Art, culture, shopping, sex and food New York was amazing and I do truly
miss it I can guarantee a return trip and I can only hope that it'll be sooner
rather than later. So many friends and acquaintances have asked me what my all-time
favorite part of NY was and at first so many thing's spring to mind, the view
from the Empire State, The duck that I guiltily ate at Niles Restaurant,
managing to find the perfect dress as well as getting snapped by one of my favorite
blogs. But in the end I think it has to be the famous, grand and dazzlingly
beautiful Central Park we spent a lot of time there walking through the orange
and yellow leaves, climbing rocky hills and watching the many dogs being
walked. It is such an amazing place very quite and serene in most places and so
different from the fast-paced surrounding city.
The colour of the leaves were so beautiful to walk through.
The lake.
Parts of the park look as if they're out of a fairytale.
Oh and I almost forgot (and how could I!) while we were over there we managed to to see a friend who ten years ago had been a home stay student staying at my house, I was nine and she was seventeen and seeing her again was amazing something I could not have dreamed of happening. So next time we see each other will definitely be a lot sooner than ten years time.
So now this five part series has come to an end and Jake and I now face a day of moving everything into our new apartment by three eeeek!!! It's going to be a long day.
Phew up to part
four, soon I'll be able to tell you about all the exciting things that have
been happening to be recently but I'll never forgive myself If I skip over New
York there was just so much that happened in the 19 days we were there and
tomorrow it'll have been a month since we left. So as a Fashion Student I was
soooo excited to be able to go to New York which I heard had excellent fashion
sense and I was looking forward to the shopping especially. But I had to say I
was somewhat disappointed in Manhattan especially, Don't get me wrong Barney's
and Chanel probably had wonderful clothes but I'm not really in the right
economic situation for that. I actually found most of my clothes in Brooklyn
and Soho, possibly not a surprise to New Yorker's but the myths that come out
of New York had me believing different. Majority of the fast-fashion store over
there like New Zealand sold... crap with the exception of Urban Outfitter's but
that could be debated whether they really are fast-fashion as they bring in
clothes from many different brands and so it's not them pumping out hundreds of
the same designs. However in Williamsburg in Brooklyn we found the best shop
ever it's called In God We Trust and all there clothing is made in America plus
everything is just soo nice and great quality. I got such a gorgeous dress from
there in black with a open back and mustard green silk for the collar and the
sleeves. No doubt it'll end up on a Sunday Best post soon!
We also went to
the Doc Marten's store in Soho we I experienced possibly some of the best
customer service I've ever had. The first week we went there and I finally got
around to replacing my tired old pair of Chuck Taylor's with a pair of made in
England Vintage 1461's and this very cool guy who had mad hair served me and
then the next week we went back to the same store where Jake got a pair of made
in England burgundy 3989's which are actually pretty spectacular and anyway
this guy remembered me down to the pair of shoes I'd brought, impressed much.
Soho is also home to the Taschen shop which
publishes many, many amazing books on art, fashion, photography, Design etc,
etc. And Yay! It was their 25th Anniversary which meant that they were having a
huge sale and I manage to pick up 100 Contemporary Fashion Designers for a
mint and it is absolutely amazing although so far I haven’t had too much time
to actually sit down and read it because Jake and I are in the middle of moving
out of our current apartment and into a new one!
Oh and I also forgot while we were in Soho on one of our many shopping and exploration trips both Jake and I were spotted by Fashionista and put up on their website Jake's is here and mine's here!
Only one more part to go, and then I'll stop rabbiting on about New York I promise.
So as well as all these fabulous art museums and artists we also did
plenty of other very tourist-y things, we managed to make it up to the top of
The Empire State building just as sunset was finishing making for a
terrifically brilliant view and we stayed long after it was dark as the city
looks extraordinary at night. Luckily Jake managed to get a lot of pictures on
this trip (11 rolls of film, and 4 cameras + he brought a polaroid camera when
we were there) because I'm terrible at remembering to take them and of my own
two rolls of film I still haven’t gotten round to getting either of them
developed.
On one of our first nights in New York we went to Madame Tussauds, which
I was looking forward to immensely. I have to say the wax figures are amazing
as long as you don't look at that hands which were a bit worn and too shiny to constitute
as real. Majority of the wax figures looked like who they’re meant to be however
I actually struggled a bit with the Miley Cyrus one. Our all time favorite was
Andy Warhol and we both took a picture with him that could pass for real except
for the sign in the back showing his name. Also the 4D movie was so cool, I
really hope this catches on because if there's anyone out there who doesn’t
like me know what a 4D movie is it's when as well as everything kind-of popping
out the screen you feel the wind and snow fall's on you and hail stones rush past your feet. I thought it was pretty extraordinary.
Another museum that I actually really enjoyed
(minus the hoards of school children running about) was The Museum of Natural History. Obviously we didn’t manage the whole museum in one day but what we did
manage was pretty extraordinary. As childish as it is, we were both so excited
to see the dinosaur skeletons as they have a whopping collection of them and
before this I can't remember the last time I saw one. They had pretty much
every dinosaur that come's directly to mind one of my favorites was the Geochelone Tortoise skeleton it was HUGE and had a smiling face. However the museum does
hold other exhibits and so time to move on. It had exhibits that we saw on both
African and Asian mammals, which are stuffed and put into dioramas of their
natural habitat. We ventured into the underwater creature exhibit where we very
quickly went around, as there were about three separate school groups, which I
suspect is just a daily thing there. This museum is pretty spectacular, we just
paid for the cheapest pass each but they had on some really interesting paid exhibits
that we both would have liked to have seen. One where they had over 200 live
and different coloured frogs so if you ever go to New York then this is I'd say
an absolute must even if your not really into the whole tourist-y thing.
The Museum of Sex. What can I say? Saw the
name, had to go. It didn’t disappoint. The front room is the shop that is very
brightly lit with upbeat music playing and (very) large selection of sex toy's,
book's and games with of course a never ending amount of flavored condoms, then
there's a downstairs entrance to the bar where I'm told (as I'm under their
state drinking age) they serve cocktails that get your up and running, ready
for some.... Fun. The entrance to the museum is on the shop floor and once
you've paid your admission your submerged into porn and it's history starting
with the earliest silent film era porn where the most action a guy get's is
seeing a ladies ankles up to the rough and sweaty much more explicit porn of
today. You then go through to the next room that looks at sex in film and T.V.
such as Kids and Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Oh and through both the film
sections a not particularly lovely man with his *cough* mail order bride
*cough* *cough* loudly exclaimed how "Oh! haha I know this one, hehe not
like I've seen it (winking)" hmmmmm no-one wanted to know. His poor
wife must have been mortified. I mean of course I didn’t expect the place to be
empty of people like this, but honestly Fuck off no one is actually interested
in all the movies you've wacked off to! However we waited until he was a few
rooms in front before we moved forward and thank god because we walked into the
S&M section that (thank-god, because it's not my thing) they didn’t have
any porn playing and it was just the photographs of people dressed in kinky
latex suits and gas masks. They also had some Real Dolls on display which I've
always wanted to see in real life because the idea is so fascinating and I've always
wanted to know just how human they feel, luckily for us they had a Real Doll
penis and vagina that we could touch! To be honest they’re a bit cold and kind
of clammy and weak feeling I think to ever make me want to go in the doll
direction. You then walk into the cartoon section that once again starts off
with the earliest forms of cartoon porn where the cartoon is in black and white
and a simple outline of a guy pushing his large penis around in a wheelbarrow.
Then slowly moves forward to porn in comics and reworking of Disney character’s
before looking at anime porn which is a little bit too disproportioned to me
and it's the frame transitioning’s aren’t very smooth but then again I'm
probably full of nothing but criticism as anime is not very exciting normally
for me.
Part 4 coming soon! Sorry for the long wait we're in the process of moving YAY!
So I love, love, love where art is going but I also
love where it's been, and for this there's MoMA, The Met and the Guggenheim.
One of my all time favorite art movement's is Futurism, and MoMA has quite a
nice collection of Futurist pieces, one of which I was quite excited to
see; Umberto Boccioni's 'Unique Forms of Continuity in Space', 1913. I'm
not going to pretend that I know absolutely everything about this piece but it
is such a beautiful work and I can never figure out how such beautiful flowing
and smooth shapes can be created out of a metal and manipulated. I think I also
prefer not to know as it adds a certain mystique to the sculpture for me.
Now although I have just gushed over futurism but
for me the only piece of work that can move me beyond anything is Monet's
"Bridge Over a Pool of Water Lilies". The Met has one from his
extensive series on display and quite honestly I think I stood there for about
fifteen minuets just looking in wonder at his dream-like perfection of the
scene. Of course he had a lot of practice with this scene before but the power
of the work is quite astonishing when your actually standing in the grand rooms
of The Met in front of it. This painting was definitely a highlight of the New
York trip for me.
Ahhh the Guggenheim! My favorite piece here is
actually the building it's self designed by Frank Lloyd Wright is a continuous gentle
spiral going upwards with small rooms off to the side as you go up that display
the art, as walk around/ up you can see right down into the entrance hall and
up the glass roof/ window at the very top. While we were visiting they had
hanging in the void a collection of works or one whole work, I'm not too sure
of Maurizio Cattelan hanging from the celling and the higher you got the
more you saw as there was ton's of stuff all hanging at different heights. The Guggenheim
is possibly the absolute perfect size as you don't get too exposed to too much
stuff you can easily do it in 3 hours while The Met was just far too big to do
in a day and you begin to become numb to it all after 4 hours of walking
around, as much as I enjoyed it.
Also while we in New York we were fortunate enough to be able to visit
the studio's of great artist's, one who stands out clearly to me is Nina Katchadourian who
does fantastic photography and at the moment all of it is taken on her IPhone
while she is on a plane the concept behind the work is pretty cool. It all
about being constructive while your travelling instead of wishing it could all
just be over. She uses the materials around her to create her costume and set's
so quite a lot of it is toilet seat covers and plastic cups. She also uses
images from magazines and mixes them with other material's to create new
pictures. You can check out her work here.
Oh you can see pictures from our trip on Jake's Flickr.
So as mentioned way, way back Jake and I were lucky enough to go to New York for a study trip that lasted around 19 days. The city is simply stunning and I feel like we definitely left far too soon. Because it was majority an Art's trip we spent ALOT of time visiting museums and artist's, amongst the list of many that we visited I think that the art museums that had the biggest impact on me were, PS1, The Met and The Guggenheim.
If you haven’t heard of PS1it's part of MoMA, which we also visited however I found the work at PS1 much more interesting as the artist's are less well known than those at MoMA. Also the work I found was generally more interesting. This is not to say that I dislike MoMA because they had some very good futurist pieces there. However that's beside the point. At PS1 the work is very diverse, socially challenging and epic. Diverse obviously as there were many different medium's and style's used, socially challenging as one artist's work who I will go on to talk about confronted the viewer with explicit sexual references and talked about male dominance. And epic, now don't take that as how the word is usually used i.e.: "last night was epic!" but actually so astounding as the work took over your senses and surrounded you, transporting you to somewhere else, this refers to an installation piece.
Clifford Owens spent his summer at PS1 working with video, photography and lives performance. When we got to PS1 his live performance pieces has stopped as it was November but they had video's of his performance's playing. In his work he played a lot with our idea's surrounding sex in one prominent piece I remember him using his hand's on vegetables, especially a halved artichoke as if it was a girl's clitoris as well as using a egg plant as a ghetto flesh light. Another one of his performance pieces that sticks out to me was one where he had a room lined with people and would slowly chose a person (male or female) and then go up to them and decide to kiss them or not. The experience of being in that room must have been bizarre the awkwardness of being both chosen and not would have been crazy.
I've heard that sometimes art can be so beautiful you cry, and until this trip I had no idea what it really meant, I mean who cry's for beauty? This trip took me to two pieces where I found exactly how true this statement can be. Ok I didn’t actually cry but I definitely got teary. One of these mentioned pieces is by Janet Cardiff and her sound installation 'Forty Part Montet'. The installation is in a huge, more hall, than room space in PS1 and features a huge circle of free standing speaker's all facing in, two benches sit in the middle and you can chose to sit on these to listen to what can only be described as epic. The sound that emits is 40 human voices all singing in close harmony, the piece is "Spem in Alium" a Latin Renaissance motet composed by Thomas Tallis. Composed in 1573 it was to be sung by 40 people split into five groups of eight arranged into a horseshoe across the floor and balconies in a cathedral so that the music bounced off the walls and windows, undulating around the worshipper's below. It has been thought to have been written for Queen Elizabeth's birthday and WOW it would have been the most amazing birthday present ever. Jake and I were very lucky arriving at PS1 on a very empty day and had the whole hall to ourselves when we got this piece we just sat in the middle, shut our eyes and let the music wash over us. It was the most amazing sound, it reaches every part of you and I felt like I was up in the clouds, angel's and all the experience is un-writeable you really have to experience it yourself.
And now I've got a load of washing and cleaning to finish grrrrr! So wait for Part 2, perhaps tomorrow.
Or Teddy, he's an androgynous bear and he’s 19
years old. No, I am not ashamed that I still love my Teddy he’s been everywhere
with me and has the hole count to prove it. Now the reason I'm introducing Ted
is because tomorrow we leave for The Big Apple. Jake, Ted and I. And as Jake
and I plan on having the time of our lives there won't be much time to blog,
however Ted will be making regular appearances on my Tumblr of himself at
various NY spaces and places so make sure you keep an eye out.
Also if you happen to be in Wellington, Auckland,
Los Angeles, or New York airport or on any of the flights in between keep an
eye out for the Lace Knickers Zine hanging around. There are only 11 made so
finger's crossed they don't all get thrown out by airport employees. Oh and
also a few will be scattered around Wellington and New York. So if you find
one, comment! I'd love to know who picked them up!
Ok, I'm sorry it's such a short post but I’ve got a
bag to pack, zine's to bind and a new skirt to hem.
So, I know I have seemingly joined the ranks of the many bloggers that went under in three months! BUT! I am determined to trudge on and continue writing this!
So as I mentioned a looong time ago I'm going to NYC in November and in order to ensure that I am able to go and exhibit, and experience I am doing a few fundraisers! My first one is tomorrow and gosh I hope it doesn't rain. Ironically I'm doing a sausage sizzle, which is doubled by the fact that while I am vegan my boyfriend and helper is vegetarian.... I know it's quite the gimmick.
Of course I had to advertise the event around my uni and so I tried my hand at graphic design! eeek and well I found that I am defiantly not cut out to be a graphic designer. But I think it will do the job, what do you think?
Well, I now must go off and buy 75 sausages, hmmmm it still doesn't quite feel natural...
New York, New York, that's right here I come! I've said it and you'd better believe it! After two days of on-the-edge-of-my-seat anticipation, both my boyfriend and me got our conformation emails to attend the student art trip to the big apple. As I understand it we're going to be visiting a large number of exhibits and artists as well as perhaps getting some of our own work displayed! On top of all of this there's going to be time to explore and already Jake and I are compiling a list of our must-go-to's.
Living in little Wellington means that we don't have access to such things as:
News stands on the road
Giant pizza slices
Horse and carriage rides
And a s*** load of other stuff that we've compiled...
Yes, it's six months away and working towards the money is going to be tough but I'm so excited, New York is my dream, a center of activity with great music, shops, food, culture.... Should I go on????
I'm sad enough to already have thought of what i'm packing and not packing in order to have room in my suitcase for new clothes and home decor and shoes.... But I'm not the only one, he's admitted to looking how far away record and specific clothing stores are away from our hostel.... Okay, my minds all a jitter and I'm about to start watching Lagerfeld Confidential, so I'm awfully sorry but short post today!
