A Very White Welcome
Things have started to finally get back into full swing at the Pratt Art History office. This entire week, wide-eyed freshmen have been milling about and getting lost on campus. Slowly, new and returning faculty have been coming in, printing out their syllabi and lamenting over the quick end of summer.
Today was our faculty meeting and our reception for newly accepted graduate students. As with the reception for last spring's awards ceremony, I was put on decoration detail and, let me tell you, I tend to go a little overboard. It's pretty much my favorite thing to do because it gives me a chance to become Mr. Max Martha Stewart. For the past week or so, I've been collecting inspiration images from the internet and keeping them on a folder on my desktop.
The reception was to be held in one of Pratt's various gallery spaces and, in order to play off of the stark whiteness of the room, I decided it might be fun to work with decorations that were entirely white. I ordered 40 white balloons from Party City which were allowed to float up to the ceiling, their ghostly ribbons hanging freely to the ground. I took a tip from Martha Stewart herself and used round mailing labels and thread to create some rather charming garland which I draped off of the tables and the entranceway to the room. Lastly, I created a welcome sign by cutting out oversized text from construction paper.
August 26, 2010 at 06:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Pratt's Campus
I took these photographs of my school's campus as part of my job in the Art History office. We're currently in the process of updating our website and the chair decided it might be nice to spruce it up with some photographs of the classrooms and the campus. The department's flickr is currently on lockdown because we exceeded our bandwidth limit, so I figured I would just post the images here. I think they really capture the magic of Pratt's campus.
When I started touring schools during the winter of 2005, I had no idea of where I wanted to go. When I visited Pratt, though, I knew just by looking at its campus that this was the place for me and I could pretty much burn my applications to all other schools. The grounds featured not only the largest sculpture garden in the entire city, but a beautiful colonnade of sycamore trees and some truly impressive buildings. The interior of the library was designed by the Tiffany Glass Company. Throw in the industrial architecture of the main school buildings and you had a pretty irresistible combination. This is one of the reasons that I'm not completely upset about the mountain of debt I will be in when I get out of school.
August 15, 2010 at 03:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Room Updates
Because I'm hardly ever at home for more than a month at a time anymore, my mother had taken to turning my room into an extra closet of sorts. Whenever I returned home for Thanksgiving or Christmas, I would arrive to see things thoroughly out of order and new pieces of furniture, blankets, and photographs stuck here and there. This summer, I decided to try to reclaim it, at least temporarily.
I made a few additions to the room including a quartet of paintings that I created from wood from Home Depot (only $8 for all of it!), a new alarm clock, and the chair and American flag I bought at Sloan's. I created the DIY chandelier a few years ago by stringing large christmas bulbs through a chandelier I bought at IKEA.
For those who are unfamiliar with my bedroom, it can be a little bit odd when entering it. For one thing, it pretty much is the size of a closet. It is also painted a particularly garish shade of yellow. I have a cup of black Sharpie markers in my room and when people enter it, I allow them to draw or write whatever they want on the walls. All-in-all it creates a nice black and yellow bumblebee sort of color scheme.
August 5, 2010 at 12:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Sloan's
When I was little and my parents took me shopping at Sloan's furniture store, I came along only begrudgingly. The store's intense clutter sent shivers up my spine and and the unheated, dimly lit, cavernous space made me long to be back at home. Who knew what could be lurking behind the broken down wardrobes and mountains of filthy knickknacks? After spending what would seem like an eternity picking out just the right piece of rickety furniture, my parents would finally leave and I would breathe a sigh of relief.
Now, when I return to Sloan's more than ten years later, I go far less reluctantly. As I've accrued a taste for vintage furniture and one-of-a-kind pieces, it has morphed from an obsessive child's nightmare into a veritable cave of wonders. Every time I enter the nearly unmarked four-story brick building in Buffalo's dilapidated East Side, I have to control the urge to poop my pants from excitement. I could spend hours in this store and never get bored. I would say that going in there is like embarking on a treasure hunt except that everything in there is like gold to me. As I sift through piles of old animal skins and rows of framed photographs, the mental list of Things-I-Want-To-Buy becomes overwhelmingly overloaded. The last time I visited, I pretty much wanted to walk away with the entire store hitched onto the back of my car. Due to my continuous lack of money, though, this was impossible. I did walk away with a pretty snazzy green chair from the 50s, an old American Flag, and a few other fun things, though.
July 25, 2010 at 04:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Concrete Central
Last Saturday, my father took Russell and I on a car ride through two Buffalo neighborhoods: The Hydraulics and The Valley. Nearby, we stumbled across a pretty amazing public park. The park, hidden at the end of a residential block, overlooked the water and was surrounded by railroad bridges, factories, and grain elevators. It resembled a sculpture park with industrial structures instead of Jeff Koons sculptures. I pretty much pooped my pants when I saw it. I'm pretty convinced that it has to be one of Buffalo's best kept secrets.
I was so in love with the park that the very next day, I had Russell, Kat, and Kat's sister Erin come back there with me to do a little photo shoot. In addition to exploring the park (I still have yet to learn its name), we ventured across a railroad bridge and into one of the surrounding complexes, Concrete Central. I had never been inside one of Buffalo's industrial buildings before and it was pretty amazing. The entire first floor was covered almost completely with graffiti. A fair distance away from any houses or people, it was a secluded little paradise for picture taking.
June 23, 2010 at 04:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)