SK8 or DIE V 100 Boards/100 Artists ATL, GA

 100 artists/100 boards. Silent auction starting at $100

Prints by Wolfbat Dennis McNett

Owl Board/Bowl ©Rich Arbitelle

Even though they're still running "Sk8 or Die," this past weekend's opening party/silent auction at YOUNG BLOOD gallery and boutique was the talk of A-town. Collectors and art board aficionados, here's what went down:

Local color

DJ Fari

Jill Di Donato and Rich Arbitelle

I liked skater David Clark's rocket ship. Photographer Ryan Flynn snagged it

This mermaid also caught my attention. It reminds me of Gonz stuff. ©Julie Newton and Raymondo

Oops!  I got distracted ... and lost my bid

But I had my eyes on a piece by Rich Arbitelle. This was a two-for-one. He cut the nose and tail off the board and fashioned them into a bowl, which he hand spray painted. The 

piece also includes a hand painted checkerboard - which was the deck. The night was young ... I placed my bid and thought I had it on lock.

 

Owl Board/Bowl ©Rich Arbitelle

Rising Star: Vandal Expressionism Creator, Joseph Meloy

Inspired by the Abstract Expressionists of the 1940s and 50s, as well as the 80s graffiti he encountered as a kid growing up on NYC's LES ("In grade school I was obsessed with Cost and Revs,"); the posters he'd tear down as a Bronx Science teen in the 90s artist Joseph Meloy coined Vandal Expressionism, his understanding of defacement and re-appropriation as a hieroglyphic and often cryptic language "of scribbles." 

"Tic-Tac-Toe Paskettios" ©2011 Joseph Meloy

"Being in the 90s on the Lower East Side, I always had my eye on something in the street. I was 16, 17, doing my thing, and graffiti or posters or even just the natural habitat of life in the street would catch my eye," explains Meloy (cue soundtrack to the movie The Wackness.)  Amidst the angst teens growing up in NYC's odd transition from 80s grittiness to 90s sanitation, Meloy was still attracted to the dopeness. 

"Back then," he says, "I didn't exactly know the meaning of everything I saw, I just knew I wanted something to do with it. I didn't just want to collect these posters, stickers, and shit, I wanted to make them."

Vandal Expressionist, Joseph Meloy, photo courtesy of www.thelodownny.com 

A decade later, he favors “l' écriture automatique” — a Surrealist technique that's "not as pretentious as it sounds." Meloy's work is automatic and highly associative — including Biblical, historical, political, as well as pop signifiers. "When I consider the element of 'pop' in Vandal Expressionism, it's more of a sensibility of wanting to make art as a commodity that appeals to a wider swath of the population. All that l' écriture automatique stuff just means I use a loose unconscious method to conjure up my line-work and subject matter." He shows me. We're packed in tight at the bar in Epstein's, but he picks up a pen and snatches my Moleskine. "See?"

"Cosmo"  ©2011 Joseph Meloy

"Untitled (Gorilla Face)" ©2011 Joseph Meloy

He hands me back my notebook and says, "You don't mind right? I mean things that are used, destroyed, scratched or scribbled on make up a language of their own."


Word. 

"Invasion" ©2011 Joseph Meloy

He's one of those dudes that takes his shit really seriously in an earnest more than hispster kind of way. He's even got a manifesto: i.e. 

Vandal Expressionism is intrigued by toying with sense of scale.

Vandal Expressionism lets the seams show.

"My paintings are only so big because my apartment is only so big. I need space. I could make my paintings huge if I had more space."
 

CLOSING PARTY

Wednesday, March 30, 2011 8-11 PM

Le Salon D'Art 90 Stanton Street, NYC

Art and paraphernalia for sale. 10% of proceeds from art sale directly benefits Japanese Tsunami Relief Fund.

Blow-Up Art ... incredible, really, what it says about structure ...

Matt Sheridan Smith’s “Soft Futures (price has no memory),” part of the 2011 winter’s art installation Total Recall at MetroTech in Downtown Brooklyn.

I felt myself being propelled into a world very much like the one laid out in front of me by French artists. I took one last look at the city of little domed cubes. Blow-up houses, an engorged cathedral  – what a concept. I wondered if this girl, decked out in PVC pants, chain-link jewelry, and plastic high heels, was for real or just full of hot air. 

Queen Elizabeth

The Queen is dead. Long live the Queen.

Rising Star: Style Seeker, Charity de Meer for Rebel Glam

© Charity de Meer 2011

“Why aren’t I famous yet?” mistress of style, Charity de Meer asks me over crème brulee at Smith Street’s Bar Tabac. “What’s going on?!”

Since 1998, the native Floridian has been documenting images – everything from editorial/backstage fashion to pet portraits to Taylor Swift “when she still had her baby fat.” De Meer, still shooting fashion, commercial, and portrait work – “I only use available light, so when I show up, people are always like, where’s your equipment … and I point to my camera,” her most recent undertaking is her style blog, What Charity Wears. All of her projects fall under her brand (though she probably wouldn’t use the word “brand”) Rebel Glam. Her explanation of the moniker: “I asked the Brazilian husband of my make-up artist what he thought of my photographs. Because he barely knew any English, I appreciated the care with which he chose his words, and knew he had to be onto something.” Beautifully macabre; a mix of couture and road kill, creepy and elegant, de Meer’s photographs capture something predatory, partly because as a style seeker, she’s “always on the hunt.”

© Charity de Meer 2011

For years, she’s found freelance work as a fashion photographer, frequently flying between FL and NYC so her clients, including the New York Times and WireImage thought she lived in Manhattan. In June of 2010, she made it official, moving to Bushwick and joining finalist in the 2009 CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund, Gary Graham and his team as a retailer in both the flagship Tribeca store, and at the ABC Carpet & Home outfit.  “One of my nerdy hobbies is that I enter sweepstakes. I’ve won a trip to Vegas, a Tiffany necklace. I made it two years in a row as finalist in W Magazine’s Individual Style Contest, and both times I was wearing Gary Graham. I emailed Gary, and he was like, ‘You wear it well.’ So I came and starting working for him.”

Not all of her working experiences have been as serendipitous. “I got in trouble with WireImage because I was supposed to be shooting Danny DeVito promoting his Limoncello Premium Lemon Liquor, which I had already done, so I asked Rhea Perlman to take a picture of me and Danny DeVito. She did, gladly, but WireImage didn’t like it so much. They docked my pay! But the photo is totally worth it. I like to hope things work out my way; I’m not a rule breaker, I mean well.”  

© Charity de Meer 2011

Charity de Meer’s Spring Picks  

•       Keeping a high-low brand mash-up (i.e. Gary Graham/Conway; Alexander Wang/Target; Phillip Lim/H&M)
•       Neon (something small, like a neon bra peeking through or neon anklets -- J. Crew has good ones)
•       Joan Jett black mullet cut
•       Jessica Kagan Cushman Nantucket Bangles
•       Kelly bag in a crazy color
•       Textured stockings
•       Layered-on costume jewelry

Charity wearing Jessica Kagan Cushman Handmade Resin Nantucket Bangles

Gary Graham's FRT'11

Charity de Meer’s Spring Look Inspirations

            A beautiful girl in the woods, her dress ripped

Thrifted locket, with an 18k gold razor blade from eBay and fox claw from Odette NY

            Ultra-posh hotel as backdrop for with a girl in tutu   

© Charity de Meer 2011

         Owl heads. Always. 

 Contact Charity de Meer at charityphoto@gmail.com 

my cameo

Writer/Producer, Jill Di Donato
Beautiful Garbage Trailer: Directed/Produced by Lauren Rayner

Beautiful Garbage: A Novel, Trailer Screen Shots (Teaser)

Hamilton Harris

Catrin Lloyd-Bollard and Grace Folsom

Catrin Lloyd-Bollard

Stylist, Lisa Carroll

Meeting of the Minds

The night I met Lauren Rayner X

Sara Lloyd Launch Party 12-2-10

Rising Star: Handbag Designer, Sara Lloyd

Like most New York women, Sara Lloyd is obsessed with handbags. “A purse is your statement piece,” explains the Southern native. “And it always fits!” For Lloyd, a former intern at Kate Spade, her obsession burgeoned into a business, Sara Lloyd Ltd. Her custom-made handbags are one-of-a-kind objets d’art, distinguished by high-end European fabric and vintage costume brooches. Her aunt, an owner of Travis & Company, a mid-century and modern fabric house for interior designers, supplies Lloyd with a plethora of limited edition or discontinued fabrics. “Each fabric she gives me is enough to make one or two purses,” says Lloyd, showing me reams of hand screen-printed Spanish fabric, intricately embroidered French textiles, and subtle British imports.

©Zach Hyman 2010

 For the centerpiece, Lloyd digs for treasure at her favorite flea markets – Scotts Antique Market in Atlanta, the Chelsea Flea Market, and Tender Buttons, a tucked-away New York spot that’s a century old and carries “exotic pieces from overseas as well as mass-produced buttons.” She is by nature a collector, as are most die-hard flea market junkies-cum-fashionistas, and has a shoe box full of treasures for her clients to choose from. “My signature is a flower brooch,” explains the designer. “I like big, colorful pieces – something that pops.”

Lloyd, who officially launches her business with a party/art show on December 2, 2010 at the L.E.S. pop-up gallery, Panda, has found herself a niche clientele in the wedding industry. Her clutches have caught on as bridesmaid gifts. “The bride will come in and choose what fabric she wants for each bridesmaid’s purse.”  Nothing says thank you like couture, and priced to sell (within the $80 range) these handcrafted goodies are less expensive than something you will find on the rack.

©Zach Hyman 2010

Lloyd’s clutches are delicate, made to carry a gal’s essentials: “License, cash, one credit card, cell phone, and lip gloss.” After all, wearable art is about making a statement, not cramming your entire life into a bag. 

©Zach Hyman 2010

To RSVP to Sara Lloyd Ltd.’s Launch Party featuring photography by “It” boy photographer, Zack Hyman, and the official unveiling of LoRayDesign, check out: Launch Party RSVP 

Thursday, December 2, 2010 from 8-10 PM

Panda Gallery: 139 Chrystie Street, NYC

The Undoing of Harper M.

Something had happened these last months at the Cape. Harper began to fill with something so palpable she knew it from somewhere but couldn’t place it, and then it hit her. Relief. Oh, she’d meet her maker all right, but not from poisonous gas on the subway or in the sod of a rotted municipal machine. There’d been a mourning of sorts, a letting go. Goodbye to the device that filters water with nanotechnology; goodbye to softly-worn leaflets, those reading like prayers for sad women. Goodbye to the street urchins who’d hand her leaflets. Goodbye to escape routes; goodbye to code yellow, orange, red: DANGER!  Something inside her growing rampant, feral and out of control, this would be her undoing. This bug the best doctors in the best city couldn’t get a hold of, that her body kept alive and nurtured, that fed off her cells and blood and cytoplasm, it made her feel sorry for them, for Frank and the others. How they’d laugh if they heard her say it. She couldn’t say it – no – this was something you couldn’t say, not in the arms of your most cherished beloved, not after cataclysmic sex with a black Jesus. But as Frank steeped her tea in a pewter pot, dusted for mites beneath the bed, dragged down board games from the attic in their rented seashore abode, she could think it.