Creative Sugar Magazine - June 2014

CREATIVE SUGAR

THE FALL ISSUE

J U N E 2014 - A N E M E R G I N G A R T I S T M A G A Z I N E

2 Summer 2014 CREATIVE SUGAR

C OV E R

T H E E N D E T Y M E S F E S T I VA L

P H OTO S A N D W O R D S BY

A D A M D E V L I N

CREATIVE SUGAR Summer 2014 3

Creative Sugar

Issue 9Editor-in-ChiefSabrina Scott

PhotographersAdam DevlinKeith BienertJason Maddox

WritersAdam DevlinAshley ArroyoChristine EtienneChristopher DurantDeena AtkinsonDena FerreiraEmily WiestKenneth Lundquist, Jr.Samantha Weiss

Makeup & Wardrobe StylingAngelique Cerniglia

HairTay Sims

Art DirectionSabrina Scott

© 2014 Creative Sugar Magazine

All rights to art, words, photos, design and copyrights are the property of the Artist. All work in this publication may not be used without the Artist’s consent.

New York, New York

Contact:[email protected]: creativesugarmagazine.netfacebook.com/creativesugarmagazinetwitter.com/creative_sugar

F R O M T H E E D I TO R

E D I TO R- I N-C H I E F

Suumer is here. Keep cool, keep hydrated. Check out

that art show in the city that you’ve put off. I t makes

a great opportunity to catch up with fr iends or even

for a romantic date.

This issue brings together a great vibe with a

conversation with painter Alexander Yul ish, at a gal lery

in LA. Written by NY transplant Deena Atkinson.

Enjoy!

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VANESSA KOWALSKI 6BY KENNETH LUNDQUIST, JR.

ALEXANDER YULISH 8 BY DEENA ATKINSON

NOZOMI ROSE 16 BY SAMATHA WEISS ENDE TYMES FESTIVAL 18 BY ADAM DEVLIN

LAUREN FOXX AND RITT HENN 24 BY DENA FERREIRA


CUL

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FASHION EDITORIAL 26BY KEITH BIENERT WITH JASON MADDOX

M I C H E L L E N A K A S H 36BY E M I LY W I E S T

L I F E O F A N A R T I S T 40BY C H R I S TO P H E R D U R A N T

G U N M E TA L I N K TAT TO O 42BY C H R I S T I N E E T I E N N E

FA S H I O N A N D R O G Y N Y 47BY A S H L E Y A R R OYO


vanessa kowalski: vintage atmospheresBy kenneth lundquist, jr.

When I first met Vanessa, I was immediately star struck. Her personal style is like a brilliant summer day- effort-lessly gorgeous. In experiencing her work, and watch-ing her approach to the creativity of her images, I knew that she is on the golden road to artist success. I had the chance to sit with her, in her new studio in Brooklyn, and chat while we painted live pineapples for a new spread.

Of course, my first and most obvious question- Why art, photography?

“It’s funny to think in terms of making images. I am often plagued by an idea and can’t rest until I’ve seen to its creation. I can’t exactly say why, but just that it is. Mak-ing art, creating, has been a great way to cope with daily reality and its idiosyncrasies. With photography I feel like I am building my own language, and communicating without words has been an adventure.”

What attracted you to the style you work in pres-ently?

“I work in various approaches to photography- often shooting with whatever is readily available to me. I’ll use a scanner, make a polaroid, shoot with a 4x5, a point and shoot, etc., - It really depends on the outcome I’m envisioning. Every image I create has its own atmosphere, and that is something I try to explore with the medium I’m working with. I think irony is a big facet of my work, which is why I might, for example, make a polaroid of a rock - an instanta-neous image of one the longest processes. I would hate to limit myself to a singular way of creation. Experimenting so often leaves a lot of room for error, which is something I appreciate about my own way of working.”


vanessa kowalski: vintage atmospheres

(ABOVE) WATERMELONS, PHOTO BY VANESSA KOWALSKI

(OPPOSITE LEFT) 2.99, PHOTO BY VANESSA KOWALSKI

(OPPOSITE RIGHT) CMY(BLAC)K SHEEP, PHOTO BY VANESSA KOWALSKI

What is your greatest inspiration for your work?

“Language has always been my work’s center of gravity. Growing up bilingual resulted in this constant feeling of being lost in translation, everything always had two sides. I find that ten-sion of duality present in my work, working with antiquated techniques for a digital audience. I think that I’m always trying to pick a side in my work, and sometimes the side I’m on is obvious to the viewer, and sometimes I like to let my viewer have their own opinion. I have always been inspired by the natural world, especially fruits and vegetables- they’re like these beautiful gifts from nature that I haven’t really wrapped my head around yet! The conversation surround-ing GMO foods has been of particular interest to me lately- there is a lot of miscommunica-tion and circulation of false ideas surrounding the topic and I’ve been doing a lot of research lately to formulate my own idea about it. I also think Instagram is completely awesome - I follow many photographers and love having the argu-ment of whether or not your Instagram pictures are considered your work. They totally count, by the way.”

What makes your work unique among your peers?

“It takes me a really, really long time to make an image. I put a lot of time and effort to create some sort of vernacular in my images based on symbols. I’m interested in the narrative of an image. The way I work has gotten increasingly more meticulous, which I think is moving in the opposite direction for others as most photogra-phers transition into the digital age.”

What are your processes in creating your work?

“I spend a lot of time in vintage/thrift stores searching for props. I am probably a level 1 hoarder. Most objects have this charged energy about them that you can feel when you pick them up. Finding family souvenirs in a thrift store always brings a great laugh - I love that I can buy someone else’s memories. I also have a thing for fake fruit- I love to see the idealized versions of objects. Fake fruit just reminds me of Barbie’s trying to portray real people. I travel as much as possible- having a worldview brings a different level of understanding into my image making process and allows me to take a step back from the work I’m making. I want my art to function in the world we live in, and to make

sense beyond my studio walls.”Vanessa is in her early twenties, but I get the sense she has her ear on the creative pulse. I wonder if she would have any advice for emerging artists?

She doesn’t take but a second to respond- “Talk out loud about your work.”

The future is incredibly bright for Vanessa. She says,“I’d really like to spend the next lengthy period of time focusing on my project “CMYK RGB GMO” which is an exploration in the perceptions we have about color and genetically modified foods. I’ve never felt so obligated to make a body of work, and I think it will be interesting to see how all of my research comes into the light.”I poke her for her favorite color, she says-“Dang. My idea of red might be different than your idea of red, but the red in my head is pretty beautiful.”For more visit - vanessakowalski.com


UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL WITH PAINTER ALEXANDER YULISHBy deena atkinson

lexander Yulish is many things – an actor, a model, a native New Yorker, an Angeleno, and a student of everything life has to of-fer. But first and foremost, he is an artist. The son of a famed illustrator and sculptor,

art has always been in his blood. You can check out his oeuvre online here. Look-ing at the website, I was blown away by the im-mediacy, the raw energy of his palette and lines and I couldn’t wait to visit the gallery. In person, the paintings are even more visually stunning, at once playful and brutal, gripping, anarchic, intuitive; some are emotional to the point of being soul-crushing. I mean that in a good way- the kind of aesthetic soul-crushing that reminds you of something inside yourself, or teaches you something you didn’t know, the kind that taps into a primal part of the human spirit, the ch-thonic, sub-material that resides in the depths.

I sat down with Alexander in KM Fine Arts Gallery in Hollywood to hear about his new show ‘Un-quiet Mind’ and find out more about the intrigu-ing and charming man behind all the semi-myths I read on the internet.

Deena : So, I stalked you online a bit before coming up with these questions. Your back-ground seems really interesting…you grew up in New York, correct?

Alexi: Yes, I grew up in Manhattan. I grew up on MacDougal and 8th. And then I grew up in Chelsea.

D: I read that you grew up in the Chelsea Hotel, did you live there?

A: No, I grew up right next to the Chelsea but people always write that I lived there because it sounds more romantic! But yeah, I was around people like Patti Smith and that whole group on multiple occasions, so it was definitely exciting growing up there. This was before the neighbor-hood changed drastically; it was still Chelsea.

D: Your mother, Barbara Pearlman, is an artist as well? She hasn’t shown her work for almost 30 years. To what extent was your art influ-enced by her?

A: She was a famous illustrator for Vogue, and she travelled all over the world for her career. Then she got into fine art and that was her next progression. At one point her illustration career was skyrocketing and she just quit. She came back from a show in Germany that she had sold out and she just quit. She said “This isn’t what I want to do right now,” not in the sense of quitting art, but she only wanted to paint. She didn’t want to deal with the business part of art anymore, she wanted to make things really beautiful and pure. We had a studio in the back of our house so she would go and paint there; later she got into sculpture. Recently she has come out of hiding. We’re go-ing to have a show together, actually. We don’t know when or where, but a lot of people want us to have a show together and we are planning it, so that will be a great extension.

If you go to Pearlman Art you’ll get an idea of the environment I grew up in.

D: Was it during your formative years then, that she decided to just pursue painting, and do all this art for herself?

A: Yes, it was when I was around 6 years old.

D: So you grew up with the impression that art is for self-expression, it’s not something you do in a commercial sense, in order to sell things for profit? Art for art’s sake, if you will.

A: Exactly. As a kid I would spend hours literally just watching her paint. She taught me every-thing from drawing to color, but in a sense you can’t really teach someone to be an artist. I feel like it was in my blood. Part of it I think is genetic – it’s just in you. And the other part is

a


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putting in the work, so she taught me the craft.

D: Did she instruct you at all? Teach you color theory and give you advice?

A: To a degree. When we used to draw together what she would tell me is “Just commit to the first line, whatever it is. Put your heart into that first line. And then the second line, then the third line…”

Really, there is no such thing as a painting, it’s just a bunch of lines. But at the end, if you’re lucky, you might get a painting – and that’s great. Sometimes when I don’t commit to some-thing I’ll throw it out, because I’ll realize that although I technically see a painting at the end, my heart isn’t in it. The paintings in this show, ‘Unquiet Mind,’ I feel my heart is in it. The rest, that I didn’t put my heart in, they were hung in the garbage. So maybe some homeless person is using it for a blanket.

D: Were you exposed to a lot of art growing up that influenced you? When I look at your work I see a lot of de Kooning, maybe early Picasso...

A: You know, I get Bacon, de Kooning, Chagal…but when I look at myself I really don’t see any of that. I can understand the similarities in composition or in color combination and I take it as a compliment. But my favorite compliment I guess would be when you see an Alexi you just know it’s my work. It’s not self-conscious, though.

People will go on and on about what they think inspires me. But I don’t even go to museums that much because I don’t want to be influ-enced. Things like memories influence me, like this conversation, maybe this will end up in one of my paintings.

D: Besides memories, what other types of things inspire you outside of the world of fine art?

A: Everything. Gravel. Trees. People. Cities. I don’t think there’s anything that at the end of the day doesn’t inspire me. You have all these experiences every day and it just starts to seep

into your bones. If you take a shower some of it wipes off but most of it’s stuck in you.

It’s really hard for me to talk about my paintings because essentially they’re just conversations and the conversation shifts.

D: Speaking of being inspired by cities and the environment you’re in…you moved from New York City to Los Angeles. Did that change in atmosphere affect your creative output in any significant way?

A: I moved here because I had already done New York. At the age of 25 I thought, “Okay, I grew up here, I was going out when I was 13 years old.” So you experience those things, then all of the sudden you want to experience something new. And I did. And I hated it here for the first 2 years, but then I stopped comparing. Once you stop comparing you can actually appreciate LA for what it is. I made peace with it and I fell madly in love with this city.

Plus, I have room to work here! In New York it would be almost impossible to have that much studio space. D: So you can work on a larger scale than you would in Manhattan...

A: This show is a little bigger than the last show; I just feel like I had a lot to say and it came out. ‘Emperor of New York’ was similar but different. They all have the same conversations but they’re different.

I don’t even know how to name my paintings. I have friends name them sometimes, just because it’s like..the experience we’re having here and talking. Imagine you had to name this conver-sation...it would be the strangest thing, what would we call this? D: It would be hard because there are so many subjects, there’s just a lot of content there and so many things going on…

A: Yeah, so that’s like when I finish a painting…how do I possibly name it? Sometimes some of them can be more figurative, like this one I called ‘The Empty Chair’ because to start there actually was an empty chair, although later I switched it, but that one was a little easier. It’s messed up because you can have a painting with a really cool name that isn’t that good and vice versa. Or the name can influence you; for in-stance, a painting might be called ‘Sunrise on the Moon’ or something, but if you named it instead

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‘Battlefield’ that’s what people would see and take away from the painting when they looked at it. Subconsciously it’s amazing what naming does for a piece. I don’t want to name anything “Un-titled #5” or “Series 2,” or “Man Walking Down Stairs Holding a Staple Gun..” I just don’t do that.

D: Have you ever tried to work backwards, come up with a name first and then paint based on that? Like a writing prompt.

A: No, I haven’t done that! It’s a cool concept though. Sometimes I give myself scenarios, such as, “Today, I’m going to do a black and white piece.” Giving yourself restraints like that can be fun.

Going to the studio is like going to war, but it’s a war you really want to win. You risk everything knowing that you can lose, even at the last mo-ment. Sometimes I get to the end and I’ll be like okay “I got it, this is almost done” and then all of the sudden at the last minute, you end up doing something at the bottom of the canvas that just doesn’t work.

Everything’s a puzzle. If I do this blue line at the bottom it has to balance with something else. It’s like ping pong. So you can lose a painting at any moment. And that’s what I love at the same time – it’s unpredictable. And that unpredictability is what makes me want to paint. If it isn’t a bit unpredictable or dangerous I don’t get interested. Some people think because I use so many colors there’s a really happy energy….look a little deeper. It’s a dance. A lot of these paintings change every time I see them.

D: This kind of malleability and flux, is that something you are hoping people take away from your art?

A: That’s what I would like people to experience, to see something different every time.

At the end of the day, you have to paint for your-self and you just hope it translates. I feel lucky people are buying my stuff and getting inspired and the show is doing well, but at the same time, if it didn’t, I still would have to paint. Even though there’s nothing really romantic about doing some-thing that people don’t appreciate.

D: Art is inherently subjective.

A: Yes, there are certain things people like. I saw someone just get pounded in their stomach when they saw this particular painting (“Closer”) and then the next person walked by without barely glancing at it. You’ll overhear people; sometimes

they get excited and sometimes they’re saying they don’t really like it. But you can’t let that affect you personally, the business part of it. The business part is so important and that’s the scary part because I just love painting and want that to be separate. I think the idea of identity is just the weird-est thing, having to say ‘I’m a writer” or “I’m a painter.” What does that even mean? It’s so limiting.

D: You want to do what you love but you also want to make enough money from it that you can continue to do it. You don’t want to spend your day at a soul-sucking job that leaves you with no free time to pursue your passions.

A: Oh god, yeah. I’ve done the weirdest jobs.

D: What’s the weirdest job you’ve had?

A: I’ve been a food delivery man in New York City, that was a really strange one. I had to ride a bicycle and bring food from this place called ‘Live Bait’ and I would go to the weirdest homes and people would invite me up. I would literally just sit there and talk to people while their food got cold. Or sometimes I would crash the bike, spill everything, and I’d have to reassemble their food.

When I first came to LA I worked for this real-ity TV show called “Change of Heart” and the premise was I had to find people and then these couples go on a date with the other people and then have to decide if they still want to be with their significant other. So I literally would go up to people and ask if they wanted to make $500 to be on this show but technically I would break couples up. People would call me afterwards and yell at me, saying “Why did you put me on this show? You made me look like an idiot!” So that was one of the strangest…really, really odd.

But yeah, I’ve done everything. When I got out of school I started modeling and I went to Europe and I didn’t like it at all. I lived in Milan for a while and it was so strange but I would do it all again, I just love experiences. And I like watching people…I get really curious about people. I need people. Just as much as I need to be alone. If you’re a painter you spend a tre-mendous amount of time alone, it’s very intro-verted. But at the same time when you’re alone there’s only so much you can learn. It’s so good to actually talk to someone.

D: You get to bounce ideas off of people…

A: Yeah, and get excited! There’s nothing too


romantic about being tormented in your home. Wearing sunglasses and telling no one to come see you or look in your eyes. Having your as-sistant say ‘Only speak to Alexander Yulish when spoken to,” or something like that. I mean we’re all eccentric in our way but there has to be a bal-ance. D: Speaking of the artistic process, I read you-have a place in Mexico? Is that where you go now to paint?

A: I’m starting to. My mom and I are moving to San Miguel, and we found the perfect place but it ended up getting bought literally right before we made the offer. It was our dream home, with these huge studios. We ended up finding a place further away.

D: San Miguel, that whole area is a big expat artist community.

A: It is! But it’s weird, I don’t like hanging out

with other artists that much. I wish it was the time of Picasso and Modigliani, and that whole crew back in the 20’s; they all bounced ideas of one another and they all critiqued and it’s just not like that anymore. Everyone always says they want to create that kind of a space again, they want to re-create Warhol’s factory, but no one’s ever going to recreate that.

D: Growing up in NYC during that time must have been interesting. Warhol was still alive then. And you got to experience the height of graffiti before they really cracked down and stopped running the trains with tags on them. Did you ever do street art?

A: Oh yeah, we would tag any place we could.

D: What’s the coolest place you tagged?

A: On a church..Just kidding! That would’ve been really bad. We would literally just dare each other, we would tag the sides of police stations,

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I’ve gotten chased. We used to get in bad fights, cross out the wrong person and they’d know you! It was a little more innocent, people didn’t just shoot you, I mean down town…but that wasn’t my personal form of expression, there were people who were complete masters, geniuses… Street art is a very strange thing right now. It was the height and now…There’s a group of street artists who will go down as unbelievable. Everyone likes street art right now but not every-one’s a street artist. There’s a difference. Some of them are going to be in permanent collections of the biggest museums in the world and will be appreciated. Someone will do a throw up and it’s not nearly as profound but sometimes you just see something and you can’t even express it, it’s just insane. Sorry, sometimes I have trouble with words. Saying something is “insane” doesn’t re-ally describe it.

D: I know what you mean, I say “awesome” or “rad” all the time when I really like something, and I don’t know why those words even comes out my mouth because things are always so much more nuanced than that and we have this whole rich vocabulary at our disposal…

A: Exactly, because at the same time a color will express it, like “Blue!” or “Ultramarine Blue” that’s like how I feel and then other times, that’s not how I feel. I have to create a whole new blue. But then you realize you can never create a blue, everything’s been invented.

D: Well, Yves Klein made his own blue and he patented it. A: Oh, you’re right, that was a bad example with the blue…now you’re like ‘You’re an idiot Alexi you need to do your art history!” Ha, I hate art school.

D: You mean when you went to college?

A: Yeah, I just hated it. My mom was my real art school. And that was essentially years and years just watching her and experiencing that. But in school I hated my art teacher. I remember once I had to render a chair and when I was done I decided to elongate everything because that’s how I felt. But my professor was upset because it wasn’t what he instructed us to do. It was a constant battle.

At the end I remember I said to him “I’m an art-ist” and he said, “That’s a pretty bold statement. People spend their whole lives before they can call themselves an artist.” And I looked at him and I said “Well, that’s their fucking problem.” And he just looked at me, and that was that. It was bad

so I quit. It was just such an awful experience. D: Because it was limiting? You didn’t have full freedom of expression?

A: Basically. I could render something if I wanted to, exactly life-like. But at the same time, I re-member drawing with my mom and she taught me to just extend a line until it emotionally stops being relevant to you. When the emotion stops the line stops, so a chair or an arm may go out all the way across the canvas and then all of the sudden it ends. But there has to be a dialogue, you cant just take it all the way out for no reason. So you may do that but other things have to balance. In a sense, there are no rules. You create your own rules. There’s an alphabet, just like if you were to write a book, you would have to use an alphabet. Here, the alphabet is colors. Some-time the colors may not be enough so you grab a branch off the ground and stick it through the canvas. That may not be enough, so you start using everything around you. Some people use cement bricks, and they build a brick wall in the middle of a gallery. That works emotionally for some people. For me it doesn’t. But everyone has their own form of expression. D: Speaking of forms of expression, you’re an actor as well. You were in a David Lynch movie?

A: Yeah I was, it was such an interesting experi-ence. I wanted to meet him, so I did and it was at the end of his movie “Inland Empire” and I remember getting a phone call the next day ask-ing if I wanted to be in the film. They just told me to show up on set. It was towards the end of filming and it was a fun experience. I love acting but it’s not something I share that much. Some-times people want to know the story; yes, I did acting…and I did a lot of things…then they’re like “Oh, you came to painting later in life,” but, no, I didn’t. I’ve been painting my whole life. I just decided to focus on it, and I got really fortunate. It’s funny, acting doesn’t do it for me the way painting does.

D: Because you’re following someone else’s script?

A: Yeah, I don’t like people directing me how to do things. The only thing I have to worry about now is the guy who created these colors and put them in a tube.

D: Well, hopefully that guy knows what he’s do-ing! You’ve mainly done acrylics so far?


A: Yeah acrylics have gotten just unbelievable, they’re very different from oil in a sense but at the same time it’s very immediate, and that’s what I love about it, the immediacy of it.

D: Do you always use a really bold palate?

A: Sometimes. Sometimes I won’t use them, and I’ll only use a blue. Or a black. I don’t paint for the sake of using a lot of colors. I use colors be-cause that’s how I express what’s going on. But everything changes. I’m curious to see where I go in the next 3 years, 4 years. Every show is different not for the sake of being different but because the vocabulary, the language changes.

D: I read something about someone seeing your cellphone background and that’s how you got discovered?

A: I was at the Chateau and I had just gotten my first show here but I was sitting and this guy who is a friend of a friend sitting at our table saw my phone background and he asked who did the painting. It turns out he collects art, so to make a long story short, so he bought a bunch of my stuff and told the Annenberg family about me, then they contacted Leila Heller at her gallery in NYC. There was a show called “The Young Collectors Exhibition,” and that went really well so I started having bigger collectors. I was just fortunate but I worked very hard. Really there’s no correlation between working hard and doing well on the business side, a lot of that’s just cir-cumstance. You just have to be in the right place at the right time. And the work has to be good.

D: Your paintings are abstract, but they do have recognizable things in them, such as a chair, or a vase, or a body. When you make the first line, that line you commit to, do you have any foresight that eventually, it’s going to become a human, or a lamp, or whatever?

A: Not really. I commit to a shape whatever it is. Then I’ll start to disintegrate the shape. Like this one painting, the shoulders were out to here. And it felt right, but then you realize it’s not balanced. At least for me. Sometimes it works when you have huge proportions. This one all of the sudden started getting very compact and very it felt like everything started to get squeezed in.

D: So you painted over the shoulders?

A: Yeah and it was just constant, you know a chair, this chair turned out to be a longcouch. And then it felt..it could be anything, it was actu-ally a drink when I finished it. But sometimes it’s

not that figurative. There was a desk I think, which I completely erased. It just constantly changes.

This one was called “Family” and now it’s “Alone To-gether” like how you can be surrounded by people and be very much alone. It’s very much about being in the city. I had just gotten back from NYC and this kind of came out from it.

D: I’m really glad I can ask you these questions in person and we can point to the individual and paintings and talk about them. Because I had this whole list of questions, but it changes when I meet you, and when we are actually looking at the paintings as a point of reference. This sounds odd to say as someone who writes about art for a living, but what do we talk about when we talk about art?

There’s a Gerhard Richter documentary on Netflix and at some point, I’m paraphrasing here, but he says something like “To talk about painting is not only ridiculous but beside the point. Painting is another form of thinking. Words are only capable of expressing words and painting has nothing to do with that.” And I just thought that was so beautiful…

A: Wow, yeah! You completely get it. Painting is another form of thinking. I completely agree with that, I didn’t say it as well as that..I’m not good at speaking and that’s why I paint. It’s difficult and pointless too because our conversations are com-pletely different.

It’s also that, to me, painting is another form of thinking that can be very ethereal. I think it’s another form of expression. When words aren’t enough I paint.

Well, there you have it. Alexi Yulish is a truly incredible individual and a talented visionary; you should check out his work in person if at all possible or check out his gallery online.

alexanderyulishart.com/


Nozomi Rose floats easily between many creative media, extending her artistic endeavors from paint-ing and photography to fiction stories and plays. A survivor of the Kobe earthquake in Japan as a teen-ager, much of her work deals abstractly or concretely with the feelings of survivors of disaster, or those displaced by larger forces—her fiction pieces deal with reactions to the Fukushima, and her canvas work is inspired by discussions between Japan and the United States of war and Peace Constitutions. She also works to navigate the space between her Japanese, European, and American experiences with art. Although she has been trained in Paris and has a great understanding of Japanese artistry, she believes these art scenes are “too rigid,” and seeks to create a more fluid, less defined artistic experience for herself through her work.

We met in her most recent display, a gallery in Med-gar Evers College that showcases several pieces that had once been shown at the Japanese Consulate in New York, to discuss how her Japanese perspective lends a more unique view of art.

CS: What media of art do you work in? How do they intersect or influence each other?NR: I consider myself as a painter, but I often create artwork that goes far beyond how the field of paint-ing has historically been defined. For example, I deal with Formalism, but my paintings can easily become three dimensional. I do not sweat to cut the canvas of my painting anymore. When cutting my picture plane, I do not think, “oh, I will become a sculptor if I do that.” Do you think Michelangelo thought “oops, I will become a painter if I work on the Sistine Cha-pel”? I don’t think so. Artists need to do what their work requires. I listen to the materials and follow the voices…

My work is informed by Shaped Canvas. Yea, I’m doing the 60’s, but I like it and I cannot help it. Also, I increasingly started to think that I truly like Arte Povera. In short, I am not a medium-specific artist. I work with the ideas of painting and photography. I see those two fields as a single discipline of image-making. The field of image-making began with words, and I personally believe that this image-making

tradition goes back to literature, fiction writing to be precise.

CS: How is Japan and Japanese art draw upon in your work? Does it show itself in different ways across different media (for example, writing style versus canvas style)? Is it all subtly mixed togeth-er?

NR: I think my painting style has been very Europe-an because Japanese art is too strong in visual arts to visualize my personal voice through it [It is too generic, or typical—similar images are repeated be-tween many artists, and so there is less room for a personal voice]. Modern Art is a mere reflection of Japanese Art. And then again, an American English teacher created the Japanese identity in visual arts, not someone Japanese. A renowned black curator I know once told me that Japanese is as white as you can get, so that explains it. My “current” work uses Nihonga paint (traditional Japanese painting pigment), but I used it in the way that relates to collage, like Picasso.

You might find more of my Japanese-ness in writing in part because I write a lot about Japanese disas-ters (in relation to East Asian color perceptions). I have been reading about ancient cultures that didn’t have color blue and had it confused with green, just like Japan.

CS: What is the inspiration for the art on display currently? How does it compare to the other work you’ve done?

NR: I made subtle changes to the works I am exhibiting right now [from when it was shown in the Consulate General of Japan]. I framed “black bishop” and “white bishop” in gold; the frames are not part of the paintings, but the gold may be. I installed the piece “untitled (hope)” much higher than how it was shown for the first time in my 2012 solo show at the Consulate General of Japan in New York in Midtown Manhattan. This was in part be-cause the consulate office had the low ceiling, but I feel this work of mine changes every time someone hangs it and that is fine with me.

artist nozomi rose discusses japan, the u.s. and her influencesBy samantha weiss


These three pieces [currently on display at Medgar Evers College] are taken out of a group of my art that is very conservative and conventional. I created them for the Japanese Government… When I decided to work with them, my goal was that I have them feel art. Their space was all about international affairs that was foreign to me, but we slowly worked together and successfully com-pleted the project.

CS: What was the experience of painting with Nihonga like? How did it differ from your usual process?

NR: Well, Japanese paint has much larger grains than other paint like oil or acrylic, and so it is much heavier. Traditionally, when you paint on canvas, you have it set up on an easel, almost vertical. Here I had to lay the canvas out flat because of the heavy paint. The color is different, too, maybe muddier—but that may be my experimenting with it, because it looks muddier in Black Bishop than White Bishop. Also, it is traditional for Japanese painters to mix the paint with their fingers, although they do paint with brushes. I wanted the expe-rience mostly of touching the paint, which is something that European painting does not have.

CS: What was your goal in creating these pieces?

NR: These were on display at the Consulate General of Japan in New York, during the big discussions of the Peace Constitution of Japan. In 2011, the United States was asking for Japanese military aid, despite it being against the Peace Constitution. There were also discus-sions about the use of nuclear power plants in Japan, and whether or not it should continue.

For “untitled (hope),” I used my unfinished painting from 2004. I recreated my 2002 sculpture that I made right after 9/11. I reworked on it with the change in materi-als, from plaster and wire to canvas and fishing line. The theme for this is the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, so it is supposed to visualize the feeling of something ephemeral.

To me, “untitled (hope)” is about its title. The word “hope” is the English translation of my Japanese name, but does the word represent the artists’ “hope” for the victims of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, the author-ship (signature) or the ownership of the artwork? While I was creating this piece, along with “black bishop” and “white bishop,” I was thinking of war and the relation-ship between Japan and the United States, and how it is like a chess game.

(TO P) A R T I S T W I T H S C U L P T U R E, U N T I T L E D H O P E

(B OT TO M) W H I T E B I S H O P, BY N OZ O M I R O S E


went to the first night of the fourth installment of the modestly legendary Ende Tymes Festival, a weekend-long celebration of experimental music, video, and art. It was situated at The Silent Barn in Brooklyn, NY and on Sunday at Outpost Artists Resources in Ridgewood. It’s an entirely independently funded festival of extremely noncommercial music—mostly harsh noise—started by musician

and organizer Bob Bellerue. I went on Thursday night, May 8th, to see what the noise (so to speak) was all about.

The concert is notorious for being what Bob has described as the “one noise concert of the year” for a lot of artists and musicians in the Brooklyn area. Its substantial line up served as a powerful draw of likeminded artists around the New York area. Performers had a focus on textures, performance, innovation, and the extreme ends of the sound spectrum. A wide sprawl of different ethos drives the artists on display, but experimentation is their shared connection.

As an event organizer, Bob Bellerue is a modest, well-spoken man, kind and easygoing. Organizing the event himself, he skews away from commercial sponsors, handpicking the acts based on who he personally enjoys. Low budget and ramshackle, Ende Tymes operates entirely on handshakes, informal agreements and whatever free promotion the internet can offer. It’s an unspoken majesty of the experimental arts world that I will proudly defend: no one is in it for the money. This is true expression, take it or leave it.

A short walk from the Myrtle/Broadway J train stop brought me to The Silent Barn. Performances had begun on time, which was a little unexpected. Bob is strict and regimented in his scheduling; like some others I know in the same position, he’s dealt with enough noise code violations to understand the importance of the strict itinerary. And everyone helps each other. A percent of the door goes to the performers, who are vast and from several places in the world. An average performance length of about 15 minutes promises speed in delivering weird or transformative experiences.

Unaccustomed to bands who keep their schedules so strict, I miss Chris Pitsiokos’ performance with Philip White as well as Limax Maximus. Their performances, already uploaded online to UnARTigNYC (unartignyc.com) by the time I wrote this story, are excellently diverse and colorful.

I entered to the sounds of Lazurite, one electronic musician whose manipulation of live samples created an unusually immediate reaction. She was weaponizing sculptures installed in the Barn’s main stage, building a squeaking groan into a disarming, unexpectedly ebullient swell of buzzing drones and a kind of distant, glimmering twinkle of something that at full volume would be quite terrifying, but in the distance, has an odd allure to it. It strikes me as a “gem” sound, for its crystalline, elusive beauty, and how it holds the air in stasis.

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T H E B E G I N N I N G O F T H E E N D Ewords & photos By adam devlin



In the midst of the audience were most of the performers. They are all friends to some degree, and usually associate on Facebook in different music groups, where the proliferation of event sharing ensures a loyal attendance. I met up with Rat Bastard briefly, who I had previously seen in Gainesville when he was promoting the International Noise Conference, his noise festival.

“I’ve done INC [at The Silent Barn] before. There’s too many fucking rules now,” he says when I tell him I’m excited for the next performance. “Now you can’t take a beer, can’t take a s*** with a beer,” he laments.As a member of the Laundry Room Squelchers, Rat is privy to the kind of psuedo-celebrity status of other noise artists with long and influential careers. His show is last, and he’s a major crowd draw.

Following Lazurite was one of the most spectacular performances of the night, Phill Niblock. A lasting force in avant garde music, minimalism, and experimental composition, Niblock has had influences on artists such as David First, Sonic Youth and Glenn Branca. Armed with nothing but a computer and a beer, he drew layers upon layers of simple waves into a heart stopping superdrone. It could only be called such, a superdrone; past the dirges and chants, coursing through the legacies of the Scottish bagpipe and the esoteric artifice of the snake charmer, the raga and the sitar – building more furiously, growing metallic and mean and brighter than organic instruments but still perfectly seated in the middle of your ears, it was a breathtaking performance, unmatched. At 19 minutes, it felt far longer and yet I didn’t mind it one bit. I sat down and got some thinking done. At one point I may have tried to meditate. Niblock sat patiently at his computer sipping his beer, then folding his hands together.

Worth followed, an artist who utilized a string of effects pedals and a device called a no-input mixer, which is an audio mixer that creates sound out of pure feedback. Existential implications aside it burst forth in piercing tones in harsh timbres and occasionally thumped a deep heartbeat or a cat’s purr or a motorcycle in idle. At the end of the performance it was wailing and screaming, as it is wont to do.

I took a break and went out for some fresh air in the side entrance and stone garden that wraps along the side of the Silent Barn. Lazurite and their friends were relaxing, and I knew

one or two people there to kill time with. The experimental community is a fairly close knit one but everyone is welcoming and friendly. I had a drink outside and surveyed the sculptures and art. As I stood up to return, I heard the sound of a broken pipe. It may have been gushing water into a metal bin.

Past the flimsy threshold between the outside world and what is now a Taskmaster performance, I heard the sound of two trains colliding. It just kept going and going. Vicious and metal and loud, the A and C trains crashing together in parallel from 125th to about 14th. No wait, now it sounds like children clashing pans. No, it’s two hundred gamelan players with no rhythm playing their hearts out.

Then everything gets blurry and sounds like a nightmare. It’s about half over at this point. Taskmaster grabs a wire which (I guess) makes noise happen, and locks his arms spread out, Diane Arbus hand grenade style. He has an impressive beard and a monastic disposition.Next on the stage was one Jean Sébastien Truchy, who I am unfamiliar with. His music consists of stark, binary drones—up note, down note, beat, rest, etc.—and a disturbing stage presence. In a truly unnerving cadence, Truchy contorts his hands and moans like a tortured prisoner. The industrial pulses behind him grow stranger and collapse under electronic processing. He’s also rocking the monastic chic look, but of a monk who’s rooting for the other team. Then he just starts screaming like a regular demon. I’m thoroughly terrified and impressed. Once in a while a burst of noise subsumes another and it’s almost briefly kind of catchy. It’s very pretty at the end, with layers of voices and wind gusts.

Truchy gives way to Shredded Nerve. He has on black boots and shorts and a t-shirt for the band Disma. Sometimes when people use loop pedals or looping equipment of some kind they like to use interesting sound sources and in Shredded Nerve’s case he banged on metal grates and used a metal billy club with a microphone attached to it. It was sort of catchy, or it was infectiously looped until satiation set in and I could hum along to it. I’m pretty sure at some point the sound of someone urinating was sampled, which has a long list of precedents.

I was eager to try out the camera, which I had borrowed. The stage proved difficult to photograph due to low lighting, so I wandered around the venue. The Silent Barn was cluttered with trinkets, walls were covered in graffiti, and the side entrance contained not only a ticket


booth but also a barbershop, where customers are encouraged to pay what they think their haircut is worth.

I took a few shots of the interior and some of the art. Walking around I saw art peppered along the walls and rooms full of people talking to one another. Each of the musicians who had played earlier seemed to have a cabal of people who knew them. There were about three degrees of separation between everyone in the room. I took a picture of Bob as he opened a back door, perhaps to retrieve some more cables. Everyone needed lots of cables at shows like this.

Developer was the most actively diverse sound painter of the night, serving a buffet of interesting and far-reaching timbres interspersed with small, neat experiments—like a microphone on a door hinge, and it squeaks! When I closed my eyes it was impossible to track. It reminded me of being stressed in the morning, when my fatigued mind can’t form a complete thought. Then he bowed what looked like a drying bin for utensils, and at some points along the bow it sounded like an electric guitar. Other noises turned up in pitch and squeaked humanly, and then some genuine bells, musical bells, played before more noise happened.Slasher Risk were a duo who lit sage to cleanse the venue before playing some post-rocky guitar melodies for a few minutes. It was very moody and kind of nostalgic and sweet. Then someone turned a knob and the melodies became a guitar tornado. Slasher Risk’s attention to detail in the evocation of irreverent 90s alt-rockers was too spot on for the crowd to appreciate. They riffed and posed and twisted their hips lackadaisically while snarls of blown-out bombast whirled about the room. It was very dark and I couldn’t take any good pictures of them and at one point a half dozen attendees tried to start a mosh pit.

Again I was reminded of simple binaries. Silence and noise. Total harmony, then the beatific, cathartic buzz of the atonal. Suspended in the air of the room were two glowing orbs cycling through colors. They glowed along with the music, getting brighter or darker as the volume rose or lowered in the room. But tonight everything was so loud you’d never know. They were fully beaming, in soothing pastels and loud neons.

What began as work/death’s performance turned into an opportunity for me to clear my head a bit. I took off around the street corner for some food and to check my ears to know what kind of damage I’d accrued. I felt guilty for skipping out on the show and subconsciously ill from the absence of sounds. It was as if a

great vacuum opened up in my head, far more punishing than anything emanating from the little venue behind me.

Normally at this hour I would have been hearing an arresting, echoing herd of piano chords doused in processing by work/death’s mindful and brilliant Scott Reber; I had to rectify that problem. I managed to make it back after around 10 minutes right as something kind of transcendentally beautiful collapsed into something darkly creepy. It kind of toed that line for a while before fading out.

Blessed Thistle was Bob Bellerue himself, a standard (for this crowd) performance that was nevertheless thoroughly satisfying. He screamed, whipped white hot sonics up and down, pressed buttons that made things growl or hiss or buzz, and at one point shook his gear around violently, knocking some of it to the ground. Bob was the Platonic Noise Artist, his highs perfectly highs, lows just right, and just enough interaction and scalding fury to come alive, particularly when he yelled and shook the flimsy plastic table he laid his toys on. Already worn out from the event—the perils of DIY organizing!—it seemed like Bob held in every last ounce of his precious strength for this part of the night.

Newton provided the penultimate performance of the evening, a schizophrenic sound collage


made up of textures and thumps and watery sloshing sounds. Clicks and percussive slaps were timbrally blended into a grey mush that cavorted between speakers playfully...then angrily. When that thing reached its logical end point, Newton played a sample of a crying baby and dissected it, rearranged it, sped it up and down and fed it through weird machinations until it screamed and howled like strange birds in pain. In physics class I learned that a baby’s cry was in the range of frequencies that human ears are most sensitive to.

Rat Bastard was the last act. Quick to set up, he was armed with nothing but a guitar and an amp, and what looked like a pedal that had been built from scratch, no doubt to produce odd noises. With the bravado of the world’s one true guitar god and the outfit of a mad burglar, Rat truly shredded. A method not taught in any books, vile and burning with a mix of hate and desire he shredded like a real life punk. The crowd, which had diminished to a small semi-circle, loved it. Some bobbed their heads.

It was always the most curious thing to me, bobbing heads at a noise concert. How were you all bobbing along? There was no rhythm to follow, no pattern to make sense of. Nothing to grab onto; nothing but pure id, manifest in sound. Yet still, inexplicably, I nodded along

with them. The music breached patterns of thought and structure and there we were small but communal, nodding along together. Somehow it still made sense.

Bob was tired. There were still messes of audio cables, circuit bent synthesizers and busted amps to store and plenty to clean up. I offered to help load out gear after the last performance had finished and I was packed up. He told me not to worry. Someone would help. Someone will always help out.

The festival continued all weekend long but I don’t think I could have survived the entire weekend. It ended on Sunday, May 11th, with a screening of experimental video art, a welcome respite from the chaos of past days. Walking back home Thursday night I felt my brain make its own little drone concert: a single piercing ring which grew as the city noise ebbed, until it occupied my thoughts completely and lasted for two more days.

Ende Tymes typically takes place in May once per year, at a venue chosen by Bob Bellerue. Anyone interested in the Ende Tymes festival or any of the performers and artists involved can learn more at halfnormal.com/endetymes/. Anyone curious about The Silent Barn should check out silentbarn.org. Both are artist run, self-supported communities, open to volunteers and participants.


change, change, change: there’s a fox in the henn house

The Greek philosopher Herclitus said it before Plato and François de la Rochefoucauld concurred, “The only thing constant in life is change,” and many centuries later Joni Mitchell said, “You can stay the same and protect the formula that gave you your initial success…[or you can change]…either way they will crucify you…but staying the same is boring.” Now considering Lauren Fox and Ritt Henn have been performing tributes to Mitchell for the last few years, should it surprise their fans that they’re now doing a bluesy cabaret show featuring the hypnotic music from the soundtracks of David Lynch films? Ghosts of Love – Songs From the Reel World of David Lynch, had its premier in the intimate red room of Stage 72/The Tried NYC on Manhattan’s upper west side this past winter and spring to sold out audiences. They received glowing reviews by the New York Times, Broadway World and CabaretScenes. Even if you don’t know the work of David Lynch, you will leave changed -musically and emotionally

evolved, stimulated, thrilled, even saddened, and definitely better for it.

When I first met Lauren she was an aspiring actress in her twenties, co-owner of Alice’s Tea Cup in New York City and she’d never mentioned wanting to be a singer. But in fact she’d attended LaGuardia High School for Music & Performing Arts with a concentration in Opera Singing. It was a dream long forgotten but it was there that she learned to use her voice as an instrument.

That was several years ago. But dreams deferred were also dreams evolved for Fox. She found her way back to singing and has never looked back. After seeing her perform all these years later I was dumbfounded by the sultry sophistication that oozed out from beneath that eye-catching blue velvet dress that clung to her ribcage. Her long red hair vibrated in contrast and her straight cut bangs framed her stunning blue eyes and

By dena ferreira


high cheekbones. That voice went eerily into the crowd like a breadth of smoke eking its way under our skin and into our bones. As beautiful as she is, she couldn’t steal the spotlight though.

Her cohort, Ritt Henn, in perfect distinction to the blithely beauty of Fox, is like a wild wolf, howling at the moon, while feverishly strumming at the bass or unexpectedly softly picking a ukulele or ringing bells once hung from a camel’s neck in Egypt. While Henn’s body convulses and twists in both the pleasure and pain of love, Fox quietly, dutifully and mercilessly sings the poor man into even more ecstasy and anguish. The man’s got a voice like a big bad angel and the two are really quite a pair. They are the right mix of right and wrong – meant in the most positive way, they’re tantalizing together.

Fox says, “I first saw Ritt play acoustic bass at the Algonquin before it closed. I loved his sensibility and style – he’s very interesting to watch, adding to the experience of any show. Nothing he does is the obvious or typical.”

For Henn it was easy, Fox’s talent and generosity is compelling. “I first began working with Lauren on her solo piece, “Love, Lust, Fear & Freedom: The Songs of Joni Mitchell & Leonard Cohen.” Peter Calo, on acoustic guitar, Jon Weber, on piano and musical director and me, on bass, goes out with Fox on every show. It’s very nice that she includes us on the package. Not all cabaret singers do that.”

What inspired the work with David Lynch films?“We’d sung benefits and a few of David Lynch songs here and there. Friend, Elizabeth Freund, began working for The Lynch Foundation and that’s when it came to me. Songs from David Lynch soundtracks would be a really great show. I gave Ritt songs that I knew and liked and then he gave me songs that I’d never even knew existed.” Separately but simultaneously the two went to work on the project. Fox on the script and Henn tackling the music to which he adds:“This was not songwriting but it was still creative. It was nice because my mind was in need of a break…it was using muscles and skills and at the same time not having to think about lyrics – not having to wade through my twisted sense of sensibility when it comes to trying to write lyrics and either embracing it or escaping it; I was totally able to just side step it and sing the songs.”

Coming together in the end, the collaboration paid off. They knew they had something special.Moreover, what these two have created is an evolution in story telling; a new art form, out of old art forms, using everything old to make it

narrative. It’s cyclical –beginning where it ends and beginning again: infusing the evocative melodies from Lynch’s film soundtracks and in no particular order, with some of the most iconic lines that any true Lynch fan would readily recognize, the ingredients turn out a rich story of love and loss. This isn’t your Eydie Gormé and Mel Tormé show that your grandparents lauded over. Fox and Henn have paid great homage to some pretty great trailblazers in music and film. They’ve taken the work we’ve already appreciated like “Love Me Tender,” “Blue Velvet,” “Wicked Game,” and “In Dreams,” and focused in on the theme of love and loss, turned it on it’s head and made sharp left turns, got lost and then got found again; fell in love, fell hard, failed love and tried again, surprising their audience.

Finally, their unique take on these great frames of work have caught the attention of some of the biggest fans of David Lynch. Recently they were invited to perform at the biggest Twin Peaks reunion, “A Damn Good Twin Peaks Screening,” at The Paley Center for Media in New York, twenty-five years to the date of the final episode. (Twin Peaks fans will know why that is). Upon Fox and Henn’s return from an overseas gig, they go straight into the studio to finish their first CD, which will be released in the fall. It’s featuring many of the show’s songs and more. You can also follow them on their new Facebook Fan Page FoxandHenn.

What Fox and Henn have done is change the sound of cabaret and even the look of its audience without excluding anyone of its original followers. They’ve built on the old to make something exquisitely clever and hauntingly beautiful. The music makes one want to cry till exhaustion and then kiss their way back into bliss. Change is sometimes what we fear the most but it doesn’t have to be. Change is more likely than stagnation. That is the good news, though. Nothing lost will stay that way forever. The sun will set, taking away the glory of its light, but it also rises. Nothing is constant but change. Take risks and surprise yourself with the outcomes.

Photo by:Timothi Jane Graham/Timothi Photography http://timothi.com


Ballet Pointe Shoes:

J. Bloch

Corset/One-piece:

La Maison de Fashion


Photographed by: Keith Bienert with Jason Maddox

Makeup and Wardrobe Styling: Angelique Cerniglia

Hair: Tay Sims

Model: Christine Ann Juarbe of Q Model Management LA

Stylehouse: La Maison de Fashion

ONE HOT CITY A S U M M E R S TO R Y


Bolero: La Maison de Fashion

Bodysuit: DKNY

Skirt: M. Stevens



Red Wrap Dress: La Maison de Fashion

Tap Pant: DKNY



Black Bustier, Black Skirt-Belt,

Tap Pant: Damsel



Dress: La Maison de Fashion

Shoes: Speed Limit 98



“Janvier London is a premium accessories house with an emphasis on luxurious statement pieces.”


aunched in 2013 by Jordache heiress, Michelle Nakash, the initial lines carry an

impressive array of bag designs that seek to combine a modern new look with constructive elements while indulging in the luxury of ever-lasting glamour.

Nakash established Janvier London with cre-ative director Elle Azhdari in 2012. A line that screams “I own the night,” or “I know how many steps in four-inch heels it takes to get from Soho House to The Jane backwards with electronic remixes still humming in my ears.”

And if the Janvier vibe is one of glamor and mischief then there’s no doubt Nakash’s heart is the grand centerpiece. Quality and exclusivity, --“you can’t sit with us” --but with Michelle you can, and most likely she’ll buy you some fancy tea you’ll choose out of a large wooden box at some overpriced cafe in the village. She’ll tell you stories of homeless men outside Balthazar and the reckless evenings she’s spent riding in cars with boys.

Her prized possessions include Mug Shot by Project Face, Renee Dweck, a photograph of Che Guevara by Liborio Noval and a box of love letters she keeps under her bed.

There’s a lot more than meets the eye when it

L

Goldie Hawn and the vintage mermaidby emily wiest


comes to Nakash, she’s an animal activist, singer and 80s blazer connoisseur. And I’ve come to help her pack for our trip to France, ready to gain an intimate perspective into this woman’s world.

She floats through her Soho Loft, a large marble mosaic depicting Sophia Loren by Marcos Marin eyes me suspiciously from the wall. Vaulted ceilings and chandeliers usher me into the grand space. “I hate sconces,” she tells me as we ascend the stairs to her converted walk in closet. “This place was cov-ered in them when I bought it and its taken me years to remove them all.” (I notice there are still two rebel sconces, triumphantly hang-ing high above the sitting room.)

I lay on the chaise lounge in the center of her “closet,” as she begins to pack.

“I feel like Cleopatra” I confess, “That’s the point” she replies in a frenzy, exquisite gar-ments flying through the air. “Should I bring the ball gown? I’m going for a Goldie Hawn in “Overboard” theme. She holds up a long black Diane Van Furstenberg creation. “Pack it!” I squeal… a bit too gleefully.

We fly to Paris, Paris is drunk--the whole city. Or perhaps that was the jetlag, either way, there’s one night making out barefoot in front of our boutique hotel, the gentle memory of a skirt chasing bellhop and then we’re on to our second leg, cruising south through the coun-tryside.

Driving through the south of France in her supped up rental is nothing short of bliss. We discuss men, boys, women, musicians... she loves to have a crush almost as much as she loves the Rolling Stones and Fiona Apple. I say Fiona’s style is intentional, Nakash says it comes from a true artist’s ambivalence. She turns on “Hot Knife” and we listen in silence as we fly through the French countryside.

A night in a chateau, Michelle in purple, she demands to be taken for a turn in the garden (she loves Jane Austen). And there she was, like the cover of a romance novel hanging off a ladder, picking flowers in the summer green fields and forests and centuries of sculpted, remodeled architecture.

St. Tropez. Nightingale, callgirl, wandering through cobblestone streets looking to meet you. A party city by night and lounge about by day. Seafood, mixed food, well fed women in tight dresses. She owned the night and called my dress «romantic.»

Heir to a gilded lifestyle you›d expect the daughter of one of earth›s greatest for-tune collectors to be more or less than she is. Truth be told the heiress is just a playful loving girl, doing yoga by the pool, reciting anecdotes about expansive vulnerability.

Travelling by night we fly into Corsica, an Is-land of bandits (I’m told) and we giggle over a string of fantasy-nightmares; perhaps a crew of sexy pirates would overtake the boat and have their way with us.

She hires a car to drive us south from Ajaccio to Bonifacio to meet the yacht. She sleeps through the winding rolling journey in the Lulu Lemon yoga pants she won’t leave home without and her Helmut Lang mesh ivory sweater.

Once on board there’s no doubt she’s a water baby, as she loves the sea.

Riding the wave of the high tide fairy air in those sparkly bottoms and clash t-shirt, she’s a vision in bronzed skin with the fabled hair of a high seas Mediterranean mermaid. She beckons, “come on board” with an all-know-ing, all-graceful grin. She whispers, “let’s begin” to the Champaign flute and the bril-liant star studded night. It’s time for a swim in some deep dark underwater, cave--or grave--a testament to her adventurous side. Rock leaper, lobster eater, some kind of water nymph with a tail end to end the scenic view-- the great distractor. I was enamored, some silly playwright on an all-encompassing jour-ney through a day in the life of a 1% hipster.

A butterfly stalked us days like a tissue in the breeze, hovering lovely above our flame-like, sun-stricken faces, freckly and warm. The mood was “Pale Blue Eyes” and we’d hap-pily linger on. It was the ocean that had our


attention with its relaxed atmosphere. We were hammered asteroids buzzing bleep-like through an endless sky, always with the sadness of isolation brewing beneath, the infinite oasis. She’s not afraid of sharks, but the vastness of the ocean terrifies her. She hates snorkeling, would prefer not to see. Drunken water sports, sun block, a bonfire on the beach and back to bed to do it again. The gently rocking cabins our lush prisons, capturing us, keeping us from the midnight air.

On the last day she dons a Jean Paul Gauti-er bustier designed for La Perla. She’s free in her body and always ready to dedicate her beauty to the frame. Smiling, seducing, unmoving, frozen in time. Frozen but not mine. She’s the girl who embodies the devil be damned rockabout town chic momentous attitude, with her scraped knee baby self and her womanly taste. The hair, face and body pieces of a braid tied together to create this vixen image, rebel pirate bag maker.

http://www.janvierlondon.com/pages/about


L I F E O F A N A R T I S TBY C H R I S T O P H E R D U R A N TI hear there are many misconceptions about artists. People believe it’s easy, yet in reality it’s a world full of struggles and challenges that we face on a daily basis, including competition from other artists out there and time constraints.

Making art and living as an artist is difficult, this is why I have a job outside of art to support me and also my artistic needs. One day, however, I want to take a huge leap in to the art world and start making a living out of it.

My main goal as an artist is inspiration, making people believe in themselves is what I do best.

“Believe” being the operative word, most art-ists just don’t believe in themselves or they get slammed by people who can do nothing but judge them. It’s a real shame, some incredible artists I have met in my time are made to feel worthless because their work gets rejected or unappreciated by people who just don’t under-stand what it takes to create something.

I go to sleep at night thinking of vivid beauti-ful colors and what I can add to my drawing to make it better. I wake up every morning with the same feeling, the desire to go over to my table, pick up my pencils and draw. I utilize my pencils to great effect, I love them. They allow me to re-lease my inner emotions and thoughts through the simple movement of my hands.

I can draw anywhere between 6-8 hours a day, and that’s including a 9 hour shift at my day job. If you love the craft and want to commit your-self to it, you have to be prepared to work, and work hard. I may not be selling my work yet, but i feel secure in my abilities as an artist and my thoughts. I also write a lot of things down, be-cause sometimes art isn’t always about drawing or painting. Anything can be art.

To me, being an artist is like having a sixth sense, I believe we can see things that others can’t, and being an artist enables us to create these things we see, and then show them to the people who can’t.

I can respect all types of art from around the world, but I love colored pencil drawings. This is

the art I am trying to master. I draw for hours in my bedroom with my television on in the background, and I am meticulous about details in my work. I never used to be that way, I would rush things to get them out of the way. But now my drawings take me weeks if not months to create.

I love the whole processes required to draw. The visual stimulation you get from creating something that people comment on and admire. I literally live and breathe my art work, it’s a part of me, and in that respect you can look and see the passion and love that has gone in to it. Art is not just about drawing something and hoping it sells and mov-ing on to the next project. There are no elements of emotion involved if you create art like that. You have to love it and feel proud of yourself for cre-ating something. I have my own Facebook page which I try to update regularly and to try and in-spire other artists too, and that in itself is like hav-ing another job. I have over 25,000 people on my page and I routinely get asked a lot of questions about paper, pencils, art materials and the occa-sional “Will you draw me for free” message. I reply to them all as I love helping others, there are the odd haters and people who try and put me down. If you want to succeed in the art world you must never give up. I was told in school by my teachers that I would never become anything special. The truth is, everyone is special in their own unique ways. You just choose to believe that at times.

Everyone reading this can become successful, if you dream of being the next Picasso, do it! Noth-ing can stop you apart from yourselves. Don’t lis-ten to any haters or people who are jealous of your progression in life. Work hard and when things are not going your way, work harder.

That’s what a true artist does, they never give up If you are an artist, use your powers and your abili-ties to help inspire others and make people believe in themselves. You can help make the world a better place simply by making someone believe in themselves.

My Facebook art page - https://www.facebook.com/TheArtworkOfChristopherDurant


L I F E O F A N A R T I S TBY C H R I S T O P H E R D U R A N T


When you walk into Gunmetal Ink, the brightly colored walls welcome you. I first heard about this shop from my friend and tattoo artist Chad Tree. He did an apprenticeship with owner Bori back in 2011. Bori took Chad under his wing to have a more rewarding spiritual career in the arts. Since then he has developed an illustrative style all of his own.

To be honest I haven’t been to many tattoo shops. This one is equipped with all the traditional services one can expect: tattooing, piercings, laser tattoo removal and cover-up services and apprenticeships opportunities. In addition, Gunmetal Ink also has a main gallery for artists to showcase their work, a small café area, and a shop where a tattoo artist can buy supplies.. Central to the shop there is an art gallery featuring work by Chilean artist, Alonsa Guevara.

Owners of Gunmetal Ink, Bori Benz and Krisstihl , talk to me about the concerns of the business and how their past mistakes have informed them to become not only tattooists but tattoo artists. These guys carry a wealth of knowledge from experience. Bori’s past twelve years of experience includes serving in the Marine Corps, as a barber, and film school. Kris’s flair for aesthetics, and initially starting with drawing and airbrushing, plus his over 20 years of event planning, have informed their decisions today.

I ask Bori how he feels about the rise of reality TV shows focusing on the tattoo industry in recent years.“I see too many people trying to jump on this bandwagon, because of all those TV shows. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve tried the TV shows. There are people who aren’t cut out for it and there are people who still publicize their inability to do something. It’s prosperous.” He goes on further to explain, “Every tattoo that walks out that door is a direct representation of you, of what you do. No matter how simple or how complex, you have to knock it out of the park every time and if you don’t, or are incapable of

doing so, what’s the point?”

Bori continues to explain the complexities of tattooing as an art practice. “The sad thing is, the common or the average Joe is not an art critic .So most anything would look OK to the general public, that’s the problem. So you have to walk on thin ice when it comes to critiquing tattoos. Especially our clients, they’re very sensitive. Sometimes, they [tattoo artists] build relationships with their clients where they bat an eye. So before you call someone’s tattoo shit, when they walk in the door, you have to be mature and think about that,” he said.

What Bori made me realize is that there are relationships formed between tattoo artists and their clients. Clients are sensitive (and within reason) about past artwork that adorns their body. Bori explains, “You are talking about a few hours where someone is intimate with another person. A lot of relationships build out of tattoo sessions.” He explains, “It’s hard not to come off as a hater. Unfortunately, the market is saturated with it’s almost taboo to critique tattoos because people call you a hater. But at the end of the day, it’s sad, the market is saturated with work that is getting by and that is making money, you can’t fight that.”

I ask Kris and Bori about lessons they learned from past life experiences. “Those 20 years of event planning taught me how to be a good people person, how to talk to people, how everyone’s different and how you have to adapt to them,” Kris said.He’s done Billy Joel’s Birthday, Whitney Houston’s Wedding, Lionel Richie’s wedding, concerts and fashion shows.

Bori said, “One thing I learned from the military, is if you have a problem with something, don’t ever just address the problem; you best goddamn bring a solution, because all you’re doing is bringing negativity.”

gunmetal ink puts tattoo in the galleryby christine etienne

CREATIVE SUGAR Summer 2014 4343TAT TO O AT I S T B O R I B E N Z

TAT TO O BY KRISSTIHL

TAT TO O BY B O R I B E N Z


Bori’s dream to own a tattoo shop was realized at 26 years old. It held the vision of being one of the first storefront tattoo shops in Washington Heights NY, equipped with bay windows to compete with Soho’s market. Unfortunately this dream came withhard learned lessons. Under Governor Giuliani, landlords could disseminate their real estate taxes among their commercial property renters. So they worked double as hard to pay not only their taxes, but the landlord’s real estate taxes as well.

I ask Bori if he has any advice to those seeking property or leasing. “Just because you are your own boss, doesn’t mean that you can just stay home at your choosing, No, it means that you will work harder than you will ever work for anyone in your life. Make sure your overhead is low, it’s feasible, make sure it’s not confined in space, the lower the ceiling the lower on your income, you restrict the space to diversify your income, you put yourself in shackles, he said”

I ask him what made him choose Connecticut and if he likes it better here.“My uncle Tio Flores has the business upstairs making equipment for tattoo artists. He was also in the Marines and the force and started to follow an artistic path later in life. He makes the tattoo machines or the shop and foot metals with reclaimed materials and customizes art on them by various artists. There are many family members playing different roles in the shop. “I wanted to support my family. He also has a security agency, helping people get their security firearms, NRA classes- a one-stop shop for security world, “ he said

The new Gunmetal Ink opened in Bridgeport CT in February 2014. “It’s a better place for us artificially, financially, it gives us a place to actually grow,” he said.

Kris said he likes Connecticut better than anywhere else and that the location makes them more creative. “Being in the city, there are a lot of distractions. We have more space and before we were cramped. This is awesome. The fact that we have to drive a little bit far, it has its ups and its downs. It’s nice to get away, you know? And I think if I lived right here it would lose some of its nuances, I’d get bored of this. Everything is new, it’s a better vibe and we have yet to see the true warm weather. It’s easy to be here for a lot of hours. That’s what we want it to feel, homey and comfortableWe (Me, Bori and Bori’s father) poured a lot of sweat; achy knees, back, effort and design input into the shop and were involved with construction, flooring, ceiling and plywood,” he said.

I ask Bori if he sees a difference in the clients that come in now compared to his last shop. Bori said,“Now we are tattooing 9-5’s, Americans, where things mean something to them – little things.”[Bori proudly shows me a tattoo that he did for a client of the 2nd Amendment]. The artwork alone is getting better up here because people are requesting top-notch stuff. They know the value of sweat equity.”

Do you see any differences between working in Connecticut and New York.Bori said, “New York requires certification, knowing of blood pathogens, cross contamination, that of a sterile nature whereas Connecticut licenses the shop.” Bori explains that it is a double- edged sword: It is helpful to be educated in art considering the competition but it also sets it apart especially because Connecticut is a state that does not harp on individual standards, more than the business /shop aspect. The county asks instead,if you are capable of doing the artwork.

He continues, “Hopefully we get to force this artistic issue down here, No more of this chopped block, scratcher apartment type deal. I would rather just stick with two artists here until I get the quality that I want walking out that door. Everyone leaving through that door, I want them leaving satisfied, and I want them to praise us. It’s not going to do that if my standards are as low as society’s.”

hat are some concerns or issues that he sees in the tattoo world? “We look for the easy money, the easy way out .No one wants to work sweat equity no more, no one wants to go to college no more, no one wants to work no more. We’re forced fed with the easy gig. You see those tattoo shows, with the tattoo artists blowing up on Instagram, following them, living like rock stars. We get the liquor, women, free sh*t. People love tattoo artists. But you don’t see what it took for that man to get there. The years of grinding out in the tattoo shop, being considered trash, slum of the earth, just tattooing, everyone envious of you as a free spirit with marks on your face…. It’s a process to get to who you are. If you are good it took you some sort of process to get there, people don’t see that on Instagram. You got the young guys saturating the business, the scratchers. I’m not an anti –scratcher, some of the greatest tattoo artists didn’t have conventional tattoo apprenticeships they are just that talented artistically... You know what I am anti? I’m anti bougie. I’m trying to give another brother a chance at life, like art did to me. Bust your ass


TAT TO O BY KRISSTIHL


now so that your future will be more certain.”

I ask Bori for the names of great tattoo artists. “Nikkohurtado andCarlos Torres,” he said.What strengths in the real world help in the tattoo world? Kris said,“Competition isgood because that’s what gets people persevering and tryin’ to outshine each other and that’s what gets you excelling at the craft. When you’re by yourself that’s when you’re sort of stagnant, you don’t know that you can do something better, because you don’t have someone to compare yourself to. So, by having other artists near you, you just develop, if you’re a good artist, if you’re humble and feel that you’ve got something to learn, anybody who’s a good artist says that you learn forever, every tattoo you are still learning.”

Bori said, “I’m one of those people self-analytical people. If I see a deficiency within me or within my nature/ character, I don’t just accept the deficiency I also mitigate the deficiency. I’m not trying to change it? It’s who you are… I acknowledge that sometimes people turn themselves into jagged pills and they are hard to swallow. I’m just trying to put a sugar coating on

my pill. I’m still the same medication. I just taste sweeter.”

Bori and Kris are planning to open more shops in San Diego, CA and Austin, TX with veteran friends. You can visit these guys here:

Website: http://gunmetaltattoos.com/

Gunmetal Ink4380 Main StreetBridgeport, CT.

Also visit my friend: Chad Tree and once apprentice to Bori: http://www.thetreeflower.com/


There are many out there who consider the world of fashion to be a playground for the materialistic narcis-sist and the commercialism industry. And there are more who consider fashion to be a privae club for the savvy and cultured. Regardless of the school of thought, not many can see beyond the trends and sea-sonal lines to notice the underlying prescriptive nature of fashion.

Historically, clothing has been used as a form of ex-pression, primarily exhibiting class distinctions. The world of fashion had always been restricted to higher classes, and the birth of fashion democracy did not come forth until the sixties and seventies.

Today, we might consider ourselves free from the tyrannical powers, which dictated fashion in the past. But, there is still one frontier, which remains under the influence of societal conceptualizations called “mens-wear” and “womenswear”.

Historically, when it came to fashion, there was a distinct gender defining line that the sexes dared not tread. Instead, exaggerated notions of masculinity and femininity served as the main influences for designs. But this line, where masculinity meets femininity, this is where power plays are neutralized. This is where the fun lies.

Today, menswear and womenswear still ascribes itself to gender normative forms and designs-- it is all too predictable. Each summer, crop tops get shorter and men’s shorts stay the same length. But, the middle ground, the sector of androgynous fashion is a general-ly uncharted territory. We’ve caught glimpses ofexperi-mentation during the cultural revolutions of the 20s and 60s, and in the younger days of hip hop, and today a new wave of unspeakably gorgeous androgynous models are being brought forth for the world to marvel at, but until we can feel comfortable moving across the prescribed gender delineations highlighted in fashion, we are still restricted. Each of us houses a component of the opposite sex; the ying and yang symbol reveals an intertwining of opposite energies that come together to form a per-fect circle. The power of wholeness defines androgyny; this fusion of male and female identity markers pro-duces a mysterious fluidity. American culture juxta-posed against a number of European countries reveals an inherent rigidity, where sex is taboo, and so we see

fashion reflecting the obvious instead of exploring the more elusive aspects of masculinity and femininity. Thusly, women’s fashion accentuates her sexuality through by restricting and revealing, and men’s fash-ion reflects his power through comfort and ease.

But, because it is (in) human nature to fear the un-known, elusiveness is avoided and only what which is clear and evident is embraced.

Why not use fashion as the historically self-expressive tool that it is to explore your own sense of what it is to be a man, and what it is to be a woman? Our self-expression will not be fully genuine until the duality is embraced.

Fashion designers create clothes based on percep-tions of femininity and masculinity, but it is up to the individual to convey their own perception. Fashion, being the initial visual marker of personality, is an opportunity to interact with or against society in a tangible way. Until fashion reflects our whole human nature, the tyrant, who has enforced broken percep-tions of society into fashion designs, still reigns.

Fashion your body, instead of letting fashion do it for you.

C R O S S T H E FA S H I O N L I N E W I T H A N D R O GY N YBY A S H L E Y A R R OYO


S O S W E E T YO U’L L G E T A C AV I T Y.

C R E AT I V E S U G A R M A G A Z I N E.N E T

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Creative Sugar Magazine - June 2014

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