this one isn’t really about “going out of the city to see an art museum” as much as it is just about going out of the city. we went to a friend’s wedding in Glencove last weekend ( the weekend before Thanksgiving ) and took the opportunity to stay out there for the night and the following day. first of all, the wedding was a Sikh wedding which was a new experience for me. it was both much more informal than i was expecting and everything that i imagined. there was a lot of music performed by three older men playing something like accordions. i’ll have to look up the name, but they were these sort of mini air powered organs. we received two meals during the course of the wedding and were not allowed to sit next to each other. unfortunately we didn’t have a good camera to take pictures, but here’s a couple shots of us before we went into the temple and of the tv showing a live feed of the alter…
the reception was at a different location, Bethpage. we had some time to kill and Bethpage is very close to Levittown, which, if you remember you architectural history, is the original suburb. i, of course, did not remember this, but we decided to check it out nonetheless… preparation would have been the key word here since we really didn’t see much of anything that seemed to warrant a field trip. that said, we were unprepared and at least we didn’t have to go far to check into our hotel where we proceeded to watch Big Daddy for the next couple of hours before heading to the reception. the reception was a lot of fun… good indian and chinese food. we met some really nice people who we will probably not see again, but that’s how weddings go i suppose. here are a couple shots we took at the reception.
the following day we went to the Sands Point Preserve and spent the day hiking through the forest and along the coast of the long island sound. it was a beautiful weekend for this trip and although we missed the tours of the more restricted areas ( out of season… ) we were able to find some good fall colors and very peaceful walking paths. here are a few pictures… more of all of these can be found by following the links.
a few weeks ago we went to Storm King Art Center in Mountainville, NY on the west side of the Hudson River. we drove up there to see once again, the fall colors that live outside of the city… i guess we truely are leafers but it couldn’t have been a nicer day to be there! we were lucky to get up there when we did since it was the second to last weekend the grounds remained open for the season. most of the art center consists of outdoor sculptures and there is only a small building housing some additional works. we didn’t even go inside except in search of a snack ( which we could not find! apparently there is no cafe or restaurant… ) we will be more prepared on a second visit and bring a picnic lunch. the stone wall by Andy Goldsworthy was impressive and very well suited as were the Richard Serra pieces, but it was of course the beautiful fall colors that made it such a refreshing afternoon. see for yourself…
this past weekend, in our continued quest to “see the fall colors”, we took another day trip. this time we took the train up to the Dia:Beacon. it was really beautiful; the train ride goes right up alongside the hudson river and the museum is just a 5 minute walk from the station. even that parking lot was well designed ( i chalk this observation up to having lived in highly car-dominated parts of the country for most of my life )… it’s hard to say what my favorite exhibit was, everything was fantastic… the torqued ellipses by richard serra, the drawings by sol lewitt, the light installations by dan flavin… but i think it’s fair to say that i was really impressed with the installation by on kawara; a new name to me, but ( perhaps as a consequence of recently being exposed to some other long-time-span type of projects ) this one held my attention. especially the 100 year calendar that was on display with the paintings. jenn and i took some time deciphering it and determined that he was born on December 24, 1933… we were off by a year though i’m not quite sure how… here’s one example of the paintings on display that happens to have been painted on a somewhat special day… 
so, last weekend we saw this exhibit at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, CT. it was amazing and goes through February 24th, 2008 so if you are in the area it is well worth the trip. ( it is especially nice in the fall, of which there is still some left… ) my favorite piece was called “Opera for a Small Room” by Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller. after doing a bit of digging on the internet, i can’t believe i was so unfamiliar with them… a wonderful surprise and a few books to add to my wishlist. i’ll leave you with a picture of “Opera for a Small Room” from their website…
Mark Goulthorpe of dECOi Architects presented a lecture at Columbia last night called Lecture: The Possibility of (an) Architecture that was really interesting. one quote stood out ( and i’m probably not dead on with the wording, but i was still mulling it over too long before i decided i should write it down ) he said:
the rising tide of the parametric will swamp the lower end of our profession - thankfully, because all they do is collage readymades anyway.
the “collaging of readymades” idea is something i have been thinking about off and on for some time now. it’s something that, to some extent you have to do in the course of making architecture. it’s practically impossible to design everything. it’s usually not part of the scope of the project and when it is, it’s almost always cost prohibitive and makes maintenance a pain in the ass. i’m going to have to give some more thought to the counterpoints of standardization and mass customization, but he made some good points about the expeditious nature of assembling pieces that are not all the same. he said that Norman Foster told him once that you could never beat the efficiency of pressing out large quantities of the same piece; that that was the end of the discussion… however, if you can be more efficient in the assemblage, in the construction… perhaps you can beat out standardization. this was Mark’s point last night. of course, it doesn’t seem to be there yet considering the lengthy process of the project he was referencing and ultimately, the fact that it has not been realized. a couple other interesting things that came up that i’ve only done the most cursory of investigations into… * hyposurface and some videos he showed of it in action from a biolab symposium i think * springy thingy processing application straight to 3D print… how? research. * maison de verre * borromean knot or rings ( references to Lacan discussing Joyce and the sinthome or 4th ring ) * voronoi diagrams and tools to create them
home at last… 17 hours of travel plus 8 hours of sleep… ready for the work week to begin.
i guess…
i have been following this blog about style for some time now… i’m not sure why, but i just like looking at the people he finds interesting and reading the things he has to say about what they are wearing. mostly there are just photos of people standing on the street in milan or new york or tokyo or some other city, but recently there were two longer, atypical posts about Cary Grant and Fred Astaire that caught my eye. i must admit i don’t have much of a studied familiarity with either of them… just a pop culture sort of familiarity. they were good reads, each laying out an argument favoring one or the other and their approach to their image. i guess i’m just recommending them for an interesting little read. and somewhere along the way i was inspired to rewatch a favorite movie of mine that i haven’t seen for such a long time. more on that later. meanwhile, read… and let me know if you have any thoughts, favorite performances or movies of either Grant or Astaire… the last Cary Grant movie i can remember seeing is His Girl Friday and i can highly recommend it. [ Link 1 - Cary Grant ] [ Link 2 - Fred Astaire ] [ Bonus Link ] <— forgot about this one….