Wear + Here

A model of Ellsworth Kelly’s Austin, slated for installation at the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, TX paired with Alyson Fox Necklace.

My Texas ramble continues in Austin with a reason to return: earlier this month, the Blanton Museum of Art at The University of Texas Austin announced the imminent alightment of Ellsworth Kelly’s Austin on university grounds. For the 91-year-old artist, Austin marks many firsts: It will be his first free-standing structure, his first foray into stone and his first representation of color in glass and light. The 2,175-square-foot stone building will be inlayed with luminous glass windows, a totemic wood sculpture, and 14 black-and-white marble panels. The building, originally conceived in 1986 as a private commission, was never built because Kelly insisted on public access. While singular in form, Austin reflects Kelly’s lifelong interest in abstract distillation, of hard lines and color divisions.

“Austin is part of a journey that began nearly 70 years ago,” Kelly said in a museum release. A journey that began in Boston, continued in Paris, and endured in his studio, informed by lasting inspirations: the 12th century fresco he discovered as a student at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston; his affinity for Romanesque and Byzantine art and architecture, forged while studying in Paris on the G.I. Bill after serving in World War II; the rose light bath of Chartres Cathedral. Yet, unlike the religiosity of these European monuments, Kelly imagined a space defined by amorphous spirituality, where purity and simplicity of form could be a conduit for experiencing calm and light.

“Go there and rest your eyes, rest your mind,” he told the New York Times of his intention for Austin. “Enjoy it.” As I am enjoying this city and its creativity (epitomized by artist makers like Alyson Fox).

The Tunnel of Love in Klevan, Ukraine paired with Toga Floral Lace Cropped Top.

On this Valentine’s Day, as the luxury of peace finds many places saturated with pink, it seems timely to spotlight a perspective on love amid conflict: love as optimism; love as a construct growing from rubble; love as green and lush as this lace top.

The Tunnel of Love in Klevan, a historic enclave in western Ukraine occupied during World War II, invites couples to stroll along the railway leading to a fiberboard factory. The train still runs, three times a day, delivering wood. I would wait for the conductor to clatter by and let the verdant hush settle in, as peace may do in Ukraine if the ceasefire set for midnight tonight holds. An enclave of optimism in a country beset by violence. A light at the end of a long tunnel.

“Cocoon” a 2009 string installation in France by Sébastian Preschoux paired with Mikoh Seychelles Swimsuit.

I didn’t want it to end, but I rose (predawn) resolved to finish “The History of Love” by Nicole Krauss.

And then I couldn’t let go: after lingering with the last page, I began flipping back to favorite passages like page 111, resonant of so many things including these spontaneous string installations by Parisian artist Sébastian Preschoux, including this swimsuit (perhaps ill-suited for an oceanic journey).

“Sometimes no length of string is long enough to say the thing that needs to be said. In such cases all the string can do, in whatever its form, is conduct a person’s silence.”

The Joshua Light Show, staged through Sunday at the Ace Hotel in Shoreditch, London (c/o Cool Hunting) paired with Honor Watercolour-Print Bustier Top.

Another masterful mash-up in London: a kaleidoscopic light installation set to surf-noir soundscapes transforms the seventh floor of the Ace Shoreditch. Within the hip haven, the mysterious soundtrack to Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Inherent Vice,” composed by Radiohead’s renowned Jonny Greenwood, swirls amid the abstract spectacle produced by psychedelic pioneer the Joshua Light Show. A lush dream state suspended above the city, for five days only through Sunday.

Art Suite 7, 5 ° by Wolfgang-a. Lüchow, Sebastian Andreas Scheller and Anja Kilian at this winter’s ICEHOTEL in Jukkasjärvi, Sweden paired with Helmut Lang Rabbit Fur Jacket.

Jukkasjärvi, Sweden is my kind of small town: the dog-to-human ratio is in equilibrium (1,000 : 1,100). Also my species/speed: the hamlet, 200km north of the Arctic Circle, is home to the first and largest hotel built of snow and ice (a composite locally known as “snice”). Now in its 25th iteration, ICEHOTEL welcomes guests for cold encounters in artist-designed igloos followed by cozy stays in pine chalets. Even though winter gear is included in the suite price, I’d pack this fur coat to wear over the provided overalls. Would an icy slumber make me thaw?