winter vibes

 Some photos I took on the day of the first snow. I must say, now that I have my driver's license, I honestly feel a bit nostalgic for quiet early morning school bus rides. Freedom is completely worth a half hour of silence though. Anyways, I thought these captured the things I like most about winter.

The quiet, the calm, the cold.

ana

People who are talented at many things are often the subject of my hatred. This may seem like a strong statement but to be honest, I'm human, and probably just like you, when faced with intimidation jealousy often rears its ugly head. However, with this "hatred" is also a type of idolization or worhip, and lately the fantastic Ana Kras has been the victim. A Serbian-born designer and photographer, she consistently produces amazing work, and seems (from what I've seen of her studio/living space) to have a beautiful aesthetic pertaining to every aspect of her life. It also doesn't hurt that she is gorgeous and has an impeccable sense of effortless style but I digress...

Pictured below are her lovely hand-strung bon bon lamps:

These have actually inspired me enough that I've now begun drafting a new project that I will tell more about when the time is right... anyways ... equally inspiring are her photographs (I hope you can tell at this point that I am utterly captivated by her entire aesthetic), her are a select few from her ikebana albums, essentially her online photo albums containing a plethora of personal and commercial images, all shot by Ana.

Again, here are a select few:

And the artist herself...

you get the point...

(all photos except the last one courtesy of Ana Kras)

flora

I'm not sure why but lately I have discovered a strange affinity towards plants that I didn't know I had. I'm not a bug person (they gross me out, I am not apologetic about it) so I've always steered away from gardening, yet now something about flora amazes me. Each shape, vein, or even spotty pattern of decay is fascinating. I blame this newfound interest on AP Environmental Science, which I am taking this year, and though I already had great respect for living things it seems I am now so intrigued as to have nearly idolized them? I pose this as question (rhetorical) just because the concept seems so strange. Anyways, I'm thankful for any newfound inspiration no matter what...school can drain the creative part of my mind faster than I would like it to.

images: tumblr

nothing gold can stay

I took this photograph two days ago. The past week and a half have been incredibly trying for me in many ways, so when I walked into my bedroom only to be greeted by the most glorious late afternoon light, it stayed with me a little longer, and the feel of this moment was buried a little more deeply in my being. I can dissect some of the most powerful things I have ever experienced into seconds, and the thirty seconds that the light was just like this has certainly created a mainstay in my top twenty. I feel lucky to have had my camera on hand so as to get some good snaps of it before it was gone. I myself have been having a hard time putting it into words however it made me think of one of my favorite poems "Nothing Gold Can Stay" by Robert Frost:

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour. 
Then leaf subsides to leaf. 
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day. 
Nothing gold can stay.  


The golden hour never disappoints. 

in progress

Here is a detail shot of a painting I've been working on lately. It is acrylic and heavy gel medium on canvas. I hardly ever plan out my paintings so I rarely know what they are going to look like when they are done. In this case, I can't figure out if it's a self portrait or not, though I'm not entirely sure it matters.

please give credit to me if you would like to use this image

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I should probably be apologize for my prolonged absence from blogging but I've decided that I won't. Not because I want to deny you readers content, but more because as the writer, I needed to sort things out, and think about the direction I actually want this blog to take.
The identity and ideas that this blog was born from didn't seem to fit quite who I am anymore (a lot has changed in the past two years!) so I needed time to refresh myself and think about how I can transform this into something wholly meaningful for readers and for myself.
Maybe it's because today is a rainy day, my favorite, and I find them to be the best days for reflection that I can adapt my findings into coherent sentences, but I finally figured out just what it is that's been missing from here, the thing that would make it feel one hundred percent mine.
Though I started this ultimately as spillover space for my mind, it was focused on fashion, a subject I loved but that most people around me were not willing to talk about simply because they were not as interested in the field as I am. I say "am" because I'm still intrigued by fashion, and think, when done right, it is still one of the most beautiful art forms, yet if I said it was my passion, at least at this moment in time I would be half-lying. This is because the truth is that all art is my passion. All forms of self-expression, whether that be fashion, painting, poetry or film for example, are my passions. In the end, what moves me the most are people; I live to understand them and want to know how and why people do the things they do. Art is just my method of processing.
That is why I needed to change the direction of this blog, because at its core it is for me and of me, as much a reflection of myself as it is an observation and analysis of the world around me, and from this moment on I won't be leaving out any parts of myself.
So, I guess what I'm really trying to say is that this is now a mixed bag. Expect everything, and anything, I can't promise what will interest me or move me on any given day, but I can promise that anything on here from here on out will be honest and true and human.

Thank you.

france two

This post is entitled France two, though if you are not a consistent reader of this blog you may be confused as upon scrolling down it appears that there is no France one. There was a France one but because I'm challenged in the area of technology upon trying to edit said post (specifically centering and lining up all the photos which I don't understand why they don't do automatically for you) I ended up somehow deleting the whole thing. I got over it but trust me, in the moment I wanted to throw the nearest unbreakable object against a wall.
Anyways, this is the second collection of photos of France from my trip (I still have two more weeks here!) with photos from a melange of places. After my stay in Paris I lived with my aunt for a few days in which we traveled to Normandy and then I took the TGV down to Provence where I'm now staying with my family. Sorry for the sporadic posting!

1. stormy skies over Provence
2. Roman arena in Nimes
3. beach in Normandy