Day 357: Twelve.TwentyEight.13

A facebook game:

Here’s a game: let’s fill Facebook with art. Those who ‘like’ this image will be assigned an artist, then they should post a photo of a work by that artist, continuing the chain. I was assigned Sarah Sze.

(Just my own note here, not part of the game itself… I LOVE THIS! I’ve already learned soo much about artists I formerly knew nothing about. Or at least, thought I didn’t. Turns out I have photos of Sze’s work from one of my many visits to The Highline. I just didn’t realize it was hers… Anyways, those of you who know me know this is completely the kind of thing I love to be a part of… Thanks for being so awesome Keila!!)
Hope you will want to play along, too, friends!)

Sarah Sze: Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Sze graduated Summa Cum Laude from Yale University with a BA in 1991. She then received a MFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York in 1997. Sze is an alumna of Milton Academy in Milton, Massachusetts, from which she graduated in 1987.
Career

Since the late 1990s, Sarah Sze’s signature sculptural aesthetic has presented ephemeral installations that penetrate walls, suspend from ceilings and burrow into the ground. The artist creates immense, yet intricate site-specific works which manipulate every space—be that a gallery, domestic interior or street corner—and profoundly affects the way it is viewed. Sze’s practice exists at the intersection of sculpture, painting and architecture where her formal interest in light, air and movement is coupled with an intuitive understanding of colour and texture. Sze utilises a myriad of everyday objects in her installations from cotton buds and tea bags to water bottles and ladders, light bulbs and electric fans. Presented as leftovers or traces of human behaviour, these items, released from their commonplace duty possess a certain vitality and ambition within the work. Her careful consideration of every shift in scale between the humble and the monumental, the throwaway and the precious, the incidental and the essential solicits a new experience of space, disorienting and reorienting the viewer at every turn.[3]

Her intricate works, each of which she constructs by hand, consist of unexpected and carefully arranged combinations of materials. Sze transforms these everyday objects into gravity-defying works in horizontal and tower-like formations that zigzag into the heights of gallery spaces.[4] In 2011-2012, her work Still Life With Landscape (Model for a Habitat) was installed on the High Line in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood and received the AICA Award for Best Project in a Public Space. In 2016, a permanent installation of drawings by Sze on ceramic tiles will open in the 96th Street Subway Station on the new Second Avenue Subway line in New York City. [5]

Sze is a 2003 recipient of the MacArthur Fellows Program “genius grant”.[6]

Sze lives in New York with her husband, Siddhartha Mukherjee, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Emperor of All Maladies, and their two daughters.[9][10]

Bio courtesy of Wikipedia

Artwork by Sarah Sze

Here’s to another day of creativity…

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Day 355: Twelve.TwentySix.13

As the end to this year-long resolution – experiment – draws to a close in a mere ten more daily posts, I’ve been doing some thinking about where it’s brought me, and what happens next. Except… I thought it would be wholly more profound than it is. Like this whole AaaaaHaaaa moment of clarity. I would have my life figured out. Except… I don’t. In some respects, I feel exactly where I was an entire year ago. And yet, I know, I know, of course, I am not at all the same person I was when I sat down to a blank blog screen.

I do know that this whole thing has been wholly about me (how selfish) – about discovering and uncovering and repairing. But also, hopefully, something universal and relatable and worthy of reading. So instead of drawing out the much bigger meaning, I will simply share the thirty (that’s a lot right? But I do have three hundred plus entries, and I’ve become quite attached to this thing…) posts that I feel most connected to. The ones that were the most difficult to write, the easiest to post, the most heartfelt… You get the picture.

In no particular order of importance, rather in order of appearance:

1. Day One. Remains the backbone of my wish for this project. It’s why, and how, I create.
2. Day Five. Felt good to write. It came from a totally true and honest place.
3. Day Eighteen.  Regret.
4. Day ThirtyOne. The dream that just won’t quit.
5. Day ThirtySeven. The Virgo dilemma.
6. Day SeventySix. To heal.
7. Day SeventySeven. Why I look good.
8. Day SeventyNine. Guerilla gardening.
9. Day OneHundredFive. Beautiful darkness.
10. Day OneHundredTwentySix. Onstage magic.
11. Day OneHundredFortyThree. My health care dilemma.
12. Day OneHundredSixty. A little reminder that the sun will shine again.
13. Day OneHundredSeventyThree. A Love Story (for my someday child).
14. Day OneHundredEightyFour. Relationships of the fairytale kind.
15. Day OneHundredEightyNine. A day of discovering.
16. Day TwoHundredOne. How I know the world will be alright.
17. Day TwoHundredEleven. Thanks Girls Like Giants for re-posting this one.
18. Day TwoHundredTwentyEight. I’m (still?) a dancer.
19. Day TwoHundredFortyThree. Time to start acting my age.
20. Day TwoHundredSixtyOne. A reconnection of the artistic kind.
21. Day TwoHundredNinetyOne. To Believe.
22. Day TwoHundredNinetyTwo. The art of blankets.
23. Day TwoHundredNinetySix. My mama is cooler than most, well, people.
24. Day ThreeHundredTwelve. So ludicrous I just would do it.
25. Day ThreeHundredFourteen. Validation for all my crazy.
26. Day ThreeHundredEighteen. Some whimsy. (It doesn’t all have to be serious all the time, after all.)
27. Day ThreeHundredTwentyThree. An amazing day doing one of the things I love best – discovering a city’s art and space.
28. Day ThreeHundredTwentySix. Love. Love. In Love. Want. Want. Want to do this.
29. Day ThreeHundredTwentyNine. The beauty.
30. Day ThreeHundredThirtyOne. Seattle. Rediscovered in photos.

Here’s to another day of creativity…

Day 350: Twelve.TwentyOne.13

Reminders/Reflections. Because today, I need them.

1. A facebook post from a colleague:

“If it does not feed the fire
of your creativity, then leave it.
If people and things do not
inspire your heart to dream
then leave them.
If you are not crazily in love
and making a stupid fool of yourself
then step closer to the edge
of your heart and climb
where you’ve been forbidden to go.
debts, accusations, assaults by enemies
mean nothing,
go where the fire feeds you…”
-Jimmy Santiago Baca

2. Making a delicious mess in the kitchen with a best friend can be the exact remedy needed for mending recent heart wounds. (Not necessarily of the romance kind – although there is some of that to be sure. But mostly, the wounds are self-inflicted. A coming to terms with destructive decisions standing in the way of living a truly valuable life.)

 

Here’s to another day of creativity…

Day 341: Twelve.Twelve.13

What a brilliant – and beautiful – way to stay connected as a family when distance gets in the way. This? Over facebook or messaging any day.

Dad Finishes Kid’s Drawings

Here’s to another day of creativity…

Day 334: Twelve.Five.13

This about sums it up for the night. Beautifully, I might add:

Here’s to another day of creativity…

Day 330: Twelve.One.13

You can know someone and like them and appreciate them… and then come to realize there are whole pieces of them you don’t know. And it’s fabulous to discover those hidden (or not so hidden) talents, dreams, motivations, creative visions. To see people pursue their passions, even in the midst of a good, solid, happy life, is just plain old awesome. Here’s one of those moments to share with you:

James_Craft on Soundcloud

Here’s to another day of creativity…

Day 321: Eleven.TwentyTwo.13

I just love Pharrell Williams. Here’s one more reason why he makes me so HAPPY.

You can watch hour one of his 24-hour music video here:

And the whole thing can be found here:

Pharrell Williams – Happy

Here’s to another day of creativity…

Day 318: Eleven.Nineteen.13

I can’t wait to see this:

This is just too beyond adorable and makes me want one of each – a kid and a puppy:

Toddler naps with his 2-month old puppy every day

And this, this is just great, (more so the sexy men than the kittens for me, but I will admit, the cats are quite cute, too):

Hilarious Photos of Sexy Men and Adorable Cats in Similar Poses

And… the original Tumblr page that the photos came from – thanks to my friend for bringing my attention to it!:

Des Hommes et des Chatons

Here’s to another day of creativity…

Day 314: Eleven.Fifteen.13

My step-mom shared this with me. It’s exactly perfect. And validating. And I want to make every person who has ever misunderstood me read it.

Why Creative People Sometimes Make No Sense

Here’s to another day of creativity…

Day 312: Eleven.Thirteen.13

This is crazy. I would do it in a heartbeat.

The craziest OKCupid date ever

In an online exchange after I posted the article and exclaimed I wanted to find a romantic fella like him to take me on this type of grand adventure, a friend told me it was a ‘special’ type of person that would do this (she meant it with love).

It was then I had a sort of epiphany about the kind of person I want to be (am?!), and the kind of ‘special’ a person who wants to be my significant other needs to be. Thank goodness it came when it did. Before that I was swimming in my own salty, wide open ocean of thoughts. Feeling discouraged and downtrodden about the prospect of me ever finding a special someone who lives up to my potential.

Here are a few things that I am now, gratefully, coming to know about myself:

• I live for this type of spontaneity, while at the same time I live a life anchored by details and plans and organization. It’s not a contradiction. It’s what makes navigating open, adventure-filled waters manageable; knowing there is something to keep me grounded when needed.
• I live for this type of creativity. I crave it – no, require it – in equal parts to the oxygen-rich particles my lungs depend on for my existence. This goes well beyond the “forge your own path” mentality. This is about continuously expanding and inventing our reality. Stagnant and status quo will never be good enough to enter my life’s vocabulary.
• I’ve got a full life. This is not me bragging. This is me coming to terms with all I have worked to build. I simply don’t have time to pull someone along for the ride. They need to come equipped with their own full sail, ready to chart even greater distances with me.
• I don’t have a list of required characteristics for my significant other. Except now, it seems I do. Whoever they are, whatever their background (and hopefully, it’s vastly different from mine) they have to, HAVE TO, understand, identify with, and encapsulate the above epiphanies.
• I so want my heart to catch up with my head and let this person in. I don’t want to spend a lifetime of settling in my romantic field all the while planting a rich, abundant life in all other realms.

Here’s to another day of creativity…