We are so happy to be working with Soho Rep again this year on their Spring Gala taking place on Monday, April 8 at Battery Gardens. Soho Rep is a fantastic contemporary theater that has been around since 1975 and in their permanent home on Walker Street since 1991. They are one of the most innovative theaters in New York City and we just love being a part of their world!
www.sohorep.org
It was great to be a part of the New York Weddings Event last Thursday at the Metropolitan Pavilion! Now that spring is officially here, cherry blossoms are definitely on our minds. Our friend Jessy Wolvek of Fleurs NYC created two gorgeous, show-stopping arrangements of cherry blossoms in mercury glass urns for our booth. Coupled with the lovely pink ranunculus bouquets she made for us, we felt like we were seated amidst a most glorius springtime garden. Thanks Jessy!
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| Photograph from THE BATON archive |
We are so thrilled to be part of the New York Weddings Event today at the Metropolitan Pavilion from 5:00 to 8:00 p.m. Stop by and say hello!
My husband just returned home from a trip to Sweden, arms full of lovely gifts from COS, a Swedish clothing line I knew not until now. An H&M affiliate brand, they are all about design and tend toward simple, stylish and affordable pieces. LOVE. I find the COS website particularly inspired including a most excellent online magazine.
www.cosstores.com
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| Photograph from THE BATON archive |
Here at THE BATON we speak constantly of the importance and necessity of collaboration. Most winter days I think of master collaborator NAU, a luminary Portland-based clothing company, as I wear my favorite cold weather coat to face the elements. NAU’s sustainability practices are almost unmatched and they give 2% of each sale to one of their five Partners for Change, each one an environmental or humanitarian organization, and the consumer chooses to which of the five that percentage will go. We also love the fact that they feature on their website friends who are positively and powerfully impacting the world. One item from their line is matched with each of these individuals and NAU donates 5% of every sale of that item to the charity of that friend’s choice. We think however that our personal no turning back moment was a few years ago at NAU’s pop-up store in Soho where they invited our friend TS McFadden (interviewed on THE BATON on New Year’s Eve 2012) to show his Mother Series — works which are created by removing dried, left over paint from his palettes and remounting and thus repurposing it as works of art in their own right — in their lower level art and performance space. Check out this very nice video of the installation.
www.nau.com, www.tsmcfadden.com
Paris-based journalist and author Mary Blume last month released The Master of Us All: Balenciaga, His Workrooms, His World. This lovely book tells a really fascinating inside story of the great and intensely private Spanish fashion designer Cristóbal Balenciaga. A good deal of Blume’s research was primary source material — her name was Florette Chelot and she was a vendeuse at Balenciaga, one of the first he hired and who stayed on for more than thirty years until he closed his business in 1968. Blume first met Chelot as a young writer newly arrived in Paris, looking for an affordable suit at Balenciaga. Florette Chelot helped her find it. Decades later, Blume recorded Chelot’s memories of the designer, his fashion house and his life right up until her death at age 95 in 2006. After reading her book, I was reminded of the wonderful and very special 2010 exhibition — Balenciaga: Spanish Master — at the Queen Sofía Spanish Institute in New York curated by Hamish Bowles and conceived by Oscar de la Renta. Definitely a favorite.
The Master of Us All: Balenciaga, His Workrooms, His World by Mary Blume (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2013)
YOU SEEM TO WORK STRICTLY IN LANDSCAPES, CAPTURING THE DENSITY OF NEW YORK CITY TO THE VASTNESS OF SCOTLAND. WHAT DRAWS YOU TO LANDSCAPES AS OPPOSED TO, FOR EXAMPLE, PEOPLE?
I don’t necessarily think of myself as a landscape photographer. I am not trying to capture landscapes per se. I think what I am mainly looking for or what seems to catch my attention is composition. I find myself continually drawn to simple bold shapes and often look for repetition and visual movement within those shapes. My photographs are not about the subject or scene. I never look for those things. What I see in the photographs is more graphic form. If at some point that graphic form happens to be human, I’ll probably start photographing people.
YOU PHOTOGRAPH ALL OVER THE WORLD. DO YOU TRAVEL TO PHOTOGRAPH OR DO YOU PHOTOGRAPH WHILE YOU TRAVEL?
I travel to photograph. I have tried to combine vacation travel with photographic travel, but my wife gets very bored standing around for a few hours while I wait for the sky to get interesting or a shadow to emerge. I also find that I need to turn my eye on so to speak. And vacation travel is about shutting off rather than turning on. For me making a really successful photo takes a lot of time and concentration. It means walking through fields or climbing into a ditch, or standing in the rain for hours. My process is not most people’s idea of fun.
YOUR WORK IS QUITE HAUNTING AND YOU HAVE STATED THAT YOU PREFER SHOOTING IN PLACES THAT ARE COLD AND UNINVITING. ARE THE TWO CONNECTED AND INTENTIONAL?
My life is so filled with the hustle bustle of city living, noise and visual pollution that I think I am continually looking to simplify. Or find some sense of calm or serenity. I don’t know if I am looking for haunted spaces in particular. I think what attracts me are spaces devoid of visual clutter and distraction. I gravitate to places that people have naturally stayed clear of, and because of their sparse surroundings, compositions within that type of space just seem to reveal themselves more plainly.
WHAT BRINGS YOU JOY?
A old friend and the conversation that ensues just into the 3rd pint of Guinness.
COMB OR BRUSH?
Brush.
DO YOU LIKE YOUR NAME?
I was born Antony Kevin Bennett in Southern England in 1967. And was never called Antony, only Tony. Tony Bennett was just another name to my parents who were both from New Zealand. But I think I started noticing people making a fuss about it when we moved to the U.S. in the early 70s. Once I realized I shared my name with the singer Tony Bennett, I started to look for alternatives. Maybe I would go by Kevin Bennett, my middle name. But I think ultimately it just seemed like too much work to try to change it or correct people, so Tony Bennett is what people call me. AK Bennett is for the art (more not to be confused with the singer than anything else.) But to answer your question, I would say no. To me Tony always sounded like I made pizza.
FINISH THIS SENTENCE. MY AGE IS…………….
an odd way to measure my life, I prefer to say I have been around the sun 45 times.
WHAT’S FOR DINNER TONIGHT?
I have no idea. Hopefully not asparagus.
www.akbennett.com
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| Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Fifth Avenue and 89th Street, 1966 Photograph from THE BATON archive |