Patti Astor describes her and Fab 5 Freddy as "the queen from Downtown meets the king of Uptown" and "the artworld would never be the same". You might know her as the lady ('Virginia') from Wild Style. Astor went on to co-found the FUN Gallery in early 1981 with partner Bill Stelling. This tenement storefront gallery, was the first of the 1980s East Village galleries, and specialised in showing graffiti artists, like Fab 5 Freddy, LEE (Quinones), Zephyr, Dondi, Lady Pink, and Futura 2000. It also gave important shows to Kenny Scharf (in 1981), Jean Michel Basquiat (November 1982), and Keith Haring (February, 1983), artists with a street background who showed elsewhere.
For a while the mix of worlds was unique, with the FUN crew of downtown artists and hipsters, beat-boys, rock, movie and rap stars mixing with both neighborhood kids and the official art world: museum directors, art historians and uptown collectors in their mink coats and limos. The gallery closed in 1985, by which time many other East Village galleries had opened, the interest in graffiti painters in the art world has subsided, and rents in the East Village were rising dramatically.
Check out her mini bio documentary:
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