ricky Clifton: Design Minotaur – Part Man, Part Myth

By Christopher Daish
Published December 2012

Ricky Clifton: Design Minotaur - Part Man, Part Myth

In the confines of a recent reflective train upstate to Albany, I found myself texting my former employer artist/designer Ricky Clifton. He had just returned from his friend Rachel Feinstein’s opening at the Gagosian in Rome, en route to Milan and Barcelona. “Did you see the ruin, the castle on the small island?” he inquired referring to Bannerman Castle that I had indeed just passed. It took me back to the days spent as Ricky’s assistant; painting the walls of the Interview Magazine office SoHo in Andy’s blue, moving pieces within the cryptic masterpiece that was to become home for supermodel Agyness Deyn, drinking watermelon martinis whilst re-arranging Basquiats at Glenn O’Brien’s apartment, to name a few. Witness to the quiet genius of Clifton, attempting to climb into the landscape of his mind, I encountered a man from another era.

Clifton came from modest stock in Fort Worth, Texas; his father worked at Taco Bell and mother was an executive secretary. In the seventies, he met idol and soon to be friend Andy Warhol, who told him that it was a good time to move to New York. Clifton listened and landed a job in NYC with Jean-Paul Goude at Esquire, costuming celebs’ pets as other celebs for television. He dressed Warhol’s two dachshunds: Amos as the pope and Archie as Jacque Cousteau. Goude left Esquire and the series never aired but Clifton had found his niche amongst the artist elite. Clifton views Warhol as, “the statue of liberty of New York, who took onboard the outsiders, and will never be replaced.” When he called The Factory, Andy always picked up the phone.

Clifton’s pièce de résistance – the Williamsburg loft of British supermodel Agyness Deyn comes to mind when attempting to grapple with his genius. The 3,000 sq. ft. corner loft is an esoteric journey through the upper limits of design possibility and was featured on the cover of the April 2010 edition of World of Interiors. Deyn’s triumph paved the way for the realization of the lofty ambitions of artist super couple Rachel Feinstein and John Currin’s SoHo loft (featured in WOI December 2010). Clifton’s designs draw upon the Early Modern Period, the Aesthetic Movement that gained prominence in 19^th Century Europe. He holds British designers William Morris (1834-96) and Christopher Dresser (1834-1904) in great esteem. In 1977, Clifton studied design in Kyoto, Japan focusing on tea ceremony, noh, kendo, and calligraphy, traits that permeate his work. Integral to his vision are the works of iconic American decorator Billy Baldwin, Italian interior architect Renzo Mongiardino, Italian designer Piero Fornasetti, and American artist Cy Twombly.

Currently, Clifton is decorating a co-op at the Dakota Building (72^nd Street and Central Park West) for private clients; a dream job not only because of his love for Renaissance English Victorian settings, but his like-minded clients and their need for a bar in every room. Jokingly they vow to start a new religion, sort of like Mormonism focused on the girl called “intellectual design.” Between daily jaunts to the Upper West Side, Clifton does flowers for a select clientele including British actress/artist Jemima Kirke. In the seventies, Clifton worked for famous NYC florist Toni Dipace who was discovered by designer Roy Halston and fashion illustrator Joe Eula whilst selling zinnias out of clamshells in Long Island and was responsible for the shift away from arrangements to plants. One Christmas, Clifton delivered a tree to the Dakota Building to Lauren Bacall the wife of the late Humphrey Bogart. When he asked where to put it she replied, “I don’t give a fuck where you put the God Damn thing cause I think Christmas is the most depressing day of the year,” as it was Bogie’s birthday.

A jack-of-all-trades, Clifton procures art and antiques from a variety of auctions and markets worldwide for a broad client base. Entrenched in a seemingly endless whir of design and art, Clifton pauses for a brief moment to revisit his love for opera. In the eighties, Clifton drove a cab in NYC and hoarded opera records, a collection he eventually gave away to artist friend Phillip Taaffe. Clifton fondly recalls when he found a Leontyne Price record discarded on a street corner in Tribeca. Several years later one cold December night, he picked up Price in his cab, whilst listening to his regular Friday night opera broadcast. Serendipitously, Kurt Herbert Adler’s Il Trovatore featuring Price came on. As Clifton approached her Tribeca apartment, Price instructed the cab driver to, “drive around the block, there is a nine minute ovation coming up.” Clifton looped the block and Price asked him to wait while she fetched something from her apartment. When she returned, Clifton rolled down the window and she handed him her latest record and exclaimed, “see I told you it was nine minutes.”

At the conclusion of our lunch meeting at Clifton’s “local deli” Casa Mono (52 Irving Place, NY), the conversation shifted to politics and his disdain for anything Republican. On parting, he gave me his best Mitt Romney trot impersonation and disappeared back into his abstract world.

http://westviewnews.org/2012/12/ricky-clifton-design-minotaur-part-man-part-myth/

Painting For Our Future - West View News

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Keith Haring: Painting For Our Future

By Christopher Daish
Published November 2012

Keith Haring: Painting For Our Future

As the leaves change color, the pool is emptied of water, the children have cleared out, but what remains is the unmistakably powerful imagery of Keith Haring’s mural at the Carmine Street swimming pool (Clarkson Street and 7^th Avenue South). Executed in 1987, the artwork is nothing short of a kinetic soup of abstract primary shapes and colors playfully interconnected, flowing across a 180 ft. horizontal wall (by 18 ft. high) that witnesses say was erected in a few hours. Dolphins dance and jump through rings, engage amphibious humans of warped proportions; a person emerges from a fish’s mouth; the emphasis here is on fun and youth. The late Haring magically created a backdrop laced with hope for the kids who were to frequent the pool in years to come, the message succinctly universal.

Born in 1958, Haring grew up in Kutztown – a small town in Pennsylvania – and at a young age began to follow in his artist father’s footsteps, latching onto cartooning and popular culture, in particular Walt Disney. In 1978, after a brief dabble in commercial art, he moved to New York City to study at the School of Visual Art (SVA). Haring quickly fell into the burgeoning downtown art scene characterized by punk and hip-hop music, dance and graffiti. The city quickly became his canvas, the subways of the Lower East Side, Upper Manhattan and the Bronx, his studios. His spontaneous, iconic chalk renditions on the blank subway advertising panels gave him access to the public and became a key component of his artistic voice.

Haring became immersed in the uninhibited expressive environment that the downtown art scene was becoming; the rotating gallery he curated at the underground music and counter-culture Mudd Club (77 White Street) became a regular fixture. Fellow creative transplants such as Madonna, William Burroughs and Andy Warhol gravitated towards Haring, all of with whom he collaborated. In 1982, he hung his first New York one-man show at the Shafrazi Gallery (544 West 26^th Street) gaining immediate critical acclaim and international recognition.

Haring’s arrival on the global stage paved the way for in excess of 50 public works worldwide during the 1980s. His art investigates topics such as birth, death, love, sex and war. The primacy of his line and figures made his art accessible to the masses with the directness of his message never in doubt. Haring identified the importance of bridging the gap between the bourgeois gallery world and the masses, which he achieved through his public murals. NYC based graffiti artist Rusk cites the importance of street art and graffiti as, “an element of the urban environment that commandeers public space beyond the control of big money real estate and advertising.” In 1986, Haring controversially opened Pop Shop, a retail store in SoHo, that sold his artwork in the form of buttons, T-shirts, mugs and key rings at a modest price.

Haring utilized his artistic star power to tackle the greater social problems at hand such as the crack epidemic, literacy and HIV/AIDS. The “Crack is Wack” wall (128^th Street and FDR Drive) completed in 1986 was evidence of Haring’s fierce concern for society and is the only remaining NYC public piece alongside of Carmine Street Pool mural. Lower East Side artist Chico, a contemporary of Haring, recognizes that change is inevitable in street art, as he has seen his works evolve and disappear over time. He explains, “It must be original and beautiful, unify the community, and carry a deeper message.”

On February 6, 1990, at the age of 31, Haring died of AIDS-related complications. Before his death, he established the Keith Haring Foundation to continue his charitable support of children’s and AIDS-related organizations. He stated, “No matter how long you work, it’s always going to end sometime. And there’s always going to be things left undone (Keith Haring Foundation). Haring’s legacy has lived on through his accessible iconic imagery. In his final years, devoid of self-pity, his paintings spoke to greater social realities. Even though he has exited this lifetime, his art has remained immortal.

http://westviewnews.org/2012/11/keith-haring-painting-for-our-future/

Addition of an orchid provides inspiration

Editing Pays Off - "Beautiful Garbage" to be published

After undergoing tendon surgery on my birthday (12th January 2012), I entered a period of darkness and immobility which prompted me to try my hand at editing fiction. My first project was to look at the work of close friend Jill Di Donato, Professor of English and contributing writer to the Huff Post. The process was wonderfully therapeutic and allowed me to immerse myself into the world of fiction.... 

SHE WRITES PRESS NEWS: ANNOUNCING BEAUTIFUL GARBAGE, JILL DI Donato

If Holly Golightly lived in the ’80s, how far would she go to make a name for herself as Manhattan’s artist du jour?

Jodi Plum: smart, talented, ambitious, troubled. Her story, BEAUTIFUL GARBAGE, parallels an artist’s journey with her sexual epiphanies, exploiting the notorious milieu of the 1980s downtown art scene from an unexplored point of view—that of the young female artist. We know all about Warhol, Basquiat, Keith Haring, and their fictional counterparts, but what about the edgy women artists of this time?

Fresh out of her teens, Plum leaves suburbia for Manhattan’s glam and gritty art scene. She soon falls into the clutches of Monika, a beautiful photographer. Under the spell of her new mentor, Plum quickly becomes a rising star. When a skeleton from her past surfaces, Plum’s dream life crashes to a halt. Overwhelmed by guilt, she slips into a world of parties, drugs, and high-class prostitution.

Set in the crime-plagued New York City of the 1980s, BEAUTIFUL GARBAGE offers a satirical and irreverent look at post-’70s sexual politics, the downtown art scene, and the world of elite call girls. Against this background, Plum struggles with the notion of the modern artist.

A Brooklyn native, Jill Di Donato holds a BA from Barnard College and an MFA in fiction from Columbia University, where she’s also taught writing. Currently, she’s an adjunct Professor of English at several New York schools including Barnard College and The Fashion Institute of Technology. She is a headlining contributor to the Women’s Section of The Huffington Post where she writes about sexual politics, dating, and relationships. Her column “52 Weeks of Sex” is featured on Good Days Media.

Her fiction, essays, and collage have been published in various media outlets, fromThe Saint Ann’s Review to iVillage.com.

Reflection

"Talked about our marriage...the owl cooed" (The Little Owl, NYC)

Body Art

Cats and dogs rain down

Top of the morning to you 

Fall imposes herself begrudgingly

Doodle scrawls draw scowls 

Poochville, a new sheriff in town

West Village Newsboy

Here's Looking at You Kid

Work in Progress

Well, one day maybe.....

16 Jets

The Real McCoy (West View News)

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The Real McCoy:

By Christopher Daish
Published September 2012

The Real McCoy:

The Beast That Is NYC Restaurant Success

When asked about why people choose to open restaurants in New York City, third generation Irish South Bronx firefighter Sean Killarney pauses for a moment and explains, “First and foremost, you have to be crazy.” His new restaurant McCoy (89 McDougal Street corner of Bleecker) located in the heart of Greenwich Village that opened in May this year is not his first rodeo. With two thriving restaurants already, both called Beach House (located in Long Beach and Rockville) whose idyllic deserted island website backdrop beckons, “Choose your paradise,” they are a far cry from the bustling corner of McDougal and Bleecker that has served as a revolving door for restaurants in recent years. He likens his change of scenery to the step up to the N.F.L. or the big time, if you like.

Killarney focuses his attention on a farm-to-table approach with only the freshest local ingredients (many from Hudson Valley). He revisits the importance of his staff as the bridge to the customer and representative of his beliefs. He insists that, in his restaurants, there are “no titles,” a fact that is displayed before my very eyes on a busy Friday night when an elderly couple peers in and he seizes the opportunity. When they ask if he is invested in the place, he fires back, “I am the head busboy,” and offers them a complimentary round. Although they had just eaten dinner, they end up ordering more food and staying for several rounds. The proof is in the pudding. Killarney leads by example and is no stranger to hard work and, often found busing the tables and sweeping the streets, he explains, “Restaurants are a seven-day-a-week business.”

His “in the trenches” attitude is perhaps the reason why he secured the much-coveted lease. One morning late last year, he witnessed what he assumed to be the owner of the building sweeping the pavement, and later in the day, face to face, they realized they were men cut from the same cloth, and the deal was done.

McCoy is located only a stone throw away from Keith McNally’s Minetta Tavern. McNally is a restaurateur who has established a tapestry for success within the contemporary NYC savvy foodie scene without alienating tourists. McCoy’s sleek, well lit bistro fit-out is a return to The Roaring Twenties with wonderful attention to detail. Bill McCoy, an American sea captain and rum runner during prohibition, smuggled alcohol from the Bahamas to the East Coast seaboard off Long Island, known as “Rum Row.” The then “speakeasies” scattered throughout NYC that sold great booze were referred to as the “Real McCoy.” Killarney has witnessed a dramatic negative shift in the paradigm of the American business culture, and ultimately cites pride and hard work as the crux of his business mantra.

The guarantee of success for NYC restaurateurs is a bleak prospect indeed, with four out of five restaurants destined to fail within five years of opening (according to businessinsider.com). Few considerations precede: Location. Location. Location. McCoy experiences a high volume of thoroughfare; a constant stream of tourist buses navigate Bleecker daily (over 50 million domestic and foreign tourists visited NYC last year, according to nycgo.com), is located close to NYU main campus, and is immersed in a famous live music hub. However, a good location is no guarantee in this game, for there are so many moving parts necessary to success and NYC diners are a fickle bunch indeed. Killarney explains you generally only get one chance to impress new customers, and that’s if you can get them through the door. In a city saturated by choice, careful attention must be paid to all the nuances from the obvious such as food, décor, and service, to the less visible such as lofty payroll, avoiding taxes, and high food costs.

There is no doubt in Killarney’s mind that New York is the center of the world, if not the universe. The eagerness of visitors to uncover this very phenomena first hand feeds into the beast that is New York City. Killarney takes great pride in having become part of the equation; he is part of the furniture of the famous Greenwich Village. He takes great pleasure in meeting his customers from different walks of life, hearing their stories, learning about the big old world. It is this very give and take that begins to make sense of the desire to open a restaurant in New York City, often against great odds. It’s still early days for McCoy but, as Killarney oscillates naturally from to table to table with humble grace, his kind face alludes to the fact that he is part of something bigger than him, bigger than us.

Notes from a Retired Bachelor (West View News)

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Notes from a Retired Bachelor

By Christopher Daish
Published August 2012

Notes from a Retired Bachelor

Surely it doesn’t get any better than being actively single in New York City, the most colorful and diverse city on earth, for I used to think so, but may I digress. When attempting to piece together the hazy bar stool encounters in search of what I thought was love, deep down all I wanted was a brief human embrace, the prospect of waking up next to that person and worse still having to wearily construct a breakfast that showed I cared and that the night wasn’t merely a transaction. Well, whom am I kidding.

In a city saturated with people, never have I encountered so many lonely souls. Most Sundays I used to leave my beloved decadent East Village squalor in search of these very types (insert self) and oscillate westward to The Windsor (West 4^th at West 10^th Streets) in what became “Office Hour Sundays” with my old mate from high school Cam McKnight. It felt like I had travelled back in time to my college days, surrounded by an army of men dressed in chinos and crisp collared shirts high fiving, talking stocks and fantasy football movement, and hoards of zombie-esque women in search of what they probably wouldn’t find three sauvignon blancs deep, reverting to online shopping banter. Restaurants had become oceans of couples on blind dates, matches made in cyberspace, heads in cell phones, devoid of human touch. Perhaps I’m getting carried away, but this is what I felt it had come to, technology driving us apart rather than bringing us together.

On the brink of throwing away my bohemian joie de vivre approach to life, and re-joining Facebook, I met Stephanie Suits. Everything made sense. Love is ever present and falls out the sky when you least expect it, and life is timing. Without the periods of loneliness and despair, and uncomfortable dates spent talking about dead pets, you cannot begin to appreciate the gift horse when it looks you in the mouth. The newfound lightness of being that Stephanie brought to my world made the merry-go-round of singledom a distant and forgotten memory. When you know, you know.

We will be tying the knot at my beloved Sydney Harbour Down Under on January 6^th 2013. There is nothing like a Sydney summer to offset a NYC winter. We have accounted for one wedding crasher and they shall be fed and will have second dibs on the dance floor. Save the date.

http://westviewnews.org/2012/08/notes-from-a-retired-bachelor/

Without a tissue

Times past, rusty floodgates

A lifetime of street-cornered existence

Dusty memories pavements crack

Rain drops bouncing like fireflies

Forgotten pennies rain

Over my vagrant lost soul

Horse Whispers

The Line

It is often  the vast spaces of nothingness in between that speak the greatest truths. These spaces stitch together the edges of the line, give meaning. With speed we haphazardly construct a reality that hides within, a sense of self that yearns for attention. A fire that lurks beneath.

Starting to miss the non profit world

Housing Works’ Candace Rivela, Creative Arts Therapist and Therapeutic Recreation Coordinator, previously worked as an art therapy intern at Cylar House and has been working at ENY since May of 2010, developing and facilitating creative arts programming, facilitating art therapy groups, such as Expressing Anger Through Art and Creative Recovery, in addition to several Open Studios in which clients are free to explore art materials and themes of their choosing.

One facet of the Creative Arts Therapy program at ENY is Therapeutic Recreation, a treatment service designed to restore and rehabilitate a person’s level of functioning and independence in life activities. Therapeutic Recreation promotes health, wellness, and healthy peer interaction by offering opportunities to expand knowledge of self and environment.

As part of an initiative to increase Therapeutic Recreation programming at ENY, Candace has invited new Housing Works’ volunteer, actor/model, Chris Daish, to join her team as a weekend volunteer. Drawing on his “healthy body-healthy mind” approach and enthusiasm for life, Chris researches activities and events that appeal to the needs and interests of our community. Chris coordinates with the Creative Arts Therapist to plan and facilitate monthly activities and trips aimed at exposing the clients to diverse culture and reducing stress and activity limitations that are caused by HIV and mental illness. Kudos Candace and Chris!

http://www.housingworks.org/community/detail/candace-chris

Untitled

You city of towering brick and steel
Inferno of thwarted dreams long misplaced
Vessel of hope if not for the blink of an eye
The endless possibilities a continuum
A seamless whir of existence
Souls of stone blood of clay
Humans bobble like pigeons seek scraps
The feeding frenzy of civilization
Remnants of forgotten memories
If only to know you for a day
For a second
A gasp

Teenage Art Gallery Article (West View News)

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Teenage Art Gallery: Innovative Youths Redefining Contemporary Art

By Christopher Daish
Published June 2012

By the time aspiring painter Audrey Banks became a teenager, she already knew a lot about the life of a struggling artist. She had paid annual summer visits to her London-based fine-artist aunt, who would take Audrey to bohemian restaurants and talk with her for hours – recounting the extensive schooling, the part-time jobs to pay the bills, the frustrating time lapses waiting for commissions. Wondering how she might get a jump on this long road ahead, in 2009, a 15-year-old Audrey got the idea to start an art gallery for teenagers.

Audrey rounded up a group of her fellow students from Bard High School in Alphabet City, and after more than a year of brainstorming and planning, the aptly named Teenage Art Gallery (TAG) was officially underway by December 2010. The group secured a gallery space – the Open Center meditation and healing facility on 30^th street, which offers free space to artists on a monthly basis – then set out for submissions, spreading the word through social media (they made about 6000 Facebook friends) and after-school programs. Over the course of four months, about 700 artists between the ages of 12 and 19 submitted pictures of their work via email. Audrey and her co-founders voted to narrow down their favorites.

The TAG team launched a publicity campaign, too: blasting out press releases to local newspapers and magazines, and hanging hundreds of red balloons in Washington Square Park; emblazoned with the words “Pop Me”, the balloons yielded the June 2011 date and details of their exhibit. The crowd-funding website Kickstarter helped cover the group’s expenses.

The event turned out 250 people and displayed a total of 37 pieces of teen work, including photography, sculpture, and performance art; major media outlets fromNew York magazine to the New York Times to the Huffington Post covered it. Soon, more young talents from across the country were eager to send in submissions. A second TAG exhibit was held this March, at the Rogue Gallery in Chelsea (it featured the painting of a boy as young as 11, whose non-teen status was overlooked because his skills were so impressive).

While some long-working artists have criticized the TAG movement (mostly on Twitter), insisting that these teenage creative types haven’t earned their stripes, the buzz has nonetheless carried abroad – there are now TAG branches in Florence, Italy, and Frankfurt, Germany, thanks to the international exposure of theTimes. A third NYC exhibition is scheduled for June 12^th at the Salon 94 Freeman Gallery (call for details).

TAG’s founding member had minimal involvement in the organization’s European offshoots, but Audrey did consult with their teams, sharing her timelines and guidelines for pulling off a successful show. Now 18, Audrey is headed for college in the fall and happy to pass down the reigns to the next generation of young artists. In a way, the transition mirrors her paintings, which often depict a woman’s evolution – revisiting themes like female empowerment and milestones like motherhood. Her work, the teenager says, is a “reflection of my place within the community.”

http://westviewnews.org/2012/06/teenage-art-gallery-innovative-youths-redefining-contemporary-art/