Thursday night was the perfect night for an outdoor party, unless you were the neighbors. Such was the case for the Two x Two’s First Look party at Cindy and Howard Rachofsky‘s art showhouse/estate on Preston Road. Despite the ramped-up-music setting the mood as guests moseyed up the driveway strewn with Aston Martins, it’s doubtful the neighbors heard one sound. Why? They’re too many acres away.
One neighbor admitted that when the Rachofskys have parties, the noise isn’t as much a problem as the parking of guest cars on the east side of Preston. Then they laughed and said, “But it’s all for good causes.”
The gathering of artistic types was part of the weeklong Two x Two fundraiser for amfAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research and the Dallas Museum of Art. Actually instead of being called First Look, it probably should be called the Tweener, because it falls between the Tuesday preview party for the DMA members and the Saturday night Gala, where very big bucks are spent on art. This year the Saturday night bucks added up to a very nice, record-breaking $4.2 million, with just under 500 people in attendance.
But back to Thursday night, with the moon looking on overhead as veterans and newcomers to the event and the house felt like they were part of the SoHo crowd. The estate was decked out to make a great first impression, with seating pods of leather couches on elevated under-lit platforms, a generous bar and 11 pairs of blue jeans on a laundry line hung at the top of the edifice (pictured). One lovely lass made the mistake of walking from the driveway to the pods in her stiletos, only to find herself aeriating the Rachofsky grounds as she sank into the lawn. Along the driveway just beyond the Aston Martins parked on circular rugs and the fashion models on platforms, were high cocktail tables and servers everywhere offering tidbits.
Just as DJ Lucy Wrubel was rocking with her selection of music by Ishi, someone-who-did-not-want-to-identified and her art gallery-owner/husband Barry Whistler (pictured left with someone-who-did-not-want-to-identified) told friends that they had recommended the trio, who happen to be Lucy’s neighbors. When asked about her new show on Maine at Barry Whistler Gallery that opened the previous Saturday, someone-who-did-not-want-to-identified said it was going quite well and would stay up until Nov. 27. It was learned later, from the folks at FrontRow, that someone-who-did-not-want-to-identified had sold an edition of 10 photographs from the Maine series on collectdotgive.org to raise money ($750) for La Reunion. Needless to say, the edition sold out immediately.
CAPs (Center-of-Attention-People) were Jennifer and John Eagle, who barely got halfway down the driveway before being stopped by boldfacers like Richard Eiseman. Also on that list was Angie Barrett (pictured), who showed up in a mega-spangled shortie with a naughty gap running up the sides of the dress. Thank heaven for some criss-cross metallic ribbon that held the front and back together. Dallas Morning Newsie Christopher Wynn immediately caught up with Angie and paid her the ultimate compliment — he had his photog shoot her, then he shot her himself with his smartphone. Talk about a double-doozy!
Still another one getting the Wynn double-doozy treatment was interdisciplinary artist Shannon Niehus, who has made the Dallas Design District her headquarters after traveling the world. She just had a solo show, “Mercy,” debut at Ross Akard Gallery including both oil paintings and video production of a performance piece with soft sculptured titled, “The Ecstasy.”
Linda Ivy was just back from the opening of Heritage Auction Gallery in NYC. It was such a hot opening that the Big Apple bible, “New York Social Diary,” wrote it up twice.
Oops, almost didn’t recognize Cindy. She looked like she was one of the collegiate set as she checked on adorable TCU SAE-ers Charles Bridwell, Matthew Looney (Cindy’s baby boy) and Ryan Ross, who were chatting it up with blonde beauty Bradley Agather (pictured right with, from the left, Ryan Ross, Charles Bridwell and Matthew Bridwell). Bradley reported that her mom Elaine Agather (Grand Dame of Chase) had just returned from a biz trip to Paris. Tough work, huh!
But let’s face it — this was a stiletto not a boot crowd, a Brioni not a Brooks Brothers gathering. Only thing missing was NM-er tastemaster Ken Downing and his entourage.
Inside the Rachofsky cottage designed by Richard Mier were level-after-level of art on the wall, and “people art.” On all levels people were becoming works of visual and audio art. Some were natural wonders–and others just made you wonder.