Fringe Arts: Habitus

On Monday, we managed to catch the last day of Ann Hamilton's habitus, a Fringe Arts installation. And it's not exaggerating to say that just like that, a somewhat dull and purposeless day was filled with strange and hilarious spectacle and delight.



The installation consisted of many huge cylindrical curtain shapes hanging in a warehouse open to breezes from the Delaware River, suspended from pulley systems that you could either spin around yourself. Either the wind or your motion made these curtains billow out like sails or like giant skirts.



There were a number of very serious art-appreciators there, but I have to say that for us the main reaction was delighted laughter and amusement. Imagine that light and happy feeling of twirling around in a flouncy skirt - but times a thousand.



Here is a shot of the rigging that each curtain was on, just to give you a better sense of how it worked. You can just about see the pulley that was connected to a dangling rope pull.



So fun. And plus, we got to see a helicarrier in the Delaware on our way to the exhibit.

What delight came out of nowhere for you recently?

Avoiding the Disposable Wedding Dress

You guys, I loved - LOVED - my wedding dress. It was a true work of art. It was a handmade, unusual, extraordinarily beautiful, flattering, and made me feel like I was floating around the entire day that I wore it. It looked like this:



(I'm the one in the middle, wearing white.)

But then, after one perfect, astonishing day, it was packed back up into its box - forever? When else would I be able to wear 20 pounds of beads and feathers? But, on the other hand, how could it just go unworn from that moment on, a one-use thing like a plastic fork? That seemed like a terrible choice, so I took my dress to a fantastic dressmaker and asked her to split into two parts: a top and a skirt. I don't have excessive call to go to fancy galas, but surely at least one or two would happen sometime.

And, lo, last April, we did get to go to an honest to goodness black tie event at the Barnes Foundation. I did the Sharon Stone thing and paired the drop-dead skirt with a simple tee:



Flattering, magical, floating perfection. Continued bell-of-the-ball effect. It was a wonderful night.



Now, if only I could ever fit back into that beautiful beaded top...

Prague in the 80's

Am I still extremely slowly scanning my grandfather's slides, you ask? Why yes, I am. I definitely thought this would be a one month project, but like with every other thing I have ever done, I was clearly way underestimating the timing. Still, little chunk of slides has revealed surprising treasure. Last week, I started scanning a set of slides labeled "Travels in Czechoslovakia" from 1986.



I don't know where these places are, and my brief attempt to Google has led basically nowhere.



But now I am having daydreams of going to Prague, finding these buildings, and taking updates photos to match.



Looking at these, I can almost exactly see my grandfather setting up these shots, adjusting his camera, choosing his frame. It's like a Proustian madeleine, and all my memories of him come flooding back.

My Grandfather's Eye

My mother's dad, Boris, was an avid amateur photographer. Family lore is rife with stories of him checking the light meter and slowly adjusting the focus on the giant lens attached to his equally giant camera as we, posed and poised, started shuffling impatiently. I loved the cozy and alien feel of the tiny red-lit darkroom that he had set up in a closet in my grandparents' apartment, with its semi-mysterious trays of developing solution, floating upside-down images, and drying black and white photographs hanging from a clothesline. I never wanted to do it myself, but I loved watching him.

Many of his shots were turned into slides. Actually, the division was straightforward: black and white film became photographs and color film was developed into slides. It may have something to do with the availability of the necessary equipment in Russia in the 80's? In any case, I have recently started the long project of digitizing the slides. As expected, there are many fantastic pictures of our family. But a surprising delight has been seeing the more artistic photos that Borechka would sneak in here and there - landscapes, street photography, bits of nature that caught his eye. Here are a few of my favorites:









And what did I look like 30 years ago? Check out those 4 inch diameter braids, people. Those ponytail holders look industrial strength!

A New App Featuring the Little Cardboard Doll Furniture

Check it out: cardboard is going totally digital. Illustrator Gwendi Klisa used my Little Cardboard Doll Furniture patterns (pro tip: get them for free here!) to create adorable backgrounds for a new children's app called "And So To Bed."





I love that cardboard tree too! It kind of makes want to actually follow through on my dream to create a giant cardboard dollhouse.... but that has the potential to be the kind of project that sucks me in to the point that I forget to eat, sleep, interact with the family.

Follow all the latest app development on the app's Facebook page, and see more of Gwen's work on her website.

Art at the Museum

The first Sunday of the month the Philly Art Museum has some nice deals and kid friendly activities.

We romped on over, pencils and paper in tow (after an exhilarating 4th going white water rafting. Excellent time had by all, except Jakey who insists that because he got soaked by the "rafpids" (sic), it was actually no fun).

The kids had a blast drawing sketches and shapes and learning about how to position, plan, and scale their drawings-- it was the best trip to the museum I can remember, they got so into it! They loved the armor and knights, and then after an ill-planned venture into European art 1500-1700 (a bit rough for a four year old's attention, apparently) they sketched some of the reconstructed Roman-era colonnades and pillars.

New Little Kitchen

A nice shiny number from Elissa. I love that wooden oven door!

Don't forget - you can buy your own plans at fortytworoads.etsy.com.

It Came From Downstairs!

Our basement remodel is officially complete! And by remodel, I mean the whole enchilada - zero to hero in just under two months. Here is the whole progression:

We started with your run of the mill terribleness. Doing laundry in the middle of this? Ugh. How clean can clothes washed in this place feel, really?



Framing goes up (check out that space to the left of the washer/dryer - that will be the new powder room):



Drywall is up! You can start to see the eventual utility area solution - a set of four sliding track doors which will leave all the stuff in there very easily accessible:



The flooring is in! We picked an awesome tile that looks like wood, and matches almost exactly the medium brown oak boards in the rest of the house. Putting that down made the craziest difference ever! Also, the baseboards and doors are installed. That whole area under the stairs is going to be one giant walk-in closet:



And now... the finished AFTER. With the addition of really nice overhead lighting (a fixture above the stairs, a faux window over the crawl space behind the stairs, and three rows of track lights hidden in the exposed joists we have arrived at the amazing transformation! Here is a walk-through:













Now we just need to throw some furniture in there (right now, the thinking is - more play space for the kids), and we will really be cooking with gas. Man, I am so totally psyched that we did this!

More Lego

"I'm making wings on this so it can be a flying car like a helicopter"
"this is what my constructions are. What my ingredients are."

So sayeth the Legomaster.

(also I love the "blogger" iPhone app!)

In/Out

Lara has been playing with interior and exterior spaces in her artwork recently. Some of this is inspiration from the way her school's yearlong theme - castles - has tied into learning about perspective drawings in art class and thinking about space design as they transform their classroom into a reasonably functional medieval city-state complete with working drawbridge and moat at the door. (Incidentally? Man, I love that school.)

First, a perspective drawing of a super-minimalist room. It is so totally great, with its mix of detailed ink, patient and technically varied watercolors, and that hilariously wild zig-zag of crayon on the door (aka "I got tired of coloring everything in," which is the kind of refreshing honesty you would love to hear from, say, Rembrandt, and his whole "meh, I don't really feel like painting the hands" deal...):



I really love it - it's now framed and hanging in the office.

And now a series of row houses, which make me happy because, hey, this is what houses look like to a city kid - none of this peaked-roof-with-a-front-yard nonsense that is the only type of house ever illustrated in any book. I also like how the doors get progressively more functional - she is working on taking more and more advantage of the third dimension:

Vacation IV - Wrapping up at Storm King

After a lovely visit to some dear friends and their new baby, we swung up to the Storm King Art Center, a ginormous outdoor sculpture park. Misha and I had been there B.C. (before children), but figured nature + good weather + giant metal sculptures = good time for everyone. Good call, us!

There's definitely a picture of college-age me oh so cleverly "lifting" this sculpture (Suspended by Menashe Kadishman) up from our earlier trip:



It's a cool feature of the place that the changing topography affects the way the sculpture looks. For example, we remembered this one (Spheres by Grace Knowlton) from before - except it was more than ten years ago, and back then? No trees.



It was really a wonderful day, even though we only got to see about a quarter of the place. We're making plans to come back in the fall to check out the foliage - and the cool landscape-based sculptures we missed. One actually looks a lot like those grass waves we saw in Cape Cod!

New Little Kitchen

Check out this little number from Bess! How awesome it the idea to use the space underneath for storage? So brilliant.

New Little Kitchen

Check out this great one from Amanda, who brilliantly put one of those battery-powered click lights into the oven and used part of an old skirt to make the little curtain!

Awesome New Kitchens

So, I have some totally great new kitchens to show you.

First, this re-designed version from Nathan, who beefed up the realism when he, in his words, "made a few tweaks to look more like our kitchen; added a window from some Mr. Potato-head packaging. You can't see in the photos, but I added a drain and trap inside the sink cabinet."



Wow! Now I'm wishing I had thought about all those plumbing details... especially since Mr. Forty-Two Roads recently rather impressively replaced the drain and trap under our kitchen sink to fix a leak. You know, get the kids started on that stuff early.

Also, check out this completely hilarious blog post from Stefanie, complete with a video of the construction process.

Thanks so much for showing us your creativity, guys!

A New Little Kitchen

Joyce's daughter-in-law made this awesome kitchen after getting the instructions as a Christmas present. So excellent - I'm loving the stripes and the multi-generational project!

Some Great Little Kitchens

Sarah built this lovely lavender number:



Check out that brilliant sink faucet made out of a soap pump! Genius.

Here is the one Anne made:



I love that splash of red on the fabric - and the modern faucet placement off to the side. Super swanky!

Cute, cute, cute!

Check out this adorable Little Kitchen from Heather:



I love that green! And that industrial-chic PVC pipe faucet totally rocks!

Outstanding in the Field

Yesterday, we had the most amazing, beautiful, delicious, romantic, fun, and just generally wonderful dinner with Outstanding in the Field, a traveling cross-country feast that sets up tables in farm fields and asks local chefs to prepare meals that highlight local produce. I am not exaggerating when I say that it was the best food that I have ever eaten in my life.

Yesterday's feast was held at Tim Stark's farm, a gorgeous spread that is known for its heirloom tomatoes (over a hundred varieties! Did you even know that there were a hundred varieties of tomatoes? Crazy.)

A three hundred year old ash tree (16 feet circumference!) lives on Tim's farm and anchors the division between the tomato fields and the barns:



The meal is set up as one very, very long table (for our dinner, there were about 150 people!), and the people you end up sitting next to are your dinner companions. We really lucked out in the dinner neighbor department, and had a blast with everyone around us. You can just barely make out me waiving my arm in the air in this photo that Misha took (from a ladder they had set up expressedly for this purpose - brilliant!).



The view from our hillside table was incredible.



Everyone was asked to bring their own plates, which added a really cute country touch.



Ok, ok, and finally - the food.

The winner of the passed hors d'oeuvres (well, if we were playing it Top Chef style... which we were) were these gazpacho water shots. What is gazpacho water? We couldn't figure it out, but we couldn't stop downing these. They were cool, slightly spicy, extremely flavorful, and completely addictive.



The four course dinner started with this smoked heirloom tomato and goat cheese salad. The pictures make it look simple, but it was dressed with some kind of tomato reduction that was out of this world. No one could get enough of this stuff.



Next, trout. And when I say trout, I mean the best prepared fish I have ever tasted. I don't even really like fish all that much, and I was trying as politely as possible to fight off other to get seconds (ok, more like fourths or fifths...). The trout was on a bed of fingerling potatoes, sorrels, quail eggs, marinated mushrooms, and onions prepared in some heavenly way that I can't begin to guess at.



The main course was chicken two ways - white meat done to perfection with herbs, and dark meat made into a crispy confit. Unbelievable. We got to meet the farmer whose chickens these were - the hilarious, gruff-voiced Tom Colbaugh from Happy Farm.



Really, just a perfect, perfect, perfect day.



P.S. Thanks, Mom, for being with the kids while we had the time of our lives!