Chelsea garage

Last weekend, my friend Aric took me to Chelsea garage (when he said "Let's go get some junk" I thought he meant "food"). He has goals of filling an entire wall with strange portraits, and I was in a random jewelry and typewriter mood, so this was definitely the place to go.

Huge! I had never been to this place before, but it was FULL of old stuff. Clothes, jewelry, candlesticks, rolling racks, statues, old coins, everything.

My favorite booth/area had a bin full of old photos and postcards, some of them written out to people and stamped (1¢ stamps!). They were of tourist attractions in France, England and the Western U.S. I wonder if those people ever thought that the short notes they wrote to friends and loved ones would end up in a flea market 60 years later, a random 25 year-old girl looking at them and wondering what their lives were like.


I turned around and there was even more - old military hats and helmets, political pins (all from the Nixon campaign) and knives.




My favorite favorite part was the camera bin. They had a Kodak Brownie!





The guy manning the booth was neat too, full of stories. He wrote his name and number on the back of that old photograph for me. Overall, this was a good way to spend that afternoon. This place probably has the most stories compressed into that amount of space in the whole neighborhood. maybe even city.

Terry Richardson for UNIQLO

This is part 5 in a mini blog series: Smaller Versions Of What I Had Planned. I can't let all of the "to blog" ideas that I had floating around in my head disappear, even if they may be irrelevant by now. Here's a brief rundown of stuff I saw & went to that I had to go back six pages in my Flickr stream to reference.

This might be the last in the series. There are other things on my "to blog" list, but they are not time sensitive (not for another several months, at least). I will probably write some entry skeletons on my slightly-longer-than-usual flight this afternoon.

A couple of months ago, I pulled a Johanna and made a friend via the Internet. Well, a few days after this happened, Joseph showed up at Naked with a present! It's a book full of Terry Richardson photographs that UNIQLO had quite a while ago... I think almost a year ago? (do they still, Joseph?)


It came in a plastic staple-top bag with a tag - cool packaging.

A t-shirt is more than just a t-shirt. It's an expression of who you are. Where you've been. What you love. And with hundreds of limited edition t-shirts to choose from each year, you'll always find one that says exactly how you feel. That's the UT philosophy.

Nice, eh?

I forgot who mentioned this, but someone told me that he just walked around NY finding people for this book. I recognized three or four from parties and my neighborhood, so that sounds right to me!



Thanks again, Joseph :)

Tristan Perich @ Whitney

This is part 4 in a mini blog series: Smaller Versions Of What I Had Planned. I can't let all of the "to blog" ideas that I had floating around in my head disappear, even if they may be irrelevant by now. Here's a brief rundown of stuff I saw & went to that I had to go back six pages in my Flickr stream to reference.

I have written about my friend Tristan before... well, on leap day I went to see a Big Deal at The Whitney. It was part of Whitney Live ("Fun, bold and unpredictable, Whitney Live showcases an eclectic variety of cutting-edge performers").


Tristan's email prior to the event read (this is much better than a description I could give):

This solo evening at the Whitney Museum will feature three compositions of mine for ensemble with 1-Bit Music accompaniment: "Active Field" for 10-violins and 10-channel 1-bit music, as well as two brand new premiers. These works explore relationships of physical electronic sound. The event will start promptly at 7PM and is free with museum admission (which is pay-what-you-want on Friday evenings). The Whitney is my favorite museum and I feel so privileged to perform in that space, and on the leap year!

It was incredible. Amazing. A series of violins opened for the first composition, playing along to his music (he sat in the front row, conducting) which eventually exploded into blippy wonderfulness.


Then came a percussion set, and finally Tristan on furiously fast piano (my forearms ached just watching it).


My jaw was on the floor for this entire thing, and I was so, so so proud of him. The place was packed and he looked pretty giddy. I can't wait to see more of his stuff.

Color Chart: Reinventing Color

This is part 3 in a mini blog series: Smaller Versions Of What I Had Planned. I can't let all of the "to blog" ideas that I had floating around in my head disappear, even if they may be irrelevant by now. Here's a brief rundown of stuff I saw & went to that I had to go back six pages in my Flickr stream to reference.


I went to this member preview at the MoMA with my friend Diana. It was definitely a breezier one than Design and the Elastic Mind, but no less thought provoking. It was pretty self-explanatory and centered around the emotional and spiritual power of color. A really interesting part was that the exhibit was brought to us by Benjamin Moore paints.

Anyway, I was very surprised by how many well-known artists were featured. I am not sure why? Anyway, there was stuff by Rauschenberg, Ruscha, Warhol, Duchamp, Jasper Johns and Damien Hirst, among others. I was most delighted by these four:

Jan Dibbets, Colorstudy (close-ups of cars):


Ruscha, News, Mews, Pews, Brews, Stews & Dues (screenprints using mortar & pestle-crushed ingredients like baked beans, mango chutney, tulips, caviar and axle grease):


John Baldessari Common Memory Colors:


Dan Flavin Untitled (my favorite, I love love love light installations):

This one's around until 12 May, get thee to a nunnery the MoMA!

Stefan Sagmeister - Things I Have Learned In My Life So Far

This is part 2 in a mini blog series: Smaller Versions Of What I Had Planned. I can't let all of the "to blog" ideas that I had floating around in my head disappear, even if they may be irrelevant by now. Here's a brief rundown of stuff I saw & went to that I had to go back six pages in my Flickr stream to reference.

This was the perfect followup to Design and the Elastic Mind. I went straight from the MoMA to Deitch Projects for the final day of this exhibit. It coincided with Sagmeister's book release, which could be purchased at the gallery. This one was really engaging and visually stimulating, which I definitely needed at the time.

The second I walked in, I thought of Tahiti, which I couldn't really explain since I have never been there (all I know about it are Gaugin's paintings). I realized what it was when I walked to the back room though: a wall completely wallpapered with bananas.




Some of the lessons that we saw through his art (he had a series of photographs lined up, each one with a different word on it):


- Everything I do always comes back to me
- Starting a charity is surprisingly easy
- Having guts always works out for me
- Drugs are fun in the beginning but become a drag later on

Here was a cool part: dozens of little sketchbooks with hanging pencils. I drew a seahorse in one.


Sadly, I can't recommend this exhibit because it's over. You can buy the book, though.

Design and the Elastic Mind

This is part 1 in a mini blog series: Smaller Versions Of What I Had Planned. I can't let all of the "to blog" ideas that I had floating around in my head disappear, even if they may be irrelevant by now. Here's a brief rundown of stuff I saw & went to that I had to go back six pages in my Flickr stream to reference.

"I think your blog is getting jealous-child syndrome and feeling alienated because of your Tumblr." - Satish

He's right. I turn to my Tumblr in times like these, because it takes less time to post a quote, a photo or a short anecdote than it does to write a long-ish piece on here. I'm sorry :( there really is no excuse. I have thought about taking an hour of time out of my sleep schedule every day so I can squeeze everything in, but really I don't think it would help. Someone at an Adcenter board meeting once mentioned that however much time you're given for something, it will take that long. Regardless of whether it's a week or a day, the same task will fill that amount of time. Nevermind, then.

Design and the Elastic Mind
I went to the member preview at the MoMA with Satish. Everybody can find a number of sources about this exhibit by now, so I won't get into detail about every single part of it that I loved (even though I filled four pages in my journal that day). For anybody who hasn't read about it though, it was full of stuff that showed designers as changing from form givers to essential interpreters. The elasticity part referred to grasping progress (in technology and the world) and making it one's own.



The exhibit was separated into small scale (nanostructures), human scale (interactions with others) and large scale (cities, www, the world, the universe), making it really easy to navigate. That being said though, do not go to this exhibit unless you have a lot of time and mental energy. Going through the entire thing, reading and thinking took us around two and a half hours. SO interesting though!

One of the things I wrote down was a water-moving system that used the Fibonacci sequence to circulate millions of gallons of water with minimal energy. There was some awesome visualization, like what the entire Internet looks like (by the way: it looks like fireworks); aircraft navigation paths; computer chess thinking paths; etc. Relatedly, the NY Talk Exchange was so incredible you should visit this link if you only click on one in this part. Oh god there was so so much more. Shoes that stored your walking & stair climbing energy throughout the day and then were used to power small electronics that night in your home; children's science ideas (including the caption "This is a squiggle. It is a plant that has been genetically somethinged"); more more more.

Visit this nerdy and fascinating collection of ideas, it's up until May. Oh, and the entire thing uses Courier Sans :D

beenkbeenk

I have been going absolutely insane lately; the past three weekends for me have consisted of work (both Saturday and Sunday), among other things. While this isn't terrible (I deal very well with things when I have the option to take a nap in the middle of the day if I like), I have a note on my computer with a mushrooming list of seven things to write about. It includes three exhibits (one of them probably irrelevant to talk about by now (the Stefan Sagmeister one @ Deitch Projects that is now over)), a couple of cool things I have seen around, etc. I'll get to it. I think.

So, apologies. For now though, here is something: my friend Ryan started a blog. Ryan is a friend of mine from grad school, and I've always been able to turn to him for snippets on everything cool (he was like my personal Wooster Collective-meets-NOTCOT). You can imagine how excited I was to hear the news.

Well, Ryan didn't disappoint. Less than a week after starting beenkbeenk, he uploads one of his latest videos called Dream.


For being his first venture into After Effects, I'd say: pretty damn good, kind sir. Thanks for making me smile today.

Everyone say hi to Ryan!