Chelsea Gallerista

VIDEO: Dane Owen talks about the Boro, or "tattered rags" used to describe patched and repurposed kimonos. If you ever venture across the Brooklyn Bridge to Dumbo, possibly headed for the ultra-hip (in a rustic way)  Vinegar Hill House restaurant for brunch, make sure you stumble around the corner to visit Shibui . Dane recently restored this Japanese Step Tansu. From the Facebook post : "I would say it was early Meiji c1880. It was made with hand forged nails and hinges . Mortised and tenoned joinery. Hinoki wood frame. I have 3 other Kaidan on the website , one is a little smaller but they are real so they have to be big enough to get to the second floor and deep enough so you wont fall off."  It's a treasure trove of old Japan in a cavernous, cement floor garage. The owner Dane Owen, a Santa Fe native, pops up from behind a great wall of tansu (Japanese storage cabinets, no doubt the Ikea of old Japan at the time) as a walking Wikipedia of Jap...

Only in New York City! Someone from Downunder wrote me today, saying they'd been approached online by a Chelsea gallery offering representation. The offer came with a proviso that most painterly puritans run screaming from - a hefty upfront fee of $3000, and 30% of sales (which is less than the usual 50%). It is popularly known as a "vanity gallery," where you pay for the privilege of exposure. The question to ChelseaGallerista was, should I go for it? Well, you're looking at someone who's never taken the road well-pedaled. I made a career out of taking marketing to the nth degree by homestaying with customers year round as an invited family member. I rode a bike for a living and turned it into a platform for customer evangelism and content-driven advocacy. I look for the opportunity, not the objection. (You'll even find me asking an Amway salesperson, so what have you got that's new and good?). So, my take is about asking, rather than judging...

Patrick Yacco of GeeksOut congratulates me on winning a PJ McQuade doodle of George Takei - and seems that George "liked" this photo on Facebook .  OK, it wasn't in Chelsea, but good as ... Last Friday I got an impromptu invite to an art raffle by my illustrator friend Justin Winslow . Oh how fun to be Justin's "fruit flyette" of an evening ... last time I mumbled "ok" to one of his texts I ended up in a place called the Rawhide staring up at an impressively gyrating, live advertisement for Iron Gym , one of which, like you, I own and have hanging, like yours, nowhere near a doorframe turning me into Wonder Woman or you into Big Arnie, unless you're a body conscious Chelsea boy. Yes, Chelsea is known for its gay population, although the plummet from gentrification to generification is fast turning it into another Duane Read/Rite Aide/Olive Garden 'burbia. But I digress. The event, organized by a very fun collective called  Geeks ...

Damien Hirst: Cathedral Print, Duomo 2007 - spotted at Phillips de Pury, Park Ave Evening Collections Article: 9,000 butterflies killed in Hirst's latest artwork VIDEO: Damien Hirst Retrospective at the Tate Modern, April 2012 In the space of hours my inbox has been deluged with news stories about mega-artist Damien Hirst. The first is about his  new website  complete with Hirst-cam. Two cameras (when they're switched on) are trained on his worktable, platoons of assistants and hopefully, fleeting glimpses of the man himself: www.damienhirst.com The second is about a new series of Hirst multiples selling at the 2012 Affordable Art Fair , a place where, the career-conscious have told me, an artist might start, spend one, maybe two seasons ("tops"), and hopefully never "need" to return. In this exhibit, his dealer Manifold Editions is offering his spot series as woodcuts , a word my brain unfortunately flummoxes with "woodblocks" and imme...

I popped up out of the subway in Athens to face a phalanx of police riot shields. In LA, Stephen Spielberg's mother proudly toured me through her shrine to her son's talent (it's on the way to the restroom of her diner). Then there was Occupy London with its dystopian yet fiercely activist vibe ... and the $10/night Kung Fu hostel buried in one of Hong Kong's buzzing cities-within-a-building with its Changi prison aesthetic and crazed woman who refused to budge from my bunk bed … SPOT PLANKING: One of the funnest things you can do in Geneva at the Gagosian Geneva gallery. Thanks to Johan @Gogo for being a great sport! My latest escapade was a complete departure from anything I've attempted before: the  Damien Hirst Spot Challenge  - a kind of global art scavenger hunt. The brief: dash across datelines visiting 11 galleries showing the artist's Spot Painting retrospective, get your official "been there, spotted that" card stamped, and as a ...

Thanks to Andrew Luk of Gagosian Hong Kong for this admirable composition. The painting was hung a little lower than the one in Athens - probably because everyone in Honkers is 5' nothing like me. Read my complete Spot Challenge chronicle The Gagosian Gallery Hong Kong was my last stop on the Spot Challenge. How awful to come all this way and fluff it ... but it nearly happened. Unable to secure a China Visa "on the fly" to visit my cousins in Beijing for a couple of days, I'd moved my onward flight forward. This meant I'd have to sit for a few hours at Beijing airport, then depart for Hong Kong same day, as the immigration rules dictate. (It was cheaper to do this than re-book the flight). An Etihad airlines officer summoned me to the counter. It appears, madam, you do not have a valid onward ticket out of Beijing. WTF? I'd spent an eternity at the Beehive Hostel in Rome calling the eternally inconvenient United Airlines office in the USA (can y...