• March through May 2024

My mother in Bushkill
March, 2024
Colin with morning coffee
John and Matt
Neal going to town during his birthday karaoke
Matty, on the way to TJ Byrnes
Edgar and Matt, TJ Byrnes
John and the fish slippers
Chris and Buff
Hangin with Carson
Seafood tower at Thai Diner
Erik
Old friends, serendipitously matching Skyline Chili shirts
Erik and Matt at Blade Study
Gaby and Euan
March is always a test and this one was no different. Matt and I survived it by sacrificing cultural, social, and intellectual stimulation for being curled up at home and watching college basketball. We capped off the month promising we’d end our brain rotting, self soothing March Madness hibernation along with miscellaneous substance abuse.

Come April we were intent on getting out of the house, Going To Things, and seeing art again. A visit from John (Stoughton), who came over from Cincinnati, was a good way to set things off. He, Jason, Matt, and I traipsed Manhattan, letting a chaotic inner compass lead us to Public Works Administration gallery and the donut glazing conveyor belt at the Times Square Krispy Kreme. Matt acted as whimsical Willy Wonka architectural tour guide by leading us to the Marriot Marquis on 45th Street. Upon asking why the hell he was taking us to a Marriot, he promised this one was an architectural marvel. And so it was. Massive, brutalist. A high rise with the biggest inner atrium I’ve ever seen. To have Wikipedia sum it up: “The hotel was first announced in 1972 and official plans were released in 1973, but the hotel was postponed after the New York City fiscal crisis in 1975. The hotel was restarted in the late 1970s under mayor Ed Koch. There was extensive controversy over the destruction of five old theaters on the site, and various lawsuits and protests delayed the start of construction until 1982...

An architectural feature of the hotel is its concrete elevator core, which consists of a minaret-shaped structure with twelve glass elevator cabs on the exterior.”

We left the sublime novelty of the Marriot Marquis only after splitting up and joyriding the elevators that shot us up and down like toy soldiers in pneumatic tubes. After this- art. Jamian Juliano-Villani at Gagosian (marred upon learning the artist does not paint her own paintings), Frank Stella megasculptures at Jeffrey Deitch, Joan Jonas at The Drawing Center (soothing). And- somehow- two big beautiful mounds of dirt: Walter de Maria’s Earth Room and Delcy Morelos’ El Abrazo at Dia Chelsea (sublime, brilliant, unforgettable).

And so we pushed on towards springtime with a desperate hope typical of New Yorkers beaten and bruised by the months of frigid misery. But when that first warm day arrives, suddenly every inch of sky and concrete seems to be glowing. Just for us.