Hair, a Bag, and a lot of Good People

I also managed to get my hair cut for the first time in over a year! Tina at Plume managed to fill out my bangs, healthify my ends without cutting too much off. I was really satisfied with my experience, especially that the salon is organic, and only charged $35 for all that attention. And they do free bang trims too!



Hans does this all the time. He's nuts!

I've been hanging out with a lot of different groups lately! Its so strange to think that I moved here little over a year ago without knowing anyone, and now I have friends from Eastern State, Basho, Swarthmore, and now members and friends of Puppetyranny! And its the best when they overlap! Like when Kennedy from Peter Pan showed up at Erika&Jack's housewarming party with her boyfriend! Or how Eli from Basho was roommates with Mark Pruce from USY during college! Just the other day I hung out with Eli and David from the Peter Pan show! David makes these amazing gloves, and his website is great, but you can also buy directly from his Etsy store. Photos by Eli!

Tonight is a play by the Baltimore Annex Theatre called A Fistful of Flowers, hosted by Puppetyranny at Little Berlin!

Tuesday Celia can start moving in to her new apartment, just a few blocks from me!

AND I just discovered that some awesome girls I knew at MICA, Christianne and Jessica, are moving to Fishtown, also just a few blocks away. I think Celia will like them very much. <3 <3 <3

Last night I made scones from this recipe, with cranberries! Yum, breakfasts for weeks!

Also, All the Plants are Fine

Despite that Hans took a chunk out of the Avocado plant, I managed to save him and he seems to be growing back in all the right places. I mean, so its starting over a few months, its going to take 10 years to bear fruit.

This funny thing that I still have growing and growing from the Bryn Mawr Lancaster Boys last summer
Spider plant!


Ivy, oh where did that come from? Ian of course.

Jade is also doing much better than when Ian saw it last.


And if my grandmother doesn't come get her plants soon I might just throw them to the worms!
The worms actually are a sad story right now: I did several things wrong, varying from not enough bedding all the way to not keeping them moist enough. But Matt recently built us a beautiful handle-lid, so I need to get things figured out and start again! Yay wormies! (I hope I didn't kill them, but rather that they escaped out the drainage holes and into the earth and are making babies and happily swimming around down there)

Brooklyn and Back (And a lot of Manhattan too!)

Well, I made it to Brooklyn this time. Saw some amazing people, museums, and I understand NYC/Brooklyn much more than I did. All in all, mission accomplished!

I stayed with Dave on Monday and Wednesday night, and even got to spend some time with him during the day! My AAM card lets me in to any AAM Museum (and others too!) for free, sometimes with a guest too! So I ended up going to 10 museums in 4 days, and Dave got to go to some with me, including the Guggenheim!

The MET is always a good time, and I always end up seeing a new Alfred Emile Stevens painting! He's one of my favorites, and I can't find a book of his work anywhere. I can usually spot him a mile away too!
This lovely work is by Kees van Dongen. I am so in lust with these color choices! (Even more intense in person of course)

I took a walk around the Reservoir while headed to the West side, and took some shots along the way.

I had just enough time to run through the Natural History Museum before having to head back to the Gug, who were nice enough to hold my bag while I toured the city without it for a bit.

Then Kayla was so great, she came in to the city after work to pick me up and we had dinner in Chinatown which was delicious (shrimp in eggrolls! genius!)

Then I went to meet Lizzy Zevallos at a Fringe show that her friend wrote called Tiny Geniuses. Hadn't seen Lizzy since high school: she's the same, but better! Every aspect of the play was simply AMAZING: from the IKEA set, to the actors, to the spectacularly written over-the-top witty dialogue... I wish I could see it again! And best yet, Lizzy knows the girl who wrote it: Emily Feldman. Awesome.
I stayed with Lizzy and her roommate Christina, and their cat Blinkn. View from out their bathroom window:






It was raining a lot, and luckily on Wednesday morning, Dave was home so I could drop my stuff off at his place. Then I took him to the MOMA

How he loves his art!

I really loved this Matisse. I couldn't look away. I need to paint more nudes. (!!!!!!!) (And this particular painting wasn't even at the big Matisse show (on the 4th floor?), and that was really good. We were pretty tired, so I just ran through it while Dave rested outside. It was like a miniature depiction of my week, just running around looking at art smiling wildly and feeling a little bit insane and a lotta bit excited.)

Finally saw a Kara Walker in person! It was really amazing.

Dave left and I hit up the American Folk Museum, sort of just breezed through it, but it was interesting. Then I met him for his fringe show, In the Schoolyard. Not so much my cup of tea, but enjoyable nonetheless. And I got to see two fringe shows! Talk about an education!

Thursday morning I got to see Mark Pruce for breakfast! I have waited YEARS to see him again. What a great kid, and engaged too! Lucky gal. I'll meet her someday soon too!

Then I booked it to the New Museum, where I couldn't take any photos, but had a really good time there too. The space is amazing! Ran to the Whitney, and had an amazing time. I had only been there for the 60s show a few years ago, but was awesome (really, how many other words are as pure as "amazing" and "awesome"?)

Then bolted (note use of increasingly hurried adjectives, as my time in NYC runs short!) to the Frick where I finally saw Ingres' Contesse d'Haussonville... and cried. Like a sap. I didn't expect to, but I love him.

And the Neue Museum. I remembered my love for Schiele and Klimt, as well as discovered George Minne, and educated myself in Otto Dix, of whom I had remained mostly ignorant through my art education.

Thursday night was spent at Ashley Lloyd's, and we went to dinner with her friend Jeremy (how we never met during our years at MICA is beyond me!) and went to a real Brooklyn bar, and then crashed. I saw Chelsea for a minute, and Selina for a bit longer.

(Be cool, make serious faces.)

One more museum: The Brooklyn Museum. It was so much bigger than I was expecting!




And I had forgotten about their Warhol exhibit. I have also been rather ignorant of him, passing him off as "that pop artist" but now I know better!



Then some Kiki Smith, although perhaps I didn't spend enough time with her.


Larry Rivers



And even got to see Judy Chicago's The Dinner Table!!!! It was really the icing on the cake!
Vadis Turner
And even some Louise Bourgeois.


I'm exhausted all over again. Or should I say, inspired? Studio time!

Staying in the Loop!

Alright folks, I'm trying Brooklyn one more time. I've got a few days of working by day and partying by night, and then I hit the open road (via Megabus of course).

I can't believe how busy I've been this summer, with good people, good food, and being productive in the most important areas of my life. I even gave my kitchen a bit of a makeover!

Look at all that CSA food! Last night was one of those meals that the rest of my meals should strive to live up to: corn on the cob with butter; baby potatoes with trader joes olive oil and rosemary from my garden; sauteed eggplant with tj's olive oil, on toasted tj's bread with pesto that I also made for dinner, the basil from the garden, arugula from the CSA, pine nuts from the depths of my cabinets, and cheese from tjs. (everything not specified, is from the CSA). Good gosh it was a delicious meal! And I have tons of pesto leftover!

I'm finally doing laundry at Andrew's today, and will make him some sort of lunch-dinner combination while I'm there in return.

I also bought a bike helmet yesterday. Total impulse buy, but I had stopped in the Bike Stable to scope them out, and I always forget that studio-mate Derrick works there, and was so helpful! And now I just have to fix the bike and grow a pair, and I have lots of people who have promised to bike around with me, and I'm really hoping to get comfortable enough for a bike ride to Manayunk with good people in the fall. (What more could anyone want?)

I've been reading some awesome books, and also have finally gotten some Artnews magazines in the mail. Its so important to stay in the loop!

On the Road Again

(Why, hello August! You seem much nicer than July already! July was really quite a bitch.)

Its really quite impossible to post, when you're so busy (too busy to take photos), and even more impossible when you're sad and busy with sick grandfathers, and funerals. I know my audience here is limited to a select few, but for those of you who knew my grandfather (even for a moment), you knew how special he was to me. There were hundreds of people at the funeral/shiva, and that, I'm sure, is not even a fraction of the lives he has touched during his lifetime.

Shayna's visit was also overwhelming too, but it (above other things) reaffirmed how much I really need to live alone. And of course it was nice to see her again.

I've been in the studio a lot lately, but not for very long periods of time (those mosquitoes are either actually demons, or I am way too fucking delicate). I made a list of all the things I'm working on, and I'd really like to get most of them finished by the time I go to Boston&Providence in October. And definitely by the time I go to Ohio with Celia for Thanksgiving.

I've recently been sucked into the tornado that is Puppetyranny. I've mentioned them before, but I was asked to help with a performance at Vox Populi this past Friday. It turned out to be one of the pieces that I had seen at the Cabaret Naivete a few weeks ago, but it was great to be involved.

Puppetyranny presents Mystic Powers from Jeffrey Bussmann on Vimeo.

I'm on the left. Its actually pretty unfortunate that this is the one that got filmed: we did maybe 7 performances that evening, and most of them were very smooth, but this particular one, we got a new helper, unrolling the scroll. A little awkward at times, but you get the picture.

Also, check out the mouth puppets video!

Puppetyranny is putting on their Prequel to Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens this weekend, and I've been told that I'll be selling admission. I already helped make the duck. Come show your support! Its looking really good.

And most recently, Nadav and Sam have asked me to design their ketubah, so I've started some sketches. Hopefully that'll be smooth sailing, and will bring in a pretty penny too!

And finally, I've just spent the last 2 hours posting a note on facebook, begging for dark hair donations, so I can FINALLY get a move on with the hair art, to sell at the mutter. SO, if any of you have dark hair, and are getting it cut, please send it my way. Much obliged.

Apologies, but I'm Brooklyn Bound

I know, I know, I've been MIA lately. Shayna stayed for a week and a half, Poppy is really sick, I have been working a lot. Several parties and good people have been taking up my time, and I leave right from work today for Brooklyn. Lots of good people there too. And museums! And galleries! And food! I promise photos will be posted soon. A thousand apologies.

"How wonderful, how sane, how beautifully difficult, and therefore true."

Reading Salinger again.


Shayna will be staying with me for a week or so, I must get her a key, as I'll be visiting Jackson (somehow, and only briefly) and my elderly grandpapa and my sillyface gradmammy.