Cirera + Espinet on Clever.
I recently had the pleasure of writing about this 540 square-foot bachelor pad in Barcelona, which features red marble countertops, dark green micro-cement floors, and terracotta velvet curtains instead of doors. Designed by local firm Cirera + Espinet, the apartment is full of unique solutions to a host of common small-space conundrums: cramped corners, lack of light, inadequate storage. What I love most about it, though, is that despite its bright colors (and all that luxurious velvet), it's a space that somehow still manages to feel minimal. “We wanted to create a multifunctional apartment,” the designers say, “that was daring and simple at the same time.”
Read more on Clever. Photos by Enric Badrinas.
Minka and the Bear.
I'm excited to announce that I have an interview up today on Freunde von Freunden, with one of my new favorite artists, Minka Sicklinger. Minka is well-known for her tattoo work, but she's an illustrator, too, and a former fashion stylist. In a past life, she says, she was a "treasure hunting pirate," and it shows: her tiny Manhattan apartment is filled with trinkets, taxidermy, and mementos from her travels. There are books on the floor, plants on the windowsills, a golden egg in the corner, and the head of a bear above her bed. It's her spirit animal, she says. It guards her as she sleeps.
Of her art, Minka says: "Every time I sit down at a blank page of paper I don’t know what’s going to come out. I draw how I see things, which is not necessarily how they look in real life. It’s like when I took photographs: I never really cared about what was in the frame. I cared about how those things got there and where they were going after."
Read the full interview on Freunde von Freunden, and see more of Minka's work, here. You can find my past FvF interviews here, including this one with art director Aslan Malik, who has gold fingernails and a cat named after Anais Nin. (No big deal.)
Pumpkins & Poodles.
So pleased to share that my first feature on one of
my favorite websites, Freunde von Freunden, went live yesterday (another, based
on an interview I conducted over the summer, will appear later this year). For
this one, stylist Andreas Kokkino and his fiancé, art gallery sales assistant
David Daniels, welcomed photographer Greg Kessler and me into their Bed-Stuy
brownstone for coffee and homemade pumpkin cake.
My favorite bit of the interview? Andreas's answer to my question about fashion inspiration: "One day, when we first moved here, I was walking home from the train and there was a kid wearing three pairs of shorts so that you could see every waistband. He had no shirt on, and a pair of Nike slides with socks. On top of that, he was wearing a cape made out of a Disney Princess beach towel, and he was just walking down the street, business as usual. I found that very inspiring."
See the full interview at Freunde von Freunden, here. Photographs by Greg Kessler. Thanks again to everyone involved for such a wonderful day.
PS: I have three features this month in Rue Magazine, as well, including interviews with interior designers Kelly Wearstler and Nate Berkus. Check it out, here.
My favorite bit of the interview? Andreas's answer to my question about fashion inspiration: "One day, when we first moved here, I was walking home from the train and there was a kid wearing three pairs of shorts so that you could see every waistband. He had no shirt on, and a pair of Nike slides with socks. On top of that, he was wearing a cape made out of a Disney Princess beach towel, and he was just walking down the street, business as usual. I found that very inspiring."
See the full interview at Freunde von Freunden, here. Photographs by Greg Kessler. Thanks again to everyone involved for such a wonderful day.
PS: I have three features this month in Rue Magazine, as well, including interviews with interior designers Kelly Wearstler and Nate Berkus. Check it out, here.
Water.
Megan and I recently reread David Foster Wallace's 2005 commencement speech "This Is Water" - whether you've read it before or are seeing it for the first time, I thought I'd share an excerpt today. I remember reading this bit for the first time years ago and thinking, someone just explained the meaning of life.
Photo by Max Wanger.
"The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day. That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing...The capital-T Truth is about life BEFORE death. It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness."
Read the full speech, here, and have a wonderful Wednesday. (See also: George Saunders on kindness; Jonathan Safran Foer on being attentive.)Photo by Max Wanger.
In the Direction of Kindness.
George Saunders's Syracuse University convocation speech - published three days ago in The New York Times - is one of the best things I've read all year. Possibly ever. It may be old news by now, but take a look if you haven't already. It's brilliant and thoughtful and funny - the perfect way to start a weekend, a new month, a new adventure, a new life. Below, my favorite bit, toward the end:
Photos by Max Wanger.
"Do all the other things, the ambitious things – travel, get rich, get famous, innovate, lead, fall in love, make and lose fortunes, swim naked in wild jungle rivers (after first having it tested for monkey poop) – but as you do, to the extent that you can, err in the direction of kindness. Do those things that incline you toward the big questions, and avoid the things that would reduce you and make you trivial. That luminous part of you that exists beyond personality – your soul, if you will – is as bright and shining as any that has ever been. Bright as Shakespeare’s, bright as Gandhi’s, bright as Mother Theresa’s. Clear away everything that keeps you separate from this secret luminous place. Believe it exists, come to know it better, nurture it, share its fruits tirelessly.
And someday, in 80 years, when you’re 100, and I’m 134, and we’re both so kind and loving we’re nearly unbearable, drop me a line, let me know how your life has been. I hope you will say: It has been so wonderful."
Read the full speech, here, and have a beautiful, happy weekend. See you Monday.Photos by Max Wanger.
Love > Likes.
Words to start the week, courtesy of Jonathan Safran Foer via The New York Times: "We often use technology to save time, but increasingly, it either takes the saved time along with it, or makes the saved time less present, intimate and rich. I worry that the closer the world gets to our fingertips, the further it gets from our hearts...
We live in a world made up more of story than stuff. We are creatures of memory more than reminders, of love more than likes. Being attentive to the needs of others might not be the point of life, but it is the work of life. It can be messy, and painful, and almost impossibly difficult. But it is not something we give. It is what we get in exchange for having to die."
Read the rest of the article, entitled "How Not to Be Alone," here. Photo by Amanda Jasnowski. New POV post coming tomorrow - until then, have a lovely Monday!
...everyone is always in need of something that another person can give, be it undivided attention, a kind word or deep empathy. There is no better use of a life than to be attentive to such needs. There are as many ways to do this as there are kinds of loneliness, but all of them require attentiveness, all of them require the hard work of emotional computation and corporeal compassion. All of them require the human processing of the only animal who risks 'getting it wrong' and whose dreams provide shelters and vaccines and words to crying strangers.
We live in a world made up more of story than stuff. We are creatures of memory more than reminders, of love more than likes. Being attentive to the needs of others might not be the point of life, but it is the work of life. It can be messy, and painful, and almost impossibly difficult. But it is not something we give. It is what we get in exchange for having to die."
Read the rest of the article, entitled "How Not to Be Alone," here. Photo by Amanda Jasnowski. New POV post coming tomorrow - until then, have a lovely Monday!
Sense of Shelf.
It's Nice That's weekly series "Bookshelf" - in which artists, writers, designers, and creative thinkers list their five favorite books "in the whole ruddy world" - is an addicting and fascinating read. I was just talking with a friend the other day about how revealing bookshelves can be. My own is admittedly sparse (I've been doing most of my reading on a Kindle lately, and I don't even own a real shelf), but I consider the two tall stacks that I do have an ever-expanding work-in-progress.
Thoughts on a personal top five: Just Kids, The God of Small Things, possibly Jesus's Son by Denis Johnson, and something by T.C. Boyle and Geoff Dyer. You?
Photos, from top to bottom: set designer Anna Lomax; Antiques Roadshow's Marc Allum; Anna Lomax's Chapelle du Rosaire; Why Cats Paint, owned by Dazed and Confused editor Tim Noakes; Hilary Greenbaum of The New York Times Magazine; photographer Will Sanders.
Writers On Writing.
As part of Shared Worlds 2013, literary luminaries share their best advice for fellow writers. According to the website, "some days...you simply need to know that someone else has been there before--behind a different keyboard, holding a different pen." Below, some of my favorites:
Writers, from top to bottom: Lev Grossman, Scott Eagle, Garth Nix, Karin Lowachee, Tobias Buckell.
On a related note, a tip I like to keep in mind, from Henry Miller's work schedule commandments: "Don't be nervous. Work calmly, joyously, recklessly on whatever is at hand."
Find more advice at Shared Worlds, here. And have a wonderful weekend!
Writers, from top to bottom: Lev Grossman, Scott Eagle, Garth Nix, Karin Lowachee, Tobias Buckell.
On a related note, a tip I like to keep in mind, from Henry Miller's work schedule commandments: "Don't be nervous. Work calmly, joyously, recklessly on whatever is at hand."
Find more advice at Shared Worlds, here. And have a wonderful weekend!
Summer/Sadness.
Two art zines of note: this forty-page Summer Cocktails collection by illustrator and designer Jordan Kay (the inclusion of found paper inserts makes each copy one-of-a-kind),
and SadGirls, which features art and writing by "girls who make things and have lots of feelings." I love it.
Nosy Animals.
I posted an image by Stoic Mike a couple of weeks ago as part of an Equals Record teaser; since then, I've had the opportunity to scroll through the rest of his delightful Tumblr, which features artwork that combines words and pictures in curious, quirky ways. A few favorites:
Especially love that jackrabbit - what a wise little guy. See more at Stoic Mike, here. Thanks again to Maya for the introduction!
The New-Fashioned Wedding.
This morning, I'm thrilled to share (somewhat belatedly) a project that I feel so lucky to have been a part of. It's a book called "The New-Fashioned Wedding," and it showcases the beautiful work of Paige Appel and Kelly Harris, founders of the event planning company Bash, Please. As a longtime admirer of Paige and Kelly's, I was over the moon when I was asked to help write their book. (If you look closely, you'll see my name on the title page - what an honor!)
"The New-Fashioned Wedding" is available for purchase, here. A big thank you to Paige, Kelly, and Rizzoli for being such a pleasure to work with, and for inviting me to be a part of such an inspiring project.
Happy weekend to all!
Even Your Coffee Is Surprised.
Google Poetics is brilliant, funny, perfect for a Monday morning. Who knew there was poetry to be found in Google autocomplete suggestions?
See much more, here.