confessions of a blueberry bandit

Escape to New York!

Andy & I hopped our train to New York and had a fabulous time! 

I left my "real" camera in my suitcase for the entire trip and only photographed with my iPhone.  I have to admit it was really liberating...  This is coming from someone who used to lug around a large-format (film) camera and tripod and all the accoutrements.  Now I have been completely seduced by digital technology.  It's funny, but getting an iPhone (after resisting it forever) really reignited my love of photographing.  How amazing is it to take a photo and instantly share it with the world?  (Hello, future!  It's so nice to meet you!)

Anyway, it was a lovely & inspiring trip overall.  Please join me (and forgive the ridiculously long post)...

I really loved the unexpected deco lettering on the train station door...

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We had a sleeper car on the way up... It was tiny & expensive, but sooooo worth it!  If you ever travel by train, I highly recommend the upgrade.  (The 19-hour return home in regular seats was miserable...)

  

Am I the only one who gets excited about things like folding sinks?

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There was no lack of graffiti on the train ride... You tend see the skeeziest parts of each city you pass through.  My favorite graffiti was simply the word "crotch" scrawled across a wall. Sadly I did not get a picture.

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 Lovely sunrise view from the train.

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Breakfasting in the diner car.

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Somewhere in Virginia?

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Washington, D.C.

 

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And finally in the big city...

Have I mentioned that I love Hipstamatic?  Yeah, it's trendy, but it makes everything look so great.

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Sake at a Brooklyn sushi joint.

(I ate so much good food, not to mention cupcakes and rice pudding... Why didn't I take more pictures?)

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Henry Darger exhibit at the American Folk Art Museum!!!  Most of the exhibit featured Darger's personal collection of art & ephemera, but there were a couple of his (amazing) large panels.  It was a small-ish exhibit, but great nonetheless.

 

Kasia's a little unsure about what's going on here...

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Somewhat creepy wooden dolls, also in the folk art museum...

And an even creepier hair wreath.  I was fascinated by this.

We also spent some time in the MOMA, one of my favorite museums, but I think I had killed my phone battery by then, so no pictures...)

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And on to the wedding, the whole reason for the trip!

Smokestack in the park where my friends had their wedding.  I can't remember the name of the little park... somewhere in Williamsburg, right by the water.

Chris & Annie getting hitched... It was the windiest day ever, but a really lovely wedding.

 

   The happy couple!

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Amazing view from the park.

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Wedding party jump!

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Andy & me & my amazing wind-blown hair...

Weddings are just like roller coasters!

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That's my man...

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After the ceremony, the bride & groom and most of the wedding party hopped on bicycles and rode to Aurora, where we enjoyed a lovely dinner, and then on to The Richardson, a speak-easy bar where I had an amazing drink called a "Scottish Dew."  All I can say is whiskey and cucumber.  Yum.

Post-wedding sparklers at the bar!

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My last full day in the city I was able to spend some time with my uncle & aunt & cousins who live in NY.  I don't see them often, so I was really pleased that it all worked out.  We had lunch together in a great  Turkish restaurant in Brooklyn, and then just the gals broke off and traipsed around Manhattan.

 

 

They took me to Dylan's Candy Bar, a child's dream-come-true (but potentially a parent's nightmare!), and had frozen hot chocolate.  And cupcakes.  And immediately lapsed into sugar comas.  It was great.

The gumball tabletops and peppermint-striped seats were such a nice touch!

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We spent a long time walking along Central Park and did the customary carousel ride... I love the Central Park carousel so much!

 

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We also explored the High Line, which was new since I was last in NY, and was a really great way to see the city.

It was sad to say goodbye... 

But it was also nice to return home to my little house and my animals.  I'm feeling recharged and ready to get back into makin' stuff.  Hopefully I will have something to share soon!

♥

 

My Cherry Amour...

It may have been 72 degrees outside yesterday, but there's talk of snow tomorrow!  Cherry and her sweet little bluebird friend are ready with their matching scarves!  I will be listing them in the shop in just a moment...

This will most likely be the last morsel of progress before I leave for Paris.  As excited as I am, I've been having all sorts of anxiety-laden dreams about being mute and invisible, usually startled to find myself in places I never meant to find...  But it will all be OK!  Somehow I will pack my suitcase and navigate my way through airports and take my first solo taxi ride in a foreign country...  And then I will laugh at myself for being so neurotic about it all while I consume large amounts of fancy wine and cheese.

I want to share a recent addition to my little art collection, a painting by my friend Rizzie Gallego:

Little Boobies, painting on wood panel

I took one look at the tiny bunny slippers and the painting's name itself, and I knew it was meant to be!  (I'll let you deduce why I like the name so much...)  That Rizzie is a talented gal.

Well, I'm off to trade my paltry American dollars for some Euros.  It's going to hurt just a little bit.  I'll try to post again before I leave.  Have a lovely weekend!!!

I Want...Cookies

Portrait With a Cookie...

Once upon a time when I worked in the hospital ICU, I was instructed to check on a little lady who had been buzzing desperately for help all afternoon.  Thinking something must be dreadfully wrong, I raced in and was told in a tiny, sweet voice, "I want... cookies."  Sadly, she couldn't have any cookies, and I had to be the one to break her heart with the news.  Fortunately for this bunny there were no unrequited cookies!  He still seems to be sad, though, as he is all alone in my shop! 

As you can see, I did manage one step in the direction of Progress, though I have to admit that the studio is still unusable.  Sigh... I think I will miss the ache of hours spent slumped on the couch with a project in my lap!  Said projects will have to wait, as I felt a strange need to martyr myself to the cause of a 6o-hour work week.  Sigh (again)...  Not only am I unable to say NO, but I readily volunteer myself with no prompting.  What is wrong with me?

Thanks to unusually blustery winds, I lost electricity for most of the day and have to make up some of my endless work hours tonight.  But I will be back soon!   Have a delightful week!

p.s.

Reluctant Progress Note #9... by Sara K.

And the latest painting that I have been agonizing over...

I call it Portrait with a Lollipop.  It is waiting here...

Once again I have let a million years pass between posts...  I have been battling a very unpleasant cold and a crippling case of the blues.  During this time I found myself feeling very conflicted about most things, including blogs.  And even more specifically, the constant need to be perky and appropriate and adequate and fake (and a never-ending list of other undesirable adjectives)...  I wrote a couple of ill-fated blog indictments that were incredibly whiny and negative and terribly cliche...   Thank goodness I had the sense to think about these little rants before sharing them with the world!  In the end I decided I was thinking about  it all way too much and that I just needed to step away for a little while.  (Have you ever been embarrassed because you've found yourself exclaiming the word blog too much in public?)

Today, despite my lingering cold, my emotions seem to be in check.  So I'm blogging.  Just like that .  No pressure, no imagined need to be anything other than what I am at this very moment-- a gal who is glad the wretched month of January is over, a gal in great need of a lozenge so she can face the world whispering blog... blog... blog...

p.s.  Seriously, if I seem like a total loon, just blame it on the cold medication!

Reluctant Progress Note #8

Hello, Hello, dear friends in the blogosphere!

I have time for just a wee little Progress Note...  I spent the last two days sharing a table with Emily at the Big City Bread holiday sale.  I didn't sell as much as I would have liked, but I had a great time!  Emily and I were quickly labeled those girls with the cute stuff...  We endured freezing temperatures, blustery winds, and a whole lotta smoke from a nearby fire pit, but we managed to survive with lots of hot cocoa and good conversation.  Here are some not-so-great photos of our set-up:

Amazingly, these stockings (the cutest stockings ever!!!) did not sell, though every single person who approached my little table freaked out over them...

I have listed them in my shop, and also these holiday cards:

In a most fortuitous exchange, I traded one of my bunnies for these fabulous slippers hand-made by my friend Rizzie.  I definitely got the better end of the deal.  The little frowning faces and those teeth just kill me!  Rizzie will hopefully be opening an Etsy shop soon...

The flurry of activity has left my house an ungodly mess, and everything smells like sausage roasting over a campfire!  I can't tell you how much I'm dreading the clean-up process.  I will be back soon with some felt plushies. 

I wish everyone a happy and warm weekend!

Reluctant Progress Note #6

Who wants to see some Progress?  Let's see a show of hands...

To get through another long night, I've been indulging myself with ice cream and This American Life .  Oddly enough, it seems to have been a magical combination, because I finally sat down and  drew a whole slew of designs for holiday cards/gift tags!  I'm very excited to share just a few:

 

Much time will be spent cutting and glittering in the coming days...  I'll be listing sets of these in my shop next week, after the Etsy update is finished. 

In the mean time, I have posted a couple more of these:

Stay tuned for some new pillows, stockings, and a brand new Etsy banner!

Now back to my evening with Ira Glass...

That Old Familiar Feeling... by Sara K.

Once upon a time I was obsessed with photography.  More than obsessed--it was my life.  I thought about it day and night, in my dreams.  Even if I didn't have a camera with me, every moment was a snapshot in my mind.  I imagined releasing an invisible shutter and forever imprinting all those wondrous moments in my memory...  Or I imagined scenes-to-be and prayed I would be able to recreate them without losing them.  I found a world beyond my world that I could only embrace with a camera.  I made a deep, lasting commitment to the large-format camera despite the inconvenience.   I learned to love the smell of darkroom chemicals on my hands.   I relished those solitary moments in the dark as I loaded film or worked all night to make prints that were just so.  Those were the times when I felt most like myself, when I felt like I was doing something that mattered.  Of course, I also felt trapped at times and sought other outlets... but the love was always there, waiting.  Then I faced the end of my long journey through art school and the inevitable disillusionment as life in the real world began.  I had no choice but to bid a bitter, tearful farewell to my beloved (borrowed) view camera and the darkroom that had become home.  My peers scattered, and all sense of belonging in the world dissolved.  And that love that fueled my very being finally gave up on me...

Right now you're probably thinking, Why didn't you just go to grad school?  The truth is, I thought about continuing on... I was Yale-bound for about five minutes.  I thought and thought and thought about school and, in typical fashion, never followed through.  Burn-out had taken a pretty heavy toll, and I just needed a little break.  I'm embarrassed to admit how many years have now passed.  Every once in a while I still think about going back to school, but...  I still have dreams about the coolness of the darkroom, though now they tend to be panicky nightmares that involve being caught trespassing where I no longer belong.  Sometimes I even have those brief, magical moments where the whole world is just waiting for that little click! to be immortalized and brought to life...  For a long time I cried about the fact that I only had a "crappy 35mm camera" and no dark room of my own.  Now my film-camera is broken, and all I have is a truly crappy point-and-shoot digital camera that has the nerve to beep.  I don't even get to touch the outside of a film cannister, much less a full sheet of smooth, fertile film...  I sheepishly  take picture after picture of the most mundane, safe things: windows, my cat, oh, and my cat.  Then I eventually load them on to the computer and do my best to forget them.  I keep my worthy works from the good old days boxed away and hidden, and I rarely own up to being a photographer.  The shame is unbearable...

But lately I find myself pouring over all those digital files and marveling at their lovely luminescence on my computer screen, those little glowing gems!  Somehow I'm able to appreciate the guilty pleasure of taking a million pointless pictures without wasting anything but idle time.  Maybe it's that little spark in the air now that Fall is on the way... Maybe it's my frustration with all those "other outlets."  Or maybe it's just that old love still waiting for me...    I don't know.   At any rate, I've decided to share a few recent images.  Share them and nothing more.  I will not try to justify them or defend them--this is not a critique, after all.  It doesn't matter if they are wonderful or terrible or blurry or trivial.  It doesn't matter if they are nothing like "the work I do."  They just are. 

A Love Letter... by Sara K.

Dear Print Gocco,

It really pains me to say this, but I just don't think you and I should see each other anymore.  It's not you, it's me...  I'm just at a strange place in my life, and I really think it would be best to part ways for a while.  We had some good times, didn't we?  I hope you can find someone who will be able to give you the attention you so deserve.  For now, farewell...

Regretfully,

Sara

Sigh...  My brief love affair with the Print Gocco seems to be over.  The sad truth is that I could easily replace "Print Gocco" with any other word associated with creativity.  Dear camera...  Dear felt...  Dear paint...  Dear pencil...  The Gocco just happens to be the latest medium that I can't manage.  At all.  As in tons of wasted ink and paper and time and nothing to show for it.  (I had decided to make a series of prints of costume-clad feet for Halloween, but now I just want to scrap the whole idea!)

So yeah, I guess I'm in a real deep-down creative funk.  Not the kind of funk that makes you shake your booty, unfortunately, but the kind that makes you sit on it for days and days (or weeks) without a good idea in your head.  I keep moving from project to project and buying new materials.  I've even convinced myself that I need a different house in a different town.   All efforts end in frustrated tears.  I just can't bear another conversation with my mother that begins, "Well, I keep looking for new things on your Etsy page, but..." 

What I really need is a new me.  That's easy enough, right?  (Note sarcasm...)  Andy has advised me to break my routine, to do something out of the ordinary today.  (Doesn't he realize that actually making something would be out of the ordinary?)  If I can pull myself away from the computer, I'm going to swim or walk at the park or lie under a tree and read some fluffy book.  And not think about failed projects or Etsy or my Print Gocco... Let's face it, I will think about those things, but maybe I will be abducted by aliens in the process.  Little twinkly-eyed aliens who will probe me and give me a creativity transplant before returning me to Earth.  And afterward, maybe I will have a new outlook on it all... 

If I Could Live in a Cloud... by Sara K.

So I really enjoyed my big Saturday night out...  I went to the aforementioned Aux Art Event at our wonderful little space called Athica.  There I found my true dream-home:

A giant, billowy cotton cloud with a ladder for easy access...  I am not sure which genius of an artist created this, but I am absolutely in love with it.  That little sign in the foreground was just for me... It read "PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH!"   Oh, to live in a cloud!  Who has not wished for that at least once in their lifetime?  There was a slight hole near the top, where I could just see my own head peeking out...

I missed the bulk of the night's performances, I must confess.  After a couple of glasses of wine, I was quite content to sit outside and watch the train going by and listen to the music as my gal-friends did something to a cell-phone with a sim card.  (That term lives with words like blog and newbie in my brain...  What in the world is a sim card?)  However, I did catch what was, for me, the true highlight of the evening.  A small gaggle of children (ages 6 mos. to 7 years?) performed improvisational modern dance to a set of experimental electronic music. I had to take my shoes off to enter the small, magically-lit studio and sit cross-legged on the floor with all the other adults (why do I never have socks in such moments?).  One little boy managed to incorporate a plastic light-saber into his dance.  It was amazing and amusing all at once...  I longed to be a child again as I watched those little free spirits moving without the slightest drop of self-consciousness.   One little girl eventually asked, "When are all these grown-ups gonna dance?"  I tried to disappear into the shadows as small hands summoned (why did I have to sit so near the front?)... In the end, I just couldn't shed my big-girl inhibitions.  I felt like such a terrible, boring grown-up, the kind I never liked as a child.  Oh, well... Sadly, I only remembered my trusty camera after it was all over...

I was especially taken by one piece of music entitled "Music Box," which just happened to have been composed by a local barista named Sarah Black.  It was lovely and eerie and almost brought tears to my eyes.  (I tried very hard to find this piece somewhere on the vast 'net, but I could only find a link to the artist's MySpace, which features her gothic-industrial project.  Interesting, yes, but not quite my cup of tea.)   One day I will find it and share it!

Fortunately, I did remember my camera when I ran into Jill and Jeremy, who won the award for Greatest Fashion Flair:

They were in the middle of a dirty-talk war... While this was not a scheduled event, it was another highlight of the evening...  It's a sacred, age-old ritual of theirs in which they try to one-up each other with the most vile, disgusting insults and threats any human being could ever conjure. It's all in good fun, really, highly amusing and educational.  But I won't repeat any of it here!  Incidentally, I'm not sure who won...

All this talk of creativity and insults makes me want to go sew some lumpy felt animals!  I am planning to make some more startled bunnies and some other emotive critters, as well.  I do tend to work at a snail's pace, so it will probably be a few days before I have any true Progress to post.   Maybe I'll show some works in progress later today.   Or maybe I'll just curl up in a cloud and dream...

Happy Tuesday!

Reluctant Progress Note #3... by Sara K.

I finished another painting today!!!

Meet Saint Stanley the Humble Sperm...

I have reluctantly listed him in my shop.

I am really loving painting right now, enough to erase the guilt of not having finished pillows I started ages ago.  I've learned that I prefer to paint really small with tiny brushes.  It's funny, really, because I always seem to be attracted to BIG images when it comes to photography and work in galleries.  Maybe it's just because you can't be intimate with a piece when you're craning over a velvet rope, surrounded by idiots with flashing cameras.  I certainly feel intimate with these new paintings--I almost can't bear to part with them!

You can add sad-looking sperm to my list of obsessions... It's not a tribute to masculinity or anything like that, I just love them.  They seem like such lonely little underdogs. I am also obsessed with assigning halos to creatures who wouldn't normally be considered fit for such an honor.  Unexpected icons.

I wore the white veil of Catholicism as a child, and though I rarely set foot in a church now, little elements of my holy days still remain.  My grandmother tried so hard to make me a good little Catholic girl, really she did!  She always found an excuse to give me holy cards and little collections of stories about the saints.  And I was very good.  I just couldn't help it that I was more interested in looking at the pretty pictures than learning anything about Jesus and his crew.  I couldn't help it that I failed first confession.  (The one thing I did fully grasp was the guilt... oh yes, the guilt!)  I decided long ago that church just isn't for me, but I must admit that I love beautiful cathedrals and incense.  I love the gilded paintings of Mary and her babe.  I love the giant glow-in-the-dark crucifix that my husband and I received for Christmas last year...

Am I a heathen for painting a blessed sperm?  I hope not. 

Sigh... That distant rumble of thunder tells me that it's time to get off my blessed computer and get some blessed sleep.

Hallelujah for Progress!