HAppY420 welcome to my wet paint lots of image blur and a haze of iconic artworld lituations.

The day started with a bright glow. I live downtown and I love walking out my door onto the active Chinatown streets. It takes almost no time before I see a familiar face, skater and street style icon Keith Hardy. He introduced me to his friend photographer Anna Bloda who just hosted a pop-up at this space on Essex Street that has been at least three different galleries I can remember. I continued on to my local smoke shop for some THC crystal pre-rolls I wanted to give to a select few today—the first being my barista, Cecily Brown being my immediate second 😉

This is Heavy. He is the newest addition to Pike Street and lives with the monks at this Buddhist temple. He is so huge and so sweet. I typically stop at this temple to meditate for a moment before a busy day and now I cherish that time even more.

I stop to check in with Will Shott at his gallery as he is opening a new show tonight with Lucy Charlesworth Freeman. I did the last show with Will and I changed his space quite a bit so it was great to see it back to fresh white with Lucy’s colorful work enlivening the walls. I’ve been helping a lot of the galleries on this block over the past year doing construction and art handling and this week was a heavy hitter, painting two separate spaces, transporting works and installing two shows. Everything is in order now and we’re all excited about a big night!

I stop over to 56 Henry to see the crew and drop off a half ounce of weed to Ellie Rines. She plans on selling dime bags through the night. Never not hustling.

My last stop in the neighborhood is at King’s Leap where Isabelle Frances McGuire will be opening her solo show. I met with gallery owner Alec Petty and artist Stephany Lazar to troubleshoot some wiring solutions for a piece that utilizes a baby Yoda doll as a motorized vessel thats activated by a motion sensor. It’s an amazing show.

I also swung by next door to Public Access to catch a quick glimpse of the group exhibition organized by Diego Barcelo and Selah Wilks featuring works seen here by Marika Thunder, Sofia Leilani, Isabella Kressin, and Madison Kenny. Lots of heat in this show!

I continued over to Nolita or Noho or wherever the Calvin Klein billboard is to see new Kendall Jenner ad styled by Mel Ottenberg. To those who don’t know me, it might seem odd that this was an important destination today. The majority of my art revolves around images of Kendall so something like this is always very exciting for me. I love seeing such large prints; it reminds me of Jack Pierson’s show “Paintings” (‘97-’02) at Maccarone in 2015, which were large, close-up photographs of lips, skin, and nature scenes printed on billboard vinyl and stretched like canvas. Mel made a TikTok a couple days prior talking about when he was young in NY, he’d dream about having his work on a billboard and it was inspiring to imagine showing something of my own at this scale.

I saw Michael Rappaport and his wife Kebe Dunn walking down the street right after that and had to politely ask for a picture. He was very grateful that I asked lol. I love seeing celebs in the wild.

Next, I had a meeting with the staff at Amanita to discuss some construction plans they have for their space. I’m so lucky to have such a huge community of people in the art world that constantly plug me in with job opportunities. Shout-out to Lauryn-Ashley Vandyke pictured here on her way back to the office with some Sweetgreen and big smile!

After crunching some numbers, I headed over to meet artist and friend Nathaniel Matthews. We met to talk about a painting of his I’m buying to set up a payment plan. I get so excited about adding new works to my collection and am always happy when I can show support to artists that are my contemporaries. Nat was carrying around some glass block that is part of a sculpture he’ll be presenting soon and he bought a Vichy Catalan that he planned to add to the piece.

I went home and rolled like 20 joints to give out and headed back to Henry and Pike for the openings. The 56 Henry team was holding it down for the two-space solo show by Jo Messer. From left to right: Olivia Saporito, Zeke Estes, and Alana Frances Baer.

Then I took a quick trip to Tribeca to hang with some besties; the 420 vibes were peaking.
From left to right: Naveed Hussain, Gabriella Fussner Chen, and Harley Laratta.

I went to see Jessica Dean Harrison at Gern en Regalia and was surprised yet delighted to meet a musician who I have looked up to since high school, Cass McCombs. I acted like a total fan but he was really sweet and chill. I had to walk away before I embarrassed myself too terribly.

Later that night I saw A$AP Mob co-founder A$AP Illz getting out of his BMW around the corner from my apartment so I had to snap a quick shot. It was pouring rain and he still had me take two pictures because he didn’t want me to rush and he was right. The first pic was mad blurry and his eyes were closed.