Jun 30, 2010


Escape here.

summertime


I have Jess' hand-me-down grill now. What shall we make?
Recipes here.

Jun 28, 2010

LUDWIG VAN


obsessed with that bedspread.

Jun 27, 2010

type

EmmaLipp Vinyl Project

Vinyl letters of the future by the very thoughtful Nathan Preston.

SPRING INTO SUMMER

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It was such a peculiar spring here in the northwest, and although peas and strawberries all but missed me altogether, walks this weekend showed the sun is creating the beginnings of summer berries after all and maybe we will even get something besides a green in from the farm soon.

Jun 26, 2010

happy/sad

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jess moved to minnesota. she took these photos of her last penthouse meal (for now) of polenta with tallegio, herbs and mushrooms and baked duck eggs over arugula with greek yogurt and chile fried sage. thanks giovanna for turning us on to yotam ottolenghi, whose delightful cookbook PLENTY is also serialized in the guardian online here. we drank antica terra, because jess only likes maggie's wine. =) we may have drank too much and cried while dancing to journey.

Jun 23, 2010

Jun 17, 2010

PINATA TIME!




TONIGHT
EMERSON SPACE CASE
NE 30th + EMERSON, 1 block south of Killingsworth on restaurant row
If you are available, you have no excuse:
Five minutes long and free!
The show is a live installation that will loop every 9 minutes from about 8:30 to 9:30
You will be outside, we will be inside.

Jun 13, 2010

PERCOLATING





JESS HIRSCH. NAGI NODA. LUCHA LIBRE.

BREWING









PHYLLIS GALEMBO, GUILLERMO GOMEZ-PENA, ANNIE LARSON, BOWIE, CAN'T REMEMBER BUT IT'S SO GOOD.

M.I.A.

On a crisp, sunny day in mid-April in London, Maya and her publicist, Jennie Boddy, were in a car being driven to the home of a Sri Lankan wedding photographer. Instead of doing standard publicity photos to promote her still nameless album, Maya had the idea of using a photographer she found in the phone book who worked, as many Sri Lankan photographers do, in an almost Bollywood style, by inserting a simple picture, in this case of Maya, into dozens of fantastic, almost surrealistic tableaus. A few days ago, Maya hatched this plan, which like most Maya plans was inventive, artistic and, in an unsettling way, combined the high with the low. “I’ve had my eye on some jewelry from Givenchy forever,” Maya told me, as we inched our way in bumper-to-bumper traffic. “It is millions of dollars’ worth of gold jewelry. To wear it for these pictures, Givenchy had to send a bodyguard. I liked the idea of a photographer shooting me in his council flat in all this gold, knowing that the jewelry requires a bodyguard.” She paused. She was wearing opaque brown stockings, very small, tan leather shorts that laced up the front, high-heeled ankle boots and a fluorescent yellow bra that periodically flashed through a loose, open-knit Phat Farm sweater topped by an oversize dark brown jacket. Maya’s nearly black hair was pulled into a bun on top of her head, her nails were colored in an elaborate checkerboard pattern and she had applied a dark indigo powder to her eyebrows. It was an exotic mix: her body was downtown and her face was uptown. “All of what I’m wearing is American,” Maya said. “If I was a terrorist, I wouldn’t be wearing American clothing.” She paused. This may have been a joke, but Maya rarely laughs. She speaks carefully, slowly, with a kind of deadpan delivery. Like a trained politician, she stays on message. It’s hard to know if she believes everything she says or if she knows that a loud noise will always attract a crowd.


Diplo wasn’t allowed to work at the house (“Her boyfriend really hates me,” he said), so Maya and he recorded “Tell Me Why,” perhaps the closest thing to a pop-radio song on the record, at Red Bull Studios in Santa Monica. “It was my birthday; I was on mushrooms,” he recalled. “It was a special atmosphere: I found the sample” — a patch of music lifted from a song by the Alabama Sacred Harp Singers — “and Maya actually whistled. I did 15 demos for her before she finally chose that track. Even if she hates my guts, she knows that we can do crazy stuff together. The sound on her records is unlike anyone else’s, and we all take that very seriously.”

-Lynn Hirschberg for the New York Times, M.I.A.'s Agitprop, May 30th, 2010

Jun 12, 2010

(JUNE (BABY) JUNE)

baby june
So adorable, like a little duckling. I could have held her all night and I can't wait to get to again. Love love love love love.

Jun 10, 2010

100 ACRE COLLABORATORS

One of the main reasons I enjoyed being a part of theater groups growing up and now why I pursue performance projects is the chance to collaborate with others. While I find myself interesting enough most of the time, I am not really the reason why I choose to engage in artistic endeavors, and I find the micro-community that is created through a project incredibly fulfilling both creatively and socially. I find myself continually amazed, shocked and inspired by the things other people can do - and the things you didn't even estimate - and the pressurized environment of a performance can be a great opportunity to make those things come out of the woodwork.

100 ACRE was a project inherently about collaboration, first and foremost being about the relationship between me and four of my close friends, JESS HIRSCH, JACQUELINE MENTION, ERIN PERRY and CRYSTAL WILLER. We created the piece by all reading the Winnie-the-Pooh books and sharing images, words and ideas from them that we liked (and didn't like) and things we related to in them. We spent time remembering our own stories and memories from over the years and connecting with each other about them in ways both comfortable and uncomfortable for us. It was a different and risky endeavor for all of us and I think very meaningful.
Us with Matt (who contributed his musical + photography skillz to this project as well) two years ago before he left for Princeton.

Before I even had any idea of what the piece was to become, when I thought it would be an experiential tea party, I knew I wanted to involve scents from OLO, ceramic wares from GRETCHEN VAUDT and music by LINDSAY KAPLAN. As the piece evolved, so did those collaborations, and I couldn't have been more pleased with the results.

I asked LINDSAY KAPLAN if she would play and/or create music, and the process of creating an original score in many ways defined my process and ultimately set such a wonderful tone for the piece. Lindsay was very patient with my having absolutely no idea what the end result of the project would look like and plodding along through abstract ideas and sonic inspirations. Her "light touch," wonderful personality and musical talent got us singing together, speaking in gibberish and in funny voices. I hope to get the musical tracks online soon. She records her own music under the name KAYA ONEIDA, snippets of which are here or on her own website .

(Kaya Oneida performing at The Third Side last December at PWNW, which we were also a part of!)


I am very interested in involving sensory manipulations and experiences in performance, as I think scent is oft-neglected and underutilized. I am a little obsessed with exploring this partially because I struggle with my own sense of smell - it seems to register in different tones than how most people experience it. Heather Sielaff, the mastermind behind OLO FRAGRANCE (website here) created two fragrances: THE FOREST, a pine spray that infiltrated the entire gallery and set the audience's initial experience of the piece, and THE ENCHANTED PLACE, a cake scent infused in the string that was in our hair and around the audience's sandwiches, and in the fabric we pulled out to make our tent in the final vignette - the Enchanted Place. She is planning on selling The Forest spray at Nationale in the near future!


I didn't know GRETCHEN VAUDT personally before this project, but I knew I loved her ceramic pieces that are for sale at Nationale and Una. She is also a photographer, a wonderful person with an awesome house and I'm sure is filled with a myriad of talents I will hopefully learn in the future. (She is working on a website.) I commissioned her to make honey pots for the show and she produced simple, evocative vessels both childlike and sophisticated that looked beautiful on their own and filled with golden honey.
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Lastly, miss May Juliette Barruel of the new new Nationale - Portland has a gem in this gallery/jewelbox of a shop and I was blessed with the opportunity to make a show for her space. I am happy to have a developing friendship, as well!

(Self-portrait by May.)