HH 4 days to deadline

Down to the last handful of days to get the house ready in East Hampton. I love this project so much. What a rad project to be able to build with these guys. It helps that they are unbelievably patient and lovely.

It has been the most amazing thing to watch ideas become . . . physical? Is that the right way to say it - become reality? It's funny though because it's someone else's reality. I'm going to miss this house.

I've been out here off and on for the last 3 weeks. The crew of cabinet makers, painters, electrician, plumber, they all kind of watch me in awe and confusion. I'm moving furniture and buying parts and pieces of electrical sockets and trying to fix antique sconces. Maybe not like most of the designers they have worked with. I love working as in physically moving things, and fixing things. I've been sanding a painted bench that I bought because I want more of the wood showing. I started rubbing the sconces that I just stripped with metal and they look sooo good, just how I would have wanted. It's so nice to be able to make things look just how you want them. It's not something you can do very easily with new things.

It's also really cool that I get to kind of live in the space as I work. For the most part I am on constant ADD mode for real. I'll get up to go get something in another room and 45 min later I'm still dinning around with something that distracted me. Then I'll start something else and go back again. Even at night when I go down to get something I start working on something else. Then I can't find anything because who knows where I was last, or where I could have left something. So crazy. I'm such a spaz.

Right now I'm feeling really excited, anxious, grateful, and a little bitter sweet about finishing. Hopefully the Smillow's will let me come back visit every once and a while.

East Long Island

"Oh, here come the nerd glasses"

Well I still love them.  I've wanted a pair of clear framed glasses ever since I can remember, even though I've never tried a pair that I thought looked good on me AND I could afford.

I walked into this shop on Madison today.  It took guts cause it was one of those creepily perfect, sterile looking stores, but once I got my eye on their specs I couldn't resist.

Water Colorist, Jack Unruh

I came across Jack Unruh's work in a New York Magazine article about Rudy Julianie. The article wasn't very flattering, neither was the cartoon image I suppose. It did strike me though (the image). The freshness of the limited color on the light sketchiness of the drawing reminded me of some little paintings I had been attempting. I still remember Diana Gardiner (my watercolor teacher at the UofU) talking about not "muddling" your colors and such. Something that was a lot more difficult than I could have guessed right off. With examples of one free and easy Utah artist in particular (and I can't remember his name!) - I had spent a lot of time attempting to create whole painting with the deceptively difficult medium. I've been happy with my recent more manageable sketching I've done with furniture, and this artist has given me another little push in that direction. Thanks Jack.


Jacks website wasn't quiet as exciting to me as the Julianie image that originally interesting. His careful paintings and drawings are impressive though. This one above is a cool one. Thanks to my Design Principals teacher I have this uncommon interest/border line obsession with diagrams, so maybe that has something to do with it.

I still think these characters are his most provocative though.
(Thanks Barbara for listening to my rambling, and proving to listen by emailing me this)

TN

I like how alone this house is on it's lawn.  No drive way or walk way, like it just dropped right out of the eye of a tornado.


Why does everything get so pretty when it's old?  It just takes so long to get this way, and then it's gone.



unidentifiable (to me anyway) lush greeness that was fun to walk through

twig birdie nest

how comfy does that hay look?  I have the most 10 year old innocent reaction to the saying "lets take a roll in the hay"  I usually grin inside and think "yes please, sounds lovely."

Oh sex you say? eh.

Interesante

Found Artist : Eva Eun-Sil Han : Collage : Intricate

Erie Basin

I was in Red Hook this weekend (one of my favorite hideaways in Brooklyn) and I passed a little store that I have walked past before, but never been in. It's beautifully mysterious looking with it's black furniture and floors and otherwise white interior. There is old furniture on display in the window of the rickety old building - and if you look past that furniture you can see that the little things inside are too beautiful and careful to be cheap.

It's one of the mysteries of Brooklyn, and New York in general. How do these jems survive in their run down neighborhoods? Red Hook is being revitalized now, but it's no Soho. It's far far away from any subways, and even then it's far from the city and even downtown Brooklyn, but still this little slightly gothic victorian contemporary looking antique store survives?

How ever it works I'm sure glad it does - because there is no other place I would rather be surprised by an amazing shop like this than in a lovely desolate place like Red Hook.

Plus they have a web site so others can get a glimpse of the coolness - http://www.eriebasin.com/shop.html