2010: A Good Year?

It’s the third Thursday in November, which means the release of this year’s Beaujolais Nouveau vintage. To pay tribute to this world wide celebration of the vine, I’ve pulled out a few of my favorite examples of wine-related architecture.

Herzog and de Meuron’s Dominus winery is probably the best known winery in architectural circles for its context-driven design. The building envelope garnered much of the fame, constructed as a gabion system – wire cages filled with large rocks – that screens the light without blocking the free flow of temperate Napa Valley air.

Dominus Winery by Herzog and de Meuron, Napa Valley, 1998. 

hen there’s the barrel cellar, my favorite part of the winery, where the mass and density of the surrounding earth stabilizes air temperature and humidity while minimizing vibrations – ideal conditions for wine storage. I’ll limit myself to three examples here: the 18th century cellars of Loimer winery in Austria, the sweeping arcs of the concrete cellars at Bodegas Otazu in Spain, and Stephen Holl’s restoration of the labyrinthine wine cellars dating back to 1100 AD for the Loisum Visitors’ Centre in Austria. I know this last one is mostly for looks, but what can I say? I have a thing for old world tunnels.

Loimer's 18th century cellars, restored by Andreas Burghardt Architect, Austria, 2002.

Bodegas Otazu's barrel cellars by Jaime Gaztelu Quijano Architect, Spain, 1997.

Loisium Visitors' Centre by Steven Holl Architects, Austria, 2003.

 On to the drinking part of this tour! Tasting rooms have become architectural jewels in and of themselves, but I appreciate the subdued simplicity of Peregrine’s tasting bar in New Zealand by Architectural Workshop. 

Peregrine Tasting Bar by Architecture Workshop, New Zealand, 2003.

Let’s end on a ridiculous, obviously pre-Recession example: the Radisson BLU Hotel’s Wine Tower in the London Stansted Airport. Within a 13-meter high, temperature controlled cube where bottles are illuminated by NASA-engineered lighting systems, trained acrobat servers called “wine angels” move wine safely from tower to table via a computerized pulley system. Ticket change to Vegas, anyone?

Wine Tower by Elimun8 & Speirs and Major Associates, London, 2004.

Amateur Night

“The sudden bisociation of an idea or event with two habitually incompatible matrices will produce a comic effect, provided that the narrative, the semantic pipeline, carries the right kind of emotional tension. When the pipe is punctured, and our expectations are fooled, the now redundant tension gushes out in laughter, or is spilled in the gentler form of the sou-rire.” – Arthur Koestler, The Act of Creation*

Okay, so this isn’t the only thing that came to mind when I watched an amateur comedy show recently – editing got involved, too.

The show was what you might expect: mediocre comedy with a highlight here and there, mostly jokes on adult themes, body parts and fluids, etc. But comedy, both good and bad, interests me because of its creativity.

Comedy has been a point of reference for those interested in the creative act, especially those who approach art and culture through the lens of psychoanalysis, since the 19th century. Creatively speaking, comedy is the merging of two “habitually incompatible” lines of thought that end up in that non-violent release of tension, aka laughing.

To do this well, to get people rolling in the aisles, the incompatibilities must be “implied in the text.” If you make it explicit (i.e. over-explain the structure upon which the joke is built), you “destroy the story’s comic effect.”** We all know that person who makes the funniest joke not funny by reversing the order of the joke’s elements or explaining the joke’s premise in too great detail. They’ve punctured Koestler’s pipe in too many places. The tension is diffused before that pivotal moment of release – it’s all drip, drip, instead of the desired gush.

For writers, this comes down to the fact that a good joke must be well edited. You can’t give too much away too early, and the punch line can’t be blurted out without the build. Sure, a good comedian must have stage presence and good delivery, too, but even the latter is built on giving the audience time to develop that inner tension based on the smallest number of words up front. Marketing copywriters work with this principle daily – when your audience isn’t expecting what’s coming, the cathartic effect makes them want to pay attention to what you have to say next. And that’s good business.

*p. 51, Arthur Koestler, The Act of Creation, The Macmillan Company: New York, 1964.
**p. 36, Koestler.

Hometown Hero

NCDT's David-Ingram (Costume by Erika Diamond. Photo by Jeff Cravotta)

This weekend’s North Carolina Dance Theatre performance was still on my mind this morning so indulge  me for one more post. I took another look at the program, searching for the name of the choreographer and lighting designer on my favorite piece of the night called Arson. That’s when it hit me – Choreographer: David Ingram. I knew it sounded familiar. Ingram hails from East Tennessee, more specifically, Kingsport, Tennessee, which happens to be where yours truly was born and raised. In fact, I think David was Fritz the year I played Clara. Let's just say he's grown up quite a bit since I saw him last, and I approve.
Enough of that, let’s talk about Arson. I’ll admit, the design did it for me: costumes by Lindsey Bruck, set and lighting design by John P. Woodey. The backdrop to the stage was removed, exposing the architecture of the Knight Theater backstage that normally lives hidden from the audience’s view. A single sheet of white fabric draped the back wall from the flyspace to the stage floor.
The great height and added depth were magnified by the performers occupying the stage space and the lighting design, which included several utilitarian metal light cages like those you’d find on a construction site hanging in rows downstage. These pendant lights would increase and decrease in intensity throughout the number, the light shifting from a bright white to a warm yellow, while dancers alternated swinging specific pendants front and back as they moved between and around them.
The effect was such that the entire space of the theater was altered, the scale reconfigured, color drained to sepia tones.  Music by Hangedup, Ben Frost, Rachel Grimes and Piano Magic alternated strings and distortion over heavy bass tones that made the entire theater seem to expand and retract in rhythm like a diaphragm. I was mesmerized.
So here’s to David Ingram, the hometown hero who made his professional choreographic debut at this year’s Innovative Works series, and to the designers, musicians, and performers who made it more than choreography.

Picking up the Slack

NCDT's Kara Wilkes in costume designed by Erika Diamond. Photo by Jeff Cravotta

Thanks to a thoughtful friend, I had the pleasure of attending North Carolina Dance Theatre’s “Innovative Works” performance last Saturday night, which as you might have guessed, featured a series of original pieces by emerging and established choreographers created specifically for the NCDT dancers. While this outpouring of new ideas and energy can sometimes go amiss here and there, Saturday’s performance was one stellar performance after another.
That said, if I had to choose a weak link, it would have to be the opening number, which mixed language and movement in a way that frankly didn’t work. I enjoyed the movement, how can you not enjoy watching these performers own the stage, but the premise – a beatnik-inspired setting complete with bongo drums and moments of spoken word between which the dancers would perform a movement series – seemed oddly dated, considering the “eco” theme that drove the evening’s program. More than that, the words didn’t connect with the movement.
That got me thinking. The arts have such power because they defy words. Art replaces words with movement, sound, images, color. Architecture, too, does a bit of this, offering spatial experience as explanation of what architects do. How do you add words with it becoming forced? Didactic?
Art and architecture should never have to pick up where words leave off or vice versa. It the dialog between the two that gives texture and depth to the experience.
The first number on Saturday night required the dancers to pick up the slack, and, believe me, they did beautifully. While it didn’t detract from my evening, that uneven exchange clarified to me why I care about what I do as a writer and editor in design and the arts. Maybe NCDT will get one of my kind involved next time.

Business Books that won’t turn your stomach or compromise your ethics

Okay, it’s time I put it out there. I’ve answered the same question the same way enough times to know it should have a place here.

When I was starting up my business and hitting the library for resources (thank you, library!), amid the shelves filled with titles on getting rich quick and lessons from CEOs-who-know, I discovered three books that I recommend to every person who asks me how I did it:  Michelle Goodman’s The Anti 9-to-5 Guide and My So-Called Freelance Life and Lauren Bacon and Emira Mears’s The Boss of You.

          
Sure I waded through the many available (and free!) online resources that helped me through the process of choosing a business structure, registering with my local chamber, paying zoning fees for a home office and so forth, but these ladies’ books gave me the guidance and chutzpah to make my business happen and have a good time doing it.

Though they’re writing for women and, yes, most if not all of their examples are women-owned businesses, I recommend these books to my guy friends for the same reasons I recommend them to my ladies. First off, they’re fun reads. The authors have great senses of humor – a necessity for anyone who’s starting their own business – and they offer invaluable advice based on their and fellow business owners’ experiences.

Secondly, they offer something very different from those other books on the topic. They speak to doing business because you want something more than just money or fame or power over the universe. Of course, we all want to make money at the end of the day and I’ll admit sometimes I’d like that power over the universe part, but the point is that money is just one of many reasons most people start their own gig, myself included. As a result, their advice seems so much more honest and authentic than the shallow posturing I find in most other start-up guides.

If you’re green on the business startup process, I recommend reading the books in the order I listed above. Goodman starts from the beginning – she even walks you through finding what you want your business to be if you don’t have any idea yet – then takes you through the logistics of everything from self-discipline to healthcare to taxes. Mears and Bacon are a bit more ambitious and go so far as discussing how to grow your business, find and hire employees, and be a good boss.

Though they started as library loans, I have since purchased all three. Their resource guides and well organized chapters make them go-to references for me even now. Plus I can freely mark the margins, and we all know how I love margins.

I Heart Book Sales

I cannot resist a book sale, especially if books on art and architecture are involved and even more especially if the proceeds are for a pet cause of mine. So attention friends: if you live in or plan on visiting the Queen City September 24th or 25th, don’t miss the Art, Architecture, & Photography Used Book Sale at Hodges Taylor Gallery in Uptown Charlotte. Held by the Friends of the Library, all proceeds benefit our local libraries and new boxes will be unpacked continuously so check it out both days if you can. And tell your friends because we in the industry need the reduced prices, Great Recession or no.

For all you dance, music, theater, and film devotees, the Friends of the Library will feature a Book Sale for those areas of interest on Saturday, October 16th, so mark your calendar.

Just in case you're due for an act of all-out altruism, pick up a book or two for me. I'll miss the sale due to a long scheduled trip – horror!

Man Down: Novice Gaming and Writing for Laughs

Disclaimer: I’m not a gamer. My gaming days ended with Super Mario Brothers 2. I realize that makes me a luddite amongst my peers who at least know how to play Playstation, Wii, or Xbox 360. I know how to use an Xbox as a DVD player.

So I can relate to Nicholson Baker’s recent New Yorker article, “Painkiller Deathstreak,” where he relays the frustration and absolute ridiculousness of being a video game novice. Baker is a great writer and funny, too, which means he’s a really great writer. I love breezily inserted lines like “I wish so many foreigners didn’t have to be shot, so many historical sites damaged without comment, but evidently they do,” or in explaining the portrayal of his death in one game, “the image desaturates to black-and-white and there’s a tactful moment of funereal bagpipery.” When the hero of another game finds a precious, ancient green lamp, Baker empathizes that “being an American action hero, [he] immediately breaks it like a piggy bank on the floor.”

In On Writing Well, (one of my favorite books on the craft), William Zinsser describes humor as a “special angle of vision granted to certain writers who already write good English.” Baker’s account is fantastic humor, and it’s the writing that makes it so – that delicate combination of syntax, phrasing, and wit. Humorists do serious work, as any fan of satire knows, but the presentation sets it apart from other opinion pieces as something accessible if no less controversial.

A novice’s reflections on gaming may not draw great controversy, but gamers’ tolerance to depictions of violence is one of the underlying themes of the article. E.B. White believed, “Humor is a by-product that occurs in the serious work of some and not others.” The product of disparate ideas brought together to shed light on some truth however seemingly small, humor represents the quintessential creative act.

Model City Economics

Model cities: who doesn’t love to look at miniatures of real life places and take in the bird’s eye view of a city made comprehensible by its micro-sized rendition. Now imagine that model being made of trash – reclaimed bits of detritus modeled, sculpted, and repurposed into backyards, condo towers, or the great lights of Broadway.

Enter Max Liboiron, an artist and academic who creates “walk-in, miniature dioramas” from a city’s discards. Her most recent work, The New York City Trash Exchange, opening September 9th at the AC Institute, represents none other than the great city itself and is, yes indeed, composed of New York City trash.

Max Liboiron, "The New York City Trash Exchange" (2010)

Liboiron’s work is more than a fun introduction to trash activism. Issues of economy and exchange value play out in the exhibition of the small cities.  In some cases, the parts of the installation are to be taken away by patrons free of charge since the visitor’s own trash might be included in the work itself.

Other installations are based on a barter economy. Visitors are free to take away a piece of the installation as long as they replace it with something of equal or greater value in return. The irony of gauging trash’s value is not lost on artist or viewer.

Max Liboiron, "The Dawson City Trash Project" (2008)

 Liboiron’s work also invokes the archeological, as in Material Afterlife: Circulation where she created 139 lawnscapes and 70 cars then tracked their location as they were taken away by gallery patrons. Liboiron mapped her sculptures’ movement across the continent, like so many migratory birds. For its lowly origins in the city dump, it’s hard not to see the poetry.

Marginal Behavior: Book Graffiti

In “Marginal," featured in the June 28 issue of The New Yorker, Author Ian Frazier relays his experience at the New York Public Library event focused around marginalia, aka those markings sketched into the body, cover, and/or margins of books, what NYPL's Anne Garner calls "book graffiti." Of course, the library wasn’t displaying just any marginalia. Selected from the library’s collection were the in-text scribbles of literary giants like Mark Twain, Jack Kerouac, William Coleridge, and Vladimir Nabokov to name a few.

Image from here

 For designers, marginalia are probably best equated with one of our favorite ideas – the palimpsest. Great marginalia takes on a palimpsest-like quality – the layering of thoughts, intersections, and outside references that inform and reform the text in question. This is why ebooks for all their convenience are lost on me. Sure, a digital book is great for a beach read I never plan on picking up again, but for those texts that are important to me, a digital highlighter will never replace the physical act of underlining an exquisite sentence or marking a particularly convincing passage. (Sue Halpern speaks to the digital marginalia problem in "What the iPad Can't Do" on the New York Review of Books blog.)

Image from the New York Review of Books

The most serious marginalians I’ve known in my life were philosophers. I once noticed that my philosophy mentor, a certain Mr. Casey, having read everything on the planet at least half a dozen times, created a key with dates on the inside front cover for his marginalia, i.e. black ink for the first read, blue for the second, pencil the third, double underlines on the fourth, and so on.

As an interpretive device, marginalia inspires a certain kind of faith. When returning to a text weeks, months, or years later, I always glance at my marks to get a feel for my prior readings of the material. I’m no longer surprised when my marginalia seem to be written by someone else – someone better read in some instances, more naïve other times, or enamored with an idea for a reason inconceivable to me today.

Read Frazier’s piece and decide what sort of marginalia-maker you are (I’ll admit I enjoy hostile marginalia or what I’ll call satirical marginalia, but seeds of ideas and cross references fill most of my margins).
Do you have a good example of marginalia in your library? Send it in. Perhaps an online exhibition is in order.

I Heart Bookshelves

Another tip of the hat today, this time to Bookshelf Porn, the online photo collection for people who *heart* bookshelves, i.e. erotica for book-obsessed individuals like myself. (A big thank you to my art historian friend, Roberto, for sharing this fantastic find.)

Below are a few examples to whet your appetite. More are added to the Bookshelf Porn site daily. By all means, if you have a bookshelf to show off, submit it!

 And I can't resist this one - a rule by which I try to live (she says as she completes her entry for the day). Ah, the contradictions of modern life.

Staying on subject, here's one of those fun intersections of life. I came across this book last week while browsing the shelves at Paper Skyscraper (which is incidentally the best design bookstore and best gift shop overall in Charlotte): Unpacking My Library: Architects and Their Books.

Featuring bookshelves in the offices or homes of starchitects like Tschumi, Williams Tsien, Toshiko Mori, and Michael Graves, the book offers what everyone knows to be the truth about a personal book collection: revelations of heart, soul, and mind. Of course, despite all those big architecture names, it's really the scholar's list I want to see: that of Michael Sorkin, also in the book and a potential subject for a future "I heart" post.

Tip of the Hat to: Josef Frank

After admiring Google's tip of the hat to Josef Frank this morning, I couldn't help but take another look at his whimsical textile designs. If you're unfamiliar with Frank's work, consider the recent movie version of Mamma Mia! Whether you like musicals or not, the sets in that movie were absolutely breathtaking: clean whites and blues of the Greek coast as backdrop to brilliant textiles, which happen to be, eh hem, Josef Frank designs.

 Textile design by Josef Frank featured in Mamma Mia!

Watching that movie, (and yes, I like musicals), I immediately wanted to know the origin of those fabrics. Leave it to Design*Sponge to show the way. You know it's good design when even 60 years or more after their original creation, the patterns still seem contemporary. Gotta love those Scandinavians. Design is in their blood.

Textile design by Josef Frank

Exhibiting qualities of whimsy and the baroque as well as a surrealist approach to form, Frank's fabrics invoke such a different side of the imagination than his contemporaries in the Bauhaus and moderne movements. When all was being whittled down to streamlines or orthographic formalism, Frank produced these refined but expressive forms that we still love today.

 Textile design by Josef Frank on sofa by Anthropologie

I Heart Engravings: Never trust an octopus

Of all things I love, books are at the top of my list, right next to millinery, engravings, sea monsters, and all things baroque. Webster's Pictorial Dictionary offers all of this to me within the bounds of a beautiful kiwi green hardcover, complete with gilded title block and sea monster illustration (okay, it's an octopus, but we all know what those can do. I'll just refer you to It Came From Beneath the Sea and King Kong vs. Godzilla. Enough said.)
Ah, rejoice my heart.

And for all of those octopus-defending types - you know who you are - who go on and on about squids being the true culprits of aforementioned crimes:

Case closed.

2010 Color of the Year

The color of the year is...(drumroll, please): Pantone 15-5510 or, in layman's terms, Turquoise. Now I know I'm behind on reporting this. It was announced last December, but lots of other color-focused companies (Benjamin Moore, Sherwin Williams, London's Global Color Research) are jumping on board.

Now forgive me, but really? I find the choice a bit uninspired. Don't get me wrong, turquoise is actually one of, if not my absolute favorite color. It can be simultaneously earthy and airy, rich and whimsical. Its variations conjure up sea-green glass bottles, tropical water, and heirloom hydrangeas. The stone for which the color is named happens to be my birthstone. Suffice it to say that I have an attachment to the color.

My question is when was turquoise not a color of any year? It has somehow transcended decades of fashion, design, and popular taste to remain a happy, beautiful color in everyone's book. I think it deserves a better title than color of a single, stinking year.

Ah, well. Here's to you, Pantone 15-5519.

I Heart Thunderstorms

I love thunderstorms, those that come crashing about us in spring and summer being at the top of my list of favorite things. It's not just the excitement of the thunder and lightning, in fact, I could just as well do without the lightning (though you can't beat it when you've a significant other to clutch). Just give me the prequel to the storm, that unmistakable electricity in the air, darkness coming on at midday, followed by rumbling thunder in the distance and fat drops of rain right behind. The best seat in the house is a rocking chair on a deep porch though a kitchen chair by a screen door does the job for me most days. I could sit contentedly for hours just listening to the storm, feeling the coolness of the air, watching everything outside drink it all in.
So for all you in Charlotte: look outside - it's storming.

John Constable

 Rainstorm over the Sea (ca. 1824-1828)

Art World Icon: Louise Bourgeois

Famous French-American artist Louise Bourgeois died yesterday at age 98.

Let me start by saying that I didn't think I would have to write this post. I planned to link to the Art of the Day blog of my dear friend, an art historian and librarian, who, I was sure, would have written a beautiful and enlightened tribute to one of her favorite artists. Whether from shock or lack of knowing, my friend has yet to write on the subject, so I find myself having to muster up the courage to write something myself. Here goes...

Born, raised, and trained as an artist in Paris, Louise Bourgeois moved to New York in 1938. Bourgeois' started her artistic career as a painter, but a decade after her arrival in America, she took up sculpture, the medium in which she became one of the greatest innovators in the history of art.

Her first sculptures were slender wooden figures carved from wood and painted black or white. Arranged in groups and placed vertically, the sculptures suggested a group of figures despite their abstract form. Indeed, Bourgeois called them "Personages."

Personages (1947-50)

Photo: Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times

As the art world moved further into abstraction to the point of near annihilation of the figure, Bourgeois remained committed to tactile, plastic sculpture. To this day, her organic, sexually suggestive sculptures of the 1960s, when Minimalism was de rigeur, give me pause. One of my favorite descriptions of Bourgeois work comes from the PBS Art: 21 series: "The anthropomorphic shapes her pieces take...are charged with sexuality and innocence and the interplay between the two."

Never crossing into fetishism or vulgarity, sculptures like Cumul I (1968) or Double Negative (1963) are almost too palpable, too explicitly plastic to view at length.  

Cumul I (1968)

Because of her sustained explorations into the inner life of the subject, Bourgeois is often linked to Surrealism, but she was never interested in dreams for dreams' sake or sexual transgression per se. This interest in the subjective psyche is even more evident in her later work. In her 80s, Bourgeois created a series of multi-media environments composed of made and found objects that she called Cells. Complex assemblages like Cell (You Better Grow Up) (1990-93) speak to the psyche, its complexities and contradictions as well as to childhood, another recurring theme in her work.

Cell (You Better Grow Up) (1990-93)

I would be remiss if I completed this post without one mention of Bourgeois' spider sculptures. I'll admit, these creep me out, but their delicacy despite their size, make them, dare I say it, beautiful. Of course, they are also capable of terrifying small children. Maman, the most famous of these sculptures and standing over 10 meters high, refers to Bourgeois' own mother: "My best friend was my mother and she was deliberate, clever, patient, soothing, reasonable, dainty, subtle, indispensable, neat and useful as an araignée [spider]" (Source).

There is so much I must leave out: drawings, works on and with fabric, decades of work from a fertile mind. Bourgeois's productivity left us with art enough to ponder for years to come. As a woman, as an artist, as a pioneer, as an individual, Louise Bourgeois is an icon we will all remember with respect and love.

Lee Bonticou - Sculpture in 2D

MoMA is currently running a Lee Bontecou exhibition through August 30.

I first experienced Bontecou's work at MoMA Queens in 2004. I was initially struck by the tactility of the work and her use of materials - felt, metal, clear wire, canvas. Bontecou's compositions range from kinetic whimsy to Star Wars inspired wall art (in a good way), but each piece, for all its tactility and three dimensional qualities, works remarkably in two dimensions. Take the press image that the Museum chose for the exhibition:

At first glance, this could be the work of a (very) talented graphic artist. It is actually a photograph of one of Bontecou's kinetic sculptures (Untitled. 1980-98), which also happens to be the centerpiece of the exhibition. Don't get me wrong - seeing this piece in the flesh is breathtaking, but I wouldn't mind hanging this print on my wall either. 

Some might say that all great sculpture works in 2D - art in the round means it should present well from any angle, however flat, right? Fact is that few sculptors cross the graphic divide so easily. Let's just say that Bontecou's sculpture exceeds the qualification of photographing well.

As has been my fate recently, writing about these events takes the place of actually attending them. If you're in NYC this summer, check it out and tell me what you think.

Lee Bontecou: All Freedom in Every Sense

Canned Beer

Call me a snob, but I refuse to let the metallic taste of aluminum interfere with a good beer experience. I understand there are advantages to cans - lightweight, more easily crushed against the average frat boy's skull, etc., but food and drink is one area in which I fail to see how the utilitarian argument prevails.

Then comes along Oskar Blues Brewery out of Colorado, and, you guessed it, their line of specialty brews are available in cans only.

Why?! Our local beer guy (here's the plug for Brawley's in Charlotte) told my boyfriend that it's designed for campers (the lightweight factor coming into play), but we all really know that the cans raise the beer's hipster quotient. That alone made me want to dislike the beer, but... erg... it's actually good beer.

Oskar Blues started with Dale's Pale Ale, the "first hand-canned craft beer,"  but the label has now grown to seven brews. We tried the foundational Dale's Pale Ale as well as their Gordon Ale, which the company describes as an Imperial Red/ Double IPA. Being an IPA fan myself, you can guess which I prefer, but I'm not cool enough to say I didn't notice the metallic tinge.

So while I'll admit this is worth trying, my advice to all those hip campers: carry a glass or, er, enameled tin cup for pouring.

Ode to Ovation

A simple ode to Ovation, the cable channel that exists for the pleasure of the nerdy few. It is no Bravo - no omnipresent, handsome gay man or beautiful rich bitch. How it stays on air, I don't know. There can't be that many people interested in things like a honky-tonk singer turned opera performer or the design origin of greeting cards, but I don't mind minimal company. So here's to a few favorite Ovation moments:

Designer People - Ovation, why didn't you come to me before Amy Devers? I'm so much cooler (though I'll admit my wardrobe isn't).

Later with Jools Holland - Here's to musical talent and small venues but why 4AM?! Another reason to have TiVo.

Bathroom Divas - That honky tonk singer I was talking about? Episode 3.

Reality TV - About up and coming photographers, dancers, musicians, artists, and designers. Sure Project Runway started it all, but Ovation took into disciplines other channels wouldn't dare.

Documentaries -  On every artist, architect, musician, and designer worth mentioning and beyond. I celebrate a channel whose core content is built on these sorts of productions.

Tar and Feathers

Despite nearly a quarter century of involvement in the dance world, I had never seen the work of Czech choreographer Jiri Kylian. So when a friend who formerly danced with Pittsburgh Ballet Theater was raving about his work yesterday, I did what any educated person would do - I found him on youtube. I was not disappointed. 

There are a number of clips from his long works online. "Falling Angels" demands noting, but I prefer "Tar and Feathers," which is absolutely stunning from the dancers' movement (formalism meets the womb) to the music (ambient sound overlaid with notes from Mozart's "Jeunehomme") to the set design. And yes, that piano! For those not into dance but interested in Surrealism, watch the first clip below just for the piano. It's less than two minutes and worth your time, trust me. The second clip is a 1 minute section from the same piece.

For those with time and money to spare, take a field trip to see the Boston Ballet perform "Black and White," a five-ballet program of Kylian's work scheduled for the third and fourth weekends in May.

Tar and Feathers by Jiri Kylian
Tar and Feathers by Jiri Kylian (Clip #2)
Photo: Netherlands Dans Theater

The Musical With Something Extra

Part of my job is to read. I know, it's terrible but someone's got to do it. One genre that I follow on a daily basis is criticism. Literature, art, theater, architecture, film, typography, you name it: criticism speaks directly to its subject and attempts to engage the reader - novice and expert alike - in evaluating that subject, not as being good or bad per se but, instead, relevant or no, influential, tangible, topical, etc. Criticism puts creative work into perspective. It provides informative reviews of a given object, play, or building's place in the historical/cultural/socio-political spectrum and how it may exceed or fall short in comparison. Information equally prepares every creative professional to jump the quality divide - thus how good criticism can alter the course of careers and professions.

Architects hate criticism, but I think that stems from years of brow beating in school by smug professors who have never learned how to be good (read: constructive) critics. So I will not list an architectural review today. Instead, let's talk theater posters.


Yesterday the New York Times reviewed the new production of "La Cage aux Folles," the French musical production that became in the 1996 English movie translation, "The Birdcage" starring Robin Williams and Nathan Lane. It is a well-written piece by Ben Brantley (click here for the theatre review), but more interesting is the interactive feature on the design development for the production's poster art, "Ad Evolution: La Cage aux Folles." The interactive feature reveals a number of proposals for the ad campaign by NY creative agency SpotCo with voice overs by agency founder Drew Hodges. Click on an individual poster, and you get a closer look with Mr. Hodges relaying the inspiration for each design and the reason why it was (in the case of the final version) or was not chosen for the campaign.

There are some fantastic ideas here. I love the yellow show "girl" with the big red lips, but Mr. Hodges is right - that text is too small for Times Square. The simplicity of the pink poster with falsies, mustache, and the show's name in lights is another favorite as is the neon option near the end. The final version is excellent of course, but forgive me if I feel like I've seen it before - someone please help me remember where. Yes, I get the playful notion of the sex objects in heels and feathers being men instead of women, and this ad is so New York City.  I guess I just go for whimsy or Studio 54. When this show hits Miami, one of these other posters should travel with it.

I Heart Millinery

I have an undying love for all things hats, especially those which refer to that beautiful time in history when gloves, hats, and stockings with perfectly vertical back seams (or the wearer risked a tarnished reputation) were the rule rather than the exception. Okay, okay. I know there are many aspects of that time that I would never tolerate as a contemporary woman, but forget all that for now because we're talking about hats.  

I have a collection, which I know I should photograph at some point – little portraits, my children since I have neither spawn nor a pet – and each one is chosen for both its unique, individual character and its place in the collection. 

One item that is still missing from the collection is a top hat. Whether rooted in a recent affinity for the Victorian or my love of the burlesque, I have searched high and low for that perfect top hat for three years now to no avail. More easily found are the ultra traditional (refer to your local equestrian shop) and the tiny, whimsical versions (hello, hair clips), but I’ve not gotten as close to satisfying my mind’s eye as I have with topsyturvydesign’s millinery on, where else, Etsy.com. 

Below are a couple of my favorites - and yes, I realize they're all black, but top hats are traditionally formal wear. Topsyturvydesign does other colors, but, call me traditional, I dig the black.

What I think these clearly show, besides beautiful objects for the human body, is that quality millinery never strayed far from careful hand craft. It’s not just the details that require the hand’s attention, but the shaping and care with the fabrics and stitching as well. 

One of these will be meeting the other kids soon.

On Top of Spaghetti...

Last night I satisfied my boyfriend’s cravings for – you got it – meatballs. Don’t ask me why this is funny to me (and it’s not just their name), but I find meatballs to be one of those hangovers from mid-century housewifery, complete with vinyl tablecloth and Technicolor food photography. I nearly donned an apron for it but have yet to find one cute enough but not so precious as to prevent me from wearing it while working with tomato sauce.

The Ravenous Boy, 1954. Image Source: Plan 59 Prints

Don’t get me wrong – I dig a nice, polished modern kitchen in the fifties mode. But meatballs? After the mental image of that kitchen, the next words that came to mind were bad, duo-chrome man food. Being the amazing girlfriend I am, however, I cracked open Cook’s Illustrated Best Recipes and turned to that entry you never would have thought you’d turn to in a Cook’s Illustrated: Spaghetti and Meatballs.

What I learned from making meatballs:

1. Meatballs are easy to make. Really! Perhaps that’s why they became a fifties staple. They’re something the ole wife-y can pull off with more or less ease and still satisfy her family. And, yes, my boyfriend was very, very happy. I was actually nearly offended by how happy he was considering the many exotic recipes from Food & Wine I’ve made for him over the years that registered modest applause by compare.

2. Meatballs are NOT heavy, dense, fried balls o’ meat. No, these meatballs prepared per CI’s directions, were light, almost fluffy (if you can call meat fluffy). As the cookbook called it, if I’d rolled the balls too tightly or over-compressed them before frying, they may have turned out according to my preconceived notions. It turns out that a light hand is just the trick.

3. Now this wasn’t a surprise really but still a bit of a revelation. Eating meatballs over spaghetti with the sauce prepared in the same sauté pan as the meatballs – how to say this – well, it did induce an uncanny sensation of déjà vu. I don’t know if it was the texture or the color or the taste (probably a combination of all three), but the dish channeled the spirit of June Cleaver into our living room. Maybe this is the true definition of comfort food.

So there you have it. I apologize for prejudging this long-loved dish and encourage you to try it out on your nearest manly appetite.

Architecture as Social Critique: Holl in Beijing

Architecture as a form of social critique: we’ve moved past that, right? As practitioners, as historians, as a society that learned the lessons of modernism and reveled in the erudition of postmodernism?

Here’s what sparked this post: Holl’s new building in Beijing, the so-called Linked Hybrid. Now some would argue that architecture cannot be critiqued in the same way as, say, a sculpture or painting, but art criticism is where I started - those be my roots- so forgive me if I want to talk about the cultural production that we call the built environment in ways that reflect the social, political, and aesthetic context of its making. So perhaps you understand how, when that glossy AR cover (Architectural Record, January 2010) came to occupy my breakfast table this morning, I saw a building that spoke to a social condition in a way that the buildings on that cover have not in some time. 

Full disclaimer, I was one of those who spat venom at the starchitects and little guys alike who went running to the money pouring out of China and the Middle East in the past decade. Many defended their work under the guise of buzzwords like “global community” or argued that they were bringing inspiration to the oppressed masses in the form of a free, democratic building style (Architectural Record, July 2008). Let’s just say that I found those excuses unacceptable, simply means by which they could avert their gaze from the reality of those situations – slave labor where expenditures could sometimes mean the occasional life or money being pulled from the starving underclass to feed a newly developing upper class and an ambitious government’s deadline for presence on the world stage.

Don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against the dollar. I like money and wish I had more, but I also have ethics which lead me to despise those who would gain a dollar at someone else’s expense, especially a disenfranchised cog in the authoritarian machine.

Take that for what it is. Let’s talk about what I saw on that cover.

At first glance, Holl’s building elevations are oppressive, concrete grids, stiff exoskeletons that provide the primary structural support. The effect is heavy and there’s no tripartite scheme here to lighten the mood – just the grinding monotony, the equidistant spacing, the squares multiplying up and down, left and right. No cornice to end the march; the building just stops. And there are eight of these buildings, clustered in this new development just outside Beijing’s Second Ring Road. Honestly, the scheme immediately brings to mind Soviet architecture in East Berlin, which did a good job of this sort of building-for-the-people that lacks any sense of life’s color or vitality.

Maybe it was the fresh coffee and morning light, but something sparked. Before I read the feature article (and Holl’s statement that he would never do a project that “relocates” people – Good for you, guy, I guess) I suddenly saw the building grid as representative of the people in the Chinese communist system, each counting equally, square by square, separated from each other by the heavy hand of government supervision. The containment of each individual is palpable.

But then Holl and his Beijing-based partner Li Hu begin to offer opportunities for subversion, slight changes in the grid that suggest an unstoppable human spirit. Diagonals run across small sectors of the building, not breaking the grid or even severing the barriers between squares, but connecting two, sometimes four individuals at a time. This is a slight subversion of the order but enough to hint at the human will to connect and engage, even while operating within the grid’s structure. (Yeah, yeah, after reading the article, I understand that these diagonals are actually the lines of structural support, but why should that deflect interpretation?)

Then come those large swaths of color – the bridges that penetrate and connect these blocky volumes, reordering the grid at its moments of intersection. Like a beam of colored light bouncing off of surfaces, these bridges seem to represent those streams or digital flows of information that are cutting through the society. Try as you might, you cannot block out those outside influences and dialogs. People will connect to the world. They will be exposed to the outside. Being found out is inevitable.

All of a sudden what looked like oppressive blocks with novelty bridges become a subversion of power. Revolution in construction.

Is this what Holl and Hu intended with their building? Probably not, but I will persist. Irony in design is too rare in architecture. To find it in Beijing is the only positive sign I’ve seen in the field recently. I’ll take it.

A Late Arrival.

To all those who know me well, I know what you're thinking. For years I've commented on the self-aggrandizement and narcissism of blogging, my upper lip curling when thinking of the mundane drivel that so many bloggers take for content, a smug smile when wondering "really, who's listening?" Yet, here I am, equipped with my formal apology to (most) of the blogosphere. I'm here because like so many others, I wanted an outlet that (1) got me writing on a regular basis; (2) increased the web presence of my new small business venture; and (3) allowed me to participate in the vibrant virtual community of designers, writers, architects, and scores of other creative professionals out there (many of whom have probably been blogging all this while, dismissing my snears as ignorance - and justly so).

So what is this blog about then? The good stuff. Ok, some days I may write about writing. Other days, in fact most days, I prefer to talk about the latest article on architecture I read or the new bottle of wine I discovered. I love the arts and design, and these days those words cover a lot of territory: architecture and cool products, sure, visual culture and dance, of course, but, also, food & wine, fashion, and travel. Basically, this spot is for me to talk about what's interesting to me today. Is that narcissistic? Perhaps a little, but maybe it's interesting to others as well. And if it is, let me know? I'm all for connecting to a creative community that sees the traditional boundaries between disciplines as suggestions rather than requirements.

Background:
This blog represents part of the new act of putting myself out there in ways I never would have previous to my experience of the past year, namely unemployment which took me to various levels of uncertainty and despair before converting to resolute determination.

One day, I just woke up and realized the plan I've nurtured for myself was not working. In fact, the plan was dead in the water. No life plan is foolproof. None can stand up to Great Recessions or government bailouts or other catastrophic circumstances without giving way. Some plans bend, some break. I decided mine was broken for the fact that it was never flexible enough in the first place.

So what to do? Cliché as it sounds, I decided that if I was going to live life, I better start now. "Waiting for the right time" became the most ridiculous phrase to me because there's never a "right time." There's now and there's later. And if this little niche business was (surprisingly) bringing in work, then stop half-a**ing it and take the world by storm.

Thus my new year's resolution: To be a "better boss of me." I'm investing all my spare energy into really seeing if this self-employed bit can work for me in the long term. So now the stack of books on my coffee table are all new non-fiction, not cultural history or theory as usual but, rather, books on business strategy, viral networking, and start-ups. I've become one of those people... but with spunk.