London Fashion Week

What goes better with art than fashion?  It's like peanut butter and chocolate, or rye, sweet vermouth and a dash of bitters.  Ok, maybe rockstars go with art equally well, but that's just like switching the rye for bourbon: you still get an amazing cocktail.

Anywho, a couple weeks ago, my friend Kelly McCallum (whom I'm staying with in London) got a call asking her to create some sculptures for the upcoming show of designer Saloni's fall/winter 2011 collection.  So she created these amazing flamingos with crystals growing on their feet, referencing a natural phenomenon that happens to baby flamingos as they grow up on the African salt flats, to be used in the styling of the room.  And let me say (not just because she's a good friend) but they looked fantastic.

They were the perfect backdrop for Saloni's beautiful designs.  And although my pictures are a bit blurry (cell phones are only so ideal for documenting moving models) this next image gives you a little bit of an idea of how it looked during the show (plus, it's also my favorite outfit from the collection)...

But we had a blast, Kelly wound up being interviewed on Fashion TV, and both of us would up doing a small blog interview about a show you have coming up next month in Shoreditch, which I'll tell you more about when I'm not about to run to the studio.  Between all the free champagne and adorable little fanciful cupcakes and all the fabulously dressed people we met and chatted with, it was one fantastic afternoon.  Although I will say, next time I'm invited to a runway show, remind me to dress up...I was one of maybe 2 people in jeans, and possibly the only woman not in heels...sometimes us artists play our part a little too well and forget that sometimes even we have to clean up a little bit.  At least I'd showered and remembered to put on deodorant.

But you should check out Saloni's fall/winter line:
http://www.londonfashionweek.co.uk/designers_catwalk.aspx?designerid=1790&seasonid=23#pic0
And if you really loved me, you'd buy me a piece or two to wear to my upcoming opening in March.  Or at least invite me to more fashion show, because they can always use more artists in the audience, right?

Happy Belated Valentine's Day!

Just to prove to all of you that I'm one of the greatest friends of all time, I present this exhibit of awesomeness:


Bleeding Heart Cakes from Lili Vanilli (www.lilyvanilli.com/)


Kelly McCallum, the awesome friend that I'm staying with while I'm in London (making this whole trip possible) saw a blog post about these amazing cakes that look like human hearts and then you cut them open and they bleed red raspberry and currant wonderfulness.  And she was so excited about them that I tried to get a few for Valentine's Day...but poor Lili was completely sold out.


Well, a lesser friend would go, 'hey, I tried..."


But I'm an awesome friend...and 22 e-mails and 2 days later I found myself in the possession of 4 of these fantastic confectionary creations.

And Kelly was so excited, she gave me a hug.


And then we ate them after a healthy dinner of fresh pasta with mushroom ragout.


Before:

Thirty seconds later:

After:

Turns out it dyes your mouth red.  But man they were good. red velvet cake, with red glossy cream cheese frosting on the outside and berry goo...now that is love on Valentine's Day.

London painting #1

I understand that some of you might think that I'm not doing anything but eating and drinking, which is in truth how I spend a lot of my time, but I have been making art as well!  So without further ado, I'd like to introduce you to Chris and Laika:

As usual, it's a gouache painting on paper, with just a touch of watercolor to do the plaid of his shirt. I couldn't buy my normal paper here, so I'm using a brand, Saunders Wateford, which I've never used before and it definitely behaves differently than Rives BFK...but that's something that only printmakers and drawers care about, and I don't want to bore you.  I know it's not nearly as dirty as my other work, but sometimes you just need to do something to get you started.  And besides, I have to give myself a little bit of time to make some new friends.

And for those of you who really need to know the juicy details, the boy is Chris, a jeweler friend of Kelly's, and the dog is Laika, and no, she is not a pug, she's a very friendly French bulldog.  Not that Chris isn't friendly.

Brunch English Style

So the Brits don't really do brunch, that wonderful institution so beloved by us New Yorkers.  Is there a meal more perfect for a Sunday then brunch? Rich eggs and wild boar apple sausage, challah french toast with seasonal fruit compote, or wild mushroom omelettes with heirloom tomato salads all washed down with enough mimosas or bloody maries to take the edge off of Saturday night's revelry.  I love brunch.  And the British just don't do brunch.

But what they do have is pub roast.  Instead of eggs and mimosas, you go out on Sunday afternoon to the local pub and have a roast with all the fixings.  At the Dragon, one of my adoptive locals, changes their roast every week.  This past Sunday you had a choice of roast leg of lamb with mint sauce or roast beef with horseradish sauce (oh and there's a nut loaf for you crazy vegetarians) served with roast potatoes, carrots, and turnips, sauteed cabbage, cheesey cauliflower, and a Yorkshire pudding.  It may not be eggs benedict with home smoked salmon, but it's pretty freaking good.

You sit around in the pub all afternoon and eat this giant plate of meat and roast veg and then just drink all afternoon.  Whereas brunch when you've finished eating and have a good buzz on, everyone then goes out for a stroll and window shops or just continues chatting.  There's something to be said for the after brunch promenade, but there's also something really nice about just eating a huge meal and then everyone sitting around all afternoon drinking in a warm pub...which is why it's a good thing I joined a gym here.

And I'll admit, I'll pass on the bloody mary for a Guinness anytime.

EVERYTHING!!!!

There is an amazing exhibit here in London right now called the Museum of Everything, and it has, well, to put it mildly, almost everything you could possibly want to see in a succession of rooms.  It may be the best show I've seen in years.

This incarnation of the show is their third, and it completely focuses on outsider art and a strange collection of Victorian photographs of mostly midget circus performers.  And it's amazing.  It's been a really long time since I saw an exhibit that inspired me this much.  Not that there are ideas that I want to steal, but I walked out of the show chomping at the bit to get in the studio and wanting to know more about a few of the artists and the styles.  It never occurred to me that I need to learn sign painting techniques, or that embroidery could look that awesome when it depicts naked ladies.  I wish I could have taken photographs so I could show all of you how absolutely wonderful it was.  But here at least is the website, http://www.museumofeverything.com/ , and if you're in London see it before it closes...if you're not in London, well, um, you can buy a ticket to London and then go see it.

There aren't really any images on the website, so I found this one for you all ('cause I'm just so nice and want everyone to enjoy everything like I did)...http://www.theartsdesk.com/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=2402:art-gallery-the-museum-of-everything&Itemid=23 They have an image from each part of the show (many of you will be surprised when I tell you that my favorite is Ted Willcox).

Enjoy everything!

Making some art in London

I've run away to the wonderful city of London to make art here, since it sometimes gets old making art in boring Brooklyn.  But check out the studio space I'm in!  I've got a corner in KM Studios, which is a good friend and amazing artist Kelly McCallum, and it's fantastic.  So now on to making art!

From the easy to the the unpopular

Seeing as I have to maintain my jetsetter lifestyle, I'm running away to London for two and a half months in a few weeks, which naturally means I have to switch a bunch of opera tickets.  No biggy, it just means that my opera season is a bit compressed now.  Lucky you! Either you get to hear about lots of opera all at once, or you get a huge break from hearing about any opera and only about my travels...I guess it depends on what you prefer to read.

But the ticket switcharoo means I got to see "Don Carlo", which I've only heard good things about.  I know I've said this before, I'm a big fan of Verdi.  He's just pretty, I can pretend to sing along, you can breathe along with a Verdi aria...I really like Verdi.  And although there are hundreds of people that have spend thousands of hours working on dissertations and studying his work, the basic truth is: he's an easy composer. Non-opera lovers can sit through one of his operas (even the ones that are 4 hours long like "Don Carlo") and still walk away smiling (if it's a good production).  And the MET did a fine job, the sets were nice (well they did include burning heretics) , the costuming understated, but beautiful, and the singing was fine.  I have very little to say about "Don Carlo".  I was really excited to get to see it, I wasn't disappointed, but it sure didn't blow my mind like "House of the Dead" last season or "Lucia de Larimoor" the season before.  Ferruccio Furlanetto, who played King Philip, was incredible I will admit, but he was the only stand out actor in the production. Not that everyone else was bad! They were fine, it's just that that's it, everything was just fine.

Then on Friday I saw "Pelleas et Melisande".  I'll start off with even for an opera lover, two operas in a week is a bit much...but...

"Pelleas et Melisande" is Debussy's only completed opera.  I had never heard of it.  And I was there opening night,  and I know that I wasn't the only one there that had never heard of it.

It's a difficult opera.  Folks that came for Mozart, that love Verdi (and as I just said I love me some Verdi) were not enjoying themselves, a lot of people left half way through (a lot of people left less than half way through).  However, after just saying this: I loved this opera.  It is so amazingly modern, everything that "Dr. Atomic" had tried to be but horrifically failed at achieving (which is strange I compare the two because Gerald Finley plays the lead in both: Golaud in "Pelleas et Melisande" and John Adams in "Dr. Atomic").  It's the imaginary story of an older king who marries a girl he knows nothing about that he finds in the woods.  When he brings her back to the castle she falls in love with his half-brother, and when he finds out, he gets mean and kills his half-brother, and then she dies in the end during child birth (but the king's child).  Standard opera story.  But it's an almost 4 hour long opera, that description took 30 seconds.  The opera is really about all the things you don't say to the people you love and don't love, the withheld moments and possibilities of life, in other words awkward silences and regrets.  It's so human it's hard to believe you're watching an opera.  At the same time though, the story is so far fetched that it blows your mind as you walk out on the street still feeling a little awkward for watching a series of relationships self destruct that realistically when there's absolutely nothing realistic about the actual story.

Debussy called it his "ideal" opera: a symbolist piece not meant for the masses.  There are no librettos, no arias, just musical emotion, and it is profound.  I often wonder why it is that I love the opera so much, and so often the only conclusion I come to is that I love the extremes, but I don't think that's entirely true.  What I think I love is the impossible truth that's hidden in them.  Not the extremes, but the realities hidden in the absurd, and it's the operas that emphasis that part of the medium that I have learned move me the most: "Pelleas et Melisande", "House of the Dead", although not so much "Lucia de Larimoor", it's still just a bella canti opera with a really, really good aria at the end.