My friend Jessi Browne-White is a very talented artist — visual and performing.  She was recently selected to be one of the artists to adorn a piano for the Sing for Hope Pianos project.  As part of her vision, she needs body parts… Well, faces and arms, anyway.  So for Easter, she hosted a plastering party!

We sat around the living room enjoying snacks and wine while one by one we were led to the plastering chair!

Jessica Browne-White applies plaster bandages to Tina Mitchell for a piece she’s creating for the Sing for Hope Pianos project.

Thanks to Jessi’s facility with the plaster bandages, it was quick and painless.  Now I want to buy some and try my hand at plastering.  Nothing is safe!

I can’t wait to see the finished product when it arrives somewhere in NYC!

New York is an amazing place for art.  It’s also an amazing place for crowds.

I dropped by Grand Central Terminal to see Nick Cave’s HEARD•NY, a performance art piece of stylized horses parading in Vanderbilt Hall.  I had stopped by Monday morning to see the Soundsuits “at rest” on display in the hall.  I was looking forward to seeing them in motion.

When I showed up today, 15 minutes before the showing, the hall was PACKED.  There were two performance spaces on either side of the central aisle through to the main hall and they were each surrounded by hordes of people.  I got shoved down the side of one of the spaces and wound up about halfway along the space and 4 rows back.  But since everyone was standing, it meant I could see little.  So much for my idea of a nice quiet shoot.

In fact, the only way I could get any images was to go paparazzi style: arm straight up and shooting just about blind! This is the first time I’ve tried shooting this way and the results were… as expected.  I’ve got a couple shots that weren’t bad, but I think I’ll go back much earlier to get a good spot.