Handsome and stately Glenn Belverio the MoMa design expertin and lauded columnist with Diane Pernet’s A Shaded View on Fashion proclaimed in New York City the Vaginal Davis Autumnal WeekLaVa.
On the last day before the diva returned to Germany, she spent quality time at Remedy Diner at 245 East Houston Street with her dear sister of the clothe Mr. Belverio and olde LA pal Nurse Lauren(Pain) Pine, who use to be the right hand gal of designer Patricia Field. Ms. Lauren who use to work with Frau Davis on Melrose Avenue at Retail Slut gave up all that high glamour to devote herself to medicine where she has ruled supreme for the last 20 years as a registered critical care nurse. Miss Lauren is wise beyond her years and is a stalwort voice on what is wrong with the US of A at the moment.
Lobster Lady Rebecca Goyette whose day job is in MoMa’s Education Department is a fast rising leader in the new art movement of Crustacean Sensuality and is a new member to the cult of ancient black intititty that is and always will be surrounding the Whoracle et Delphi Vaginal Davis.
At the two woman reception Chimera at Invisible-Exports featuring the BBC of the late great Louise Nevelson and the tiny make-up paintings of little Ms. Vagimule all was right in the world. Collectors and punters alike were foaming at the snarl for a chance to make off with one of the expressive make-up and perfume portraits.
La Davis’ study of unheralded notables like Ruby Dee, Tuesday Weld, Miyoshi Umeki, Tura Satana, Lupita Tovar and her daughter, the former actress Susan Kohner. Ms. Kohner is half Mexican and half Jewish and is the mother of film directors Chris and Paul Weitz. Kohner was quite effective portraying a light skinned black woman in the remake of Imitation of Lifedirected by Douglas Sirk, that featured Juanita Moore, Lana Turner and Sandra Dee in 1959.
The original Imitation of Life from 1934 starred an actual light skinned black actress Fredi Washington along with a riveting performance from Louise Beavers. In Chimera Ms. Washington is represented from her stage role of Mamba’s Daughter that also starred sweet mama stringbean Ethel Waters.
In Chemira Louise Beavers joins Washington along with singer and actress Della Reece, the little known Diana Sands who is so incredible in the 1970 New York gentrification film The Landlord, featuring a young, hairy chested Beau Bridges getting down interracially speaking with the gorgeous Ms. Sands.
The other actress portraits are of Brenda Sykes who in the Black community of the 1970s became notorious for needing repairs to her private parts after each sex session with dinosaur genitaled football and film star Jim Brown. Ms. Sykes was also in the TV situation comedy Ozzie’s Girls starring Ozzie and Harriet Nelson and had a tasty lovescene opposite humpy Elliot Gould in college protest drama Getting Straight (1970). Most people know Sykes from the 1975 sexploitation film Mandingo opposite Perry King and boxing champion Ken Norton, but she was also involved in a love affair with her TV co-star Leigh J. McClowsky in the primetime soap Executive Suite.
Ms. Davis also includes early black soap star Ellen Holly from One Life to Live and Russ Meyer starlet Kitten Natividad who use to ride the same bus line on Wilshire Blvd as Ms. Davis back in the 1980s. Hard to believe, but Ms. Davis actually worked for over ten years as the assistant to the director of UCLA’s Placement and Career Planning Center Bill Locklear. Bill is the father of actress Heather Locklear. Heather and Ms. Davis were part of the same graduating class at UCLA.
Russ Meyer and Natividad also lived together for years, and were regular attendees to many of Vaginal Davis and The Afro Sisters performances, as the couple were part of the LA orbit of Michele Lamy and then husband performance artist Richard Newton.
The wonderful Steven Michael Azo of NYU’s video art department put his dib in A$AP before the reception even started. Once the soiree on Eldridge Street began the small Lower East Side space was jammed with the likesis of mega attractive artists like: Jonathan Berger, Ian Chang, Michael Bilsborough,Alex Israel, Damien Davis, Argentina’s Lucas Michael, Jonah Groeneboer, Brad Hampton, Item Idem’s Cyril Duval with juicy juice mongerer Michael J. Bullock of Butt Magazine and Fantastic Man (no relation to JM J. Bullock of Too Close For Comfort fame) and sleek lovesexy blackamoor Telfar Clemens, the New York urban design guru who all the world seems to be wrapped up in the house of. Well why not? Mr. Clemens is not only young, gifted and black but is a bonafide studkin par excellance.
A lot of the monied fagarettes were swooning over humpy blondine actor Jonno Davies the star of off Broadways A Clockwork Orangewho only had eyes for Welsh dreamcake Taron Egerton and his older beau Milo Ventigiglia, also seen floating about I-E, Document Journal’s Justin Polera, the gorgeous power attorney and art collectress Erica Teasley-Linnick who is also the senior program officer with the Democracy Fund of the Open Society Foundations U.S. Programs, Cynthia “Social Lies” Powell President of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, Dale Soules one of the stars of Orange is The New Black, Casey Spooner, Cindy Greene and Lizzy Yoder of Fischer Spooner, Angela Di Carlo who use to do the makeup for Fischerspooner but now has her own singing career and is one of the stellar DJanes at the Mattachine party at Julius, Ms. Di Carlo is a dead ringer for 50’s actress/singer Dolores Gray, poet Thomas Dooley, Doug McClemont formerly the mortician to the shtars and editor of Honcho Magazine now the head Honcho at Marlborough Gallery, power kollectors with a capital “K” Phil Aarons and Shelley Fox, Scott Rothkopf, the dapper and dreamy chief curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art, everybodies downtown favorite the ravishing and super smart Lia Gangitano of Participant Inc. and her main man the debonair Mr. “T”, Angela Monaco, jewelry designer with Concrete Polish, sizzling sexpot Thor Perplies and his beautiful lover, Jason Kemper, Amy Sadao, the director of the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania, multi-hyphenate beauty boy and lovegod Alex Jovanovich of Art Forum International, Historian Todd Shepard, Billy Miller of STH, Jan Wandrag, Slava Mogutin who gifted Ms. D with a signed copy of his new macho/macha fotog book Bros & Brosephines, Joe Baptista from PACE Galleries responsible for the Nevelson in the show which is up for sale, Aaron Krach who made the Vaginal Davis buttons&bows, Chris Cole, Norman Ghoulsen von Holtzendorf, Charity Hope Valentine-Coleman, the writer and Bricktops at the Parlourclub firstborne daughter with her foxy new girlfriend Stacy Szymaszek poet and director of Poetry Project at Saint Marks Church, Jared Buckhiester the brilliant artiste,hungthrob and former Givenchy model, Sean Carrillo and his wife the youngest of the Warhol stars Bibbe Hansen, teenage looking Gala Verdugo, Glenn Belverio, NYU dance scholar Barbara Browning, filmmaker and curator with feet shod in gold Adam Baran who brought along performance artist David Serotte, thespian Thom Hilton, Riley Hooker and members of the House of Ladosha, Brooks Brody of Fierce Pussy, lensman Bill Jacobson, writer and performer Mike Albo, musician Geo Wyeth, Michel Auder, Jennie Livingston of Paris is Burning, Travis Chamberlain, Rhys Ernst of Transparent fame now shooting his first feature film called Adam in New York City, avant garde muscle hunk Calder Kusmierski Singer, DJ Chicklet, Punk Rock Dave, Ms. Davis’ Berlin gallerist Dan Gunn looking very matinee idol, and I-E’s cuddly proprietors Ben & Risa.
Thursday Sept 28th kicked off the public program of the New Museum with the Vaginal Davis performance piece – Blick und Begehren(Gaze & Desire) at the ground floor Museum Theater. It was SRO sold out with sight lines around the block and around the corner to see the zany miniscule black lady from Los Angeles via Berlin, Germany.
Ms. Davis was wearing a blouse and skirt by designer Rick Owens that gave the illusion she was on the Liza Minnelli diet when in fact she was on the verge of breaking every scale created.
Caught up in the crazed antics, Trigger exhibit director and curator of Education and Public Engagement at the New Museum Johanna Burton with her curatorial backup singers Sara O’Keeffe and Natalie Bell, also on hand the stylish Mr. Billy Miller of the Manhattan Review of Unnatural Acts who looks like a fresh 21 year old thanks to his new sex regiment with a very young lover, delightful public programs coordinator Andrea Caldarise kept things orderly while Bibbe Hansen& Sean Carrillo, award winning writer Bruce Benderson and his 22 year old protege Ben Shields, Rebecca Goyette The Lobster Lady, male bombshell Dusty’s Treehouse Childers, Chris Cole, Glenn Belverio, Mark Morgan Perez, Bradford Nordeen the IV, Ethan & Grayson Dolan, basketball puppy Kristaps Porzingis, Jonathan Van Dyke, Patrick Staff, journalista Jessica Bennett, Sarah Johnson, Jessie Michael Nova, Sarah Johnson, Laurel Sparx, Jamie Shearn Coan,Ben & Risa of Invisible Exports, Dan Gunn of Berlin’s Dan Gunn Gallery, The Magic Flute an Opera in Six Steps Spoken Chorus, Amy Adams of the West Coast gallery that represents Vaginal Davis Adams & Ollman, Gala Verdugo, Ellen Lesperance, Jackie Elempay,Wu Tsang, Holy Young Father Daniel Flores Estrella, the junior Catholica priest& Columbia University Phd student Juan Fernandez(who picked Ms. Davis up from La Guardia Airport stuffing her face with fish tacos, beauty products and toiletries), Mike Feswick of Phile Magazine, legends legends Ela Troyano & Carmelita Tropicana, and New School’s Ricardo Montez providing the WoW factor.
Special thanks to Derek Wright the big peniled tech wizard for making things appear effortless.
Mr. Montez earlier in the week treated the sisters Troyano, Ms.D and Hector Martinez to an enchanting Mexican feast at a new East Village cantina called Rosie’s at 29 East 2ndStreet. Rosie’s features inventive post modern Mexy dishes and the best pitchers of Margaritas in all of Christendom.
The after party for Ms. Davis took place at Julius, the oldest gay bar in New York City which operated that evening as Club Mattachine hosted and DJ’d by film director John Cameron Mitchell, and vivacious cabaret stars Amber Martin and Angela DiCarlo.
Mattachine dance parties began occurring monthly ten years ago. It was the brainchild of Cameron Mitchell and hunky PJ DeBoy who collaborated together on the cult film Shortbus. So happy that a bar like Julius located in historic Greenwich Village has been revived to honor urban queer pioneers.
Was thrilled to hear a lovely mix of songs including Davis requests like Little Eva and Laura Nyro. Besides the wonderful cocktails and olde school atmosphere at Julius the bar has a kitchen and serves the best cheese burgers and fries. Ms. Davis was given lots of gifts at the shindig including a colorful Tahrir Scarf from entrepreneur Johnathan Morpurgo and a luscious pendant by artist Damien Davis the grandson of Sammy Davis Jr. and Altovise.
Go to: JoMo@TahrirScarf.com or check out the website at TahrirScarf.com.
On Ms. Davis’ first day in New York Ben of Invisible-Exports treated the lady and Dan Gunn to a vegan Mexicali brunch at Plantas JaJaJa on the Lower East Side. The place has only been around a short time, but has an eccletic vibe and loveable staff who fawned all over the shtarina.
The youthquakers at the Standard Hotel East Village also gave the lady lots of celebutante attentions and one particular bellboy from Brooklyn’s avantgarde theater scene set her heart a flutter with his hypermasculine donkey dicked charms. The staff at the Standard Hotel in New York are way cuter then the kids at the Standard in Downtown LA. Ms. Davis’ hotel room on the 19th Floor featured a panorama view of Downtown fit for a dowager empress.
Hector Martinez aka Hector San Martine flew from LA to assist his diva prinzessin and add just a bit of poker face to the colorful proceedings in NewYorika. Poor Hector having to deal with a frazzled neurotic and super demanding shtar, after being at Burning Man and then returning home from vacation in Tokyo with his activist husband Erikla Fierce.
Hector, and Ms. Davis had a lovely reunion brunch at Veselka with Mark Morgan Perez. Mr. Morgan Perez never ages, and looks exactly the same as he did when he was in Ms. Davis’ installation Topping From the Bottom at the endurance art festival she curated with Ron Athey Platinum Oasis at the Corral Sands way back in 2001. The Lady D and MMP got to spend quality time with each other at Madison Square Park oogling tightbodied businessmen and devouring corn muffins on their fav bench across from the Flat Iron Building.
New Museum opening of Trigger: Gender as a Tool and Weapon was explosive. So many artists and art stars in this giant group show. New York needs events like this and what made it so special is that you hardly see anything in the whitey white art world where people of color are celebrated and applauded. The energy at the opening reception was seismicgorrigle sistah! with a sea of hot steamy bodies in motion as the New York weather was beyond humid and drippy.
The art collective really rules in Trigger with The House of Ladosha reigning supreme over the festivities. I talked to so many people and made lots of new friends thankx to the great Viva Ruiz who is the house mother to all the new generation of artists of color on the scene.
Was thrilled to chittle chat with Sur Rodney and the serene majesty of Lorraine O’Grady who is in her 80s but doesn’t look a day over 40. I wasn’t familiar with the work of Ms. O’Grady but now I have to research her and get acquainted with every aspect of this artistic femme duval. Here is a list of the artist in the Trigger show:
Morgan Bassichis (b. 1983)
Sadie Benning (b. 1973)
Nayland Blake (b. 1960)
Justin Vivian Bond (b. 1963)
Gregg Bordowitz (b. 1964)
Pauline Boudry / Renate Lorenz (working together since 2007)
Nancy Brooks Brody (b. 1962)
A.K. Burns (b. 1975) and A.L. Steiner (b. 1967)
Leidy Churchman (b. 1979)
Liz Collins (b. 1968)
Harry Dodge (b. 1966)
The Dyke Division of the Two-Headed Calf (founded in 2008)
Josh Faught (b. 1979)
ektor garcia (b. 1985)
Mariah Garnett (b. 1980)
Reina Gossett (b. 1983) and Sasha Wortzel (b. 1983)
Sharon Hayes (b. 1970)
House of Ladosha (founded in 2007)
Stanya Kahn (b. 1968)
Carolyn Lazard (b. 1987)
Simone Leigh (b. 1967)
Ellen Lesperance (b. 1971)
Candice Lin (b. 1979)
Troy Michie (b. 1985)
Ulrike Müller (b. 1971)
Willa Nasatir (b. 1990)
Sondra Perry (b. 1986)
Christina Quarles (b. 1985)
Connie Samaras (b. 1950)
Curtis Talwst Santiago (b. 1979)
Tschabalala Self (b. 1990)
Paul Mpagi Sepuya (b. 1982)
Tuesday Smillie (b. 1981)
Sable Elyse Smith (b. 1986)
Patrick Staff (b. 1987)
Diamond Stingily (b. 1990)
Mickalene Thomas (b. 1971)
Wu Tsang (b. 1982)
Chris E. Vargas (b. 1978)
Geo Wyeth (b. 1984)
Anicka Yi (b. 1971)
Sadie Benning (b. 1973)
Nayland Blake (b. 1960)
Justin Vivian Bond (b. 1963)
Gregg Bordowitz (b. 1964)
Pauline Boudry / Renate Lorenz (working together since 2007)
Nancy Brooks Brody (b. 1962)
A.K. Burns (b. 1975) and A.L. Steiner (b. 1967)
Leidy Churchman (b. 1979)
Liz Collins (b. 1968)
Harry Dodge (b. 1966)
The Dyke Division of the Two-Headed Calf (founded in 2008)
Josh Faught (b. 1979)
ektor garcia (b. 1985)
Mariah Garnett (b. 1980)
Reina Gossett (b. 1983) and Sasha Wortzel (b. 1983)
Sharon Hayes (b. 1970)
House of Ladosha (founded in 2007)
Stanya Kahn (b. 1968)
Carolyn Lazard (b. 1987)
Simone Leigh (b. 1967)
Ellen Lesperance (b. 1971)
Candice Lin (b. 1979)
Troy Michie (b. 1985)
Ulrike Müller (b. 1971)
Willa Nasatir (b. 1990)
Sondra Perry (b. 1986)
Christina Quarles (b. 1985)
Connie Samaras (b. 1950)
Curtis Talwst Santiago (b. 1979)
Tschabalala Self (b. 1990)
Paul Mpagi Sepuya (b. 1982)
Tuesday Smillie (b. 1981)
Sable Elyse Smith (b. 1986)
Patrick Staff (b. 1987)
Diamond Stingily (b. 1990)
Mickalene Thomas (b. 1971)
Wu Tsang (b. 1982)
Chris E. Vargas (b. 1978)
Geo Wyeth (b. 1984)
Anicka Yi (b. 1971)
Trigger runs until the end of January 2018 so if you are in the Tri-State area its an imperative to see it.