Village People

Winter break is always a wonderful period where I have no sense of time and I can make as many trips to the Discount Mart as I desire (I will save my many Discount Mart escapades for a whole other post to come soon in the New Year.) Part of this eschewed sense of time, though, is due to the fact that everyone tends to leave their holiday decorations up till past New Year’s. This year in particular, I didn’t realize New Year’s Eve had arrived until about 12 o’ clock today when I suddenly figured that maybe I should make some plans. But I already saw the movie New Year’s Eve so I know how all of our nights are going to end anyway MUAHAHAH. Basically, if you’re an old woman, I suggest standing alone in Times Square tonight so that Zac Efron will come and kiss you at midnight. If you’re a wannabe back-up singer, get ready to take the stage tonight in place of Jenson aka Bon Jovi (I still can’t figure out why Bon Jovi had the lead role in this movie.) Also, everyone just stay away from elevators. By the time that this posts though, you’ll have already figured this one out on your own.

Today was also just such a splendid ending to the year. I had brunch at Sant Ambroeus over on West 4^th in The Village, where if you sit outside you can see tourists lined up to take pictures where they filmed Carrie Bradshaw’s brownstone for Sex in the City. I had apple cinnamon pancakes with honey syrup and let me just tell you they were some of the best pancakes I’ve ever had. The second they arrived at our table, the entire room was redolent with apple cinnamon-y goodness. If I had my own perfume I would want it to smell like that. While I was having this scrumptious meal, my mom spotted my musical icon, Lou Reed who was sitting directly right in front of us!!!

Me drinking Sant Ambroeus' Jasmine Phoenix Pearl tea, which tasted just as exciting as its name suggests.

Sant Ambroeus; 259 West 4th Street, New York, NY; 212-604-9254.

After doing some essential cookware shopping and being more than mildly starstruck by Lou Reed, my family and I went to Monk Thrift Shop (which, despite its name is really technically a vintage/ high-end thrift store.) Nestled right off of 8^th street, it’s a wonder that Monk has managed to stay relatively undiscovered over the years. The first thing I notice when walking into Monk is the intense incense smell, which wafts all the way up to the clever ceiling fixtures—that is, the entire ceiling decoupaged in old records for sale. Below the records are racks and racks of clothes that include candy-colored sock hop vibin’ cashmere sweaters—the same racks where today I found a collared sweater for $30 with embroidered ice skaters all over it. There are also lots of cute hand-drawn signs all around the store that add to the fun, kitschy vibe. Although it’s on the pricier side for thrift, one of these signs mention getting 25% off when you donate, which sounds good to me!!

A Safari Mickey Mouse backpack, you now know you need.

Is a safe way to judge if a thrift store is legit by whether or not they have , had, or ever will have Troll merchandise?

Monk Thrift Shop; 175 MacDougal Street, New York, NY; 212-533-0553.

And, now, a series of photos where my hands look really awkward…

American Apparel skirt and striped shirt, velvet turtleneck leotard from Etsy, telephone barrette clip

I will leave you with this list of Selfish Things I Want in the New Year:

• To continue to do lots of art. (Finish my sketchbook. Start a new one.)
• Emit sorry from my vocabulary unless it’s really warranted for an apology or something.
• Write for Rookie Magazine
• Be recognized for my blog
• Do more fabulous crafty projects
• Finally display a teen angst art show at school
• Wear my beret out of the house more often
• Go to a drive-in movie
• Find a boy who appreciates my breadth of knowledge on Pop Art and Portlandia
• Start my band: The Teenage Mutant Turtlenecks
• Learn how to dye my own hair

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Addicted 2 Stickers

Who doesn’t love stickers? Stickers are fun, and colorful, and can be used as means of identification. Not to mention they are really fun to stick on your friends! I’m on winter break now and am staying in New York trying to think up lots of crafty projects to do. Stickers will invariably play a part in whatever I end up doing. I’m kind of a pack rat when it comes to stickers. A lot of the sheets I’ve had since I was little because I use them so sparingly so as to savor them because a lot of them I got in random places that I know I’ll never go back to. If I am at your party and you don’t know what to give out as party favors, give out some stickers.

These photographs were taken by my friend Samuel that I then sticker-edited. He has a blog, where he takes photos of his friends’ style and interviews them and stuff. This was part of mine that will be going up soon. Check out his blog, here.

Stickers= the new concealer

Did you know that stickers are also really good for hiding pimples? No? Okay, maybe that’s just me. Here is a picture of me with a flower power sticker hiding one. People just thought that I was wearing a sticker on my face because that’s something I would do on a regular basis… Oh, also, if you have a pimple smack dab in the middle of your forehead wear a bindi. I AM SO CLEVER, GUYS!

Last note: Yesterday I was at my grandma’s house going through some of her old possessions and found my mom and aunt’s old camp trucks that were all decorated with Keith Haring, Star Trek, a dancing duck in a scarf, and “I’m A Brazil Nut”  stickers, and even one from an old discotheque.

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This Is What Life Looks Like Strung From The Ceiling

 Guggenheim Museum; 1070 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10128; 212-423-3500.

Whenever I think of the Guggenheim Museum, I can’t help but think of the episode of Ugly Betty, when Mode Magazine is scheduled to do a photoshoot and Betty’s braces cause a series of malfunctions, like setting off the Guggenheim Museum’s alarms and then later, getting her metal mouth stuck to a diamond bra they were using for an editorial. It was an episode that could have been taken straight out of the Disney Channel cartoon, Braceface (that show alone made me fearful of getting braces as a tween, and definitely contributed to why I opted never to get them. Also, I just Wikipedia’d Braceface and I had no idea that it was narrated by and based off of Alicia Silverstone!! You see, kids? The valuable things you can learn on the internet!). But, I digress; this post actually has nothing to do with Ugly Betty or Braceface.

My drawing and painting class at school took a field trip to the Guggenheim Museum to Maurizio Cattelan’s last exhibition before his retirement from the art world. I am sad to say I was unfamiliar with his work before going to the exhibit. But from what I've learned, Cattelan is the ultimate prankster, going toe-to-toe with Banksy, eschewing the line between art and performances pieces. Some of these past pranks have included a locked gallery with a “Be Back in 5 Minutes" sign and a room with simply open window, with a dangling rope attached to it for the illusion of escape. But this time Cattelan has really out done himself. Typically, artists who do a retrospective of their life’s work, display it in chronological order. However, Cattelan took a much more schizophrenic approach. In this exhibition, entitled, All his entire culmination of work is strung from the skylight at the very top of the Guggenheim, with pieces completely out of the order in which they were first made. In this sense, it gives them new meaning to fit into a larger understanding of his style of hyperrealism.

You know those games where people are like, if you could invite 5 people living or dead to dinner who would you chose? I feel like he would be such an interesting choice to “stir the pot,” or whatever the phrase is. I have so many questions for him, like why so many horses in your exhibit? And why so many headless horses?

Every step you take in the spiraling museum, you get a new perspective of Cattelan’s work, allowing new secrets that Cattelan has meticulously hidden in his work to unfold in front of you. Cattelan’s playful-cum-eerie aesthetic is sprinkled throughout the exhibit with sculptures of an elderly woman inside a refrigerator, JFK’s coffin, lots of pigeons, a skull flower pot, an enlarged shopping cart, a splattered Pinocchio, bunny ears that stretch the length of the entire museum, a tombstone that had soccer scores on it, rubber boots imprinted with a face, and a tiny squirrel sitting at a desk. My favorite parts of the exhibit where the mechanical sculptures. One of these included a replica of the Guggenheim Museum elevators that actually light up and opened and closed, as well as a slightly Chuckie-like child, who if you wanted him long enough, actually moved to play an audible drum sound.  Plus, there were lots of images of Pablo Picasso and Cattelan himself throughout to signify the fine line between artist and ego maniac.

 A wall of Maurizio's heads

 Truth be told, artists say they are going to retire all the time and jump back into their projects only a few years down the line. Andy Warhol did it. Amanda Bynes did it just last year (Twitter scandal of the year, le duh). So who really knows if this will be his last show? But if Andy and Amanda are any example, I have faith this isn’t the last we’ll see of him.

Exhibit Through January 22, 2012

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Collage of Dreams

A gnome postcard, artwork by Yoshimoto Nara, a photograph of a claymation mock-up of Matisse’s studio, a card from the Juan Miro exhibit I went to in Barcelona this past summer, an editorial from Anna Wintour’s inaugural issue at Vogue, a series of Andy Warhol prints and quotes (including one of the original smizer, my girl, Mona Lisa), a fashion editorial that reminds me of Edward Scissorhands, a photo of Kim Gordon, of Sonic Youth's yellow house, and images of Eloise are just some of the things I've hidden atop my wall. When I am bored it is really fun to play I Spy to remind myself of what I've posted.

This Teen Angst print is one of my personal art additions to the wall. There are a few, but this is the only one that seemed to be captured in photographs. It's a replica of t-shirts I make. 

In sixth grade I started collaging my wall. It began as a strategic means of posting pictures of things to inspire my wardrobe but it was also just a way to decorate my mundane white walls. Back then the cast of Gossip Girl and Audrey Hepburn were at the floodgate of my dreams. But as I progressed through middle school, so began the trials and tribulations of the 7^th grade. Cliques began to come into play, throwing off our elementary school dynamics. It meant that we could no longer all be just friends; we were separated and dominated by superiors. Our similar taste in Lizzie McGuire was no longer enough to base our friendships off of. All the while, my wall became more of a safe haven for the people that I aspired to be like in some way, and the people that filled my middle school could never measure up to. Each day when I would come home from school and want to cry about how “so and so” ripped my bow from my hair and told me I couldn’t wear it, instead, I did things like going through every magazine I could get my hands on and take out pictures that I felt best represented me. I remember this one editorial from an April 2008 issue of Teen Vogue, with Willa Holland on the cover (one photo from it is pictured in the first photo above), in which models pranced around in prom dresses in an amusement park was extremely formative for me because it's one of the few editorials that doesn't look posed and I want to, like, live in inside it. 

An old photo of me with one of my collage walls (I still had bangs here. See if you can spot some other differences!)

I aspire to be a fashion journalist and my wall is almost like an editorialized version of another girl’s diary; it’s my own way of expressing my angst and joy and is a living and ever-changing piece of art that I get to wake up and fall asleep to every morning. The only thing different about my room now in contrast to in sixth grade is that my collage wall has expanded much higher up to the molding and completely fills my entire bedroom. Although it still serves its founding purposes, to help inspire quirky outfit combinations, and to put a splash of color in my room, it has a more profound meaning to me than just that. I put up some of my own art and things from some of my favorites like Barbara Kruger and quotes by Angela Chase from My So-Called Life. Plus, I like to think I’ve matured somewhat since then. I’ve taken down any and all homages to substance-less "bros" and replaced them with the likes of The Kinks, John Lennon, Andy Warhol, Fred Armisen, and Bill Cunningham. As I get closer to graduating high school, I fear what will happen to my beloved collage wall. Truth be told, I might just have to take it with me.

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