wil and kris (and gracie and ava)

i don’t know what it is, but i have become obsessed with midcentury furniture.

maybe i’ve been watching too much mad men, but all the sudden, i cannot get enough of that retro, danish, streamlined, warm wood, 40’s-50’s-60’s finds…

wil and i have decided to cut back our spending (we hardly spend any as it is) just to be more frugal and try and be smart with what we do pay, but i still am sifting through craigslist to see what i can find. i was too late on some amazing two tier side tables to refinish for only 20 bucks a few weeks back, and i was only a few hours late today on this really cool desk for 50 bucks. (i hate calling on craigslist things, but i probably could have had this if i had called, instead of emailed, since i emailed about an hour after the listing went up and got no response, but found out it was sold when i called about an hour ago)

i really feel like i don’t want to buy new cheap things anymore, but instead find some awesome cheap old things to revive or refinish (if necessary) to have in our home.

it really didn’t help that this last week, i was in atlanta with my boss to go to the design center and a huge antiques market. this market, is two ginormous warehouses full of vendors that come from all over to sell antiques. we wake up at 5:45 (4:45 nashville time), and walk around while most of the booths aren’t even there yet or are just setting up…if we go any later, all the good things are gone! but for alcott, we are looking for entirely the opposite of my taste for my own home. french and italian pieces from europe from the 1800’s…interesting chests, gilt mirrors, sconces and lighting from ancient churches and homes, etc. we have vendors we frequent, a handful with thick french accents as they tell you what little village they got that particular piece from.

anyways, every 4 or 5 booths though, something catches my eye, and it seemed like this month, there was an abundance of great mid century finds. one booth had an amazing pair of chairs with curved wood arms and a rusty tweed fabric. oh so great…in alcott’s terms, they were a good price…for me not so much. but i saw so many side tables, chests, nightstands that were within reach (like a pair of nightstands for 200 bucks!). i wished my strongest of wishes i either had the money or had a place for them.

seeing these midcentury things, only makes the desire stronger…and unfortunately, i have a few blogs that i have come across that i frequent… this one being my favorite. she makes me wish i lived in an older bigger city, because every few posts or so, she has a picture of something amazing that she found on craigslist for a great deal. our nashville one just doesn’t have much of a variety on cool vintage things…and if so, they are snatched up before i can get to them like the last few things.

*sigh*

in t-minus 3 hours, me and cassie are off to southern california for a long weekend. woohoo!

we get to celebrate a number of things while we are there:

• the graduation of my cousin brett, from azusa pacific university. way to go!
• the arts and crafts architecture movement, as seen in the gamble house
• frank gehry’s achievement in architecture at the disney symphony hall
• the hard work of the laborers who created an authentic chinese garden at the huntington
• the employment of michael at disneyland and the benefits of bringing people in for free!
• the great family i have and get to spend time with!

i don’t know if wil’s too jealous at me having a girly/family weekend without him…he’s got two friends staying the week, so i know there will be plenty of cigars, halo, beer, poker, and other manly things (that i probably don’t want to know about!) to take part in during my absence.

(taken by wil on a past trip…but just posting it to get myself revved up for the flight!)

two big sites were on our plate this morning- the uffizi gallery (extensive renassaince paintings) and the accademia (the david). upon our arrival in florence i started reading the guidebook to get a feel for the area and our plans, only to find out that unless you want to stand in freakishly long and slow moving lines, you need to get reservations to these two places. and of course, sometimes you have to call a month in advance in order to get a time slot. one piece of advice to future travelers: read through your guidebooks before you travel!

i was able to get a time at the accademia (easier to get a time a few days in advance), but as the uffizi was booked through next week, our only option was to wait in line. you don’t necessarily have to have a reservation to get into the museums, they just confirm you can get in at a certain time without waiting in line- especially since most places only allow so many people in at once. knowing this we planned on heading to the uffizi first thing in the morning, right after it opened. good thing we did because the line was already decently long. once we grabbed our spots, it just continued to grow and grow behind us.

while standing in these lines, we’ve found a good percentage of the people around us are american. spoke to two girls who just graduated college and were on a month long trip throughout europe. we’ve met quite a few people at the train stations, laundromat, etc. with similar itineraries. i know we thought we wanted to do a month in europe at first, but i don’t know if i could have done it. it’s just too exhausting to never be on a regular schedule, room, diet, language, etc. maybe i am just a travel wimp.

back to the day…we got to the uffizi around 8:30 and stood in line for a while- definitely not as bad as if we tried to hit it in the middle of the day. we were ushered in and immediately surrounded by hundreds of italian paintings by michelangelo, da vinci, boticelli, giotto, and of course many more. it was interesting to see the subject matter of the time…i decided i don’t think i would want to live during the renassaince. yes it was the rebirth of humanity and art, but it seemed so dark. mostly all the paintings revolved around gruesome religious stories or martyrs or christ’s suffering.

our museum walkthrough ended around 11, and being the normal americans we are, we were ready for lunch. but nothing opened till at least 12! and to make it worse, everyone opens their cafe doors and displays before they even open… we walked to kill time and found a little corner cafe with great little pizzas. they were wonderfully simple. it makes me wonder why we feel like we need to slap all sorts of meat and veggies and sauces on our pizzas, when a combination of just good bread and one or two toppings and herbs make a great meal.

with a large chunk of time between lunch and our reservation for later in the day, we relaxed, later had some gelato (we can’t get enough of it- especially when it’s on every corner), and sat and watched a busy piazza. around the corner was our next stop, to see the david.

although we had reservations for 4:30, we got there a bit early, and waited in another long line. seeing that the line without reservations never moved at all, i was happy to have made the call, but we still stood outside forever. we watched a nearby street vendor desperately try to sell cheesy prints of italian paintings and scenes to passerby tourists…without luck. our time was called and we made our way, thankfully no later as the temperature was starting to increase!

in the first room we saw some awesome sculptures by michelangelo- probably my favorite sculptures thus far due to the fact that the entire series of 5 or 6 was unfinished. each sculpture was of a figure, only halfway emerging out of the rough stone, revealing every chink he made with his tools. the visualization of his process was more impactful than the perfect polished finished products we are so accustomed to seeing.

but of course, our sight was not long after distracted to the end of the hall where the david stood. a huge sculpture of 17 feet (plus the 4-5 foot pedestal he stood upon), he demanded everyone’s attention. unfortunately no pictures were allowed, so we couldn’t capture him, but it won’t be easy to forget the site.

we laughed as we left the museum, realizing that we stood in line longer than the time we spent inside the museum, at both places today. surprisingly, florence has felt more “touristy” than rome or even paris (paris was probably the least!). maybe because this city is the smallest of the three, and the visitors are so concentrated around the few sites here.

either way, we enjoyed what we saw and went straight back to our room. the temperature is up to the 90’s today…we were happy to waste a couple hours out of the hot streets until dinner. wil is checking for a good place to eat right now in the book. it looks like we’ll have another leisurely evening together enjoying to drawn out meal, and later preparing for our big day trip to cinque terra tomorrow (yay for more train rides!).

here’s a video while we were bored in line at the uffizi…get ready for some edge of your seat action. oh and by the way, if you can tell in the video, yes, my cheek decided to break out in the last couple days (without me thinking of bringing any medication). what fun.

ciao!

the mail has definitely made me very happy the last two days.

on the 3rd wil and i finally got our wedding album…only a year later! (it took me a terribly long time to sit down and actually pick my favorites- there were too many) it is so much more beautiful, bigger, and nicer than i imagined it would be. it’s hard to not show it off to everyone. thanks to benjaminimages!

something i stumbled upon through my hours of playing on flickr (i really have become quite obsessed) is a “holga” camera…the cheapest camera out there- 20 bucks- that is entirely made of plastic (including the lens). some people consider it a toy camera, others it’s own art form. due to it’s simple construction it has the potential of giving you some really cool effects (otherwise annoying when you are trying to take a perfect shot): light leaks, grainy-ness, soft focusing, etc. put all of those results together with square format film, and you’ve got some unique, retro looking prints on your hand. of course, no shot is guaranteed, and with the great potential for art, there is great potential for messed up shots. but at that price, why not have fun with it? here’s a link to see what pictures people are taking with their holga’s.

so i splurged (i really don’t buy much for myself so 20+ dollars is a splurge) and decided to buy one online for europe. we’ll be taking hundreds of photos on our digital of course, but i thought it would be awesome to just have a small series of these kind of photos from our trip. and i already got it today! can’t wait to receive my film and get rolling.

upon the end of my project (which i am still meaning to take pictures of and post) we had our “studio in review” at the factory on friday night. although i was worried it might be awkward, uncomfortably standing in front of my boards, but it ended up being a nice, low key wine and cheese evening, mingling around one another’s boards and celebrating the end of the semester.

it was wonderful seeing wil show up with laura at his side…introducing her to all the important people in my life, showing her my makeshift classroom space and giggling with her and my local friends combined.

^ all the girls from work…from left to right: carolyn, my boss, isabella, her daughter and our afternoon cheerleader, cass, me, kim, and amy.
fortunately, although the event ended around 8, the three of us took our rumbly tummies to a mexican restaurant for some good food, drinks and catching up on lost time. and to top the night off, cassie and mike joined us for some late night train…i don’t know how well of a game it really was, since we were all so tired- we basically just deliriously shuffled the tiles around the table while laughing at what sound effects we could make each turn. thanks mike…

last tuesday i had a “design development” presentation. to give an idea of what that means, in the industry there are specific titled phases of a project: programming (gathering info), schematic design (rough conceptual ideas), design development (the meat of the project- developing the beginning ideas into a real applicable design for the client), contract documents (once the developed design is accepted- the production of drawings for it to be built), and contract administration (installation, overview, payment, etc).

since none of our school projects would actually be built, our semesters end with the design development presentation of our ideas. this senior studio is a bit different- we had an interim presentation to our teachers with the same level of work done as we would at the end. it actually was nice because it pushed us to finish things earlier than we would have- allowing us time to correct the design, produce more drawings/models and make a more thorough presentation for the end with the jury.

anyways, with all that said (you have just complete design 101!), here are two photos of boards of my senior project at that point (just the fluffy stuff since the architectural drawings wouldn’t photo well). my final presentation will be a second design development pres. of the same stuff- even with some of the same materials and drawings but just more elaborate.

background info on my project: i am designing a church- a young, nondenominational church- using an existing building in nashville. although hard to see in just this without poring through all my drawings and architectural features, my concept is based on the human figure and it’s proportions (organic and mathematical at the same time). you can click on the thumbnails to see the photos.