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PALM BEACH
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ART THAT’S
BUSTING OUT
OF CONFINES
INSIDE GREENWICH
HISTORICAL SOCIETY’S
EXPANSION
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Contents
features
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Greenwich Historical Society
Preserving the past, enriching the future.
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24
Access to Art
Aficinados turn to these experts for direct lines to prized collections.
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Artist in Motion
E. V. Day continues to shock, amuse and move audiences worldwide.
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Breast Cancer Alliance
Celebrating 20 years of changing the course of breast cancer.
042
Laid-Back Manor
Di Biase Filkoff Architects’ design skills create two ideal retreats.
faces of philanthropy
048
ELIZABETH BOOLBOL, making strides to end
poverty and injustice around the globe
050 SAMAHITA A. P. JAYANTI, AmeriCares advocate
inspired by her upbringing and travel worldwide
quick look
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TRAVEL: Gone Glamping
016 TRAVEL: Glimpse Guides
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etc.
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Events Table of Contents
Palm Beach Table of Contents
Masthead
Editor’s Greeting
Astrology
COVER PHOTO: E. V. Day photographed at her studio in Brooklyn, N.Y.,
by ChiChi Ubiña. Art in background is Day’s “Bandage Dress (White Hervé
Leger & Chain),” 98 x 87.5 x 16.5 in.
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E.V. Day’s collection of
sculptures titled “Twisted”
are inspired by French
artist Yves Klein who used
female torsos and a single
rich paint color to create
his work. “It’s a female
artist taking back the blue
with a nod to his ideas
and career,” said E. V. Day.
“I wanted to do all arms
and legs and put them in
this twisted configuration
reaching for something.
It can sit in five different
positions.”
Artist in Motion
CHICHI UBIÑA
Inspired by her
experiences from L.A.
to Giverny, Greenwichraised artist E. V. Day
continues to shock,
amuse and move
audiences around the
world.
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h
er art has been called edgy, poignant and futurist.
A few minutes talking to E.V. Day and the New York-based sculpturist
reveals a personality much like her work: honest, energetic and always
with a playful balance of humor and purpose.
Day broke ground and got her first big break with her exploding
Couture series, Bombshell in 2000. The installation deconstructed the
iconic moment in the classic film The Seven Year Itch when Marilyn
Monroe’s skirt is blown by a subway grate. It was included in the Whitney Museum of American Art Biennial and has since become part of the
permanent collection. Much of her work involves monofilament fishing
lines and tackle hardware, creating taut lines between a floor and a
ceiling upon which she suspends various materials—often involving
pop culture imagery.
“The Italian futurists’ preoccupation with velocity and motion and
their love of aerodynamism inspires much of my work,” said Day. “I
started painting when I was in college, but when I began to create in
three dimensions, it was really liberating to have an almost limitless
quantity of processes and technologies to deploy in the service of velocity and anti-gravity.” Since 2000, she has continued to garner national
attention for major installations at respected art venues around the
world including the MOMA in New York City and Philip Johnson’s Glass
House in New Canaan, Conn.
How did you first become interested in art ?
I think I knew from a young age, but I didn’t think I was going to be
able to pursue it. I grew up with the notion that “you’ve got to have
marketable skills.” I kept my jobs for a long time, even after I was in the
Whitney Biennial and I was able to live on the sales of my work. I worked
for artists and galleries and got into art production for commercials and
other projects.
What did your early freelance jobs teach you ?
It was fascinating being in a room where millions of dollars are being
spent in a moment for making the perfect drop of condensation on a
milk bottle. It gave me real perspective about the choices I make and
made me realize whether my work is successful for a wider audience or
not, art is important. It was eye opening.
“Pollinator” in polished nickel plated copper (top) and
“Pillow Talk” in black (bottom) may look like something
from a sci-fi movie but they are reproductions of the
reproductive organs of a flower. Opposite page: “Carmen”
a retired costume from the New York City Opera, part of
her Divas Ascending installation in 2009.
Of all the places you have worked and lived in your life, which
places have had the greatest influence on your work?
The two years I lived in Los Angeles between college and graduate
school definitely have had the greatest influence on my work. For me,
L.A. is a microcosm of everything in American culture: the good, the
bad, the ugly—with a predominant sheen of beauty (both natural and
artificial). More specifically, NASA’s Jet-Propulsion Lab in Los Angeles,
one of my favorite places on earth, and space and anti-gravity have
long served as inspirations. Plus, the urban landscape is dense with
irrepressible wild foliage—tropical plants issuing from cracks in Culver
City sidewalks—and that climate of fecundity/fertility is where I like to
live in my mind even when it’s chilly in my studio in Brooklyn.
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Top: Divas Ascending,
created from retired New
York City Opera costumes,
was displayed in the lobby
of Lincoln Center in 2009.
Bottom: Giverny was a
collaboration with artist
Kembra Pfahler whom she
photographed in character as
the pink painted nude goth
nymph of her performances.
The photographs were
displayed in The Hole Gallery
in a replica of the Japanese
garden at Giverny.
Opposite page: “Pollinator
(water lily)” in cast and
polished aluminum.
For anything to change, there
is a sort of rupturing. A central
point in a lot of my work is
about that moment.
You live in Brooklyn with your husband, Ted Lee, award-winning
cookbook author, where you both work at home. How do you
manage to juggle work and fun?
He has a professional kitchen. I have my studio. His world is grounded
in food. Mine is more esoteric. I think we have a mutual sharing that
happens in our relationship. We take each other to different places. We
enjoy each other’s worlds. We don’t go on vacation and clock out. If
we are traveling he’ll start interviewing a chef and I’ll go visit a gallery
or museum. It all blends together. Our life blends with our work. We
understand each other in that regard and help each other.
Among your residencies and fellowships, you were an artist in
residence at the Fondation Claude Monet’s Garden in Giverny,
France. What was that experience like? How did it influence you?
It was incredible. It’s hard to find words for how amazing and transformative it was to live and work on Monet’s estate during the peak
summer months. And to be honest, before I went, I was apprehensive
because the opportunity had arrived totally out of the blue. You don’t
apply, you just get chosen, and I couldn’t envision the correspondence
or resonance between Monet’s world and my own work up to that point.
But as soon as I walked in the garden for the first time, the total eyelevel immersion in floral seduction—so much nature designed to lure
and attract the bees to perform their frottage with the flowers—it all
connected pretty instantaneously in my mind with the anti-gravity/
velocity/feminine forces I’m interested in.
Tell us about your installation at The Glass House in 2013. In a
lot of ways architect Philip Johnson, who bequeathed his former
residence to the National Trust for Historic Preservation, was a
sculpturist as much as he was an architect. How do you identify
with Johnson?
It was thrilling because, as you say, Da Monsta is at once a work of
architecture and a sculpture (its form based on a model that Frank Stella
gave Johnson as a gift). And as both building and sculpture, it’s very
expressive. Its form has a distinct personality—cartoonish, monstrous—
and also when you go inside the building it’s menacing, in a playful way,
because there are no straight lines inside the room. It actually induces
vertigo! Working with Da Monsta was a tango of sorts. I responded early
on in the project with the urge to harness it, to capture it. That’s where
the red web of ropes tethering the building to the ground comes from.
And then inside the building, I delineated every curve with angle iron,
which tamed the room’s vertiginous effect. But then I felt the need to
anthropomorphize the creature even more, to give the animal a voice,
so I added a sound element. I took a recording of my cat purring and
looped in into speakers installed underneath the floor, so you heard
this rhythmic breathing, like the monster is napping—sort of sweet,
but maybe also a little ferocious. I wanted to make visitors see Da
Monsta more as a living character than inert architecture.
You just returned from a trip to NASCAR. Was that for work or
play?
A little of both. I was a guest of Jimmie Johnson. He was convincing
me to do an installation of a fire suit he wore in a race he won in
2006. Being in the pit at NASCAR with Jimmie—nothing else comes
close to it except a shuttle launch—the athleticism and precision. The
aerodynamics of it are fascinating. They are going 200 miles an hour
with a cage around them and wings. I’m really excited about it in
thinking about the approach I will take. I am going to a facility where
they build their cars next. I hope they have some things I can learn
there and incorporate.
How does your current piece fit into your CV?
It’s the first male garment I’ve used in my work. In some ways, it’s
similar to the wedding dress series I did. Johnson wants something
celebratory to mark the experience—something that shows how his
career transformed in 2006 and all these things started going right.
It’s similar to the duality of my exploded wedding gown as well.
For anything to change, there is a sort of violence—a rupturing and
turning into something else. A central point in a lot of my work is
about that moment. It’s not about the violence though. I’m married.
I’m not against marriage. It’s about the emotion. It’s about the shift
and celebrating all those elements that come into the parade of it.