Monster Smash

My Smash Book (challenge no. 26) is close to bursting. With only a few pages left to fill, it's crazy to look back at all the bits and pieces that landed a coveted gluey spot. Here are my latest:

Storm gloom + Hurricat + our marionette costumes.

Photo from Wicker Park, Chicago + some textural framing.

Squirrels go to Chicago for a week, then San Francisco.

Card from the Clift Hotel in San Francisco.

And also, just because, here are some haunting phone shots I took earlier today after venturing out into the city. Happy Halloween:

Subway stairs to nowhere. 

Con Edison trying their damnest.

Union Square Park got slapped around some.

Spoiled Fruit-ball!

Fallen awning.

Batteries and flashlights for sale on the street (Lower East Side). 

Fallen gas station sign (at 2nd Avenue and 1st Street).

More people than I've ever seen making their way across the Williamsburg Bridge.

No One Likes You, Sandy

I was on a two-week business trip (so my challenge posts were already lacking), arriving home just in time to welcome Sandy with un-open arms.

Not until I started seeing some of these images throughout yesterday, last night, and this morning did I realize just how lucky we were to have power and no flooding:

 Many of the subways have been affected. MTA is saying they're down "until further notice."

Alphabet City, Manhattan 

 Manhattan without power.

 Dumbo, Brooklyn (southwest of us)

A double rainbow the morning after the storm. Pretty unbelievable.

Eleven Months In: Progress Report

Welcome to the last month of my 20s and also the scariest sentence I've ever typed.

With the exception of challenge no. 7 (which is very much in the works and something I'm extremely excited about), I think I'll be able to successfully cross all challenges off the list. Here is approximately where I stand with thirty-ish days left:

The challenges in blue are the ones I'm actively working on. The challenges in green are the ones that are completed.

1. Do yoga three days a week.
2. Give a stranger $100. Film it and post it on YouTube.
3. Eat 29 cupcakes in 29 days and write a review of each. 
4. Research and identify 10 procedural reforms that would help move congress and the executive office back to being a government of the people and for the people. Print these 10 reforms on handout cards and distribute to anyone and everyone you know. Post them on your Facebook page and website. 
5. Travel overseas, ride trains only, and put together a collection of photos titled "Window Seat."
6. Sit in silence and stillness each morning for 15 minutes before you start your day.
7. Write and direct your own short film and submit it to a film festival.
8. Spend one night in a women's shelter, make a connection and offer to take family portraits.
9. Make and bottle your own wine. Save it for a future birthday.
10. Lie down on your back in a NYC street and pretend to be a dead bug. 
11. Write a sad story about a girl who gets the things she always wanted -- on your typewriter.  
    
12. Make a conceptual photo series, preferably a book. 
13. Your 27th and 28th years were characterized by massive life changes that included a move and job change; my challenge is make one more life change. I'm not going to define it, but some suggestions would be: take another step with Austin, get a friend for Dagmar, get involved with something you care about in an incredibly inconvenient capacity.
14. Take flying lessons.
15. Do 200 crunches and three 1-minute planks every other day. And assist your scared, almost-grad cousin in finding a job in Atlanta New York. 
16. End every day by writing down one positive thing that happened in the previous 24 hours.
17. Learn how to perform an authentic Japanese tea ceremony.
18. Get a photo (or photos) into a gallery/showing AND/OR sell one of your photos.
19. A year-long water challenge: Drink 1 liter of water per day, wade across a stream, swim across a pool, row across a lake or pond, and fly across an ocean.
20. Make and bring your lunch 2 out of 5 days a week.
21. Manifest yourself in an act of humanitarianism that permanently and positively enriches the life of a child. The act may not be accomplished with direct financial, but must involve sacrifice of your time and attention.
22. Research your Jewish heritage going back at least four generations. 
23. Pay one compliment to a different person every day.
24. Raise a basil plant and name it Kyle.
25. Take an art class and create an original painting.
26. Keep a Smash Book (scrapbook) for the year.
27. Write words (the grouping of letters that hints of story and promise), even if it's only one line or thought or idea, in a momentary embrace of lapse of reason, everyday, and incorporate these words into a future novel.
28. Learn to sew, design an outfit, make it, do a self-portrait in it.
29. Attend 10 religious services. Record your impression of each.  
30. Write the first chapter of your first novel and the outline. Submit to a publisher.

Positive Things: Chicago Edition

I spent last week in Chicago for work purposes. Here are a few of my positive moments (challenge no. 16 is to end every day by writing down one positive thing that happened in the last 24 hours):

Discovering possibly my new favorite raw place in the U.S.

 Getting to spend a week in a fantastic city.

Working on a Super Bowl ad for the first time.

This sweater.

Seeing the real thing (at the Art Institute of Chicago).

Keeping a 25-year friendship going. 

Going Through the Motions

Now that all of my Japanese tea ceremony equipment has arrived, I must practice the steps of the ceremony itself, as I only have thirty-eight days to complete the challenge. While I do have my hardcover step-by-step guide, sometimes it helps to watch someone move through the steps (it's been many months since I had my private lesson where I watched my instructor perform a simple ceremony).

Here is one of quite a few videos I found to give you an idea of what I'll be doing when I get my tea party on. The napkin folding part might take me a half hour, so I hope my guests are patient types.

One thing the video doesn't show is the offering of sweets ("wagashi") before the tea. They are placed on a lacquered tray, for the guests to enjoy while the host is preparing his or her ceremony. I found a place in NYC that makes these traditional (and gorgeous) Japanese sweets, which look something like this:

Finished Product

Here is my homemade blackberry wine for challenge no. 9 (drinkable!) with the labels now on it, perched confidently on my bar cart like a good bottle of wine should. If you are ever a guest at my house, I will force a glass upon you, and I predict it will go something like this:

Guest swirls wine in glass and takes a sip. Guest makes mildly unpleasant face, but quickly covers it up with an enthusiastic smile.

Guest:  "Mmmmm...SO good. I can really taste the blueberries."
Me:  "Blackberries."
Guest:  "Blackberries."
Me:  "So glad you like it! You can just take that whole bottle home if you'd like."
Guest:  "I would LOVE to, but you worked so hard to make it, I think you should keep it. Plus I can't feel my tongue anymore."

Reconnaissance Mission

I recently went artist-stalking at Brooklyn Art Space (formerly Brooklyn Artists Gym where I took my watercolor painting class) in order to collect more scraps for my photo series, "Discarted," for challenge no. 12.

Not only did I get to take some pictures, but I met a few artists who welcomed me anytime to their work space to take more pictures of their used paper towels (you can imagine the awkward opening question). And, if you're curious, the overwhelming majority of painters prefer Bounty over any other brand.

Here are some of my favorite images from the visit (this artist preferred old t-shirts over paper towels, and I think it made for some really interesting shots):