"Wake Up Sunny!" was the idea originated by our dear late friend Gordon Stokes Kurtti shortly after the circa 1985 Vanity Fair
Magazine exposé of the scandalous will contest between the celebrated comatose socialite's husband (Claus von Bülow) and two of
her children. Gordon -- an artist, writer, designer, wit par excellence, and the first close friend in our immediate circle to die of AIDS
-- in his characteristically chipper invention suggested we market t-shirts inscribed with the slogan "Wake Up Sunny!" for wearers in
support of the (characteristically American) pie-in-the-sky optimism which her loving son and daughter demonstrate in their
devotional faith that though legally brain-dead Sunny indeed live; not only keeping their beloved mother on life support, but
maintaining same in the stylish glamour to which she was/is accustomed -- thereby decreasing the inheritance to which Claus, accused
of deliberate dose tampering the injection that landed Sunny in the aforementioned coma to begin with now comfortably lives on.
Claus, as we know was acquitted of all charges.
When I saw Gabriele Leidloff's work I immediately began thinking of ways to get a closer observation of Mrs. von Bülow's current
state. In April 1998 Gabriele Leidloff taped/recorded a telefonconversation with me by making phone calls to friends in the style
industry to get an impression of her face (optico-motoricity, expression, gestures) from her hair and make-up stylists who attend her
daily toilette.
Jack Waters, New York