Nigel Barker.

Hosts Nigel and Cristen Barker, Russell James and Donna Karan will be at the Fourth Annual Solving Kids’ Cancer Spring Celebration this year honoring Ms. Karan’s BFF Bonnie Young and daughter Gabby Karan De Felice. The committee includes supermodel Helena Christensen, socialite Jennifer Creel, Carolina Herrera, nightlife queen Amy Sacco and photographer Kelly Klein, to name-drop a few.

583 Park Avenue, (212) 583-7200, cocktails 6:30pm, dinner 7:30pm, individual tickets $600, tables $6,000-$25,000. 

Nicole Hanley Mellon and Matthew Mellon.

Fans of the pre-grunge Seattle indie band Young Fresh Fellows will rejoice tonight alongside the junior-society set at the annual Young Fellows black-tie ball, which is themed “Dance of Time” and sponsored by Donna Karan. The highbrow-yet-beautiful steering committee includes author Lesley M.M. Blume, Lydia Fenet and Sara Gilbane Sullivan, along with a benefit committee boasting designer darling Wes Gordon, Matthew Mellon and Nicole Hanley Mellon, Lulu Frost designer Lisa Salzer, Cator Sparks and Georgina Bayard Schaeffer. The dolled-up girls and kitted-out chaps will peruse the fancy art and slug back a lot of cocktails. You can find them later with their bow ties askew and Donna Karan gowns disheveled, after hours at The Boom Boom Room.

The Frick Collection, 1 East 70th Street, (212) 547-0706, 8:30pm-12am, Tickets start at $325 for under 39-ers.

You are looking at a photo of a man in a coffee shop. He is wearing a straw hat, frayed around the edges. His hair is white underneath, and long. His hand is grasping a coffee cup, but he is not looking at it. He is looking at someone out of frame, making a gesture with his free hand: fingers extended, palm pointed slightly diagonal and down. The universal sign for “This is the important part.” In mid-gesture, he is animated. He does not seem to know he is being photographed.

This is how Denis Piel might have posed the scene of himself being interviewed about his latest book, Moments. The photographer with the flair for the cinematic is set to release a coffee table collection later this month with Rizzoli. Moments is a series of images, mainly of models and actresses, that Mr. Piel shot on the set of various advertising and editorial campaigns during his tenure in the ’80s as of one the magazine world’s Big Names.

His more famous works can be seen on the covers of Vogue, Vanity Fair and GQ; in 1979 he was handpicked by Condé Nast’s Editorial Director Alexander Liberman, along with Irving Penn and Richard Avedon, as one of the few photographers to ever have a contract with the publishing house. Over the course of his tenure, Mr. Piel shot more than 1,000 editorial spreads in the U.S., German, Italian, French and English versions of Condé Nast titles.

Before Annie Leibovitz draped a sheet over a 15-year-old Miley Cyrus and called it a day; before Terry Richardson made it into Page Six with accusations of masturbating in front of naked models he was shooting, Mr. Piel and his contemporaries were displaying their contributions to the century-old “art-or-pornography” debate on the front pages of magazines and fashion spreads for luxury products.

But besides the transgressive nature of partial nudity in a high-end glossy, the comparisons between Mr. Piel and his contemporaries—which also included Vogue’s preferred cover fashion photog, Helmut Newton—are few and far between.
“They were very, very, very ... and I’ll add another very, different,” former Vogue editor Grace Mirabella recalled of the famous cover photographers in the ’80s. “Helmut—who was superb, had a great sense of style—was always looking for the deepest, not-best story about the women. In other words, he put them in situations that were very uncomfortable, that was this close to being excessively sexy, and almost questionable.”

Mr. Avedon, meanwhile, was “the strongest” in fashion history, according to Ms. Mirabella, with his monochromatic, soul-penetrating portraits. And Mr. Piel? “Would it be superficial of me to say that his were the most attractive?” she wondered.

“He was the best of his moment. He was able to get the allure of the model while still keeping this sense of reality that was missing from a lot of the more posed shoots.”

“He was not the usual type ... if you could consider photographers of this period a type,” Jade Hobson, the creative director of Vogue at the peak of Mr. Piel’s fame, told The Observer. “For example, he had an Australian accent.”

He also had a casualness in both dress and demeanor that put models at ease: “With Denis, he was always looking for that ‘off’ moment. So many photographers at that time were looking for the girls to be ‘on,’ but Denis wanted that awkward moment between a pose. He was looking for something more real.”

“His was the antithesis of a fashion shot,” she concluded.

In truth, Mr. Piel is more interested in models who can act (and vice versa) than ones who just blindly follow direction. He can (and will) proudly claim that he was the first photographer to have actress Uma Thurman sit for a shoot. There she is in Moments, at age 16, pouting and pulling at an oversized wifebeater that looks in danger of falling off at any second.

The photographer admits to being partial to curvier woman (as defined in the realm of modeling, that is), which also made him an outlier of fashion photography. Isabella Rossellini frequently appears in Moments, as do Rosemary McGrotha and the ill-fated Gia Carangi.

“I wasn’t round, but I wasn’t rail-thin,” former model/actress and frequent Piel collaborator Amanda Pays told The Observer. “He was interested in the female body in a more sort of natural form.”

Ms. Pays admitted that she had originally been uncomfortable with the idea of doing a nude photo for Mr. Piel for a personal collection (though she got to keep her hat in the shot, which she used as a fig leaf). “But there was not something not creepy about Denis. It wasn’t so much about being naked as it was getting to know you as a person. Doing a portrait that was just a little bit deeper than a physical picture.”

Perhaps because, like the saying goes, what he really wanted to do was direct.

“With my photos, I really want to do is tell a story. I want to set up a mise-en-scène,” Mr. Piel expounded, dropping some film vocabulary into an explanation of his famous 1983 photo “Video #4.” (The snapshot features Nastassja Kinski on a red couch, holding a phallic-seeming video camera. She is clothed only in fishnets and a black mesh bra.)

“What a picture really does is make you think about what happened right before the photo was taken, or what’s about to happen.”

Mr. Piel cites as inspiration not another photographer, but Stanley Kubrick: the director had planned to write an introduction to Mr. Piel’s book, but passed away before seeing it to fruition.

“What was great about Kubrick was that he never told the same story twice. He didn’t need to brand himself; instead of today, where people make 10 movies and you feel like you’ve just seen one.”

Mr. Piel’s cinematic flourishes define his body of work. Peter Arnell, the creative director for Donna Karan’s seminal ad campaigns in the ’80s, recalled collaborating with Mr. Piel for shoots of hyper-realistic city scenes. This series of photos evolved into a video ad, which follows Ms. Karan as she is driven around New York, trying on clothes and getting ready for a date. Ms. Karan’s inner thoughts are conveyed in a pre-Carrie Bradshaw monologue of soundbites: “I live for luxury, but the real thing ... an afternoon nap”; “Dark glasses are like being behind a waterfall ... safe and daring at the same time,” and “God, why won’t he call?”

“The video was revolutionary,” Mr. Arnell stated as a matter of fact. “That’s because the best way to engage an artist of Denis’s talent is to explore, and not go in with very tight preconceived notions, like this definitely has to be a print, or it has to be television. Denis was so excited to do film, and he was really able to capture the idea of the modern woman on the go, which is what Donna wanted.”

Ms. McGrotha, who met Denis Piel on an Elle shoot in the ’80s, became one of his most frequently photographed subjects. She remembered him as more as a Kubrick-type obsessive, sometimes having her hold poses for hours while setting up the lights for cameras with low shutter speeds.

“He was very intense, very precise. He always wanted you to live a certain role ... there was a lot of role-playing of different characters,” Ms. McGrotha sighed. “But sometimes he’d want your personality, which was a lot harder.”

Mr. Piel saw the idea of models “playing themselves” somewhat differently. “Sometimes I would go on shoots, and I’d take my own pictures first. Like the Vogue story we did on Amanda [Pays], I took her picture first, before the shoot. I like to get as raw as I can, as much of the personality in the model before they are all made up and artificial.” An odd word choice for a fashion photographer.

He explained: “When Andie MacDowell was chosen to do Sex, Lies and Videotape, the director was very clever. He cast her to not act. She was herself, she was playing herself. And that’s why she was so great in that film.”

Ms. MacDowell was a former model of Mr. Piel, posing for him in Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue in 1985.

“He shot me in my early 20s, when I had just finished wrapping St. Elmo’s Fire,” the Southern-twanged actress told The Observer over the phone. “But I wasn’t a star by any means. I was an introvert, so it was good for me to work with someone like Denis, because he worked like a director. He always came up with some kind of ideas or concepts of a character you’d be playing. He was getting people to play out these roles, and it gave them an opportunity to be bolder than a model normally would.”

Eventually Mr. Piel did become a director: In 1995, he directed his own feature, Love is Blind. The documentary chronicles the first year of marriage between two blind people. Mr. Piel refers to it as “the beginning of reality television.”

After Condé Nast, Mr. Piel found himself as something of artistic futurist. He formed several creative collectives, like the Umbershoot, a virtual “ideasbank” where independent filmmakers could share their work and cross-pollinate techniques and theories. It went belly-up in the dot-com bust. Still ... no regrets.

“Our idea was to have films distributed online; today that’s a reality,” Mr. Piel said. So he was right after all.

Of course, he is best remembered for his photographs. Hence Moments, which he hopes will re-establish him in the art world.
“I was planning to do a book for years, but never got around to it. And then I looked around, and saw that my position within my peers had been lost,” Mr. Piel lamented.

Today, Mr. Piel is excited about a new project—one that takes his latest obsession and combines it with photography—turning the 17th century chateau in the South of France where he currently resides into a “sustainable hotel environment”-slash-“utopian Eden.”

“We’re really into permaculture right now,” Mr. Piel said. “I want to take pictures of this fantasy of a tomorrow where the world has collapsed. People have to think, ‘Well, how am I going to eat? How am I going to live?’ They’ll have to figure out their relationship to the Earth.”

He plans on portraying this fantasy future with a photographic series where semi-nude women interact with nature.

And why wouldn’t they be clothed?

“Well, because we won’t need clothes,” Mr. Piel replied. Ever the pragmatist, he quickly added, “Or maybe we do. Maybe it’s just minimum clothes.”

The designer garage sale was co-hosted by Donna Karan, Kelly Ripa, Emma Roberts and Ariel Foxman, who were also in attendance. With designer threads on major discount, Super Saturday has become one of the most anticipated fetes of the season. Kelly Ripa declared this Super Saturday’s success with an excited tweet (and an ambiguous exclamative): “Whoop!... Everything is sold out! Way to go #OCRF.”

Rutherford.

On a rainy Thursday, guests braved the traffic mess created by President Obama’s visit to New York and streamed into Lincoln Center’s David H. Koch Theater in a blur of gowns and tuxes. High-profile attendees from the worlds of fashion (Hamish Bowles, Donna Karan), literature (Salman Rushdie), rock ’n’ roll (Ric Oscasek, Paulina Porizkova and their two teenage sons) and society (Prince Dimitri of Yugoslavia) all rubbed shoulders with a bevy of stooped Asian grandparents eager to see a traditional dance performance. The Observer was there along with them to see the first of five performances by Shen Yun—a performing arts troupe that showcases traditional Chinese dance and art forms.

We were seated next to a harried Ann Dexter-Jones, mother of the three Ronson siblings. “Can you believe the president’s shut down half of Manhattan?” drawled the Brit. “I had to walk nearly half an hour to get here!”

Associated with the Falun Gong movement, the spiritual group that has been harshly repressed by the Chinese government since the 1990s, Shen Yun aims to show the world the rich and oft-forgot cultural heritage of China while also exposing the country’s current political brutalities.

As such, the show included acts featuring ancient Chinese dance as well as more unsettling modern interpretations of the Chinese political atmosphere. In one dance piece titled “Our Story,” a teacher writes a proverb on the blackboard, at which point Chinese police wearing black shirts emblazoned with the hammer and sickle in communist red beat the teacher to death. Fortunately, the unlucky teacher is revived by the ever-present Chinese deities. While these overtly political messages were rather unexpected for first-time viewers, the more traditional dances were nothing short of a triumph.

In “Chopstick Zest,” inspired by a folk dance from the outer reaches of Mongolia, men danced, jumped and beat handfuls of chopsticks against their chests in perfect rhythm. “I hate these guys who make me look out of shape,” quipped Patrick Harvey, a board member of the Shen Yun organization.

The Koch Theater added much to the atmosphere. The red velvet seats were made even more sumptuous by the giant chandelier, which gleamed like a disco ball, and the crystalline lights planted within the balconies. “It reminds me of Swarkozy,” one guest mused. “Swarovski?” another sought to clarify. “Or Sarkozy?”

After the performance, guests ambled up the marble staircase for the after-party, chatting about the spectacle they had just taken in. Various coteries gathered around tall tables and a variety of Chinese delicacies were presented—including a particularly mouth-watering chicken dish. (We went back for seconds.) Revelers temporarily set down their wine glasses to throw back shots—of tea, that is. A tea-tasting station featured exotic leafy blends from Radiance Tea House.

The Shen Yun dancers also made their way to the reception. The female performers were readily identifiable in traditional Chinese garb, while the men wore suits and blended with the crowd. Although most of the troupe were born in China, the majority were raised abroad. Walking around the party, The Observer noticed several dancers prattling in perfect French with other guests.

We caught up with Kelly Rutherford, wearing a white Nanette Lepore dress, who raved about the performance. “We get so inundated with a sort of intensity and things that aren’t beautiful all the time. You know I think it’s so nice to see something that is almost innocent and beautiful and good dancing,” said Ms. Rutherford wistfully. “It made me crave Chinese food for sure,” she added.

Sex and the City author Candace Bushnell similarly expressed her appreciation of Shen Yun. “I’ve seen the New York City Ballet perform so many times,” said Ms. Bushnell. Shen Yun, however, was something wholly different. “The great thing is that you can really be transported,” gushed Ms. Bushnell.

Averell Fisk—grandson of former New York governor and U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union William Averell Harriman—chatted with his wife, Kirsten, about the hairy political issues surrounding Shen Yun. The Fisks were shocked that the Chinese authorities had attempted to stymie Shen Yun because of its ties to Falun Gong. “It’s just nice to put it to the Chinese a little bit,” said Mr. Fisk of attending the evening’s performance. “You think they’d be proud of their culture!” exclaimed Mrs. Fisk. “Remember the Cultural Revolution,” Mr. Fisk said in a knowing, muted tone. “They brainwashed everyone essentially,” concluded his wife.

Ms. Karan—whose nonprofit organization, Urban Zen, underwrote Shen Yun’s opening night—wore an arresting wooden necklace with large carved faces. “This is from Senegal, and these are from Haiti,” she said, gesturing to her many wooden bangles. “Part of Urban Zen is the preservation of culture and which it really links East and West together,” explained Ms. Karan.

Before long the younger set grew tired of standing around indoors and adjourned to the balcony. Dragging on cigarettes (is that even legal anymore?) socialites including Nora Zehetner, Zani Gugelmann and Alexandra Slatina chatted, fraternized and generally cordoned themselves off from the rest of the party.

After consorting for an hour or so, guests began to make their way back down the grand staircase where Jimmy Crystal gift bags were being distributed. The designer’s website doesn’t lie when it claims to “crystallize almost anything you can imagine”; the goodie bags included a crystal-covered letter opener. (We’ve been looking for one for ages!)

And so, after a week of highly favorable reviews and highly fashionable audiences, Shen Yun must once again bid farewell to New York. Provided they can evade Communist party censors, doubtless the company will be back next year. —Elise Knutsen

It was a day full of activity with networking sessions, panel discussions, a fashion show and finally finished with a cocktail party and performance by Estelle on the roof of Skylight West. The mixture of Celebs and CEOs included Tamara Mellon, Aerin Lauder, Diane von Fustenberg, Christy Turlington, Queen Rania of Jordan and Melinda Gates.
 
The Observer sat in on one panel called "Business as Usual," moderated by Hearst Magazine Chairman, Cathie Black. A variety of topics discussed included the idea of the work and personal life balance, which the panel generally agreed was impossible to achieve.

Some of the advice was surprising, "Try not to always be in the office," said the CEO of (RED) Susan Smith Ellis.

Make-up CEO, Bobbi Brown added, "I've gotten some of my best ideas on the ski slope."

The head of JP Morgan Asset Management, Mary Callahan, had this to say to women in their 20's "Work really hard, play hard, you can sleep later."

Surprisingly accessible, a large number of the high-powered panelists stuck around after their slots and chatted to the other invitees. Wendi Murdoch, was seen chatting to organizer Dee Poku and LA-based former actress, Amanda de Cadenet. Despite a rather intimidating group of women, the large British contingent lent a feeling of coziness to the day that at times made the talks feel like dorm room discussion. Still, business cards were handed out with relish.

Bobbi Brown said, of the conference, "I've just met such interesting people."

Update, 9/23, noon: An earlier version of this post referred to Ms. Ellis as saying her best ideas came on the ski slope. It was Ms. Brown who actually said this.

"Holy crap, it's Martha Stewart!" gasped Precious star Gabourey Sidibe at the premiere of the The Big C hosted by The Cinema Society & Showtime at Donna Karan's East Hampton cove-front home on Saturday, Aug. 7. "I like knowing how to make things out of pine cones," she said, explaining her awe.

Ms. Sidibe, who a plays a disgruntled teenage student on the show, had not yet acclimated to her surroundings. "I'm in some inn," she said.

The hulking craft queen, meanwhile, was attired in a silk, sand-colored blouse. "There's Donna!" she hollered, bulldozing forth.

"Oh, I'm so glad you're here," said Ms. Karan, whose Urban Zen Foundation co-hosted the event.

"Hi, Martha," designer Calvin Klein said kindly, but with slightly less enthusiasm than the hostess.

"I can't wait to see the house. I've never been here before,"

"You're kidding!" Ms. Karan said, "Oh, I'm gonna take you all around, honey!"

The wafting scent of citronella led guests up a curling path from the driveway to a wide teak deck covered in freshly mown grass (concealing a pool, it turned out).

Caftan-clad IMG Fashion honcho Fern Mallis greeted Halston creative director Sarah Jessica Parker and her husband, Matthew Broderick, as they sucked down soba noodles on a divan.

What does the couple, parents of three, usually do while at their Sag Harbor home?

"We wake up at the crack of dawn with our children and we never, ever, ever, ever go out," Ms. Parker said. "Never. And literally, it's Fawlty Towers, we have endless houseguests. It's been great, it's been a good summer."

At around 9:30 p.m., Ms. Karan was crouching at Mr. Klein's feet, back propped against the designer's knees. On the balcony of the house's second floor, Ms. Stewart photographed the scene below with her iPhone.

"A day," Ms. Karan said jadedly, when asked how long the party setup took.

All the upholstery and rugs were white; wasn't she concerned about spills?

"We don't think about it!"

In peril of privacy invasion, Hamptonites hide behind hedges higher than a giraffe's grazing level. But on Monday evening at the Sag Harbor screening of Angela Ismailos' documentary Great Directors, the Transom took advantage of a rare moment of estate abandonment to extract the post-holiday secrets from typically hedge-protected Hamptons habitués.

Cohosts and former Interview editors Sandy Brant and partner Ingrid Sischy arrived minutes before the screening's 7:30 start. The couple's secret solution to Sag Harbor's paucity of streetside parking? Don't even try! They stowed their Mercedes sedan in a parking lot on the side of the road leading into the village.

Sag Harbor stalwart Donna Karan talked with Ms. Sischy at the popcorn counter. The designer mixed a palette of muted tones with artfully slouched harem pants and a pale gray knit scarf, looped and secured in a leather belt at her hips. A photographer approached the pair and asked to photograph Ms. Karan.

"No, no photos tonight, please," she said.

To avoid a similar confrontation, Gulf Coast crusader Jimmy Buffett, hot off an Anderson Cooper interview, arrived late and snuck out the back door of the theater as soon as the credits rolled.

In the back row sat Rudy Giuliani and wife Judith, having slipped in unseen after the lights dimmed. After the screening, the couple greeted cohost Jay McInerney. The novelist, in white pants and a black linen shirt, proffered a double-cheek kiss to Mrs. Giuliani while reserving a handshake for the former mayor.

After some prodding by the Transom, Mr. Giuliani turned confessional. "I have to give it away?" he lamented when asked his secret for dealing with an acquaintance whose name he has forgotten.

"O.K., I'll tell you. It's real simple; I say, 'How are you?'" he smiled.

And if a third person arrives?

His brow furrowed. "I let them introduce themselves. O.K., so, say Judith comes over and I don't remember your name," indicating the Transom with a head nod. "I'll say, 'You've met, right? Have you met Judith before?' And then they have to introduce themselves."

Mr. McInerney has a similar tactic. "I try to get somebody nearby me who I can introduce to them. I act as if they're so well known that I say, 'Do you know Campion Platt?'" He gestured hypothetically to the architect, who looked up from across the table. "Often you can get the name that way. It's basically a beard. You use a decoy."

The secret weapon in Mr. Giuliani's arsenal? He never forgets a face. "I'm very good with faces but not with names, which is why this happens to me. If I've met someone, I usually remember them and I often remember where I met them but not their name, so I can get away with that, too. I'll say, 'How are you? Gosh, last time I saw you was at ...'"

Asked for a solution to avoiding Hamptons traffic, Mr. and Mrs. Giuliani answered in unison, "Back roads!" Mrs. Giuliani explained, "I've been out here 20-some-odd years, so I know all the back roads; I can stay off any main road!"

"We're never in any traffic," the former mayor confirmed.

"We are never in traffic," Mrs. Giuliani repeated with emphasis.

Artist Eric Fischl was unprepared to have his secrets demanded of him by the Transom. "I have none," he offered after a laugh. "Sorry, I really don't. My life's an open book, and it's really boring on top of that."

"So, if I tell you, it's not going to be a secret anymore?" art collector Beth Rudin DeWoody wavered when asked her secret hostess gift. Her dinner partners, publicist Debbie Bancroft and art consultant Joe Sheftel, helped jog her memory.

"That lemon cake you always send!" offered Mr. Sheftel.

"No, that's just for Christmas. There's a vodka that comes in a glass skull that I like to give," said Ms. DeWoody.

"You know, she never stays with anybody because she's got houses everywhere," Ms. Bancroft volunteered.

Ms. DeWoody's secret summer recipe? "Well, if there are kids around and you want to make something quick, I like the bagel pizza. You buy some bagels and sprinkle cheese and tomato sauce on top. But for me, I like to make Huevos Rancheros."

“Oh, here’s Donna Karan! We gotta let her in!” hissed a frantic publicist atop the newly opened High Line Park, even as Parks Department officials were turning away a steady stream of latecomers to the park’s opening bash, held atop its 16th Street section on Monday, June 15.

As guests overflowed, Friends of the High Line co-founder Joshua David descended from the elevated railway, flanked by police officers. “We’re at capacity,” he told the frustrated crowd.

It seemed the A-list was encountering the same problem as other New Yorkers, who have lined up in droves to ascend the High Line since it opened on June 9.

“I think right now our biggest problem is over-success, and just making sure we continue to manage it, and make sure people have a good experience up there,” said Robert Hammond, another co-founder of the group that pushed for the park. Seventy thousand visitors have flocked to the park since it opened, stretching maintenance staffs and increasing fund-raising needs by $300,000.

“We didn’t use any flowers at the event, to save money,” said Mr. Hammond, gesturing to a ceiling full of green balloons shimmering in a sunroom. (It turned out they could be purchased for either $500 or $1,000, to benefit the park.)

In a speech to the packed dining room, where tables went for as much as $100,000, guest of honor Lisa Falcone, who, along with her husband, Philip, donated $10 million to the High Line earlier this month, implored the assembled crowd to help make sure the park succeeded. “My husband says I think money grows on trees, but hey,” she said, to hearty laughter.

Ms. Falcone also told the crowd that her pink-tie-clad husband, one of the park’s biggest benefactors, first discovered the elevated railway when he used one of its steel supports to support himself after a few drinks one night.

The other guest of honor, actor Edward Norton, disclosed his own High Line–related foibles, back when he lived on Horatio Street. “A bunch of us used to go up on the roof when we were imagining all the things we were going to do with our lives, and, you know, have a beer or two, or a smoke of something,” he said. “You would look north up through the meatpacking district, and back then it wasn’t the new Soho, it was the trannies and the truckers and there was this ribbon of green stretching out there.”

Mr. David described sneaking through the park’s chain-link fence with the Fight Club actor, before it was open to the public.

In fact, two-thirds of the park remains fenced off, and questions remain about when the northern sections might open. The city has yet to take control of the northern third of the High Line, which currently stretches above a land-use battle over the West Side rail yards. Friends of the High Line would like to see the city take possession of the park as part of the rezoning.

City Planning Commissioner Amanda Burden, one of the park’s staunchest supporters at City Hall, said only, “I’m very optimistic that the city will acquire the High Line.” Ms. Burden told the Transom that she had been turned away from the park when she went to the wrong entrance. “I said they were absolutely right and everybody had to start in the same place,” she said.

Asked for her favorite view from the floating park, which she has traversed many times in her official capacities, Ms. Burden gasped. “That’s like choosing amongst my children,” she said.

These days, the 48-year-old reformed nightcrawler fantasizes about waking up at the Strand!

"My wife, she reads. I go home and watch [Ultimate Fighting Championship]," explained Mr. Tunney, pointing to his recent painting of a large chalkboard with the phrase "I must read more books" written over and over in neat, elementary-school-teacher script, one of several new works now on display in his spacious studio at 666 Fifth Avenue.

"I used to read a lot of books, but you know, you get kind of swept away in the world," he said. "Finding time for quiet reading in New York City is very difficult."

On Wednesday evening, May 20, Observer publisher (and 666 Fifth proprietor) Jared Kushner, designer Donna Karan and the Cabalist Michael Berg host a reception and private viewing of the artist's latest works titled “The Peter Tunney Experiment," with proceeds from sales benefing the charity Spirtuality for Kids.

“The goal is for kids to have a class basically called Spirituality 101," Mr. Tunney said. "I think it’s such a great idea. It might be the most needed thing for everybody. The big collapse we had, the Bernie Madoff story, all the other stories like that, if you were to really analyze that intellectually, you would see that there is a breakdown of morality and spirituality along the way. These aren’t typos or accidents or anything like that. These are people saying, you know, Screw it! I’ll just do it. I know I shouldn’t, though.”

The day before the show, Mr. Tunney was traipsing about his studio, dressed in khakis, a light blue shirt, and a pair of white sneakers splattered with purple paint, using an unlit cigar as a pointer to show his young helpers where to hang everything.

It's a room screaming with messages: “Inspire,” “Remain Calm," “We live in a beautiful world," to name a few; each one with it's own story that the artist is all too happy to tell.

Consider his "Finding Calm in the Chaos" painting. "There is chaos in the world," Mr. Tunney said. “There is insanity out there, there is murder out there, there’s child abduction, and it’s all going on every day. It’s been going on for a long time. It might get worse. It might get better. I don’t know!"

The artist speaks from experience. Once featured on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, the former Wall Street whiz wound up losing millions during his hard-partying days, palling around with the notorious photographer Peter Beard.

He's settled down quite a bit since then, getting married and moving to Long Island.

Given the recent financial turmoil, he said he's been selling a lot of "Don't Panic" and "Stay Calm" paintings.

“I should have been dead 10 times about 25 years ago," Mr. Tunney said. "I’m happy to be here. I came out of Crobar and became sober. Who would suspect that? You’d figure you’d go dead. But yeah, 10 years with Peter Beard, one year in Crobar, and then go sober. That was my routine.”

He let out a little laugh. “But I did another painting that said 'Enough is Enough' and enough is possible."