Friday art walk.

Last friday I had a much needed art day with a good friend visiting from San Francisco. Our first stop was for sustenance, aka a big fat breakfast. We shared the blueberry pancakes and farmers eggs with roasted tomatoes at Clinton Street Bakery. The sun-filled restaurant was a wonderful way to start the day. And yeah, those pancakes were pretty damn good. Light and fluffy, not dense, covered and filled with blueberries. I almost couldn't stop myself from finishing them. Their baked goods looked amazing, worth a trip back I'm sure.

Filled up and happy we walked over to FIT to see the Daphne Guinness show. Selected for her status as a both a muse and a fashion icon, FIT displayed her clothes in a museum setting, arranging her collection into several thematic ranges: dandyism, armor, chic, exoticism, and sparkly. The show didn't wow me like the Alexander McQueen show at the Met, but it certainly was nice to wander around and get close to the clothes without throngs of other people jostling me for position. One nice element was that you could walk all the way around the mannequins, so you could see the backs of the dresses, albeit through a scrim. I always hope for more content from a museum exhibition: when was the dress purchased, what did it cost, where did Guinness wear it, etc. In the end, I walked away having pretend shopped through her wardrobe but not really getting much sense for who Guinness is and why she selects and wears what she does. Anyway, the show is free and definitely worth an hour of your time.

From there we headed to Chelsea to see two more shows: Richard Serra at Gagosian and Do Ho Suh at Lehmann Maupin. I can't really say much about Richard Serra that you don't already know. His art takes over a room, it could take over a field. I like looking at his sculptures, I like sneaking my hand to brush the metal when I walk past it. I like the color, the warm and glowing rusty orange, glowing like fire but cool to the touch. In this show you can walk in and around, out and about, a series of arcs that have inner walkways that you can lose yourself in. I stumbled on an art student (probably) sitting on the floor and sketching with charcoal. I wouldn't have minded a little picnic down there between the metal sheets.

From Gagosian we headed over to see an exhibit of Korean sculptor, Do Ho Suh, at Lehmann Maupin Gallery. His work is about home and identity, a confusing state for a Korean living in Providence. One piece, Home Within Home, shows his house from Korea dropped in by a parachute and rammed into his home in Providence. Both homes have been replicated in exacting detail. They aren't miniatures, maybe one step up from that, mediumtures. The refrigerator is sliced on the diagonal and shown, split open, with half of everything. Half a lettuce, half a bottle of wine, half a turkey.

Also on display is another version of Home Within Home, this time made from translucent resin. The two homes have been merged together, formed and then split into four quadrants (as shown in the picture above). My favorite show of the three, it's closing on October 22nd, blink and it will be gone.