Warhola sits in the flowery café at Phipps Conservatory with her partner Jesse Best. She looks at Jesse and smiles sweetly. They are raising their daughter in a house, not far from where they sit chatting about Abby’s uncle, Andy Warhol. The house where they live was Warhol’s family home and nurtured his bigger than life love of art, culture, and family.
“Every celebrity close to Andy knew a different side of him,” explains Abby. “Nobody got to see the personal side of him, but Andy himself.” The couple met through a mutual Warhol Museum acquaintance and a less than two years later their gorgeous daughter Veva was born. Their daughter’s name is partly a nod to Abby’s favorite Warhol personality Viva, whom she met and whose beauty she admired as a child. Abby’s own beauty is timeless, resembling a young Twiggy from the 60s.
As a photographer, Abby has captured New York Fashion Week and her staging designs have been widely seen on a popular wedding blog, StyleMePretty.com. In the past year Abby and Jesse have made strides as an artistic team that recalls an era of American glamour by using old Super 8 and 16 millimeter film. Abby’s photographic lens innately found its subject using the aesthetics born to her.
It still astonishes Abby how many of her childhood impressions are reproduced all over the world. On a recent trip to Japan, flashes of Warhol’s bright colorful flowers were transmitted on huge public displays. To her, he was Uncle Andy, and there was a time when priceless artifacts of Warhol’s early renderings were carried on a school bus to show-and-tell or stashed under a dusty bed. Abby was a young girl of thirteen, when the Warhol Museum was first opened, incidentally celebrating its 20th year anniversary this May.
“It was fantastic, the big party,” remembers Abby. She also remembers getting stuck in the museum elevator with Dennis Hopper. “He just lectured me about drugs the whole night. I was little, so I didn’t know who half the people were, but I have pictures.” “The party is where I met Peewee Herman. My grandfather silkscreened a four foot Peewee for me. [My grandfather] was the one who led Uncle Andy in his work. He had it; him and baba (grandmother) had it, and really nurtured him.”
Abby and Jesse are working on a documentary to be released in 2015, about the familial and personal side of Andy, which never has been documented before. They typically use a Swiss-made Bolex camera, which is the type Warhol used shooting his famous Screen Tests films of celebrities and personalities. “To meet the family that are so far removed from Andy’s fame that they refer to him just like any other uncle or cousin,” explains Jesse, a professed blue collar, black sheep. “They are this little microcosm of twelve people that are unaffected of how huge he is. That makes them charming and down to earth.” Jesse, who studied film and animation at Edinboro University, also uses Super 8 and 16 millimeter film alongside Abby to create cinematic look books for campaigns and weddings. Abby’s innate ability to pick up subtleties in her frame make her images graceful and dreamlike. “We love the process of film. It’s physical and chemical, it’s nostalgic,” explains Jesse. “You can’t create images like that with modern cameras. And Abby has always been interested in timeless images.”
Formally trained as an interior designer, Abby’s eyes admire the work of Norwegian fashion photographer and filmmaker Sølve Sundsbø, and German photographer Ellon Von Unwerth, whose work is widely popular for its erotic femininity and use of black and white images. “For us, it’s a form of art. It’s a form of photography,” explains Jesse. “We aren’t really telling stories, but capturing a brief moment in time with this film. That’s why Andy’s idea behind his Screen Tests are just kind of genius because it’s a moment in time that can’t be duplicated, it’s its own form of a time capsule.”
Warhol’s early Golden Slippers is Abby’s favorite works, she can’t say why but they echo a simple sophistication. It was fun to imagine who would wear the literal works of art. Abby was 5-years-old when Warhol died, but she imagines that if he were still around he would have embraced social media. They both laugh a little and say that they think Warhol would have collaborated with the likes of Lady Gaga, and definitely beat Ashton Kushner for the most tweets. #classic
Visit www.abbywarhola.com for more on this talented artist.