Tonight at MILK Gallery, a benefit event and art auction called ART for SPC will raise funds to support the work of the Stephen Petronio Company. The contemporary art event, which is part of the legendary dance company’s 25th anniversary season, celebrates its long history of collaborating with innovative visual artists.

Photographer Cindy Sherman is acting Committee Chair of the event, and contributing artists include: Donald Baechler, Michael Bilsborough, Ross Bleckner, Louise Bourgeois, Mark Borthwick, Mark Chamberlain, Emilie Clark, Sante D’Orazio, Dumitru Gorzo, Stephen Hannock, Sarah Hardesty, Karen Heagle, Lesley Horowitz, Timothy Hull, Jennie C. Jones, Jayson Keeling, Jen Liu, Robert Melee, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Simone Shubuck, Sarah Silver, Spencer Tunick, Ryan Wallace, Christian Witkin, Dustin Yellin, Patti Smith and many more. (See below for a handful of pieces available at auction.)

Stephen Petronio is regarded as one of the leading dance makers of his generation. He founded Stephen Petronio Company in 1984, and has created an expansive body of work marked by an unmistakable movement language in collaboration with innovators in the fields of music, visual arts and fashion, including Laurie Anderson, Lou Reed, Rufus Wainwright, Cindy Sherman and Anish Kapoor.

*Tickets are still available at the door for $25 or $125.
For general inquiries, call 212.473.1660.

ART for SPC
Tonight: 6:30pm – 9:30pm
Milk Gallery: 450 West 15th St. (between 9th & 10th Avenues), New York

*above: Daniel Arsham’s “Swallow My Building,” 2009. Gouache on Mylar, 18 ½ x 13 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin, Paris.

*above: Mikhail Baryshnikov’s “Untitled (Crises),” 2006. Matte digital C-print. 24 x 36 inches. Artist’s proof, signed by the artist. Courtesy of the artist.

*above: Louise Bourgeois’ “The Ainu Tree,” 2000. Six color lithograph on paper. 29 x 20 inches. Edition 80/100. Courtesy of the artist and Cheim & Read.

*above: Emilie Clark’s “Untitled from Maxwell’s Lair (MM-73),” 2009. Watercolor and graphite on paper. 12 x 12 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Morgan Lehman Gallery.

*above: Annie Leibovitz’s “Stephen Petronio, New York City,” 1993, Archival pigment print, printed in 2010. 20 x 24 inches. AP 4. Signed. Courtesy of the artist.

*above: Patti Smith’s “Wing Net for Robert 2008,” 2008. Silver gelatin B&W print. 10 x 8 inches. Courtesy of the artist.

*All images courtesy of Seventh House PR.

Diesel teams up with cutting-edge furniture brands Moroso and Foscarini to expand beyond the fashion world into furniture and lighting. Their “Successful Living from Diesel” range hit the US market during last weekend’s ICFF. Approaching the home furnishing world with the same energetic style that’s made it such a hit in the fashion world, “Successful Living” was inspired by edgy music, a creative spirit, and a need to express one’s individuality. Now, Successful Living will be available through retailer The Future Perfect of Brooklyn and Manhattan.

Recurring themes in both the collection’s furniture (Moroso) and lighting (Foscarini) pieces include the ideas of “Camp” and “Rock.” The Camp theme implies mobility and a nomadic lifestyle, as evidenced by portable furnishings, often incorporating tent-like, canvas materials. The Rock theme has a double meaning: first, as in Rock and Roll, captured through elements like punky, metallic studs and second, more literally, through the rough-textured material inspiration for items like the hanging Rock lamp.

Check out some highlights below!

*above: Fork table lamp, from Foscarini, recalls “a casual camping lifestyle,” with a canvas shade with visible seams and metal grommets that attach it like those used to tie down tents. Fork “emits a warm homey light, like a tent illuminated in the dark woods.”

*above: Fork floor lamp from Foscarini.

*above: Glas from Foscarini reinterprets the classic work light used in warehouses and factories worldwide. Available in hanging and table versions.

*above: Rock, also from Foscarini, recalls an active volcano with its dark, lava-like exterior, split to reveal sparkling crystals inside, with hundreds of asymmetric golden facets that reflect the beams of light.

*above: Overdyed Table by Moroso. The Overdyed series of wood furniture includes a lounge chair, side chair, rectangular coffee, and round side table. The ragging paint technique used to finish the wood comes in Indigo Blue or Weathered Gray and reveals its natural markings for a more vintage effect. Frames are Raw Black lacquered steel.

*above: Overdyed Lounge Chair from Moroso.

*images courtesy of Diesel

Founded in 2005 by Eva Milinkovic and Kriston Gene, Tsunami Glassworks was born out of what its partners saw as “the need for bright and edgy expression in the design industry.” Embracing simple, clean shapes and tactile designs, Tsunami’s beautiful, playful pieces come in hand blown, cast and kiln formed glass.

For this year’s ICFF, the Canadian design firm presents their new “Hypervoxel” chandelier and a new pastel color palate for their popular Tubes collection.

Hypervoxel is a free blown glass chandelier whose organic forms mimic weightless liquid floating in space. This versatile series can be configured in small or large groupings, with halogen or LED lighting, and is customizable by color and size.

And for 2010, the Tubes vase series – an ArtSlope favorite – is now available in mint, opal rose, vanilla, robins egg blue or lavender.

*above: Tubes in robins egg blue

*above: Hypervoxel chandelier

For more info, visit tsunamiglassworks.com.

*All images courtesy of the designers.

In a small East London studio, designers Yvonne and Rebecca Drury – the masterminds behind the MissPrint label – hand draw the illustrations that will ultimately be hand silkscreened on MissPrint wallcoverings, fabrics, and interior accessories. Simultaneously playful and peaceful, their bespoke prints offer a modern twist on classic prints, and are mix and matchable to accommodate almost any environment.

This weekend, MissPrint will launch new wallpaper designs and woven fabrics at New York’s ICFF. Their “Dandelion Mobile” wallpaper (see below) has been very well received since its launch in September 2009. Due to its success MissPrint are adding two new colors: Porcelain with Powder Blue and Mist Green with White. The illustration style is reminiscent of the fifties with a contemporary twist featuring stylized seed heads.

The popular “Leaves” design (also below) will be unveiled as a new addition to the wallpaper range, in four colors and also as a high quality woven fabric. The organic nature of the design is balanced by a geometric feel, which fits perfectly into their current collections.

All MissPrint products are manufactured in the UK, and are produced in the most environmentally friendly way. The complete wallpaper range is PEFC certified; it is printed with organic pigment inks, which are non-toxic, free of heavy metals and classed as non-carcinogenic.

For more information on MissPrint, visit www.missprint.co.uk.

*images courtesy of:

The International Contemporary Furniture Fair (ICFF), New York’s annual, premier furniture design event, opens to industry-goers this weekend and to the public next Tuesday, May 18th. This year’s event will host nearly 600 design exhibitors from 40 countries, covering everything from textiles to kitchen and bath, accessories, wall coverings, lighting, carpet and flooring, and indoor and outdoor furniture. Almost 24,000 interior designers, architects, retailers, developers, store designers, hotel and restaurant designers, manufacturers, students and general public are expected to attend.

Always a playful maze of the newest available designs, this year’s participants will include everyone from Tom Dixon and Blu Dot to Bernhardt Design and Miss Print. A few sneak-peek images are below.

If you have the chance, please, do yourself a favor and check it out!

International Contemporary Furniture Fair
Open to Trade: May 15th-17th, 10am-5pm
Open to General Public: Tuesday, May 18th, 10am-4pm
Venue: Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, New York City

*above by Danese Milano

*above by Cocoon Fires

*above by Tradition

*above by Rachel O’Neill

*above by Tom Dixon

*above by Conmoto

*above by Varier Furnitureas

*above by John Kelly Furniture

*above by Sancal Joseph

*above by Asa Selection Inc

*above by Axor

*above by Council Inc

*Images courtesy of ICFF

Opening today at the NY Art Directors Club and running through the 14th, Superheroes & Super-Villains is a collaborative project courtesy of Parsons‘ BFA Illustration students and local youth from nonprofit 826NYC’s Superhero Supply Company. Over the course of the spring, 35 grade school students at 826NYC’s creative writing workshop crafted their very own superhero or super-villain. Those stories were presented to the Parsons illustration students, who created art representing the characters and scenes from the stories.

The stories and illustrations bring the superhero’s powers and super-villain’s motives to life, and describe how each character came to be a hero or a villain. For example, after a chance encounter stealing other kids’ cookies at a daycare center, Spinner and Ghostly embark on a worldwide crime spree, while criminal mastermind Croleum creates death traps and disguises out of his three secret command centers. Fighting for the good side, Ever Boy uses his morphing powers to inhabit the bodies of ordinary humans and evil villains to save the Earth from a massive explosion.

“The real value of the project with the Superhero Supply Company and 826NYC was twofold. For the young writers at 826NYC, their work was taken seriously and treated with great respect by the illustration students from Parsons. Plus they got to see their writing come to tangible life through the images made by the students at Parsons,” said Steven Guarnaccia, chair of Illustration at Parsons. “For the Parsons iIllustration students, in addition to the sheer pleasure of illustrating the wildly imaginative work of these young writers, there was the real-world experience of responding to an author’s text.”

826NYC is a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting students ages 6-18 with their creative and expository writing skills, and to helping teachers inspire their students to write. Their services are structured around the belief that great leaps in learning can happen with one-on-one attention and that strong writing skills are fundamental to future success. 826NYC provides free programs such as drop-in tutoring, field trips, after-school workshops, in-schools tutoring, help for English language learners, and assistance with student publications. The creative writing center is located behind a swinging bookshelf at the back of the Superhero Supply Store on 372 Fifth Avenue in Park Slope Brooklyn, which sells “high quality crimefighting merchandise” for charity, including secret identities, lairs and capes.

General Info:
Superheroes and Super-Villains
Parsons BFA Illustration Thesis Exhibition
Monday, May 10-Friday, May 14
Opening Reception: Monday, May 10, 6-8 p.m.
Art Directors Club, 106 West 29th Street, New York, NY

http://www.adcglobal.org/adc/events/calendar/

*above: Everyboy by Sophia Chang

*above: Spinner Ghostly by JP Morales

*above: Lightning Storm by Stella Lee

*above: The Shadow by Anthony Calabrese

*above: Lord Darkness by Lulu Wolf

*above: Freakshow by Katie Turner

*Images courtesy of Parsons The New School for Design.

Designer Tom Dixon and Philips Lumiblade have collaborated to develop Flat Lamp, a unique collection of light bulbs incorporating Philips’ revolutionary OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diodes) technology. A first in the next generation of lighting, OLEDs are a new generation of SSL (Solid State Lighting) light that boasts an efficient new light creating technology. Due to their availability in super thin panels, they offer a fresh perspective on lighting design.

Layers of electrodes are sandwiched in a single sheet of glass, like a traditional light bulb, but compressed into a flat disc. Dixon is amongst the first to use this light source and capitalize on the super-thin technology. Light is created by semiconductors – rather than using a filament or gas – allowing SSL lighting to provide energy-efficient, longer lasting and sustainable lighting.

According to Dixon, “Our collaboration with Philips has been nothing short of illuminating, being able to work on the cutting edge of technology in a field that has such a big impact on people’s every day lives. For us it’s a dream project where the objective is to work on the immediate future method of reducing energy consumption whilst illuminating spaces in a more attractive and more functional way. OLED’s are going to change the way that designers, architects and the general public use light and we are delighted to be the designers of the world’s first integrated OLED bulb.”

Flat Lamp is available in three different shapes: Strip, Round and Square and is presented through chandeliers, a floor, wall and table lights. The collection launched at the Philips stand during Milan Salone Del Mobile.

*Rendering courtesy of Tom Dixon.

Iranian born photographer, videographer and filmmaker Shirin Neshat first rose to the international stage in the mid-90s with a photo series called Women of Allah, an intense body of work exploring women and martyrdom in Islamic culture. Since then, her work has progressed from photographs to video installations and short films, covering difficult topics like Eastern and Western boundaries, men and women, the sacred and the profane, exile and belonging.

A new book out this month entitled, simply, Shirin Neshat, explores the evolution of Neshat’s potent imagery (see below!). Featuring a foreword by world renowned artist Marina Abramovic and an essay by art critic Arthur Danto, this stunning collection covers everything from Women of Allah, focusing the lens on militant Muslim women, to her first feature film, Women Without Men, based on a novella by Shahrnush Parsipur, which was banned from the author’s native Iran. The film follows the lives of four women during the summer of 1953, when an American-led coup d’etat brought down Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minister and reinstalled the Shah to power. Notably, Women Without Men makes its U.S. debut this year, and has already earned the Silver Lion for best director at the Venice Film Festival and been selected as part of 2010′s New Directors/New Films program of MoMA and the Film Society of Lincoln Center.

Neshat’s work is boldly beautiful, incredibly powerful, and at times even stark: women cloaked in black veils with excerpts of Farsi poetry inscribed across the surface; videos of clans of men and women in barren landscapes chanting, sacred burial rituals, groups of men and women listening to rousing moralistic sermons in a public hall, and more recently, magical realist works in which women fly or plant themselves in gardens to ensure their fertility.

Shirin Neshat is available now through Amazon or Rizzoli.

Shirin Neshat
essay by Arthur Danto
foreword by Marina Abramovic
Published by Rizzoli
Hardcover, $75.00

*above: Shirin Neshat, Women of Allah Series, 1994. B&W RC print (photo taken by Cynthia Preston), 31 x 46 1/2 inches (79 x 118 cm). Copyright Shirin Neshat. Courtesy Gladstone Gallery, New York.

*above: Shirin Neshat, Allegiance with Wakefulness, 1994. B&W RC print & ink (photo taken by Cynthia Preston), 46 3/4 x 37 1/8 inches (118.7 x 94.3 cm). Copyright Shirin Neshat. Courtesy Gladstone Gallery, New York.

*above: Shirin Neshat, Stories of Martyrdom, 1994. B&W RC print and ink (photo taken by Cynthia Preston). 11 x 14 inches (27.9 x 35.6 cm). Copyright Shirin Neshat. Courtesy Gladstone Gallery, New York.

*above: Shirin Neshat, Production Still. Rapture, 1999. Copyright Shirin Neshat. Courtesy Gladstone Gallery, New York

*above: Shirin Neshat, Rapture Series, 1999. Gelatin silver print. 44 x 69 inches (111.8 x 175.3 cm). Copyright Shirin Neshat. Courtesy Gladstone Gallery, New York

*above: Shirin Neshat, Passage Series, 2001. Cibachrome print. 51-1/8 x 63 inches framed. 130 x 160 cm framed. Copyright Shirin Neshat. Courtesy Gladstone Gallery, New York

*above: Shirin Neshat, Passage Series, 2001. Cibachrome print. 51-1/8 x 63 inches framed. 130 x 160 cm framed. Copyright Shirin Neshat. Courtesy Gladstone Gallery, New York

*above: Shirin Neshat, Passage Series, 2001. Cibachrome print. 42 x 63 1/8 inches (106.7 x 160.3 cm) framed. Copyright Shirin Neshat. Courtesy Gladstone Gallery, New York

*All images courtesy of Gladstone Gallery, New York

Not too long ago, London-based shoe designer Lislie Yeung became very interested in the idea of albinos. It all began when she read an article about the spotting of an albino dolphin in Louisiana. The idea that something natural could look so surprisingly unnatural – based on our personal familiarities and expectations – really struck the young designer. So she began to explore albino-related images, and created a list of vocabulary that encapsulated the overall mood and qualities she associated with them. The result? Flash forward a short time and Yeung introduces the Albino shoe collection, a series that goes just a bit beyond the expected. It combines various shades and textures of white in different, exotic skins, shades of blush and gradient-dyed lace and strong, contrasting blacks.

Yeung was born in Hong Kong, and received her BFA at Parsons School of Design in fashion womenswear. Post graduation, she designed for 4 years for the likes of Sam Edelman, Calvin Klein and Tara Subkoff. Following in the footsteps of shoe legends like Jimmy Choo, Yeung got her masters at Cordwainers college in London. Her shoes have been displayed, among other locations, at the V&A for a LuLu Guiness 20th anniversary event.

For more info and images from the collection, visit notjustalabel.com/lislieyeung or lislieyeung.com.

*Images courtesy of Lislie Yeung.

Check out designer Jason Phillips’ latest pieces for the Phillips Collection below! Based out of North Carolina, this impressive, award-winning young designer heads his own firm, Jason Phillips Design, and is also VP and creative director of the multi-designer, creative collaboration, the Phillips Collection. At just 26, he’s both the youngest recipient ever of the Pinnacle Award from the American Society of Furniture Designers, and now the youngest member of their Board of Directors.

Describing the resin and silver leaf Burled Bowl and Vase (first 2 images below), Phillips begins, “Why compete with nature?” For the Burled Collection, he “takes the best forms from nature and casts them and ultimately finished with a hand-applied gold or silver leaf appliqué.” Each egglike beauty is available for about $250, measuring 17x13x12”h.

For the Havana Screen (middle pair), nearly a thousand randomly placed bamboo sticks are nailed together. It comes with a metal base that lets it float in the middle of a space, but works equally well against a wall. You can even mount it onto the wall as a large piece of wall art or as a headboard. Available as part of a larger collection in espresso and blonde. Measures 43x5x67”h and goes for around $600.

And last – but absolutely not least – the very clever Indent Table is cast in “lightweight but durable concrete with a special distressed patina. The indoor/outdoor table has a sphere scooped out of it to serve as an ice bucket for storing drinks or bottles. Of course there are dozens of other possibilities and the piece works as great indoors with other goodies stored.” Phillips’ favorite filler choice? “Blue MnMs!” Indent Table measures 3x43x17”h and is available for about $1000.

*above: Burled Vase

*above: Burled Bowl

*above: Havana Screen (rear left wall)

*above: Havana Screen

*above: Indent Table

*above: Indent Table

To see more of the Lifestyle 2010 collection, visit phillipscollection.com.