It's all so overwhelming

Since it's thanksgiving break, I've been slacking off like nobody's business. I've been sleeping A LOT, which is really needed, but doesn't lend to productivity. Yesterday I went with a friend to chinatown because I REALLY REALLY wanted dim sum. Dim sum is essentially chinese brunch, but with food that's not at all breakfast-y. It's so delicious. Here's where we ended up:

Nom Wah Tea Parlor

We ordered way more food than we could ever eat, but it was great.

Today, I went to the MoMA. I figured since it was a weekday and I went right after they opened it wouldn't be too busy. I was so wrong. It was the busiest it's been of the three or four times I've gone. The place was packed with tourists and school groups. The MoMA is so overwhelming to me. There's so much to look at that I feel like I need to go there every day for like a month. At some point I just have to leave because I can't look at any more art.


I always enjoy seeing the hierarchy people create in museums.

A group looking at Van Gogh's Starry Night

No, no, I don't actually need to see that painting, feel free to just stand there listening to your audio guide and taking photos. I mean, it's not like you can find photos of it online or in books or anything. (Hypocritical, I know, since clearly I was taking photos)

Compared to:

The blatant lack of people in one of the Minimalist galleries. 

Anyway, I went today because they recently switched up their contemporary art exhibit and I wanted to see it. Actually, I really just wanted to see this:

Rirkrit Tiravanija's piece "Untitled (Free/Still)"

Apparently the artist turned an entire gallery into an exhibition space (including the offices and such) and used part of it as a kitchen and served free curry to everyone who came in. The MoMA recreated it in one of their galleries. In the picture above, the man with the stellar stache is telling us about it very awkwardly. He clearly was just reciting from a script that among other things, said something along the lines of "The food is free, the conversation is free, together with the sunlight streaming in the windows..." 

The curry was actually pretty good, and I chatted with some man, who, after I sat down mentioned that we were supposed to have "free conversation."  

I've also wanted to see this Felix Gonzalez-Torres piece for a while:

The MoMA is right off of 5th Ave, so after my escapades there I decided it was a perfect time to go on a shopping spree. I trekked down 5th Ave, and as usual when I go shopping, ended up buying things I don't really need, and not getting what I do need. All the stores on 5th Ave are huge. Every place I went was completely overwhelming, with multiple, large floors. 

This is the flagship Uniqlo store. I don't know why the US doesn't have more of these, they're AWESOME.

Sweaters in every color EVER. 

You probably can't tell from this picture, but this place just keeps going, and going, and going. 

And, as an added bonus, they have plastic covers for your bag when it's raining. How thoughtful. 

One last thing I love about New York. Everything is constantly changing. 

What? You haven't been to Bryant Park in a couple of weeks? There's now an ice rink, an indoor/outdoor restaurant and like 50 pop-up shops. Surprise!

In which I attempt to make up for the lameness that was the beginning of my semester

Okay, as you may have gleaned from that title and/or my previous blog posts, I haven't done as much fun stuff in New York as I'd like. I have, however, spent a lot of time folding paper. After a brief stint merely cutting and gluing paper, I decided I actually really hated it. So back to cutting and gluing and folding. Apparently the folding makes all the difference.

Look at all those cute little paper pyramids

I've made it a point to do some fun things, rather than spend all my time making art.

A couple weeks ago a bunch of us decided to get up at 3:15 in the morning and go to the Today Show. Why did we get up so early, you ask? Because Coldplay was playing live in Rockefeller Plaza. Despite the huge line already there, we managed to get fairly decent spots after almost getting trampled numerous times. It was completely worth my lost sleep. Coldplay was super great live, they played some of their most popular songs, as well as some new ones. Let's be honest, I don't like Coldplay enough to actually buy a ticket to one of their concerts, but I do enjoy them, so seeing them for free was pretty great. Seeing the Today show live was cool too, although most of the time they were in their studio, not outside where we were.

Not the picture I meant to upload, but close enough. This was before the line got super crazy.

I know you can't tell, but I'm fairly certain Coldplay is up there. You're just going to have to take my work for it. 

This week has been jam-packed with awesomeness. Saturday I went to Carnegie Hall, to see the Budapest Festival Orchestra. They did not disappoint.

Yeah, we were basically at the very top, and we had to hike up like 20 flights of stairs to get there, but for $10 I can't complain too much.

Monday was obviously Halloween, which apparently is a huge deal in New York. We went to the parade, but couldn't get very close because of the massive amounts of people watching it. Basically we just wandered around looking at people's costumes, as there were huge crowds of people in costume all around the parade route. 

Leslie Hall and Andy Warhol. Both winning costumes in my opinion. 

You know, took some photos with random people...

And a random person's rabbit...

We saw enough sexy bunnies and cats to last a lifetime. If you want to be a sexy animal, that's fine, really, just be something more interesting than a bunny. Like an aardvark. Or a platypus. 

Tuesday my friend randomly called me during the day and asked if I wanted to go to the Colbert Report. She had randomly gotten tickets that day, so I dropped all plans of doing anything productive. It was a great decision. Colbert was super fun live. Yo-yo Ma was on the show, which was SO FREAKING EXCITING. I sort of love Yo-yo Ma, and have wanted to see him play live for kind of a while. He and three other people just came out with an album called The Goat Rodeo Sessions, and they played a couple of songs from it. I didn't like this song as much as this one, but I very much enjoyed Steven Colbert's intro to it and how much the band is loving it.

Thursday I went to The Phantom of the Opera, which was my first broadway show ever. It was pretty bomb.

Monsieur Andre, looking much happier than I would be if I were soliciting donations from theatergoers.

We're now debating if we want to go see Daniel Radcliffe in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. Although I desperately want to go see The Book of Mormon, I'm pretty sure it's been sold out for quite a while. Tragic, I know.

Now, back to the art making. 

Legitimate use of my time, right?

So, I worked really hard last week, and I feel sort of justified slacking off this week. But here's the thing: making this was essentially all I did all afternoon, fashion a paperclip for this bird's beak. That and eat a delicious falafel.

BOOKSNAKE!!! LOL!!! ROFL!!

I realize that I keep posting photos of my art. I'm sorry. I promise I'll stop soon. But after six weeks of work, I have finally (well, maybe...) finished my book snake. After much deliberating, I decided to call it The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, 5000 Nights at the Opera. (BOOKSNAKE!!! LOL!! ROFL!!! was also on the table for a while, but sadly, it was not to be) So here, in all its glory, is The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, 5000 Nights at the Opera: 

(and when I say "all its glory" I actually mean part of its glory, as the room was too small to get the entire thing in one photo)

The other end

If I laid it out in a straight line it'd be somewhere around 50 feet. FIFTY FEET PEOPLE. You should be at least mildly impressed by that. 

Yep.

All work Copyright 2011 Sarah Lee

Books I don't read

I bet you're all wondering, "How is Sarah's art coming along since last week?" Well, to answer that question, it's coming along quite well, thanks for asking.

If you ignore the table covered in crap and the lamp, you can see my two most recent pieces. Last night at like midnight, I literally got up out of bed to talk to my roommates because I came to the realization that these two pieces are really all I have to show for my long hours in the studio. Yeah. It's a little depressing. 

Complete with Josh trying to photobomb my pictures.

And the snake is growing. 

I would like to point out that before I started saving these gluesticks I threw a good deal out, and I also have used a number of bottles of elmer's glue, some book glue, and hot glue as well. This is just a small sampling of my glue consumption.

I would really like to post photos besides my art of New York but I haven't taken a whole lot. 

I will, however, throw in this photo of some old asian people playing hacky sack. They were pretty good at it, too.

Things made and partially stolen

So. I've been making things. Out of books. And glue. A lot of glue. Like this:

(See that sign behind it? Although it clearly states not to touch or move this, at least 3 people kicked it. Two have fessed up. I'm still waiting on the third.)

I sort of wanted to shoot myself making it, and it's still not done, but it's mildly enjoyable. I just hide in my corner crazily folding and cutting books for hours upon hours. 

I also made these:

Does this look familiar to anyone? I'm fairly sure all of the three people who read my blog will make the connection. Haha... Sometimes I steal my friend's ideas. But generally they're just Christie's and I call it collaboration. (On a somewhat related note, has anyone seen this?) I'm just waiting for Chris to end our friendship and sue me. (I would actually link that to something, but THERE'S NOTHING TO LINK IT TO.)

In future I will perhaps post more exciting things about New York, but for now, all you get is this boring book art crap.

Things I don't like about New York #1: Ballsy Pigeons

Seriously, I'm not going to feed you, get your little beaks away from me or I will not hesitate to aim a kick at you.

Things done whilst at work

At this point I still had like 70 juice boxes, but it was becoming a bit structurally unsound and I had to go do other work related things.

Only a partial slacker

It's official. I suck at blogging. I've had this blog for approximately 157 days and this is only my ninth post. I suppose a post every 17.4 days isn't that bad, but even so, none of it has been entirely spectacular.  My only excuse for sucking this badly is that in the 157 days I've had this blog I've been extremely busy. What have I and have I not been doing, you ask? Let me tell you.

I have NOT:

been blogging very much (clearly)
invented anything life changing
contracted any deadly diseases (that I know of)
graduated
managed to walk in heels without looking like an idiot
learned to play the harmonica
found a place as awesome as pinkberry in minnesota (even though I did try a number of promising alternatives)

I, however, HAVE:

been a complete overachiever in my studio classes

discovered that I own a tambourine (who knew?)
asked my roommate heidi how to spell things in approximately 1 out of every 10 texts I send
created massive amounts of prints and photographs

such as this nifty monotype that I made at like 2:30 am the day of my final critique, that I only have this ridiculously discolored photo of

been a complete slacker in my generals (which I feel completely fine about)

played the barbie game more than I ever thought I would

been chained out of my room by my roommates

managed to get four pieces into the student art show at my school

won best of show for one of my photographs in said show

seen here behind chris, who claims he is standing suspiciously far away from us because he didn't want to cover up my photo, but in reality I'm pretty sure he just didn't want to associate with us non-medal-winners

had four jobs at one time

purchased a bow-tie

helped somali adults learn english

read both The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and Tunneling to the Center of the Earth in the last five days

spent extended periods of time at royal grounds trying to de-stress

done an entire series of photographs about fruit

THAT'S RIGHT. I wasn't a total slacker. Only a partial one.

I have somewhat nerdy hobbies

I've done absolutely nothing productive today. Here's what I did do though:

That's right. I arranged my books by color. I mean, that's a totally legitimate use of my time, right? Notice how I don't have any bookends, so my books are flanked by candles and a camera. Classy. I need to invest in some bookends, I'm thinking either these or these are freaking awesome.

I sort of love books. A lot. When I'm older I hope to have a huge library. Something Beauty and the Beast-esque. Growing up I was always surrounded by an abundance of quality literature. My mom used to have a business buying and reselling books, so I went to an extraordinary amount of book sales, bookstores, antique stores and garage sales looking for books with her. Since then, she has been slowly paring away our collection to only the very best, but every time she wants to get rid of something I protest. I feel like there's always a chance she could get rid of something I'm going to really want to read in the near or distant future.

In reality, I will probably never read a good number of the books we own. I have this problem where I get books and then never read them, or I only read part of them and never finish them. Of the 29 books in that photo I've read somewhere between 4-6 of them all the way through. Pitiful, I know. In my defense, since these are the books I have at school, a lot of them are books for classes that I only had to read part of. I also still have some books for a class that I went to once and then dropped. Yeah, some of those I haven't even cracked open.  I'm probably going to read them someday. Just maybe not soon.

You may not believe it, but I do actually finish books sometimes. I have been known to do nothing but read for days on end if I have a good book. It's one of my favorite pastimes. (I actually hate when people ask me what my hobbies are, because they all sound super nerdy. "Ummm... I like to read... and sew and knit and stuff... and make art...") Because I was homeschooled, I had to be really self-motivated, and I remember getting in trouble a lot because I would spend too much time reading when I was supposed to be doing other schoolwork. How sad is that? Who gets in trouble for reading too much? Me, apparently.

Failstruggle.

There are a number of things I feel like I should be good at, but I'm really not. For example:

1. Flower arranging.
I mean, how hard can it be? You just throw some flowers in a vase, cut the stems down and done, right? False. I have yet to understand how this can be such a struggle. Even when I buy those really nice bouquets that look fantastic in all their wrapping, when I get home and put them in a vase, they look unfortunate, no matter how much cutting and arranging I do. You would think that this would come naturally, since I'm an artist, but no.

2. Parking.
Yet again, how hard can it be? I'm a fairly decent driver, but when it comes to parking, I'm sort of screwed. Especially if I'm driving a large car. Parallel parking is just a mystery to me. How did I pass my driving test? I don't know.

3. Comforting people.
This is the worst. Inevitably people will come to me and relate some tragic story and then start crying. At this point I'm just lost. What do I do? Do I say something? If so, what? I usually just end up awkwardly hugging them and saying something ridiculously lame, like, "That's so lame!" Exactly. I suck at this.

4. Making small talk.
I have this problem where if I will never see you again I don't feel the need to get to know you or really talk to you. I don't actually care what you do for a living or what you're doing next weekend. I will most likely forget it all in about 10 minutes anyway. I know, I know, this sounds horrible. I suppose it is. But are we really enriching each other's lives at all? What are we gaining from this awkward chit-chat? Nothing, I say. NOTHING! This view on life is probably all due to the fact that I am horrible at making small talk, especially at college. Once you get past the "What's your major" and "What classes are you taking" questions, I get stuck.

5. Spelling
I used to be good at spelling. Somehow I lost that skill. I'm not really sure how.

Apparently, writing blog posts is also not one of my strong points.

In other news, yesterday I was wearing a name-tag at work that said "Sam." It took a good amount of time before I actually noticed.

He may deny it, but he really is a hipstotter

Recently in my printmaking class, we've been making lithographs, and our assignment was to create a modern day bestiary, or an animal that illustrates some moral. My solution to this problem was to make a hipster otter, or a hipstotter. Of course, no good hipster would admit to being a hipster so he's actually an "(i'm not a) hipstotter". (Also, as a side-note, this is an interesting and slightly life changing article about hipsters.)

I think he turned out quite well. Of course, killing myself making a seven color print wasn't enough, and I decided he needed to be put in some different situations. 

"Did someone steal my fixed gear bike?"

"Nevermind. Here it is."

"I liked this artist before he even started making art."

"You probably wouldn't understand my art, it's really conceptual."

Yep. That's pretty much it. 

All work Copyright 2011 Sarah Lee