It's not often that you come across a real old-fashioned cobbler's shop – a place were hides become shoes with a minimum of steps in between. Doing the galleries on the Lower East Side in New York, I stumbled on just such a place: the miniscule A.B.K. Leather, where the Belarussian Alya B. Kazakevich cobbles up a storm. I'm not sure I love the products themselves. They've got a tiny touch of the hippy to them. But the process that goes into them seems absolutely right, and as good as most of what goes on among New York's painters.
