Lux Lotus

Swoon, Quite Rightly

Pitchaya Sudbanthad, who I just met at Cupcake a few days ago, has a lovely new piece at - I think, my absolute favorite general-interest website - The Morning News. It's an interview with a female street artist named Swoon that delves into her process and philosophy. I am sort of in love with street art lately (isn't everyone? I guess you sort of have to see the beauty in graffiti sooner or later if you live in New York) and so this piece came along at the perfect time to pique my interest even more.

Pitchaya's approach to this interview is fabulously intellectual (and therefore, refreshing), and he blows my mind basically from the first question:

Pitchaya Sudbanthad: Some of your hand-pulled prints and cutouts take up to two weeks to make, and then you post them outside, exposed to wind, rain, and sun. There’s something very Buddhist about that process, which makes me think of intricate sand mandalas that Tibetan monks make and then wipe away with a broom. Can you talk more about that will of decay?

Swoon: One thing I have to say is that I’m not as pure in that way as you might think. With the prints, I have print blocks I keep that I can work from again and make multiples. So, in a way, the images can be thought of as permanent...

So go and read it right now. It's that good.

Worth checking out: Wooster Collective, Faile, and the Heidegger-influenced work of Shepard Fairey. Also related is the work of my lovely friend Jes, who paints and documents New York in the most a-m-a-z-i-n-g way. She can take a simple image - an empty subway car, a picnic in the park - and render it so that the single frame becomes intricate beyond measure, beautiful beyond comparison. Support a living artist and pick up some of her genius work before it becomes prohibitively expensive. And yes, just to make this meme a trend, Emerging Arts is planning a photography exhibition of street art in the five boroughs.

Horse Races & Game Faces

Tonight I had the pleasure of attending a very interesting panel discussion sponsored by the Medill Club, entitled "Covering The Election: Are We Getting It Right?." The speakers were Jay DeDapper, who is a political correspondent for WNBC; Bryan Keefer, of the illustrious CampaignDesk.org (and who also happens to be my boyfriend); Ray Kerins, a managing director for GCI group, the PR firm that coordinated the host committee's media operations at the RNC (hello, Barney's!); and David Pollak, who is the chair of Democratic Leadership for the 21st Century. The panel was moderated quite well by Mike Kuczkowski, a vice president of Edelman PR.

I went because Bryan was on it, and really didn't expect it to be interesting. In fact, had I known how illuminating and in-depth the discussion would be, I would have taken notes and had something more nuanced than my basic impressions to share with you. Each of the panelists brought a distinct viewpoint to the conversation and it kept things lively. Pollak disagreed with most everyone, a trait that serves him well in his frequent appearances on Fox News. Usually, I am sort of embarassed to be a Democrat (e.g. I love my ultraliberal values, but regard the Democratic Party as hopelessly boring and clueless), but I liked what he had to say.

As an occasional publicist myself, dating a journalist who often appears on "state of the media" panels, I am often bored because no one ever talks about media relations and the role that it has in shaping news coverage; a glaring omission from my point of view. Needless to say, I was not disappointed tonight. Kerins and Kuczkowski had lots to say about messaging and intellectual versus entertainment value in the media, and I thought their perspectives brought a lot to the discussion. Basically, I am only going to "state of the media" discussions from now on if there is at least one public relations professional on the panel; Because it's just more interesting, not to mention realistic.

DeDapper's perspective as a television political correspondent often brought him into conflict with the opinions of the other guests, not because he was opposed necessarily, but because it's one thing to criticize the news and another to report it.

"Conformity Bored Her"

It's so rarely that I feel inspired, or even amused, by The New York Times, so imagine my surprise to read an article today that I am head over heels in love with at the moment. The "news" is that a deceased eccentric French decorator's possessions are being auctioned in Paris, but really, there is so much more to the story.

Madeleine Castaing seems to have been the rare person who is truly committed to living a gorgeous life. The article details her affinity for leopard-spotted carpets, plastic flowers, assorted unconventional pairings, and rooms designed in homage to literary descriptions. Oher interesting details include how she walked by her future home each day wondering what it would be like to live there, and later opened an antique shop during the war. There are only a few accompanying photographs, but it's still quite evident that her design sensibility was just so amazing and true.

Here are a couple of impressions of her that the Times gathered:

"My grandfather thought she was crazy," Frédéric Castaing said, adding that opening a shop in the middle of a war was the kind of extravagant gesture fully in line with his grandmother's character.

"She was free, free, free, totally free, with a fantastic independence of spirit and liberty of thought," he said. "Conformity bored her." Which explains why she painted pink plastic morning glories a more pleasing shade of blue and wore dresses that matched her upholstery.

"It was all about atmosphere," said Count Bruno de Caumont, a decorator who is also the creative director of Edmond Petit, a Paris fabric company that produces many of Castaing's signature ingredients, like carpets patterned with tiny green leaves to resemble a forest floor. "Castaing used to say that she was making poetry with furniture the way poets make poetry with words."

Sotheby's has information on that auction, but that's not quite the point, is it?

Market Research

I am actively seeking a full-time gig, and I'd love to put my writing, editing, project management and/or publicity skills to work for your organization. You can read more about my experience and qualifications here.

Is It Really Real, Son?

Sarah is one of my favorite books of all time.  Intensely dark and compelling, with aspects of magical realism, it's a wildly creative novel and a uniquely American story that plays out amongst the isolated and marginalized characters who populate truck stops and constitute their own community along the highway.  The themes are often rather disturbing, but the fairytale-esque details and likeable main character make it a memorable read.

In anticipation of a recent long train ride, I picked up author JT Leroy's collection of interlinked short stories, The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things, and although I liked it, it's less hopeful and magnetic than Sarah.  Extreme neglect and parental abuse combined with religious fundamentalism figure frequently in each of the stories, and the elements of Sarah that made the story loopy and comic, like a teenage hooker transforming herself into a religious icon and a diner that serves impossibly gourmet food, have been stripped away.

I visit JT Leroy's personal website to see if he had any other projects in the works, and was very interested to learn that a film version, featuring Asia Argento as both director and star, of Heart has been produced and will be released soon.  Very cool.

YARDSALE

Another good pick, if you're in town this weekend.

s.u.n. Arts is hosting a yard sale, featuring the work of local designers.

It takes place at Tahir, 412 E. 9th St. on September 18 & 19th, from 12pm-8pm.

Ill-matic

The Smart Set, my weekly column of things to do around town, can be found at MaudNewton.com, and offers lots of suggestions for weekend culture vultures, e.g. some of the best illuminated manuscripts on public display and where to see them.

My current favorite, which I'm looking forward to seeing in person one of these days, is described as follows on the Metropolitan Museum of Art/Cloisters site:

figures are rendered in delicate grisaille (shades of gray) that imparts an amazingly sculptural quality, and the images are accented with rich reds and blues and with touches of orange and yellow, pink, lilac, and turquoise. In the margins, close to seven hundred illustrations depict the bishops, beggars, street dancers, maidens, and musicians that peopled the streets of medieval Paris, as well as apes, rabbits, dogs, and creatures of sheer fantasy.

In the column, I also mention my other fascination of the moment, Seven Ages of Paris (which led me to search for any depictions of medieval Paris I could find), itself in turn a book I was inspired to read after so thoroughly enjoying City Life.

Work It

There is a new magazine out that looks very promising. It is called, quite simply, Work. I browsed the content up on the magazine's launch site, and to be honest, I have to confess that none of the stories in the premiere issue look very interesting to me personally. But I majored in industrial and labor relations, and I am aware that is the one subject I have a bit more specialized knowledge on than the average magazine reader. And I worked in the labor movement for a couple of years.

I'm not looking for "The Marxist Dialectic of Kitchen Confidential" or anything, but I do believe that the intersection of work and culture could be a lot more invigorating, even on the table of contents. So maybe Work isn't for me, although you would think that I would be the perfect demographic. If I see it in a bookstore or at a friend's house, I'll pick it up and let you know if I've changed my mind.

The Best-Laid Plans

City Life, which I just finished reading, is an excellent survey of general urban planning trends that attempts (and largely achieves) to answer the question: Why aren't our (North American) cities like theirs (European)? Witold Rybczynski, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, lays out the key concepts that shaped cities in the United States and Canada and discusses why cities developed as they did, within the political and economic frameworks of their time.

Having lived in several cities: Washington, D.C., New Orleans, Albuquerque, Ithaca (NY), San Francisco, and New York City (twice now), for both months and years at a time, I can certainly appreciate the different factors that influence urban development. For instance, having grown up a stone's throw from the elegantly rational (in street layout only) nation's capital, I find cities like New Orleans and San Francisco to be oddly perplexing, with their design shaped so much by geographic features of the terrain on which they stand. And of course, like everything, cities are so political.

One of the (many) thought-provoking points that Rybcyznski makes in City Life is that because America is largely founded on the principle that equality and democracy are our greatest values, these values also impress themselves upon city planning, the arts, and almost every major aspect of our culture. Access, in the end, determines outcome. Hence, shopping malls.

Along those lines, I'm reminded of sort of tangentially related, but very interesting Artsjournal critical essay by William Osborne that discusses the differences in funding for the arts in the U.S. and Europe, and offers some potential explanations: Marketplace of Ideas: But First, The Bill.

City Life is excellent, and I highly recommend it, if that's your sort of thing. Rybcyznski has written several other well-regarded books exploring similar topics, and his Home: A Short History of an Idea is the one I'll probably check out next. Also on my short list, The Great Good Place by Ray Oldenburg. And, if you're a Financial Times subscriber, check out this article about urban activist Jane Jacobs (The Death and Life of Great American Cities, that Elizabeth noted at the Cupcake blog.

Not too long ago, I read an interesting article in Smithsonian magazine about Arcosanti, a utopian community that has had trouble sustaining itself. I'm all for architecture changing (and adapting to) the way we live, but I'm not sure why the middle of the Arizona desert would appeal to anyone but the most die-hard believers.

Right now I've just started The Seven Ages of Paris, by Alistair Horne. It's a history of the city of Paris that is fairly dripping with scandal and intrigue from page one -- certainly the type of tome I treasure.

Postcards From The Edge

I spent this past weekend in Upstate New York, Ithaca to be precise. I really didn't appreciate it when I lived there in college, but now that I have the yin/yang counterbalance of living in New York, I like to go back now and then for a break.

If you've never been to Ithaca, it can be thought of as a college-town in the classic sense, along the lines of Berkeley (minus the influence of nearby San Francisco, or even Oakland) or, I've been told, Iowa City or Fayetteville, Arkansas. The scenery is just beautiful, and the variety of (and feverish support for) independent businesses is absolutely refreshing.

At nearly every possible opportunity, I drove out of town just to see where the road would lead. On Sunday, I ended up in Trumansburg, a lovely little village about ten miles away. On the way back to Ithaca, I stopped at an antiques marketplace and admired an 18th-century pine hutch and a 19th-century Parisian tea service for 12. The tea set was porcelain with a hot pink and dark fuschia leaf pattern overlaid, and totally dreamy.

If you're thinking of heading up that way, here are my top seven: Moosewood, Gimme Coffee (the one in Trumansburg is best, but Fall Creek is fine, too; note: there is now a Brooklyn outpost!), The (I.M. Pei-designed) Johnson Museum of Art (on the Cornell University campus), Ludgate Farms Market (weekdays), and the Ithaca Farmers Market (weekends), Autumn Leaves Used Books (located downtown on The Commons; I once bought a dictionary of '30s hobo slang there that I still reference frequently), and Spirit and Kitsch.