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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.

Good Eats

This cookbook is gold! My friend had recommended the test kitchen cookbooks to me so when I saw this at the library I decided to give it a whirl. My counter is stuffed full of cookbooks that are just too time intensive to be realistic at this point. Basically I've got about 20 minutes while the boys watch silly symphonies on Youtube to throw everything together for dinner. I must have cooked about 12 recipes in the two weeks I had the book and as the ultimate barometer of greatness I even managed to make some decent granola from their recipe and I am a notorious granola burner. Huzzah for healthy meals that can be made in a half hour!

Paper Built

Here's a great interview with one of my favorite architects Shigeru Ban. He discusses his involvement with designing disaster relief shelters out of paper tubes and the architecture of basic necessities. I love his seemingly simplistic ideology for creating spaces yet he achieves such beauty with basic geometries and forms.

Imprint

Tonight as I was browsing through the NYTimes art section I thought about the people who have had a significant impact on my artwork and my willingness to pursue art making as a career of some sort. The first person who really helped me to develop my art into a more thoughtful and meaningful pursuit was my printmaking Professor Phyllis McGibbon. I remember halfway through my intro to printmaking semester I realized the satisfaction that comes from communicating some part of yourself through the work you create. And I've continued to be motivated by the A- she gave me in the class, with the instructions that I could do a little more. Art making can be such an arbitrary and open-ended process, one in which I often err on the side of brevity, that I've tried to evaluate my work in terms of her admonition to take it one step further.

Mamasita

My mother has always been my biggest supporter and source of inspiration. Her eternal optimism and sense of humor always lift me up and renew me. Having her help with my kidos is wonderful but mainly I love having her here to talk to and watch a good British drama with.

Hair Today Gone Tomorrow

My mom's been in town for the past week keeping me company, hence the lack of posting, and last night I took advantage of the budget-friendly-free-hair-cut courtesy of my madre. We decided to play it safe with a shoulder length look in the event that a post cut trip to Dollar Cuts was necessary I wouldn't be forced into a Mia Farrow Rosemary's Baby cut. Anywho my new length has filled me with images of 90's nostalgia, basically a combo of Winona Ryder in Mermaids and Hillary Clinton during Bill's first term. After finding this image of Hillary I may take that trip to Dollar Cuts after all or simply embrace a conservative political wife hair cut for a while.

Crossing to Safety

After Jane Eyre, this book is my favorite of my book club reads. The story follows the friendship of two couples, from the birth of their first children through death. There's a nice banal realism to the characters, who are simply dealing with the day to day struggles of marriage, family, career, etc. and yet the author embeds these struggles with dignity and hope.

A Tree House

My magazine of choice for inspiration these days is Dwell. Oh how I long to be one of the former hedge fund managers, dotcom CEO's, architecture dept. chairs, etc. who display their beautiful, modern, unique, never ostentatious homes. I also love the kid friendly vibe that seeps through most of the homes they showcase. My current must have for a future dream home is a house suspend in, cantilevered into, or jutting up against the trees. I love the idea of living in a tree house and the childlike possibilities that it allows for, a swing in the house or a fire pole leading the back yard, why not!

A Good Laugh

Tonight I'm feeling inspired by the joy of watching and making fun of lame movies with my other half, El Camerono. If we find a movie lacking we always feel free to talk throughout the whole thing (in the privacy of our home viewings mind you, I know my proper movie theatre etiquette) which usually ends up making the film quite an enjoyable watch. Ah, the small pleasures of life!

Art Matters

I'm happy to report that my inspiration for today is derived from an actual discussion I participated in versus my norm of just reading a quick online article. Tonight I attended a panel discussion about critical dialogue (and the lack thereof) in the Spokane arts community. It was held at the Saranac Art Projects, a non-profit artists co-op which I just became a member of last year. It was helpful for me to get some insight into the local press and their constraints in covering the arts in any meaningful way (essentially people who read the paper aren't interested in an in depth art discussion which is fair enough). What I took away from the discussion was a desire to set up a network of peers who can give me their honest opinions of projects that I'm working on, and it's encouraging to know that these peers do actually exist in Spokane if I just spend the time to weed them out and actually put forth the invitation.

Moolah

Let me start by prefacing that I'm not planning on getting a divorce, lest one of the two people I think actually read this blog become distressed (hi mom!), nor am I sufficiently out of debt to the point where I'm actually investing my money, but with that said, this article on salon.com got me thinking about my present apathy toward my personal finances. Every so often Cameron and I sit down and go over our finances and budget, and this usually ends with me feeling dazed with a slight knot in my stomach. Basically there are so many moving parts that it's easier for me to just zone out through most of it. This article acted as a nice wake up call for me to concentrate a bit harder next time and unlike the woman writing the article at least I can say that I do actually know that passwords to all our accounts, so that's a place to start.

Marcela

I'm inspired by my Dad's wife Marcela. Not only has she raised two great kids but she is an accomplished jewelry designer. When we visited Texas last year she showed me around her amazing garage studio which was decked out with some great equipment that she has purchased over the years by selling her work. She also set me straight by noting that the sketchbook I was toting around every day was pretty much empty and suggesting that perhaps I do something to remedy that. After seeing all that she has accomplished and the beautiful work that she was making I finally got my act together somewhat and started engaging in the Spokane Art Community and finding time to make some work here and there. It's always nice to be reminded that it can be done!

Benji

Ugh, my brain is definitely feeling depleted of any shred of inspiration as I just watched one painful hour of television know as 'Shedding for the Wedding'. My morbid curiosity got the better of (as well as my shameful secret interest in bizarre reality tv shows) but uh, that is one hour of my life I will continue to regret having given away to the CW.

Anywho let me think back to better times, earlier in the day when I was thinking more clearly and actually chose to crack open a book. I'm reading Walter Isaacson's bio of Benjamin Franklin which I'm loving so far. The quote of the day was some advice given to Franklin courtesy of one Salem witch hunting Cotton Mather.

He warned, "Let this be a caution to you not always to hold your head so high. Stoop young man, stoop - as you go through this world - and you'll miss many hard thumps."

This quote hit home as I always look back at moments when I've allowed myself to become prideful and realize that first of all I usually sounded like a complete fool and end up feeling like a big jerk, and rightly so. However should you ever find me needing a good dose of humility please remind me of the fact that I voluntarily watched 'Shedding for the Wedding' and that should bring me back down to earth :)

Ladies Night (or Day)

Today is international women's day, who knew? Celebrate with me by viewing this gallery of three thousand years of warrior women, which has yet again caused me to regret not playing powder puff football in high school.

the ultimate lazy-girl

I love plopping into our large (imitation) lovesac at the end of a long day, but alas after a few minutes it requires constant shifting to avoid a neck cramp. Enter the mythical liquid expanded polyurethane-fill in this great Shadow armchair. It looks like the perfect end of the day chair and with neck support to boot! Also I love the honesty in the design of the chair, there's no pretension to dignity, it's the complete embrace of laziness and comfort.

A New Look

Perhaps it's the long cold winter drawing to a close (hopefully!) but I'm feeling the need for change, starting with the old tresses. I'm remembering a hair appointment I had in college where the stylist told me, "Now your friends won't tell you this but your hair is really damaged and you need to cut at least four inches off." Well unfortunately once again my friends aren't telling me but I have a sneaking suspicion that I need a drastic cut so I'm thinking short wavy bob with some old school styling a la coco or this ysl ad.

Eve Arnold

Today I took a trip down to our local independent bookstore Auntie's and was sad to discover a rather pitiful selection of art and photography books. But much to my relief I found a diamond in the rough as I stumbled upon Eve Arnold: In Retrospect. I'd never heard of Arnold before but I knew it was a must buy when I saw this photo of Silvana Mangano at MOMA in 1956.

Something's Fishy

Today my inspiration came from the humble canned anchovy (now no longer relegated by me to a pizza topping for ninja turtles). I had never cooked with the fish before, but tonight I sauteed it with some garlic and white wine and drizzled it over roasted cauliflower and my eyes have been opened to a whole new world of tastiness. The sauce even won over the hardened food critics know as two toddler boys who are quite particular about eating veggies as seldom as possible. I plan on doing an epicurious recipe search for anchovies and incorporating more of the goodness into my life in the near future.

Good Read

I would file this article under fascinating rather than inspirational but it was definitely a good read. Here's a link to the NYTimes Magazine's profile of Lori Berenson, one time MIT student from New York who was imprisoned in Peru in the late 90's for her involvement in a revolutionary movements terrorist plot. She was just released and is raising an 18 month old son in a country where she is pretty much universally despised.

Triple Threat

In Katharina Grosse's show at MASSMOCA she combines painting, sculpture and architecture to create a new hybrid medium, just my cup of tea.

London Street Photography

I love this slide show of images from a show up at the Museum of London. In fact I loved these images so much that in my mommy haze I believe I sent the same friend a link to the slide show in two separate emails, definitely a must see. My favorite image is the photo of two women in coats and cloche hats, very stylish.

evaluating

Today at church several members of the congregation spoke about a scripture verse regarding the proper use of our time. There was a specific admonition to avoid idleness which really struck me. I am quite busy each day raising two young children and yet I know that I use this as an excuse for laziness in prioritizing the things that I do. In putting out the most immediate fires each day I often neglect things that will pay dividends over time both for myself and my kids. So I'm going to set some time aside tomorrow to think about goals for myself and detailing what I need to do each day to accomplish these things. I'm certainly not expecting to implement a new system of daily activities or organization strategies at the moment but in the spirit of Bill Murray I'll start with baby steps.

Teamwork

As today was spent cleaning the house and watching the BYU vs. SDSU basketball game, I'll have to look to the game as my source of daily inspiration since the thought of even writing about cleaning makes me groan. But on to the game which was really great to watch. I was surprised to actually find myself caring about this game since I haven't really been invested in a basketball team since Adam Morrison was crying at mid-court against UCLA so many seasons ago (that one still hurts to think about). Watching so many people step up and make shots for BYU got me thinking about all of the volleyball teams that I have played for over the years and how rare it was to be on a team where everyone felt and played like an essential part of the team. That positive team energy is pretty elusive (especially when dealing with a bunch of crazy teenage girls) and so I feel really lucky to have had that with a select few teams. Most athletes pay lip service to wanting to win but it's a whole lot harder to actually put your personal wants behind what's best for the team and to have others do the same as well. Ah nothing like a little athletic nostalgia.

Sometimes you feel like a nut

As part of my continuing obsession with food as art I will be sad to miss out on the pop-up Nutropolitan Museum of Art in NYC. The gallery will consist of photographs of the classic PB&J reimagined and in a move I think all museums should imitate they'll be giving out a free jar of peanut butter (all natural even!) to every visitor.

The Homeless Hut

Our garage is filled to the brim with random construction waste from building our house. What to do with half a package of roofing shingles, 2 bags of cement, boxes full of nails for the nail gun? These are the questions that continually befuddle me as I try to organize the garage in the hopes of some day housing a car there. Well this article about a guy in MA who builds tiny structures in his backyard out of random debris has inspired me to think again before trying to unload it all at a garage sale or pawn it off on relatives.

killer dress(es)

I like to kill time flipping through the new runway shows as they're uploaded to style.com and I probably spend about 30 seconds scanning each collection. These two looks from London fashion week really jumped out at me causing me to actually pause and determine that if money was coming out of my ears (a la Tyler Perry) I would love to wear these dresses. In other fashion news after a streak dating back ten years I believe (minus a few in college) I've decided to let my Vogue subscription lapse, ah the end of an era.

look 16 from Jonathan Saunders

look 1 from Marios Schwab

Oh Gloria!

The Daily Dose o'Danielle has risen from the ashes! Motivated by the never ending winter and grey sky's, I'm back to find something to inspire me each day and share, so here goes. (and apologizes for the random formatting issues from my older posts, i wanted to include them but I'm not about to spend all day resizing images)

I randomly picked up this pictorial biography of Gloria Vanderbilt as a result of arriving at the library 15 minutes before closing and spending the first 13 minutes trying to track down a potty training DVD to no avail. Who knew she was such a talented and creative woman? Actually most people may know this, but I was totally in the dark and knew her only as the name on the back of jeans from the 70's. Her interior designs were completely inspiring and over the top which I loved. The woman covered her walls, floors and ceiling in quilts and then lacquered over the floor until it became a hard flat surface, genius!

Big Bambu

I would love to take a trip out to NYC and visit the Met before this amazing installation comes down. Here's a link to the NYTimes write up of the work and a great video interview with the artists.

Morals via Murals

OK the title is a bit misleading since The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch isn't a mural painting so much a a triptych on wood panels. But here is a link to an interesting read on moral philosophy as it relates to Bosch's seminal work.

Rietveld-Schröder House

My love of architecture began in earnest my freshman year of college in the class '19th and 20th century architecture' taught by Alice Friedman. This was the first time I literally loved the material that I was learning each week in class and couldn't wait to hear more. The NYTimes has an article here about the Rietveld-Schröder House in Utrecht that was one of my favorites that we studied in that course.

Jacob Holdt's American Pictures

Danish photographer Jacob Holdt's photographic record of his five year journey across the US in the 70s has been really interesting to flip through lately. I'm thinking that my work for this upcoming show needs to be more grounded in my day to day reality of living in Spokane, so we'll see how this ends up manifesting itself in the work.

Turbine Hall

The Turbine Hall at Tate Modern has been carpeted with more than 100 million "sunflower seeds" - the latest commission in the gallery's popular Unilever Series. Visitors will be able to walk on and touch the seeds - the brainchild of Chinese artist Ai Weiwei - which are in fact made of porcelain. Each imitation seed husk was individually handcrafted by skilled artisans and now covers 1,000 square metres of the London gallery's Turbine Hall. The ceramic seeds were moulded, fired at soaring temperatures, hand-painted and then fired again over the course of two years.

Home Made

I love this home designed and built by the sculptor Patrick Dougherty. The resourcefulness and craftsmanship speak of the immense dedication of time and love for the place itself and stands in such contrast to the majority of homes built today as quickly and with as little thought as possible.

Service

Watching this video produced by my local church congregation has inspired me to seek out more opportunities to serve others within my community.

Gallery Sit

Tonight I did my monthly gallery sit at the Saranac. I loved a drawing by Scott Kolbo titled, 'Grandpa Makes a Racist Comment' now if only I had an extra $600 lying around it would be mine.

The Chorus

Tonight Cameron and I watched the French film Les Choristes. I was inspired by one of the characters dedication to his creative pursuits in spite of his knowledge that he will never receive any recognition. The film itself was really enjoyable if not very groundbreaking. It's the typical inspiring teaching tale but the acting and casting are great and having two rascally boys of my own I enjoyed it all the more.

The Perfect Loaf

This recipe was given to me by Michael Schmitt, the artist and wood shop overseer extraordinaire at UC-Santa Barbara. Michael inspired me daily with his amazing looking lunches he managed to prepare each day from his small wood shop office using only a toaster oven. As I would sit eating some barely edible panda express he would be dinning on fresh bread and tomatoes from his garden and telling me stories about his time in France. This recipe is perfect for bread novices like myself and is really wonderful right out of the oven with a sharp cheese.