Boris Johnson’s Foray into Painting, “I Just Can’t Wear Citrus Colors, Myself,” and Saucy Grandmas
This is mostly a Seen and Overheard-type newsletter, covering The Other Art Fair in Brooklyn, a WPGA tourney, and a visit to the Sleeping Beauties exhibit at the Met
Written on Monday, May 27th: I was wondering why I was so tired today by 1 PM, and then I realized — d’oy — that it might be because my neighbor woke me up, as he usually does, at 4 AM this morning, and kept making noise until 7 AM, at which point I gave up and got out of bed.
At least the fatigue “mystery” was solved after five seconds’ thought.
This 4-AM-wakeup thing was how I started my day a few days in a row last week, thanks to said man (demon?), so usual stresses were compounded last week by some good ol’-fashioned sleep-deprivation-delirium.
What I always think after nights being kept awake is something along the lines of: new parents get to wear their sleep deprivation as a badge of honor. They’re helping raise a life. They’re giving themselves over to the care of a baby.
What do you get for your troubles when it’s a 40-year-old man baby upstairs who wakes you up every hour of the night, because he “gets hyper” at night? Do I get to claim I’m raising him, too? Can I commiserate with other tired parents?
At the very least, can they admit me to their club?
Please?
NB: It’s Thursday morning and instead of waking me at 4 this morning, he kept me up until 4. I am barely functional, but here I am.
Anyway, onto my newsletter.
Two weekends ago, I went to The Other Art Fair in Brooklyn. I’d first gone to this particular art fair, which shows great artists who offer affordable pieces, in 2014, in London, where it originated. Back then, I was wrapping up my life in London, about to transfer to SVA in New York. It’s interesting to remember that experience before I’d launched my career as an illustrator, when the process of making and selling prints was intriguing and mysterious, before I’d done any fairs myself.
While art at other fairs usually sells in the many thousands, the Other Art Fair has prints like this, available for $100. I almost bought this one:
When I saw this booth from afar, I thought: what if this said Boris Johnson Art?
He finally pursued his calling to make Rothko-y paintings in primary colors. Good for him!
And this looked to me like Sherwood Forest:
But it wasn’t.
I have printmaker Laurey Bennett-Levy to thank for hearing about the Other Art Fair happening in Brooklyn: I’m on her email list. I stopped by her booth, and she told me that she does her screenprinting in LA, because New York is filled with too many “toys” — distractions.
She asked me if I’m related to a Susan Coyne in Colorado, who was her daughter’s school headmistress. I said that I only recently found out that my great-grandfather hosted two brothers of his who came over from Ireland, so who knows? I’m learning that there are some Coynes around that I might be related to, after all.
I talked to an English photographer who was selling photographs of graffitied New York City bathroom walls. He was waxing poetic about missing Vice media, which he said used to come in magazine form. It used to be sold in London by a man who, when you bought it, would slide it across the table with his plastic prosthetic arm.
I said I’d known about the work culture at Vice, which was hostile to women and non-white people, so I had never been particularly enamored with the company, even during their heyday.
“Oh, well, one of their founders went on to found the Proud Boys,” the photographer said.
“Well, that tracks!” I said.
I told the photographer that when I was in high school, you could find The Onion on NYC streets — if memory serves, they’d dump it on Friday afternoons for enthusiastic readers. Or maybe they sold it in those little kiosks?
When I told him his work reminded me of being young and hanging out in [lower] Manhattan, he said something doleful and warning, like: “Wouldn’t want to go back there, would we!”
I said: “Why not? It would be fun.”
Next, I found Ben Lenovitz’s booth. I adore his work, which is deeply committed to silliness. I told him that I’d seen his “traditional” landscapes, which he’d finished off with absurdist characters, at last fall’s Spring Break Art Fair.
I said that it’s only when I can let go and approach drawing with this level of lightness and freedom — a rare occurrence — that I’m truly proud of my work.
“Yes, but for each one of these paintings” (he was referring to the square ones two videos below) “I have one hundred other ones you don’t see, which missed the mark. It’s not like every single one comes out a hit.”
“Oh, that’s a relief to hear!” I said.
I should have known! It takes a lot of work to look free. Just read about John Singer Sargent’s process.
Before he left, he gave me a free little print, of a dog with the word GURU above it.
The next day, my friend’s company was hosting a WPGA tournament, and she could bring five guests, which meant I got to break out this linen jacket I bought at a yard sale last year for the first time. It turned out to magically match this orange purse that I bought to celebrate on the day that Trump did not win reelection in 2020.
What I found out from that trip is that I would definitely like to relocate to Liberty National Golf Course and set up a hut on the property. Look at this view:
I have never watched a golf tournament before, and it involves various people standing or sitting at the same (invariably beautiful) location for hours on end, doing inscrutable things. Like this man:
Sometimes, as was done by a spectator man who fancied himself a tournament employee, people yell “FORE!” which I learned means, “Try not to get hit by flying golf balls!”
I repeat that I would like to be permitted to move straight onto this golf course. Maybe set up right there, under a tree. There was green in all directions. There was only birdsong in the air. That’s my jam.
Some of my friends and I were a little challenged by the sudden need to hush ourselves right before the players swung. We were discussing Bridgerton fashion — particularly Penelope Featherington’s — and I found myself yelling, “I JUST CANNOT DO CITRUS COLORS, MYSELF” at the wrong moment.
Whoops.
While it was fantastic to see the professional golfers make immaculate plays, the true star of the day for my friends and me was this turtle, making her valiant way across a green to a (doubtless manufactured) pond.
My friend’s corporate hookup got all of us plus-ones (or plus-fives) into a tent with free food and drinks, which included this type of cookie that everyone loved. We all agreed that this was no ordinary grandma: she was a saucy, unusual one, with some tricks up her sleeve. Look at her eyebrows!
My friends stayed on until the tournament wrapped, but six hours of being professional-golf-adjacent were enough for me. I caught an earlier ferry back to Manhattan, and passed this sight, and thought of how unreal it was that many of my ancestors beheld this view with all sorts of feelings in their hearts, in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
(In fact, one of my Italian ancestors, Stefano Verme, arrived exactly two years after this statue was installed).
I’m glad I came back to New York when I did, because I got to witness these spectacular views of late afternoon glow in the Financial District.
…replete with a cheeky 5:00 moon!
Walks
For my #betweentwobuildings photo series:
Crossing Park Avenue one early afternoon, a trio of Escalades:
For the first time, I went to the Costume wing of the Met. This woman brought the fashion:
My friends and I came across these unusual signs in the labyrinthine exhibit:
The exhibition had a “smell” component, an attempt to introduce museum-goers to the smells these garments (some of them from the 18th century) had in their boxes before they were incorporated into the exhibit.
Why anyone would want to smell centuries-old garments is beyond me.
An older woman ahead of us enthusiastically rubbed the wall and told us it smelled nice and that we should try it. I balked.
My friend rubbed the wall.
“SO? What did it smell like?” I said.
“It smelled exactly like…other people’s fingers,” she said, which sent us into a laughing fit that lasted the rest of the exhibit, as if we were in sixth grade.
When we passed this statue on the way out of the Met, I said: “HE’S having a rough day. This is what I feel like once I’ve spent a couple of hours at any museum.”
I looked at the information plaque.
“He” was Saint Hilary of Galeata.
I saw Isaac Mizrahi speaking to a couple of beatific-faced acolytes on his way down the Met steps. My friend tugged my arm and said, “That’s Isaac Mizrahi,” and we both laughed that we recognized him, since he’s the most nondescript-looking celebrity we could think of.
Seen and Overheard:
1 This particular scene felt, well, very American. You might recognize the 65-foot hot dog from two newsletters ago. It lives in Times Square now. I don’t know why.
2 I stop by a deli to get some water. I buy one of those newfangled health drinks which are mostly coconut water, but infused with lots of nutrients and slapped with fruit flavors. As I’m checking out, a manic-looking preppy man tells the deli owner, a Korean man, the following: “I’m a Celsius CONNOSIEUR and they JUST released this new flavor, Raspberry Peach. I’ve had all the others ones and I’m so EXCITED to try this one, man. I can’t WAIT.” The deli owner looks at him impassively. I see the man again, down the sidewalk. He’s taking a picture of his new CELSIUS drink. I don’t capture that exact moment, but the next one.
Is Celsius the new cocaine? Dude was hopped UP.
3 I’m at the Education Center in the Met. There’s an older woman holding a tote bag that says:
YIELD
TO
THE
ART.
I think it’s a fabulous cheeky tote. I wonder where she got it. Then I realize she works here; she slips away into a side room for a few minutes before reemerging.
4 An Israeli family — a man and his three children — get on the N train bound for Brooklyn. His two older children, a boy and girl around age eight, are learning English so he quizzes them on their visit to the zoo today. The boy is much more willing than the girl to practice English, but he still sighs a lot and just wants to get through it.
“What more did you see today?” the father asks.
“A penguin, a lion sea…”
“Sea lion.”
“Sea lion.”
Eventually his older sister joins in, briefly, to talk about the colors of the animals.
That’s about all for this week-ish. My posting schedule is wonky since I published a mini-essay on Sunday rather than my newsletter. It’s my first time adding an audio component of myself reading a piece, so check it out if you haven’t.
Thank you for reading and sharing! Please send good thoughts as I navigate my second year living below a hostile nocturnal being. If you find yourself awake at 4 AM in the coming days, know that I am probably awake, too! We can commiserate.