What Happened Live in September?

This unseasonably warm September has me back running in Central Park as I train for a few up-coming half-marathons. Fall art season is back in full swing and I would have to say Man Ray at The Met is the stunner of the month and my only five star review is Biscayne Bay National Park. I am still painting everyday as a meditation. Some are silly paintings, but the act of painting is a deeply satisfying way to record my daily perspective. Rockwell Kent’s line came to me mid-stroke: We are simply instruments recording in different measure our particular portion of the infinite. I like this idea of being reminded of the infinite in our challenging times right now. I think as a reader you have picked up on my taste, or how I question or build my own taste. What do you do to define your taste? I was featured on a podcast this past month with the Director of my graduate program at California College of the Arts Justin Lokitz, Design Shift: Designed to Listen . Have a listen. I talked about taste and how it is the intersection of time and experimentation. We live in a culture when everything is immediate and experimentation is threatened. How might you carve out time for both as a radical act? Here is a few highlights of September and what is exciting me in October.

NATURE

Mid-month, I went scuba diving in Biscayne Bay, my thirty-second National Park (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)— it was the first time I dove shipwrecks and I loved it. I even found a rare sighting of a nudibranch. Diving to me is just like going to an art museum. Diving is about calming your breathe, close looking, and allowing the elements to hold you.

THEATER

I am back in the city and I ran to Broadway. I was back in a seat at the Wintergarden Theater featuring the National Tour of Mama Mia! with my dear friend Meg and her sisters (⭐️⭐️)—it was light, predictable, and familial. A very dangerous scene with boys in neoprene and fins has me questioning all their costume decisions. The crowds love it! I caught a preview of Punch (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️). Never have I experienced such a whiplash from Act 1 to Act 2. It feels like a punch. But, I almost would consider Act 1 - boring to a fault. I don’t say this lightly. Act 2 was a masterclass of acting with Victoria Clark playing a grieving mother (give her a Tony nom)! It was so stunning, so emotional, and a great night of theater.

I checked out a new comedy club in the Lower East called Caveat with - Skipped History Power Broker, Part 1 with Ben Tubin (⭐️⭐️)—rough edges, but ambition. Galas at Little Island (⭐️⭐️), a signal that summer was leaving us and fall performance had arrived.

The Fall Dance Festival at City Center (⭐️⭐️) featuring CLARA FUREY/BENT HOLLOW, Dog Rising, LIL BUCK & DAVÓNE TINES, RESURRECTION and HUBBARD STREET DANCE CHICAGO IMPASSE. Later, I saw Turandot at the Met. Liu was the stand out performance with her final aria. I have seen this opera now eight times and it always captures my imagination around what does it mean to sacrifice for the love of another? Justin Vivian Bond’s Flaming September (⭐️⭐️⭐️) was a reminder of what cabaret does best: collapse intimacy and performance into the same breath. Mystical, Mysterious, and Wonderous in a 19th century church in Brooklyn. The performance was a re-interpretation of Marianne Faithfull’s comeback performance in the 1990s was educational, inspirational, and iconic. My fifth set at West Side Comedy Club (⭐️⭐️⭐️) went well with an entirely new 5-minute set and it was exciting to have 15 more people in the audience supporting the dream. I have now had 150 people see me live at West Side Comedy Club. I try to go up around once a month and getting out to more open mics.

VISUAL ART

The Met preview of Man Ray:When Objects Dream (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️) and Echoes & Evolutions: Nancy Holt on the Upper East Side (⭐️⭐️⭐️) played like call and response: surrealist interiors vs. land artist horizons. I was moved to see a gallery treat Nancy Holt’s masterwork, the Sun Tunnels, with such reverence, intentionality, and class. I have visited the Sun Tunnels twice in my life and I live with it on my Apple Watch Face. The piece constantly reminds me that our earth is in motion through space and this in fact grounds me in my daily life. I particularly love the viewfinders on 86th street looking across the street and into the sky.

Miami gave me sea life including a rare nudibranch sighting, but also slight disappointment with an underwhelming visit to the Perez Art Museum(⭐️). The museum, designed by Herzog de Mureon, is hard to get to museum while set along the Bay. I made the effort and I would say my highlight was a Mark Dion installation and a surprising exhibit by brothers Elliot & Erick Jiménez: El Monte. Other than that, the curation seemed to be jarring from gallery to gallery. Moving through the space, the museum seemed incomplete and hard to access.

What I am excited about in October : Erich Heckel at Neue Galerie Ruth Asawa at MOMA and The Met Opera And already preparing for: *** New York Comedy Week *** Studio Museum in Harlem Re-Opening

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