We struck GOLD!!!

An appropriate place to end the rainbow of St Patrick's Day?

Gold Bar

New York City. Three small words, the biggest nights out. I was lucky enough last night, St Patricks night, to attend the opening of the Efflorescence exhibit at Dacia Gallery, located on Stanton street in the lower east side. This little gallery packs a big punch, the focus of the show based loosely on abstraction paintings, in so few words. Here are a few of the pieces I was privy to.

Jee Young Choi

Peggy Klineman

Jane Hugentober

Yuri Leonov

I've known Yuri longer than I like to admit, I met him in high school before my purple hair phase. We are now both at SVA and he's graduating from the illustration department this spring. Kudos Yuri, well done!

This show just went up so it's on for another month or so, if you are in the area, or any fan of what you've seen here, do go check it out, it really is fantastic.

(A small note to the artists: I enjoyed the show and am only here as an observer, if anyone objects to the images or text I have posted here, tell me so, and I will oblige any way I can. Thank you.)

After the opening I headed promptly east, where my friend and I stumbled haphazardly into another local gallery reception. Actually, it was a hair salon that happened to have a ton of paintings up. Will save that for another post, but here's a hint:

A guy by the name of Joseph Meloy makes hundreds of these Basquiat-esk, "fine art graffiti" paintings and drawings in an allegedly very narrow space. Nonetheless! Its an impressive body of work, and almost overwhelming to see all at one time, drunk. Check out the website.

Upon walking around the corner from the hair salon show I met friends at Epstien's Bar and had a decent time partaking in the festivities. I'm a sucker for holidays, any holidays. In a place like Manhattan, no matter how much green I was NOT wearing, there are always the people with green wigs, hats, beads, makeup, to make me feel like I'm just as festive, without having any shamrock eyeshadow on. Bless you drunkards!

Without so much as jolly jig I found myself and the crowd we'd accumulated being shoved into several cabs, which made more than a few U turns on our way to Gold Bar. This was my second time going to this location, first time while I was coherent. But of course, that status could not have changed faster by the time I was inside. For such gawdy, flashy decor (uh, all gold?) the place really had a fancy feel to it. Maybe its the thousands of gold skulls, or the royal paintings of dogs wearing bling on a tiger skin rug, but the place had class.

See what I mean? Clearly this is the pinnacle of good taste.

I have no idea why the main room was overseen by a painting of my brother.

That was a helluva night, and all the stops along the way were worth mentioning. I hope everyone had a fun and festive night, because come last call at 4am, it doesn't even matter if its a holiday or not, right? Right.