Let there be...lights

Guess what? The studio is almost done after a long break in momentum. I had shows to do and businesses to make go! But now the project has been switched back on~just now looking for lights for the almost-done-being-refurbished-room. I typed in French Industrial, and found this incroyable site. If a person could truly love inanimate objects, then I truly love all and any of these, which have enough charisma (and wattage) to seduce. Damn them. I was thinking to turn the studio into an interrogation room anyway.

*photos courtesy of factory 20

Clearing

Clearing the summer wreckage and making room for winter.

Ordinary Day (Paris Edition)

On a beautiful day in Brooklyn I am thinking things Paris, looking at some pictures, drawing some inspiration for a little holiday collection and a new project I'm ready to begin, amongst other big and little thoughts.

Happy Today

a wonderful (and talented) new friend and happy bonbon recipient...

*above photos by lily

A Week in Twelve Parts

incroyable milliner's objets d'art from paris. more on these soon.

my new dog-niece

my fig tree that always cheers me up even if it only has one lonely fig

the animation that left perhaps too strong an impression on my already
warped perspective. the documentary helps put certain "pieces" together.

a new shop for bonbons and a special design for them.

we got some new chairs so wanna come over?

the blurry week
Guess who's teaching a two-part
necklace making workshop Monday? There's still space!

This has been a blurry week, a sick week, a week of couches, limited computing, and gingerale, long waits in doctors offices and inconclusive diagnoses. To that I say, poo-poo. But in and out of the blurry fog, I have seen things happen. And I'm feeling better already.

How was your week?

Five Year Plan Dot Org

Ladies and germs, I would like to introduce you to my old friend Aaron Sinift.
Aaron and I met in Iowa City and were in India at the same time which took us on many adventures and now, he is about to have a new one. He always amazes me with the largeness of his thinking and his big heartedness but mostly it's his approach, always original, completely his own.

He just sent me the finished website for his newest project, Five Year Plan, a total mission of love. He has merged passions and artists that have touched his life directly by curating artworks in a non-traditional way in the form of a book which is also a bag. This bag will contain the artworks and will be produced and printed in India in a traditional way thereby helping Indian artisans, weavers and printers. It is available for pre-purchase by any of us, in tiers of prices so as not to exclude anyone with all proceeds going towards Doctors without Borders (MSF) and fund future benefit work by Five year Plan.

The artists he's gotten to donate works are incredible including amongst them Yoko Ono, Robyn Beech, Julie Doucet, Greta Byrum and Donald Baechler. If that's not impressive enough, the website was totally conceived and HANDMADE by Aaron. Beautiful incredible stuff. Message of the day: Think Big.

I'm talking about Falafel: a food review

let's eat this thing

a side-view of Chez Marianne's

a sukkah in the Jewish Quartier

where I like to eat said sandwich

the competition

can you see that hot little falafel fritter in there under all that other
goodness? hell yes, if you look for it!

oh chez marianne's.
thank you for your to the point service, but delicious food.

I think amongst tourists who come to Paris there is a consensus that L'as du Fallafel is the falafel place in the Jewish Quarter in Paris, as if there were no others. Not that I'm against the level of deliciousness coming from their quick and over-burdened mis-en-place on the rue des Rosiers, I just like Chez Marianne's more, just around the corner, where the layers of pickled cabbage salad, spiced cucumber and tomatoes, shaved slices of sweet onions, a creamy bed of fresh hummus beneath the small soft, tender garlicky falafel balls steaming and nestled on top, (yeah I said balls, steaming and nestle in the same sentence), with a delicious piling on of tender, surrendering eggplant artfully draped on top, a squirt of hot and yogurt sauce and I always put a few tiny cornichons, offered at the counter, on top for good measure. That big package-inside a freshly baked pita unlike any pita I've seen here in NY (sorry Sahadis), is enough for me and the line is much shorter because those guidebooks don't always know what's good.

I just like my experience there more, where I can duck around the corner and eat my falafel outside against the old school and enjoy one of my favorite lunches in all of the world, this one, at Chez Marianne's. But I always root for the (incredibly delicious) underdog.