obligatory wedding post

No, I did not wake up at 5 AM to watch the royal wedding.

But I have been scoping out pictures of the dresses (and the hats!) since 9:30 AM.

I was praying for long lace sleeves.  The Alexander McQueen (by Sarah Burton) dress exceeded my expectations.  (And the veil! Oh the veil!).

I also loved Pippa Middleton's dress (lucky sisters have amazing figures....)

Another random observation - the Spanish royal family is freaking gorgeous.

Princess Letizia (by marriage....)

Also the Beckhams.  Victoria Beckham's dress is really growing on me...

manon lescaut; puccini

This has to be one of the most beautiful songs ever.

We're playing it in symphony orchestra right now (concert next Friday!), and though we sound far from perfect, there's still something about it that makes my heart want to melt.

ok, i caved...

...and created an account on polyvore.com.

what a way to spend a rainy saturday afternoon...when psets and lab reports are calling...

back to neutrals by vivoperlei featuring glass shades

it didn't turn out as well as i wanted it to....but then again, i guess that's something that can come with practice :P

chihuly part 4

Mille Fiori - "It wasn't so much trying to replicate plants as it was a way to work with all the techniques we've learned over the past thirty-five, forty years."

That's right, I thought a lot of the pieces looked like pipe eels or something...whatever those worms are that live on the ocean floor, half-buried in sand, their tops waving around with the current.

And, this is when my camera ran out of battery.

Oh well, I guess that just means I'll have to go back again :)

chihuly part 3

From "The Northwest Room" - featuring Native American baskets.

The central piece was a giant hunk of wood with all sorts of glass vessels on top (they reminded me more of sea shells than actual baskets).  Unfortunately the picture didn't turn out amazingly...

On the side, shelves held actual Native American baskets right next to glass interpretations.

chihuly part 2

Ikebana Boat, 2011

(Ikebana = the Japanese art of flower arranging).

chihuly at the mfa

From the new exhibit at the MFA - Chihuly: Through the Looking Glass.

I've never seen an art exhibition such as this, and it was truly a surreal experience. I snapped away like never before (although I could never do it justice!)...until I exhausted my camera batteries.  And, intelligent me forgot to check to see if there were any spare batteries in my camera case before I left (there weren't).

Anyway, I don't have many pictures that I'm incredibly pleased with, but here are some...and I'll be posting more over the next few days.

Persian Wall, 2011

don't banq on it!

(sorry, bad pun).

So it's nearing the end of yet another school year.  Only about a month left!  Which means that I need to start thinking about the traditional end-of-month arts staff bonding dinner.  Last night the thought popped up in my head (again), and this time I had an idea.  I remember seeing this really awesome restaurant during one of our tours of Boston for architecture studio class.  And didn't remember the name.  Thankfully, my friend apparently has mad googling skills.

me: ...that architecturally cool place we stopped by on one of our 4.111 tours. Gr, I don't remember what it's called. But it had all those cool undulating waves of wood or something inside? Maybe in the south end?

jenny:  i just googled "boston restaurant undulating waves" and it came up!  BANQ

yeah, unfortunately Banq closed a few years ago.  And the restaurant that came after it, Ginger Park, just closed in December.  My restaurant search continues!

Anyway, at least I can marvel over pictures of the interior (and maybe a new restaurant will open there, and we can go next year...).

Later this afternoon is my MFA day.  I'll get to finally see the Chihuly glass sculptures!  So excited.  Pictures to be posted later :)

notting hill/marc chagall

It's official; this four-day Patriots day weekend in Boston has already established itself as chick flick weekend.

Last night: Mean Girls.  Tonight: Notting Hill, a.k.a. one of my favorite romantic comedies ever!

So artistic inspiration for today is the Chagall painting, La Mariée ("The Bride," 1950), which features in the film.

"It feels like how love should be - floating through a dark blue sky."
"With a goat, playing a violin."
"Well, yes.  Happiness isn't happiness without a violin-playing goat."

eyeballs, harris burdick, and de-funking the artistic funk

remember The Mysteries of Harris Burdick (1984, Chris Van Allsburg)?

A few weeks ago I received a request to review a book of short stories by Tony Rauch (eyeballs growing all over me...again, October 2010) for the MIT newspaper.  I've never written a book review before, and I don't have much time right now...(prioritizing my time for museum reviews...), but naturally I was intrigued.

The description given was "A 140 page short story collection of imaginative, whimsical, dreamy absurd, surreal, fantasy, sci fi, and fairy tale adventures.  These fables will make great story starters for young adults and reluctant readers.  Some of the pieces are absurdist or surreal adventures that hearken back to imaginative absurdism, sci-fi, and fantasy of the 1950s.  With themes of longing, discovery, secrets, escape, eeriness, surprises, and strange happenings in everyday life, readers will delight in these brief but wondrous adventures."

I only just started reading the collection half an hour ago, but already it has pulled me into its own, strange little world of weirdness and fantasy.  Somehow a few short stories have begun to pull me out of the said "artistic funk"; I feel more inspired than I did this morning.  It's the images that the stories paint, strange pictures in my mind's eye and strange thoughts and deep thoughts and, well, creative thoughts.

Anyway, apparently it's possible to become inspired after reading 20 pages of a short story collection?  Rauch's eyeballs is somehow reminiscent of Van Allsburg's Harris Burdick collection.  One title, one elusive tagline, one image, and days' worth of thinking.

MR. LINDEN'S LIBRARY.

He had warned her about the book.  

Now it was too late.

give back the funk

The problem, it would seem, with being an arts editor, and a full on science major on top of that, is that there is a huge tendency to fall into an artistic funk.

I'm not complaining; I love what I'm doing this semester.  It's amazing to be part of the probably imaginary club of I-edit-therefore-I-am.  This is not meant to sound self-important in any way; it is what is is: I just happen to like this administrative stuff more than I thought I would, and as stressful it is to go about half the week wondering if people are actually going to pull through and submit their content, it is also incredibly rewarding and exciting every Friday when the issue comes out and I can say to myself, "wow, I helped organize this."  On the same note, I am now fully immersed in my major, and the psychology, cognition, and brain science classes that I'm taking are all so interesting.

However - when one is caught up in this endless circle of answering press emails, editing articles (sometimes in class...), and, yes, studying brains, it's much too easy to get caught up into the said artistic funk.

No joke, I may actually be starting to miss my art history class from last semester.  Reading fifty pages about the Orientalist movement in the 19th century?  Only a small price to pay for getting to watch slides of beautiful paintings three times a week.

I end up sifting through arts emails wistfully, wishing I could make the opening of Boston Ballet's production of the Nutcracker, or something from Boston Lyric Opera, or the new exhibit at the ICA, or at the MFA, or......

Anyway, enough of me ranting about life.

It's beautiful and sunny outside, and MIT is full of happy prefrosh visiting for CPW (campus preview weekend)!

Hopefully I'll have a semi-artistically-inspired post sometime soon.