Raggly

"Raggly Flag" by Thornton Dial

Today is Flag Day.

When I was in school we had to write a composition entitled "What Does The Flag Mean To You". It was a lesson in civics and history.

When you are a child you don't really think about the meaning of flags. You might learn to identify flags of different countries, maybe a first visual association with a world larger than your own.

In the 1970's I was fond of the saying "Let your freak flag fly".

Flags get all wrapped up in politics, self identification, emotion and pride for sure. Who doesn't get a lump in their throat when the national anthem is played and the colors are trouped out?

So I give you an image today of a painting by Thornton Dial called "Raggly Flag". Thornton Dial is an excellent example the American dream. He is an artist, self taught, who started painting later in life. Today he is considered one of the most important artists of the 21st century. I love his work.

People all over the world reinvent themselves during their lifetimes. Ditto for self made women and men. But somehow this idea of having the freedom to be anything you want at anytime in your life rings truest and perhaps the loudest when people think of the USA.

So today I salute my flag, and let my freak fly, grateful and proud.

I encourage you to check out Thornton Dial. If you live in Indianapolis the museum of art there is doing an important exhibit of a life time of his incredible work. Read more HERE.

Get this book on Thornton Dial HERE

This is a new Thornton Dial book HERE

And if you are one of those blessed art collectors you can buy this work of art HERE. If I had the money I would buy Thornton Dial for love and for the investment.

For sale: Thornton Dial oil on paper - 30 x 44

Remembering Audrey

Remembering Audrey HERE

Every year around this time I especially remember Audrey Hepburn. Her birthday is on January 20.

Audrey Hepburn with Bob Willoughby 1958

Bob Willoughby was a photographer to the stars, and he took many wonderful photographs of her.

Audrey Hepburn with Bob Willoughby in 1963

I can never look at too many photos of her. "Audrey 100" is a book that Audrey's family has compiled with 100 stunning images. Paying strict attention to aesthetic beauty, artistic expression, and personal significance, they have lovingly selected these photographs to represent the qualities Hepburn herself stood for throughout her life and career.

Audrey 100 HERE

I collect images over the year, that I hope to use for my annual Audrey birthday post. I always seem to find a couple I haven't seen.

Richard Avedon took this photo of Audrey Hepburn

I especially love to see "at home" photos. There are a few of Audrey Hepburn's homes in the earlier years of her career.

Architectural Digest used one from the 1950's for a cover in 2006. Does anyone have this issue? Are there more photos of her home inside? I didn't find much on the AD web site.


The house photographed is the Beverly Hills home she shared with then husband Mel Ferrer in the 1950's has all the trendy trappings of the day.

Audrey Hepburn and Mel Ferrer at home in the 1950's

Audrey was an animal lover and kept a pet fawn in her home for awhile in the 1950's.

Smoking and a boomerang print on the couch were en vogue in the 1950's

Mel and Audrey also had a Malibu home.

Audrey playing ping pong at home

Malibu home of Audrey Hepburn and Mel Ferrer

Why do so many of us girls love Audrey? As a young girl about town in New York, I of course fancied myself as my own version of Holly Golightly. And of course Audrey was so elegant, so funny, so chic. Later she became a role model for all her charitable work for UNICEF. What girl didn't love her?

One of my treasured possessions is my own personal photo of Audrey. She's posing with my a dearest friend. They are at the Museum of Modern Art. There was a party for Audrey honoring her films that night. I did the flower arrangements for that party.

I was longing to see her, just a glimpse of her. My friend loved her even more than I did. And then there he was with her!

He worked at MOMA and secured an invitation that night. He waved me over, and whispered "get a camera".

This was in the days way before cell phones, much a less cell phone camera, and it was pre-blog days where we have acquired the habit of photo documenting everything to the point of numbness.

I didn't even photograph my own work that night, I didn't even own a camera! But I did as I was told, and found a a man with a camera, and brought him over to my friend, who was still standing next to Audrey!

He said, "Miss Hepburn this is my dearest friend Valorie Hart, and she arranged the bouquets on the tables tonight".

"Lovely," she said, "Everything is so pretty and perfect and my favorite color. How did you know my favorite color?"

I told her she was too kind, and asked if I might have a photo of her with my friend.

They both passed away.
And I am an old lady with a faded photo and great memories.

My photo of Audrey Hepburn with my dearest friend

Specimens And Vignettes At Ruby Beets

The Vamp Valorie Hart, with The Hipster Honey Wolters

- I have a ton of pictures from my birthday trip to New York this past July in a folder labelled "Photos To Be Processed." Amongst them are a zillion vignettes from my friends' store in Sag Harbor, New York, a little place called Ruby Beets.

I have known the owners Honey Wolters and Sharone Einhorn from our glory days in Soho (which took place many years ago). We were all associated with the restaurant The Soho Charcuterie in one way or the other.

Through the doors of that restaurant passed some people who worked there, or hung out there, who have become notables: Gina Davis (then only a model & wife of one of the waiters Richie Emilo), Ellen Barkin (actress & a waitress up the street at The Spring Street Bar), Max Blagg (poet & a bartender at Raul's who hung out with the Charcuterie staff), Jim Farmer (composer & Max's sidekick then), Annie Philbin (museum curator & wait staff at the Charc), Gretchen (beuatiful Valkyrie bartender & muscian), Jerri Bokeno (singer with Phil Spector & wait staff), Suzanne White (producer & bookkeeper and bartender), Elizabeth Streb (dancer & hung out with us), Nancy Alfaro (wait staff & dancer), Philip Maberry and Scott Walker (artists & hung out with us), Susan Salinger (wait staff & photographer), another Susan (wait staff and protege of Lou Reed), Robert Maplethorpe (photographer - hung out with us) Pat Iuto (fashion maven - hung out with us) and her husband Michael Schatz, Bruce Cliborne (chef), Jude Bartlett (wait staff & dancer), Brenda Norton (wait staff and singer in Loup Garou), Laura Zarubin (food maven who hung out with us), Anne Wright (chef & daughter of Russel Wright), and of course Sharone and Honey, and many more wonderful artistic souls whose names I can't remember.
The celebrity clientele was monster: Richard Gere, Susan Sarandon, Tommy Tune, Twiggy, Joni Mitchell, Meryl Steep, Warren Beatty, Julie Christie, Bette Midler, Dolly Parton, the rock group The Police, Adam Ant, Mary Boone, Julian Schnabel, David Brenner, Rod Stewart, Barry Bostwick, Betsey Johnson, and many more I am sure I have forgotten. Paul Prudhomme cooked there one night to launch his first cook book.
The Soho Charcuterie owned by Francine Scherer and Madeleine Poley was one of those magical places at a magical time in my history.

Sharone and Honey were the coolest chicks. Sharone looked like a rock star. She was rail thin, and always looked totally right. Her demeanor was sardonic and mysterious. She was totally rockin' and hot. I worshiped her. Honey was a glam hipster, and always laid back, always had this Mona Lisa smile, this killer body, a sensual creature with wit and a tell-it-like-is attitude. Both of them had tremendous style. They set trends in fashion, and how they lived.

Honey worked in a place in Soho called Craft Caravan, an importer of textiles and amber and all kinds of ethnic stuff from Africa, and other exotic places. She also did a stint at a jewelry store called Art Wear on West Broadway. She knew about objects like no one I had ever met.

Years went by and the Soho Charcuterie closed its doors. I worked there for six fabulous years. It launched my rock and roll career, and also my event design business. After it closed we all dispersed, kind like we graduated from this funky crazy school of booze, good food, drugs, sex, and roll.

Look at the cash box! It's the little vintage mini box. And I spy our card on the desk!

I met up with them again when I started working in the Hamptons a couple od years later. They had opened a store in this 11 room farm house in Bridgehampton called Ruby Beets. And these cool New Yorkers had left the city and were living in the Hamptons too! If I have to name one of the biggest influences that formed me as a decorator, I have to say it was Honey and Sharone and what they did at the original Ruby Beets.

I would love to own this painting!

Each room was lovingly decorated, and it used to kill them when people actually bought stuff, disturbing their perfect encapsulations. And boy did the people buy! Whole rooms could be wiped out by Donna Karen and her friend Babs. In fact Honey and Sharone got me a job doing the weekly house flowers for Donna Karan.

White paint was slapped on alot of stuff back then. And this is the first store I saw (and bought) taxidermy from to use as decoration. Those girls love specimen collecting. I really think Ruby Beets invented what we call shabby chic now. I still own at least four pieces of furniture I bought way back then, and I still love them and use them.

It was such a hassle when they sold out of merchandise. Of course they wanted and needed to make money, but in those days they rented a huge truck, and drove hundreds of miles picking antiques and vintage stuff for the store. The shopped, loaded the truck, drove it back to Bridgehampton, unloaded the truck, painted and repaired the stuff, arranged the store, and BAM! it would all be sold in a weekend, and they'd be on the road again.

Stacked stone lamp base!

Honey had two young boys then, so it was hard running the business and being a single mom. Now those boys are grown. Sharone has kids now too.

A still life waiting to happen

So this past summer it was a sweet reunion. I had not been to the Hamptons in over 10 0r 12 years.


Yet when I walked into the store Honey acted like I had been out just for a few minutes.

Conversation picked up where we left off. Sharone called to say hi to me on the phone.

I need to get a couple of these waste baskets!

The new store was a marvel to me. Even with working in retail now myself at the most stylish shop in New Orleans, I was still disarmed and charmed by the things at Ruby Beets.

I couldn't stop taking photos. And Honey filled me in on every object I was attracted to.

Shades of Fornasetti!

She offered to share their sources with perch. in New Orleans, something so generous, and very much appreciated for sure.

This new Ruby Beets is tiny in comparison to the old 11 room house. Somehow it's assembled like the perfect puzzle and treasure trove.

The girls still like old things, and specimens, but they also have contemporary furniture and textiles made just for the store.

This wooden model of a whale is spectacular!

They have added modern accessories too, keeping in step with how we all decorate now with that required mix of vintage, antique, and contemporary.

Ruby Beets was always a legend, and even more so when the girls closed the old place, and took a break for five years. Everyone talked about the great stuff they got from Ruby Beets, and missed it being out on the Montauk Highway.

So now open again for a couple of years, the new Ruby Beets is a media darling, and I am so happy for them. The internet hastens every one's fame these days.

I hope you enjoy all these photos I took. I think it's the largest collection of photos of the store.

Please feel free to use them. I think they are great studies to perhaps do a painting from. You have to love a store that sells a scent library.

Library of Scents - too divine!

They carry Cara Croninger a fabulous jewelry artist from the old Soho days. I used to have a couple of these hearts, but lost them one night at The Mudd Club or maybe at Heartbreak or Area. I still have a pair of Cara heart earrings!

Cara Croninger hearts - I Heart these! Are you listening Santa?

I love all the scientific gadgetry they have.

And they love glass.
They are masters of layering object upon object.
Here's an updated take on taxidermy.
This teeeny chartreuse bust just slayed me!
And here are the flat weave rugs they have manufactured for the store.
The whole place reminded me of country version of perch. I could move right in!
The huge beet hanging out front harkens back to the days of 17th and 18th century shop signs.
The store front is so elegant.
Here are the girls in their glam shot done for a Shop Talk story at 1st Dibs. Sharone used to have black hair! But man she still looks sexy. And who could resist Honey?
These last couple of photos are from 1st Dibs.
I don't know how they stopped at a half dozen ha ha.
This last photo is mine. It says it all: Old and New!

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