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Lucy McRae, Ministry of Sound & Nail Polish

By on August 5, 2011 in art, inspiration, true story
 A still from ‘Chlorophyll Skin’ by Lucy McRae.


So I was late to work today because I HAD to paint my nails.
Seriously.
Now before you write me off as some kind of acrylic-obsessed bimbo, you should remember that I am also a perfectionist with a heroin-like addiction to color. Needless to say, my decision to wear a spectrum of fuchsias was the kiss of death for my timeliness. What could have been a five minute touch-up became an hour-long PROJECT. I applied and re-applied, considered and fussed, held my fingers up to the light and felt my stomach twist. THEY JUST. WEREN’T. PERFECT.

Sanity Police! Put your hands where I can see ‘em!


Of course, the final result was lovely. (And yes, my office wall is the same color as my dress.) But it took quite a while before I could settle, and as I struggled to chase the rainbow (thanks a lot, Skittles), I found myself thinking of Lucy McRae. 

 As a transformative artist, McRae plays color and angle against the familiar canvas of the human body. I loved her work before I knew who she was, and in recent months I’ve felt her influence everywhere. McRae’s latest collaboration occurs in Robyn’s new music video Indestructible. A network of variegated fluid snakes around the singer’s body.

Robyn: the latest darling from Ministry of Sound? Or cyborg?

Though the application of unusual forms to bare skin has become the artist’s signature, McRae’s work reminds us that color can be an emotional trigger like no other. ‘Chlorophyll Skin’ is a visual delight, juicily tactile and free-form. As flows of ink drip down cotton swabs layered flush against models’ limbs, the changing shades transform from blended hues to living sculptures. The sight of scarlet tumbling down a arm shocks like so much blood; a flood of green that soaks across a shoulder mimics moss across a breathing tombstone. 

 McRae’s entire ’Chlorophyll Skin’. Mesmerizing.

Here I am struck by the gentle breath of the models, the trembling inhales with each new shade. They remind me not only of the joy that visual harmony brings to my nervous system but of the fact that I can’t control it sometimes. Art is unpredictable, even the work we strive to create. Perfection may come, but all in due time, if we are patient and lucky and watching.
Each creative act is a little birth, so we must labor again and again and have faith in the process itself. If our offspring do not meet expectations, we can polish and primp and angst all we want, but ultimately this vision is ours. Once we release them into the world, their paths will be largely unforeseen. So we will do our best, set them free, and try to love them no matter what.

Including preliminary nail polish choices. Seriously.

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Equinox Gym

By on August 3, 2011 in humor, inspiration
Behold, the newest advertising campaign from Equinox.

In this PC day and age, when many “athletes” have fallen victim to such smarmy concepts as “mind/body balance” and “yoga”, I’m glad to see that SOMEONE remembers what working out is all about.

Getting abducted face-first into sports car windows, thereby showcasing your gorgeous gams. Obviously.
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Equinox Gym

By on August 3, 2011 in inspiration, notes
Behold, the newest advertising campaign from Equinox.

In this PC day and age, when many “athletes” have fallen victim to such smarmy concepts as “mind/body balance” and “yoga”, I’m glad to see that SOMEONE remembers what working out is all about.

Getting abducted face-first into sports car windows, thereby showcasing your gorgeous gams. Obviously.
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Avicii

By on July 18, 2011 in art, inspiration
Just heard this song on the radio. If the ocean breeze blowing through my windows had a rhythm, it would be this, a flow like water in sultry summer air, a breath of tidal freshness wandering dark streets and urging me to follow.
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Color Riot!

By on July 13, 2011 in art, design, inspiration

It’s 101 degrees outside. Hot, humid, and depressing. The news is full of stories about psychotics who get away with murder and sexually tormented little girls and Africans who survive an epic drought by eating leaves.
ENOUGH.

Here and now I demand: GIVE US COLOR!

Thank you.
Don’t you feel better already?

Now, I understand that bright objects in variegated hues aren’t on par with, say, international aid. They’re less convoluted, for one thing, the conjured relief immediate. Color is a band-aid with cartoons on it, and while we ultimately need more to cure the wounds of humanitarian and environmental tragedy, we also deserve small bursts of joy.

Or big ones!

Take the example of the Favela Painting Project. Haas & Hahn, an artistic duo whose real names are Jeroen Koolhaas and Dre Urhahn, decided to painting enormous murals in the slums of Brazil, layering color across the faces of woeful buildings in the heart of Rio di Janero. The result is an unexpected explosion, a firework of youthful energy and artistic passion that has revolutionized the community.

 
Transformed!
So take the power into your hands. GIVE YOURSELF COLOR!
Grab your pencils, your markers and paints; take to the streets or a sheet of white paper.
Let every home feel like this:

And commission all hand soaps to be arranged thusly:
And as you draw and brush and play, spread the news! We DO know how to be happy, we HAVE the power to change the world, and we WILL find joy in a crayon box, in leaves of paper, in the overflowing prism of our colorful, creative hearts.

And good news! Coldplay is already on board.
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Susan Wood

By on June 21, 2011 in art, creative writing, inspiration

When I grow up, I want to a writer like Susan Wood.

Daily Life
by Susan Wood

A parrot of irritation sits
on my shoulder, pecks
at my head, ruffling his feathers
in my ear. He repeats
everything I say, like a child
trying to irritate the parent.
Too much to do today: the dracena
that’s outgrown its pot, a mountain
of bills to pay and nothing in the house
to eat. Too many clothes need washing
and the dog needs his shots.
It just goes on and on, I say
to myself, no one around, and catch
myself saying it, a ball hit so straight
to your glove you’d have to be
blind not to catch it. And of course
I hope it does go on and on
forever, the little pain,
the little pleasure, the sun
a blood orange in the sky, the sky
parrot blue and the day
unfolding like a bird slowly
spreading its wings, though I know,

saying it, that it won’t.

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Walt Whitman (Miracles)

By on June 13, 2011 in art, inspiration
Blissful.

A funy thing is happening now that I post to my blog every day. I’m enjoying the narrow-yet-flexible parameters of mindfulness as an umbrella topic, but as I go about my day more and more subjects seem to throw themselves at me. As these fun or artsy bits and pieces grab my attention, I find myself wanting to share them with you. Typically, I’d upload these songs or pictures or poems as a Daily Dose, but now I feel stymied. I Dose every day already! I don’t want to confuse subjects and projects and titles in this poor, fledging forum, and the compulsive perfectionist in me demands aesthetic, thematic, harmonic, symmetric consistency

But luckily for you, I’ve championed over my crazy and I’ve decided that I’m not going to withhold slices of brilliance from my dear readership simply because certain tags overlap. So as I resolve my titular conflicts, please take these posts for what they are: my best attempt to share with you the lovelier things in life.


Recently, I signed up for Poem-A-Day from the American Academy of Poets (you should too!).
I love this today’s poem by Walt Whitman and find it especially relevant to my mini-rant yesterday. Like me, Whitman seemed to believe that ‘our hearts crave more than bliss’, and with this work he celebrated the everyday for the miracle that it is.

Miracles

by Walt Whitman

Why, who makes much of a miracle?

As to me I know of nothing else but miracles,

Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,

Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,

Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of the water,

Or stand under trees in the woods,

Or talk by day with any one I love, or sleep in the bed at night with any one I love,

Or sit at table at dinner with the rest,

Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car,

Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive of a summer forenoon,

Or animals feeding in the fields,

Or birds, or the wonderfulness of insects in the air,

Or the wonderfulness of the sundown, or of stars shining so quiet and bright,

Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in spring;

These with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles,

The whole referring, yet each distinct and in its place.



To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,

Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,

Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same,

Every foot of the interior swarms with the same.



To me the sea is a continual miracle,

The fishes that swim—the rocks—the motion of the waves—the ships with men in them,

What stranger miracles are there?
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Flight Paths

By on May 24, 2011 in design, inspiration, true story

When I was in middle school, I had a dream. It was the best dream of my life.

I didn’t dream of a better world, a thinner body or more money. I dreamt that I could fly.
Specifically, I was hang-gliding across a thousand different landscapes, swooping low and high above canyons and deserts and broad sparkling seas. Several years later, during Extreme Spring Break 2005, my friends and I adventure-sported our way across New Zealand’s South Island, and I knew the time had come.

I was going to hang-glide for real.


The entire thing last for about 10 minutes—approximately 1/100th the length of my dream montage—and involved strapping my body to a trained instructor and running off the edge of a cliff with him. Fortunately, we were also strapped to a kite. This thin skin of nylon and wire caught the wind immediately, jerking us upward as though against the face of a wave. We rode currents in the air, dipping and spinning, occasionally breaking against the crest and trough of an invisible swell. When we finally landed, my heart was pounding, smile radiant and knees stained with grass from my ungainly collapse.

“How long does it take to become licensed to fly?” I asked.

“Depends. It’s really how many months it takes you to make it up there without breaking something on the way back down.”

Ah. A dream for another day, then.
* * *
Six years later, I’ve become an unlicensed expert in the other, more mundane way to fly: pay exorbitant fees to sit in sky-bound cattle cars where you have as much helm control as a sardine in its can. 
Let’s pretend I look like this.

Right now I’m en route to California. This is a work trip. I’ll spend 2.5 days on the West Coast in order charm a potential client with my litanies on smell. Once we arrive, I will refer to ultra-sophisticated slides on a projector and pass around samples for sniffing (scintillating stuff, I swear). Replete with alliteration, the saleswoman and I will follow this tap dance with the jab-cross of flank steak and expensive wine. Overwhelmed by our mixed physical metaphors, the client will swoon, and we will re-cross three time zones as champions.

BAM! That’s how business is DONE.

I must admit I like giving presentations. Sometimes the fame is hard to handle, of course, but the whole wearing-a-suit-jacket-and-schmoozing-a-crowd thing is very glamorous and exciting and yes you can have my autograph but later, please, I’m trying to tell a story. For the flights themselves are not all grapes and rose bowers.

Airports, you realize, are decidedly not fabulous. They’re unnatural, for one thing, From the second I lug my overstuffed “carry-on” through the sliding doors of Departures, I become part of an assembly line. I inevitably picture rats in lab mazes or that scene from War of the Worlds on the ferry. I’m breathing artificial air, exhaling everything good and clean and right about the world. Nature out; machine in. I feel the loss of melanin and kinetic warmth and grieve them like phantom limbs.

But there’s no time to waste in lamentation. By now I’ve spotted the monster crowds, and my body has seized up, nerves crackling with cortisol. HURRY UP, YOU FRUITCAKE, my mind screams, and now I’m running, dragging my bags and crippling passersby, free from remorse and any shred of dignity. Only the strong can survive the sterile heart of this congested, seething nest where humans routinely come to blows over the technical definition of “3 liquid ounces” and Chex Mix costs six godforsaken dollars.

 (Speaking of godforsaken, raise your hand if you’re glad the Rapture didn’t actually happen!)

Once I’m at the gate, my pounding heart slows to an approximate 160bpm. I can see my plane; it’s fully adhered to the terminal by its umbilical jetway. For all intents and purposes, the worst part is over.

Haha, no it’s not. There are still delays and freak storms and engine malfunctions and crowded runways to contend with before we even get on the plane.

Before I go slamming everything about airports, I do have one secret pleasure to share.
I love the part where everybody takes off their shoes.

It’s such a wonderfully grounding experience. It doesn’t matter if the articles removed are Manolos or high-performance sneakers or globe-trotting Five Fingers or slabs of cardboard attached with twine. Even Lady Gaga has to unbolt her Lobster Claws to reach her final destination. Everybody takes off their shoes—the rich and the poor, the beautiful and the unfortunate-looking, the sane and Yours Truly. Here, the airport manages to unite us in a single moment of humanity: feeling embarrassed by our feet.

What a comfort.

There are additional comforts to be found in the wide world of aviation, though I have yet to personally encounter any of them. Several airlines offer the latest in in-flight amenities to their First Class guests, including straight-out beds (Cathay Pacific) and pull-out three-seaters.

Air New Zealand: this is not how I fly.

Even global airports are getting upgrades. At Changi Airport in Singapore, for example, jetsetters can stroll through Airport Gardens or go for a refreshing dip in the Balinese-style swimming pool. 

What???

And speaking of Australasia, Christchurch’s global hub now features an international terminal showcasing the sights, sounds and smells of New Zealand’s South Island in all its natural glory. An air bridge lined floor-to-ceiling with photos pipes in a soundtrack and smells associated with different regions of the island. Can y0u imagine collecting your bags from a carousel that rotates in the heart of a jungle? Or Customs booths nestled among breezy wheat fields? In Christchurch, foreigners now walk down hallways full of rainforest leaves and their wet green smell.

In Jersey, all we get are mingled strains of Axe from juiceheads on line behind us.

These innovations are truly marvelous. March onward, glorious technology; go forth and beautify our artifice. But I remember what it used to be like, the drab façade of Christchurch in 2005; I recall its neutral walls and wonder.

When I was 20, I didn’t wish for more. I carried an empty passport, a well-worn fleece, and the most sophisticated thing about flying was Newton’s Third Law. New Zealand’s stodgy old airport was merely a gateway; it thrust into high relief the incredible beauty of the land itself. Free of previews, I was taken by surprise. 

In two weeks, I did a lot. I jumped off a bridge and hiked a glacier and felt the spray of light-slicked fjords. I swam with dolphins and ground iron into a knife. Above all, though, I drank in beauty. I breathed it in through the cold and mists, felt it rush against my face through the rickety bus window.

Everywhere I looked, deep blankets of trees rose above the mountain chains. The ocean spilled against rocky beaches, stones smooth as the polished knuckle-bones of giants. The world was glorious, shrouded in mystery, a thousand years and ten thousand miles from anything I’d ever known. 

Maybe I can’t really complain about airports.

Sure, luxury amenities are probably absent. Digital design may be light years away, and the food may be engineered for pod people. But even as I’m kicking the seat in front of me, whining like a child about runway time, I’m standing on the lip of something epic.

An airplane is a portal, a passage where space meets time. Whether we land with pickax or PowerPoint in hand, the process will transform us. Despite our oversized luggage and embarrassing feet, we humans will finally learn how to fly.
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Martin Solveig

By on May 17, 2011 in inspiration, true story



Last week I was tapped to give a trend presentation to some customers visiting from a perfume & beauty care company in South America. This morning, when I picked them up at our Research & Development building, it started to rain.

“Welcome to the US!” I chirruped as they piled into the company Navigator. “We didn’t request this weather, I promise! Ha ha ha!”

Oh, I’m so funny.

Fortunately for me, these women were Peruvian. They laughed, and it wasn’t a language barrier thing! At least I don’t think.

Basically every person I’ve ever met who lives south of the Equator acts like a ray of sunshine. More specifically, Latin Americans tend to make me happy. Not to sound painfully New Age-y about it, but I dig their energy. And, for the most part, they get me. 

No surprise, then, that as I corralled our guests into the Marketing boardroom, a space full of modern furniture and Twizzlers, I felt my adrenaline rise. I was on fire this morning, rattling off phrases like “IMF forecasts” and “sheer blends of floralcy” like someone who knew what she was talking about.

So I’d like to take this moment to thank the 3 things that made my morning such a success:
1) my love of speaking at great lengths to captive audiences;
2) Peru;
3) the song “Hello” by Martin Solveig & Dragonette. With SURFERS.

Happy Tuesday!
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National Poetry Month: Mae Chevrette, Sarah Kay & e.e. cummings

By on April 8, 2011 in art, creative writing, inspiration
from “Mask Thy Wisdom with Delight” by Ralph Waldo Emerson
mixed media print by Mae Chevrette

April is National Poetry Month.

The first time you wrote creatively, did you write a poem? I happen to think that most people connect with their writer’s spirit (and everybody has one, believe me) through poetry. It’s a funny thing, though, that as we cultivate our faculties for communication, we move away from this form.

This definitely happened to me. When I started the Creative Writing Program at my high school’s Performing Arts Academy, I went gangbusters with poems. Over time, I became less certain of my ability to speak poetry’s language (I wasn’t winning enough contests that way), so I relegated the majority of my verse to personal journals and the odd group critique. These days, prose feels like my second skin, but I can’t help but feel something is missing from my world without poetry.

since feeling is first
who pays any attention 

to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world


my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate

than wisdom
lady I swear by all flowers.       Don’t cry
–the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids’ flutter which says

we are for each other:then
laugh,leaning back in my arms
for life’s not a paragraph

And death I think is no parenthesis

Here, e.e.cummings makes the point with such elegance it practically brings me to tears. That is the power of poetry; that is why, even as I struggled to make sense of it, I understood all along.

Poetry is not a foreign language. Our minds are likely to confuse it, of course, for this is a voice that cares not for syntax, ignores grammar and common construct. It is moved by the smell of a summer sunset, the pulse of surf, tiny fractures in a sidewalk where young grass comes curling through. Poetry is a whisper, a gesture. Plotlines be damned, says this voice. Try harder.

So we listen, and listen hard. What we hear will surprise us, for poetry—centuries of it, rhyming or rhythmic, spoken or scrawled, my 9th grade musings and the words that wait even now in the back of your throat—all these poems are nothing more the language of our hearts.

The following video is one of the sweetest, most inspirational things I have ever seen. Sarah Kay is a spoken word poet, a daily dose like sunshine, and if you listen you will understand why this month might be my favorite of them all.
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