Supermodel Kristy Hume, 23, says she wants to retire from the catwalk to paint for a living. She plans to set up a studio this month in Woodstock and start classes at the New York School of Visual Arts, according to an interview in the London Sunday Times. She hopes to get a show in a few years "when I have enough work," and also talked of plans for opening a combined gallery and cosmetics store.
Hume names Egon Schiele and Salvador Dalí as influences. "I've had so many ideas in the past five years and I can't wait to put them on canvas, to see if they match my vision of them," she says. "I steer clear of abstracts and I'm not ready for oils. It's work that will represent me as a person better than modeling ever did." Now under contract to Chanel, Hume was on People magazine's list of the 50 most beautiful people in 1996. She is married to actor Donovan Leitch.
Star Wars hunk Mark Hamill has a new job -- as a cartoonist. He's writing a weekly comic strip called Rib-Man
for the Kansas City Star. The brainchild of former barbecue king Rich Davis, Rib-Man squirts bad guys with barbecue sauce and stabs them with his "golden fork." The first episode of the Hamill-written strips appears Mar. 10.
Shock rocker Marilyn Manson makes watercolors as a hobby, and has swapped portraits of drug dealers for samples of their wares, according to an interview in Raygun magazine. "Yeah, I'll, uh, sniff a big line, I'll get really stressed out, I'll run into my room, and I'll paint a painting in five minutes, you know? I'll blow on it really hard until it's dry and I'll give it to him."
American artist Terry Winters told the British press that he liked formaldehyde funster Damien Hirst. "He's the real thing," Winters said. "Like Coca-Cola."
Sotheby's New York is selling Fred Astaire's set of 12 Regency chairs and an 18th-century George III mahogany dining room table in its English Country House sale on Friday, Apr. 9. Other Astaire lots include a pair of Victorian side cabinets and a mirror. Top estimate for the chairs is $25,000. Consignor is Fred's daughter, cookbook author Ava Astaire McKenzie, who says there's not enough room in the house to keep everything.
Among the lots owned by O.J. Simpson sold at Butterfield & Butterfield in Los Angeles recently: two Tiffany-style floor lamps for $7,000 each and an Art Brut portrait of a girl by disco queen Donna Summer for $5,500. An inscription reads, "Picasso girl is one of my favorites. Hope you like it too. Donna Summer."
Porn diva Cicciolina, who was briefly married to Neo-Pop artist Jeff Koons, says she is writing a steamy new autobiography. The new autobiography is her second, and is not expected to detail the custody battle with Koons over their five-year-old son Ludwig.
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art director David Ross recently woke up one night in his Telegraph Hill house to find a stark-naked homeless man in his bedroom. Ross called the police, but lent the man some clothes before they took him away.
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