Chelsea Gallerista

Fabulous Santa Monica seaside architecture Read my complete Spot Challenge chronicle I've been "flat out like a lizard drinking" since winging my way from NY to LA to London on the Damien Hirst Spot Challenge. I'm about to head to Paris on the Eurostar first thing tomorrow (and Brits roll their eyes when you call it the "Chunnel" - apparently that's the term for the car ferry). So let's do a quick catch up: 8 countries with one  Traffic Cone Bag First, I'm traveling impossibly light on this 8 country, 2 week global jaunt with just my signature  Traffic Cone Bag ,  I'll bore you with the full equipment list at end of this post (but it might have to wait til I'm paused in Rome).  That's the small one at the right, and I've got it inside the slightly bigger one, so in a pinch I have two ultralight, under-armpittable baggies. Already in the short hop from NY to LA I've managed to lose my inflatable pillow and Smar

For the love of a sliced shark in formaldehyde ... can you stand another pic of me in front of another  Spot Painting and my special Spot hat? (In case you missed the start of all this, here's Day 1 ) I'm doing it. I just decided, 3 days before the opportunity goes "pfffftt." I'm doing the admittedly carbon-belching, fanciful, "join the dots" Damien Hirst Spot Challenge . This is a round-the-globe whistle-stop junket spotting his 11 gallery shows in 8 cities, and getting a card stamped and apparently, a signed print by him for all your carbon emissions. Fun mapping tool gcmap.com did this. Why backtrack across the states from LA to London? LA closes first, London in a week, so I wanted to get there faster and save *some* stress. Map saved  here . It's granted me the perfect excuse to visit friends in the UK I haven't seen for 10 years, and, erm, some hostels in Paris, Geneva,  Rome and Athens where I don't have anyone to c

That was easy: I knocked off the first three spots in NYC by zipping around on my Pantone Honeysuckle folding bike - a Bike Friday Speeding tikit - and my special spot hat! Read my complete Spot Challenge chronicle If you're an art lover, it's very dangerous to come off an intense filming project  and stumble around the gallery district. You're liable to slap down plastic just to reward yourself for your blood, sweat & tears, then utterly regret it when the charge hits the bank. You're probably safe if you're a 99%-er like me, killing an afternoon in places I love, like Christies, Sothebys, Phillips de Pury or Gagosian. I was never in any danger of being hammered at a recent Phillips de Pury auction  I attended (I made sure not to register for a paddle). But if someone tells me I can buy a Damien Hirst print with the frequent flyer miles languishing in my account ... tie me down quick! The Complete Spot Challenge , happening simultaneously in seve

I've published my now-and-then little neighborly roundup of hidden Chelsea suggestions over here . Stimulating the local economy, one calorie at a time!

Guests must wear these masks ... and remain stumm . Photo by ChelseaGallerista "I got a spare ticket to see Sleep No More tonight. Interested?" Does a chicken have hard lips? This über-hyped "immersive theatre" production (a UK transplant) is so solidly booked to its cobwebby rafters, I hear scalpers were having a field day until it was extended through December.  Meaning, those of us slowpokes get to see it, and others with a spare $75 can return to catch what they missed first time around. There are countless reviews  of this production on the web, so what follows is Chelsea Gallerista's personal experience. Sleep No More resembles a self-guided murder mystery. It's based on MacBeth and staged in a formerly glorious, now shuttered Chelsea hotel, The McKittrick - and fitted out to the nines with creepy conviction. I read that there are 93 rooms of garage-sale tchochkes and more in a space of 100,000 square feet, and that you will never see it

This "nanomedia" arts event happened just a few crank turns over the Brooklyn from the home of ChelseaGallerista last weekend. http://www.creatorsproject.com More words soon (but why blather when sound and pictures do it so much better?), meanwhile here's a few shots   on my Facebook page, and here's a little whip around by day - folding bikes allowed!

Artist and former dancer James Kennedy: precision abstractions created with an eye for the architectural and plenty of tape.  VIDEO (right) : ChelseaGallerista interviews James Kennedy in his studio (2:55 min) "I go through a tone of blue tape. It takes almost as long to mask up a painting as to paint it." James Kennedy is my latest favorite "local" artist. I say favorite, because I love practically every piece on his website . Flipping through his work is like looking through a kaleidoscope of color, line, form and some pretty deep cuts with an Exacto knife. I say "local," because I stumbled across him as normally I would, doing my Thursday night rounds of Chelsea gallery openings (when I can get out of work on time). I think I must have spent at least an hour or more in his modest workroom on a high floor in a Chelsea artists' labyrinth, going from painting to painting and back again, mesmerized by the studied surface treat