Issue # 29
Archive stories

London: Claudia Roden was a name well known to anyone who worked in food. Then the new wave of culinary stars arrived, and only in the past few years has there been a return to the grand writers who laid the foundations of contemporary food writing. Roden symbolises a rare period in history. Her two…

New York City: Legs folded and with unwavering eye contact, Minjae Kim emits poise and calm. But if you meet his eyes longer than a moment, you see something of a fun frenzy beneath the surface. This frantic, creative energy comes out in his work, which is mostly hand-carved wooden furniture incorporating quilted fibreglass and silky…

Cairo: Mounir has the look of those people who know how to be fully present. His beautiful blue eyes have the joy of a child and he always blesses me with answers that contain wisdom and kindness. I remember meeting him after my first visit to his eco lodge Adrere Amellal, meaning ‘the White Mountain’ in…

New York City: I first met Darrel Ellis in 1981. I was 30 and he was almost 23. He had just broken up with the actor José Rafael Arango and we were at an East Village neighbourhood gay bar called The Bar, at 2nd Avenue and East 4th Street, half a block from José’s apartment. The…

When one faces a conversation with Álvaro Siza (Matosinhos, Portugal, 1933) it’s hard to think up questions that haven’t already been formulated hundreds of times in previous interviews. His first built project, four houses in his native city, happened 68 years ago. Since then, he hasn’t stopped doing architecture projects, building whenever the right circumstances…

Rogelio hasn’t slept a wink since he inherited the Rosas family estate. The first two days have been unequivocally joyous, like non-stop sex, an endless delicacy. He keeps his eyes open wide at night and only catches sleep for a few seconds or minutes here and there in quiet moments—at mass, on the john, waiting…

New York City: Ice-pop red and blue and Halloween-orange six-inch-high tapered torsos merging into outrageously demonstrative faces, Alice Mackler’s sculpted clay portraits, with their scarred, furrowed, and lumpily textured surfaces, are alternately distorted, grotesque, totem-like, and irrefutably endearing. Blow-up-doll mouths and huge peepers, drooping boobs, all curves and contrapposto, self-possessed, and at times appearing confrontational or…

Paju: There are so many stones in Choi Byung-Hoon’s home that you might find one bouncing off your foot. He has stones holding up his table, stones holding up the books on his bookshelf, and stones weighing down ultra-thin sheets of traditional Korean paper. There are stones in front of his door, stones in his…

Los Angeles: Are you where you once thought you’d be at the age you are now? Sydney ‘Syd’ Bennett isn’t. In her view, she’s somewhere better. Early teenage success on the basketball courts, with professional-level potential, was diverted by a wack coach and GarageBand exploration in her parents’ home, quickly leading to Syd’s musical collaboration…

New York City: Duane Michals loves pie, especially apple. There were at least three on the counter and one in the refrigerator when I came by to visit. His cramped kitchen also serves as a de facto greenhouse for dozens of orchids that soak up the light from the recessed window. In fact flowers, both fresh…

Milan: I first met Joan in 2015 when I brought her into the radio station where I work for a small, live concert. I don’t remember exactly how it happened, but I realised that this young girl with a guitar, who hadn’t yet found her musical identity, had something special. That girl has now become a…

Tehran: At the beginning there was daddy sperm. DADDY is Reza Shafahi, born in 1940 in Saveh, Iran, an ancient metropolis located southwest of Tehran, known for its pomegranates, melons, wheat, and cotton. Saveh is a wealthy city, once ruled by Reza’s father, a rich patriarch who until the late ‘30s owned pretty much every…

Milan: My father, Marco Glaviano, was born and raised in Palermo, Sicily. He became a successful fashion photographer in the ‘80s, working for Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, developing a personal body of work that featured many of the supermodels of that period, and, it’s said, ushering in a certain aesthetic that focused on beauty and the…

Elgorriaga: I first met Álvaro in the Guggenheim cafeteria in Bilbao. He was meeting with a friend of mine, who promised I’d be very glad to know him. Álvaro was wearing an impeccable white cashmere Gucci coat from the ‘80s or ‘90s—on a rainy day. A tall, good-looking, bearded guy, his presence was incredible. I was…

Siwa Oasis: I remember the first time I went to Siwa back in 1998: my son Miles was two years old and my father had been speaking to me about Mounir and his extraordinary initiative for I don’t know how long. After a day’s drive, I recall arriving in the pitch-black night with only bonfires and…

New York City: The first thing you’ll notice about one of my favourite architects and friend Solveig Fernlund is her elegance. She is a willowy yet sturdy Swedish woman nearly six feet tall, who my mother, if she were still living, would have described as ‘a lovely long, tall drink of water’. And this willowy, sturdy…

New York City: Kunle Martins’ status as an OG of the Lower East Side is well deserved. Kunle, aka EARSNOT, aka IRAK, is the eponymous founding member of the IRAK crew, made up of misfits, outsiders, skaters, and graffiti artists. IRAK gained street cred while catching the eye of the ever-elusive art world, who couldn’t get…

London: When I first began to make contact with people who collected ceramics with a passion, some extremely generous invitations were extended to visit their private homes and to see the pots in their collections. And on the very first occasion, a strange thing happened; a jealous streak ran through me. I am ashamed to…