I've got (one) eye on you

That artworld stereotype of the the blowhard barking loudly on the phone, swearing, making a spectacle, embarassing himself and others with his asshole-ness and declarations of privlege: it exists. That guy was walking out as we were walking into an art opening last week. Not really welcoming, but whatevs, we had a great time despite the mess that greeted us.

I hate to admit it, but the blowhard got under my skin a bit, and I've been thinking about that guy for a week mostly because I had a sneaking suspicion of who it was. Click, click, click and Google images confirmed his identity. And in the funniest way: a picture of the loud mouth with a hand covering his right eye. I could barely believe it. I've seen hundreds of versions of this image before.

When I went back to college a few years ago to complete my degree (which I did: BA, Industrial Design) a project had me researching Sheila Levrant deBretteville, the celebrated graphic designer, artist, and Yale professor. Google images lead me to an intriguing image of SLdB covering one eye. As one does on the internet, I continued clicking and discovered an amazing photo journal by another famous graphic designer: Ahn Sang-Soo. He too became a subject of study, but for his incredible typography work, not photography. It turns out Ahn has taken literally hundreds of pictures of creatives covering one eye. His website has been on my radar ever since; it is simple and elegant with the right splash of humor and intrigue to keep me coming back to it after all these years.

Sang-Soo's influence creeped into the wine blog I co-created, Swirl Smell Slurp. One night at a wine tasting at a favorite neighborhood wine shop, Silver Lake Wine, I asked happy tasters to hold up their wine glass to one eye. The results were silly and wonderful, like the spritzy rosé we were drinking.