Miami Design District and the Rubell Family Collection

Miami, like any large city, is divided up into little neighborhoods. We had heard good things about Wynwood District and were eager to see all this amazing graffiti we had been told of. Unfortunately, we were rather silly about the way we read the map and confused one 2nd street with another and ended up in the Design District. No matter, we heard they had galleries there so we decided to look around.

Unfortunately the galleries we did find were closed for the day but the sun was setting and the area looked like an interesting mix of urban and modern so we just strolled and snapped pictures.

On our second trip to the Design District we got a little wiser and went directly to the Rubell Family Collection. It's one of the largest privately owned collections of contemporary art in the world. With artists like Keith Haring, Cindy Shermam, Kara Walker and Jean-Micheal Basquiat kicking around in their vaults we were eager to get a look.

Photo credit: Marty Cherry. This piece was part of their American Exuberance collection and it was pretty cool when you got up close to it. It was like looking at coulds - there were all sorts of figures and animals in it.

We weren't sure if this was an interactive piece of art out on the patio or just an interesting cone shaped lounge chair. In any case we enjoyed it.

Exploring Home: Part 2

Everyone who goes to DC ends up on the Mall at some point. In fact until more recently that's all I really could think of to do when I though of DC which is sad because I've lived in the DC area all my life. Until moving to Alexandria and having metro access to DC I found it to be an intimidating and terribly boring kind of city to approach. Wrong.

DC has tons to offer in the realm of food, drinks, dancing, art and festivals. The international mixing of cultures here offers a wide array of activities and events and I am only now just beginning to appreciate that. The DC Shorts Film Festival is coming up soon and next spring the Environmental Film Festival will be going on, both of which I plan to take advantage of. Then there's the "yoga buffet" as Katie likes to call it of all the different studios and styles of meditation and yoga. And you know what ya'll? I even signed up for pole dancing classes. It's for my health....

Recently I've been on a walking kick where after taking the metro somewhere I'll just start walking. I know at some point I'll hit another metro stop somewhere and I'll get home but it's been such a great way to actually see the city.

Last week a few of my girlfriends came out to DC and we did a little daytrip that I wanted to share. Inevitably we did start our day out on the Mall but wait! There's a new face on the Mall! The Martin Luther King Jr memorial is finally done and open to the public so we went there first to check it out.



We spent probably 20 minutes or so taking pictures and walking around to read the MLK quotes that are on the walls behind his statue. During our stay we witnessed, by accident, a really cool interaction between two people. An older black man was standing next to a quote from Alabama and he was having a stranger take his photograph. While she was photographing he was explaining that he was 10 years old when the riots broke out in Alabama and that this particular quote had significance from his childhood. A white woman of perhaps the same age was walking by as this man was telling his story and she stopped and listened and then walked up to him and asked if she could shake his hand. She told him that she had been there too and they shared this memory. Rachel and I just looked at each other and said "ugh...someone should be capturing this." So look out in the future for a post about this project idea!



After the monument we went to Teaism for lunch and then headed over to The National Museum of Women in the Arts. This was my first time at this museum and we had the place to ourselves. I get the feeling that it's probably usually pretty empty since it's not right on the Mall. I would reccommend this gallery though - some cool photography and a really cool exhibit on the Gorilla Girls right now! Here's a few pictures of some photos I really liked.


Imogen Cunningham, Jesse Dorr Luca


Ann Hamilton, Untitled #8


Berenice Abbott, Eva Le Gallienne


Anna Gaskell, Override #26

To close out the evening we went to Busboys and Poets for some vegan nachos and a brownie sunday. Day well spent.

Life Size Alien Me!

So a few months back my good friend and fellow artist Jenny Starks was looking for some models for her senior BFA showcase and it sounded like fun so I thought...sure, I'll give it a try. She had her show over the past weekend and Pang and I happened to sneak out just long enough to snap a pic and take a look around. It was really really well done on both Jenny and Kate's part. I was surprised at how large the prints were. So here! Take a look at my alien face and me being a nerd in front of it!



kinda freaky right?



Thanks to Jenny for letting me post this and also letting me get involved even though im a boring graduate now who is so out of touch...i miss school.