Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Coming To America.



Well ladies and gentlemen, I finally finished doing our vacation laundry and now it’s time to repack! Tomorrow morning I’m headed to Brooklyn baby! In fact I’ll be in New York for 2 weeks. This year will be the first time I’ve experienced a good old fashioned 4th of July in America celebration in like---7 years. Then I get back to France just in time for Bastille day. In true Aries fashion---I can never get enough beheadings fireworks!

More importantly this trip to the US will be my first in 2 years. Two whole years! I wonder how quickly I’ll get my American accent and swagger back this time around. Every time I go back to “the States” my brain goes through a slow transformation: It usually takes me roughly 24 hours to stop thinking in French and starting all my sentences, then having to restart them in English. Within 48 hours, I’m back to thinking in English and only a few French words pop up in my brain. By day 3 I’m All-American again and using the F-word like it’s going out of style.

Anyway besides doing a lot of gallery visiting in Chelsea and Brooklyn, and eating too many meals with my friends, the main reason I’m going is to take an intensive art workshop at the Women’s Studio Workshop in Rosendale New York.


Every year WSW hosts a Summer Arts Institute which offers intensive courses in printmaking, hand papermaking, ceramics, letterpress printing, photography, and book arts. I’ll be taking the Cross Pollination: Trace Monoprints, Paper Lithography and Encaustic class, taught by Tatana Kellner and Cynthia Winika. I’m especially excited because the last two days of the workshop we will actually be working at R&F Handmade Paints and learning the basics of encaustic painting. I’ve been toying with the idea of taking this class for 2 years now. Needless to say I am so excited to finally learn some new techniques that I can incorporate into my own work. Tell me this video of a book in-progress doesn't make you just wanna jump up and make something:



Artwork aside, I plan on taking advantage of all the good things that America has to offer like, shopping on Sundays and 24 hour restaurants that serve meals that are bigger than your head. How sad is it that what I’m looking most forward to is eating and shopping?

If you live in the NYC area or you know of any interesting cultural activities that I can do in between my capitalist-obesity fueled orgy, please do leave ideas and activities in comments.

See ya on Bastille Day!

8 comments:

Cherise said...

I thought the F-word was multilingual?

Anonymous said...

I work in production (children's books) at a publishing company, and its amazing how little has changed in the book making process overall. Even with automated machines, most parts of a book are still done piece by piece (case, text, binding), and for children's novelty books (pop up books for instance), these books are made my hand almost completely. Enjoy your class!

tonton_flaneur said...

Lucky you!!! Well, fellow Aries...we are going through MAJOR astrological "issues" right now..so check your horoscope!! ;-) Have fun!!

anji said...

obviously the F-word is Freedom-Fries, right????

sprite said...

I have no idea what Encuastic art is but it sounds suitably fun and hard to do! Two years is not as long as you think - I have not been to my home country for 5 years, how is that!?:-)
Cherise:- I believe the french say "merde" instead. Of course I only know this from watching movies..

Anonymous said...

This sounds like a really exciting opportunity! I'm sure you'll have a great time. I know how weird it was for me the first time I didn't make it back to the States every year! Everything was familiar, but somehow just a tad farther away and less urgent that it had felt before. In the meantime I think the longest I haven't been there is 5 years...

Trina

Ed said...

You think in French? Wow, I'm still trying to get to that stage :D.

Have fun (well I'm sure you're already here)!

Anonymous said...

Make sure you get plenty to eat and rarely walk. Ahh, the American way. No joke, my plan is to eat what I want and die happy at 50 of a massive coronary.