Meet Painter Extraordinaire Darryl LaVare

I first noticed Darryl in the East Village years ago.  At the time, I only knew of her as a popular afterschool babysitter and a gal who always looked fabulous:  punk rock tee, leather biker jacket, tiny pleated mini, and pointy boots.   When I finally did formally meet her, I was touched by her warmth and openness.  As is so often the case with my fellow mother friends, I didn't realize until later that Darryl was not just a well-loved caregiver, but also a fabulous artist, trained at the Rhode Island School of Design, which she left her hometown of Memphis to attend in 1986.  After graduation, she moved to New York City and right into the lower east side:  "177 Ludlow St."  Says Darryl, "I was in NY so much throughout college that people just assumed I lived there."  While in New York working on her own career, Darryl met many artists and musicians who would go onto be famous, if they weren't already:  the dashing experimental filmmaker Nick Zedd (who she dated!), Rockets Redglare, John Waters, Jim Jarmusch, Richard Kern, and respective members of Bad Brains, the Butthole Services, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Stone Temple Pilots, to name a few. 

Currently, Darryl is bringing up two lovely daughters and is on a roll with her art.  Check out many of her paintings whose images are featured here.  "Like" Darryl's artwork here!

Are you in a tight place?  If so, what are you trying to do about it?
What comes to mind for me is that I feel like I’m trying to face my fears.  There was a time that I was afraid to paint.  For many different reasons, I’ve been taking action and trying to face my fear of failure.  In the past, perfectionism prevented me from making art:  I didn't want to start something if it wasn't going to be brilliant.  I’m trying to let go of some of that.  I’m trying to have faith and have the courage to face my demons and just do it.  I’m trying to be led by unknown forces.  Do the footwork and be led by the universe or a higher power.  I pray—for lack of a better word—to have the insight and the courage and the wisdom to see where I should be going.  I’ve been feeling good about that.  I’m not religious, but more spiritual.  And I find the more that I do it, the more it works.  It could be a side of me or an intuition I’m tapping into, I don't know, but if I put it out there, people seem to have ideas for me.

What inspires you?

I’m inspired by other friends going through their creative processes.  And I’m trying to inspire other friends.  It’s basically a group of artists who are supporting each other.  For my art, I'm definitely inspired by people, human nature.  Right now, I'm doing a series of Tompkins Square Park riots, punks, police, homeless people, and right now, protestors.  I really think that the Tompkin Square Park riots of '88 came about as a result of class war like the Occupy Wall Street movement.  The paintings I’ve been making look new, but they're about these riots that are now a part of history.  Usually, for my work, I choose a theme and I do a series.  I work from photographs.  I try to take the photographs, but for this current series, Clayton Patterson let me choose from some photos.   He was there during the riots and took lots of photos, so I’ve been working from those.  My latest paintings are from photos I took from the Williamsburg Bridge.   In these have included my daughters.  I like the combination of the graffiti, the sky, and the bridge together.

What do you want to get done this year?  (Or next?)
I’d love to have gallery representation.  That's my big dream.  That would make it possible for me to spend more time painting and showing.  This year and next, I plan on continuing to paint.  I also hope to again teach the art and mural classes at my kids' school.  And I should have my website done soon!

What's your favorite legwear?

I always, always wear black leggings.  Last year, I bought so many different colors and textures of stockings--and sometimes I layered the lace and the leggings--but usually I just wear the black leggings. 

Boys are Back in Town

Earlier I was with Lara's husband, C and C's bro-in-law, G.  They are both in from the west to play the Monk marathon at Spectrum tomorrow night.  This was taken at Mission Chinese.  After that we went to the New Museum, then Il Laboratorio Gelato, Culturefix, then the Angel Orensanz Center.  I can't wait to see them tomorrow night.  (Guess what, Lara?  G knew our waiter from the music scene in SEATTLE?!)

THEN later--I met up with an old friend from Utah, J.  I met J the first semester of grad school at the U--Fall '88.  J was a film major from Ogden.  Now he's a recruiter for a law school in San Francisco.  Here he is with his boyfriend, R.  J bought me a cone at the Big Gay Ice Cream truck.  Before that we'd gone to my favorite Vietnamese place on Orchard and had edamame salsa with a big sesame cracker.  (I also took them up to Spectrum for five minutes.)

I never do this much on a Friday, never hang with so many boys, never eat so much food.  I feel like I've already had a very full weekend.

Habit

I went again, Lara, and took this surreptitious photo.

I just wrote a long post and lost it!

I keep visiting Habit.

I'm fascinated that three actors are living in an alternative universe a stone's throw from my building. 

I love the way audience members anxiously circle the house, trying to angle themselves for the best views, trying to anticipate where the actors will go.

While I was there yesterday, an actor took a shower, and some of us watched the outline of his body moving.  A toilet flushed.  This same actor took a nap in the messy bed, waiting for his next line to come around.

I peered over the shoulder of another actor, as she stabbed a knife into a tray of cold brownies.  She spoke her lines--an explanation of semiotics--with her mouth full. 

Yesterday, I saw this character die in a different way than this character had died a day earlier.

The only requirement is that the actors stick to the script as written, but I'm fascinated by the ways this set script becomes malleable, and tweaked, the way our own scripts do.

I've visited Habit four times and will go back today.

Can you see why I'm addicted?  Read more about it here.

A Clean Well-Lit Place on East Broadway: Pushcart Coffee

The tin ceiling of Pushcart Coffee

Anyone who knows me at all knows how much I love clean well-lighted public places where I can sit and eat stuff and drink stuff and write and/or grade. 

This strong inclination of mine I came to slowly.  By the last two years of college, I was taking the bus from Provo to Salt Lake in order to do my homework at the Salt Lake Roasting Company, for I could not bear to do it at home . . . or in the then snackless HBLL.  (Sorry, library!)  And there were was nothing remotely similar in Provo.  

Over the years, I have lingered (probably very pretentiously--who am I kidding?) in countless cafes in . . well, not as many cities as I would have liked, but Paris is one of them!

I only regret I have not kept track of them, so I'm going to do so now.  

Today I spent the afternoon in a newish lower east side cafe called Pushcart Coffee.  My notes are as follows:  

Pushcart Coffee.  East Broadway and Clinton.  New York, NY

Pros: 

Food: Locally sourced ingredients (a whole chalkboard devoted to this), raw kale salad on the food menu

Coffee:  Stumptown (roasted in Brooklyn)

Music:  Perfect for aging Gen Xers like me:  Stones, Ramones. TV on the Radio, Violent Femmes, Nirvana, The Breeders, The Strokes (from the ‘hood!), Johnny Cash’s “Cocaine Blues,” Fugazi’s “Waiting Room” (one of my favorite ditties—see below), and Ziggy-era Bowie on the hi fi 

Staff:  Super nice and earnest staff, who patiently overlook my Saturday afternoon spaceiness. I now even know their first names.

Unexpected amenity:  A healthy stack of contextually sensitive reading material for patron perusal:  The Great Bagel and Lox Book, New York:  Then and Now, The Lower East Side Remembered and Revisited, Unexpected New York, and Life on the Lower East Side:  photographs by Rebecca Lepkoff, 1937-1950. 

Ambience:  lots of natural light, wood floor, high tin ceilings. 

Wi Fi:  seems not so easy to get on the Internet (I didn’t ask)--which is good for writing (but bad for grading). Plenty of computer outlets!

Cons: 

Bathroom:  No visible public bathroom (although I didn’t ask).

Unexpected Amenity:  kids' activity area (although, even as little as four or five years ago, this would have been a big pro).  

Food:  Uninspired kale salad (a tad overpriced for what it was)

Décor:  Too fussy?—the cafe has such good bones that the vases of dried flowers, dried wheat, and the empty coffee bean bag hung “Salt Lake Roasting Coffee style” on the wall were unnecessary.

View out the window:  Generic East Broadway traffic and the back of the worst of ‘60s-era urban renewal.

 

Lack of interesting legwear: No tights wearing except for me (granted it was a warmish day)

Overall:  Pros far outweigh cons.  Plus, the management seem very devoted to the best aspects of the neighborhood—its texture and history (it’s called Pushcart, after all), and it’s a good, low pressure place within walking distance to get some good old-fashioned writing done.

It's very generous of management to be so welcoming to children.