o pioneers.

it's tuesday and i'm back in new york city. winter has settled definitively into the space that was occupied last week by an unusually mild autumn. remembering the disgustingly hot summer and how it threatened to kill my love for this city, i don't complain. yet still i yearn to be back upstate, off the grid, in the big country house where jade and i spent thanksgiving week.


the first four days we spent alone, performing basic improvements to the house as a trade for the opportunity to be there, and preparing jade's sculptures for casting. we worked hard and fell into bed tired, but it was lovely. there were fires in the wood stove, three home-cooked meals a day and most importantly a huge expanse of space and quiet. romantic. festive. beautiful.



jade, sculpting.

we sat with our hands in cold buckets of alginate that turned to jello. creepy fun!




the day before thanksgiving, friends began to join us. to help out. to hang out. hardly any of them knew each other, but all became friends through the process. so awesome.

dwain.

nora.

i found myself fascinated to be immersed for an extended period of time in the barren east coast winter landscape. of course i've seen the leaf-less trees of the city for a decade and a half and have traveled outside of the city during wintertime. but i found it a totally foreign feeling to be so surrounded by entire mountainside and valleys of bony trees. that, combined with the novelty of being so far into the country, with the only neighborly interaction in a week being a wave from an orange-clad atv riding hunter from a field away, made me feel like i was in a time warp. an east coast time warp. ah, such are the delusions of a city girl. i felt like a pioneer, or like laura linney playing abagail adams, laboring away on my farm while revolutionary soldiers could have tromped through the hills behind.


david, allison, jade and matt.


and behold. aluminum was heated furiously hot and poured into molds.

xavier.



this was an incredibly laborious process that required knowledge, physical strength, extreme patience and keeping your cool.

sexy.
sexy!


david and matt discovered they were born on the very same day of the very same year.


terrified of all things related to fire, i can't claim to have been directly helpful to this process. i had to give peripheral support via running countless pots of boiling water out to bathe the propane tank, cooking big meals and keeping the fire going in the kitchen for the warming of numb limbs.


but what an incredible process to witness!


and how splendid to see jade's work cast in metal.

i have a bazillion and one more photographs, which i will upload to flickr in the coming week. in the meantime, extreme thanksgiving to dara and alberto: we're ready to move in!

for kim

ice path in the catskill mountains.
click on picture to appreciate fully.

boyfriend bragging time

you know what i admire so much about emre? he is exactly the opposite of me when it comes to any kind of art project. when i get an assignment--no--when i merely think about taking a class in which i might be assigned projects--i panic. panic. my brain melts. i cry. there can't possibly be a single worthwhile idea in me. and if there is, it's stupid or it's hiding. i'm sure of it. that's how much confidence i have in myself.
emre, on the other hand is completely nonchalanct in such situations, tricking me into thinking that he is underachieving, or he will never finish, never figure anything out. deadlines approach, time runs out and still there is no stress. just out pops something whole, complete and awesome.
this past week when we hosted his father from turkey was no exception. while i was cursing the god's of transport and lack of time, he casually multi-tasked a fall colors family trip up to lake minnewaska--slash--video editing class shoot without nary a mention of his idea in advance. thankfully, it's not only his sister who has a flair for drama. his father, you can see, had too much fun running through the snowy (!) trails at the stunning lake minnewaska while emir and haley patiently stood by freezing, and i bossily scouted locations and shots while emre said, yeah, that's what i'm going to do next. except emre wouldn't say yeah. 'cause his english is better than mine. did i mention that he beats me in scrabble and that's just not fair, considering this is my native language, not his?

since emre had to compress this considerably to get it on you tube, the image is tiny, so try 'full screening' it by clicking the lower right hand icon on the little screen--that was clear--to enter full screen mode. could someone find me a job writing instruction manuals? clearly i've missed my calling. click here for 'feeble' by emre balik.

and by the way, if anyone wondered at my exhausted state of late, maybe you understand a little better now after seeing emre's unstoppable ball of fire dad in action. even this self-approving tour guide can't keep up!