She Sure is {Sketching Again}

Once upon a few weeks ago day, when it was just getting nice outside, the artist and the bosom friend, who is also known as "the running writer",  ambled down one Atlantic Avenue in one Brooklyn neighborhood. They passed a little shop, just a tiny shop - and upon consulting with one another entered its doors. They wandered thru the wares. They sifted thru the stores, and then - it happened! The artist stumbled upon an object of magic!

Then a lot of things happened. Maybe the artist realized she'd forgotten her purse at a nail salon a few blocks away, and maybe the shop keeper was skeptical about the particular mysticism of a particular object, and maybe there was a seagull that chased the poor girl down her block while she carried the object aloft- but at any rate, soon the magical object sat upon the artist's studio table. After the artist had begun to recover from a cold and been to new jersey back and forth, and had a really intense dance class, and took a really long two day workshop at General Assembly and worked like a happy little coal miner at her fancy game designer job-job, the time came to test the power of the new-found object. It had its moment, and the artist pronounced it good. 

All is right in the world. We're back at the drawing table. 

She Sure is {Delirious} Pratt Draw-A-Thon

This June, Mika and I will mark six years at job-job. At high noon on Friday, I had her make my annual pilgrimage to Utrecht on 23rd and 8th so I could fulfill my pre-all-night-drawing ritual, which includes, um... going to Utrecht to buy things I'm going to burn through over the span of 12 hours. In pure brilliant Mika style, after crooning through sketchbooks and drooling over new pens she deadpan delivered this, "I can really mark the year by your weird traditions." This year we know it has been a year. It's Spring. I have life drawing to share.

Also, in pure traditional style, I walked home from Pratt at 8am, absolutely high, my body pumping with pure adrenaline. It's a marathon for a reason, and while I've never run more than a 5K (in which I felt my lungs may explode ;)) I can understand how absolutely crazed with energy you can be after pushing yourself as hard as you can go. After 12 hours of drawing straight through from dusk to dawn, you feel like you're bionic. 

So just like last year, and every year for the last decade, I power walked home. In true traditional Mark-Your-Calendars style I listened to Elliot Smith, Eminem, Eartha Kitt, and Ben Folds, (Maybe there was a little bit of unauthorized Gotye thrown in there).Pratt fuels me, and when I am nostalgic and ecstatic and feel like the world can barely hold my energy, I listen to the music that mattered to me when I lived on Dekalb and when it was an odd day that didn't find paint in my hair. 

I got home. I sang in a cold shower (like every year). I dressed in jeans and a fresh t-shirt (like every year). I dance-ran to my studio (like every year). I got about half an hour of prolific work done, barreling through without even a hint of tired, and then... I zombie walked to my bed, half crazed with an all systems shutting down urgency unlike anything I know 364 days a year. I threw myself across the mattress, where I stayed until 2pm (just like every year). 

This week you'll be getting quick draw reports from that midnight oil reserve that lights my fire all year long, and if you can't wait, there's always last year.

She Sure is {Classy} - Happy Birthday Nails

The nice part of living in NYC is the stuff that is just par for the course.
You have a birthday, you get your nails did.

 

  

That's how we roll.

She Sure is {Sketchy}: Walking in a Wonderland

This weekend was my kind of Brooklyn winter dayz. We tapped out at 52 degrees and I wore a denim jacket. It felt like the first day of Spring, the thing I always want for Christmas.

 I slept in (exhausted after an evening of pure bliss in Gowanus). I danced to Spoon in my pajamas -- A very important part of a balanced weekend. I put on one layer of clothing. I grabbed my en plein air kit and shuffled out of the Penthouse at 302 Court without a stitch of make-up or any semblance of plans. I rambled along Henry. I skipped along Sackett. After a long and ambling time I copped a squat at the park to draw some chillins dressed like JCrew models. It happened fast because they hadn't been unleashed without coats in so long their batteries were on full. These are speed sketches.

I read "my slutty book". In evening time I juggled a bit of nothing and nothing to meet a friend at Zaytoons -- the kind of friend that had a baby and moved to Jersey and craves grape leaves --which means I did not have to even leave my burrough (or my block for that matter) AND I ate Shwarma. Yesiree, never any day better. At the day's end, I danced to Spoon in my jeans. I did dishes. I baked zucchini-nut muffins like a boss. I made terse and hilarious innuendo with K. I took a shower hot enough to melt the paint off a Honda. I got back in my pajamas. I watched Felicity (the one where the Christmas tree catches on fire, you know which one). I worked on my new top secret animation project. I got a phone call. I changed out of my pajamas back in to ONE layer, people. I ran to Camp, for a nightcap where I met a man I haven't seen in many moons.....
oh and there were sparklers. Did I mention the sparklers?

This is Brooklyn. 

It is perfect.

She Sure is {Sentimental}

Mika recommended this after reading one of my odes to Brooklyn.

If you are or have ever been a New Yorker, close the door and cuddle up. You're going to need this:

Maybe you can pass it off as winter allergies.

A New York Minute

I would like to journal, but it's something that never seems to get done. Instead I now bullet point my New York life, one minute at a time (well, kind of)

This week was all about Before and After.

This week I....
At the beginning...

• Took my bookshelf from this:
• To This: 

• Saw my most lovely-of-all people-in-the-history-of-the-world-Acupuncturist who makes me happier than any person with the exception of Santa Claus, The Duchess, Beth Logan and Mary Blair. You can see her too: http://www.yelp.com/biz/tomomi-tanaka-new-york <--This is me giving you a hug wrapped in life balance, wrapped in therapy, wrapped in a rainbow and tigerbalm.
• Survived an Earth Quake. Well, kind of... All this stuff fell on the floor! MY SUNGLASSES! MY MEGAFAT SHARPIE I USE TO WRITE ON CARDBOARD! Let me tell you -- It was an ordeal. I was at work. If you have not seen my work, this is a picture of my work:That's the view from my desk. In essence I work in a NYC box. This winter it will be clear that I work in a snowglobe. Everywhere you look you see NYC. You can sit at your robot animation and see from the Bowery to the Cloisters. You can walk to get a drink of water and see the Statue of Liberty. On your way to lunch you see Macys. That is how we roll at job-job. So it's where we were all sitting when the earthquake happened. I felt the desks shake. I felt the windows shake. I saw the lamps swing. A few things fell. Small kine things. All my coworkers, aka. 'East coasters', having never been debriefed in an earthquake before, rose from their desks and ran to the larger than people windows without a hitch. They craned against them to see WHAT WAS HAPPENING!! It was amazing and... 
• I loved it.
• I read the Outsiders. 
• I watched the Outsiders.
• I openly awwed at several cimematic details. I have my BFA in film so I can say things like 'Oh woah. Patrick Swayze looks SO good' on repeat. It's critique and so I can say it again. In case you were wondering... Patrick Swayze looks SO good in this movie. Matt Dillon's got some pretty sweet acting chops -- who saw that coming?  You were of course destined to love Ralph Maccio forever. Tom Cruise sucks and is a complete over-actor. 
• I formed an odd little club with Miss. Rachel in which we read a book and watch a movie and then blast on the movie. Next up...??
• I shared an amazingly perfect middle eastern dinner at Zaytoons. It is the best. That is not debatable.
• I lost a half a pound.
• I had a crafty skill to the wall night with a bunch of girls. We shellacked plates with this weird epoxy concoction. I have no idea how this is going to turn out. It will probably be a monstrosity. Next week there will be pictures.
• I had a deep and late-into-the-night discussion with my gal Ashley. We just 'get it' because we both understand the pressure of being overly talented strong female leads and future millionaires bajizillionares. Also we are totes humble.
• Then this hurricane came and it was this is this and that is that... 2 points if you know I am using Flounder's voice to relay this story.(Ok that link is not to Flounder's voice but it is to the best voice in the whole perfect thing)
• I tried to buy batteries, but New York went crazy and ran on batteries and water. I realized that I could just take them out of my stereo if I needed them.
• I laughed at NYC's preparation for a natural disaster. Everyone freaked their faces off for something that was as common for me as a snow day was for them growing up. (Incidently snow days still really spazz me out) Awww look the boutique downstairs taped their windows. Presh.
• I was promised that when I woke up on Sunday morning everything would look like this:
• It did not.
• It looked like this:That's another before and after and the thing we're microscoping would be my anticipation.
• After the storm was over the electricity went out
• 'The apartment' had an influx of boys this weekend. 
• Nothing like a storm and some chinese checkers to keep things interesting
• I sat in the dark with the boy and listened to Johnny Cash because NO way in HELL was I butchering my stereo's juice just to have a little bit of flash light
• I made everyone take a minute to appreciate Irene. Was she a hurricane? No. She was a tropical storm with purpose. Did she still accomplish a lot of what she set out to accomplish? Were people scared into shutting down mass transit, evacuating thousands, and crying in the streets? Did my roommate still make enough rattatouli to feed an army? Did I skip a shower and instead bathe in a bath full of freezing cold water on Sunday night that I'd drawn just incase?? Yes. She did it her way. On her terms. That's kind of cool.
• I LOST MY SH*T when the tinsy leak that I thought was fixed (perhaps because I was promised it was fixed after it plagued me for eight months while fighting my landlord to fix it) split open in Irene's wrath (which let's face it, after collecting four inches of rain water INSIDE the theater my house was really minor in comparison to mine).
• In that moment of complete crazy and weakness with water pouring down in my house and Irene shaking the windows I may have been talked in to performing Britney's "I'm a Slave for You". sigh. Here's where you get the benefits of this being my version of a journal... because I'd never admit this otherwise.
• I documented said rainwater. Here we meet yet another before and after:ewww... gross. OK I know what's happening here. I went to Pratt. This is a bowl of clear water from the roof sitting on a yellow chair. So the water looks yellow. It's an illusion. I'll fix this...
   um. yeah.
• I still have this bowl of branch water. I got rid of the others, but I want my landlord to see this with his own macho eyes. I know that a) he will not care and that b) the amount of anguish I have keeping this bowl around is just stupid and I should toss it out but I also know c) that is not how I roll.
• The minute the storm was over I ran to Wyckoff  Street to visit my eighth favorite thing about my neighborhood:
• This mosaic house was one of my chief concerns when the wind was winding. In nicey-nice news the artist's husband was out cleaning branches and such from the tile and we had an 'everything is fine' chat. Irene made off with a few loose tiles and some sprinkled sequins and glitter but that is all. Celebrate.
• I went to brunch with my favorite girl to write-letters-to/consume-calories-with/fantasize-about-kidnapping-a-child-from... JenPal 
• Brunch happened at my favorite place to brunch so double plus. Seriously. Be jealous.
• I went on a looooooooooooong walk with the boy. We saw this: 
• Maybe we added something..
• Ok , OK we added the bike... It left me wondering. Earthquake? or Hurricane?
• I got some pretty bitchin' fabric samples back from spoonflower.
• I finally saw 'The Help'. I pronounced it good. Sometimes this BFA in film plagues me. I wonder if you have similar problems. Is there something you love LOVE love (in my case movies) that you persued higher learning in (be that college or other) that you now enjoy a little less for not being able to enjoy it without intense focus on details or things you would change??
• I watched 'Walk the Line' with my Brooklyn version of Johnny Cash.
• My roommate and I are becoming extremely well versed at using obscure music and movie quotes as a sole means of communicating. 
• I realized that I cannot let these New York Minutes go longer than a week. It's been a week and two days and it took way too long to pull this together. Those extra two days make this post craaazy. So expect something Monday from now on. 

---------------------------------------------------------------------

• Watching: suggest something. I'm out.
• Reading: Excuses be Gone by Wayne Dyer and Grief and High Delight by Brittany Warnock
• Listening to: Britney's Femme Fatal on loop
• Drawing: Penguins
• Eating: In love with pickles at present
• Learning: Italian
• Coveting: this bike in red
• Saving for: a Cintiq and a plane ticket
• Quoting:
  

In the meantime, I'm dying to know, what do you have to say?? How was your week. Spill like a two foot slit in a ceiling.

Here On the Street Where I Live

I love my neighborhood. If you google 'Carroll Gardens' it is not hard to see why. 

This weekend, after my eight hour Children's book intensive, I walked a new friend to the train. She could not stop gushing, 

"It's like you live in EUROPE!" 

--um...Yeah, I know.

I've said it before, but this is the best part of sharing the best part of New York my home with people. I look at it with fresh eyes when I am explaining its significance in my life.

Today I was going to review a book I bought a while ago on a visit to Community Book Store, but I decided -frack that. Instead I'm going to start by telling you about Community Book Store. I'll review the book later, and you'll appreciate it more, knowing that it was a diamond in the rough.  First, Let's look at this beautiful picture of my favorite neighborhood bookstore, taken in 1972....

LIES.

This was taken two weeks ago.
Have I mentioned that I love it here?If you make it through the front door, this is what you will find: 

This is the sorted part. As you fight your way further into the recesses of the store, things get sordid. It smells like dust and like books that have been well loved.

The part I like best is that you will never ever know what you will find. Like, for serious.For instance, I once found a turn of the century porno. It had a lovely dove blue cover and a letter pressed title. Five pages in, petticoats were being ripped off in hot passion, or excuse me in piquant moments of rapture. It was published in 1902. I've never used the word "score!" more appropriately as when it I unearthed it from a box of dusty tombs.

I have found long forgotten, terribly important children's books from my past here, cook books that fill me with glee (and butter), instructional encyclopedias that later assisted me in the fixing of sink pipes and the kind of monumental beautiful picture books that are made with hand etched plates.

The store is owned and presided over by The Bookman of Cobble Hill. I was going to put a picture that I took of The Bookman here, but Jacob Murphy, always does it best. See the rest of his beautiful series here.

The amazing thing is that even with the chaos and depth of The Community Book Store, The Bookman, knows where everything is. 

I showed up there a few weeks ago needing a copy of 'A Town Like Alice' for a birthday gift. We had one of our typical exchanges:

Me: 'Do you have A Town Like Alice?

Him: "A Town Like Alice, A Town Like Alice... A Town Like Alice............"Nevile Shute?"

The process is ten kinds of wonderful. He will give you a brand new copy, new releases and stuff publishers are releasing now (usually for 10-20% off list) are up front behind his 'desk'.

If a new copy isn't in his possession, he'll climb deep into the store, moving boxes, re-stacking piles of hardbacks, sometimes even reaching behind books in the shelves, they're stacked two deep. Then he'll simply hand you the volume you're in need of. 

A lot of times if I know I want something new, I'll have him order it for me. Afterall, I'm always looking for an excuse to stop by and see what's 'new' on the corner of Court and Warren.

Simply adding to the eccentricity of this dusty shop of horrors/wonders, The Bookman doesn't really keep typical hours.

On  breezy Summer nights you'll find him smoking his pipe on the  open store's steps well into the late hours of the night. Other times there will be a hand lettered cardboard sign in the window saying something like 'Gone until August - Vacation'. That is what I wanted to tell you about the street where I live today.

The Guggenheim but in Brooklyn

I spent last night in downtown Brooklyn, Stillspotting NYC. Now, over the years I have been to some weird-ass Guggenheim events, but from the first NONE of them have been as weird as last nights'.

I LOVE being a part of new things. Pedro Reyes' installation, entitled 'Sanatorium' is the first in the Guggenheim's new 2-year initiative to bring art into the burroughs. So I went without any real idea of what I was getting myself in to. I bought tickets a few weeks ago and due to the rain, and the boy not being able to make it last night, I almost stayed at home. Like for REAL, like I had to take a cab to make it to Jay Street in time or my 6pm time slot.

From the moment I arrived I regretted going. WHY AM I HERE?!! I wailed internally. I quickly realized that not many people were there by themselves, because honestly, why go to the weirdest show on earth alone?


After talking to the receptionist I was 'prescribed' sessions 15, 9 and 16. I started out alone in a room I instantly decided I would hang out in if I was hoping to be murdered and stuffed in a box.

Here's the great thing though, I'm so glad I had no idea what I was getting myself in to - because if I had I wouldn't have gone and I am SO glad I went. Over my two hours at the installation, I let go of my scepticism and just went with it. The session leaders were wonderful. They left you feeling at ease and free. The whole night cleared some major head space in that nice freeing way that is sometimes hard to get when you're city living. By the time the evening was over, I decided to use our extra ticket to go back today!

It was so, so, so fun. There are sessions specifically fit to families and others for couples. If you go with someone you can still break off separately for a session or two. Today there are even sessions for small children. There were couples at my session and a lot of girls who went together. If you were a single guy, this place was bank. I'm not going to lie, I did give out my number --- but only because I was funny in a space where you had to talk about things you do to comfort yourself. I went wearing a plaid shirt and blue jeans - so I know I was not asked out because I was pretty. I went totally low maintenance and I was glad for it. Wear comfortable clothes - no skirts. You'll understand after you get done.

Oddly enough I LOVED being there alone. Go with someone or not, but just go. I think you'll be happy you did. So here's the deets, Pedro Reyes' Sanatorium is in Downtown Brooklyn today in two hour time slots starting at 10am. The last slot is at 8pm. Buy tickets online and take your print-out. Finding it was kind of a pain, but If you take the train to Jay Street, it's 4 doors down from the TKTs booth as you walk away from Starbucks.

If you have a chance to go, you must! Grab a cab and get!!!

Except the first, all of the photos in today's post are lifted from an article I found after I got home.