So many days, so few blogs

Exciting happenings

Day 4. I think. It's so hard to keep track.

Day three

Day three: a success.

So much art.

Just what you've been waiting for. Day two in Vienna. 

We made it!

Sleepdrunk

My roommate and I have a problem. We think we're really funny. No, seriously, it's a problem. We will sit for HOURS talking and laughing at really stupid things. 


For example: Craigslist. I mean, how can you NOT love craigslist? You can buy this "Pink & Gold Southwest Pottery Sculpture of the Feminine"for only $35! 

Or Pinterest:

Oh my gosh, the amount of inspirational quotes is overwhelming!

Our favorites tend to be awkward and really poorly taken photos of quotes. 

Etsy also has some real winners.

We've stayed up until three or four in the morning MULTIPLE times scouring the internet for things we find funny, which at that time in the morning, is EVERYTHING. We reach this state we like to call "sleep drunk." It's pretty much like being drunk but there is no alcohol involved. This also happens when we're really stressed. In order to become less stressed we distract ourselves for excessive periods of time, until we become more stressed because we've wasted so much time. Watching videos of baby sloths. Because we love baby animals. Especially ocelots. (I'm a little embarrassed that I just linked to a photo from a blog called "Holy Cuteness.) 

Do you see how ridiculous this is? IT NEVER ENDS. 

In other news, I made this nice little stack of woodcuts for a postcard print exchange. I'm pretty stoked about it. 

Skills I gained in NYC #1: Sleeping on the subway

Subways in NYC are freaking great. Seriously. The people watching is phenomenal, they're super convenient, and just all around awesome. However, it can take quite a while to get somewhere. It usually took me about an hour to get from my apartment to my internship, so I had some time to kill. As I pretty much never slept enough when I was in NYC, I was always in the mood for a nap, and this commute was the perfect time. The first couple weeks I was there I always wondered how people could sleep on the subway, but after a while I figured it out. There were many days where I honestly couldn't not fall asleep on the subway. Here's how it's done:
1. Know approximately how long you're going to be on the subway. Obviously, longer commutes are better for napping, as are commutes with few or no transfers.
2. Know what stop you're getting off on, and what the 2 or 3 stops before it are. It also helps to know your route pretty well and know how far into your commute most stops are.
3. Sit at the end of the car, so you can lean against the side while you're napping.
4. Rouse yourself every once in a while to check what stop you're at. If you still have a number of stops to go, you can keep sleeping.
5. Once you reach one or two stops before where you're getting off it's a good idea to try and wake yourself up to avoid missing your station.

Seriously, this is one of the best ways to use the time you spend on the subway, I promise.

Mostly just pictures of paper.

For my studio final I made two pieces out of (of course) book pages. I know you've been dying to see them, sooooo....

Piece number 1:

Fun fact: I used Gorilla Glue on this and it stayed on my skin for like a week and my nails for like a month. I looked like I had some kind of skin disease.

Piece number 2:

I didn't get any straight on pictures of the entire thing because I couldn't back up far enough, sadly.

Yeah, I folded all these little 1 inch pyramids myself. Be impressed.

So yeah. 

All work copyright Sarah Lee 2011

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.