Artist Kiki Smith and architect Deborah Gans talk about their stained glass window in the Museum at Eldridge Street. Their new design is the culminating piece of the 20-plus-year restoration of this national historic landmark, an 1887 synagogue. Smith and Gans’s design features a celestial motif – illuminated stars in a swirling pattern that evokes the Big Bang.
Listen to the story here
Stained-glass window by artist Kiki Smith and architect Deborah Gans
in the 1887 Eldridge Street Synagogue
Courtesy Museum at Eldridge Street
I finally got around to listening to my copy of the beautiful and haunting compilation Dark Was The Night. Maybe I was waiting for just the right day to really appreciate it. Buy your copy today, and all the revenue goes to AIDS charities.
Bryan and I were invited to Colorado to play and document the Communikey Festival. I had a fabulous time catching up with old friends, visiting a gorgeous part of the country, eating yummy food, and hearing really good music.
Friday night at B-Side
with David Day, Ejival, Spinoza, Nordic Soul
Saturday night after hours Dirtybird Showcase
with Christian Martin and J. Phlip
Saturday Communikids workshop
Sunday in the Park with Communikids
Communikey Festival Site
I had a chance to view Coraline in true 3D at the most lovely movie theater in New York The Ziegfeld. Coraline is far better and darker than most children’s films. The visuals were completely inspiring and I can’t wait to see it again and again.
from the original book by Neil Gaiman
Coraline and her kitty venture down the rabbit hole.
The mouse circus performance was my favorite part.
One morning we work up at 5am and headed to the beach in Cirali,
Turkey. We met up with a scientist who helps the sea turtles get
through the sand and make their way to the sea after they hatched.
He let us watch the process.
It was an absolutely beautiful sight.
link to the full gallery
Shot live at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City on Icelandic Independence Day, Sigur Rós @ MoMA is a unique concert film highlighting new material from the band’s latest album, as well as classic Sigur Rós songs. Directed by Alex Simmons.
watch the film here
I had goosebumps the entire time I watched this concert film, their music is unique and otherworldly.
This beautiful movie was so sweet and heartwarming, while presenting an apocalyptic, dark dystopian view of the future. There was hardly any dialogue and many of the scenes and sound design were totally sublime in the most beautiful way. Highly recommended.
I just came back from this heavenly place.
my friend Nica off on her broomstick
My dreamlife is so rich and full of amazing imagery, it is often very hard for me to wake back into this world.
The Real Princess, Edmund Dulac
The Princess on the Pea
By Hans Christian Andersen
Translation by Jean Hersholt
Once there was a Prince who wanted to marry a Princess. Only a real one would do. So he traveled through all the world to find her, and everywhere things went wrong. There were Princesses aplenty, but how was he to know whether they were real Princesses? There was something not quite right about them all. So he came home again and was unhappy, because he did so want to have a real Princess.One evening a terrible storm blew up. It lightened and thundered and rained. It was really frightful! In the midst of it all came a knocking at the town gate. The old King went to open it.
Who should be standing outside but a Princess, and what a sight she was in all that rain and wind. Water streamed from her hair down her clothes into her shoes, and ran out at the heels. Yet she claimed to be a real Princess.
“We’ll soon find that out,” the old Queen thought to herself. Without saying a word about it she went to the bedchamber, stripped back the bedclothes, and put just one pea in the bottom of the bed. Then she took twenty mattresses and piled them on the pea. Then she took twenty eiderdown feather beds and piled them on the mattresses. Up on top of all these the Princess was to spend the night.
In the morning they asked her, “Did you sleep well?”
” Oh!” said the Princess. “No. I scarcely slept at all. Heaven knows what’s in that bed. I lay on something so hard that I’m black and blue all over. It was simply terrible.”
They could see she was a real Princess and no question about it, now that she had felt one pea all the way through twenty mattresses and twenty more feather beds. Nobody but a Princess could be so delicate. So the Prince made haste to marry her, because he knew he had found a real Princess.
As for the pea, they put it in the museum. There it’s still to be seen, unless somebody has taken it.
There, that’s a true story.
