And this was our Saturday:

Another perfect 82 degree, low humidity day (seriously, did Bill Clinton negotiate with the weather gods to have this perfect day for Chelsea’s wedding? I don’t know. He was able to bring those 2 women back from North Korea, so…)

A drive to Dia in Beacon. The first time I went to Dia was when they first opened their doors 7 years ago. We were visiting a client who had just moved there, to learn more about this Smithsonian Photography project which we would later design and we got a tour of the town and a visit to some of the art studios that were being renovated. Beacon was supposed to be the next big thing. I’m not sure it really quite got there.

The 2nd and last time I went to Dia was when I was 37 weeks pregnant with Mia. I was huge and uncomfortable and we met my friends from Amsterdam who were visiting family nearby. It was dead of winter and cold and I remember being at that final stage of pregnancy where you don’t really give a shit about what you look like, you just want that baby out of you. My friends had a toddler at that time and I remember being stressed during our visit to the museum because he was the only kid there and unlike the city museums, Dia is usually very empty so the guards have nothing to do but to watch a running toddler in the gallery spaces like a hawk. I think he may have even touched a painting. I’m telling you, it was stressful. Well you know what? Saturday’s visit with the girls was just about the same. It was hard to contain them from running around the minimalist, huge spaces (no photos allowed at Dia, btw).

The girls were more interested in finding every plush gray couch scattered all over the galleries than Sol LeWitt’s Drawing Series (ok, the couches *were* ridiculously comfy), but they did totally dig walking inside Richard Serra’s massive steel torque sculptures as I thought they would. That alone made the trip worth it.

And you know what else was worth the drive? Discovering Zora Dora’s popsicles after it was recommended by a few people on twitter. I had the Honey Lavender Bee Pollen and Mark had the Banana Curry Peanut Coconut. There were about 25 different flavors. Yeah, this was our kind of place and got us thinking about popsicles. Mark makes them for the girls, but holy crap! Maybe we should have a few flavors each week for the store!

We drove back to Brooklyn with the windows down. Another splendid night watching the sunset from the car. I can’t remember the last time we had a summer with so many days “off”. When we work, we work gangbusters hard and it’s rare that we both get 2 back to back days off on the same days, but this is the summer of doing things.

Sometimes, I can’t believe this is my life.

There are a lot of abandoned buildings and houses on Governors island, including churches, a fort and even a castle, but the examples of Colonial and Greek Revival architecture, particularly the yellow wood frame houses that were used as military housing, have been the ones that I’m most curious about (I have an interest in abandoned buildings). I don’t recall any of the houses being open to the public last year, but this year a not-for-profit group called No Longer Empty have curated site specific installations by a dozen and a half artists inside the houses of Colonel Row.

Thank god for art. I have to admit I was a little overwhelmed by how increasingly commercial and crowded the island had become, but stepping into these old houses instantly restored what I had loved about the island last year – a place not touched by time, eerily full of ghosts and a feeling of being transported to a different place, but not knowing exactly which place. It was a much needed break from the circus outside that was our visit last Friday.

Btw, have you checked out the plans for the future build out of the island? I have no idea what’s going on in these renderings (you gotta love those people dropped into architectural drawings). It all looks very interesting.

Like last year’s visit to the spectacular Neto installation at the Park Avenue Armory, Big Bambu is a massive site-specific installation by Doug and Mike Starn for the rooftop garden at the Met. Part sculpture and part installation art, the bamboo structure is being continuously built from opening day in late April up until October by a group of artists and rock climbers. This work is one of those pieces you need to see in person in order to appreciate the complexity of the structure and the way the light playfully filters and dances through the intricate lacework that is created by the interlocking bamboo poles. It’s possible to climb the installation through a series of winding staircases and platforms that are being built into the structure, but you need to grab one of the limited guided tours in order to do so (to the big disappointment of the girls).

We couldn’t have picked a better day to come. Wednesday was the first day that the heatwave broke and we were treated to a sunny and comfortable day that couldn’t have been more perfect. The view from the rooftop garden overlooking Central Park and the surrounding buildings was a view that I hadn’t seen in about 20 years. Visiting an installation by the Starn twins on that roof also seemed fitting as I remember their rise as stars in the art world in the late 80s from my high school and early college days – their taped photographic assemblages to me, in many ways, represented the art of that era. It’s interesting to see how their work has evolved over the last 25 years from those early photo works to these large scale installations. That evolution and the fact that the brothers, who are identical twins, have remained a creative partnership for so long is sort of awe inspiring. But this is what art does. It inspires, it transports, it confuses, it confronts, it makes you think and seek out more. Maybe the girls will have a recollection of all this someday, beyond the funny butt jokes. Maybe Claudine will remember how the filtered sunlight inspired her to put on a dance under the bamboo ceiling, way up high on a roof one perfect summer day in NY.

Oh, the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It may not be as hip or modern or cool as the “new” MoMA or the New Museum or even the Whitney, but it’s so glorious and I haven’t been there in years. Also, I’d been carrying around a free family pass in my bag for literally years and today was the day I decided we must use the pass before it became even more tattered.

The Met is one of those NYC places that is seeped in nostalgia. I had an art history class that met every Thursday at the museum during my freshman year at Cooper and so, I’ve spent many countless hours at the Met listening to lectures and sketching in my book with my classmates. Perhaps this is the reason why I often overlook the Met when we’re feeling like visiting a museum, but I was reminded today how glorious it really is.

We came for a specific exhibit (photos to come tomorrow) but we took a quick tour of some of the galleries, including the European sculpture garden.

“I went into this room and there were butts only”, Claudine later recalled at bedtime.

I guess that is what she took away from the visit because the girls engaged in a half hour of butt jokes as they giggled and pointed and remarked that while some of the sculptures were missing heads, arms or feet, they all had their butts.

Since the attention span of kids seem to be no more than 90 minutes for museum visits, it was just a whirlwind tour and we left to go to the Ancient Playground right next door before I could reminisce with my 18 year old self about that art history class, walking the galleries every week for a year, and a certain memory at The Temple of Dendur (the Egyptian temple above ) that I will always hold dear.

I finally opened a second etsy shop of photographs over the weekend. But you know that last scene in the Graduate when they’re on the bus and the adrenaline has died down and Ben and Elaine are looking unsure? I kinda feel like that, though I don’t know why.

On one hand it’s nice to see these photos together in one place and I will surely add to the collection as I take more photos, but on the other hand, I have no idea if there is a market for them. I mean, look. I’m not a professional photographer. They are mostly mushrooms and marshmallows. They might be interesting to look at, yes, but to buy and hang on a wall? So the shop will be an experiment (hey, 2 of the photographs made it in treasuries that landed on the Etsy front page already, though at the odd, unopportune hour of 6am Saturday and Monday morning, lol). We’ll see.

At best, it’s been a distraction. I feel no pressure right now to make sales, it’s not something I’m relying on to make a living or anything, but I feel like I had to put it out there. I think it’s a jumping off point for other projects and opening this shop, however small and tight the collection is for now, is making me feel accountable to get some of the other ideas going.

Small steps, right?

I chuckle every time I have to photograph new marshmallow flavors (in this case, espresso, which we’ll have for sale in a few days – they all got snatched up within an hour at the BK Flea). I mean, how many different ways can you photograph a marshmallow? But strangely enough, many ways and I am becoming a bit obsessive over them, mostly because they aren’t looking like marshmallows to me so much anymore, but abstract shapes with weird textures, particularly the oddly shaped ends of the pan that don’t get packaged up.

It’s all part in a series of projects I’m doing with the bits and pieces of materials that aren’t used but discarded from the byproducts of the biz (well, except for mushrooms which are my other photographic obsession. I’ll show you those soon).

I’ve also been toying with the idea of selling photographic prints for awhile. It’s been a long process, however, and I’m nowhere near opening up shop. It’s partly due to the fact that I’m feeling a little bit unsatisfied with certain technical aspects of the photos like sharpness and resolution, etc., but largely due to the fact that I’ve been searching for some kind of theme to unify the work – I don’t want to just throw together a collection of my favorite photos – and so this is where I’ve been struggling. I think over the years I *have* developed a certain style – the product shots are pretty minimal and monochromatic and props are used sparingly, but that may be more to do with the fact that I very well may be a lazy stylist. I am, however, becoming more and more interested in photographing food as completely abstract forms which is why I find marshmallows and mushrooms appealing, but….would anybody buy this stuff? (OK, Nichole, I know you would). I can only imagine it if they were blown up big, to take that abstraction even further with an exaggeration of size that is out of context which is why I’m obsessing over sharpness and resolution.

In any case, I’ve got some plans to push these abstractions further. We’ll see where they go.

I’m in overdrive work mode again. Knee deep in the crazy, juggling 3 projects. Insane. Never experienced deadlines like this.

But as busy as I am, I’m really itching to work on some of these projects that I’ve started in my downtime, particularly the ones that involves the teabags. Why does it work like that? When work is slow, all I want to do is sit on the couch and do nothing but surf the fashion and gossip blogs and eat Doritos (yes, my weakness and I’ve had whole twitter conversations about them with other fans), but when I’m up to my ears in work, the motivation suddenly appears out of nowhere. Infuriating.

But all this to say…I’m back. I’m feeling infinitely better. The antibiotics have kicked in. Not as lost or depressed as I was feeling for several months back. I have energy again. I’d just like a few more hours in the day, please.

PS. I did an interview with my friend Amy for her Playlist series for the Herman Miller blog. The first in the series was with Nichole (didn’t I say she was my parallel universe twin?). You can read mine here.

Trying not to focus on how slow things are progressing on the ChangingMyCareer front. There have been many distractions and so much administrative stuff for the business to take care of, not to mention the hours it takes to respond to emails and inquiries every day. I’m doing a bit of drawing but not sure where it’s taking me. Instead, I’m trying to ride each day and trust the pace that things are taking, but still, it’s been quite challenging to find solid blocks of time to work on anything. I think if you have young kids, you’ll know what I mean. The day becomes so disjointed when one kid has to be dropped off and picked up every day and the other kid has an opposite schedule from the first. You learn really fast to work in 2-3 hour time chunks, which is not always conducive to productivity and sometimes not enough time to get anything rolling. It always kills me if I have to stop to go pick up the kid when I’m on some kind of roll, knowing that the momentum might be gone, but that is life as a working parent, isn’t it? We adjust.

We have never had full time childcare. We could never afford it. It’s always been about juggling work and family schedules for the last 6 years to make full time hours work on part time childcare. This is why it was such a relief when Mia started Kindergarten this year and why I’m excited to have some sort of predictable schedule in place once Claudine goes to school 4 days a week in September. It’s not a full day – the day ends at 2 for her and 3 for Mia, but still. It’s more stability in time than we’ve ever had.

This also will mean the end of our relationship with out part time nanny this summer. She has been with us for 6 years, 2 days a week, since Mia was 3 months old and I’m really not looking forward to the conversation that we’ll need to have. I am not so good with confrontations of that nature. It’s a big change for all of us and I can’t imagine being in a situation such as hers, to spend so much time with these kids, watching them grow up, helping them grow up, and then one day…gone.

This is something I’m working on. I’m going to post work in progress once in awhile even though I normally hate to do that, but in an effort to let go of that unrealistic perfectionism, I thought it might be a good idea. Posting things might also make me more accountable. I don’t know what it is exactly, but this week has been a rather strange week. A break in normal routine for sure and I don’t feel like I got a single thing done, but also losing some focus on all these ideas that I’ve had in my head. I know that it’s normal in the cycle of creativity to question the validity of what you’re doing once in a while, so I guess I’m just stuck in the bottom of that cycle. I’m starting a short 4 day freelance project tomorrow so I’m hoping that will kick me back into gear, but I’m also really ready for the week to be over so that I can start new again. Anyone else feel like this week just dragged by?

I think I’ve hit a wall. I was coasting along all happy and motivated, planning my (hopeful) escape route and then I started drawing.

It was not good.

I mean it was fine, really, but I’ve been so out of practice that it made me wonder how I even made it through art school. Now I’m not going to say this to brag, but I will tell you this story just to make a point. When I was applying to colleges here in NY, all the art schools except Parsons had scholarship competitions as part of their admissions process. One school (Cooper Union) had us do a take home exam where you had to complete specific art tasks and then hand them in while the faculty looked over your portfolio. Two schools had us take the art test on location at the school with a bunch of other hopeful bushy-tailed candidates (Pratt, SVA). We had to do things like draw a crumpled up piece of paper and take off our shoes and draw them. I won full scholarships to 2 of those schools and the Parsons guy told me my portfolio was in the top 3 portfolios that he had seen that year.

Again, I’m not telling you this to brag, but on the contrary, I’m mentioning this because it’s funny how little it means, then and especially now. Talent might be a gift, but if you don’t keep at it, you risk squandering it away. As I struggled to finish my first year of bootcamp at Cooper (we had to enroll in like 8 or 9 different classes a semester. Yeah, you heard that right), I realized deep down that while I was technically proficient, I lacked a certain passion and uninhibited creativity that many of the other students had. I just didn’t have it and the work that I did was not good. Some of you may already know my struggles with art, but while it’s true that I lost interest in art that first year, I also gave up on it and myself. I felt totally uninspired and deflated (though I would later gain it back with music).

I have this problem, see. I’m both cursed and blessed with being a perfectionist and I tend to give up on something if it’s not turning out the way I envision. It’s incredibly frustrating and I know it’s stupid. I tend to focus on the goal and not the process, even though I like the idea of process and it seems that I *should* like the process of, well…process. So I found myself reverting back to these unrealistic expectations that I set out for myself. I did a drawing and it wasn’t good. I shouldn’t have cared so much about the way it looked, but should have been encouraged by the fact that I was trying to draw again. And instead of getting upset with myself, I should have just kept going, working at it and doing it over and over and over again. But the perfectionist, Type A with a capital T, control freak in me didn’t make that happen.

I’m starting over again tomorrow. The good news is that I have a lot of ideas right now. The bad news is that I have a lot of ideas right now and can’t focus on anything. Seriously, I’m all over the place, but I look over at the girls and see how freely they draw and paint. They will both literally draw the same person figure over and over, day after day. I have whole sketchbooks and piles of loose papers with these people, but there’s a lesson in there! Focus and perseverance will get you to the place you want to be.

And before you say it, I know. I get it from Claudine all the time. “Chill out! You have to chillax, mommy!”.