It's Sunday

In the car, something called "prehistoric X" on the radio , all music from high school. "she sells sanctuary" is just ending. Along with this facebook slide into the past this holiday, I have been fighting pulling out the yearbooks. All these really hazy memories of people, it's like puzzle pieces fitting together. SO strange.

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a walk in bushwick

today i attended the 3rd ward holiday craft fair, where my friend betsyply (check it out!) had her wonderful yarn and other fun handmade stuff on sale. these things always mystify me a bit, but also make me feel warm and fuzzy (craft fairs, that is). i think it has something to do with being taken to year/fabric stores all the time as a kid by my mom. she'd plop me down by the pattern books and say "find something that you like and i'll make it for you". unfortunately there weren't any unisex pattern books in the 70's, and everything always seemed too frilly for me, but if i didn't find something she'd find it for me. looking back its obvious she just wanted a project to work on, and it it was for me then it was practical. my poor mom, she obviously was born a few decades too soon.

anyway, i got off a million stops too soon, since i was taking the J instead of the L. the hewes street stop was an old haunt anyway, i used to work on scholes st in the late 90's in an artists storage space (you had a choice of the chinese/mexican place for food, or the yummy but all too brief in existence cuban sandwich place.) this was before cellphones (think pagers people) and there was a payphone nearby you could trick into thinking you gave it a quarter by hitting it (it was a bit obscene. you'd hit it, then it would say, in that automated female voice "thank you"). so i walked towards bushwick up montrose, past betsy's old east williamsburg neighborhood (it looked the same), then hit the montrose L stop (all the sudden it went from a wasteland to white people and restaurants), the abruptly turned into empty streets full of warehouses. the light was just gorgeous, and i really wished i had a zoom lens for my little digital camera. i took a few snaps, and here are a handful. i just wish it wasn't so frakkin cold out today! otherwise it was a perfect outing.

iheartphotograph!

i'm featured on there today:

http://www.iheartphotograph.blogspot.com

yeah!

its been awhile......

overwhelmed with work lately, not entirely unpleasant but definitely have let my brain only be in work mode.

luckily have had a few days off to vegetate, and let myself vegetate, so i am feeling refreshed. and i'd even be able to think too if it weren't for the cement trucks which have been outside my window since 7:30 AM.

trying to write a coherent cover letter for a job application is nearly impossible at the moment, yet i keep trying......

otherwise, have been obsessed with louis sullivan. can't stop looking at this picture of one of the columns on the bayard building on bleeker that i took last week. its just sculputure. its the future. its beautiful.

ok, off to eat sandwiches and get away from the cement mixers.

New Academic Building Tour

today i went on a tour Cooper Union's NAB (New Academic Building). I must admit, as its been shaping up on the outside, I'm kinda proud of us for producing something pretty cool looking. its much better than the model/renderings that i saw. A bunch of people went on the tour, one of them being none other than Mr. Owen Soloman, the man who controls everything that goes in and out of the foundation building and can remember your name even if you graduated in 1992. We agreed it was shaping up nicely and was pretty darn exciting overall.

The upper floors gave me sense of moving within space which and not formerly been occupied by humans ever before. Years ago, when i worked for Amazon Movers, we moved a woman into a condo in the 60's on the west side. the space was brand spanking new, it had no sense of history, it contained views of the city never seen before by anyone except maybe the construction guys who built the building. this was such a different feeling from most of everywhere else in the city, which had been trodden on and lived in a million times over. it had no resonance unlike apartments in my neighborhood of the lower east side. i guess i was shocked that a space like that could still exist in the city. funny thinking back on that now, because a million more spaces like that have been built over the last few years. walking in the upper floors of the NAB felt like this to me. space i previously could have never imagined occupying.

The Hewitt building, which was torn down for this new building, was only 2 stories high but very grand inside. it had 3 underground levels, the third one was pretty small, but still noteworthy i think. i have pictures from a tour we did before its destruction, but they are all on film. i'll have to post some at a later date. originally built in the 1920's i believe, it was meant to rise 7 stories. the popular myth on campus was that an underground river flowed beneath it, and it began to sink and therefore couldn't be built any taller than 2 stories. today i learned that it was probably a combination of lack of funds, and very sandy soil on the northern end which was very hard to build on. the building had massive bomb-proof girders in its foundation, and proved very hard to the demo crew to remove. i also have some pictures somewhere of the demo crew and its mesmerizing backhoe operating clearing out rubble.

but now, picture from todays tour. i don't know yet if the building we be as functional as they say it will be, but it will be mighty pretty. Some of these are blurry i know, it was getting dark outside already at 4:30.

Voting day!

Obsessed with the idea of finding out how things are going, but know there's nothing to be done. Someone suggested looking here www.fivethirtyeight.com . Fasinating! Going to hopefully get some ben and jerry's ice cream right now, and then maybe some of that starbucks dealie. Hope I can fall asleep tonight!



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Pie!

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oct 22nd

Oct 21st

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oct 20th

Oct 19th

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Oct 18th

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Oct 16th-#2

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Oct. 16th

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oct 16th

Oct 15th

This must be the secret escape hatch from the engineering building, here at cooper union. RIP 2009. One building which won't be missed, for sure.


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Oct 14th

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Oct 13th

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First try

Just seeing how this works from the new phone....exciting!



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that fall feeling

its nice that the weather is changing, although it means i need to find a bigger board to put in my window which decided to not close anymore this summer. and try to fix my roommates heater, again.

went to Dia: Beacon on monday, i haven't been there since before it opened (when i worked at Dia we were sent up to move Vera Lutter's giant pinhole camera, which we made for her. if i remember correctly it was on wheels, so it didn't take long.). it hadn't changed much, just that most of the contents of 535 W22nd street had been put on display. Nice to see it all again, as well as the "Dia" construction aesthetic.

the best part though was seeing 2 rooms full of Hilla and Bernd Becher photographs, printed at 20x24 i think. ther eis nothing quite like seeing them in person, to realize that they arent' perfectly frontal, that there is a slight bit of keystone-ing, and that these moments reveal the human behind the camera. Photoshop makes it possible to erase all of these so called "flaws", often draining images from any sense of preconception. their photos are even more proof of how amazingly beautiful analog photography can be.

on a side note, i'm having a hard time finding books by contemporary color portrait photographers in the library. i think i must just be having a mental block, cos i know there are oodles. tryingt o find some examples for class on monday. any ideas?

time , oh, and Ellen

so many new ideas, so little time. why is it that you can think of great stuff to make when you really don't have the time, but when you have time you space out and watch you tube? i guess sometimes you need to watch ellen confront john mccain on gay marriage on national daytime TV and hear what lame thing mccain says, then compare it to what hillary clinton said on the same show. very interesting. it DOES in some ways show how far we have gotten just to have someone who i actually gay and a natinal icon, on national television, confront the possible next president with these issues and get a response. I liked hillary's answer the best sort of overall, but it wasn't quite sufficient either. i'm not sure if i agree that calling it "marriage" is the right thing to do, just because there is so much history attached to that word (frankly, a lot negative esp. for women). perhaps it can be called something else. maybe everyone, gay and straight, should have the right to choose between the words "marriage" and "civil union" or something else. I think it should be more democratic across the board, really. everyone should have more rights in these situations.

ok, i didn't mean to go there this morning, i'm not sure where that came from in my brain. i'll go to work now and turn it off.

a few months later

i know its been awhile, and I'm sorry about that, but life here has gotten in the way of thinking in any sort of ordered fashion. wanted to give an update on the collages in public, and here are some pictures i took a few weeks ago of the situations. "accumulation" is totally gone, in that the construction barricade is totally gone that it was on. "glob" has been covered over by some posters. they had plenty of room, I'm not sure why they chose to paste over the collage, but i guess that's just territory. "leaning" has some tasteful additions that almost make sense in terms of its structure, and "gyrate" is on a panel which they seem to take off to access the space behind it. when i stopped by to take some pictures the whole panel was removed and off to the side. seems like it had also been cut down slightly, they left the collage on there and just cut through it. "spurt" is pretty much the same, i really thought someone would have spray painted over it by now! I'm very happy to watch these collages as they morph and change while living in their new outside enviroment, and will post some detail shots soon.

oh and also, 2 of my cyanotypes will be in a show at Soho Photo in November, "leaning" and "pile #3". I won the "jurors prize" (which means he really liked them), so it should be good! more info soon....

the cycle

you know the problem i have with applying for shows is that while i'm doing that, i can't make new work. its good to reflect and all and write about what you do, it helps the work grow, but damn, how much time do i spend formatting my pictures as "jpgs 1900x2400 with a black background" or "no bigger than 100 pixels wide" or "powerpoint format only please". ugh. then again, slides were probably worse.

anyway thats what i've been up to all week (except for going to work), so no wheatpasting. boo hoo.

dubstep

listening to "Generation Bass!" on radio 1, mary ann hobbs show. can't say i've heard mych dubstep, but i have heard ABOUT dubstep for quite awhile. reminds me a lot of pirate radio from back in the day (alien sounds to my 20 year old head) , but more of a mash up. i think i liked starkey the best, but then i was listening through a timy G5 speaker which i know doesn't do any music justice. ok, maybe i like them all. but as usual, where's all the women DJ's? its always boys, boys, boys. why?

"derive" has been on hold due to achy swollen ankle, but finally moved into the studio today, ace bandaged up my sprained ankle and set out into the world. have found some new spaces to wheatpaste onto (ok, one is old and close to my house, but its still valid). i lost my cute little measuring tape though and can't seem to get started until i find it (yes, just buy a new one i know). so many places to work with, its kinda insane.

i'm just itching to walk somewhere, anywhere, but i don't want to mess this ankle up more than it already is. double urgh.

haven't visited my old sites as of yet because of the ankle, but i will tomorrow and take some pix if things still exist. having some ontinuity issues in myhead, but what else is new. worried about the new semester, but can't seem to sit the fuck down and flesh it al out. so many ideas in my head, how do i get them out and into the world? urgh.

worried about my apartment too. we don't know whats happening to us. for the first time in 17 years i have no lease. we seem to be owned by a rather faceless "management company". i know , this is new york, get used to it, but i think we had a good run here. now its time to face 2008. kicking and screaming, but that means its worth it right?

took my old comuter to the studio today, and got lost in a pile of old scans, chunks of collaged photos i'd taken years ago that i scanned a few less yeas ago. some are super cool, but i'm not sure what to do with them. ugh, this whole continuity in project land is frustrating. or whatever.

ok, gotta elevate this ankle and watch some more "the wire - season 5". in the meantime, contemplate this picture of a midtown highrise. i couldn't figure out what was actually going on. why all the doors?

pix from the trip

started to talk about it, but have to finish it later. took awhile to learn this here flickr thing. here's some pictures from my recent trip:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/beatricethecat/sets/72157606790402144/

i sprained my ankle mere hours before leving seattle, and have been battling a wee bit of a cold. so i'm hobble-y and just plain tired. but back to work tomorrow, i hope i can ride my bike! the swelling has gone down.....hmmmmm

on the outside

back to home, back to new york. i can't help but think what it must be like to see this place form the outside. i've been looking at cities from the outside for a month now, even my hometown of pittsburgh to a certain degree. what would i feel about this place is i was visiting it for the first time? just moving here? hard to tell. its my home, and that feeling usually kicks in within seconds of seeing manhattan's magnificent spread of urban verticallity. all other cities are compared to new york, and all others pale in comparison, at least visually, and each has its own identity nevertheless.

soon i will be buried in a fall semester work avalanche of my own making, and any fresh outside-of-new-york thoughts i have right now will be lost, therefore i will try to just talk about them now. i've only been back a day and feel that my attention span has been lost, my mind is darting through 500 things i need-to-be-doing-right-now. shake it off, ladie, shake it off.....

i'll save the trip pix for flickr. too many for here. looky: http://www.flickr.com/photos/beatricethecat/sets/72157606790402144/

i visited 5 cities, and each one was different, of course. some i'd been to before, some not. i had friends who lived in (almost) all of them, and therefore fell like i had a bit of an inside edge.

chicago (3 days). could have been the stress of friends getting dicked around about their potential new apartment situation, and the stress of getting out of new york wearing off, but chicago just seemed gritty. i didn't see all of millennium park, but it just didn't seem like enough of a park for the whole city. there was much walking, and it seemed like the place was sort of divided (like so many big cities) by a giant highway. downtown had some hoping spots, probably mostly during the day, but the action was really somewhere else. the area where i was staying was being overrun with gentrification, much like my neighborhood here in new york. overall it seemed like a big city, but something was missing. once again, i didn't see everything, so i am unfairly judging probably. good food, lots of nice shops, but it did seem like it was trying to prove itself.

vancouver just felt very star trek to me. star trek with uber nature. new new new condos everywhere, kinda freaky really. then the old bit was full of the homeless and addicts, much like the east illage of old. so radical of a contrast. it didn't make sense to me. beautiful place, but odd.

san fransisco. this is the second time is was there, and i realize i might have judged it unfairly last time i was there, because i had a nasty cold. once again, there for only a few days, but i could see why people compare it to london. the "mission" style architecture still throws me for a loop, and i know it actually is california, but it just kinda doesn't seem for real, like it should be a movie or something. it felt like a proper city this time, all big and impersonal and with museums on hordes of tourists and the hassle-y hussle and bustle. and some bad ass coffee at ritual. (vancouver also had good coffee, i must admit)

portland oregon was a big suprise for me. i knew absolutely nothing about it before driving there. once again, i walked quite a bit, then found a cool guidebook, and was just really so pleased with the whole day. it felt so nice there, almost kind of familiar. also, my day began with some nice trash on the street to photograph. but they are so serious about their beer, and their bicycles, and their local produce, and their public transport, well, it just was a mighty wonderful place. i'd like to visit it again sometime soon. my friend robin tells me the downside it that it rains much of the year (london anyone?). hmm,,,,,,.....

and lastly, seattle. theplace that gave me a sprained ankle on my way out. well, the henry art gallery is awesome, and i'm sure so is the REI store, but overall i thought it was a bit bland there. sure, it had some interesting bits, but so spread out. took to long to walk between neighborhoods, and there was just dead space in between.

more to say but my head is back in new york now. for better or worse.......

zzzzzzz

well, i thought i would have posted more, but its funny how tired you get when travelling....the thoughts are there but the discipline to sit down and write is lost. driving is also tiring (6 more hours to portland from california). but i'm on the last leg of my trip and looking forward to going home actually. even though i will be busier than ever once i get there.

some more pix from michigan

just so you know i'm still there, cool fallen in house thing natalia took me to see, on a bike ride to saugatuck state park.....

its late, in the woods (but not i guess)

friday night, and there is some sort of dance party here where i am, in the woods of michigan. just came from chicago, the windy city, and although it is nice there, it is still a bit weird being in the middle of this ginormous country. yes yes there is water enough to feel like there is a coast, but its fresh water, and in my head i know its a lake and has a beginning and an end which is sort of quantifiable. and thats a bummer.

chicago was nice, but i got the feeling that the trash situation there would not fulfill my needs. most of the wicker park area where i was had these back alleys where people put there trash, and things were quite spread out. it was nice that there seemed to be many bikers around. must be tough in the winter, even though its flat. 3 days really isn't enough time to see a city, but the place had a nice sensibility and some yummy food for sure.

airport #1

at the pittsburgh airport, waiting for a flight to chicago. usual airport chaos, they are doing seat assignments for some people at the gate. why? doesn't that seem to be more work for everyone? i dunno. but this has happened to me before in the recent past. i really don't get it.

here's a picture of what i just left. i've ben looking at this horizon all my life. its the property line between my families land and the Guffey farm behind us. it neve fails to amaze me, and somehow magically hasn't changed much since i can ever remember. i've had nightmares before of the bulldozers coming in, the skies all grey, and tearing up the land for a housing development. with the economy the way it is, it might be safe. though i have heard that they rent the fields to other farmers now. no matter, it still looks like its being used the way a farm should.

hmmm, we might be able to get on the plane soon, so i better go.

map

i promised you all a map, so here it is.

spent all day friday driving to pittsburgh from new york. the thought occured to me that driving in new york is a lot like tetris or some sort of video game, and driving in PA is a bit like being on those cars at the amusement park where all you do is turn the steering wheel. well, def. with the cruise control on. both seem sort of unreal though, because you are so disconnected with the world around you. its all inside. and the great majority of this country lives like that every day. weird.

6am

yeah well, 6am was a tad bit ambitious, especially since i set my alarm, but didn't run it on. like clockwork i woke up at 7:30. not construction noise, cement trucks, or jackhammers as of yet, but still my mind has been set to that time. Here's the clinton st. pasting. this is the head on view, but i've learned from taking a side view that wrapping around (adding on) may be possible. if i have time tonight i might just do that, but then again i might pass out asleep. its supposed to be super hot today, not looking forward to it at all. also, here's my pasting accessory, courtesy of H&M....... no new intellectual observations this morning, it will have to wait for my brain to wake up. i'm going to go on the roof now and take some pictures while i still have a roof to take pictures from. we haven't been allowed up there in years, so its pretty special. i have a panoramic spread from 1994 from the roof, will be fascinating to compare.

2am

the moon hangs low in the sky, it has been for days, as its been growing. a group is throwing things around on rivington street, physically in the street, regardless of cards. glass is breaking. things are being thrown. its rather quietly rowdy. clinton street, an asian lady is way more interested in taking out the garbage than seeing what i'm doing with my bucket in the dark corner. i keep waiting for someone to yell at me, maybe so far i've been lucky, i shouldn't jinx myself. its all been rather interesting, this foray into the night, times when i usualy am fast asleep. i know the warm weather keeps sleep light. i should do that now, as i'm meant to be up at 6 to document. zzzzzzzz........

construction

construction on the left, construction on the right. 7:30 every morning, either jack hammers or cement trucks or that damn truck crane, louder than it should be, like its in my room, in my head. i'm up, i'm up, i'm up. i have no choice. urrrrgh. notsogreat when you've been up the night before taking pictures and trying to fend off mosquitoes because your window suddenly won't close at all, and you forgot to cut that piece of wood to prop it closed. you won't forget today (write it down). mmm, sleepy damnit.

night photo of spurt: