Category Archives: Art

HERMAPHRODITE by Peter Nolan Smith

Back in the early 1980s the construction of IM Pei’s pyramid blocked access to the Louvre Museum, leaving the ancient palace of the Bourbon kings mostly to art historians and a few wandering tourists, however I regularly wandered the museum’s desolate corridors to admire its vast collection. At that time I was employed as the Bains-Douches’ […]

Better Than The Louvre

Helmut Newton – Genuis

An Artist’s Fast Fingers

My boss Manny started selling jewelry on Canal Street in 1954. He says that he didn’t sell his first diamond until a year later. “Back then all diamonds were white. We didn’t know any better and better still neither did the Gs.” Manny’s speech is colored by hundreds of diamond selling terms interspersed with Yiddish. […]

Goodbye Columbus Day

Before the arrival of Christo Columbo in 1492, the New World was filled with empires, confederations, republics, city-states, and tribal lands. These diverse peoples represented a broad scattering of cultures. The population of the two connected continents has been estimated by modern historians to be approximately twenty-five million people from the Bering Straits to the […]

Pattaya’s 2nd World Tattoo Festival

Written May 23, 2008 My 5th Grade teacher, a nun, instructed her students that any souls arriving at the Pearly Gates with a tattoo on their deceased body would be dispatched immediately to Hell. Tattoos were a mortal sin for Catholics and despite having abandoned my Catholic faith I have retained the fear that a […]