Last night, on Pier 17 of Manhattan’s South Street Seaport, nestled amongst the dubious company of Pizzeria Unos and the Abercrombie & Fitch flagship, I went to the CRAZIEST and COOLEST art X philanthropy party ever.
Typically I don’t nearly have my shit together enough to actively support charitable causes (never mind that “give” doesn’t crack my top 15 favorite verbs) but my dear friend Dana Albarella James is insanely generous and enviably organized and curated a wonderful soirée to benefit the Horticultural Society of New York’s GreenHouse project at Rikers Island. So I went. And bought a ticket and everything (to tithe any guilty feelings into submission visit hsny.org. Now. You’ll feel good. Promise.).
There were mini spring rolls, tiny chocolate mousse ganache situations and ART. Minya Oh (Hot 97′s Miss Info) MC’d the auction and here’s just a sampling of the artwork that was present. Excuse the snapshots as they really don’t nearly do the pieces justice and there were way more that we simply didn’t take pictures of (like Sue Kwon, Henry Chalfant, DAZE, Martha Cooper, Dear Raindrop, Shepherd Fairey, Jo Jackson, Chris Johanson, Richard Kern, Dash Snow, Dondi White, Ann Sophie Staerk). BLORG.
(From the top: Steve “ESPO” Powers, Todd “REAS” James, Barry McGee, KAWS, HAZE).
You should’ve seen the fracas that ensued when art aficionados figured out that a) Their money would be going to a good cause and that b) These pieces could be fetched waaaaay under market since there were no art dealer interlopers involved.
And in a move that will make the downtown crowd lose their minds, at some point Minya decided to gild the ostentatious lily by having Todd and Brian draw on her shiny Chanel boots in silver pen. That’s a short, short run. 1:1, REAS X KAWS X CHANEL. Crazypants.
REAS did the right boot and KAWS the left and quite frankly your eyes would start bleeding from their sockets were I to show you the complete pair with close ups. You’d be so sick with jealously. That and Minya would have to charge you 10 bucks a pop. She accepts paypal. Thank you Dana for an awesome night and congratulations to all the winners. Thank you to Tim Leong for taking the photos.
