NYC: The John Dory Oyster Bar

NYC: The John Dory Oyster Bar.  The John Dory Oyster Bar is situated just off the lobby of the cool Ace Hotel and is a casual seafood focused spot.  Lunch with Susan Shacter, who specializes in photographing up and coming actors.  We were lucky to get a table on the sidewalk in the sun, much appreciate after all the rain, also good for people watching.

The John Dory Oyster Bar.  Delicious Carta da Musica with Bottarga and Chili, which I will certainly copy.  Also note the cool plastic table tops all printed with different fish designs on different colors.

The Oysters from the East and West Coasts.

Pansies and pretty flowers, plants and vegetables grace the sidewalk of the bar and are an added attraction.

 

Susan’s Ocicats; Pussy Galore (from 007), Marlon (Brando) and Iggy (Iggy Popster).

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NYC: MET - Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity

 

NYC: MET - Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity.  The exquisite exhibition Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity, at the MET, until May 27, presents a revealing look at the role of fashion in the works of the Impressionists and their contemporaries. Some eighty major figure paintings, seen in concert with period costumes, accessories, fashion plates, photographs, highlight the vital relationship between fashion and art during the pivotal years, from the mid-1860s to the mid-1880s, when Paris emerged as the style capital of the world. 

Above. Edouard Manet’s Young Lady in 1866.  It is a portrait one of Manet’s models, Victorine, she poses in a peignoir after having posed naked for his Olympia and Luncheon on the Grass paintings.

MET - Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity.  In the Black Dress Room, the color black vivified sitters ranging from the beguiling bohemian Nina de Callias in Manet's Lady with Fans, above (to the quirkily extravagant artist's model and budding actress Ellen Andrée in Manet's The Parisienne and the refined Madame Charpentier in Renoir's portrait of 1878. And as Auguste Renoir said “Black is the queen of colors.”

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NYC: MET - Punk : Chaos to Couture exhibition.

NYC: MET - Punk : Chaos to Couture exhibition. The MET's spring 2013 Costume Institute exhibition, Punk: Chaos to Couture, until August 14, examines punk's impact on high fashion from the movement's birth in the early 1970s through its continuing influence today. Featuring approximately one hundred designs for men and women, the exhibition includes original punk garments and recent, directional fashion to illustrate how haute couture and ready-to-wear borrow punk's visual symbols.

 

MET - PUNK: Chaos to Couture exhibition. Focusing on the relationship between the punk concept of "do-it-yourself" and the couture concept of "made-to-measure," the seven galleries are organized around the materials, techniques, and embellishments associated with the anti-establishment style. Themes will include New York and London, tell punk's origin story as a tale of two cities, followed by Clothes for Heroes and four manifestations of the D.I.Y. aesthetic. An immersive multimedia, multisensory experience, the clothes are animated with period music videos and soundscaping audio techniques.

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Above. A postcard of the Sex Pistols in Luxembourg, 1977, photo by Bob Gruen

  Bergdorf Goodman. The Windows at Bergdorf Goodman pays homage to the Punk exhibition, the windows are in fact more stunning that the exhibition itself, which was rather disappointing for me, having lived through that period.

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New York: An artist’s Studio – Suzanne Tick.

New York: An artist’s Studio – Suzanne Tick.   Artist and textile designer Suzanne Tick, heads up Suzanne Tick Inc., specializing in material development for commercial and residential interiors, including textiles, hard surfacing, glass, carpet, woven metal screens, and lighting. Her clients include Knoll Textiles, Tandus Flooring for which she is design director and she is also creative director for Teknion Textiles. She is also an artist who weaves recycled materials and debris into beautiful art. She creates works that harnesses the struggles of life, resulting in textiles that are both delicate and strong. She investigates materials, pairing the thick with the thin, the dull with the brilliant, and the colorful with the neutral. As Tick states, “weaving holds everything together, materials and life, successes and failures”.

 

Suzanne Tick. – Art.  She is a fourth generation recycler. From the beginning, Tick spent summers in her fathers scrap metal yard recycling plant weighing and sorting metals, exploring the possibilities in the cast-offs of rural life. At the University of Iowa, Tick began as a printmaker, etching fabric and texture into copper. She left as a weaver, combining materials both hard and soft.  Tick’s life and work have always been a narration of balance. 

Above. A detail of Refuse DC, 2011, is made from 3,470 recycled dry cleaning hangers, which took four months to collect and hangs between Bill and Melinda Gates offices at The Gates Foundation Collection.

Below.  A detail of Counterbalance, 2011, made from the leftovers of the Refuse DC piece. “This was the most difficult piece I have worked on, because the shuttle had to go across less than half an inch and the tension had to stay the same.  In reality the piece represents by dad, because he was frail and whimsical at the same time.”

  Psyche

Suzanne Tick. – Art.  The Fire Island Series triptych, which her dealer the Cristina Grajales Gallery will show at Art Basel in June. The work is based on three years of collecting hurricane debris on Fire Island, where Tick has a house. Going for long walks she saw seagulls eating Mylar Balloons in the ocean, so she started collecting them.   She cuts them like peeling an apple, to achieve long threads and uses the silver lining side,  “The beauty is the patina beaten in by the ocean and when weaving it nobody knows what it was.”

Suzanne Tick. – Art.   The Stainless Steel hanging has been exhibited at  MoMa, it is made from recycled stainless steel from the inside of tires from the tire company Bridgestone Metalpha in Japan, the fiber was spun into yarn by experimental textile designer Junichi Arai. Tick imported the fiber and wove it into flameproof drapery ideal for a theater. On the wall a painting by Gloria Graham.

The table in the sitting room.

Suzanne Tick. – Art.   A work in progress with found objects from the streets of New Orleans. The canvas is recycled from the Pink Tents installation wanted by Brad Pitt for his NO housing project.

Suzanne Tick. – Art.   Moon Charts,  “I have always been interested in Astrology, Cancer is my Sun sign and the Moon is by rising sign.  The woven piece charts the last three years of my life; from a series of losses comes creativity and causes you to pause and weaving becomes my meditation.”

Cupid – Tick’s two cats are known as “The cool cats of design.”

Suzanne Tick. – Design. The red/orange fabric is a hybrid between a honeycomb and a basket weave.  The upholstery fabric was designed for Teknion Textiles where Tick is creative director; it is strong a upholstery fabric for the corporate environment, an action fabric ideal for desk chairs.  On the left, the carpet was designed for Tandus Flooring where Suzanne acts as design director; the carpet is woven for the commercial market in one of the three factories left in the United States where they still weave carpets.

 

Suzanne Tick – The studio.   The townhouse, where Tick works and lives, was in the late fifties and early sixties, the site of the Reuben Gallery in the East Village. It was Anita Reuben who invented art Happenings and where many artists such as Jim Dine, Allan Kaprow, Robert Whitman, Claes Oldenburg, Red Groom, and many more exhibited their work.

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NYC: Panna – Mark and James Celebrate New York’s Design Hunting.

NYC: Panna – Mark and James Celebrate New York’s Design Hunting. To celebrate their apartment in the second issue of New York Design Hunting magazine, Mark Haldeman and James Aguiar invited friends to the Indian restaurant Panna.

 

Mark and James Celebrate.  With great style, like everything they do, Mark and James decorated the table of the tiny kitschy restaurant with pink tablecloths, Big City Little Sweets Cakes Pops, especially made to match the color scheme of their apartment, elephants held the name cards which were all decorated with bling and a copy of the magazine was tied with Moroccan napkin wire holders. 

 

Mark sits between New York’s Design Hunting legendary design editor Wendy Goodman and cookbook author Susan Simon.

James greets Bergdorf Goodman’s Linda Fargo.

 

New York’s Design Hunting. The shoe cupboard in the dressing room, “Things that aren’t meant to go together go together. But it works.” 

Businessman, David Hoffman, freelance editor Rima Suqi, jewelry designer Paige Novick and designer John Derian.  On the right; visual designer Johanna Burke, Ralph Lauren’s home design director Nicholas Manville and James.

 

Musician and filmmaker Phil Aceto, New York Design Hunting’s editor Lauren DeCarlo and James.

 

The Basmati rice. 

 

Decoupage superstar designer John Derian checks out the magazine.

New York’s Design Hunting. The drum table in the library was inspired by Cecil Beaton, one of their style icons.

  Art director Stephen Johnson and Flair’s Sean Clark.

 

 

The venue the Indian restaurant Panna is decorated with tons of fairy lights, the Indian pop music is loud and it’s great fun.

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New York: The Fornasetti II Wallpaper Collection.

 

New York: The Fornasetti II Wallpaper Collection. The Fornasetti II wallpaper collection produced by Cole and Son was presented to the American press in the Lee Jofa showroom in the D and D building. The new Fornasetti collection takes a bold step in wallpaper design, transcending the obvious and transforming eclectic and whimsical drawings with eccentric motifs of fantastical flying machines, architectural details, playful monkeys, keys and owls which evoke a theatrical and magical space.

Above: Barnaba Fornasetti is being interviewed by the press. He continues to produce and revives his father’s designs, skillfully taking inspiration from the extensive Fornasetti archives in Milan.

 

The Fornasetti II wallpaper collection.  Acquario: The fish theme appears in some of the earliest Fornasetti work, this design adopts some of the motifs used on decorative trays, and was picked for their whimsical and naive appearance.

Barnaba Fornasetti and Cole and Son CEO Simon Glendenning. Commenting on the new collection, Barnaba Fornasetti stated: “Pablo Neruda once described my father as the magician of precious and precise magic and I think that this decorative collection beautifully captures the magic essence of the Fornasetti world”.     

 

The Fornasetti II wallpaper Collection. Nicchie: Comprising a number of well-proportioned trompe l’oeil niches, Nicchie was originally conceived as a decorative screen in the 1950’s. Re-structured to work as a wallpaper, this unmistakably Fornasetti crosshatched design features a surreal assortment of mandolins, fruit, keys and hourglasses in graphic tones of black on white, charcoal and parchment with highlights of red, gold and bronze.

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NYC: Union Square subway - Police Vechicle

NYC: Union Square subway.  Seen at Union Square subway station a policeman on a special vehicle called a D3, a cross between a bike and a cart.

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NYC: Pure Food and Wine

 

NYC: Pure Food and Wine. Pure Food and Wine restaurant is an offshoot of One Lucky Duck is owned by Sarma Melngailis; it is a raw “haute cuisine” vegan restaurant, located near Union Square and its giant farmer’s market. The menu is entirely plant based and does not use any processed ingredients. Nothing is heated above approximately 118 degrees in order to preserve vitamins, minerals and enzymes. It is simply delicious; I never thought raw food could be so tasty. And it also has a great wine, shakes and juice list.

 

Pure Food and Wine.  Prepared by chef Nikki King Bennett, the Zucchini and Greenhouse Tomato Lasagne; sun-dried tomato sauce, pistachio basil pesto, pumpkin seed macadamia ricotta, not only look attractive, they are also delicious.

 

Pure Food and Wine.  The pastry chef Melissa Christy’s Lemon Bar; almond coconut crust and tart lemon custard, is to die for.

Pure Food and Wine.  A corner of the outdoor garden dinning space by the bar.

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