Results tagged “dashsnow”

It's been over a week now since Dash Snow was confirmed dead from an overdose, and today the NY Times sheds some light on what exactly happened to the artist, who would have turned 28 on Monday, during his last hours.

Yesterday word went around that there was some unwanted tagging going on the Os Gemeos work-in-progress mural on Houston Street. It didn't take long for the brothers to cover it up with a dedication to their old friend Dash Snow (an old photo of the three after the jump). There are actually two dedications to the late artist (who also was known as Sace in his tagging years), and one to Iz the Wiz (you can see his tag on the subway car in the mural). And with that, the mural is finally complete!

It may be easy to judge someone like Dash Snow. His pedigree, his art, his drug abuse, his lifestyle. But when the artist joined the 27 Club and departed for the big "hamster nest" in the sky, he left behind many Polaroids, many tags, many works of art, and many grieving friends. Gavin McInnes, who you know from Vice, wrote a tribute to his friend and his relation to New York City.

The best part of living in New York is the feeling that you’re in the center of everything. This feeling is like heroin and soon you want more. Eventually, Brooklyn isn’t enough. Then, certain parts of Manhattan aren’t enough. You feel like you’re visiting your parents when you’re in Soho or you’re on a road trip when you’re in Chelsea. St. Marks is a mini mall and even the East Village feels like a pale imitation of the Lower East Side. You never felt like that when you were partying with Dash Snow. You felt like you were in the center of New York. He was the kind of thing people move to New York for.

Snow's friend Carol Lee at Paper Magazine described him as a "young and talented artist, downtown fixture, bad boy, SACER, member of IRAK, etc.—but more than anything, he was a friend." Meanwhile, the NY Post wrongfully uses him as a posthumous posterboy for their rag, and the NY Times labels him an "East Village Artistic Rebel" in their obituary, pinpointing his art as being driven by "Sexuality, violence and life’s fragility... also an air of exuberant misbehavior." With all the sudden attention and fawning, Gawker believes this is the beginning of a "Basquiat-esque art world canonization" of the artist.

[UPDATE BELOW] A not totally unsurprising rumor is going around that downtown artist Dash Snow has died of a heroin overdose. Snow is the maternal grandson of Robert Thurman (and nephew of actress Uma Thurman), and his lifestyle was well-documented in a sprawling New York magazine piece two years ago. That lifestyle at one point included making what he called a Hamster’s Nest with friends, where they would "shred up 30 to 50 phone books, yank around all the blankets and drapes, turn on the taps, take off their clothes, and do drugs—mushrooms, coke, ecstasy—until they feel like hamsters."