good to look at

Sat, 06 Sep 2008 16:28:46 GMT

nearly every book i read this year :: http://ihavetwothings.tumblr.com/post/49017702/two-things-love-hate

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 21:46:49 GMT

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http://ihavetwothings.tumblr.com/

who has tumblr?

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 15:27:41 GMT

xmas 2005

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wow, totally different light

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 01:30:53 GMT

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sunshowers everywhere this afternoon

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 03:39:57 GMT

playing the building an installation by david bryne

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skipping work some saturday, totally.

Sat, 31 May 2008 03:29:16 GMT

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backyard stray, loves spaghetti.

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 04:17:24 GMT

wolves, india richer
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i saw india richer's prints at the brooklyn flea a few weeks ago, but by the time i made a full loop around the market my favorite was gone. thank goodness for etsy. her watercolors remind me of amy cutler.

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 03:16:52 GMT

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damien, after work

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 01:21:02 GMT

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at the olafur eliasson retrospective, moma

Fri, 21 Mar 2008 02:44:37 GMT

don't judge me okay? it's finally spring.

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Thu, 20 Mar 2008 21:53:00 GMT

fans! of the mountain goats, music hall of williamsburg

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i probably know his last four albums by heart and still didn't recognize half the songs he played last night. now that is a catalog.

Tue, 18 Mar 2008 01:21:07 GMT

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damien & me pointing, brooklyn & boston

Sun, 09 Mar 2008 01:10:56 GMT

In the morning, the whole world had a strange new smell. It was the smell of the aftermath, a green smell, a smell of shredded leaves and oozing resin, of crushed wood and splashed sap, a tart smell, which bore some relation to the smell of bitten apples. It was the smell of death and destruction and it smelled fresh and lively and hopeful.

A.S. Byatt, Possession

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spring!

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 00:29:42 GMT

egg, williamsburg

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drawing on the restaurant table with crayons is one way i remember my father.

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 23:32:17 GMT

wack! art and the feminist revolution, catalog

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TATIANA: are you going to the wack! poprally at ps1? there's going to be a giant edible gingerbread house and dancing.

ARIELA: omg! gingerbread house! hey, have you seen the catalog for this show? it's covered with reclining naked ladies, which is you know, sort of an interesting choice for a show about the legacy of feminist art. out of context it just seems like an awkward attempt to bring the sexy.

TATIANA: we're putting the fem back in feminism!

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 00:31:47 GMT

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some textures from design & the elastic mind now at moma

the show also includes L.A.S.E.R. tag by graffiti research lab, which like most designs in the exhibit is just so goddamn neat.

Sun, 24 Feb 2008 06:03:24 GMT

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the national's performance tonight was spectacular.

Wed, 20 Feb 2008 04:29:47 GMT

obscura antiques & oddities, lower east side

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the lady who runs the shop has an appreciation bordering on fanaticism for the weirder remnants of the victorians: reliquaries woven from human hair, yellowing medical texts, bell jars, naughty pictures, chandeliers, ornate mirrors, insects pinioned under glass, and every conceivable sort of taxidermy. she told us that even though she's a vegan, she's fascinated by the stuff. "it's freud's theory of the uncanny, you know? both dead and alive, animate and inanimate, the inherent violence of the thing--they're so beautiful and so wrong! and they never really look real, do they?"

i learned that she and her partner had flown england for the auction of walter potter’s museum of curiosities which included the famous kitten tea and croquet party which features 37 stuffed kittens in teeny tiny suits drinking ity bitty cups of tea.

in a recent issue of the believerrachel poliquin describes them:

Perhaps the most disquieting of all animal mock marriages is Walter Potter’s tableau of eighteen stuffed kittens, created in 1898. The lady kittens are dressed in cream brocade gowns and frilly knickers, beads, and earrings; the bride has a brass ring on her finger while the groomsmen sport dashing morning suits. All have oversize kitten eyes, and all would be adorable—that is, if their eyes weren’t made of glass and if they weren’t the stuffed carcasses of unwanted, drowned kittens from a local farm. The tableau was on display in Potter’s Museum of Curiosities in the village of Bramber in Sussex, England, along with Potter’s other fantasies in taxidermy, including the “Kitten Tea and Croquet Party,” featuring thirty-seven kittens pouring each other cups of tea and waving mallets; “The Rabbits’ Village School,” which showed forty-eight young rabbits variously learning their lessons, cheating, or sewing; and “The Guinea Pigs’ Cricket Match,” which included thirty-four guinea pigs, some playing cricket, some tinkering on tiny brass instruments.

anyway, she was quite pained by the fact that this museum had been broken up and sold piece by piece--all that antic crafted history dispersed--but pleased to have acquired several lots of the auction (many of which were seized by customs upon entering the u.s.).

naturally i asked if amy or david sedaris ever visited the shop, because come on, that was the very first thing i thought when i saw the photographic catalog of skin diseases and the lamps made out of deers' feet. "oh yeah," she said, "amy comes often. she has such exquisite taste!" she seemed very pleased at the thought.

"exquisite!"

Sat, 16 Feb 2008 04:04:09 GMT

rachel whiteread, water tower & jim lambie, ZOBOP (being installed); both at moma

Sat, 09 Feb 2008 18:13:29 GMT

parmigianino, antea, c.1531 @ the frick collection

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the frick is awesome, in part because it is the opposite in every way of the museum i work in each day. its floors are covered with deep carpets the color of moss, the ceilings are carved and gilded with baroque flourishes and brocade, the galleries are accented with antique chairs that aren't to be sat in. it's like visiting your grandmother's house if your grandmother were a rockefeller and owned 4 vermeers. there's not a single white wall or empty corner in the place.

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antea fascinates in several ways mostly for me it's the way her beauty is so idealized it becomes freakish--the perfect symmetry of her features, enormous eyes with the whites visible under the irises, miniature lips, etc--she looks like a martian. those elongated mannerist fingers and the curious bulk of her body do little to diminish the notion. also from the catalog:

Most of the items worn by Antea — including the marten fur, gold chain, head brooch, embroidered apron, and golden sleeves — were gifts commonly presented by lovers. Often, these were gifts given with the hope of erotic fulfillment, and, by wearing them, a woman stated her acceptance of her lover’s advances.

maybe the success of such work depends upon making the viewer into a lover. it is so tiring to only be the object of a gaze, you know, to be the beloved.

Fri, 08 Feb 2008 02:25:11 GMT

favorites from cb i hate perfume, williamsburg

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i really do hate perfume, so the very fact that we spent 20 minutes in a shop smelling everything is miraculous to me. his scents don't have that acidic chemical quality. the street was deserted, and the resident dog, a 150 lb mastiff came to rub his giant forehead against our hands, confusing his puppy smell with all the little bottles. you would think such a literal approach to scent (apples, lavender, books, tea) would be grating, like a gimmick, but the result is actually sort of romantic--little stories evoking a certain summer spent in the kitchen or the first snowfall and by extension a girl whose neck now smells of snow.

i also liked 'dust' and 'dirt', but hated 'memory of kindness'.

dept. of useful circumstances:

Thu, 07 Feb 2008 04:56:51 GMT

the neighborhood UPS guy is in love with me.

Sat, 26 Jan 2008 16:57:01 GMT

everything is going to be alright, martin creed @ MOCAD

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design*sponge detroit design guide

Sat, 26 Jan 2008 04:49:06 GMT

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needlepoint, 1987. my mother embroidered this wall hanging for me when i was 4 years old. at the top, in black and pink and green is the alphabet in various scripts, gothic is in cross-stitch. at the bottom is a doe chasing a stag before a little blooming tree, two enormous vases heavy with flowers. there are rabbits, birds, and pale strawberries in the grass.

as it turns out, i haven't spent enough time looking at the things my parents made.

Fri, 25 Jan 2008 23:05:55 GMT

Falling in love with Reneé was not the kind of thing you walk away from in one piece. I had no chance. She put a hitch in my git-along. She would wake up in the middle of the night and say things like "What if Bad Bad Leroy Brown was a girl?" or "Why don't they have commercials for salt like they do for milk?" Then she would fall back to sleep, while I would lie awake and give thanks for this alien creature beside whom I rested.

--love is a mix tape, rob sheffield

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i am back in michigan, where it is 7 degrees fahrenheit and the snow is powder and steam comes out your nose. i miss you. i hope this is what you meant when you said i was strange.