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ASH NYC

FURNITURE, INTERIOR DESIGN, SOURCESApr 24 20132 Comments

This week I had the priveldge of meeting Ari Heckman and Will Cooper, (introduced by our mutual friend Sara Cooper) founders of the design and development group ASH New York City. I also toured their ASH pop up shop. You may recognize their clean but edgy work from Lonny and other publications. The two have an interesting NYC story. Ari worked in real estate development, and having grown up with a decorator mom began staging developments with his quirky and clean eye. The apartments he staged were quick to sell. Now creative director, Will had been working for Ralph Lauren doing his in store design when they met through friends  and founded ASH in 2007. They are currently working on design and development on a number of projects, one of which is the former Abingdon Guest House on Eighth Avenue, in which they are housing their month long pop up shop.

Some of their past work:

The pop up shop features a rotating collection of their favorite vintage furniture (which they have been collecting in a huge warehouse in Brooklyn for the past 6 years) as well as chic little accessories, an amazing collection of art including limited edition prints by  Adrian Mesko, a gorgeous painting by Antonio Bokel and the debut furniture collection of Anna Karlin. 

Will & Ari

Ash NYC
Open through April 28 at
13 Eighth Avenue
Hours are Monday to Friday by appointment
Saturday and Sunday from 12 to 7 P.M. ashnyc.com;
347-422-0078

 

I DONT CARE, I LOVE IT.

ART, photographyApr 23 201317 Comments

I got this feeling on the summer day when you were gone.

I crashed my car into the bridge. I watched, I let it burn.

I threw your shit into a bag and pushed it down the stairs.
I crashed my car into the bridge.

I DONT CARE, I LOVE IT! I DONT CARE! 

I got this feeling on the summer day when you were gone.

I crashed my car into the bridge. I watched, I let it burn.

I threw your shit into a bag and pushed it down the stairs.
I crashed my car into the bridge.


I DONT CARE, I LOVE IT! I DONT CARE! 


You’re on a different road, I’m in the milky way.

You want me down on earth, but I am up in space

You’re so damn hard to please, we gotta kill this switch 
You’re from the 70′s, but I’m a 90′s bitch.

I love it! 
I love it!

I don’t care, I love it.
I don’t care, I love it, I love it.
I don’t care, I love it.
I don’t care, I love it, I love it.
I don’t care.
I love it.

The story of the day I lost my mind: Last week, I was working on a painting for Nicole from So Haute for Design on a Dime, and I left all my brushes dirty the night before because I was late to take my kids to a birthday party… so I was finishing up using my fingers. My phone died. I told the nanny I would be back late and to feed and bathe the kids. It was raining. I locked the door. And something happened to me as I dragged my fingers through the paint, and the rain fell on the skylight above. I snapped. I became something less than human, other than. My eyes were wild, and I went through the painting with my fingers, smearing the rest of it on my legs as I went. I was a cavewoman, I was an animal. And I loved it. Scroll back up and you will see the face of something other than a human being. And as I walked home through the city with the paint still on my face and under my clothes, light drizzle falling on my shoulders, feeling like an empowered beast of the wild, cavewoman, true self, no one even bat an eye, because this is New York, land of the painted ladies.

KNOW YOUR CITY: Socony-Mobil Building.

architectureApr 20 20135 Comments

Yesterday, my brother walked over to my place during his lunch break, and I packed one of the kids into a stroller and walked back with him. “What is that?!?” I asked as we approached the corner of 42nd and 3rd Avenue. “Oh, It’s the Socony-Mobil Building, where I work,” he said. The building, which takes up an entire city block, is entirely covered in stamped stainless steel. Amazingly, I’d never noticed it before.

The story behind the building is pretty interesting (abridged from the NYTimes): In the 1950′s Goelet family, real estate developers, collected the real estate on the entire block. Two developers, John Galbreath and Peter Ruffin, persuaded the Goelets to accept their proposal for a first-class office building. It was designed by Harrison & Abramovitz and John B. Peterkin, but apparently because Galbreath and Ruffin had close connections to the United States Steel Corporation, an original design of brick over a granite base developed into one for stainless steel panels above a lower portion of glass. Steel priced out at one and a half times the cost of brick, but United States Steel, nervous about the inroads aluminum was making in the building-metals industry, offered to make up the difference.

The architects wanted the 0.037-inch-thick panels stamped with a raised pattern, both for architectural effect and for greater strength, and worked out different modular designs: picture frames, fields of teardrops, a clapboard-like design, bicycle chains and others. Apparently, the builders were concerned that flat steel panels would create glare, distracting people in other buildings.

They finally settled on one of irregular pyramids arranged in rectangles and rosettes.

By using steel panels on the 1.6 million-square-foot building the team gained several inches of floor space on the inside wall, greatly reduced labor costs on the skin, and saved weight — the panels weighed 2 pounds per square foot as opposed to 48 pounds per square foot for brick. 7,000 panels were used and it was the world’s first stainless steel skyscraper.

The building opened in 1956, and while some said it looked like the building had the measles, it was also known as ” The Waffle Building”. It was the headquarters of the Mobil Oil Corporation from 1956 to 1987, and in 2003 it was given landmark status and called ”one of New York City’s most striking skyscrapers.”

I think it’s a fascinating story. The how and why of the building is just as interesting as its stamped facade.  More proof that we should all put down our cell phone and look around once in a while!

Happy Weekend!

Welcome To Paradise.

FASHION, photographyApr 19 20134 Comments

A few months ago I got the Barney’s Spring 2013 catalog in the mail, and I saved it. Welcome to Paradise, it’s called, subtitled Blue Skies, Green Grass, No Trash, No Traffic.  Shot by David Slijper, and styled by Bill Mullen.  I’ve been looking for the photos online and couldnt find em, but I just had to share them with you. Can all my catalogs look like this please? That is, like a midcentury Palm Springs post-apocalyptic good looking utopia?



I always say that I wish more decor shoots included people, and more fashion shoots included decor. Here we go: perfect harmony. While I was searching online, I noticed someone sold their copy on ebay for $11. Interesting, very interesting.

See more of David Slijper’s work HERE, its all fab.

Beyond Skin.

ARTApr 18 20133 Comments

Remember when I said I want to paint people? I think some of you though I wanted to paint portraits OF people. No, I want to paint ON people. Kind of like this. But tattoo and fine artist Amanda Wachob has one upped anything I could ever come up with: She tattoos abstract expressionist works onto the human body. First of all, why has no one ever done this before. And second. Wow. I personally would never get a tattoo. I get buyer’s remorse over nearly everything and I would never want to make any permanent life choices regarding my skin. BUT, if I were, it would obviously have to be something like this right? Im particularly fond of the pen scribbled arm. 

When describing the inspiration for her work, Amanda explains:

I was looking at a lot of Hans Hofmann, thinking about the squares and rectangular shapes in his paintings.  I wondered if these shapes were dictated by his rectangular canvas?  And if he were going to make an abstract painting that wasn’t on a rectangle, but perhaps on an organic form like an arm, what would the shapes look like?  That’s when I had the idea to try it with a tattoo.  So much tattoo imagery has been repeated over and over again, I was interested in trying to find ways to evolve it.  To play with color theory and see if shapes and forms could actually communicate something more than say a panther.  I feel like people should have more options for something that is supposed to be so unique and personal.

Amanda has also had a solo show called Beyond Skin, in which she tattoos paintings, fruit, leather and more.

So thanks for the inspiration Amanda! And thank you to Courtney, who is going to be painted ASAP for showing me her work! (PS you can see some cool photos that Courtney took in my studio yesterday while we painted and she art directed! HERE.)

Cool, huh?

See Amanda Wahcob’s work HERE.

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