james dean in new york

Like many young artists, I ended up in New York, studying painting at Parsons School of Design and learning to live on my own. A lot of my fellow art students were into abstraction, but I was always drawn to figure painting and classic portraiture. I soon discovered that I wasn't really interested in the human body in the sense that a lot of painters, like Philip Pearlstein or Lucian Freud were. I did the class assignments, learning to draw and sketch and sculpt and paint nude models in various contorted postures to better understand their musculature. But what I really liked was drawing people in clothes — men in suits, people in various social situations.

So in my free time I worked from film stills and photographs of favorite actors and movies. In my search for some source material I discovered a book of photographs of actor James Dean, taken by photographer Roy Schatt. Like many young actors, James Dean ended up in New York, plying his craft in the theater, and also early television. Schatt documented the young actor, walking around town. I could relate to the lonely, solitary figure, so far from his Midwestern home, navigating rainy streets, in front of some of the same buildings I found myself passing on the way to school each day.

I knew who James Dean was. I had probably seen part of Rebel Without A Cause one late night on television with my movie-buff dad. Coincidentally, Cinema Village, a revival movie house just a few steps away from Parsons, ran a James Dean double feature of East of Eden and Rebel Without A Cause. I decided to check it out.  Seeing him up there, on the big screen, I finally got what all the fuss was about. That red jacket. The unruly hair. He really pulled the viewer in, making you feel his suffering. He was an angsty, alienated teen, and I could relate. A few months later an uptown theater screened Giant on an enormous screen, complete with intermission. Although Dean has a relatively small part in the epic Elizabeth Taylor/Rock Hudson sudser, he effortlessly steals the movie away from them every time he is on screen. I was transfixed. Giant really showed Dean's potential for becoming not a screen heartthrob, but a character actor. And seeing him stroll across the gigantic screen, across Texas, almost life-size, was beyond impressive.

I grabbed my book of photos and started doing sketches of the actor almost as soon as I got home from Giant. I unearthed some of these old drawings the other day when I was going through my mom's and my old artwork. Looking at a portrait based on a photo by Schatt brought back another Dean and Parsons-related memory. One of my senior year classmates in the painting program also happened to be the daughter of actress Betsy Palmer. She knew I loved Hollywood and movies and said she bet her mom would love some of my drawings. I never really thought much about it until one day she brought her mom into my studio space and Ms. Palmer took one look at a painting on paper that I had tacked up on the wall and declared, "Jimmy! I'd know him anywhere!" She was very gracious and sweet and said how much she liked the work, and then told me a few stories about working with Dean in early television.

Her daughter drifted away, probably back to her own studio space, and then Ms. Palmer confided with a mischievous smile that she had known "Jimmy" very well, and that they had a wonderful time together. I recently ran across an interview with the actress where she told of her early days in New York, including some of the same stories she had shared with me that day. It was fun to hear, then and now, about a film icon's humble struggles and beginnings. Young artists have always been drawn to big cities, to search out like minds and hopefully, artistic success. I don't do much drawing and painting these days. I prefer to be creative with words and photos. But I find that I am still drawn to doing portraits of people — portraits of artists that interest and inspire me.

25 cent beer

When I was 18 I moved from southern New Jersey to New York, to attend art school at Parsons School of Design. Although I had traveled to the city with my family many times in my youth — mostly to see Yankee games or on the way to visit relatives on Long island — living in Manhattan was still quite a culture shock. Getting around the city on my own. Managing money. Using an ATM. Sounds like a breeze now, but these were big, independent strides for a girl who still wore her rubber flip flops everywhere (and had to wash the black dust of the city off her feet every night.)

A lot of that first year is a blur, but I do remember certain events and people from those days. At the time Parsons and the New School for Social Research were partnered, but still separate. You were a design or art major at Parsons who took required liberal arts classes at the New School for your degree. Nowadays they are one big school, Parsons The New School for Design. I didn't know anyone else when I moved to New York. Everything and everyone was new to me. A lot of of the friends that I made were not just in my art classes, but in my liberal arts classes. In fact, most of the datable guys came not from my art classes but from my history or literature or film classes that I took at the New School.

One guy that I met and befriended was named John. He was Greek and interesting looking. He wore his hair gelled and high on his head, almost a pompadour, as we were wont to do in the '80s. He also always wore a long wool overcoat — also very popular garb for the time. We were in a class on Shakespeare plays together. I think he was my first date in my new New York life. I say I think because I went out frequently with classmates and friends, sometimes with just one or two at a time — the legal drinking age in New York at the time was 18, so we hit the town quite often — but I'm pretty sure that he was the first guy of my new friends who asked me to do something with him, just him, actually suggesting a day and time. We made a date.

John lived in an apartment not far from Parsons. I can't remember where we went to eat, but I know he had on his ubiquitous overcoat. After dinner he wanted to show me this "great bar" on 14th street. The selling point was that it served 25 cent beer. Although my classes and my life at the time centered around 14th Street, I still found the area a little sleazy, so I was put off at first by the location, but also fascinated with John, so off we went.

The bar, of course, was a dive. A line of old men were hunched over their drinks at the bar. They didn't look up or do much of anything except tip a glass. We sat on two stools at the end of the bar, soaking up what little atmosphere the place had to offer and drinking many little glasses of cheap beer. We may have even played pool. I'm pretty sure I was the only female in the joint that evening. No surprise, as it didn't have the sort of ambience that would attract many girls. In my mind, and John may have even dubbed it that, it was the "old man's bar."

I don't think there was a name on the outside of the building, just a neon sign in the window that said "Beer." It was like some place out of the old Twilight Zone television series, as if we had stumbled into some sort of time warp. I'm not sure we would have been able to find it again. The glasses the beer was served in were very small, more like juice glasses. I've never seen beer served in glasses like them before or since. Sitting and drinking in that bar was like stepping back in time, into a short story by Henry Miller, or Charles Bukowski, or even William Burroughs. I'm sure that's why the literary-minded John liked it. And also because it was cheap and he was pretty broke, as we all were in those days.

We hung out together quite a few times after that. I think I even asked him out the next time, to go dancing somewhere, probably the Pyramid Club in the East Village. I recall that he kept his overcoat on the whole time, even on the hot, crowded dance floor. Or maybe it was Danceteria. One day John told me that he was dropping out of his classes, but I can't remember what he said he was going to study instead, or where. We exchanged numbers, but we quickly lost touch with one another. That's just how things seemed to go. It was easier to spend time with people that were doing the same thing as you. But I've never forgotten the night we went out and had 25 cent beer.

kids will be kids

I'm still thinking about Patti Smith's Just Kids. Not only was it a great read, but it was a trip down memory lane. Not exactly my memories, but I did have a similar New York young artist experience about twenty years later than Patti and Robert Mapplethorpe. Maybe it's something about the city, or just about that time in your life, but the combination of a young kid on the loose in New York always makes for some amazing times.

My New York experience was actually a combination of Patti's and Robert's. Like Patti, I came from south Jersey and was definitely the "country mouse" walking on 14th Street in rubber flip flops while the natives smirked at me. The soles of my feet would be black at the end of the day. Like Robert I went to art school, in my case Parsons—he went to Pratt. I also lived in Brooklyn with an assortment of roommates.

Brooklyn and New York goings-on.

Max's Kansas City was just a memory by the time I hit town. The "in" spots in my day were The Pyramid, Danceteria, Area. CBGB was more about hardcore than punk. But the idea was the same. Go out to see and be seen. I think my friends and I may have had a bit more fun than Patti did at first, because we spent a lot of our time dancing. It sounds like Patti wasn't much of a club-goer, but was accompanying Robert in his quest to be seen. I did see a lot of the same New York celebrities that Patti rubbed shoulders with. My dorm was a building down from Warhol's studio on Union Square and I used to see him all the time, strolling the neighborhood, flanked by two gorgeous blond young men. Mick Jagger rode the elevator up in our building to vist the illustrator Antonio.

At the Warhol opening at MoMA. And no, that's not Andy.

I also worked retail like Patti to pay the rent. I worked at the Museum of Modern Art and met many artists, and got my second art degree just spending my lunch hours in the museum. A bunch of us who worked at MoMA went to the Whitney in 1988 to see the Mapplethorpe retrospective. It was amazing. I had seen his work in the city, but just a few pieces here or there. But seeing the photographs large-scale—a beautiful lily juxtaposed with an S&M couple—it is hard to deny the artist's refined eye. He treated every subject equally, with a glossy and perfect surface. I saw his Patti Smith photos, too, and smiled in recognition at familiar album cover art. I had no idea at the time of their strong link. It was just another celebrity photo in a series of celebrity photos. I keep thinking I saw Mapplethorpe there, too, but in New York you see so many people. I can't be sure.

Robert Mapplethorpe at his Whitney Retrospective, 1988 Copyright © Jonathan Becker / Vanity Fair

The most poignant part of the book is Patti's slow realization that the man she loves doesn't love her the same way. She pulls away, gets angry, gets pulled back in, and decides that they are too important to each other to not stay close. I'll never forget my grandmother telling me when I had been accepted to art school to be careful who I fell in love with. She was in the Parsons Interior Design program, before it was a college, in 1929. She had fallen hard for a man who became her lifelong friend, but also was her first heartbreak. Most of the guys at college in my day were pretty open about their sexuality, so I don't think I could have had Patti's or my grandmother's experience. I did have a brief crush on a guy who wasn't completely out yet, but it was short, because I figured out we liked the same sorts of guys pretty quickly. And then we became friends.

It's interesting that the bohemian experience, whatever the decade, can be so similar. It makes me wonder what my daughter's twenties will be like. As much as I'm terrified at the prospect of even her teens at this point I have to admit to a little excitement for her. Will she, like her mom and her grandma and her great-grandma before her, also want to find herself in New York? Will New York still be the "place to be" for the twenty-something set in another fifteen years? CBGB is no more and the Chelsea Hotel is up for sale, but I guess these iconic joints will be replaced with new ones. Kids will be kids, so a whole new generation of escapades is on the horizon.

Related articles

• Book Review: Just Kids by Patti Smith (blogcritics.org)

turntable talk

They were my band in the 80s. They were the first band I got into on my own. Not on the suggestion of a friend, or by listening to my parents' music, or by hearing them on the radio. The Clash. My dad had a weekly newspaper in South Jersey and he suggested I write a music column for it. He even suggested the title, Turntable Talk. So I guess I've been reviewing pop culture since I was a tween ...

Anyway, once I had written a bunch of columns I felt like I had run out of subject matter. I had already written about all my favorite singers and bands. "Why don't you write the record companies and see if you can review some of their new albums?" said the old man "But I'm just a kid!" I argued. "They don't know that." So I drafted a letter, got the record company addresses from the backs of my albums, Dad proofed it and we sent it out to CBS, A&M, Epic, etc.

A few weeks later, the free albums started pouring in. So many of the albums were by obscure bands and one-hit wonders—Huang Chung, who changed their name to Wang Chung, The Dickies, Gino Vannelli (which came with a full-size poster of Gino which my mom brought to the newspaper and put up on the wall behind the typesetter), the Ethel Merman Disco Album (I kid you not.) And I listened to all of them, all the way through, no matter how difficult, or how far it drove the family out of the house. We only had one stereo in the house. I took my "job" of reviewing very seriously, even the questionable loot.

Multiple-photo collage, by Elizabeth Periale

But I also got some really great stuff. The Police, Joe Jackson, Elvis Costello and The Clash. I'll never forget the first time I put on The Clash one weekend morning. I was the only one home at the time. Maybe instinctively I knew to wait until I was alone, that I was about to have an experience. The sound coming out of the stereo was loud and raw and scary and exciting. My neighbor, Mrs. Dembski, who was walking her dog, or watering her lawn, or doing something that caused her to come out onto her front lawn across the street stopped whatever it was she was doing and stood still, staring at our house. Inside, I bounced around, afraid yet thrilled, and knew that suddenly this column and album-reviewing wasn't just something I was doing for my Dad to be part of the family business. I was really into this.

Greeting folks at the door to my installation.

Years later, when I went away to art school at Parsons I took my Clash and Police records (I left Gino Vanelli at home with Mom) and eventually stopped in at CBS to introduce myself to the contact who had been sending me all their records. She was probably only about five years older than me, but seemed a little surprised at my youth—but only for a moment before she loaded me down with an armful of new records. I didn't end up going to any of the other labels I had been corresponding with while I was still in high school, as I just didn't have time with all my classes and assignments. But I continued to write and send dad the occasional column until the paper folded in my junior year.

During that year I really came into my own at Parsons and was experimenting with photography and film and performance, as well as taking the drawing and painting classes in the curriculum. I had talked my way out of taking any more sculpture classes (usually required) when my sculpture teacher and I both agreed that I just didn't have a 3D-eye (hey, that story was convincing at the time), and I added printmaking instead. I started using a lot of the publicity materials that the record companies had sent me as the subject matter and even raw material for my artwork.

My ten red panels in a darkened room.

I was listening to a lot of different music, but I listened mostly to the Clash while I created a large-scale installation for my drawing class. I had draped a room with plastic sheeting, painted black, the paint chipping off of it until it became a tunnel which led viewers to a set of ten painted wooden panels with words pres-typed onto them. I wanted people to feel as if they were walking into my painting. I knew I would need music, the music I was listening to while I made the panels, to fill the room. I asked my friend Steven Parrino, if he would make a tape for me, using the Clash's music. He didn't necessarily think the band was cool—he was always onto whatever he thought was the nextest, bestest thing—but he agreed.

I did a little research and found out the Clash had an "office"in New York called Clash, Inc., and called and made an appointment. When I visited, it was a big empty loft somewhere in midtown with a young woman with a British accent who seemed to be the lone staff person. I told her my story and asked if I could include some of the band's music as background for my art installation. She said yes and asked me to send her an invite. "Maybe we'll come and see it." I was beyond thrilled and handed over my albums to Steven and told him to go nuts.

Steven Parrino, artist and mixtape-maker extraordinaire, expounding on the meaning of art,
or something. I miss you, Steven.

Of course Steven distorted the songs and did so much scratching, etc. that my familiar favorites were hardly recognizable. But it did sound cool and was perfect for the enveloping, claustrophobic nature of the piece. The girl from Clash, Inc. showed up and was probably as befuddled at first as I had been when she heard Steven's wall-of-Clash-sound, but she congratulated me on the installation and told me that "The Boys" would have loved it.

I gave all my old albums many years ago to my cousin, the only person I know who still has a working turntable. I've got quite a few of my favorite Clash songs loaded onto my iPhone—the kid sings along happily with me to Should I Stay or Should I Go. But recently I've been feeling the lack of Sandinista. There's something about putting on such a massive album as that one and letting it envelop you ... sort of like my installation. I haven't done that in a long time.

Related articles

• Joe Strummer Biopic On The Way (beatcrave.com)
• Clash's London Calling goes from vinyl to video (cbc.ca)
• Tsy Stle Hall of Fame Paul Simonon | How to Clash Art, Music and Style (theselvedgeyard.wordpress.com)

the end of project runway

Emilio wuz robbed. I love Seth Aaron, and am happy for him and for his family, but the "good guy" winning, was still . . . unfair. The judges telling Emilio that he made a clothing "line" as opposed to a collection. Oh really? And what were Seth Aaron's storm troopers and color-blind Mila's 60's chicks? Those were collections?

Emilio may not have been the most loved by Tim Gunn or the audience. He was cocky. He was a diva. He's a fashion designer, big woop. He also consistently made the best clothes, bar none, except my other fave, Jay, who was completely overlooked and inexplicably dissed.

All of the drama is way too reminiscent of my actual days at Parsons. I started watching Project Runway because of that connection, and because it was a show about creativity, the designers' challenges structured much like the weekly assignments I used to have to muddle through at art school. But the show, post-Siriano, has gone downhill. I swore off it last year, only to be sucked in this year mid-season by one of Jay's spiffy pleated skirt ensembles. But I think this is really it. I quit you, Project Runway. Your "competition" is a farce, as so many of the designers actually make it (off camera) to fashion week (and BTW - Anthony's designs were fun and fabulous - just like him), and your pandering to whatever you think will make "good television," rather than great design is too much. The half-hour after-show was especially hateful, as Tim Gunn showed clips of the exhausted designers and models bitchily tearing each other apart in their "confessionals" and then asked them, "What do you think about ___ calling you a ___?" Give me a break. I quit you, Project Runway.

da da da

When I was at art school my dear friend Sibylle introduced me to this incredibly silly and delightful song by the band Trio. I had my own copy of their album once upon a time. Thanks to the internet and iTunes it's possible to recapture the sounds of my not-always-misspent youth. Plus, it's just also damn fun to listen to. I dare you not to smile.

Trio - Da Da Da (1982)

elegantly dressed Wednesday

In my internet ramblings I stumbled upon Elegantly Dressed Wednesday and would like to join the fray:

When I was in junior year of my painting major at Parsons I staged this artwork for my drawing class. Most of my junior and senior year I was interested in the concept and execution of portraiture. My friend Steven was a willing subject and held the pose for the duration of the performance, which was about twenty minutes - long enough for the class to view, for the teacher to critique, and for me to document.

What is interesting to me about this photo is not only how cool I still think the piece and its subject were, but also the realization that I also took this photo on my dad's old Pentax camera with B&W film, probably purchased at nearby Ben Ness, then developed it in my home darkroom, i.e. bathroom, in my Park Slope, Brooklyn apartment. Once the film was dry (hung on clothes pins on hangars next to the shower curtain) I then used an enlarger, also one of my dad's cast-offs, perilously balanced on the top of the toilet seat, to make prints, while trays of chemicals floated in my claw-foot bathtub.

A world away from digital cameras...but Steven looks quite elegant, doesn't he?

parrino kaleidoscope

I was thinking of Steven Parrino the other day.

I met Steven at Parsons, in the Fine Arts Department, where he was a few years ahead of me. He inspired a cartoon character for my animation class, where I did a short film, The Amazing Adventures of Bugman. When I told him about the character he wasn't sure whether to be flattered or insulted, but was OK with it and wanted to see the results.

He helped me get my first (paying) job (I worked for my dad's newspaper as a layout artist, typesetter, etc. when I was in high school), at Canal Jean Co., in New York.

One day Parrino, my friend Mary and I went out for our lunch break from Canal to the nearby Greek diner and ordered our usual cheeseburgers and fries. Parrino was telling a story and as he was talking, a large cockroach walked sideways on the wall beside him. Mary and I were struck dumb with horror, but he nonchalantly picked up the ketchup bottle, squashed the roach, and finished the story, without missing a beat. Mary and I were beyond impressed.

Once at a party Parrino and I danced to Elvis Costello's Mystery Dance. He was a wild man on the dance floor, but never took off his leather jacket, even though the party was crowded and it was hot. Sometimes I wondered if he slept in that jacket.

I had a dream once with Parrino in it, where he was constructing an elaborate sculptural piece that would shoot a knife blade across a room to cut someone's throat (I had just been reading Kafka and was probably under the influence.) In the dream the knife went in slow motion and I saw it heading towards him, but then the perspective shifted and I was looking down at blood flowing very slowly - down my neck, my chest. I woke up, gasping. The next day at Parsons I looked for Parrino everywhere, but he wasn't around. Finally after classes were over he showed up, wearing a white wind breaker. It was the only time I ever saw him in white. This vivid dream inspired a set of red paintings and an installation where Parrino, at my request, supplied the music. Of course he did it on his terms. I was very much into the Clash and had even contacted someone at Clash, Inc. (the band had an office in New York) to ask permission to use their music as background for my installation. Their representative said yes and even came to the show at Parsons on the day it was open. Of course what she heard when she arrived didn't sound much like the Clash - Steven had sampled the tape of songs I gave him and distorted them until they became a wall of noise.

I'm not sure when I last saw Parrino, but I recall a visit to his Brooklyn studio. Later we went out to a local diner and he had french fries, but ordered them with mayo, as he was still jazzed having just come back from Amsterdam.

I was really upset last year to hear that he had died in a motorcycle accident. And that was more than a year after the fact. I hadn't seen or heard about him in years, but he was someone from my life, my past. And he was an individual and a painter. And an inspiration.