Counterfeit UK is ON!

Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce the finished product of the UK wing of the Counterfeit Crochet Handbag Project: Angela has made a gorgeous Louis Vuitton and is rocking it! Check out the gold embroidered "LV" logo and little pink flowers...!

(identity protected for legal purposes. yes. well, maybe.)

I'm going to update the Counterfeit site this weekend with new photos and a new look--So many of you have become a part of this group counterfeiting scheme that I need to rethink how to display all the lovely images that are coming in and it needs a new and revamped gallery page to show everything off! My apologies if I haven't yet posted your photos, but don't you worry--your time in the spotlight will shine and I've been so happy with the creativity and response that has come out from this project...truly amazing!

YOU ALL ROCK! viva crochet counterfeiters!

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the numbers game

warren buffet - $31 billion = wow

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Filipiniana exhibition article

Richie (Ramon Lerma), curator of the Ateneo Museum in the Philippines just sent me a text copy of the article he wrote in the "Philippine Star" regarding the "Filipiniana" exhibition I was in and went to Madrid for...

ArtSpeak
by Ramon E.S. Lerma

"Los Nuevos Indios Bravos"

What could be a more provocative way to commemorate The Year of the
Philippines in Spain than to see history repeat itself?

On Thursday, the 11th of May 2006, lofty ambition -- impossible to imagine
in the flurry of last-minute preparation - came to brilliant fruition. It
was the day when "Filipiniana," the biggest and most comprehensive
exhibition surveying the rich panoply of Philippine art and culture from
the late 19th century to the present, opened to a massive audience at the
Centro Cultural Conde Duque in Madrid -- a turnout that, as one Madrileña
put it, was impressive even by their own standards.

Juan Guardiola, the burly ex-chief curator of the Museum of Contemporary
Art, Barcelona (MACBA), who two years ago managed to raise the eyebrows
of not a few local museum directors, collectors and artists with his
"brassy" approach to organizing what seemed then to be a quixotic
endeavor by the Spanish cultural agency Casa Asia, looked understandably
pleased as he toured journalists from leading Spanish newspapers and
television networks through the show.

The exhibition space, roughly one and three quarters the size of our own
Met Museum's ground floor gallery, reminded me of a Romanesque church,
with over twenty alcoves opening on both sides of the nave. Exhibition
designer Angel Borrego took this architectural feature into consideration
when he developed the plans for the display, and imagined the hall as the
hull of a ship, where precious objects were kept in crates, awaiting safe
passage and unraveling. This, he said, was also in keeping with the idea
of "Filipiniana" as a way of classifying materials (books, photographs,
artifacts) pertaining to our country, which are stored in an archival
facility.

Honestly, I didn't feel very comfortable with the curatorial approach in
the beginning - particularly the idea of labeling the art and culture of
the Philippines like exotica in a curio cabinet. The feeling was akin
to imagining kinship with someone you had considered to be a close
relative; only to realize that this relative saw you as some sort of
oddity from a strange, far-away land.

I was imagining poor Madre España coming to terms with the reality of
virtual strangers from across the globe, who show up at her doorstep
claiming affinity and seeking acceptance. She receives them with
sincerity if not warmth, and her manner of expression is polite, if not
forthright. Yet she still seems awkward, struggling to, as Casa Asia
Director-General Ion de la Riva wrote in his foreword to the exhibition
catalogue, "advance the rapprochement."

This great effort to deal with, nay confront, an unavoidable truth is
perhaps the best way to read Guardiola's desire to undertake so much in
one exhibition. That being said, I cannot commend him enough for taking
on such a gargantuan task. In the collective memory, no one before him
had been able to bring together so many objects to encapsulate the
essential Filipino in a single display for the benefit of a foreign
audience. Casa Asia also deserves a rousing bravo for seeking to bridge
the gap between our two peoples.

The richness and complexity of this relationship is measured
progressively, and expounded upon on many levels in "Filipiniana."
Roughly, the show is divided into three sections, each one referring to a
particular "historical moment."

"The Colonial Imaginary" (1521-1945) showcases early maps of the islands,
botanical prints, vistas, rare Jose Honorato Lozano tipos del pais and
letras y figuras interestingly mingled in true postmodern fashion with
more contemporary works by Stephanie Syjuco and Manuel Ocampo, which
hearken to similar cartographic and imagined renditions of the
Philippines. Further tracing Spanish colonial society and its cultural
legacy are rooms holding antiquarian first editions, splendid paintings
by Juan Luna from the collections of the National Museum and the
Biblioteca-Museu Victor Balaguer (the GSIS Luna "Parisian Life," which is
also in the show, looks paltry in comparison) and, of special interest,
late 19th century photographs culled mostly from Spanish libraries and,
from a later period, the collection of John Silva and Jonathan Best.

I thought it food for thought and most appropriate in light of my earlier
misgivings to see Jean Laurent's photographs from the Madrid Exposition
of 1887 in this section -- a commercial and ethnographic exhibition that
brought together Philippine flora inside the Crystal Palace, which was
constructed specifically as a hothouse; products from the islands at the
Mining and Industry (now Velasquez) Palace; and various aspects of
Philippine culture, including actual villages reconstructed at the Retiro
Park, complete with natives shipped in from each of the colony's provinces
and put on display garbed in traditional costumes, or producing typical
crafts!

Further manifestations of occupation are manifested by materials on the
American and Japanese period. The former was played out in photographs
(those capturing battle scenes and casualties from the
Philippine-American War were revelations), books, magazine covers and
artworks from "peace time." Here, the landscape paintings of Juan
Arellano, framed as if seen through windows, from the Lopez Memorial
Museum collection, and the stunning "Interaction" by Victorio Edades,
Galo Ocampo and Botong Francisco from the Eleuterio Pascual collection
stood out. The latter was manifested by, among other materials,
propaganda posters from the holdings of the UP Vargas Museum.

The next section, "Nation (1946-1986)" traverses the post-World War II
period to the first EDSA People Power Revolution, and focuses on two
aspects. The first is the emergence of the independent Philippine
nation-state, and its search for identity as seen in cultural
manifestations marked by an attempt to localize the Western. Here viewers
can find works by the Neo-Realists with representative works by Arturo
Luz, Vicente Manansala, David Medalla, Jose Joya, Lee Aguinaldo, Victor
Oteyza, H.R. Ocampo, Alfonso Ossorio, J. Elizalde Navarro and Fernando
Zobel from the collection of the Ateneo Art Gallery as well as
interesting discoveries such as a series of Fernando Zobel photographs
from the Ayala Museum, and the iconic "Tawanan" by Anita Magsaysay-Ho on
loan from the Kalaw-Ledesma Foundation which I had never imagined would
be so miniscule! The second revolves around "Imeldifica" zeroing in on
the Iron Butterfly's extravagance as well as her cultural pursuits that
led to the establishment of institutions such as the CCP, whose forays
into high art are represented by conceptual work by Roberto Chabet. Such
excesses, coupled with the repression of civil liberties under the the
Conjugal Dictatorship became fodder for the rise of the Social Realist
Movement in art, which is evinced by the works of Antipas Delotavo,
Leonilo Doliricon, Renato Habulan, Pablo Baen Santos, and Edgar Talusan
Fernandez, whose canvas on wooden armature sculpture, "Kinupot" had the
honor of being selected as the featured artwork in the exhibition's
posters and banners.

The exhibition ends in fast-forward mode. "Memories of Overdevelopment
(1986-2006)" is set amidst the heady backdrop of globalization,
terrorism, economic growth, and diaspora as well as more local anxieties
in the social, political and religious sphere. The concerns mirrored by
the art unleash the plethora of contemporary complexity, from the
installation "Packing Up" by Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan which consists
of purposefully layered personal belongings elegantly stacked with a
formalist eye for color and texture molded out of balikbayan boxes,
stirringly evoking past and future journeys, to the critical references
to a hybrid culture as shown in the late Santiago Bose's work, where
indigenous and foreign icons collide. Manuel Ocampo's furious exorcisms
and the now inactive Sanggawa's parody of popular culture vis-à-vis
Catholic religiosity are also quite emphatic. Sid Hildawa symbolically
links together the far end of the exhibition hall, and the thematic
diversity with an installation of photographs titled the "Choker
Project." Continuing the discourse, tucked away in the furthest corner,
Jose Legaspi's devilishly excoriating drawings are mounted floor to
ceiling. Juan Alcazaren coolly contextualizes the audience's vantage
point in this section with "The Sedimentation of the Mind is a Jumbled
Museum," while Dindo Llana ups the anti-establishment ante with his not
so subtle tin can label caricatures (Kudos to Guardiola for not
succumbing to self-censorship and to the Philippine Embassy in Madrid for
intelligently turning a blind eye on what could have easily raised a
diplomatic firestorm!)

At the opening after-party, which was held at an elegant restaurant beside
the hotel where the Philippine party was billeted, National Museum
director Cora Alvina took the floor to personally thank Guardiola and
Casa Asia for their supreme effort. She was followed by the National's
senior consultant John Silva, who eloquently recounted a similar scene
that took place over a century ago. That night, the expatriate ilustrados
hosted a dinner to honor Juan Luna and Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo for
winning Gold and Silver Medals respectively, at the 1884 Madrid
Exposition of Fine Art. Held aloft as paragons of excellence, proof of
the skill and superiority of the Filipinos, it could rightfully be said,
Silva added, that art gave birth to a people's struggle for independence.

As cheers erupted and the group raised their glasses to toast the success
of "Filipiniana," I suspect that one niggling question remained on the
minds of los nuevos indios bravos: How far had we really gone since that
time?

------

"Filipiniana" runs at the Centro Cultural Conde Duque, Madrid, Spain
through 24 September 2006

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Cincinnati: PART 1

I'm splitting up my foray into Cincinnati for the International Sculpture Conference into two separate posts: one for the "fun" days of meeting folks and hanging out, and the other for some of the sticky issues that came along with the conference panel portion and which left me rather troubled and wondering if I was indeed, as someone from my audience declared me, "incredibly naive and misguided" (more on this in part 2).

So, onwards and upwards, let's all start with the FUN stuff, shall we? Click the link below...

Some background info: I was invited to speak on a panel called "Sculpture and Social Commentary" at the 2006 International Sculpture Conference which is put on by Sculpture Center in NY and Sculpture magazine. Every year it's held in a different city and this year was in Cincy, where I had never visited before. It's always a bit nerve-wracking for me to travel somewhere for a few days to get thrust into a new social situation, and especially when I have the responsibility of delivering a coherent and thoughtful presentation--ack! Luckily I met lots of lovely folks, along with some serious personalities which fit into some basic stereotypes of the ever-self-promoting artist. About 500 people total attended over a period of four days (I was only there for three), with about 50% being students (undergrad and grad), another quarter being arts professionals (art department faculty, teachers, art historians, curators, and administrators), and the other quarter "working artists" who were interested in furthering their thoughts on sculpture.

Unfortunately, I had forgotten to bring the charger to my digital camera, hence a dearth of any photos, actually. Damn! Next time, next time...But here's what I have:

Cincy is a seriously industrial-looking town in parts...one night we went to a portion of downtown which consisted of so many abandoned brick warehouses and boarded-up buildings that it was truly amazing. One night we were ferried to a very DIY artist space where they had transformed a few floors of studios into a big sculpture show...


I tell ya, it was *massive*. The work was generally OK, with a few standouts amongst the 31 local Cincy artists...






My new friend Nick who is the Sculpture Dept. head at the University of Washington. I told him to point at the artwork sitting in someone's studio in the warehouse. Don't ask me why...


Nick again with his head stuck between two Jessica Stockholder pieces. I really (heart) Jessica Stockholder. We went to Carl Solway gallery next to the warehouse, which has been in business since the 70s and started Nam Jun Paik on his early career days. They had a big room filled with several large-scale Paik video works, prints, and posters/ephemera that totally wowed me. It was like walking into a really really really bad part of town, going through a locked chainlink fence parking lot and into a big brick warehouse only to stumble across a NYC-worthy contemporary art gallery. There was also a big sculpture show in an adjacent room with Peta Coyne, Fred Wilson, Matthew McCaslin, Jessica Stockholder, Nick Cave, Nancy Rubins, among others--pretty amazing and great to see.


More shenanigans with Jessica Stockholder work...har!

Days were spent listening to panel discussions, networking with arts professionals, and making friends in general. None of us were very familiar with Cincy so we wound up getting lost quite a lot whenever we took off. I wound up making friends and hanging out with three guys from all over: Nick from Washington, Robb from Minneapolis, and Jack from NY. Robb had a truck and we all piled in to get lunch and go out at nights when the conference events ended. Hanging out with these three guys actually reminded me of when I was an undergrad in the sculpture dept at the SF Art Institute--there were way fewer women to men in the program so much of it was spent being "one of the guys" and almost the only girl in the group most of the time.


The last night the four of us went out to a pub/dinner place downtown, and then all piled into Robb's truck.

Trucks don't fit four people, mind you. Nick got stashed in the truckbed as we whizzed around Cincy...And no, we weren't drunk driving, if you have to know. Luckily, Jack was the designated driver and doesn't drink so the rest of us were off the hook...wheeeeeeee!


We saw some jazz on the recommendation of the waitress at the pub...honestly, I can't remember what it was called and by this time I'd had 2 dirty gin martinis anyway...double har! It was sadly an almost empty club with a darn good quintet playing on stage and we tried clapping as loudly as possible to support 'em.


Me, yes. It's dark, no?




Rob in the dark


Jack in the dark

I didn't take a photo of the rather drunk older waitress who served us at the later part of the night. Looks like she was both a worker and a patron at the same time. Yow.


Midnight bocci ball on the lawns of Xavier campus! No way! Way! That was the funnest part of my last night. I was being picked up from my hotel at 4am by my shuttle to the airport (eegads, what was thinking when I booked the 6am flight on a saturday???), and since we had just left the jazz club at 2am, decided we would all stay up until I had to go. Rob had a set of light-up LED bocci balls and we had so much drunken fun throwing them all over the wet lawns by lamplight. Surreal and fun at the same time. Perfecto!









Group shot of us at 4am in the Vernon Manor hotel lobby, taken by the airport shuttle bus guy. I hafta say, these guys were a ton of fun and I hope to keep in touch! I really love it when you make "surprise" friends in a random place and it just makes me feel good amount humanity in general :)

OK, my next post on Cincinnati (Part 2) will come up probably tomorrow night, and will be all about what happened during my panel discussion. Stay tuned for some "issue"-oriented blogging regarding art and politics, the "generation gap" (as I see it), and how the revolution today will not look like what happened in the 60s, no matter how much baby boomers complain about it.

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Vintage strikes back!

Yep, it's been a while since I restocked the vintage section of the store, but the day is finally here! Check out groovy-licious duds and summertime dresses straight outta the good ole days :) Oh, and there's even a $5 sale happening....Holey smokes, batgirl!

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hot jewelry alert

natalie of pashupatina *just* posted new necklaces on her website. if you aren't familiar with her work, i suggest you high-tail it up there pronto to check out way affordable lovely artistry for your neck! i've got me a few of these lovelies and i think you should, too ;)

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je suis fatigue

Dudes, I am tiiiiiired. I just got back into SF this morning from an early flight out of Cincinnati via Chicago (got picked up at my hotel at 4am Cincinnati time and arrived in SF at 10:30am--ack!). Basically did not go to bed last night and stayed up partying with some new friends in Cincy until I had to leave for the airport...will post more later along with photos. So I have officially finished with trip #4 out of a total of 5 trips in two months. I can't wait till these are all over so I can just sit down for a moment and just not do anything. Tired, oh so tired!

I also feel like moving. Been in SF for so many years now and despite my travel complaints have rather enjoyed seeing new towns and new atmospheres. The American "rust belt" states are pretty interesting with great old-school architecture. Plus, everything seems cheaper outside of this damn city (apart from NYC, that is), leading me to wonder if I'm being really stupid staying put and paying as much rent as I am. How about a farmhouse or bungalow in a cheaper town, only with superfast internet to keep my brain wired? The possibilities are myriad and rather tempting I might say...

OK, post later. time to watch TV and revel in my lack of energy today ;p

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gun running

"Standard Issue Smith & Wesson," 2006; fillet crochet panel, 8" x 11", framed


detail


even more detail

Before you start thinking i'm advocating for gun violence, puh-lease realize that this is loaded with irony. I mean, fillet crocheting and guns, right? Like grannies on the loose doing bad things, ha ha! This little piece is for an art auction called "State of the Nation" happening later this month at Intersection for the Arts. At first I was going to crochet some graffiti but it was looking sort of lame so I turned to this work. I downloaded an image of the "standard" army-issue Smith & Wesson gun and made a pattern to make a crochet panel that is supposed to be actual size. The gun itself is 7 1/2" long. I used Adobe Illustrator to make the grid (note that fillet crochet grids are *not* perfectly square, hence the rectangular-ish sqaures on my grid).

Want to make one? Download the jpg pattern here! (about 128k)

Some tips:
--Make a small swatch first! The pattern is 100% final size, so you can check against it to make sure it turns out "real" gun size. I made a 2" x 2" swatch before I did the whole thing.
--I used rather fine black crochet thread and a tiny hook. Experiment to get the right swatch and tension for yourself.
--If you've never fillet crocheted before, google around to get instructions--it's rather easy once you get the hang of it!
--The pattern has what looks like half-filled boxes, and these are single stitches inside a full square, rather than using two stitches--it creates a half-filled square for more nuance.
--This took me about 5 1/2 hours in one sitting while watching TV--whoo-hoo!
--I mounted mine into a shadowbox frame with glass in front. I used a very thin layer of white glue on the back to adhere it to the back frame panel. White glue is water-soluble and if you don't use too much of it you can technically remove the crochet work later
--Make sure you BLOCK your work before mounting it. Most fillet crochet comes out rather strange-shaped at first and you have to block it to give it a good even shape. Get it wet and lay it to dry on a flat towel, pushing it in place. You can even lightly iron it on the wrong side.

Does this mean I am a small-arms dealer now? Ha ha!

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summer reading

A friend of mine just emailed me asking me about books related to globalization, economics, consumerism, and other issues, and I compiled a list for her and thought it might be nice to share these. You know, for all that summer reading on the beach you may want to catch up on all that hard-core theory and history (ouch!). OK, maybe not, but if you're hankering for some brain food, check these out:

"Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature," by Donna Harraway (specifically the essay "A Cyborg Manifesto"). Even though this book is rather old (80s) it still has a very radical take on things...highly recommended in general and was totally pivotal for my artwork while in undergrad!

"No Logo: No Space, No Choice, No Jobs," by Naomi Klein. From the early 2000s, it's a tad outdated now, but still interesting and informative.

"Empire," by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. VERY dense and theoretical but interesting theory on how megacorporations are replacing the nation-state...


"Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire," also by Hardt and Negri. The flip side to the megacorporations--more about resistance to the powers-that-be.

"Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America," by Barbara Ehrenreich

"Shopping: A Century of Consumer Culture," art catalog with essays. FABULOUS book and great essays in general about consumer culture and artworks.

"Making Sweatshops," by Ellen Rosen. Good statistics and well-laid out history of the garment industry and the "race to the bottom"


"The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the 20th Century." a wonderful book focusing mostly on 1930s labor movements and the art and music it produced. I was shocked to see how socially radical things were!

"Globalization and its Discontents," by Joseph Stieglitz, ex-World Bank head. Great for a breakdown on the economics of globalization in general and how it affected different countries and economies

Also, what are YOU reading these days? I would love some recommendations, so if you can think of any, please tell me! Fiction, nonfiction, whatever... I've been meaning to read some David Sedaris and the new Mike Davis book but haven't gotten my hands on 'em yet!

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Anti-Factory RESTOCK: The Good Girl!

Yep, despite all my busy-ness I have managed to cram in to the online store a selection of 8 new handmade items! Check it out!

I chalk it up to the fact that I was almost hysterically busy last week, freaking out about impending art deadlines (while not nightmaring over The Shining), but then managing to plow through a lot of work and thus have time for sewing (whew!). Girls, i gotta gets me a life. You're talking to a one-woman sweatshop here. Either that or I am an art machine. And neither of them resembles a human being, argh! Summer break? Did someone say summer means break? Who was that liar? ;p

Here's some peeks:

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America's Most Wanted

Transmission from Crochet CentCom Command to the Subcommandante Crochet Brigade:

Below are three counterfeit crochet handbags along with the dastardly ladies who produced them. their full identities have been protected with the discrete black "censored" boxes which either makes them look like wanted fugitives or like they're wearing incredibly futuristic rectangular sunglasses. ladies, don't worry, i will fully protect your real selves and won't tell the authorities when they hunt me down and come a-knockin' on my door, which i'm sure is going to happen any day now. your secrets are safe with me!


Anna in her secret hideout, showing off her handmade Chanel. Chic and dangerous, she is a shady lady with style...


Carrie with the infamous Dior tote, making a furtive daylight appearance before they can catch her...Quick! Back into the safehouse!


Ms. Diana on the lam from the authorities but taking a break to mug for the camera with the Dior that would land her in the slammer...Her impending baby will be born into the flames of crochet vice but the wee one's momma will show it how to successfully evade capture, i'm sure!

Will update on a need-to-know basis. Full disclosure puts too many at risk.

Crochet CentCom Command over and out.

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Hellooooo, Johnny!

Last night we were supposed to go out but got sucked into watching The Shining on the AMC channel instead. And although I've seen this baby many times before, it never ceases to completely and thoroughly scare the life out of me. Kurt fell asleep on the rug halfway through and I was left awake and watching it, too petrified to even get up and go to the bathroom for fear of scary things lurking around. I swear, I only get this way right after watching a freaky movie, it's not a long term thing. But then the worst part was that I had to stop watching and change the channel all together because I just couldn't handle it...Kurt wakes up and I start telling him how freaked out I am and he just starts mimicking some of the movie scenes with lines like, "But I would never, never, never hurt you, Stephanie" and I just start going hysterical. He and Jack Nicholson share a few facial traits (its the nose, I think) and he can even put on that conniving evil "Shining" look. Damn him! He grew up with brothers, where i was mostly a single child and avoided sibling torture. This went on for some while with me starting to get really mad and freaked out and he finding it sort of amusing. But of course this morning when we wake up and he's come to his senses he realizes he should not do this to me in my heightened state of Shining-induced fear and duly apologizes.

Fear--it's a crazy thing. I'm not afraid of speaking in public or doing all sorts of things, but get me right after a scary movie and I just *know* that I'm the next one to be offed, or see an apparition, get attacked by a shark, or whatever!

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plastic fantastic

Some fun things:


--jelly shoes (red pair from Urban Outfitters for $16--i know, i know, i've ranted about the UO evil empire. and they're still evil. but by gum, they have cute shoes, don't they?). I looooove my red jellies. I had a pair over ten years ago and now they've come back all over again! I wore these last night out to a bar and felt so happy. Oh, the simple pleasures in life!



Snapcrafty has super cute necklaces...yum! i don't have one, but i may just have to score me one soon. Plastic fantastic!



Moss on Etsy. A seller who makes great things! I bought one of her crocheted black cat dolls and it's sleeps snuggly on my bookshelf. This one here is a "siamese twin" cat doll. Cute and just a tad strange!

Battlestar Galactica on SciFi channel. Yep, it's official, Kurt and I are addicted to this show. And since we just started watching it despite it being in the second season, we have had to rent on Netflix all the prior ones to finally catch up (which we aren't yet). So far, it's been one DVD after another and given that there are four episodes per disk, it's turned into marathon nights. As a sci-fi fan, I have to say that the miniseries premier was AMAZING considering it was made for TV. And the weird religious cylon angle is particularly interesting--androids that want to mate with humans, are heavily religious, and fall in love. I know there's a hint of Bladerunneresque plot here, but overall it sure beats most TV watching these days. Not to mention the "terrorist" sideplots and allusions to wartime governmental moral quandaries. Smart smart smart.

Questionable thing: "frocks". Urban Outfitters is pushing these hard now. Frocks. The kind that billow out starting *above* your breast and then sort of draping strangely down. Maybe I'm just not "with it" anymore, but I'm not sure if this one can be pulled off by many. I like me a little cinching somewhere, or shaping. I say this now, but may wind up eating my words later as I did with the clog fad way back when.

Below is said frock:


Looks like a good maternity top. But we're not pregnant, are we?

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Anti-Factory restock: Cut it Up!

I *just* added a few new items to the Anti-Factory store! Yes, it's a small bunch, and I'm even surprised I managed this much since I've been swamped with work. Please stay tuned for more, tho...this particular selection has lots of patched fabrics--some tops use up to nine different fabrics--as well as stretchy thermal cotton jersey and vintage 60s cotton prints.

As much as I love summer and hotter weather, I'm itching to get back into sewing the woolen sweater styles of fall and winter...am I weird?

Oh, and the vintage section is all on sale. yippeeeeeeeee!

On a totally unrelated note: i can be so lame sometimes! i have been neglecting to check in on my various sites like myspace, flickr, etc. (mostly because i forget what my different passwords and identities are and am too lazy to hit the "forgot your password?" option--eegads!). so i go onto myspace and see that people have been sending me messages for like, months, and i seem like a real ass for not responding. to those out there who think i am dissing you--i'm not! and flickr, well that's another story. i'm locked out entirely, which is funny because now i'm stuck with the same photos in a timewarp. oh the wonders of online avatars. you forget which one of you is "you" and where you even are in the online world.

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sneak peeks (small preview)

I'll be posting a small batch of new Anti-Factory items soon--maybe later tonight, but maybe tomorrow night, i'm not sure yet! If I had more time to sit in front of this here computer and babysit the site I would do it today, but alas, I have lots of studio work to do. Deadlines deadlines deadlines! argh. yes, my vacation trip is officially over. but at least i still got my tan plastered to my body ;)

Here's a preview of the batch...lotsa different fabrics, vintage 60s cottons, and stretchy lightweight thermal fabric. whoo-hoo!

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Hawaii!

Aloha! Got back from Hawaii a little while ago and I'm in the mood to post some photos...except that after processing my photos I realized I had too much to put up on this little blog, so decided to enter my flickr account, only to realize that for some reason I have royally screwed things up and can't access my anti-factory flickr page! Either i'm extremely dumb or the merge they did with yahoo a while back has somehow affected my log-in capabilities. I spent a good HOUR AND A HALF (maddening!) trying to figure it out, to no avail. I inadvertently set up a second flickr account, using what I thought was my previous information. aaaaaaa!

OK, but whatever. in the meantime, here are the trip details...it's totally image-heavy, so I figured I'd put it in a separate page...





We spent the first 2 nights in Waikiki and it was a total tourist festival. It was my first time in Hawaii and it felt so strange still being in the US but feeling like it was Asia. Not only due to the high Japanese presence (lots of things were in Japanese and in supermarkets there was so much Japanese packaging that it was making me feel like a kid again in Tokyo!). Also, it was really weird being in a tropical country that wasn't part of the "developing world"--so clean! The feeling was like being in an extremely clean Philippines or something weird like that. No street children! No stray dogs and open gutters! It's amazing what money can do...


Speaking of money--it's a bamboo ATM!




Main beach at Waikiki, somehow shown without the throngs of tourists (they're just lurking at the edges, but they're there!)


kitchy tourist market stalls run mostly by Koreans and Vietnamese merchants. i loves the kitch, yes i do!




souvenir


the most amazing, baroque-looking kitchy candles


No way! pocari sweat! straight from japan! i HAD to go into all the little supermarkets and stare at all the goodies :)


Me and Giselle, together at last, in front of the Louis Vuitton Waikiki store. My impersonation of a Japanese tourist.


I am strangely fascinated with the Waikiki hotels, which all look like they were built in the 70s...


These buildings remind me of the days of the TV show Hawaii Five-O...which they actually still show on primetime Hawaii TV!


Celebrity Resorts, Waikiki! Don't be fooled by the lame name, it was actually a quaint 70s-era friendly little hotel that we'd happily stay in again :)


Newspaper proof we were really there


kurt was getting all post-modern and taking lots of photos of people taking photos of things


this photo is a bit lame (as we are speeding down the road) but it shows a configuration of plastic cups made into a "welcome home" pattern for US soldiers on the naval base. the military presence in Oahu is HUGE. Check out that American flag in red, white, and blue cups! Oh, the ingenuity of it all!


The view of the backyard (!) of one of my aunt's house in the East side of Oahu. Yes, it is like this. Scary good.


another speeding photo: heading towards the North Shore where my cousin's wedding was being held, we passed a dozen or so shrimp trucks where one could get the freshest shrimp grilled in garlic--ahhhh!


The wedding was held in a gorgeous vacation rental house right at the edge of Sunset Beach, the beach mostly known for having amazing surfing waves. It was sooo great to be right at the edge of such gorgeousness!


My super-cute cousin Ella lounging in the hammock. We arrived at the house the day before the wedding, so alot of it was spent hanging out on the beach and taking it easy...


My little brother Jake striking a surfer pose


Jake, me, Kurt, and Ella. Yes, hammocks were a big part of the trip.


Ayumi helping set up for the wedding. We all pitched in to make flower arrangements, set up the lanterns, etc.


A whole refrigerator full of orchid leis was stowed in the garage, ready for guests...


Eating shrimp. I feel like I ate my way through Hawaii--so much "plate lunch", fresh mahi mahi, portuguese sausage, and tons of PORK PORK PORK! A vegetarian's nightmare, fer sure.




The benches at the shrimptrucks were adorned with little loveletters locals were leaving spelled out in pebbles...


...so of course we had to join in. awwww....






The day of the wedding, Ella was the lei girl, greeting guests at the entrance


Setting up the table arrangements for the wedding. YES, that is the beach right there. The lawn part is right outside the back porch of the house, and just a few steps down the beach starts. Lord, it was gorgeous!


Mai-tais were the order of the day (and night)...


The bride, my cousin Miel, came out on her father's arm


The joining...not a dry eye in the house.


I'm not sad. Just touched.


Ayumi and I, happy all over again.


Dancer during the festivities


Another postmodern shot of people taking pictures...my family here.


Little bro and I. I just noticed how much I "mug" for the camera with pursed lips and make squinty eyes. Why do I do that?


My brother, dad, and cousin Ella. The 2 young 'uns had so much fun together since they were the only teens there. It was sweet to see them bond and relate to one another...


Perfect setting, no?


Like from a vegetarian's slasher flick. The pig head that was part of the pig body that we were all chowing down on. How I love the pig! So crispy, so crunchy is the skin. It's a big Filipino (and Hawaiian) tradition to have a pig roast. But I do admit it can look like a horror show sometimes...Coke and pork--yum!


Last shots from a nature reserve we stumbled across during our last day...

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Sama-Sama, Yogyakarta, Indonesia

My friend artist Megan Wilson, who spends half her time in San Francisco and the other half in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, has a great blog about her artwork and travels. She co-founded the Sama-Sama mural project, which is an artist exchange program between the two cities. Recent earthquake events there has turned a sad note onto the program, but so far everyone she knows seems to have come out of it physically unscathed. Below are images of the mural projects in Yogyakarta...

Buy a catalog to help out the earthquake relief, and scroll down her other blog entries to check out what looks to be an amazingly rockin' indie music scene in Indonesia!




Oh, and I just got back from crazy beautiful Hawaii--will post photos and the lowdown soon enough :)

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