NewYorkAgain

Hi!
I’m back in new york again!
My cat is happy to see me, and my sweetie, and the coastal contrasts are still very fresh!
I live here! Wow! And yes, it smells like that! Hah (eww)!
I drew and sewed a today, working on some machine sewn drawings – time consuming so I have no pictures yet. Also worked on painting and drawing some new book pages, and getting ready to move my studio to another building. Not quite as haunted. My work has been black on black lately. Very different from that literally glowing series I did in 2011 with reflective glass beads in the paint. There is some crazy light action when you look close though. Graphite over india ink is delicious, I’ll have you know. I worked this way a while back, in my landscape days. Nightscapes.
Anyhow, I am here again! So I am going to make sure I am as here and now as I can be. And, like my pop said I should do when we parted at the airport… I’m going to give ’em some hardcore california!
Here is a picture of my sweet blurry happy cat making biscuits!
Love, K

Hometown

I just visited my hometown, Santa Cruz California. I love and miss it. I saw some people I hadn’t for a decade, and some I’d seen more recently… overall it was full of love and cool air and nature and real produce and has helped bolster me for another New York year.
My family and friends are such wonderful people! I didn’t get to see enough of them, but I saw enough to make my heart feel more regular. New York is too far from California.
I miss it so much already! The only thing that seems to calm me down is situps, which are distracting from the sewing I need to do. It’s worth it though, since I’m having a hard time adjusting to being back so far.
Oh well.
I just got back, so I will get used to it soon.

xok

New Book (& adventure pictures)

Well hello there!

I just finished my first book in a long time. It’s pretty small, and called ‘dirt’.

I learned how to bind books in my PSU undergraduate times, and did a few here and there but lost track of that in favor of sculpture and larger paintings. That was a long time ago. Until now!

I worked on the painted pages for a little bit too long, ink and paint and dirt and tea and glitter. It was lovely and I loved it. I think it turned out great!

I fixed up a poem I’d written back in my farm days (that’s where the books title comes from) and typewrote it on the pages before painting on them some more. Ahhh sweet pagination.

I’m very out of practice so it’s not the best book I’ve ever made, but it’s surprisingly good, considering. I’m so happy that I haven’t lost the bookbinding!

Here are a few pictures of the book, it’s got a lot of pages so I’m just including a couple. Yay!

And heres a picture of a beach I just went to on the long island sound near Commack. And a picture of a relief off Audubon’s memorial in Trinity Cemetery, up here in Harlem… I just went there today, it was so awesome! If you go don’t forget to go to both sections, and to cross the street and go to the Hispanic Society museum to see the gorgeous Sorolla room (among many other masterpieces)!

Well yeah, anyhow, I’m going to make another book soon! Not sure what about yet… But I’m working on a zine about grad school, so I’ll finish that up first. I’ll post more about that soon.

Happy summer times to you, sweet person out in the internet!

xok

Rockawayish Beach Adventure

Hi!

Recently I went to the beach with one of my favorite people ever. We planned on going to Rockaway, so took the train there. But we didn’t get off and take the shuttle train down that way (I’d only been once and it was her 1st time – we watched all of the people with cooler bags and flipflops get off the train then looked at the map) so ended up just getting off after we realized this, when we found a stop that looked close to the water.

There didn’t seem to be much around where we were, for new york being so populated, we walked by a school, and some construction. Some giant apartment buildings were visible in the close distance. But the train was very close to the beach, we got off at B36 but ended up at B35. B for beach!

We walked down a street that began to crumble as we moved toward the ocean, the sidewalk disappearing, cracked, in weeds and wildflowers. Families holding towels walked this way too, all of us walking in the street when the sidewalk ended.

We walked up onto that long wooden boardwalk for a bit, realizing this was probably the origin of that ‘under the boardwalk’ song! I grew up in a town with a theme park, The Boardwalk, so I always thought that’s where the song came from. But miles of slatted wood walkway creating the only shade on this long and desolate beach really seems like a better reason.

We sat on the empty beach for a bit (there were less than 50 people on all of the beach we could see in either direction – this is new york so that was really weird), picnicked, jumped around in the water for a while and then realized there were 100000000s of tiny live squirmy multicolored clams floating in the water, with their siphons out and wiggling. So we stopped that jumping on the millions of mollusks part. It was weird to see so many floating violet, pink, and yellow clams.

By this time it was too hot, even under the boardwalk, so after a little more walking we headed back to the more populated parts of New York City.

Here are a few pictures, what a fun and fabulous day!

Take care!
XOK