CultureJunkie

Iris Apfel: Rare Bird of Fashion

Just picked up my ticket for Rare Bird of Fashion: the Irreverent Iris Apfel, a special exhibit at the Peabody Essex Museum celebrating the personal collection of a legendary tastemaker and style icon.

Eighty-eight year old Iris Barrel Apfel is known for her "eclectic mixing of haute couture with costume jewelry and exotic baubles." She is also credited with having started the denim jean craze among women, back in the 1940s.

A New York society figure and co-founder of textile design company Old World Weavers, she has traveled the world in search of "all things wearable and wonderful," building her business and inspiring fashion designers like Jason Wu and Issac Mizrahi (great video of him with her on the PEM site, by the way). She's been featured in Coach ads and atop Vanity Vair's international best-dressed list.

As a special bonus to the exhibit featuring over 80 of Apfel's ensembles, the museum will hold a screening of The Latest Fashion Trends from Around the World, Fashion Group International's Spring/Summer 2010 Trends report which includes photos, video clips and commentary on the latest runway shows from around the world. The special screening on Saturday, January 23rd, will also include a discussion of how to adopt the runway looks into your wardrobe.

I'll leave you with these Elements of Style, according to Iris Apfel:

     1. Never take yourself or an outfit too seriously.

     2. Visit the animal kingdom.

     3. Consider the clergy.

     4. Travel widely.

     5. Go high and low.

     6. Don’t fret about your age.

    7. Don’t be afraid to stop traffic.

(Click to watch video)

And don't forget to check out the museum's fun interactive exhibit where you can style runway models with Apfel's clothing, paper-doll style.

Running the Numbers

Artist Chris Jordan has developed an amazing body of work in his collection, Running the Numbers: an American Self Portrait.

In it, he looks at American culture - specifically, the magnitude of our consumption - through the lens of statistics, portraying a specific number of products we consume in a given time frame. He assembles thousands of small portraits into larger, more intricate works, in hopes that the images representing these quantities will be more impactful than the numbers alone.

And they are:

Plastic Cups, 2008
60x90"
Depicts one million plastic cups, the number used on airline flights in the US every six hours.

And the close up:

Cans Seurat, 2007
60x92"
Depicts 106,000 aluminum cans, the number used in the US every thirty seconds.

And the close up:

The works are amazing and really do make you think, just as the artist intended.

See Jordan's full collection or find out how to purchase his prints by visiting his website.

[via @johngonnella]

Trip to Vermont

This post is a couple of weeks late, but I visited Sugarbush, Vermont, for the first time last month, and oh my - it is gorgeous!

Here are some of the highlights; if you're planning a trip up there anytime soon, be sure to check these out:

The lodge at the base of the mountain is beautiful - that silver grain silo was converted into rooms:

It has an outdoor, heated swimming pool that was very active despite the single-digit weather (primarily children...Sugarbush is a much more family-oriented spot vs., say, Killington).

The little town of Warren, VT is quaint, but blink on your drive through and you might miss it. The centerpiece is The Warren Store, a charming spot right in the center of town, full of local delicacies, housewares, clothing, and novelties.  We enjoyed breakfast at their deli/bakery, and took home a jar of the Thursday Cottage handmade rum butter.

A short drive north brings you to Waitsfield, VT, my favorite part of the trip. Much larger than Warren (but still a very small, quaint, New England town), Waitsfield is full of art galleries, craft shops, and gourmet food stores.

The Sweet Pea Natural Food Store in the Village Square Shopping Center is the best! We cooked in a couple of nights and the produce and prepared foods from this place are fantastic. We took home an extra bottle of the Vermont Wholesome all natural maple chipotle dressing - highly recommended.

At the Artisan Gallery I picked up some Vermont Goat's Milk Soap from Elmore Mountain Farm; it smells divine (in Bergamot Rosewood and Spearmint Bergamot) and creates a rich lather. I'm tempted to try some of the other products on their site as well.

I also picked up the namesake cookbook of The Inn at the Round Barn, a 19th century farmhouse and a attached horse barn that were converted to an inn which now boasts its own catering service. And a really cool photograph called "Downhill" by photographer Jon Olsen. He uses a pigment ink printing system on 100% cotton rag watercolor paper coated to receive pigment inks...so while it's a photograph, it actually looks like a watercolor. It's really quite striking.

Last, but not least, is The Store. This place is awesome: chock full of gourmet food items, dishes, housewares, antiques, and quilts, all displayed in displayed in a restored 1834 Methodist Meeting House. There is even a cooking school in the back, where you can take classes or schedule private events: 

 

All in all, a really fun weekend. View the full slide set here (sorry, forgot the "real" camera so we're stuck with Blackberry shots):

Weekend Happenings

Lot's of exciting things happening in the city this weekend:

The Rose Kennedy Greenway Opening Celebration takes place Saturday from 8am to 8pm. Walk the entire length of parks (where that ugly, elevated highway once stood) and experience free yoga classes, arts & crafts, a farmers market, petting zoo, and live music, among other things. There's even a text-messaging-based scavenger hunt: sign-up by texting GRNWAY to 80108 or visit m.go2.com/grnway on your mobile phone and enter your phone number. There's a treasure map available to download here (pdf).
Check out the full schedule of events; afterwards, be sure to share your event photos with the Greenway Conservancy's Flickr pool, and friend them on Facebook!
Tomorrow is also the last day to catch Exiles at the Museum of Fine Arts. The film chronicles a day in the life of a group of twenty-something Native Americans who left reservation life in the 1950s to live in LA.

If you're looking for something a bit more frivolous, then head down to the Seaport for Harpoon Brewery's 19th Annual Octoberfest.

And finally, on Sunday, the South End Open Market hosts Baked Fresh, a day of live music, food, and products from over 120 local artists, crafters, and entrepreneurs.

Frenchie Silhouette

I love this Frenchie silhouette piece from Kamala Dolphin-Kingsley:

Ballpoint Lamp

This hand-made table lamp by emPieza studio has a "shade" comprised of dangling pens, which you can use and replace as needed.

It comes in different colors and there's a hanging version, too!

[via ShinyShiny]

Blue Walls of Jodhpur

I came across this stunning photo in the October issue of National Geographic magazine (click to enlarge):
Taken by Belgian photographer Jean-Pierre Zwaenepoel, the caption reads: "The blue walls of Jodhpur (India) traditionally marked homes occupied by high-cast Brahmans. The rooftop langurs, believed by Hindus to be avatars of the monkey god Hanuman, freely roam the city." [links my own]

Each month, National Geographic publishes breathtaking photos like this one in its Visions of Earth series. Well worth a look.

The Best Cigarette

I came across this video on my colleague Ernie Schenck's blog and I just love it.

It's one in a series of "animated poems" put together by ad agency JWT using the spoken word of former US Poet Laureate Billy Collins. Although I'm not a big fan of cigarettes, the poem - together with the visuals - is beautiful.

Watch the rest of the series here.

Abelardo Morrell

I was delighted to recently rediscover the photography of Abelardo Morrell, a Cuban-born Bowdoin grad that has been teaching at the Massachusetts College of Art since 1983, while exhibiting his work all around the world.

I first discovered Morrell in a 1999 edition of the Museum of Fine Arts' Preview magazine, which I still have to this day because I loved his photos so much. His work is typically designed to transform the familiar, forcing viewers to look at everyday things in a different way.

His camera obscura series, in which the outside world is projected upside-down against the wall of a room, are the most fascinating, IMO. Camera obscura (which is Latin for "dark chamber") is a  method by which a room is kept completely in darkness, except for  a small hole of light on one side, through which the image of the world outside will pass through the hole and appear inverted on the room's far side. Like this shot of the Manhattan skyline, project on the walls of an empty room:

Or this one of a farmhouse in England:

Morrell has multiple upcoming exhibits this year, the closest one an ongoing installation at New York's Fisher Landau Center for Art.

Boston's ICA: It's a Gas!

For months, we watched as the new Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston was being built on Northern Ave. It went up on a desolate parcel of land next door to the old Anthony's Pier 4, and promised to be the latest in a series of buildings that will transform the waterfront from its humble, seafaring past into its luxurious, contemporary future.

Well, the new museum finally opened this month, and I had the opportunity to visit it last night for the first time (Thursday nights after 5pm are free, courtesy of Target). And it is beautiful...on the outside:

The building is designed to provide dramatic views of the water from the inside, and it certainly does that. Plus, there is a gorgeous plank wood deck that wraps around it, which I'm sure will be put to good use in the warm weather.

But the art installations inside are another story. And this is all purely subjective, of course, from someone who is not a big fan of contemporary art.

The galleries are well laid out, well lit, easy to navigate, and - to my untrained eye - provide a nice space for viewing the pieces. But the pieces...well...they certainly are conversation starters, which is I guess what art appreciation is all about.

Here, I will share the GIANT (26 ft. 2 in. x 40 ft. 1 in.) mural visitors see upon entering the museum; judge for yourselves.

This work by Chino Aoshima is called "The Divine Gas."

From the accompanying pamphlet:

The Divine Gas depicts a giant girl lying in a lush landscape. The setting seems idyllic and serene - birds soar, a deer nestles near her foot, a couple frolics hand-in-hand.

Meanwhile, a billowing cloudscape, lorded over by a genie, emerges from her bottom. A few figures sit in the clouds, while others tumble toward the ground. Has the heroine given birth to a new (though somewhat ominous) world through her "divine gas?"

And:

Who is the troll-like figure in the clouds? A god or a demon? Aoshima describes her as: "the spirit of farting. She's cleansing the world with farts." And who are the people, apparently faint from the smell, falling out of the clouds?

Hmmm.

Visit the ICA and see for yourself, or check out Boston.com's neat interactive guide to the museum.