Studio Photos

Hello! So here are the photos that I took during class the day before yesterday. We set up the studio lighting (strobes) and got out the heavy-duty tripods, and made a crazy setup with chairs and cloth and random sculpture projects and etc. etc. etc. It was pretty fun, but I wished I could have adjusted the lighting a little more. I did change the photos up a bit in Photoshop, burning, dodging, you know the drill. I'm actually getting into this whole Photoshop thing...

I guess that's the gist of them. Or at least the ones I like.

Tonight I'm going to make some cookies from the Martha Stewart Cookie Cookbook (my new obsession) with some friends, watch America's Best Dance Crew (I just watch it for the sake of listening to Lil Mama; otherwise, I'm a purely So You Think You Can Dance fan [don't laugh at me]), and just chill out a bit. Then, tomorrow, I'm off to my internship.

Until next time....

My Palette is Washing Out

Been shooting a lot in my digital photo class. We did a little impromptu
photoshoot today, with studio lighting etc. I'll post the pictures tomorrow, I think.

Happy Tuesday?

Down to the River to Play

Hello there! Sorry I've been a very lazy blogger, but truth be told, I am going to be even busier starting very soon. I got a job (gasp!) and an internship (gasp gasp!). Yes it's true! I'm going to be working at school as the sewing monitor, which is pretty nice because I get paid to organize notions and stuff and help people with the sewing machines, and perhaps get around to sewing some stuff for myself if I have the time. And the internship, well, I am quite excited about that. I'm going to be interning for designer Rachel Comey! Ahh! I love her clothing so much.

Anyways, I won't bore you with the details, which are as of now unknown anyways. Here are some pictures from a little play date I had the day before I returned to NYC. Some friends and I went up to the mountains and took some photos at a grotto. Beautiful!

And to have such lovely models, oh oh! We had lots of fun, especially being able to drive up in the convertible with the top down. Sort of felt like we were in a corny girly movie, like Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants or Mama Mia, just without all the romance and hilarious scripts/dancing.

And it was so warm, too. Not like the 23º weather going on here in New York. Boo! I want to wear dresses!

A lovely day no doubt! (More photos on my Flickr of course) Until next time...

Little Faces, Little Boxes

Hello Lovelies!

I realize I have missed Mid-Week Magic Hour for the past, oh, two weeks at least. Well, truth be told, I've just been a little busy, as they say. Anyways, I'll make up for it and show you part of what I've been up to...

What's that you say? It's my drawing final. Granted, it is more of a painting/sculpture/installation piece, but my drawing class is run quite, QUITE loosely. Basically, if it has some portion where there is a line on something, you're good to go. Here are some detail shots of the piece:

Yes indeed, it took a little bit o' time. There are 17 gouache portraits of photographs that I took of some people in India during my trip (which was almost a year ago! I can't believe it!).

I painted the faces on tracing paper so that when mounted on the window, the light would shine through and give their faces an ethereal quality. I then made each portrait an origami box out of butcher paper to surround it. After a few snip snips and one very late night, I finished. Now all the boxes are sitting awkwardly inside a plastic "Have A Nice Day" bag. Hmmm...

Anyways, I went to the Holiday Craft Fair at Divine Studio today! It was so inspiring and amazing. I bought an adorable fox clock from Sesame Letterpress! What a nice day. Now I am working on my sculpture project, which is going to be odd. Let's just say it involves a lot of unflavored "clear" gelatin and black plastic vertabrae. I'll leave it at that.

Until next time...

Slipcase Project

In sculpture class, we had to make a slipcase for an object that does not generally have/need one. I chose this machine that is in the jewelry making sculpture studio to cover. It was quite a fun project and I got to relieve my need to sew!

Before:

After:

And some detail shots:

Click on the images for a larger view!

I like to think of it as the ultimate granny project, but some people read the lace-ups as a slightly naughty twist. What do you think?

Hello College

So I guess this is college! It's here! First post in NYC! Living in a dorm is exactly as I expected it to be, especially because my dorm is such the quintessential dorm. Shitty furniture, ugly linoleum floor, fluorescent lights...you know. But I'm working on making it nicer with posters (which I have yet to buy) and postcards. I'm pretty sure my roommate thinks I'm really weird because I have a postcard of Einstein, a turkey (its an Audubon print), and Louise Bourgeois holding a giant metal sculpture of a penis. And then I'm going to put up another one which is a Cindy Sherman photograph of this weird, mutilated face.

Anyways, today I went with the studio art department on a field trip to PS1 on Long Island. It's a museum, I think an extension of MoMA, and I really loved it. The building is an old public school that has been entirely converted into a museum, but without being remodeled, so it still looks like a school. There is art everywhere: in the stairwells, basement, bathrooms, dusty corners, etc. There were a lot of installation pieces, my favorite of which was a bunch of old scuba diving outfits (think metal helmet and all that) which were constructed just a little larger than life, and they were hanging in this dark, small room. They would alternate having a light turn on inside their helmets and then the ones in the back would raise their arms and hit this giant metal sheet with a hammer. It was cacophonous, scary, and amazing. It was actually pretty frightening, especially because they moved on their own accord and were pretty big.

Tomorrow I am going to the Guggenheim with two other girls in the studio art department to see the Louise Bourgeois exhib and whatever else is being shown there. I can't believe I am in New York City!!

A (delicious) failure

Hi.

So...yeah...my dad and I attempted at making a chocolate souffle a few weeks ago, and...it was a bomb. Literally. It was overflowing and bubbling and all "bubble bubble toil and trouble." And the worst part is that we have NO IDEA what went wrong! My dad had even made the recipe before, and had it turn out quite tasty, but this time something/someone messed up.

The recipe we used was from the Larousse Gastronomique, which also has a recipe for a savory ham and cheese souffle that we had also made, with quite less disastrous results (it was excellent, in fact). I'm still a little perplexed; it was like we totally forgot an ingredient or something, because, even after we baked it for an additional 15 minutes, when we tried to pull it out of the oven it jiggled and quivered, obviously still liquified on the inside. I must say, however, it was still delicious--seriously, how can you really go wrong with butter, eggs, sugar, and chocolate?

Anyways, I leave for New York City and NYU on Saturday. It's weird--this is such a huge event in my life, and there have been so many events, ideas, emotions, thoughts, whatever, leading up to it, that now that I am so close to it, I don't know how to feel! I'm just sort of waiting for it to come...

But I am pretty excited.