Apples, grown up

This past week was spring break and I spent it with my girlfriend in New York City. It always amazes me on how big of a difference there is between the Little Apple [manhattan, ks] and the Big Apple [manhattan, ny], and I really felt it after being there for a week. I am always amazed at the energy and power that the city holds, and I just love walking around and soaking it all up. My girlfriend is preparing a dress for a competition entry very soon, and this allowed me to have some free time to walk around the city and see some stuff that I wouldn't have otherwise seen.

This semester I have been doing some research on the architect Bernard Tschumi [see previous post], so I took the opprotunity of being in NYC to check out his work at Columbia University. He did the student center there, and really focused on the movement of the students throughout the space and how to make this an important event in their day. I had read about this project, but I didn't get a true sense of it until I actually visited the site and noticed how busy the traffic was both inside and outside of the glass curtain wall that contains the building envelope. If the glass were not there [it is practically invisible anyways], both versions of circulation would become one.



While I was there I also went to a famous restaurant [made so by Sex in the City] called Serendipity that had giant, delicious desserts. Below is just a sampling of the scale and decadence that occurs there.



The weather was decent while I was there, no rain or snow, but heavy coats all the time. There were several nights that we went out in Manhattan and one night we went to a place called Milk Bar that was decorated like the black and white bar in the movie, A Clockwork Orange; alas, they didn't have milk being served out of the various body parts of mannequins. We also went to the Bowery Bar, a bar which I had been to while visiting two falls ago with my studio; it was not as I remembered it however, as it was pretty empty and playing very mainstream, old music. I honestly wasn't expecting to see a bunch of white rich kids dancing to Juvenile's 'Back That Azz Up' while I was out clubbing in NYC, and it made me feel like I was back at Joe's Tap Room in Aggieville.

Now that spring break is over I am in the final stretch of my undergraduate career, and it is a little scary. In ~7 weeks I will be graduating and will be moving to New York whether I find a job beforehand or not. I know that I have marketable skills, but it can be quite a daunting task to try and find a job in New York no matter what kinds of skills you have. So, I am just going to give these last weeks all that I can and try and make the best of the short time that I have left here in the Little Apple.

Villette

Well, I've been sick this past weekend with a cold, but I still managed to get some work done. I've got a studio project due this Friday, so things have been quite busy and will only be getting busier. For one of my classes we are having to make a drawing of a particular architect's [mine is Bernard Tschumi] building in their graphic style, and I have posted it below. I want to try and do something like this for my crit on Friday, but we will see how much time I have.

Structure

It's amazing how my process in studio can be so related to other aspects of my life. I am currently working on figuring out the structure of my house and drawing a framing/structural plan, and it seems like I am attempting to structure other parts of my life as well. I have recently purchased a daily planner so that I can get my schedule organized. I am also in the process of trying to find a job, something that will hopefully provide more structure to my life once I start working it. I have chosen the above picture to represent this [Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square], as I have also been reminiscing about London. I was looking through all of my old Travelcards, ticket stubs, and brochures yesterday after looking at what a friend did with his that consisted of creating a montage of them in his sketchbook. Perhaps I will do the same, but write down what I am feeling about these things one year later.

I have also started to reread a book that I read in England by the great Thomas Merton. He was recommended to me by a professor and I picked up the book one day about a year ago and it really made me take a look at myself and what I believe. The other day there were some monks in the student union creating a mandela, and their work reminded me of Merton's work, so I decided to reread it. It is very inspiring and provoking material, and I am currently reading about the disparity between one's real, true self, and the self that wears a mask of who we want to be. Merton says it best:
"The deep secrecy of my own being is often hidden from my by my own estimate of what I am. My idea of what I am is falified by my admiration for what I do. And my illusions about myself are bred by contagion from the illusions of other men. We all seek to imitate one another's imagined greatness."

Below are some images I have posted before, but I made the last time I was reading Merton: