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SUBCONSCIOUS CONNOISSEUR BY CHRISTOPHER DAISH, MAN ABOUT TOWN NEW YORK CITY ARTS, CULTURE, AND NITTY-GRITTY: EP. 1

Posted by Good Days Team on Friday, March 1, 2013 · Leave a Comment 

A Trip to Beacon, NY

It’s  hard to ignore the visionary grandeur of Grand Central station, even for a seasoned New Yorker attempting to swim upstream through the oblivious tight-knit tourists en route for platform 212. In need of sustenance, the decision to grab a quick bagel and cup of Joe, a NYC breakfast of champions, turns into an ordeal. What a cluster fuck; hung over twenty-some-odd in search of Powerade, foreigners clumsily thumbing through billfolds, misdirected pastries finding confused surrogate owners. I exhale; on the brink of meltdown, I find the platform and my porthole to freedom. Immediately I am reminded of the words I uttered a decade ago, “Find a way to escape the city every month.”  As the train grinds away from my New York minute spent in hell, I ponder the lives of the mole people living underground in the sewers and subways, isolated from society, bare bones, down and out, free. Tension begins to exit my body with every breath. Thoughts spent analyzing the intensity of thought promoted by life in the city dissipate with every Podunk town that pops up along my Metro North escape route. About 25 minutes deep and the pressures of the city are as fleeting as the snow geese frolicking amid their surreal decadence.

As the layers of the onion unravel, you soon realize why people move upstate. Shimmering golden hues dance innocently with snow-covered wedding cake terrain, frozen ponds symmetrically refract fairy tale candor, and trees stretch as far as one can see. Every blink of the eye is a postcard. Access to the sky again, dreams no longer curtailed by concrete permanence. In a few moments I recount the past decade spent in Manhattan and with great clarity — I worked as a model, writer, managed restaurants and nightclubs; I painted, I engaged in a variety of hedonism.  Indeed, a colorful landscape that conjures a level of angst. So, I return to the comforts of the kaleidoscopic flickering of pastels and light that stitch together the outside world. Clickety-clack. I slump lower in my chair and sleep.

Located in southwest corner of Dutchess County in the Mid-Hudson region, Beacon, New York is home to approximately 16,000 people. Shrouded in history, Beacon houses the Tioronda mansion, the imposing pre-Civil War estate of General Joseph Howland, Civil War hero and philanthropist. This mansion became a psychiatric hospital in 1915 and was later sold to investor and art collector John L. Stewart in 2003. Beacon is also where you’ll find Dia: Beacon. Occupying a 300,000-square-foot former Nabisco printing factory, the space was donated to the Dia Foundation in 1999 by International Paper. Built in 1929, the early twentieth century industrial design meshes brick, concrete, steel, and glass creating sleek lines and open sweeping spaces. 34,000-square-feet of skylights create a glasshouse type feel and casts natural light onto the artworks creating a feel of buoyant permanence. The collection assembled in the 1970s and early 1980s by Dia’s founders, Philippa de Menil and Heiner Friedrich, features works by artists Donal Judd, Dan Flavin and Andy Warhol to name a few. In anticipation of Dia:Beacon the collection was expanded encompassing influential artists of the same era such as Sol LeWitt, Gerhard Richter, and Richard Serra.

Devoid of an agenda I float daintily between rooms absorbing piece after piece that are each emotive in a different way. On the top floor, I find Louise Bourgeois’ eerily comforting Spider sculpture, and after much wonder, seek solace in the “Torqued Ellipse” minimalist steel sculptors of Richard Serra. Cast in the shadows and enormity of these pieces, I feel safe for the first time. There is no doubt that country air has gone to my head, as I feel at complete ease. The the call of the city beckons. I decide to jump on the 3:39 express back to Grand Central to Manhattan. As I begin drift off, out of the corner of my eye I catch a glimpse of Bannerman Castle, the remnants of a Scotsman’s fortress used as a weapons arsenal. Feeling slightly displaced, edges of reality frayed, I think, maybe this day was a dream all along.

- Christopher Daish

NYC Style Vulture Launches

NYC STYLE VULTURE

@NYCSTYLEVULTURE

As NYC Style Vultures we hunt for unique garments and accessories with a past that can have a new bright future with you

New York, NY

NYC STYLE VULTURE ‏@NYCSTYLEVULTURE

Husband and wife @Chris_Daish & @stephsuits have teamed up to create Style Vulture a NYC based second hand cyber shop.

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