It’s too late to etch your name on the bathroom walls of Lit Lounge (it closed in 2003), but Erik Foss, an owner of the legendary East Village rock dive, is willing to etch it onto his flesh. Yep: He’s promising to get a tattoo of your name, anywhere you want it, if you contribute $10,000 to his forthcoming art book’s Kickstarter.
Foss and Colab Projects are planning to release the monograph, If These Were Songs They Would Be Sad Songs, and they’re appealing to all of you slouches who never paid for drinks at Lit. As of now, they’ve raised about $10,250 of the $25,000 they’re attempting to scrounge up for a book tour, with 58 hours to go.
The book will collect Foss’s visual art and the photographs he’s taken over the years. If you’ve read our oral history of Lit— which featured some of his photos of actress Natasha Lyonne, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and artists Ryan McGinley, Dash Snow, and Shepard Fairey– you know he did a hell of a job of documenting the downtown scene of the early aughts. The scene that just got immortalized in two new books.
Foss came into the art world as a gallerist rather than an artist. He opened Fuse Gallery, in the back of Lit, in 2001, with an H.R. Giger show. In 2011, he had his first NYC solo show, at Mallick Williams & Co. in Chelsea. (He now runs Tilt bar in East Williamsburg.) He describes the book as “a conversational way to show those of you who are not familiar with my work what I do, and to map out a story about my life in a non linear fashion.” The hardcover edition will gather paintings, drawings, collages, and photos of everything from his mom’s modest house in Arizona to friends like Carlo McCormick, who wrote text for the book, and former Lit DJ Leo Fitzpatrick, who played Telly “the Virgin Surgeon” in Kids.
Check out the Kickstarter for a look inside, and a video of the artist walking around his East Village stomping grounds.