Port for the Storm: Barnaby Furnas's Cup and our Ceiling Runneth Over
Water was on our minds.
On Thursday night, as the wind, rain, and thunder let loose on Brooklyn, Harriet (formerly known as Altonio and for our purposes, Studio Cat) and I began to wonder if we should have sent an ark out to TriBeCa to collect Hilary (Harkness) from her drawing session at the New York Academy of Art with Will Cotton, Chie Fueki, and other painting friends.
Just before 10, our intrepid artist arrived home. Dropping her drawing materials at the door, she humored me and Studio Cat as we took her on a tour of the apartment to show her every last hatch we had battened and to get her opinion on the puckering water blister in the ceiling. Studio Cat, still trying to convince us that we should have taken her on our Prabal Gurung’s NY Fashion Week Show adventure, threw out some vague reference to haute couture’s place in a pedestrian existence while I was pretty sure that it looked more like a droopy balloon that had gotten left behind at a child's birthday party. We both wondered if it could serve as some sort of inspiration for the cross-section in progress on Hilary’s easel.
Hilary let us argue this for a minute, but as Studio Cat's yowling reached a fever pitch worthy of Laura Mulvey’s insistence on disrupting pleasure, we both agreed to let Studio Cat have that round. As she celebrated on her oriental rug with a plate of beef niblets in gravy, Hilary pulled out her haul from the day: a bottle of Fonesca Porto BIN 27 along with a copy of Waterkeeper magazine, and Barnaby Furnas’s book, Floods.
Turns out that while I was at work and Studio Cat was snoozing in one of her many pieces of real estate in the apartment - her favorite being her closet 'duplex,' Hilary was meeting a group at Marianne Boesky Gallery to go on a private tour of Barnaby Furnas's studio followed by a lunch to celebrate the launch of a limited edition label that he designed for Fonesca BIN 27 Port to benefit Waterkeeper Alliance, a charity that works to provide drinkable, swimmable, and fishable waterways worldwide. Furnas's label is the second in an annual series of Artist Labels and centers on his "Rock Concert" series. Bottles go on sale nationwide starting in October. I'll be looking forward to seeing it.
In the meantime, the bottle of port will be saved for the next storm. When it finds us, me and Studio Cat will be kicking back - it's Hilary's turn to report for hatch battening duty.
disclaimer: the views expressed here are solely those of the art dealer's daughter.
