Night of many quotes

My favorite quote from church today came from Henry Eyring's talk about facing tragedy, I was really moved when he said that we never need to feel alone or unloved when we are in the Lord's service (ie serving our fellow men) because we never are.

And on a totally different note I love this quote from a talk that Dries Van Noten gave at the French Institute Alliance Française last night.  He said, “I’m more inspired by things which I don’t like ... nothing is so boring as something beautiful. I prefer ugly things, I prefer things which are surprising ... You force yourself to ask yourself questions. Quite often I make a collection and I say, ‘Here’s a color I really don’t like.’ ... My assistants will say 'Okay, you don’t like lilac,' [that means] this season will be lilac. It’s like you see a color, and you think, Why don’t I like this color? Maybe the composition is wrong, maybe the lighting is wrong — it would be beautiful in silk, but not the synthetic fabric ... That for me is the fun."

Girl walks into a highschool

My favorite adolescent male from Freaks and Geeks

Last night at 11pm while muffling my laughs as I read Rachel Dratch's new book I was reminded of several priceless moments of adolescent embarrassment at good ol' Provo High School so I thought I'd share. Rachel told a funny/sad story of how she rudely blew off a really great guy in high school and has regretted it ever since. I could completely relate to her plight of not understanding the male species as a teenager. Being raised by a single mom who shared my love of BBC dramas, all I knew of men took place in old castles, Italian countrysides (ah, I can hear the Puccini now!) and scenes of dashing young men on horseback, all of this unfortunately had zero relevance to striking up a conversation with a teenage boy in Provo, UT. Thus I basically avoided talking to boys for most of my high school life, even when I accompanied them to dances I still managed to say next to nothing, quite a feat!
Some really cherished memories that came back to me last night include the time I saw a guy who was a few years older than I and one of the 'popular' kids come up to me after a volleyball game with his hand up for a high five. I was shocked and flattered so I reached up and intercepted a high five between him and my older much cuter volleyball teammate, awesome. Also the time I walked down the empty hall between classes and seeing another popular older guy (why was it always these guys!) walking toward me I began having that internal panic trying to decide if I should I say hello and act like a normal person or just avoid eye contact and hope he doesn't notice that I exist. Well that nice young man actually did say hi to me and I proceeded to croak out some bizarre sound in response as I apparently hadn't spoken in a while and had a frog in my throat, and he laughed the whole way down the hall, good times.
I'm actually thankful for my awkwardness in retrospect as it kept me from the dramas of the teenage dating scene (I'm praying all my teenagers experience similar teenage awkwardness so I can avoid it as a parent as well) and has provided me with a good laugh ten years later.

Dream Houzz

modern kids design by new york architect CWB Architects

Looking to waste hours of your day compiling images of beautiful homes that will never be yours? Me too! Start scrolling through images at the Houzz website and time will magically float away. Be sure to refine your search based on your style preferences because some of the stuff on the main photo page was definitely not my taste. It was also interesting to see what interior designers interpret as 'modern' design. I loved the simplicity of the kids room above, with great light and small details like the square window to look out from the bed.

August Photos

Secretary at West German Radio in Cologne, 1931 

While reading an article about the photographer Gillian Wearing, I found a link to this great slide show of images from August Sander's series People of the 20th Century.

Nice Legs

My wire mesh leg project photographed by Erin Brown.

I'll always have a soft spot for art involving women's legs, as that was the subject of my first non assignment based art project in college. Thus I enjoyed reading an article about Larry River's mixed media piece titled 'Legs' and the problems that can arise when you place art outside and your neighbors don't like it.

could you be serious

My mom has been in town and I've been entertained to the point where I haven't spent hours staring at the computer screen each day which is great for me but bad for the blog. I'm always in need of a good laugh, especially after reading the nytimes (I feel ill whenever I read about the Trayvon Martin case), so it's off to Hulu for a nice five minute clip of SNL. The only lady on SNL that you hear about lately is Kristen Wigg, but in my opinion Nasim Pedrad is hilarious in most every skit she's in. Enjoy this Arianna Huffington impression and stick it out to the end for a great joke about Newt.

L Studio

I stumbled upon this website where they have short interviews with artists and other random content (an interview show with Diablo Cody set in her trailer?). The website is sponsored by Lexus who is clearly trying to make us believe they are innovative by association, but since I can't afford a Lexus I don't find the blatant marketing efforts too distracting. Anywho here's a short and sweet interview with one of my favorite architects Shigeru Ban.

Who are the best

Last night Cameron and I finally finished Amazing Journey: The Story of The Who on Netflix. The documentary  had great interviews with Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend. I thought it was interesting to see the evolution of the band, how these rock stars dealt with aging and what they did when their best work was behind them. I was also amazed at how many famous songs Pete wrote which are now such a part of pop culture from their use in movies and commercials. And finally the footage of Keith Moon is crazy, including pastimes such as dressing up like a pirate and running down the beach in Malibu.

Art of Letters

Nobody is a Critic

I'd even take a nice talk with Sister Wendy.

I was reading an article in the guardian about Damien Hirst's upcoming show at the Tate and it referred to another review succinctly titled, "Are Hirst's paintings any good? No, they're not worth looking at". Reading this  bit of scathing artistic criticism made me long for some critical dialogue about my work. I certainly don't want to be told my work is that of an unpromising first year art student, but I miss having a group of artists around to bounce ideas off of. Luckily I've had Emily to discuss things with from time to time, she has been such a great friend and collaborator and will be greatly missed when I head back east this summer.

Ciao Ragazzi

A quick shout out to my favorite architecture professor Filippo, who had a feature in Dwell magazine this month. He renovated this beautiful old farm house in northern Italy. The home is such an impressively seamless blend of the past and present.

illuminated manuscript

My wonderful friend Emily had me over for a birthday dinner last week and gave me the newest edition of Michael Pollen's Food Rules book. This edition was a collaboration with the painter maira kalman and it was such a pleasure to read that it led me to wonder why more authors don't collaborate with artists.

The House that Lawrence Built

I just had a look at this slideshow of photographs from the home of conceptual artist Lawrence Weiner. Seeing his photograph brought me back to my senior year at Wellesley, where Mr. Weiner came to campus for week as a visiting artist. Before he gave the standard artist lecture he had agreed to meet up for coffee with one of the 300 level art classes that I was taking at the time. It was one of the most awkward half hours of my life. There were about four of us sitting around a table with him and I don't remember any of us asking him a single question. Truthfully I didn't have any idea who he was and it hadn't occurred to me to google him or actually check out a book from the art library. As painful as it was at the time, I kind of like looking back and always having that memory of the odd 30 minutes I spent with Lawrence Weiner.

Crazy Pants

After sitting alone in the living room and watching 2 hours of 30 Rock my mind became hazy and I bought these pants online. 

 The idea was that I'd somehow look a little cooler like this lady for example.

 But my nagging suspicion is that wearing these pants and lugging around my kids will make me look like this lady, someone who decided to wear my funky pajama pants out for the day because I'm too exhausted to care.

Color Coated

I love the colors at the Stella McCartney show. Brown tweed looks so youthful with bright pink pants and the combination of blue, black and white looks vibrant and strong. Also I love that she showed pants and coats in this collection that have a nice unassuming, casual quality to them.

The Art You Cannot Avoid

The most random of the pictures Cameron took of me for my written masters thesis, which focused on the analysis of architecture and the human scale in my artwork.

I just read this great opinion article in the nytimes about the need for architectural criticism. The author highlights the indecipherability of much of the academic architectural criticism. Reading this brought me back to my days of trying to plow through the reading for grad school architectural history courses and feeling that I was comprehending about a tenth of what was written. The author also discusses the importance of being able to truly express the experience of being in a space, with all its subtly and nuance in writing about architecture. This took me to happier memories of one architectural design course which required sitting in a piazza for hours on end to analyze the flow of traffic and see how people interacted with the space, or my first design class at MIT where the professor took us to the engineering library and had us knocking on the walls to gain a better understanding of the tactile nature of the building materials. Alrighty enough nostaliga for now, long story short, the article is worth a read.

Blank File

In the late 90's there was a little show called 'Fashion File' on the style network, hosted by Tim Blanks (randomly google has informed me that it was a big hit in Canada). I remember the network had the oddest programming and seemed to basically just run a lot of reruns of shows from other networks. Fashion File was definitely the diamond in the ruff. It was on at the oddest hours so I was always overjoyed when I was able to catch an episode. So much of television's coverage of fashion is celebrity based and super cheesy, with Fashion File being the notable exception (and Style with Elsa Klensch on CNN). Tim Blanks is a great journalist and just happens to report on fashion. Today while I was browsing Hulu after putting the boys to bed I stumbled upon a great series of designer documentary's produced by the Fashion File team about 10 years ago. The interview with Alexander McQueen was so interesting to see in light of how his style evolved over the next ten years and his untimely death. Definitely worth a watch.

el sistema

It's amazing to watch these young kids play.