I traded my jewelry with Bob Stanley for paintings. He gave Marilyn the jewelry and I got lots of Stanleys.
I moved to SoHo from New Hampshire in 1974, lived a year in a one room loft at Lafayette and Grand, above an Italian diner, and next to a Chinese fresh chicken kill store. After a fast year of 100% experimental lifestyle exploration, dancing until the sun came up in underground clubs of sheer exotic pleasure experimentation, as well as simultaneously inventing my NEW SPONTANEOUSLY FORMED signature brand, the smells of the grease from the diner and the putrid cans of dead chicken part under my window, forced me to seek even quieter, more civilized living arrangement.
I answered an ad for the “almost Perfect Loft” which was one block away at 28 Howard St., and fell in love with Bob Stanley, and his family and friends. He paid rent on floors 3&4, and with the kids soon leaving he needed to get rid of his painting loft and consolidate everything into the fourth floor all purpose live and work loft.
My upstairs neighbors were the Stanleys, and they became my new family. I bought (paid the “key” money) for one of their lofts on Crosby Street, sheer pure unadulterated, grungy SoHo…the essense of the hidden illegal artist community living in industrial spaces, paying industrially low rents, to paint 8′ x12′ canvases, or make metal sculptures, dance and theater performances, spaces for making shoes that were now practice lofts for bands and film makers.
Bob Stanley was a very talented pop artist who was painting raunchY
graphic porn series, rock and roll stars, and sensations imagery that defined the 60′s culture. His brother in law was Roy Lichtenstein, and I had suddenly found myself a member of a tribe of hot names in the gallery scene…
They hung out with Claus Oldenberg, Rob Rauchenberg, Ellsworth Kelly, John Chamberlain, Richard Artschwager, Brian Eno, The Talking Heads, the Ramones, and the list just was…what it was, the gang of artists of the 70′s, in and out of /stanleys house, including me, since they kind of adopted me, ( I was skinny and cute, free, trying everything)…and very obviously to my friends, becoming someone overnight it seemed…
The December 1976 Vogue cover helped me make friends more easily. This was the last of the large format Vogues, and my work being on it was symbolic of the direction my career had taken.
Repeat performances …of having my work published …Harpers Bazaar, Elle, etc. virally, and rampantly throughout the fashion industry made a new kind of history…I could feel the change I was causing..it gave me new confidance, new power.
My artists friends, were quite taken with the new form called Fashion Jewelry, or ARTWEAR, Sculpture to Wear, Designer, celebrity jewelry designers were being conceived at this time….
The names around me that were popping like flash bulbs were: Halston, Peretti, Warhol, Studio 54, Elsa Minnelli, Cher, the Agnellis, Diana Vreeland, I was caught in a spinning vortex of sexual and professional and entrepenurial energy, a big city wide team of artists, designers, models, sin, music, sensational fashion, make your blood pump with Bee Gee joy and a healthy national financial foundation on which to live and work and then play. This is before the cell phone remember, before the cell phone.
I had been represented by Sculpture to Wear in the Plaza hotel, owned by Joan and Roger Sonnabend, for 5 years very successfully but in 1977 they sold the hotel, gave up the gallery, and I was forced to open my own version of it which I called ARTWEAR.
gazing through his filthy Howard street studio window, young Robert is stuck in a moment.
