The kid in us demands that we celebrate Halloween despite all that’s happened recently, even if it’s only in our imagination.
Speaking of our inner children, here’s Saturday Night Live’s Stuart Smalley’s crazy-funny Halloween affirmations (video link here — turn the sound off while you wait out the ad): read more…
photo: alexander khokhlov
Make-up artist Valeriya Kutsan has made an inspiring series of masks using only two elements: black and white grease paint. The one is our favorite. Though this one is pretty swell: read more…
Ever since we saw Brazilian sculptor Hugo Franca‘s wondrous furniture hewn from fallen trees, we view the occasional fallen tree the many trees blown down by Hurricane Sandy in our nearby park as POSSIBILITY. Franca has turned the big trunks into places for people to lounge, read, hangout, play in Sao Paulo. We want to “beam” ourselves there to take one of his workshops. read more…
photo: sally schneider
This morning, I went into Marcus Garvey Park to check out the damage Hurricane Sandy did to the huge old trees. They mean a lot to this part of Harlem, as most of the neighborhood hangs out under during the temperate months.
Several trees were down, whole root systems turned on end, including one oak whose trunk was more than 3-feet thick (how old must it be?). Many trees had branches sheared right off, hanging at weird angles like broken… limbs.
A few people stood around the the fallen oak talking about how sad it was, tempering their sadness with the memory of greater damage that had been wrought by Sandy: there had been truly terrible losses and suffering.
I wondered what good could come from it all and from these fallen trees. Then I thought of hauling one home. read more…
photo: Sue Anderson
Today, hurricane Sandy continues, in a different way, as we assess damage around the city, check on friends, re-orient ourselves to a changed New York. Social media has been essential, tweets and texts keeping us connected with power out and folks displaced. Throughout it all, heartening emails from readers made us feel the very far-reaching community around us. Like this one — a post unto itself— from Sue Anderson in Minnesota:
We can’t feel Sandy, but we can see her. From the deck of our home in southeast Minnesota shortly before dawn this morning we could see low on the eastern horizon the sharp line of clouds that is the westernmost edge of the weather system called Sandy, with Venus hanging high above. I snapped this photo and then turned around and snapped another of the nearly full moon that seems to continue to beacon the storm further and further inland. Meanwhile, we are caught in the middle with clear blue skies and light winds predicted for the rest of the day. read more…
photo: manny howard
Yesterday had us jumping all over the web checking out reports of Hurricane Sandy, including the startling report on Manny Howard‘s startling FB page about a Brooklyn chicken coop being mauled by the storm. (As you may remember from My Empire of Dirt: How One Man Turned His Big-City Backyard into a Farm
While we were poking around Manny’s page we came across this photo of the aftermath of an al fresco dinner party — Manny is the master of fabulous impromptu, out-of-control parties. We post it as a relief from the dire reports of Sandy’s havoc and a reminder of other days to come, of ease and joy.
Thanks Manny!
Related posts: …after the storm…
summer tubing party: out-there al fresco entertaining
stout + ice cream floats (for grownups)
smoky, bacon-infused spirits for holiday cocktails
‘what’s not wrong?’ and other ways to start your day
(Video link here.) We fully intended to spend the day working but have found it nearly impossible. We can’t help but be focused on Sandy, which comedian Louis C.K. called “monster sandy franken storm Paul Bunyon shitcloud might start throwing trees at babies in Manhattan”, “the stormatron 5000″.
We’re hunkered downwith candles, flashlights, battery-powered radios, a full larder and a bathtub full of water in case, waiting. New York City is eery: we’ve seen pictures of Times Square and Grand Central, two of the busiest spots in town, without a soul. The wind and rain have been escalating all morning, the trees in the park across the way whipping furiously, at once beautiful and disturbing. A line from the Peter Pan records we listened to as a kid popped into our head this morning: “Wendy had the distinct feeling that something was about to happen.”
The wind has picked up in the huge trees in the park across the way. TV news is reporting mandatory evacuations around the city, as the confluence of full moon, the jet stream and hurricane Sandy’s massive size threatens major flooding and power outages. The sky is straight our of a Ghostbuster’s movie; we’re waiting for the storm to hit.
We spent the morning walking around Harlem gathering supplies, as others did…prescriptions, cash, batteries. We stopped to listen to the joyous gospel that spilled from the windows of a church. As we wandered, we planned our supplies and strategy should the power go out. We’re definitely not into Powerbars; but into REAL as long as we can maintain it.
We’ve stocked up on read more…
photo: magical and otherwise
At the Corner Perk Cafe in Bluffton, SC, an anonymous donor pays for the coffee of anyone in line behind them until the funds run out. Two years ago this idea caught on and now people donate regularly, or even stop by to donate without buying anything. It made us wonder about the principle of random acts of generosity — just because — with no obvious return other than the pleasure of giving freely, making someone happy, or making something better.
We recently took a walk in the park across the way and thought, ‘hmm, what would happen if we just started picking up trash?‘ We would be surprised if we saw an ordinary person doing it; wouldn’t it surprise others? Could this become contagious? What kinds of little kindnesses can you imagine doing just for the hell of it? read more…
In our entire collection of leap pictures, this is probably the most wholehearted. Talk about “taking a leap” or…
…a “leap of faith”!!
It expresses how we feel now that our Email Subscription Service is working again. Hurrayy!! And thank you to our many subscribers who bore with us, and sent us encouraging notes.
via Cute Overload
Related posts: jumping for…art n’ joy!
fly! (merce cunningham)
keep flying!
photo of the day: ‘leap into the void’
how to fly
Once we had a rough plan and sketches for the Laboratory renovation, we needed to take them to the next level: real, accurately measured, to-scale architect’s plans. How do you afford an architect on a very tight budget, we wondered.
This is where we made the first of MANY mistakes during the renovation. We hired someone from Craigslist who advertised himself as a graduate of a pre-architecture graduate program; he made his living by drawing plans and his references checked out well, so we hired him. He arrived at the space with a laser measuring device, and completed measuring a 1000 sq feet in 30 minutes or so.
He emailed the plans a few days later. They looked strangely “off” so we ran up to the space with our trusty measuring tape. At least 10 key measurments were wrong.
The lesson (learned the hard way): read more…
photo: sally schneider
While walking in the woods upstate last week, we came across this ad hoc bench positioned across from a massive, ancient tree. The bench had been forged out of the forest’s own materials, without nails. We love the asymmetry of the stump pillar on one side, and the pile of flat rocks on the other, supporting a thick slab of sawn wood, bark intact. The bench was completely stable and comfortable, and the wood slab ample enough to lie down on, to look UP into the mighty tree. read more…
jane hammond
Some time ago, Marella Consolini of the Chinati Foundation alerted us to the poignant sculpture of artist Jane Hammond. Since it is about fall and leaves, it seems the perfect time to post it. Called Fallen, Hammond’s installation comprises leaves: “each unique handmade leaf has been inscribed by the artist with the name of a U.S. soldier killed in Iraq.”
The work started with 4229 leaves; Hammond continued to add leaves and names as the war went on. We find that the work has greatly expanded our view of fall/change/life, and especially, what happens when we really focus our attention on something. Hammond describes it well in her Artist’s Statement: read more…
Spotted on Elephant Journal founder Waylon Lewis’ facebook.
’nuff said.
Thanks Waylon!
Related posts: xusing your car to speak your heart
public signs that inspire creativity: why not?!
gandhi: ‘our beliefs become our…destiny
powerful words: devise, invent, create, change…
photo: courtesy of tillett and rauscher inc
We were instantly smitten with this kitchen, for its spareness and simplicity (on the upper East side of Manhattan no less), but especially for the marble slab table with a rough, unfinished edge. Such a simple detail to leave undone, yet the effect is bold and surprising. It could be done with any stone surface.
It is the vision of D.D. and Leslie Tillett, influential post-war textile designers whose townhouse on the Upper East side of Manhattan served both as family space and workspace for the textile design and printing. They are the subject of a retrospective that has just opened at the Museum of the City of New York. “D.D. liked surfaces to have broken edges. She had a ‘Wabi-sabi’ aesthetic,” says her son Seth in a recent New York Magazine interview.
We’re going to run over and see it as the house appears to be full of adventurous design ideas. In addition to rough-edged table tops… read more…
