summer in red hook

designer of the month: the extended interview

Look who's designer of the month at Brooklyn Indie Market! Could this be the youngest indie designer ever? Well, lookie here: I just so happen to have an extended interview on hand, and I thought I would post it for any of you out there who were interested in my daughter's creative endeavors. Here it is!:


Magnolia of CURIOUS URCHIN

Tell us a bit about yourself name, location, affiliations, personal stuff.
I’m basically an unwieldy, very chubby yet tall-for-my-age minor, with a whopping 6 months on the planet under my belt.

Apart from creating things, what do you do?
Pee, poop, sleep, laugh, grumble, raise my eyebrows, smile, whimper, moan, execute blood curling screams, semi-crawl, backwards scoot, half-way sit, shake rattles, eat every surface in range, eat peas and carrots, drink Mommy’s milk, sweat to the Oldies (nah, I really prefer Post-Rock), kick my left leg over and over, do power salutes, grow my fingernails out, flirt with strangers, stare at strangers, scratch at the floorboards and fabric patterns, pound on surfaces, scream for joy without letting up, especially from 6-7am.

What first made you want to become an artist?
What’s an artist? My mommy and daddy are kind of crazy, is that what artist means? I was born in a minor snowstorm, under a full moon--do those things make me an artist?


Please describe your creative process how, when, materials, etc.
I’m a sewing prodigy--basically I’ve been sewing since I was in the womb. I like the machine and all, but mostly I like to sew edges with my pudgy yet elegant fingers. Hand-sewing, that’s what I like. There’s something therapeutic about the repetitive nature of sewing….and eating, plush fabric edges. My inspiration comes from the sweet and beautiful animals, plants, colors and shapes that grow inside cotton fabrics. Especially the ones that come from Japan. I don’t really know what Japan is but it must be a wonderful place if it looks anything like the fabric that comes from there.


What handmade possession do you most cherish?
My first Curious Urchin teether--it's shaped like a puffy flowery star. I like to suck on it until I soak it with my cute baby spit. Then I move on to the next object or surface and put it in my mouth. But I always come back to the Curious Urchin teethers, for some reason. Made at home makes a difference, I guess. I also enjoy handmade and natural/fabric/wood creations from Little Alloutte, Babus, Acorn Toy Shop, Under the Nile (the veggies!), Haba, and Melissa and Doug's wooden toys. My other favorite thing is my mobile! I made one and it kept me entertained for months, so I decided to make more and more, for other babies. They are so fun, cause you can mix and match the shapes, so no two are alike!


What advice would you give to artists new to BIM?
When I’m at BIM the only way to go is to roll with Auntie Kathy. She takes me around to meet the peeps (by the way, I love Peeps, Marshmallow Peeps, even though I can’t eat them yet), by carrying me or pushing my stroller. So my advice for all of you who may never have done BIM: Get in good with Auntie Kathy!

In ten years I’d like to be…
An actor in Little Creatures films. My mommy and daddy don’t know that I want to be this . . . so I’ll have to be sneaky about it.

PS:
I got tired of dictating to my secretary, so here’s a parting word of advice to all you designer people out there:
B v hh j bzz m f b xc 888nm nh ,hnh j uikns sbvyv n nwx bv b

in the season of long lost banks

In the year that all the banks went down, one stood still, or moved just enough to allude to its steady decline in the memory of this city.

This lone haunted sentinel called the Williamsburgh Savings Bank, once filled with dentists, as if written into a Lethem novel, is being transformed as we wake and dream into luxury lofts, so as to defy and deny history, not to claim it or pretend it isn't past.

Once a fancy hall of money exchange, a dependable time piece, a choice venue for taking in a city panorama. Still the tallest building in the Broken Land, but not for long (when it becomes dwarfed by Ratner's Gehryization of this roiling borough's central corridor).

For many years this building was my lanky friend rising up from Flatbush, out of the fog, a needed compass for wandering eyes and thoughts.

As it fills up with luxurious consumers of the urban luxury lifestyle, this lonely muse will offer up its nostalgia in tamer, watered-down bursts, like a shaved ice held in my hand a few moments too long, on a hot city day.

See inside the building on Nathan Kensinger's amazing blog, which inspired me to say a few things on this subject.

Relocated, Reanimated

While in Lynchburg, Virginia, down the highway from VCCA, where I spent a two week residency in February, I stumbled into a labyrinthine antique shop with rows and rows of books from every era of this century. Not only that, but this shop had more than one location, and I only got to fully explore one of the two (or three). To make matters even more interesting, the shop was two doors down from one of my new favorite bookshops/cafés of all time: Inklings/The White Hart, named for C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkein, and the "Inklings"...whose work I have loved for years, even making a pilgrimage to the Eagle and Child, the pub where they used to meet, in Oxford, on Elizabeth's and my trek through England in '97.


So here I stumbled upon such a charming bookshop named after this group of British literary giants, on the main street of old Lynchburg, which seems straight out of an old dusty photograph. The shop itself and its sister café has as their mission "to sell the good, the true and the beautiful," which also include an impressive selection of books on the "war between the states," another of my former obsessions. So I bought some books about Lewis' writings at the White Hart, then had a lovely conversation with Ed Hopkins, the owner, who invited me to look through his great collection of early editions, at Inklings. When I asked him about his most prized book, he retrieved a huge, beautiful fascimile of the Gutenberg Bible, and flipped through it with joy and care.


So getting back to the antique store. . .I have to say that it was an add-on, as I was so happy to have found Inklings and seen what a wonderful world Mr. Hopkins and his family are maintaining. But when I wandered back through the furniture I found a treasure trove of books, several of which had pages that offered themselves up to being source material or surfaces to paint on. Others of which I saw and immediately thought of the Reanimation Library, a treasure of a place, by the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn.

I knew that Andrew Beccone, the mastermind of the library, had an open call out to interested library users, for donations. . . so I picked up a few that I thought might pass muster:

Note the hilarious title Plant Parenthood (kindly passed over because its innards did not live up to its title) and some remarkable images from the great Kidney and Urinary Tract Infections book (happily accepted into the Library's collection). Such remarkable, unbelievable, over-the-top images are what the Reanimation Library is all about. Visitors are invited not only to peruse this treasure-trove of images we never thought possible or printable, but to scan them so as to use them in their projects, ah yes! What a wonderful place. . . I long for a long span of time to go and browse through the library for wonders unknown, but so far, I have only been able to spend a good long hour with the online image archive, which does not disappoint. Neither do either of these literary fellows, whose comprehensive and heartfelt book projects are there, in Lynchburg and in Brooklyn, to shower lost humans with life and hope.

Lost and Found

Broken Land

Something I meant to say when I saw it this winter, finally on the inside. Outside/inside, dark/light, and crackling paint underfoot. The Brooklyn Navy Yard in all its broken glory, waiting. . .