Emily August

Check out this lovely little linkage by Jill Peck Events, a locally-minded wedding and event planning business! Thank you, Jill Peck!

I love that she picked up on my hair combs, since I think they are perfect for wedding accessories for bridesmaids or as an accent on a birdcage veil. There will be more in production very soon.

Just a quick note to say that I have added a small feed on the right hand side of my blog where you can check out my shared items of neat things I find in other blogs. Enjoy!

It is freezing in our apartment, even though it does not seem to so cold outside. I am wearing so many layers of thrifted knitwear, you would not believe it if I told you how many.

I like making photos look like they were taken with a Gameboy Camera.

Been busy lately, creative projects are put on hold until November.

Stay tuned!

Yesterday I met up with my little sisters, Sarah and Liz, for Sarah’s bachelorette day. Sarah is getting married next weekend, so we took her to a spa in SoHo, and then to see Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist in Union Square. We are such an indie music-loving family that this was the perfect movie to go see together. After that, we headed back in to Hoboken for Sushi and sake at Robongi, where we were met by one of Sarah’s close friends and one of our older sisters, Nina. We had so much fun. I’ve been saving up in order to be able afford a night out, so I especially had a good time.

Here are my sisters before the movie, the only pictures I took all day because I forgot to bring Compact Flash cards for my SLR. Sarah and Lizzy aren’t that much younger than me, and they are twins.

Love the fact that there is a creepy face on a tshirt in the shop window behind Lizzy who is singing Happiness is a Warm Gun to no one in particular.

Post-film: I felt like the exact target market for this movie; I recognized all the location shots, knew who all of the cameo appearances were, and knew most of the soundtrack (and if I didn’t know the song, Sarah leaned in to say, “Yes I played this for you six months ago, it’s _____”.) Perfect depiction of NYC music scene generalities (except why on Earth did they need to refer to Union Pool as Brooklyn Pool? To make it obvious it was in Brooklyn?), lots of wimpster/emo boy accuracies, and I loved the fairy boys with the van. Also, the characters had similar ringtones to those you will find on the cell phones in our apartment.

But also the music could have been better.

Dear self: You are a target market.

Finished another anthology of Polish Poetry, this one edited by Czeslaw Milosz (1965). Here are my four-most favorite poems from the book.

From Building the Barricade
by Anna Swirszcynska

He Steals Furs

A shell tears apart the door
of the furrier’s shop.

A man leaps in,
grabs an armful of furs,
lugs them to the gateway at a run.

At the gateway another shell
tears apart the man.

translated by Magnus Jan Krynski
and Robert A. Maguire

From Sketch for a Memoir
by Adam Wazyk

Conversations at supper or over vodka in bars,
iridescent words in which the chaos drones.
For in those years people of not quite bad will
had thier minds filled with noise, a camouflage for reaction,
ideas got entangled like gods in the era of sncretism,
I knew a painter who for three hours
was able to talk nonsense without stopping,
other composed crosswords,
waited for a cataclysm
as for a monstrous group photograph in a flash of magnesium,
red Nostradamus.

A liar was among us disguised as a journalist,
an informer was a Schongeist or a bohemian poet,
a pimp and a German agent posed as snobs,
no one knew what were other people’s sources of income,
ten just men were dying in Spain.

From Throughout Our Lands
by Czeslaw Milosz, 1944

III

If I had to tell what the world is for me
I would take a hamster or a hedgehog or a mole
and place him in a theatre seat one evening
and, bringing my ear close to his humid snout,
would listen to what he says about the spotlights,
sounds of the music, and movements of the dance.

Verses About Poland
by Adam Zagajewski

I read verses about Poland
written by foreign poets. Germans and Russians
have not only rifles, but also
ink, pens, a little heart and a lot
of imagination. Poland–in their verses–
resembles a reckless unicorn
feeding on the wool of tapestries,
it is beautiful, weak and imprudent.
I do not comprehend the working
of the mechanism of illusion
but even I, a sober reader,
am enchanted by that legendary, defenseless country
on which feed black eagles, hungry emperors,
the Third Reich and the Third Rome.

translated by Antony Graham

Check out Rory Nugent’s Square Band, featured in WIRED blog’s post Sounds of Science: 8 Futuristic Musical Instruments.

Rory will showing this and other projects in person at Maker Faire this weekend in Austin, Texas! He’s traveling with folks from the program at NYU, so if you get a picture of him at his table, send it along to Ruby and I.

PS: Rory and I have now been dating for four entire years. Hard to believe this unless I think long and hard about it, but, yeah, no matter the calculation it keeps turning out to be true. Go figure.

Well, dear readers, it is getting to be that time again. Martha Stewart is glittering pumpkins (yes, glittering is used as a verb here), the black cat in our apartment is getting rambunctious, and the leaves are starting to turn their heads and abandon their summertime hue.

It might have something to do with the fact that I am stuck with a little black cat crossing my path several times a day, but I have really been enjoying Halloween these past few years.

I was kind of ignoring Halloween until today, while on flickr, I was editing some photos for eBay, and I noticed a new feature in their editing tool!

ZOMBIFY (plus other effects since Zombify didn’t look that great alone on me):

Oh, how I love the movie Night of the Living Dead (really), and Sean of the Dead (so much). This put me over the edge and I just had to look up some of my Hallows Eve pursuits from prior years. Check it out!

2005:


Rory and I rocked looks courtesy of the now-defunct Brick Hospital Thrift Store and the pink wig from Target made its debut. We danced with our friends at the Lanes in Asbury Park.

2006:

Using my sewing machine and social skills, I crafted a huge party at work with a costume contest where everyone who dressed up got to go out for beer. It was so. fun.

2007:

Got the guys to dress up at work again, but it was less fun, because I didn’t put too much effort into the whole thing since I was about to quit my job to go work for Bard College. I was Little Dead Riding Hood.

We had an awesome party at our apartment, instead. Mother Theresa and the pope showed up. I remained Little Dead Riding Hood and Allison was Little Ho Peep. The pictures with her sheep are a little racy, so click through to flickr if you want to see.

We finished our Halloween celebrating by hitting up the Etsy Labs Halloween Party in Brooklyn. Eleanor ruled the night with this amazing animal mask. It was also fun riding the subway in a big red cape. ‘Nuff said.

Yep, so its a year later and I have since then had three new jobs (Bard Graduate Center, Columbia University, and my current job in a consulting firm). I no longer have a car to drive to anyone’s house who is not in walking distance of public transportation. My current job is in such a small office that a Halloween party is not warranted! My sister is getting married at the end of the month, and money is tight, and I have to say I am really not sure what is going to happen for Halloween this year. However, at a moments notice I can obviously be ready with a costume! Just look at all this great stuff I have laying around:

So, suffice it to say, I am not in charge of Halloween this year, but I sure would love to hear about what your plans are!

My goodness, its been a rough couple of weeks. Between the economy crashing down around the commercial paper market, family members being laid off, everyone in the world catching allergies and head colds, I am starting to remember in what ways change can be bad sometimes. After a weekend full of going out until the wee hours of the morning, and then sleeping it off with the aid of Nyquil, I also can’t seem to get anything to work properly (technology, ordering things online for work, forming proper sentences).

I feel like things are coming to a head, and that I want to rip mine off.

I have been really trying to conserve money and resources, working with what I have instead of going out to find more. Over the weekend, I paged through all my cookbooks and marked all the pages of things Rory and I should try to make. I started looking through my Built by Wendy sewing patterns and found a few options for sewing new clothes instead of buying some online. We’ve also successfully emptied the cupboard and refrigerator, trying to use up that which we have (and also anticipating our landlord getting us a new fridge: she’s delayed us twice). Instead of watching a movie or television on Saturday afernoon, I finished reading In Watermelon Sugar (wonderful).

There are a few things that I need, but I refuse to put them on my credit card. Instead I’ve put them on a list and I will get them one by one as I can afford them. Its nerve wracking and makes me feel a bit panicked to be deprived, but I am not going to die if I don’t get new ink for my printer in the next few days.

My credit card balances are now below the $2k mark and I have a plan of action to pay this off by the beginning of 2009, pending any unforseen emergency incidents. Its been a big focus of mine now for a long time to get out of debt. (I am not counting my student loans from college, because I intend to go to grad school next year and add to these anyway.) It is hard hard hard, and I can’t wait to write about the process when I am through on the other side.

What I’ve learned is that the money is not even that important to me anymore. In the past, I focused on numbers, and made no changes to the way that I looked at how I was spending money on clothes, expensive food, shoes, bags, whatever. A lot of my problem was justifying the numbers against the value of the things that I felt that I needed to have. Now, however, I’m finding that there is a sense of freedom that I’m looking for, and this is echoed in my drive to create things through my other hobbies. I cannot wait to be done with credit cards forever! I am going to be so proud of myself and I am going to have to throw a party or something to celebrate. I’m tired of constantly being aware of my debt! What a drag its been, and I can’t believe that most Americans seem to think this is a normal part of life they have to live with.

What kinds of things are you doing to connect with the world you’ve built around you? I think that everyone will have to start doing more of this as we realize that we cannot afford to maintain lavish lifestyles in the era of economic downturn that we find ourselves in.

Related: check out Jobless in Jersey City via D&Q.

Check out this lovely little interview-profile published over at Draw and Quarter. James asked me to send him some info on all the things that I do, and he edited it so nicely into this little profile. I am so impressed and honored. Thank you!

Music and photos: Widower on a mountain in Pennsylvania.

I am so glad to read the Draw & Quarter blog, because those guys are doing wonderful things, and highlighting some great goings-on in the downtown Jersey City realm. I love their interactive approach of getting people involved and sparking creativity.

In fact, I was so inspired by the profiles on Draw & Quarter that I decided to start a Flickr group for the Downtown Jersey City arts & music scene. Please join, because we are only a few members so far! The photo above is from the flickr group for the Downtown Jersey City arts & music scene by doryexmachina. I think I’ll highlight my favorites every week?

Here are two members of our Jersey City Squirrel Preschool, hanging out outside on the ledge. I have more pictures to post later, but Ruby’s face is classic. Must. Get. Baby. Squirrels.

Loving this weather. NYC is really nice in Autumn.

Excerpt from Agitator
Tymoteusz Karpowicz

It was a lion that devoured
your trees in the garden
a goldfish
swallowed your hands

1958, translated by Malgorzata Sady.
Karpowicz was born in Lithuania in 1921.

I love the sense of something large or small creating an unbalanced amount of trouble in its wake. A building falls and only a field of flowers is crushed, no one is harmed. A fly lands on the tip of a glass in the store display and the entire thing tumbles. I also spent too much time reading The Chronicles of Narnia when I was younger, and tend to enjoy the idea of lions unexpectedly entering backyard gardens.

Memory of Your Hands
Malgorzata Hillar

When I remember
the touch of your hands
I am no longer the girl
who quietly combs her hair
and sets clay pots
on a pinewood shelf

Helpless I feel
how the flames of your fingers
kindle my neck and arms

Sometimes I stand this way
in broad daylight
in a white street
and I cover my mouth with my hands

so I will not scream.

1957, translated by Iwona Gleb.

This text feels like the wake of a panic attack, and reminds me of the insurmountable feelings you have when you first fall in love with someone. The feeling of being crushed under the weight of even a memory of feeling is very indulgent and happily reminds me of being a teenage girl. I also love the idea that you can control the impulse to scream by simply placing your hands over your own mouth. I know that I’ve used this imagery myself somewhere and perhaps that is why I enjoyed this poem so much.

I’ve been drawn to the Polish Books books section at the Jersey City Free Public Library, perhaps I am trying to find something about myself there. This is the first of three in a series I plan to write about, taken from The New Polish Poetry: A Bilingual Collection, 1978; Holton and Vangelisti eds. University of Pittsburgh Press.

From The Jersey City Museum:

Jersey City Museum presents the fiber work of artist Michelle Vitale Loughlin outdoors and on view in Jersey City’s Van Vorst Park as part of The 2008 Jersey City Artists’ Studio Tour. Influenced by her grandmother who was a seamstress and emigrated to America where she sewed American Flags for a living, Loughlin began to explore fibrous materials with paint and created a series of exhibitions showcasing these hybrid forms beginning in 1999. In 2004, the artist received a Puffin Foundation Grant to purchase a knitting machine and since has used a knitting machine to create large scale architectural forms for a variety of national and international institutions including the Jersey City Museum, Hogar Collection, NY, and Casaterra Artist Residency Program, Italy. She recently has expanded her hybrid-craft vocabulary to create new works in sculptures and mixed media embroidery works.

JCM @ features artworks and exhibitions curated by the Jersey City Museum and on view throughout the community.

From The Jersey City Museum:

Playing on the relationship between the real and the invented, the found object and the created sculpture, Deborah Pohl offers us her whimsical Traffic Cone #3: For the Birds. Ms. Pohl has been interested in using these bright orange traffic cones for some time and has experimented with both their color and form, including creating a gilded version for display on a local street. For this installation, she takes advantage of the park’s natural environment, inviting its birds to partake of her work. Together with Ms. Loughlin’s textile sculptures and Mr. Catera’s soundwork, Ms. Pohl’s adds another layer of meaning and function to the space of Van Vorst Park.

JCM @ features artworks and exhibitions curated by the Jersey City Museum and on view throughout the community.

Yesterday we were in Van Vorst Park for the Soundwalk, wearing headphones and listening to little radio sounds as we made our way through the park. We were tuning in to three simultaneous broadcasts of things like historical texts and scores written to coincide with the sounds of the park. There were also hidden microphones that were picking up and transmitting more sounds into the broadcast, but we couldn’t find any. We had a lot of fun with it, dancing around whenever our transmission was broken up by hardcore screamo from a neighboring college station.

We had made our way around every area of the park, and I was photographing the three sculptural pieces on display when on top of her radio broadcast, Allison suddenly heard something like, “Sorry lady, you’re going to die!” Sure enough, she was about to get liquidated by the laser gun this child had just purchased from the Van Vorst Flea Market. How exciting!

Here, Allison has just found out that there is a red dot on her leg from the light of the laser gun. Seconds later, the red dot was aimed at me. Horrors.

This threat of violence was not part of the exhibition but I wanted to find out more about the walk, so I looked it up this morning. From the artists’ post on WiredJC:

The Van Vorst Park Soundwalk is an interactive sound art piece which simultaneously uses the park as a musical score and instrument. The public is invited to experience the piece through portable headset radios as they walk through a loosely defined route within the park.

This is a solo version of collaborative pieces that I’ve participated in in NYC and Warsaw, Poland. The Jersey City Museum has been gracious enough to present the piece to coincide with this year’s JC Artist Studio Tour.

Observations

Sounds in the park: many dogs (there is a dog run); running water (fountain); skateboards and scooters scraping on the ground, buses pulling up, stopping, and pulling away; wind; my own footsteps; bird wings flapping (pigeons make a lot of sounds); conga drums (from the Spanish-coalition sponsored flea market set up along the edges of the park).

It was weird to hear historical texts about settlers but not have enough time to sit and really listen to process the context. I have a terrible mind for historical fact and numbers. Definitely made me curious about the history of where I live.

This is the first time I’ve ever participated in something like this and I loved how supported the project seemed: Its nice to know that the Jersey City Museum, NJ Arts Council Fellowship, and free103point9 had the means to make the piece come alive with equipment and programming. I have so many ideas that I always think could never happen, so I guess I found this pretty inspiring. Then again, I didn’t go to art school or anything, so maybe this type of sound sculpture is a common form of interactive design. Either way, super cool and nicely done.

There is always a ton of stuff to do in Jersey City, especially on the first Friday of every month. This month, we had the lovely benefit of Oktoberfest last night, though Rory and I headed in to the city to see a friend’s band from Asbury Park play down in the Lower East Side, so we missed it.

Any one else heading out the 4th Stree Art & Music Festival today?

Also, my ex-boyfriend’s band is playing! He’s not in the band anymore but it would be nice to see those guys and say hello. :)

One of the cool things about Barack Obama’s campaign being focused on social networking is that anyone can see everything behind the scenes of the whole campaign as it moves forward. I just love that content like this is on a steady drip from the campaign. You see the families, the crowds of people, the signage, and the faces of each person who is involved and who cares about the goal.

I have never been one to identify with politics or feel outspoken, but I feel like this election is too important not to feel strongly on either side.

All of these photos are from the Barack Obama photo stream on flickr. There is something I like about each of these recent photos, which of course were centered on last nights VP debate.

I love that you don’t have to wait for these photos to come out in a publication, but they are just out there for you to cull through and view on your own. There are so many viewpoints that there is no set agenda of the images released by the campaign, its just there. Love it.