In real news... Cooking!

Well in news that actually matters, it's Thanksgiving!

I got to my parents' house yesterday and it has been an eye opening experience (mostly in the kitchen) so far.

After living in my first apartment for a few months now and learning how to cook and buy groceries (and always have to carry them back on my bicycle), I can really appreciate how extremely over-stocked my parent's kitchen is. I mean, they have multiple cans of cream of mushroom soup AND they even paid the extra 20 cents to buy the Campbell's kind instead of P+C store variety. They have lime juice AND lemon juice, every kind of baking supply one could ever need, and enough canned vegetables to feed a family for an entire millennium.

As much as I love cooking in my own apartment this year, coming home to my parent's house and being able to cook with anything they have in the kitchen makes me feel like a 8 year old girl who got a pony for Christmas!

Stomach growls and ESP

In my community service fraternity (APO), our new members have to do mini ‘interviews’ with the other members of the group. Often, I get asked, “if you could have one superpower, what would you have”. I usually say “the power to read minds”. Often this statement is argued with because it would make life boring.

I still think it would be great to be able to read minds. Take this, for example. Wednesday night, I had a friend over. This is a new friend, and therefore we are not completely comfortable with each other yet (not in a bad way, its just new). We were watching a movie at 2AM and I heard his stomach growling. And TADA, I knew that he was hungry. Maybe he had been too uncomfortable to ask me for a snack. We made 2AM pancakes with chocolate chips and blueberries. No more stomach growling.

If people could read minds, they would be able to pick up on these types of cues that would automatically make social situations less awkward. If you walked into a job interview and you had toilet paper trailing off of your shoe, the interviewer would think “hey, this messy potential employee has toilet paper on their shoe” and boom, you would know to look down and make a joke while removing it.

Is this cheating? Maybe. But then again, we are a culture that is in a hurry and cannot learn to pick up on social cues. Ten years ago if you met a potential mate, you had to pay attention to body language (how they were looking at you, how close they stood to you) to figure out if they had a boyfriend or girlfriend. Today, you wait until you get home and look them up on Facebook so you can see their ‘relationship status’.

So here is what I am wondering: is society today making people too lazy to pay attention to social cues? Has growing up with the conveniences of Facebook and email made me lazy? If change is supposed to be a good thing, is this change in human communication wrong?

NYC!

Friday I went to NYC on a bus trip for one of my art history classes- design history of the 20th c. It was amazing. Simply amazing.

One of the reasons why it was so great is that I finally had enough guts to explore the city by myself. I rode the bus down with friends, but they wanted to fart around the city and see Times Square while I just wanted to spend every minute in the museums.

We got dropped off at the MoMA, and I parted ways with the gals and walked about 15 blocks north to The Frick Collection (a museum that houses mostly 16th-19th c. European paintings, and some ceramic work). I had heard from my high school art teacher that the Frick was a great museum, but had always visited only the large museums when I went to NYC (the Met, MoMA, Museum of Natural History). Let me tell you though, the smaller, lesser-known museums are SO MUCH NICER. Less crowds=more intimate viewing of the artwork. Also, the guards did not seem to mind when I looked at the paintings from all sorts of weird angles to check out cracks and repairs.

Right now, I am taking a “Baroque art/ Northern Europe” art history class- which is all about Dutch and Flemish painters in the 16th c. (Rembrandt, Vermeer, Rubens). Lucky me, the Frick had several very important paintings from these artists that I have been studying. Standing in front of major paintings that you were studying in depth only a week before is really a changing experience. It reassured me that art history really is the right major for me, and that I definitely have an interest in working for a museum (not at a non-profit arts center or a gallery, like I had been leaning towards lately). The whole day made me feel like art from hundreds of years ago has a little more importance than most of the art that is being made today. (for example, the art that is in the Frick is more important than the work that is being shown at a local contemporary art gallery).

One other thing that I noticed during the day was how much nicer looking the Frick’s building was than the MoMA’s. MoMA looked stark and ugly in comparison to the beautiful mansion with marble floors and columns that was the Frick.

After spending a little over three hours at the Frick (I could have spent a week there), I had to move on to the MoMA. The transition between the two museums was jarring, because the work that they show is on two opposite ends of the history of art spectrum. The best way to show you this is in pictures! So here, enjoy a summarized version of what I saw at the two museums! See how the transition makes you feel- its quite interesting, I think ☺

THE FRICK COLLECTION
-Rembrandt- Portrait of Himself
-Rembrandt- The Polish Rider
-Vermeer- Mistress and Maid





THE MOMA (images from the current exhibition of Bauhaus designs)

Working in Downtown Syracuse/ Armory Square= YEEE!

So as the months have passed as an employee of an art gallery in downtown Syracuse, I keep discovering neat little things about the city. You would think that having worked here since February of last year I would know about all of the restaurants and historic squares that are within a few blocks of the gallery. Wrong!

Every Saturday, my roommate Melanie and I ride the bus downtown together because we both start working at the same time (me at XL Projects art gallery and her volunteering at the MOST (Museum of Science and Technology)). We also always have a half hour after the bus gets downtown before we have to be at our places, so we usually stop at Dunkin Donuts and stroll through the city.

On our first walk, I discovered that Dinosaur Bar-B-Que is only 4 blocks from my workplace. And in case you don’t know what Dino BBQ is, it’s a fantastically unique restaurant that has been voted to have the best ribs/BBQ sauce in the COUNTRY. In little old Syracuse! Sweet.

On the second walk, we went the other direction and realized that Pastabilities (all kinds of homemade pasta), the Empire Brewery (hand crafted brews and delicious Blue Corn bread), and Clarke’s Ale House (the ‘family’ gathering place of Alpha Phi Omega, the co-ed community service fraternity that I am in- which is ironic because we are a dry fraternity (we do not drink) going to an ale house. We weren’t ‘dry’ many years ago, and that’s when the tradition of going to Clarke’s was established…) are all within 2 blocks of the gallery.

This morning before work Melanie and I saw some huge tour buses/semi trucks about 100 yards past the gallery, so of course we decided to investigate. Little did I know, but I work one block from the Landmark Theater (historic/beautiful theater, showing all kinds of performing arts events). Tonight, a band called Tragically Hip is playing (don’t ask me who they are though…) and next Friday the Nutcracker Ballet is coming to town.

Isn’t is fascinating that I can get paid to hang around art all day, walk literally across the street to the Black Olive (delicious Mediterranean food) for dinner, then walk less than one block to the Landmark Theater to see a professional ballet company perform the Nutcracker? I think so.

Looking at what classes to take next semester

so Midterms have passed, and now it is the time at Syracuse when everyone starts to assemble their schedule for next semester. Usually, art history students take 5 courses a semester- two studios, two art histories and one academic elective. This semester I stuck to that exactly. But you see, I have a problem here. In high school, I did some college work that transferred into the university so I am a little bit ahead. But not quite far enough ahead to be able to easily graduate early, especially if I plan to go abroad to Florence next fall.

I am one of those people that is very financially aware, and does not spend extra money if she doesn’t have to! I figured out that to graduate on time (in the normal four years) and go abroad next fall, I have one open course time, one blank space in my schedule over the next five semesters… Now that may not seem like much, but that means that I only need to take four classes. If I graduate in 3.5 years instead (four semesters left), all I would have to do is take one extra course each of those semesters. I could save some money and maybe have an upper hand on the job market (since hardly anyone graduates in December). On the negative side, I would be extra busy and probably pretty stressed out.

It is hard to make these kinds of decisions!

At least I am enjoying picking out classes- there are so many studios that I want to take!!

-printmaking (lithography, serigraphy, or relief)

-Jewelry and Metalsmithing (as a continuation of the intro class I am now, I can take metal casting or “color on metal”)

-ceramics- wheel throwing OR handbuilding

-“video sketchbook”- every two weeks, you turn in some kind of a video (self chosen direction) and have it critiqued by the class. I enjoy working with the video camera and editing short films, so it could be fun! only drawback here is that I would need to use Final Cut to edit (I currently use iMovie). There are computers in the lab with the programs on them, but we will see.

-Photography- just intro to B+W film- pretty straightforward.

-Fibers- basically a fibers installation course focused on large/ architectural work

-extreme knitting- pretty much what the title says. I love knitting! Sometimes I stay up late like a little old grandma knitting… haha.

And of those, I can only take two! How will I decide?!