Saying Goodbye to a Collaborator and Friend

I recently said goodbye to my collaborator and friend Armand Ruhlman.

As a filmmaker, poet, writer, and fine arts photographer he was one of the most artistically brave artists in NYC, but you’ve probably never heard of him. And if you have heard of him, you adore him.

Armand was a fixture on the Lower East Side arts scene, ever positive and prolific. He was one of the old-school artists that are vanishing from the NYC artscape and leaving a hole that can no longer be replaced.

I met him at a film festival when I was first finding my way in the business. Shortly thereafter we started working together because we shared a mutual impulse to make weird things. He was open to creating art for arts sake. There was no ego. There was no, “This won’t selling so what’s the point?” or “What will my manager think?” The art was the point for Armand. And that’s what made him such an inspiration.

He was down for anything.

“Want to photo bomb the Cindy Sherman exhibit?” YES!

“Want to invade New York Fashion Week?” ABSOLUTELY!

“Want to go to Trump Tower and film me joking as Melania?” I’LL BE THERE!

Those are just a few examples of projects we worked on together. He went along with my crazy ideas and in doing so validated that they were worth pursuing. I wouldn’t be the artist I am today without that encouragement.

In the hospital room on one of his last few days his friends Marcy, David, and I played him some of his work. In a Vimeo search for his videos I found one posted a year ago that none of us had seen before. There was Armand, seated behind a desk, simply dressed, reading a monologue he wrote. The Armand laying in that room was no longer the Armand we knew, but the Armand on the screen was the artist we loved in a rare appearance on screen as himself. He was hilarious and poignant! All those years he gathered people to act in his videos, but it turns out, he was brilliantly astonishing as himself.

Before I left I touched his heart and vowed to take a piece of that creative drive so that the world won’t forget it. Honoring Armand’s legacy is a matter of leading with the heart, because what else is there, really?