Today at 12:46pm

"Rosa Parks sat so Martin Luther could walk
Martin Luther walked so Barack Obama could run
Barack Obama ran so all the children could fly
So Ima spread my wings you can meet me in the sky"
Jay-Z

Drawings I did, back in the day

Welcome to BK- lil kim

I come from Bed-Stuy, niggas either do or they gon' die
Gotta keep the ratchet close by
Someone murdered, nobody seen, nobody heard it
Just another funeral service
Niggas will get at you, come through shinin' they yap you
In broad day light kidnap you
Feds get clapped too, police stay on us like tattoos
Niggas only grind cause we have to
Money is power, sling crack, weed and powder
Fiends come through every hour
S'all about that dollar and we nuh deal with cowards
Weak lambs get devoured by the lion
In the concrete jungle, the strong stand and rumble
The weak fold and crumble, it's the land of trouble
Brooklyn, home of the greatest rappers
BIG comes first, then the Queen comes after


[Verse 2]
Now lemme give you a walk through
Show ya what to do and ya don't do
Where it's not safe to go to
Dem boys approach you
Better say quick who you close to
Don't come through if niggas don't know you
Cuz people is talkin', the streets is watchin'
The thieves is lurkin' stash da nine in the garbage
The life of a hustla, the life of a gambler
Dice games kill' mo' niggas than cancer
Ya know who ya fuck with
Brooklyn don't run we run shit
Roll up and just bum rush shit
We don't play that out in B.K not at all
4 pound leave ya face on the wall
R.I.P in memory of
Never show thy enemies love
We get it on where we live
Better have a pass when you cross that bridge

Comfort Zones

I got this in an e-mail yesterday:
"read this quote Elena...this is totally meant for you and you should live by this"

magical thinkin'

I never felt so out of it more than I did today.

"I tell myself: 'Insanity is the insistence on meaning.' " - Joan Didion

Claes Oldenburg's Art in Miami

Does anyone in Miami notice that there is public art all around them? In downtown Miami alone there are outstanding pieces by Claes Oldenburg, Raymond Duchamp-Villon, Maya Lin, Ralph Helmick and Stuart Schechter, Isamu Noguchi, Joan Lehman, Carol Brown and Edward Ruscha. Is public art not important to any of the residents here, and if so why? I always thought of public art as key to a great city because it creates civic areas outside of infrastructure, can become more acceptable and accessible to the masses who've perhaps never seen work and can generate conversation or discussion within a community. Whatever happened to this community? I think in any situation, place or space, uncared and overlooked work reflects the culture of the area, and in Miami, it's lack of "community".

 Oldenburg's larger than life size fountain sculpture is perhaps the most engaging and largest yet isolated pieces in "The Cultural Center" in downtown Miami. It is the oldest area of the city, consists of the Historical Museum of Southern Florida, the Miami Art Museum, and The Miami-Dade County Public Library. It consists of an awkward and spacious tiled plaza that links the trio of "cultural resources". The three-acre complex is a focal point of downtown. At the entrance of the Miami Art Museum is sculptural piece created by R. Duchamp-Villon (Duchamp's brother) in 1914, and a newly added sculpture by Picasso that go unnoticed except for the random visitors to rest their cigarette buds there.


"Dropped Bowl with Scattered Slices and Peels"  
by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen

Claes Oldenburg's sketches of sculpture

                                                                    Downtown Miami


This monumental outdoor sculpture with multi-dimensional sections, represents an imaginary moment in time when a huge bowl of orange slices and peels drops to the ground and shatters. The artwork includes eight bowl fragments in cast concrete with an overall weight of 124,000 lbs., four peels in steel plate with painted surfaces, and five orange sections executed in reinforced cast resin. Oldenburg is best known for his gigantic food constructions and his daily object soft sculptures.

Statement by the Artists

The opportunity came with a commission from the Metro-Dade County Art in Public Places program in September 1984. Water seemed an especially appropriate subject for the city of Miami, to which we would add one of our favorite fruit subjects, the orange, also associated with the state of Florida.

The site was a wide area surrounded by an eclectic mix of architecture and highways. A centralized fountain in a circular shape surrounded by flagpoles, as projected in the landscape designer’s plans, did not seem to respond to the location. Coosje proposed instead an anti-hierarchical approach, consisting of forms scattered over the plaza. In reference to the conventional shape of a fountain, ours would be round, but resembling a broken plate, with the oranges deconstructed into slices and expressively cut peels. We thought that the jagged fragments would be more interesting if they came from a bowl, coincidentally a nod to a local institution, the football stadium known as the Orange Bowl. Trying out the idea on a model, Coosje dispersed the parts with abandon to introduce chance and irregularity into the orderly grid of the plaza. Cesar Trasobares, director of the Art in Public Places program, likened the effect to a piñata, which spills treasures in all directions when it is smashed. The flying slices, peels, and fragments of the bowl are caught as if in stop-motion, bouncing off the surfaces of the plaza. Pools in the shape of spilled liquid, large and small, were cut into the pavement beneath the sculptural pieces. Jets of water emerge from the pools, programmed at irregular heights and surprising intervals in repeated reenactments of the breaking bowl’s impact.

At the time of its inauguration the Dropped Bowl with Scattered Slices and Peels could be seen to represent a city in the making, deriving its particular order out of the apparent disorder accompanying Miami's expansion.



Interview Excerpt with Claes Oldenburg

Miami’s Art in Public Places, which had commissioned the Dropped Bowl with Scattered Slices and Peels, was asked to participate in the Triennale of Milan in 1988, with a contribution that would involve Frank O. Gehry, Ed Ruscha, and us, among other American artists and architects. We decided to feature a rather elaborate presentation model we had made of our Miami project, which would be realized the following year. Since the model seemed lost in the space of the exhibition hall, next to a portion of a ship by Gehry, we felt it needed a container of its own, a room within a room. Our thoughts went back in time to the earliest piece that had dealt with broken flying fragments, a model of which Coosje had once unearthed among discarded works at Broome Street. This image, of a plate of scrambled eggs breaking against a wall, in fact had served as a starting point for the design of the Dropped Bowl.

“Space and light and order. Those are the things that men need just as much as they need bread or a place to sleep.” – Le Corbusier

" How do I Look?"

So I asked Emilie how was it that I looked like when I was having a seizure. Emilie being the artist that she is, drew me this:

"oh my God you bitch!" I told her, when I saw her sketch. Even though we laughed it off, Emilie did another sketch, that I found very realistic.

I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle, but if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best.
-Marilyn Monroe

"In a hurry Life is blurry"

It’s all a blur
It’s all a blur

Margarita, te voy a contar un cuento:

I asked my mom today at lunch about my middle name, and why I was named Margarita. Margarita is a flower like a daisy and also an alcoholic drink, as you may know, but turns out there's more to my name than that. I was named after a poem by Félix Rubén García Sarmiento also known as Rubén Darío. Dario was a Nicaraguan poet who initiated Spanish-American literary movement known as Modernismo (modernism), flourishing at the end of the 19th century. Dario has had the greatest and most lasting influence into twentieth century Spanish literature, and journalism. He has been praised as The Prince of Castilian letters. While greatly considered the father of modernism itself, he is revered also as a great diplomat of Central and South America. The poem was written for the daughter of a friend. We may not today see children in quite so kindly a light, but we have a responsibility to be faithful to the sentiments of the poem.

A Margarita Debayle 1908

Margarita está linda la mar,
y el viento,
lleva esencia sutil de azahar;
yo siento
en el alma una alondra cantar;
tu acento:
Margarita, te voy a contar
un cuento:

Esto era un rey que tenía
un palacio de diamantes,
una tienda hecha de día
y un rebaño de elefantes,
un kiosko de malaquita,
un gran manto de tisú,
y una gentil princesita,
tan bonita,
Margarita,
tan bonita, como tú.

Una tarde, la princesa
vio una estrella aparecer;
la princesa era traviesa
y la quiso ir a coger.

La quería para hacerla
decorar un prendedor,
con un verso y una perla
y una pluma y una flor.

Las princesas primorosas
se parecen mucho a ti:
cortan lirios, cortan rosas,
cortan astros. Son así.

Pues se fue la niña bella,
bajo el cielo y sobre el mar,
a cortar la blanca estrella
que la hacía suspirar.

Y siguió camino arriba,
por la luna y más allá;
más lo malo es que ella iba
sin permiso de papá.

Cuando estuvo ya de vuelta
de los parques del Señor,
se miraba toda envuelta
en un dulce resplandor.

Y el rey dijo: ¿Qué te has hecho?
te he buscado y no te hallé;
y ¿qué tienes en el pecho
que encendido se te ve?

La princesa no mentía.
Y así, dijo la verdad:
Fui a cortar la estrella mía
a la azul inmensidad.

Y el rey clama: ¿No te he dicho
que el azul no hay que cortar?.
¡Qué locura!, ¡Qué capricho!...
El Señor se va a enojar.

Y ella dice: No hubo intento;
yo me fui no sé por qué.
Por las olas por el viento
fui a la estrella y la corté.

Y el papá dice enojado:
«Un castigo has de tener:
vuelve al cielo y lo robado
vas ahora a devolver.

La princesa se entristece
por su dulce flor de luz,
cuando entonces aparece
sonriendo el Buen Jesús.

Y así dice: En mis campiñas
esa rosa le ofrecí;
son mis flores de las niñas
que al soñar piensan en mí».

Viste el rey pompas brillantes,
y luego hace desfilar
cuatrocientos elefantes
a la orilla de la mar.

La princesita está bella,
pues ya tiene el prendedor
en que lucen, con la estrella,
verso, perla, pluma y flor.

* * *

ENGLISH:

Margarita, how beautiful the sea is:
still and blue.
The orange blossom in the breezes
drifting through.
In my heart a skylark has in glory
your accent too:
Here, Margarita, is a story
told to you.

Margarita, how beautiful the sea is:
still and blue.
The orange blossom in the breezes
drifting through.
The skylark in its glory
has your accent too:
Here, Margarita, is a story
made for you.

Your canvas

Christo and Jeanne-Claude
The Pont Neuf Wrapped Paris 1975-85

I have a lot of philosophies about life. My own life struggles and a lot of the non-fiction that I read really have inspired these concepts. Art however is my biggest influence on these ideas about living. I was talking to my friend on the phone just yesterday and he asked me something very unusual, quite hard to answer, but I could definitely relate my life philosophy right there. "Do you think people have good hearts all the time, or at just some point in their life?" he asked. "I think people are born with good hearts, like a clean canvas" I answered. We all have one canvas when we are born, whatever you do with it, is then your own choice. We, the world are like a whole museum. Different rooms make up different time periods and places. Humans can make diptychs and even triptychs. You can break the wood on the back like a weak canvas or paint a loud radical piece with texture, leave it blank and never use it, or burn your canvas. People in history have burned rooms in the museum- genocide. Still, there are always brave other s , saving canvases from the burning rooms with an idea of chance and change instead of fear. No matter what art you make with your canvas, the brush is in your hand, and know that every canvas, like human, is individual; good heart once or still included.

old miami

In my sketchbook...