アレックスストリーターさんのインスタグラム写真 - (アレックスストリーターInstagram)「“The February snow banked up against the front door of a former Italian cigar store… Inside I was warmly greeted by a family of Greenwich Village Gypsies who lived in a small sleeping loft in the back - Damien, his wife, his boyfriend and two children! They convinced me it was a perfect place to live…situated between an insular Italian neighborhood and a gritty industrial zone. Back then it was called Hell’s Hundred Acres, but to me it could have been Mars. I quickly grew to love the neighborhood - next door you had Tony Dapolito’s bakery Vesuvio’s (still there!), and around the corner on Thompson street were social clubs lined with “soldiers” of the Five Families awaiting orders. It was the safest neighborhood in all of New York if you had a morning coffee at Augie’s, a minestrone soup at Millie’s, minded your own business and greeted the grandmothers seated on the sidewalk. In 1971 I decided to open up a shop on Prince street, selling my leather crafts, occult books, death masks and astrology maps. Shortly after, I focused on jewelry and began silversmithing. Before I ever got into wax carving, I created my first series using a technique known as “acid-etching”. In this method a design is inscribed in wax on top of a sheet of metal, then dipped in acid which eats away at the metal, leaving the design in its place. An incredibly dangerous technique to begin with, I pushed it to the limit by leaving the metal in much longer than safe. With the acid bubbling and nearly about to explode, I would snatch the metal out of the cauldron at the very last moment, the entire surface eaten away and taking on a mottled effect that resembled an ancient artifact buried too long in a tomb, created by a long forgotten hand. I borrowed obscure symbolism: Magic charts, palmistry diagrams, tarot cards and oracular sphinxes all gleaned from my occult library. For 30 years I ran my little store on Prince street. It was a daily struggle, and often a very dangerous one. Sometimes I miss the old days of the store, that feeling of endless possibility as I rolled up the gates each morning and opened to the public. You never knew who might walk in and change your life...”」4月19日 2時30分