Pleasure Notes

Hello and Happy New Year to you all! I am overflowing with hope and excitement today, thrilled to have sluffed off 2009 and eager to discover what this new year holds for me and for you. I have absolutely no clue where the road will take me in 2010, but I do know that I expect to share every curve, bump, detour, and straight-away with you. First, however, I want to share a little art project, fondly known as a Vision Board.

What is a Vision Board?

It is a visual representation of one’s intentions, hopes and dreams. You can paint, draw, write, collage, sculpt – whatever your heart desires – to express yourself. You can capture images consciously or unconsciously. It is an ENTIRELY PERSONAL exercise.

I prefer to create my vision boards using old magazines I have lying around. I’ve learned that the most honest vision boards are those which I don’t try to manipulate – meaning, I don’t go out and purchase a wedding magazine because I want to be in a committed relationship and I don’t have a list of images or phrases in mind when I begin. Manipulation doesn’t work! Trust me. I tried it last year for the first and only time. Never again. So, instead, this is what you do:

1. Find comfortable place to sit, with pile of magazines within easy reach and cat, dog or children distracted elsewhere.
2. Clear head of everything but excitement, awareness and openness for this year we have just begun.
3. Pick up first magazine, open it, and QUICKLY flip through it page by page.
4. Rip out ANYTHING that catches your eye as inspiring. Rip out the whole page. Don’t question yourself. Don’t hesitate. Just do it. And set it aside.
5. Repeat steps #3 and #4 until you’ve worked your way through all the magazines.
6. Get a piece of cardboard, wood or particle board, of whatever size you have room for in your house – because this project is NOT GOING IN A DRAWER when you are done. The size I use is 16×20, so I can slip it easily into a frame and hang it above my stereo.
7. Return to your pile of ripped out magazine pages. This time, be sure you are armed with scissors. Cut off the excess from whatever image or word caught your eye.
8. Now, grab some glue, tape or rubber cement. The rubber cement works best, in my opinion, but this year I used Elmer’s Glue because it was handy.
9. Start with the biggest images and start gluing. Again, I recommend that you not do much planning ahead of time regarding what looks best where. Simply place glue on a given item and then approach the vision board and let YOUR INTUITION guide where you place the item.
10. I encourage you to use EVERY SINGLE ITEM on your vision board that you originally pulled from the magazines. If, however, something truly doesn’t strike you as inspiring once you’re ready to assemble the board, toss it. Also, don’t be afraid to obscure one image with another. You may have layers upon layers of items.
11. Once your collage is complete, step back and congratulate yourself. You’ve just made physical what is in your heart’s eye.

For added inspiration, here is my vision board from 2009:

2009 Vision Board

And here is my vision board for 2010:

2010 Vision Board

Notice how much more vibrant the one for this year turned out to be? I am in an entirely different place in my life, and this is proof.

Now we’ll just see how 2010 unfolds, shall we? And if you decide to create a vision board of your own, let me know!

I am working all day today, a Saturday, on my feet, with lots of children and even more people. And once it is over, I must traipse back to my hotel room. I would so much rather be returning to my own home to grant myself the indulgence of  lounging in a nice hot bath – a good book and glass of wine within easy reach, and some Yoav on the iPod. But, alas, I can only dream… And isn’t this the PERFECT bathtub to place in that fantasy?

Nirvana by Bathroom Tomorrow

If you’ve been around here for a while, you already know I have a thing for bathtubs. But I just stumbled upon this one and immediately got giddy. It’s made by Bathroom Tomorrow, a design company in Bangkok – I swear, design out of Southeast Asia and Japan continually amazes me. It’s so fun, romantic, silly, gorgeous! Someday, I really must own a home with many bathrooms so I can remodel the hell out of them and have a different style bathtub in each one.

For now, I’ll just ponder on the best bottle of wine, grooviest tunes and most appropriate book to accompany this particular tub… definitely champagne of some sort… Mazzy Star from the speakers… and maybe a picture book of Van Gogh’s Starry Night, do you suppose?

Red Straws by TheTruthAbout/Flickr

I love straws. All kinds of straws. Bendy straws. Straight straws. Colored straws. Striped straws. Curly-cue straws. Animal shaped straws. Day-glo straws. Cocktail straws. They bring me pure pleasure. It may have something to do with an oral fixation of mine. Or it may be my inner-child. I just know that any drink is better if drunk through a straw.

I like chewing them, too. And tying them into knots.

But I got to thinking about how environmentally unfriendly they probably are – the costs of production and disposal, you know. So I decided to see what other things straws might be good for, other than making me happy (which, while super vital to me, may not justify the destruction of the planet)… I’m happy to report, I found enough to alleviate my guilt.

Post-modern artists and designers help me do that for almost anything, since they create their masterpieces with almost everything. In fact, I may owe Scott Jarvie a soda, in gratitude for his imaginative use of my favorite sipping aid.

Clutch Chair by Scott Jarvie

I’ll just ignore the fact that his conceptual floating lounge chair is a commentary on our disposable society, and instead marvel at how much patience it must have taken to align the 10,000 straws incorporated in this little beauty.

Clutch Spotlight. Designed by Scott Jarvie

The wall lamp he created is even more awesome, don’t you think? And you know how much I like cool lighting fixtures.

Mr. Jarvie isn’t the only one who thinks straws make great home decor, either. Tal Gur, one of Isreal’s leading designers, created a chair and table for Promise Design that remind me of those little bottles of colored sand you can buy at any beach town souvenir shop. I can’t even imaging how many straws were used.

Tal Gur at Promise Design

Not as many as Tara Donovan needed to create her wall art. It doesn’t even look like straws from far away, does it? More like snow, or cotton balls, or a really bad plaster job. But I totally dig it.

By Tara Donovan

And it really is made of straws.

Detail of Tara Donovan installation

But now the guilt is seeping back in, because I’m guessing that all those straws weren’t just slowly collected over twenty years of culling garbage dumps. Only aliens would do something like that.

Instead, I bet all those thousands of straws were created specifically for Ms. Donovan’s project. And that’s not going to help preserve nature’s straws at all!

Photo by Dave Bunnell

Beautiful, no? Soda Straws are the most fragile of stalactites, and hollow, just like the plastic one in my iced tea, which I guzzled because it is so damn hot. Probably due to global warming. Or the forest fires. Which are also probably due to global warming. Or the fact that it is summer.

Venezuelan NesTea Ad

It’s all so overwhelming, really. I’d love to continue drinking my iced tea without pondering whether it will somehow end up in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch or if my niece will end up having to live with landfills full of my straws. That said, I’d also love to eat cheese straws without getting horrible gas or high cholesterol. And suntan without running the risk of skin cancer. And wear pretty four-inch heels without looking like a new-born giraffe or getting numb toes. And dance naked in the rain without freaking the fuck out of myself and my neighbors.

Okay, maybe not the last one. The heat has clearly made me loopy. Perhaps I’m dehydrated. I need another iced tea. And it’ll go down better with a straw.

For now, that’s just the way it’s gonna be. I’ll worry about saving the planet once I’ve quenched my thirst.

Thank you, Mr. Stone, for making that so easy.

Story Time in the Forest. By Misha.

I didn’t read comic books as a kid, but I often lived in a fantasy of my own making. I frequented museum, but preferred Monet to Pollack. I never dyed my hair, pierced my bellybutton or ditched class. I was a very proper, very timid and very good little girl. BUT… as I got older, my tastes expanded. I came to love anime as much as Kundera, Lichtenstein as much as Renoir. While my bellybutton remains untouched, I have had my moments of pink hair. I love tattoos, and don’t have any only because I can never commit to a design for long enough to get one. So when I came across an artist who combines elements of anime, fantasy, tattoos, and straight up funky sexiness, I fell in love with her work. If you haven’t seen Misha’s work before, here’s some of what you’ve been missing.

Shrommy. By Misha.

I swear Miss Shrommy, here, would fit right in hanging out in front of the Chinese Theatre, on Hollywood Blvd. She probably picked up her hat on Melrose. So very L.A.

Hilary and Pals. By Misha.

Hilary and her pals are clearly the children of an illicit affair between the Cheshire Cat and Nemo.

Frogs Tell the Very Best Jokes. By Misha.

Misha’s artwork makes me giggle, in the very best way – pure pleasure!

I’ve actually had the opportunity to meet Misha. She’s absolutely delightful – humble, talented and a completely, fabulously and delightfully unique individual.

What more could you want from an artist, hmmm?

I once owned a large French Lop named Sunshine. This was before digital cameras so I can’t show you a picture of it, but just imagine a golden wheat-colored rabbit the size of a Pit Bull. That was my bunny. It lived in a cage in the back yard and, when let out, would do grand, leaping, triple-loop, double-axle pirouette acrobatics in the air that could make Kobe weep. I finally took pity on it and gave it away to a loving family who had more land through which it could frolic. It then got eaten by a coyote.

This memory is fresh in my mind right now as, everywhere I look, I’m surrounded by rabbits. I go for hikes, and they jump out at me from strangers’ bushes. I go to the grocery story, and their graphic equivalents peer at me from seemingly every aisle. I search for new t-shirts to augment my weekend wardrobe, and there they are again! Only, this time, I think I’ve fallen in love. I blame those LA-based mad scientists, Kozy and Dan.

Bunny Headphones T-Shirt by kozyndan

The artistic pair, known collectively as kozyndan, not only designs cute-ass t-shirts, but also creates beautiful and fanciful paintings and posters. The subjects are not always bunnies, but I’ll forgive them that.

Bunny Blossom by kozyndan

They inject a invigorating dash of humor and irreverence into every image.

Toasted Unchi by kozyndan

Who else would draw and digitize a shout out to cooked rabbit poop?

Pacific Drift by kozyndan

They’ve invented a real Bunnyfish!

Bunnyfish by kozyndan

You can even follow it’s adventures out in the world.

The Bunnyfish is not quite as cute nor nearly as big as my dear departed Sunshine, but it does make me feel like a kid again. And it makes this world we inhabit a little more delicious, don’t you think?