In celebration of Pride, Artsy happily presents the Artsy Impact Auction: Artists for Pride, benefiting the Ali Forney Center. New works by a diverse group of emerging and established artists will be bid on through June 29th at 12 pm EST. TM Davy, Didier William, Jo Messer, Kyle Meyer, Kate Pincus-Whitney, Erin M. Riley, Emma Kohlmann, Caitlin Cherry, Elizabeth Glaessner, Jordan Nassar, Haas Brothers, Vickie Vainionpรครค, Leilah Babirye, Darryl Westly, and Nedia Were have come together in allyship to support the cause by way of sharing their talents.
Ali Forney Centerโs mission is to protect LGBTQIA+ youth from homelessness and to empower them with the tools needed to live independently. Through this partnership, the auction will directly support the critical care, direction, education, and career services that Ali Forney Center offers to these at-risk homeless youth.
We had the opportunity to speak with Simon Haas of the Haas Brothers, who have their Fairies Witherspoon piece featured in Artists for Pride (seen in the lead image). โThis piece is from a body of work we call Fairy Berries. Each of these pieces is a little like a Faberge Egg, small and ornate,โ said Simon. โThese pieces are little meditations โ they take a really, really long time and a steady hand, and the resulting piece is an opulent little world of its own.โ
โA lot of the work we make is playful, but an equal amount of it is intensely process-based. When I am doing beadwork or making process-intensive projects like this I am very much in a meditative state of mind,โ Simon shared. โThis kind of work is almost necessary for me and my mental health.
Measuring 10 1/4 ร 4 1/2 ร 4 1/2-inches, Fairies Witherspoon is hand thrown and slip trailed porcelain detailed with gold lustre and brass plate. The underside is stamped with โHAAS BROTHERS 2020โ, and itโs accompanied by a Certificate of Authenticity signed by Nikolai and Simon Haas.
โBeing gay myself, and having experienced first hand the challenges that come with that, it is really meaningful to me to be able to support my community. I canโt imagine the added difficulty of facing homelessness caused by or made more difficult by being LGBTQIA+. This is a truly important cause, particularly in this time of increasing intolerance.โ Simon went on to add that he plans to โcontinue being a vocally out gay man and advocating for others in my community. It is so important that we make ourselves heard and support each other in our fight for equality. The LGBTQIA+ community is not a monolith, we are a collection of communities, but by coming together and advocating for each other we can accomplish so much more than we could on our own.โ
To learn more about Artsy Impact Auction: Artists for Pride or place a bid, visit artsy.net.
Twitter owes $13 billion, and itโs expected to make its first payment against that debt next week, Bloomberg reports. Due to this looming financial burden, CEO Elon Musk has been doing everything he can to cut costsโincluding directing mass layoffs, skipping rent payments, and slashing employee benefits. But even those major cost-cutting moves werenโt enough to keep Musk from turning to penny-pinching. Twitter held an auction this week that was essentially a garage sale, selling off equipment no longer needed by Twitterโs drastically reduced staff.
The liquidation of Twitterโs corporate office assets occurred during an online auction that ended yesterday, seemingly generating thousands from the sale of more than 600 items, including kitchen equipment, furniture, electronics, and memorabilia.
The auction site, Heritage Global Partners, chose not to publish the auction results, so itโs impossible to tell at a glance how big a dent the auction put in Twitterโs overall debt. Heritage Global Partners President Nick Dove told Fortune last month that the auction had โnothingโ to do with Twitterโs dire finances.