Desde La Habana {Imágenes y Son}

  ‘Habana is very much like a rose,’ said Fico Fellove in the movie The Lost City, ‘it has petals and it has thorns…so it depends on how you grab it. But in the end it always grabs you.’ “One of the most beautiful cities in the world. You see it with your heart.” Enrique [...]

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Architectural Photography in the Year of the Dragon

Apparently this is my year. The year of the Water Dragon. I am happy to say, I am finally completing my architecture website. This other digital studio has been on the back burner for about a year , but it looks like 2012 is the antithesis of  procrastination. A year that quickens…like a strong sun [...]

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My [humble] contribution to the Occupy Movement

Here’s to the three fearless women who burned the midnight oil mad-drawing, brainstorming, smoking…and listening to a French radio station. Here’s to completing a full series of state-of-the-art presentation drawings in one night. Here’s to our kick-ass boards and efficient subversiveness. Here’s to your question, La Gitane : “How does it feel to be talented?” [...]

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Happiness

“…and then, I have nature and art and poetry, and if that is not enough, what is enough?”  Vincent van Gogh

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Thinking Deconstructivism in a Canyon

” In recent years , the modern understanding of social responsibility as functional program has been superseded by a concern for context. But contextualism has been used as an excuse for mediocrity, for a dumb servility within the familiar. Since deconstructivist architecture seeks the unfamiliar within the familiar, it displaces the context rather than acquiesce [...]

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Dialogues in an Echo Chamber

This drawing was inspired by this one , by my blogsister Ghadah Alkandari.

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The Umbrellas of Cherbourg

Scenes from Parapluies de Cherbourg Thank you Dianna.

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Wabi Sabi, Dwellings for Imaginary Civilizations, Nightverses

Wabi-sabi is a beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete. It is a beauty of things modest and humble. It is a beauty of things unconventional. From Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers Charles Simonds began building clay villages, ruins and what he termed ” dwellings for imaginary civilizations of little people” in the [...]

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Confession of a Lurker | Entry for ONE LIFE International Photography Competition

I decided to participate ( characteristically last-minute) to ONE LIFE, an international photography competition, in the ‘City Imagery’ category. Click here (or on the image above) to see the entry at a higher resolution and, if you like what you see, vote and share my photograph. The prize is $10,000 or a trip around the world. [...]

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Upon discovering ‘Meditations in an Emergency’

From The Best American Poetry:   The title of the book began as a very sophisticated literary joke, an allusion to John Donne’s “Meditations on Emergent Occasions.” But as sometimes happened in O’Hara’s poetry, the joke turned out to have a surplus of meaning. His poems are meditations — but not the kind that comes [...]

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The Place That Cannot Be

  The Greeks had two different interpretation  for the word “Utopia”. The first one  (pronounced U-topos) meant “the good place”. The second, pronounced Ü-topos, meant “the place that cannot be”.   Paraphrasing  Mad Men.

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Reading Tea Leaves (and Fortune Cookies)

Well, this is no good! August is almost here and once again balmy summer days flew by with traveling, urban escapades and some R&R…while the postings have been mighty sparse. I have been a curious tourist in my own city and state, and, in between summer courses,  the roamings included a visit to Joshua Tree National Park, Much [...]

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Fabric City, Kisses and Beads

The Fabric City is finally finished! Yay! Back to collages and sketches now. From this… …to a process of cutting and puzzle-making… to this: Tomorrow the ‘city’  will be cut and applied to a presently plain backpack and signed. I also want to share this impromptu jewelry design, my second, kindly modeled! Finally, work inspired by [...]

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Dispatches from New York City

Presently and present in New York City. Conference sessions, museums, walking walking walking. Design, Architecture, Art. The energy of the City. Ideas like kites move slower than the city moves. Slower than pedestrians at a busy intersection, slower than subway trains with their human cargoes. A musical: Death Takes a Vacation. Absorbing and consuming the [...]

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This is not a Painting

  …but a photo taken in Namibia by Frans Lanting for a story in National Geographic’s June issue. From wbur.org Lanting explains how he did it in a Nat Geo Q&A: It was made at dawn when the warm light of the morning sun was illuminating a huge red sand dune dotted with white grasses [...]

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Tales of Salt Cities

“Here is a splendid volume from the Terry Gillam school of fictional photography… The book comes in a sturdy slipcase and features complex landscapes, painstakingly created, and digitally peopled by actors playing out scenes which conjure up a mystical Middle Eastern civilisation. Enigmatic, but beautiful.” AG Magazine “This is a beautifully structured text with an [...]

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{From our current selection}

    Photo from Inspired Goodness.   Founded in 2008, Inspired Goodness is a custom invitation and paper goods studio located in Brooklyn, NY.   —————————————————————————-   Notable books:   A Year in the Merde by Stephen Clarke Parisian Chic: A Style Guide by Ines De La Fressange      

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Rain of Frogs [fragments, poems, movie lines]

    The Pretty Parking Lot   I have dreamt of perfect poems faded like dewdrops upon awakening   About mice and buildings built by men   Cities are sentences that haunt me   Book thieves, foreign movies… the line is thin between memories and reverie   The fog has lifted the rain felt soft [...]

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Love Quatraine

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Creativity! [dedicated to you!]

Everywhere I turn these days i see the word Creativity..could this be a sign …cause I have not been posting that much??? This post is more like…four…but so be it. A dear student let me borrow this fantastic book: The Creative License: Giving yourself permission to be the artist you truly are. What a wonderful [...]

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Must Be Milano

 

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Fragments of Dreams

This has started to be a weekly blog, and I am not too happy about it. This Quarter has been so intense in a stupendous way: I am involved in a myriad of exciting projects at the school and became involved in new committees – and that has meant less free time, but an overall [...]

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The Revolution will be Televised? A Dialogue with the Urban Landscape.

Reissued Dec.10, 2010 From the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego site: For the first time in history, the majority of the world’s population lives in urban communities. The urban setting and its corresponding lifestyle are major sources of inspiration in contemporary culture. This is an historic revolution in visual culture, in which the codes [...]

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Collages in Art and Architecture

I have been thinking and wanting to explore collages again since this summer, when I was so inspired by Hector Perez and his students’ work with SoCal Ex–but not until today I finally acted on that impulse. I have two works done and one almost complete. Two to share, and one part of a larger, [...]

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Architecture is built politics, (un)built poetry

Choi+Shine, a Massachusetts-based design studio has recently received the Boston Society of Architects Unbuilt Architecture Award for their creative concept Land of Giants™, transforming the generic steel-framed electricity pylons across the Icelandic landscape into unique, individual humanised forms. Read the World Architecture News article here. In contrast to the poetry of the unbuilt, and whenever [...]

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Steven Holl: Sketches, Watercolors, Collages

All images are from a research project completed by my student, Mariam Thomas, on Architects as Artists and their rendering/design techniques. The relationship between architecture and art, and the study of practitioners who are also artists (with the mindframe of artists), whose design process transcends design practices and pragmatism to include enlightment, discoveries and art- wonderings [...]

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San Diego Art Happenings and Misgivings Sept. 3-5 {Part II}

Pardon the quality of the photos, my Panasonic camera is still out of commission, hope to get it back in working order soon!

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Class Notes: Thinking in Axonometric

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Shadows, Math, Truth…Ephipanies

Happy September. Post coming late today, but it is a new month and I hope this, my birthday month (yay) will be better than the last- and all summer for that matter.  Lots of challenges and growth but…they don’t call them growing pains for nothing. In my classes today we shared links on artists, visual notes, [...]

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Les Mots Et L’Amour {Words and Love}

From St Loup’s secrets & lies: All you have to do is take these lies and make them true… …manier les mots, les soupeser, en explorer le sens, es une manière de faire l’amour, surtout lorsque ce qu’on écrit est inspiré par quelqu’un, ou promis à quelqu’un. Marguerite Yourcenar Quoi? L’Éternité, Paris, Gallimard, 1988, p. [...]

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