the white album

Thanks to a tip from CityArts & Lectures' newest illustrator, I snagged us tickets to Joan Didion and Annie Leibovitz. If you move fast, they're still available.

Photo: Annie Leibovitz by John Keatley

filly designs

I love everything about these clothes. From Emily: I dropped out of law school when I was twenty-four and returned to my hometown of Santa Cruz, California. I did not have a plan but I did have a promise: no more “shoulds”. I was determined to follow my heart wherever it wanted to go. In the following years I worked as a bicycle messenger, learned to garden, fell in love, sold my car and for the first time felt truly competent and at home in my own skin. I began to notice and be taken with my own physicality: the crook of my arm holding the shovel, my thighs tightening as I pedaled, my hands strong and stained by the day. These were common moments when function was unexpectedly beautiful. This, I determined, was a form of beauty I needed to capture and express. So I began to make things, with metal, with wood, and eventually with fabric. And here, where the practical and the precious come together, was where my heart led me. I enrolled at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco for clothing design. Two years later I started Filly.

Photo from Apartment Therapy Re-Nest

but of geography

While I am writing, I am far away;
and when I come back, I have already left.
I should like to see if the same thing happens
to other people as it does to me,
to see if as many people are as I am,
and if they seem the same way to themselves.
When this problem has been thoroughly explored,
I am going to school myself so well in things
that, when I try to explain my problems,
I shall speak, not of self, but of geography.

From "We are Many," Pablo Neruda via Aubrey Road

Photo via Horse Hunting

if you like

Wendy Macnaughton, you might like Longshot Magazine.

Illustration: Dinnner Discussion by Wendy MacNaughton

Introducing: interviews with writers

Starting in July I'll be running a series of interviews with writers, including author Francesca Lia Block, Kat from No Good for Me, NEA recipient Ben Jahn, and Caroline Paul, author of Fighting Fire and East Wind, Rain.

Photo: Mya Henry and Eric Werner at Hartwood from The Selby

then poetry happened

People sometimes ask me, did you always want to be a poet, is that what you really wanted? And I reply, as truthfully as I can: first of all I wanted to be a circus performer, not just any performer but a tightrope artiste. And I knew the word `artiste' and felt it was very grand and that was precisely what I wanted to be. Meena Alexander, Poetry: the Question of Home

Photo: unidentified youth in a Tokyo jazz coffee shop

by Michael Rougier, 1964 via Tomboy Style

that doesn't happen much, though

What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though. J. D. Salinger, Catcher in the Rye

Photo: Old Standby's Main Ride

in the blue

My gmail automatically marked the APC sale as very important.

Photo: Sartorialist via Scout the Store

that sort of gesture

I was just reminded that Ratio3 has a Margaret Kilgallen exhibit going up on June 23. M-W, 11-6. Rewatching/reading her Art21 feature.

Photo: production still from PBS Art21

if less is more

My work is all about living vicariously. I'm very easily embarrassed, and I think there's a lot of me that has a difficult time with people, period. All this angst, about myself, and about things I have no control over, is somehow in the work. I didn't really get English, and I lost my Russian. As far as expressing myself, I feel like I have bones in my tongue. Language is so crucial, but I think my pictures really do come from this kind of muted stance that I took. When you draw something, the drawing speaks for itself. Dasha Shishkin in an interview with Tina Barney, Vogue, June 2011.

Dasha Shishkin by Keith Bedford for The New York Times

scratching away

The better I can completely cut myself from the outside world, cloistering myself monastically. Only coming out of my studio for food, sun and supplies, I immerse myself completely in my work, not leaving the studio. I turn off my phone and internet, I work on ten pictures at once, moving from piece to piece landing in the middle of each one like a housefly. Scratching away with a humble ballpoint, chopping at canvases with a brush, the less I interact with the outside the more productive I become. Nicholas Forker from from the desk of...

the idea

Being a somewhat dark person myself, I fell in love with the idea that the mysterious thing you look for your whole life will eventually eat you alive. Laurie Anderson on her love for Moby Dick. Via Maud Newton

Photo: Bettina Krieg's Studio on Freunde von Freunden

love looks not with the eyes

"The Ballad of Sexual Dependency and New Photographs"

at Matthew Marks Gallery in 1995

bikini, moscow

Do stuff. Be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration’s shove or society’s kiss on your forehead. Pay attention. It’s all about paying attention. Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. Stay eager. Susan Sontag vis SwissMiss

Photo: William Klein - Bikini, Moscow, 1959 via bonito blog

gone, gone, gone

Another cover I love. By Hannah Moscowitz, coming in 2012.