“if I wasn’t moving forward, i felt like i was going to explode.” ~ neil burger’s limitless, 2011
everytime i arrive in nyc. everytime i leave. it’s like a dream… so i come back to the images, the memories, rethinking each day past as i move forward into the future back home. hoping it doesn’t disappear. hoping i can hold onto it. one. more. day. and then i write. i write to remember it. to visualize it. to relive it. to learn from it. from arriving on the upper east side on a late saturday afternoon to stay with dear friend + co-conspirator charlotte eyerman, zig-zagging back to Park Slope to then make my way to Chinatown for a sneak peak of the new-ish Juku, a brisk walk down a drizzled Canal Street and the past mid-night confusion that still happens (25 years later) amongst the N,R,Q and now W ~ to make my way back up to the upper east side, wanting to continue on but doing so in the worlds of others ~ “discovering” HBO’s Tell Me You Love Me (yes, the one from 10 years ago) and finally drifting off to sleep at 4am during episode 3… I awake on Sunday to do salon #103 at textile artist Mary Jaegar’s Bushwick studio for She-Can (the non-profit that I am creative director for, to help us expand and find mentors and colleges for our scholars on the East Coast). Day 2 is approached with the same force and drive that makes me miss the NYC of my youth, its ever pushing thrusting forward into a not knowing but deep trust that anything you can imagine can in fact happen. I wrote about NYC a couple years ago ~ a part 1 and part 2 for EatDrinkFilms ~ and since then ~ a new home, a new job, a new way of thinking about fashion + film + food ~ my relationship to my life + and those things that quicken the heart… nyc tends to magnify them. because to me, for me ~ everything is possible. so when i return to the bay area ~ last time oakland, this time orinda ~ i get to pause, take a breath and re-live the 5 day “break” that becomes the impetus, the inspiration for the coming months. Below, a visual diary of things + experiences + encounters + meditative walks that the baudelarian flaneur in me always leaves nyc with, in anticipation of the next time, the next fix, and the absolute belief in that which is imagined, realized, made possible …
“we write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.” ~ anais nin
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above / saturday, day 1: arrival to re-unite with an old friend from SOAS London, and then to the beautiful and delicious JUKU, a multilevel Japanese restaurant on 32 Mulberry Street which offers izakaya and omakase ~ and the menu is overseen by chef kazuo yoshida. the concept space is curated by gallerist max levai of Marlborough Contemporary who commissions works by NY-based and international artists like Justin Lowe and Jonah Freeman. Stray Light will be opening around March 15th and is a restaurant and cocktail lounge in the cellar, which is in its entirety an art piece by Freeman and Lowe. I happened to have a sneak peek of Stray Light the night i arrived to meet up with owners Ken Cohen and his son Lucas Cohen)… ; and, bottom right ~ “research” for my opening quotes for the salon dinner / juxtaposing italo calvino with rebecca solnitt.
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“One’s life and passion may be elsewhere, but New York is where you prove if what you think in theory makes sense in life.” ~ miuccia prada
above / day 2 ~ my 103rd salon dinner, and first dinner in NYC for She-Can. an intimate gathering celebrating global women’s empowerment, co-hosted with peggy northrop, heather mcmaster, mary ann packo and mary jaeger ~ with She-Can scholars Patience from Rwanda and Aidy from Cambodia, and executive director Barbara Bylenga… with huge thanks to Kelsea Vaughn, Caitlin Sherman and Bien Cuit’s Kate Wheatcroft.
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things that quicken the heart… snapshots of days 3, 4, 5…
“He spoke to me of Sei Shonagon, a lady in waiting to Princess Sadako at the beginning of the 11th century… Do we ever know where history is really made? …by learning to draw a sort of melancholy comfort from the contemplation of the tiniest things this small group of idlers left a mark on Japanese sensibility much deeper than the mediocre thundering of the politicians. Shonagon had a passion for lists: the list of ‘elegant things,’ ‘distressing things,’ or even of ‘things not worth doing.’ One day she got the idea of drawing up a list of ‘things that quicken the heart.’ ~ chris marker, sans soleil
burberry, christopher bailey’s final collection / helmut lang, bergdorf goodman’s / polka dots + stripes / j.mendel
spaces of intersection ~ apple, upper east side / per lei / iris apfel, bergdorf’s
antonio marras at Century 21, upper west side / phoebe cates BLUE TREE, upper west side / joyce francis lucite box, from Blue Tree / petrossian
going back to my roots, my first job in nyc, frank lloyd wright’s guggenheim museum (with a hill rebay fellowship) ~ the thannhauser collection / josef albers in mexico exhibit / Danh Vo”take my breath away” exhibit / the cafe at the Guggenheim / then, downtown to the 14th street apple store
“one can’t paint New York as it is, but rather as it is felt.” ~ georgia o’keeffe
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cooper hewitt museum, bob greenberg exhibit / the immersion room, process + product / greta gerwig, portrait @ film society, lincoln center, where i saw Sebastian Lelio’s A Fantastic Woman, which premiered in Telluride Film Festival 2017, and which i missed…
abc carpet, first floor / timothy oulton ~ store within a store
union square farmers market / subway with chile bouquet / reception for charlotte eyerman, new director and chief curator of JPMorgan Chase art collection, here with st. louis-based artist basil kincaid and bushwick-based sculptor kennedy yanko / outside jpmorgan chase, park avenue
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“…the people who move through the streets are all strangers. At each encounter, they imagine a thousand things about one another; meetings which could take place between them, conversations, surprises, caresses, bites. But no one greets anyone; eyes lock for a second, then dart away, seeking other eyes, never stopping…something runs among them, an exchange of glances like lines that connect one figure with another and draw arrows, stars, triangles, until all combinations are used up in a moment, and other characters come on to the scene… ” ~italo calvino
…this closing quote was a reflection on that serendipitous moment of pause that can only happen face to face in an encounter where we have in that very precise instant the choice to move onward, or to stop, smile, say hello… the art of gathering is about inviting strangers and colleagues with a common thread and common love and bringing them together to listen + talk, conjure + connect ~ a sweet moment of shared intimacy in the chaos (and constant noise) that has become (many of) our lives. amongst the madness + the movement that draws me back time and again to the energy of NYC ~ its the not knowing, the possibility, the potential in the infinite combinations of people, to collaborate + conjure + create new worlds…
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“i was in love with New York. i do not mean ‘love’ in any colloquial way, i mean that i was in love with the city, the way you love the first person who ever touches you and never love anyone quite that way again.” ~ joan didion
pinewood
Thanks Carrie!xo,Kellyann