Dear Pennies & Pens,
About a month ago, I received an invite to a private reception at the Galeria Melissa which is a dedicated gallery space in Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood that serves as Melissa Shoes’ exclusive American outpost. Melissa Shoes was celebrating its one year anniversary with press, VIP, friends, and other supporters. To celebrate the anniversary, the store commissioned works from New York artist, Walt Cassidy. These special installations were on display while special guests were invited to sip Brazilian cocktails and interact with the artist himself.
According to the press release, “Walt Cassidy’s work serves as a personal alphabet – charting a private topography of history, experience, emotion, and thought. Surveying inner landscapes, rendered in a visual language both intimate and arcane, his work ranges from ink drawings and wall sculptures to photographs. These works testify, with remarkable emotive force, that the most demanding affective experience is often the private one, and that our most urgent expressive imperative is to render it sensibly—to make outer order from inner chaos. The works produced for Galeria Melissa are from Cassidy’s Paper series of photographs, which feature flat constructions of cut paper. These narrative abstractions seek to narrow the photographic plane, while conceptually challenging the notion of still life photography and illustration, of which much of his work is rooted.”
There was also a video in the installation that featured components of ‘BOOB: The Live Performances,’ a look at the NYC club scene between 1995-1998, compiled and edited by Walt Cassidy and Nathan Maxwell Cann. BOOB was a conceptual hardcore rock band that began amidst the infamous 1990’s New York City club scene of Peter Gatien – owned nightclubs, Limelight, Tunnel, Palladium and Club USA. Led by three prominent club kids, Walt Paper (Walt Cassidy), Desi Monster (Desi Santiago) and Loxanna (John McGrath), BOOB consisted of Mr. Johnson (Scott Johnson) on guitar, Sonia Sonic (Sonia Manalili) on bass, and Mayumi (Mayumi Shimokawa) on drums. The burlesque performer *BOB* was featured as their mascot, “The BOOB Girl”.
BOOB incorporated the talents of various other artists, filmmakers, designers and photographers (filmmakers – Daniel Falcone and Ryan Wolowski; photographers – Misa Martin, Kent Pell, and Roderick Angle; costume designers – Carlis Pistol and Jimmy Helvin). Their first performance was a sold out show at Limelight. The performance would mark the beginning of the end of an era, as New York nightlife became the target of Rudy Giuliani’s “Quality of Life” campaign. This campaign would see the closing of not only all of the mega-clubs owned by Peter Gatien, but also performance venues such as CBGBs and Don Hills. BOOB -The Live Performances includes archival performance footage from many of these NYC venues, combined with interviews and press clips which provide a glimpse into the frequently referenced 1990’s period of New York City nightlife.
Overall, even though I didn’t get a chance to check out this event, I still wanted to share it with you. PS cool fun fact, Melissa Shoes is the Brazilian footwear company that created the Jellies shoes in the 80s. 😉
And there it is. de la Pen…All Pen Everything.
