new works + more

Here are some photographs from my work so far this semester, the ones I find myself to be most attracted to. I'm considering making a collection out of a few of them and perhaps putting a book together. I feel that I'm constantly working towards having enough material, and indeed making progress, but the problem is finding the time and focus to do the book project. To buckle down... we shall see.
Next semester's schedule is set and terrific (modern art seminar! photo III! feminist theory! digital photo!) Plus, I'm going on a service trip to western PA during spring break to build houses with Habitat for Humanity, among other things. My team for that is so great, and my photo 'team' (department? enclave?) has been particularly inspiring for me lately too. I'm feeling rather held up by all the good things in my life. And just in time for Thanksgiving too...

Aristotle

"This is why, when we enjoy something a great deal, we do not really do anything else, and when we are only mildly pleased by something, we do other things; people who eat sweets in the theatre, for example, do it most when the acting is bad."

He really knew his stuff.

notes on today

- I got caught in the craziest rain shower in Astor Place. The wind and rain blew down east 8th street like they were racing to see who could hit people faster. I ducked into a parking garage with my friend and took out my camera. I jumped out onto the sidewalk and shot a picture. The sun was in the middle of two buildings a bit off center. It was perfect. It was so bright you could see the streaks of rain. They looked like pick-up sticks falling from the sky. Then I ran to the subway alongside everyone else. There were lots of shouting and random exclamations. Climbed onto the R soaking wet. It was really thrilling.

- Stumbled across the greenmarket in Union Square today. I always forget it happens on weekends and wednesdays. I bought so many veggies, including a lovely batch of golden beets. I'm going to bring them home and make mash for my family on Monday night.

- I'm in the market for a medium format camera. Something that won't break the bank (like that precious, drool-inducing Hasselblad 503CW). The main contender is a Seagull GC-105, but the reviews are awful. A friend of mine has a Lubitel and likes it. My other friend has a Yashica Mat and likes it a lot. Any opinions, fellow photographers?

- I painted my toes this fun mint green color. My digital camera is a big piece of nothing.

- The gallery where I'm interning represents a photographer named Jose Picayo. First off, his work is incredible. But his portraits are the thing. I know there is a method to doing it, but he has some way of making the center or a certain part of the person's face in focus while the rest remains out of focus. I attempted to do that with my feet photos above, kinda, ishhh. Mildly successful, I think.

Tiny Beautiful Things

Her name is Sugar, and she writes an advice column for The Rumpus. 

She was asked a version of that age old question: if you could talk to your 20-year-old self, what would you say?

This is her response.

It struck such a chord with me that I've been thinking about it for days. Especially this part:

The useless days will add up to something. The shitty waitressing jobs. The hours writing in your journal. The long meandering walks. The hours reading poetry and story collections and novels and dead people’s diaries and wondering about sex and God and whether you should shave under your arms or not. These things are your becoming.

Thank you, Sugar, for saying what I couldn't put into words.

And a photo, taken on a long, meandering walk through Madrid.

Patrick Modiano said it best:

En ce temps-là, Paris était une ville qui correspondait à mes battements de cœur. Ma vie ne pouvait s'inscrire autre part que dans ses rues. Il suffisait de me promener tout seul, au hasard, dans Paris, et j'étais heureux.

At the time, Paris was a city which corresponded to the beating of my heart. My life couldn't register itself anywhere but in its streets. It sufficed to take myself for walks all alone, randomly, in Paris, and I was happy.

Come and find me

So I keep you in a flower vase
   with your fatalism, your crooked face

with the daisies and the violet brocades

and I keep me in a vacant lot

in the ivies and forget-me-nots

hoping you'll come and untangle me one of these days

I will never hear this song and not think of riding buses all around Spain.
Weaving tales in my head and daydreaming for hours on end.
Passing by wind energy turbines and huge silhouette cutouts of bulls
perched on the tops of hills.
Rest stops. Fields and mountains.

On being culturally well-read

and why we can't know everything. Damn I love NPR!

This article speaks to my innermost overachiever. The girl who tried to read a book a week at age 7. The girl who tried to read a book a week, for a summer, at age 15 (and succeeded this time.) The girl who can't get enough music, even if it means her computer is starting to give notifications of an almost-full hard drive. The girl who tried dancing, who tried piano lessons, who tried the saxophone, who sings in the shower. Who tried to make herself completely ambidextrous in pre-K. Who makes lists of movies to see, people to look up on wikipedia, and who learned French just because it sounds beautiful.

Sigh.

Yet, I persist. My new favorite paintings, seen at the Magritte museum in Brussels. I like his work so much more than I thought I did.

L'Empire des lumières, 1954

La Magie noire, 1935

Already decorating...

Though I'll be in Europe for more than the next two months, I can't help but be excited at the prospect of getting an apartment in New York when I return. I think about it constantly. Finally, a place all to myself. It will be small, but mine. I truly can't wait.

My mom informed me the other day that she suddenly detests the mirror I picked out for my bathroom at home, featured in this picture.

So it's now mine for my near future apartment and I am so thrilled! It's super heavy, made of mosaic style glass pieces with a thick rough black trim. And it's round– I have a thing for round mirrors. My family is in possession of a plethora of furniture from this person and that person, all stored away in various basements and hideaways. I'm excited that I get to essentially have my pick of it all when the time comes. Especially a certain armoir from a family friend.... I also have a thing for armoirs. 

I feel a future post about art nouveau et les arts décoratifs coming to fruition. Keep an eye out.

inspiration + idioms

 My host mom taught me a fun little idiomatic phrase over dinner tonight. She was complaining that she always forgets to salt the vegetables, but she insisted that ça va because it's much better than oversalting them. She told me that when the cook oversalts the food, people usually say "le cuisinier/ la cuisinière est amoureux(se)!" which means "the cook is in love!" The idea is that the cook was so busy daydreaming about his or her petit(e) ami(e) that they weren't paying attention to the amount of salt going into the pot. How cute is that?

 I bought these two postcards at the Musée d'Orsay this weekend. The left is a colored photograph of Monet in his garden at Giverny (where I'll be visiting soon!) and the right is the painting La Toilette (1896) by Toulouse-Lautrec. They have a [hopefully] cozy home on my desk.

Sculpture

The sidewalks are covered in loogies, dog poo, and very serious looking people.

I bought some postcards of beautiful sculptures and tacked them up in my room.

Lyon this weekend was wonderful. Pictures to follow.

I cannot wait to go back to the Musée des Beaux-Arts.

Learning (in another language) how to use a photography studio is no easy task.

This stuff: saving my knuckles since I've been in Paris.

Monoprix is an amazing store (think: cheap cool clothes + B&N + ginormous grocery store)

Seeing two completely straight men kiss each other on each cheek makes me so happy.

And it happens so often here!

It's official: I must cut back on the amount of cheese I'm eating. No bueno.

But the ham can stay.

I can't stop listening to Blue. I feel 15 again.

Sitting on the métro and reading a French magazine makes me feel like a local.

Choosing themes for my work is proving to be a challenge. In time the theme will choose me.

I feel like I've been gone forever.

Joseph Chinard, Juliette Récamier

Useful French Phrases for the Foreign and Confused: Installment No. 5

The best yet!

Useful French Phrases for the Foreign and Confused: Installment No. 4

(In case you were wondering.)

Who am I?

I'm living with strangers and speaking only French. I do not know this person. Or, rather, I did not know this person existed in me.

Ok, it's time to tackle the handheld shower/ no curtain combo. Here is a glimpse of my room!

Paris: Pre-departure edition

Buy it here, if you so please

Tomorrow night, I depart for four months in Paris. There's so much to say about it that I truly don't know where to start. How about: I'm nervous, but mostly excited. I'm going to miss my family and friends, but more than anything I'm going to miss my dog and my baby nephew because they're the only ones who don't understand Skype (or the function of mirrors, why peanut butter is so sticky, or why I would up and leave for so long a time). 

Everyone keeps telling me, "But Cat, you're going to Paris," and I'm all like, "I know. DUH." It's one of the most notoriously inhospitable, proud, and frankly pretentious cities on the map. (You know, unless you try to be like them, and even then, good luck.) It has a reputation. It has a million connotations. My course of thought has gotten to the point where I don't even think of the Eiffel Tower and croissants anymore – I think of the cold glances, les bousculeurs (the passers-by who have no qualms about walking into you, be in on the sidewalk, in a store, or while you're taking a picture), and people answering me in English when I attempt to speak French (which I speak well, for an American). People tell me, Just roll with the punches, you'll be fine, to which I reply (in thought), Some advice! Do YOU like being punched?

It's a hard feeling to understand (this feeling you get when you leave a place to go on a journey by yourself, not even knowing the people you're going to live with) unless you've done it before. Paris is one of the most well "known" cities in the world. People assume it's easy to live there because it's a western, industrialized, and chic city. Everyone thinks they know something about Paris. You can read books, you can look at pictures, you can talk to people about their trips, and you can romanticize it to the billionth degree, but at the end of the day, no overarching truth can be deduced from secondary resources (despite anything Law and Order may tell you). It is necessary to GO there. True – I am judging Paris the same way I assume they will judge me, right? Right. But honestly, I've been there once, and I came back knowing even less than I did before I went. The place is baffling. And tomorrow I'm moving there.

So now it's time to embrace the adventure.

Hemingway wrote, "I do not know what I thought Paris would be like, but it was not that way. It rained nearly every day." I know that it's a rainy city, seeing as the field of meteorology is mostly accurate and at our service these days. About the first part though... how clever of him. I hope that at the end of my stay I will look back on these pre-departure sentiments, laugh a little, and think, Wow, you were so wrong about that place.

Do you ever feel like you are sitting on this chair?

because I do.

via mia rae

Useful French Phrases for the Foreign and Confused: Installment No. 4

 

I hope I get at least one letter!

and:

This series will continue into the new year and throughout my four months in Paris.
Have a warm, happy holiday, everyone!

FOR THE RECORD:
I googled "confused french person", just to see what would happen, and this happened:

A coincidence considering I watched that E! special on Gwyneth Paltrow last night (and immediately signed up for Goop)? Probably not. Big Brother is watching.

But hey, happy holiday!

Useful French Phrases for the Foreign and Confused: Installment No. 3

 Three uses of the word "blow", and none of what you're thinking!

1.

 

(just change "musician" to "artist")

2.

 

3.

"We treat the night like failed daylight"

I can't remember where I found this article.
It's so beautiful and interesting that I just have to share it.

Why I Adore The Night by Janet Winterson

Useful French Phrases for the Foreign and Confused: Installment No. 2

What I've Been Looking For!

This quote I found on one of my favorites, lolita, explicates literally perfectly a sentiment that I have been struggling with for the better half of my conscious life. I didn't think it could be done.

Don’t ask yourself what the world needs;
ask yourself what makes you come alive.

And then go and do that. 

Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.

- Howard Thurman

Exactly.