DLG Holiday Party 2019

We held our annual holiday party at the Institute of Culinary Education (aka ICE, but not to be confused with the other ICE) in downtown Manhattan again this year, and the results were as fun and delicious as always. As before, we chose a seasonal menu and divided up into groups to work at three different food stations to make the appetizer, main dish, and dessert. Although a few of us were skeptical to begin with (ahem, Alexis on the far right), enabled by the pink champagne, we quickly become experts in our chosen specialty, (see Alexis presenting the cooked fish and Tommy inspecting the group’s efforts,) resulting in a memorable meal. We are truly talented cooks. Okay, we also had some (very) valuable help from Chef Phil Hering and his skilled team. Happy holidays, everyone!

Wynwood Walls

The Wynwood Walls in Miami were originally conceived by the late real estate developer Tony Goldman, who was looking to transform the warehouse district of Wynwood. He came up with a simple idea, he explained at the time: “Wynwood’s large stock of warehouse buildings, all with no windows, would be my giant canvases to bring to them the greatest street art ever seen in one place.” Since their inception in 2009, over fifty artists from sixteen countries have covered over 80,000 square feet of walls. We were able to visit the walls before our return to New York, and were blown away by the talent of the artists. We were lucky enough to see some artists in action as well. As part of the world famous Art Basel show going on this week in Miami Beach, Wynwood Walls invited artists to work on installations live for spectators. As Goldman once said about the walls: “The project has truly evolved into what my friend Jeffrey Deitch calls a ‘Museum of the Streets.’”

Dropped Bowl with Scattered Slices and Peels

We are in sunny and warm Miami (sorry, rest of country with crazy snowstorms and weather) for the Thanksgiving Holiday and came across this massive public artwork installation by artists Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, who are known for their large-scale installations in city settings. Located in downtown Miami, Dropped Bowl with Scattered Slices and Peels captures a moment when a bowl of orange slices and peels drops to the ground and shatters. The artwork includes bowl fragments in cast concrete, peels in steel plate, and orange sections in reinforced cast resin all with an overall weight of over 124,000 lbs. With the oranges and bright colors, Dropped Bowl certainly captures one aspect of Miami. And, depending on how your holiday is going, it might be an accurate representation of Thanksgiving for some people (not ours, thankfully). Whatever the case, we wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving Weekend!

Every Day I Pray For Love

Yayoi Kusama is one of the most admired artists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Known for her use of repetitive elements—most famously, her use of repeating dots—Kusama’s work enchants and inspires a global audience. Kusama’s new exhibition—Every Day I Pray for Love—is on display at the David Zwirner Gallery in Chelsea. The exhibit includes paintings in her My Eternal Soul series, sculptures, and, the reason for that very long line on the sidewalk in front of the gallery, the Infinity Mirrored Room - Dancing Lights That Flew Up to the Universe, 2019. One cold morning this week we waited in the line for about an hour to spend one minute with three other people in the infinity room. Although brief, it’s well worth it. The infinity room, as the gallery says, is an “immersive and poetic experience of endless space” and the beautiful flickering lights combined with the dreamlike reflections are meant to reveal, as Kusama says, an “eternal unlimited universe [and] the eternity of interrelationships.” Unfortunately, there is only a finite time to see it. The exhibition is only on display through December 14, 2019, so hurry!