She Sure is {Urban Gardening}

A few months ago my mom visited NYC for 24 hours. When she left, there were fond memories of manicures and Middle Eastern food and three miniature elephants, left behind as a calling card of sorts. I laughed and wondered what on earth I'd ever do with this tiny cast of characters. On my way out the door this morning they caught my eye as they marched across my copy of Michael Chrichton's Travels. I realized we had all been called to this higher purpose. Like some 1920 hot femme-conservationist I transplanted them in my satchel for a jaunty trip to my Terrarium class at Smith Street's By Brooklyn. They are taking to their new environment like champs.

She Sure is {Organized} - A Guest Blog Post of Magical Proportions

I'm baaack!! Remember me? It's Ashley! I was a guest blogger here about two months ago blogging about keeping your art space organized. 

I first want to start off by thanking you all for the amazing comments and inspiring links. There were so many wonderful ideas and I'm so glad that many of you shared with us! Thank you, thank you, thank you!!

Okay, so you are probably wondering why I am back? Well, do you remember this video Amber posted showing off her fabulous art studio:

Amber challenged me to come organize it for her and I am here to tell you: CHALLENGE ACCEPTED! And of course we wanted to share the transformation with you! Here is my version of Extreme Makeover: Amber's Art Studio Edition.

My first task was to get a list of everything that Amber wanted in her new studio. I told her to make a list as if money were no object. I truly wanted to know exactly what she wanted to get out of her space.

Here was her wish list:

• Pegboards with buckets 
• Re-purposed dresser for storage  
• A baker's rack to hold her large paper (as seen in my previous blog)
• A classy shoe rack that could go at the end of her work table  
• Clipboards to hang in-progress children's books on or other sketch ideas. That way she can just grab one on her way out the door this summer  
• Place to hold her paper towels and freezer paper  
• Shallow shelf for children's books  
• Something to house "paper and tools, paper and tools"- since that is the majority of materials that she uses.  Plus she also does her make-up in the studio so that area needed to be added as well. She needed room for it all! 

I looked at her list and made an estimate that it would cost about $280 (NOT including the dresser). For those of you who don't know me, I am a bargain hunter. So let it be known that I was able to get everything but the shelf, bakers rack, and dresser for only $120!

Here is a list of the supplies I bought:

Pegboard

Buckets (12)

Ribbon

Spray paint

Clipboard (4)

Towel rods (2)

Paper towel holder (1)

Shoe rack

Banker boxes (for storage, they are cheap and can be decorated with wrapping paper because they are not the nicest things to look at. And they are cheaper than plain white storage boxes)

Screws and wall anchors (for pegboard and hanging items)

This past weekend I drove up to NYC, power tools in hand, and organized her office. Now let's take a look at some of the pictures and I will walk you through how I did it.

The pegboard was normal white. We couldn't have that. So I bought some iridescent spray paint and made it a little more interesting. 

Before:

 After:

Alright,  here is a before collage of what Amber's studio was looking like when I first came over. 

A little intimidating, right? In a nutshell, she had a lot of stuff and nothing really had a home. She felt overwhelmed. First things first, we took everything out. Gutted it. Then we cleaned it (wiped down counter-tops and floors). It's always good to start off with a clean, empty room. I knew she was super excited about the pegboard so I put that up first to keep the morale up. She snapped this shot as I was drilling a large hole in her wall:

Here is the end product:

This is a 2 x 4 peg-board from Home Depot for only $8! If you are wanting to try this at home, make sure to buy hooks to hang your items on. I would buy a multi-pack, they are the best! Here is an example from Amazon: Multi-pack.  The most important thing you need to make sure it comes with is spacers. The pegboard cannot be attached directly to the wall because then you cannot hang your hooks on the board. So buy the spacers! It is super easy!

Luckily, with Easter around the corner, it was really easy to find these buckets. This tin one (shown below)actually had terrible ribbon on it so we switched it out to match the color in Amber's studio.

We kept finding scissors with every new drawer that was cleaned out!
Now there was a place for them :)

Go ahead, Pin it! You know you want to!

Here is Amber's clipboard idea come to life. I bought clear ones so that she could decorate them in whatever pattern/paper she would like. I am excited to see how they turn out!

Another small project involved these towel rods:

We attached them under her desk and voila, there were her paper towel and freezer paper holders! Out of the way yet easily accessible!

After we put up the peg-board, clipboards, and towel rods, we had the tough task of going through everything we took out of the office and finding a place for it.  Here are some amazing before and after pictures:

This is where she kept all of her makeup! On her scanner!

So what did we do with everything? I had Amber go through nearly every shred of paper in that office. It was her choice to keep, scan or throw away. The scan option was swell, because she uses something called Evernote that lets her easily scan documents into her computer. Then she can throw the paper away, thus eliminating most of the papers that were cluttering her office. Once most of the paper was gone, we organized the rest into these storage cabinets below. We had a craft cabinet, project cabinet, card drawer and paper shelf. Once everything was grouped into their categories, putting things away got a heck of a lot easier.

We used the "shoe rack" as her make-up holder by the mirror. We knew she wouldn't be doing her makeup anywhere else in the apartment so we had to make room for it in the studio. If it were anyone else (not living in NYC) I would tell them to move it to the bathroom. But when you have limited space (and natural light) you have to get creative. And that's what we did.

We did it! See, it wasn't so scary! The hardest part is getting started, but once you do, you will be so happy that you did. Here is a message Amber left on my Facebook wall the day after I left:

"Leaving my brand new office was practically torture. I'm pretty sure there are my fingernail prints trailing from the office door all the way to the subway station from dragging myself away this morning. I cannot wait to make home and make new art."

This is why I love organizing. :) 

She Sure is {Totally Don Draper}

A few seasons ago I was on a date with a Weiden+Kennedy storyboard artist. He looked me dead in the eye and said "So basically, I'm Don Draper." Well, color me impressed! Sometimes the boys know just how to get those gams to fly head over heels. I think it may have been the hardest I ever had to work to keep my eyes from rolling to the sky. Considering my AP Calc teacher used to teach in Pidgen, that is saying something.  In recounting this story over brunch (or several brunches) it is clear women in NYC have had a fella' lead with this line before....

These Madmen posters have been making quite the buzz around town. As their popularity grew, it became apparent that my chance to return to my Clinton Hill, Pratt kid tagging roots just wasn't going to come. I started carrying a sharpie and loitering in corners.

Since good things come to girls who wait, they pasted one up at Carroll Street yesterday. Poised at the ready last night, I realized, "Who am I to steal this moment?" In the dark deserted station,
restless in anticipation, I turned introspective....

 I snake charmed an Italian man in to standing guard at my canvas. Some dollars and a run through CVS later, I found myself back downstairs, where I velcro'd a washable Crayola and some baby wipes to a wall with my twitter handle.

Here are my favorites thus far, because I am not Don Draper, but maybe you are ;). I'm a children's book writer and a K-3 animator, and I believe everybody gets a turn....well I guess that's Don's philosophy too, in a sense.

I don't know if you can make this out, but they've labeled that cow and pig. Genius.





 

Poems on an underground wall.

My Creative Space

I'm at the beginning of a pretty big project (well a new pretty big project). 

I'm attending a five week children's book intensive 

On Saturday I pitched a book, in rough thumbnail form to a class of mega-talented artists who are working on their children's books in the intensive too. I had forgotten how nice it is to be in a safe place with talented people. I get that at job-job but it's in a robot direction. Saturday was remarkably refreshing. I read my manuscript and showed my thumbnails and they wrote things on their copies of the things I was reading. I got a lot of feed back and that was a good good thing. Here is a smidgen of the things they said:

• I think you can make this really funny. Right now it's pretty funny, but I think you could make it hilarious
• I'd like to see more emotional humor in the pictures
• Can you make this shot 'over the top'?
• I really like the tone. I can hear four-year old talking through this book. Don't lose that!
• I can tell you know how to empower kids. I think this book will really resonate.
• I am obsessed with the elephants in your portfolio. Maybe it would be good to have a similar change of scale and composition here?
• I love your patterns, I can't wait to see them in backgrounds (This hadn't even occurred to me)
• I want the tension to build. I would love for this book to be ridiculous by the end.

 There were a lot of other things we talked about and that I learned, but these are the things that I want to work on before my next workshop two Saturdays hence.

So tonight my creative space is this:

 And a little of this:

Then I started to pout, because I am high maintenance wanted to make this closer to scale and I only had an itsy bitsy bit of clay. Also: under the light the clay was starting to bake. Fail.

A light bulb appeared above my head and I ran off to craft closet. I return victorious mere moments later. Yes, somewhere between being handed my diploma and arriving here tonight I forgot that I used to spend forty hour weeks with my peers stop motioning some animation. Of course clay bakes under high light and of course you need this, if you are going to get anywhere

This play will never bake. It's permanent grease and sculptural plasticity. It can be anything you have in mind. Think it's cool? Then you can try to move it in undetectable increments until you regret waking up. Luckily tonight I am building a one night only kind of thing.

As you were.

Standing on the Threshold of History

which is where I tie my shoe.

My phone died on the third set of the show I was at tonight.  Sam is the world's last non-cell phone user. I spent the first five minutes berating him for his anti-tech choices. Then the next five bemoaning how I forgot to charge mine at job-job
 "Sheesh, let it go," he whined.

--"I wanted to watch my Twitter feed! They're voting soon." was all I could say. 

"Here," he said,"let me tell you what happened. They voted no."

I looked at his beautifully handsome face in the violet light from the stage. Oh, how this man has changed me. If I never had the deep conversations about scars that hate left on his heart or the limits he's felt since childhood because of  his sexual orientation, I wouldn't ever guess he wasn't always this whole and beautiful guy, so sure of who he is and who he wants to be. I blinked back tears.

I hugged my boy long and hard, around his face so it'd get good and greasy, he hates that.  "Someone's gonna have to break out the Kiehls... " I sing-songed before I got back in to the show. P.S. I am awesome at making heavy moments light. It's a gift and a curse. A gift for obvious reasons and a curse because it has a yang to that ying and let's not forget the crisis my dead phone was. You would have thought we were filming a witch documentary in the Black Hills of Maryland instead of sipping sparkly things at Bowery Electric.

Later, walking arm in arm through the streets of NoHo I pinched  his arm.
"Sam, maybe they said yes?"

--"No, hun. They said no." 

We walked and we walked, it was cold out and he gave me his jacket. I never have one when I need one. And let's be honest, why the hell would I need one at the end of June? Not that I'm complaining... We walked some more, mostly quietly. As we started to turn the corner on Broadway, an almost trip led me to bend down and redo the strap of my heel.

I sat there trying to get the little dots to align perfectly with the buckle. Sam pulled the pack of  American Spirits that live in his back pocket, tapped them three times and then dropped his lighter.  I watched it clatter down next to me on the subway grate. For a second I half-laughed. So he's human! I've never known Sam to drop anything. If there's a person I want next to the picnic table when I am forced to stand on it and trust fall, it is Sam friggin' Thompson...and then Atlas. Atlas gets picked second.

I palmed the lighter and started to to hand it to him from where I was on the sidewalk, my shoe still half on half off. Suddenly he was hauling me to my feet.
--"Sheesh! Let go!" I snapped, yanking my arm away, trying to balance on my shod foot.

--"LOOOOOOOOOOOK at THAT!" he wailed. "LOOOK!"

He'd caught the moment they'd flipped the switch. Tonight, my dear bloggy friends, I was reminded that a life can drastically change in a New York Minute.  I once again got to witness what pure joy looks and feels like on the face of someone you love. In my recent experience it involves a lot of crying and hugging, there is yelling and whistling and high-fives from total random strangers upon the streets of  Chelsea.

The Guggenheim but in Brooklyn

I spent last night in downtown Brooklyn, Stillspotting NYC. Now, over the years I have been to some weird-ass Guggenheim events, but from the first NONE of them have been as weird as last nights'.

I LOVE being a part of new things. Pedro Reyes' installation, entitled 'Sanatorium' is the first in the Guggenheim's new 2-year initiative to bring art into the burroughs. So I went without any real idea of what I was getting myself in to. I bought tickets a few weeks ago and due to the rain, and the boy not being able to make it last night, I almost stayed at home. Like for REAL, like I had to take a cab to make it to Jay Street in time or my 6pm time slot.

From the moment I arrived I regretted going. WHY AM I HERE?!! I wailed internally. I quickly realized that not many people were there by themselves, because honestly, why go to the weirdest show on earth alone?


After talking to the receptionist I was 'prescribed' sessions 15, 9 and 16. I started out alone in a room I instantly decided I would hang out in if I was hoping to be murdered and stuffed in a box.

Here's the great thing though, I'm so glad I had no idea what I was getting myself in to - because if I had I wouldn't have gone and I am SO glad I went. Over my two hours at the installation, I let go of my scepticism and just went with it. The session leaders were wonderful. They left you feeling at ease and free. The whole night cleared some major head space in that nice freeing way that is sometimes hard to get when you're city living. By the time the evening was over, I decided to use our extra ticket to go back today!

It was so, so, so fun. There are sessions specifically fit to families and others for couples. If you go with someone you can still break off separately for a session or two. Today there are even sessions for small children. There were couples at my session and a lot of girls who went together. If you were a single guy, this place was bank. I'm not going to lie, I did give out my number --- but only because I was funny in a space where you had to talk about things you do to comfort yourself. I went wearing a plaid shirt and blue jeans - so I know I was not asked out because I was pretty. I went totally low maintenance and I was glad for it. Wear comfortable clothes - no skirts. You'll understand after you get done.

Oddly enough I LOVED being there alone. Go with someone or not, but just go. I think you'll be happy you did. So here's the deets, Pedro Reyes' Sanatorium is in Downtown Brooklyn today in two hour time slots starting at 10am. The last slot is at 8pm. Buy tickets online and take your print-out. Finding it was kind of a pain, but If you take the train to Jay Street, it's 4 doors down from the TKTs booth as you walk away from Starbucks.

If you have a chance to go, you must! Grab a cab and get!!!

Except the first, all of the photos in today's post are lifted from an article I found after I got home.

Fond Memories of Carbs

I live gluten free. For the most part I live carb free too. But I can remember.
I can remember what that is like to taste warm bread straight from
the oven or more often, the bakery's oven downstairs. I can remember what it feels like to carefully analyze a baguette battle ground while you comb through crumbs and dust for greasy tell-tale finger prints or a murder weapon. What?
Last Summer a battle for refrigerator ownage in the
Penthouse at 302 Court took a turn for the sensational.

Someday I'll have to remember what it is like

to have roommates. Thank goodness, today is not that day.