Cool Pic



idyllic landscape + the big bang = one cool photo

Just Kids



I read a quote recently where someone mentioned that New York City used to be filled with artists and intellectuals and now it's for tourists and people with money, which seemed about right to me from what I remember of my visits to Cameron's place in upper Manhattan. I loved visiting but remember thinking that it would be a great place to live if you were completely loaded with money. Anywho the random source of the quote who I can't remember for the life of me, mentioned that Patti Smith's biography of her time in New York was a great reminder of what NYC was like in the 1970's. So when I saw 'Just Kids' at the library I picked it up and have really loved her honest, unpretentious style and narrative voice. It's great to read about artist's starving for their craft and I'm hoping I can get my own creative juices flowing again since I've been in a bit of an creative funk lately. It was also nice to get a more well rounded view of Robert Mapplethorpe who up to now I had simply known as the lightening rod in the culture wars of the 1980's, and was a bit disillusioned with after having his bullwhip photograph constantly assaulting at me in grad school lectures.

W anew

I currently have a free subscription to W magazine which I've been meaning to get around to canceling for a few months now, ever since I opened my mailbox to discover a naked picture of Kim Kardsian on the cover (I'm still embarrassed about what the mailman must think of me). The last few months I've just flipped through it quickly before tossing it, however this months design issue actually took me by surprise and had a lot of great articles on architecture and industrial design and nary a naked celebrity in sight.

Take a Seat



I loved reading about this chair designed by Asif Khan. The architect created the chair by using flowers collected throughout the city and made structural by the removal of all water molecules and replacing them with a polymer. He also has a great variety of projects on his website ranging from invitations which can be made into confetti to beautiful canopies strung up to create outdoor spaces in Recife, Brazil.

The House that Frank Built


I'm not a mom that's super into scoping out toys for my kiddos, they seem to be happiest playing with rocks and sticks which is fine by me and fits perfectly into our budget. However the other day I stumbled upon this lego set that I bookmarked in my hope of actually owning it some day. Like any good architecture student I'm a big fan of FLW. My good buddy Sarita and I took a memorable detour to visit Falling Water on our cross country drive back to school senior year. Actually being in the space (with original furniture to boot!) was worth every penny of the exorbitant entry fee.

Playdate with the kiddos


I'm a big fan of the Mailbox activity book I picked up a few months ago and just recently reread for some new activity ideas for my boys. Many of the projects are fairly basic however my creative juices just don't naturally flow in the direction of making necklaces out of cereal and so any ideas and suggestions are welcomed by me. Today Mac, Hamilton and I took a few stuffed animals to the doctor courtesy of a flashlight, some vitamin C drops, a thermometer and two ace bandages. A pretty straight forward idea but Mac was completely enthralled and continued to provide excellent care to his teddy bear long after the dr.'s visit had ended, good times!

More or Less




My design sensibilities are a bit bipolar at the moment. I love austere Japanese minimalism or completely neo-baroque and over the top, nothing in the middle will do.

Ah Paris


Tonight I watched the movie Sabrina and was reminded of my teenage love of the fountains at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. I went to Paris at age 12 for a week with my French class and I loved this modern art museum above all. It was a magical trip but I do regret having gone at such a young age when I knew so little of the place. I remain hopeful that I'll be back to visit the fountains again at some point though and until then repeated viewings of movies set in Paris will have to suffice. Anyone have any good suggestions?

Ronny


Ah, Ron Swanson how do I love thee, let me count the ways....

The hair, the libertarianism, the woodworking, the love of breakfast meats, your photo ablum of past meals eatten at your favorite steak house, what's not to love!

Met Fever


I just finished up the book on the Met and loved it more and more with each interview I read. This led to about two hours on google getting more info on the various people interviewed and reading this really interesting article on the new head of the Asian Art Department at the Met. Maxwell K. Hearn is a Salt Lake City native randomly enough who just happened to stumble upon Asian art during a break from school visiting family in Missouri of all places his junior year of college. I love to hear stories of people taking random paths to their chosen profession.

The Met


My senior year of college I took a museum studies course taught by the wonderful Davis Museum director David Mickenberg. We traveled around the East Coast looking at various museums and had a particularly memorable trip to NYC where I fell in love with the Neue Gallery and really loved the playfulness of the Brooklyn Museum of Art. We made the obligatory visit to the Met which was certainly awe inspiring in terms of the size and collection of works, but the chaotic Saturday crowds were a little off putting and aside from the Frank Lloyd Wright living room, which totally blew me away, I don't remember much from my visit to the Met. So flash forward six years and I'm in a city which is currently in the process of having its only notable museum closed because of state budget cuts, wah! In an effort to fuel my slowly dying love of museum visits, I checked out Museum: Behind the Scenes and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I was a surprised by the format of 35 interviews which read as first person essays by various members of the museum staff (I was expecting an insiders history of the museum). The author interviews everyone from the cleaning and floral staff to curators and the director himself. I'm only four interviews in but I'm loving the random and inspiring stories of how these various people made their way to the Met. I love that the head of museum security with a PhD in criminal justice spent a year in college wandering around the Museums of Europe and can still describe visiting a specific tomb in Florence.