all the winter horses...

‎"She writes the way she dreams. Dreams of a life whose absence makes it all the more genuine, burning into clarity. The child does not enter into that life, nor does the husband, nor does she herself. It is a life she does not have, and yet it is her only life. She writes in order to have it. She writes for her daily bread, the one which is never given. The bread of silence, the loaf of light. The wheat of ink." Master Bobin

To a holiday filled with merriment and wonder and radiance for the new year!

imaginary play

One has to be able to hurl their love into the unknown to be surprised at what is thrown back.

Des souvenirs (le passé)

Du plaisir (le présent)

Des projets (le futur)

Vivez donc le plus intensément possible le moment présent.

(le moment présent, veut aussi dire le moment cadeau … présent = cadeau)

to imagine for tomorrow : six things
1. a sunlit place to work and rest
2. photo essays and a plane ticket
3. my children growing and thriving
4. genuine friends at my table
5. solitude
6. your hand lightly on my heart

simple and elegant

via the Satoralist

A mom from Aya's school posted this today with some of Aya's classmates in the subway. Amazing photo! You couldn't stage something like this if you tried. Vive le moment!

Jan and philosophy, this is what he told me this morning as we were walking hand in hand.

J: you know what?

C: yes Jan?

J: well when all the people die, when people die, other things live.

C: how did you come up with that?

J: oh I just made it up in my head.

There's that pinch, you know the one,
that takes hold as you stir.
No boiling water is going to warm it up
And you wonder if love has dissolved
and left a melting ice cube on the sidewalk
that you kick it around till it’s gone.
Roaming in the vicissitude of my moods.
Tomorrow morning there may be sun, yes there may.

Hooray!
For now we might as well enjoy the soup.

a maya wednesday

a sunday

Pier 11 her hands running through my hair tangled in the sun with the squeals of gulls and helicopters.

I love you he says, his kiss drying as he dashes off and back.

Ferries on the east river

The coming and going of the wind

Little spirits weaving in and out of my life.

This is the kind of thing that totally tips me off, not only as a swiss, but as a designer. Ok so the graphic artist was trying to be clever in representing "aid" to Japan. BUT 1. the red cross, is the RED cross, not the white cross. It was founded in switzerland with the symbol represented as the reverse of the swiss flag which is a WHITE cross on a red back ground. So 2. essentially, when I see this, I'm thinking a Swiss/Japanese collaboration. Check out this link from a past post of other successful options.

on my christmas list

feeling nostalgic today in Grand Central...

The body will speak the image, the language must be articulate, clear, spoken without reservation whether in sadness or joy, the commitment is total. Freedom and spontaneity rest light and secure on the discipline of training. The gift of many teachers is in who’s hands the even more precious gift of talent has been entrusted. This is the special world, in which life and artistry are one, woven from the same fabric. In this world the possibility of anything becomes the probability of everything. Limited only by the extent of the work that has been done and the bounds of the imagination of those involved. The prizes will be great, as will be the cost. Nothing less than total dedication.
-phyllis gutelius (martha graham dancer)

Ryan McGinley

today's word love

sub·tle/ˈsətl/

Adjective:

(esp. of a change or distinction) So delicate or precise as to be difficult to analyze or describe. (of a mixture or effect) Delicately complex and understated.

“The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.”

– George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language," 1946

“A kiss is a lovely trick, designed by nature, to stop speech when words become superfluous.”
– Ingrid Bergman

Albert Cullum

If all children could be so lucky! From the documentary A Touch of Greatness.

"Every child has a success level, be it art, math, drama. It is a matter of finding it and that child will feel his success."

"A Touch of Greatness" 2002 (short trailer ver.) from Denise Petrizzo on Vimeo.

Your movement always in my blood, dear Martha, thank you.

Aya has taken up the cello

the other F word

amazing book, amazing cover

aya's lullaby

you take a flower to the moon

and shatter it to silver pieces

plant the pieces

and grows a blossoming tree

of silver leaves and flowers...

support 99%

thank you Steve for making my work possible... I don't know where the world of design would be without you!

OCCUPY WALL STREET

we are ALL responsible!

The best part of my job is getting to work with photographers I love. I've been an admirer of the photographer Laura Letinsky for years, so you can imagine my excitement when I suggested to our photo dept. that we use her for a upcoming floral story and she said yes. Can't wait!

philip Toledano

his project on his father took my breath away...

resonance found....

in Joetta Maue

in the details

Every seed is painted by hand... the incredible art of Ai Weiwei

Partita for Solo Violin by Philip Glass – clip from benjamin millepied on Vimeo.

One of the sweetest and honest love stories I've seen in a while... by Andrew Haigh

Default Trailer 3/18/09 from Default: the Student Loan Docume on Vimeo.

new classical mood...

so moving, this piece took my breath away...

as for music, there is nothing more beautiful than this....

Yesterday Kai and I visited two city funded prek programs in carroll gardens and cobble hill. They serve the lower income community with clean and appropriate care for their kids on a sliding scale. The Warren Center, albeit it’s reminiscence to a clinic, showed a certain humanistic approach to the realities of what they were faced with being a city run program. The latin director who guided us through the school reflected on the problems of cut funds, removing hamburgers from the menu, expensive finger printing process on volunteers and lack of teachers in the afternoons. I liked her honesty and openness to look at the realities laid upon her and how she put forth her own ways of creatively coping with it. Little signs of flourishing showed here and there as herbs grew in potted beds on the roof top play ground, lively african american girls set up banquets in play time and vibrant art hung on the walls.

At Amico one entered with a similar clinical feeling, it’s halls were empty and yellowed, but clean. Our tour director was a young heavy woman with an overenthusiastic air who talked without pause and heaved as she climbed the school’s stairs. The first thing she did upon entering the 4 year old class that was in session was show us the bathroom. Was it to divert us from the fossilised head teacher instructing 10 wide eyed youth as she clapped her hands in a dead pan manner? Or the sickly obese assistant teacher sitting to the left who could barely walk across the room when she coldly assisted a child to wash his hands? How could this be I asked myself, that they could find a woman like that to be fit to teach? I’m not saying that a fat woman is not a good person, yet one must ask, that if a person is in such a state of severe health, how does that reflect on the vision they have of themselves and others.

My preference in regards to Jan was for him to go to the Warren Center, even if the class would consist mostly of girls and well what an experience for him, with his shock of blond hair and french tongue, to be embedded among such a diverse culture! Still my reflections after leaving both places was that why do city funded schools have to suffer such a depressed atmosphere? Why the clinical looking buildings, the obsession with hygiene and sterilizing sprays? There was a certain heaviness and lethargy. Why was music, art and yoga being cut? Surely in this large and abundant city there must be enough people who can volunteer their time twice a month for these children? And why would the city themselves, tax these schools so heavily with the weight of expensive finger printing costs ($150 x3 per teacher/staff)? We must be able to do better since right next door, ps. 32 and 58 (also public schools) are flourishing beyond belief with the support of the local community.

Rachel Barrett: "Nature and Nurture" Narrated Slide Show from Orion Magazine on Vimeo.

when art is work

A table scape I designed with Melissa Colgan for our spring 2011 issue of Martha Stewart Weddings... inspired by the swiss painter Ferdinand Hodler

higher

There are times my heart cannot contain the abundance of feeling it has for you, overflowing into my fingers as I write, your presence lingers with me throughout the day. With you I can be alone, in your absence there is no need to miss you as you are there. Complete silence is as filling as our words. The eloquence you have in expression and thought is not one I will ever possess. My limited vocabulary and visual language will have to carry me along side you with a humbled quietness. Because of you I see the beauty in all men, their potential, their strengths and vulnerabilities. Watching my child place his hand in yours as it belonged there. That life could go on anew, different and not as a replacement, but a continuation of what is to be. There IS space for more.

Ingrid Berman by Yul Brynner

I love this private moment that Yul captured of Ingrid... perhaps on set, quietly reading her lines, going over the script. The partially open door, inviting and also showing restraint. And as I look up to the top of image and its make shift ceiling, I wonder if it is part of the film, that moment of solitude or just a place she tucked away to be by herself?

how magical is the work fashion editor Katelyn Mooney and photographer Anna Palma...

really love the french line Bobo Chose...