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Almost exactly a year ago, I made a zine for a visual arts class. I’ve always held on to bits and pieces of stuff. They’re mostly just piles of receipts and flyers sitting in eternal purgatory somewhere in my apartment. This was the first time I ever compiled them.

2015 was a crazy period of change, but looking through my year-old images, I realize that I’m still very much influenced, driven, and characterized by the same things. Postcards that never got sent, annotated text, artist bios, being so into someone – the passage of a year revealed the authenticity contained in this little book. In 2015, I actually ended up visiting Prague, Paris, Vienna, Florence, Berlin and more. I saw the original Egon Schieles. I walked the streets of Kundera.

I should make one every February for good luck. I took this because the couple was kissing goodbye so tenderly. See what I mean by indoors photo fail? You can’t tell, but it was raining. The only half decent indoors shot. 

I originally wrote my usual casual-yet-witty-and-insightful styled post for my trip to Tokyo (hehe), but then I decided to experiment with a new form of memory documentation called video. It is now almost 2am and I have work tomorrow. But it was so worth it to have churned out something creative. And learned a new skill to boot. Enjoy!

Disclaimer: I know Shibuya Crossing is not actually called “Title Text Here.” It took forever to convert the video, then compress it, and upload it to YouTube – all on unreliable Beijing wifi. And I tried fixing it and reuploading that version but iMovie wouldn’t save the new one. Whatever, I forgive myself.

Music by Oliver Heldens & Shaun Frank, Shades of Grey (feat. Delaney Jane) (Leeyou & Danceey Remix) Mr. Alan Roberts Mr. John Gasparach Mr. Charley Neff Books and a globe. Mmm libraries. Painted as the sun set and made green leaves into yellow. The picture perfect farmhouse with the very private owner. He had a swing set and a friendly house cat. Before I discovered citron yellow paint. Emily with the perfect posture. Ruhee with the luscious hair that I failed to capture here. Alan reading (again). Sam with the bright red hair. Sultry Olivia. Bridget with the uncanny “Girl with Pearl Earring” resemblance.

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It’s a rare opportunity to be able to stay for five days in a world renowned tourist destination that most visitors only experience for a few hours. Literally a two minute walk from Monet’s gardens and house, Terra Foundation’s housing and studio was truly a haven for art students. In the midst of all the starstruck moments of study abroad, I was beginning to miss the feeling of being comfortable, stable, and familiar. But those four days, four dinner parties, and four fabulous studio sessions with Greg Wyatt and the rest of the Marchutz gang felt like home. Not just home, but home during the holiday season when everyone’s together – family and friends – and enjoying each other’s company with not a thought for how late it is getting or how many bottles of wine have been drained (64, if you had to know). I needed that. The focus of the studio sessions was sculpture. Now I am not naturally inclined to sculpture probably because it confuses me. It confuses me because I’ve never done it before. I’ve never done it before probably because sculpture is fricking expensive. We’re going to be casting our little three by four inch wax sculpture into bronze through the founderie at Coubertin and I think he estimated them to be at about a hundred bucks a pop. I mean, it’s a gift free of charge from Greg but, seriously. Bronze cast sculpture is not for the starving artist.

Though, there is something incredibly fascinating about playing with hot wax and burning stuff over an open flame. Melting wax is fun. Playing with soft, squishy clay is fun. I don’t know why but it’s just fun to squish stuff in your hand and feel it ooze through your fingers. Obligatory photo in front of Monet’s ponds. Did you know Monet was actually kind of a bad ass? I thought Monet just bought these ponds and gardens but no. He had these dug and built to his exact specifications (a lot of Japanese zen influence) because he was one of those rare painters that made it when he was still alive. His garden is almost the antipathy of something like Versailles with all the geometric grids and clear boundaries (seriously, the French are so strict about not walking on the grass…) where man imposes a form onto nature. If you see Monet’s garden, it’s very organic and there are no boundaries so that the reflections in the water are infinite. That was probably very important to Monet because he considered the mirror of water to be his number one motif. I used to think Monet was kinda foufou and decorative but when I actually had to draw the pond and make sense of the water, the transparency of the water to the bottom of the pond, and the reflection of the sky and trees on the water – my mind exploded.

Some attempts: We were supposed to interpret Monet’s gardens with wax sculpture on wire supports. I didn’t take a photo but I did do a sketch of it!

It might be shallow of me to say this but the food and housing definitely made the Giverny trip unforgettable. We basically had three separate houses to ourselves, catered dinners every night, museum lunches everyday, and endless loaves of good French breads and jams for breakfast. Me devouring a chocolate tart with the most sexy expression on the planet. Me not looking at all the art books on the shelves in the middle of the most epic pillow fight of the century. The Terra Foundation buildings had the sweetest country feel to them. Wood on exposed beams on stone fireplaces on floral patterned linens. Not taken at Giverny but at the Founderie de Coubertin. There’s some pretty secretive stuff going on over there, no pictures allowed. Looking back on all these photos though…man, I really am so lucky. How many people can say that they stayed at an artist’s colony in Monet’s gardens for a week? I journaled, I sketched, I ate, I fell in love with a place. Maybe Monet was onto something:

“I form no other wish but to mingle myself more intimately with nature and i covet no other destiny than to have worked and lived…in harmony with her laws. She is the grandeur, the power, and the immortality beside which the human creature seems no more than a miserable atom.”

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This weekends marks the few last days of the still lives that have served us valiantly for the past two weeks. I have come to spend so much time with them that I no longer notice the smell of the rotten pumpkin, bananas, carrots, yams, and various other moldy fruits and veg. Drawing and painting still lives was way more comfortable than painting out in the landscape. I know what an apple is supposed to look and feel like. I  have no clue what a fluttering cypress tree 100 meters away even is. Here’s all the sketches I did today from Ink-tense pencils. They’re like color pencils that you can wash over with water and the marks turn into really vibrant ink. My camera isn’t the best at picking up the accurate colorings. Sorry everything’s so yellow tinged. In reality, they’re more red.

1. First impressions. Curly-que is a black moldy pumpkin slice. Purple cabbage does not relate to stark, light background. 2. Awkward composition of tomatoes and pumpkin. But I do like how many reds I was able to  describe. 3. Blue and yellow color contrasts are always crowd winners. Focused a bit too much on dark contours rather than developing the interior color values, though. 4. Got bored of still lives. Drew Ruhee painting on the floor instead. Much more difficult than still lives as you probably can tell… Sorry I gave you a hunchback 😦 5. White bottles give me hard times. Quite proud of my cauliflower though. I’m sorry, I’m sorry! I fell off the train tracks for doing these everyday, but I do remember a couple from this week. It was midterm week so I think everyone gets a free pass for falling off train tracks.

49. Have you ever stopped and thought about how wonderful it is to be in control of your body’s movements? I was climbing the steps up to the top of the village of Lacoste. I was breathing hard because it was hot and the road was so steep and broken. But my legs just kept pumping and my knee bent when they had to and I never fell down.

48. We have sucky coffee in the United States. The French know how to make the perfect Cafe au Lait. There’s a reason why that drink’s name is in French.

47. My host mother surprised my house mate and I by buying us a jar of nut butter for our trip to Giverny tomorrow. Peanut butter for me and almond butter for Rebecca.

46. Today was the last day of landscape painting en-plein-air. Looking back on all the paintings I did and all that time I spent basking in the sun is evidence that the experience has brought forth fruit. Some pictures to commemorate the final day: Early morning in the landscape is the best time to watch the fog roll out. The last motif. Riffle Around

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