The Emma Edition

Sprinkles of The End

2013-05-12T22:03:00.001-04:00

Here are some snips from things I’ve been up to in my last weeks of high school. Ever (eek!!!!!!!). I don’t have an iPhone so unfortunately when I go to a cool exhibit/concert or I eat something cute/look cute, I just have to record it with my mind, or, in this case, borrow my friends’ recordings of the experience. Above are some Vines of me giggling and playing with food…apparently I am cornering a niche for this look. Shout out to the Bowery Diner for always having the best ambiance and milkshakes and shout out to Katie's roof for being the best secret garden in NYC. These ladies are so cool and hilarious and it makes me sad that they will be going far from me for college.

Also in my final trimester of school, I am working on my senior project, which in my case is interning and also working on art that will be exhibited at school in June. This trippy grandma’s knitting circle is part of the series I am working on entitled, “Homebody” (2013)

The pattern of my prom dress.

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Correspondent's Corner

2013-04-15T21:19:00.001-04:00

So as most of you by now know, I co-run this website called The Do Not Enter Diaries devoted to telling the stories of teenagers through their bedrooms. I started the website back in January with my best friend Emily, and so far the response has been surprisingly amazing. We stoked when The New York Times covered our project the day we launched, and continue to be surprised when the likes of NYLON to Seventeen write kind things about us. A couple weeks ago we added a new day to The Do Not Enter Diaries site, Mondays in addition to our Wednesdays, to accommodate a new column called Correspondent’s Corner we’ve started. Every Monday at 4PM will take you into a bedroom from a different teenager from across the globe—from New Zealand to Beijing. Because it’s not economically feasible for us to travel to every teenager, through this program we are able to give more of you a chance to share your stories. Our teenage correspondents are responsible for cultivating a unique group of teenagers whom they know, filming them following our guidelines, and sending us the footage to edit as we see fit. It’s been a pleasure over the past couple months getting to virtually know both our new staff and their subjects, so we hope you enjoy this new addition to our site. Still, we’re always looking to add more of you onto our team. You can fill out the application to become a correspondent here.

Below is a video of Georgia Rippin, our New Zealand correspondent as well as Angel H., the first subject she ever filmed for our site, which were both originally posted on donotenterdiaries.com . To learn more about Correspondent's Corner tune in Mondays @ 4PM and click here.

Correspondent's Corner: Georgia R. from The Do Not Enter Diaries on Vimeo.

Correspondent's Corner: Angel H. from The Do Not Enter Diaries on Vimeo.

ALSO! THE DO NOT ENTER DIARIES IS HIRING NYC-BASED TEEN INTERNS.

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Diner Desert

2013-04-15T21:03:00.000-04:00

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RAD TALK: An Interview With Photographer Dolly Faibyshev

2013-03-29T13:15:00.000-04:00

"Rad Talk" is a new column running on The Emma Edition, for 2013. In this column I interview creative people who make my life all the more rad and whose work I think deserves a wider audience. I’ll be giving them a forum to speak on things they may never been asked in a typical interview. Today I am featuring the photography of Dolly Faibyshev, whose work I stumbled upon while meandering in the Chelsea Market. From the second I spotted this cactus mailbox, I knew I had to speak with her. A new interview is posted on Fridays.

Q: Hey Dolly, can you tell my readers a bit about yourself?

A: “I got started in photography several years ago. I was always searching for a creative outlet while my career was going in the opposite direction, so I picked up a camera and taught myself how to take pictures."

Q: What or who is your ideal subject?

A: “I like weird and over-the-top. I like working in deserted places or crowds where people don’t notice me noticing them.”

Q: Your photos are great storytellers of color. What do you like about using color as a guiding medium?

A: “Thanks! I like using color because that’s the first thing I usually see when I’m taking pictures, and maybe it’s the first thing others see when they look at them. I think it can be used as a diversion from what’s actually happening too - I like creating that surprise you sometimes get from art.”

Q: Setting plays a huge part in your photographs. You often cut off the subject’s body, making them just as important as the background. Can you describe this?

A: “I’m just not interested in taking portraits. Identifiable faces make a photo feel less timeless for me. I’m more interested in environments and how people fit into them, or don’t.”

Q: Particularly in your ongoing first series, you focus a lot on Palm Springs. What fascinates you about that place in particular? Do you live there now?

A: “I’ve lived in New York for years, and I’m an east coaster but I just don’t think there’s any other place like it. It’s like stepping into the past, a time warp where many of the homes and surrounding architecture have been preserved (especially the exteriors) since the 1950s. Sometimes it feels like everything is changing around us so fast, it feels good to go to a place that hasn’t changed much at all. There’s something a little unsettling about that for me too.”

Q: How did you gain access to the homes in the photographs?

A: “For the most part I was focusing on exteriors, so access was pretty simple. The crazy thing is that quite a few people ended up inviting me in for a tour of their homes anyway, which I’m not used to in New York.”

Q: What setting do you think best encapsulates America? For me, I think it would be diners.

A: “The diner is an excellent choice. I love diners. I don’t think I can top that.”

What is your favorite American meal?

A: “Great question. I used to eat hot dogs galore as a kid, but now it’s fried chicken and apple pie.”

All images in this post courtesy of Dolly Faibyshev Photography

Q: All of your photos are extremely saturated, but there’s always an underbelly of isolationism emanating within them. Is this something you’re conscious of or try to achieve?

A: “I’m always conscious of color, but I don’t set out looking for isolationism - it just finds me I guess.”

To learn more about Dolly's work, click here.

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RAD TALK: An Interview With Laura Waugh of Novelbite

2013-03-22T16:26:00.000-04:00

"Rad Talk" is a new column running on The Emma Edition, for 2013. In this column I interview creative people who make my life all the more rad and whose work I think deserves a wider audience. I’ll be giving them a forum to speak on things they may never been asked in a typical interview. Today I am featuring Laura Waugh, creator of a genius cooking blog called Novelbite that satiates the readers and foodies, among us. Though the blog is currently on hiatus, I am hoping this will make her change her mind. A new interview is posted on Fridays.

Q: Can you tell us about yourself?

A: “I’m a graduate student and teaching associate at a large university in the American Southwest, and I write professionally about all sorts of food-related and literary topics. Obviously, I love to read, eat, write, and bake, but I also like to always keep myself involved in creative projects (painting, restoring furniture, etc). I have two mischievous cats and a wonderful husband.”

Q: How did you first get interested in cooking?

A: “My mom was a great cook, and I grew up around a group of family, friends, and neighbors who really understood how to create magic at a dinner table. I learned early on that you could make people feel special or loved just by bringing them together around a great meal. I didn’t really start to cook for myself until I went to college, but I immediately loved the challenge and reward of making a good dish.”

Q: Where do you see the intersection between literature and food?

A: “I believe that literature reflects life. Given that eating is an essential part of living, it’s inevitable that food is going to appear in our literature. The writing I do on food and literature aims to show that food (even in literature) matters. Food can say so much about a literary character, setting, or plot, but it can also reveal so much about the context from which the work was written and from which it is being read.”

Q: What made you want to start your website, Novelbite and catalog this interest? It reminds me of a more fun version of what Julie Powell did with Julie & Julia.

A: “Well, like I said, I’m an academic: unfortunately, in academia, we sometimes end up writing only for other academics. The blog lets me reach a different audience; I am able to write and share my love for books in a way that anyone with similar interests could follow and appreciate. Plus, I really love the entire process of blogging; I enjoy doing the photography and writing almost as much as I like the reading and baking aspects.”

Q: Virginia Woolf once wrote, "One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.” Why does this quote speak to the mission of your site?

A: “That’s the tagline for Novelbite! The narrator of Virginia Woolf’s essay “A Room of One’s Own” relates that line after observing how mediocre the food at Fernham (a fictional women’s college) is compared to the food at Oxbridge (a fictional men’s university). I think Woolf’s point—on both a literal and metaphoric level—is that we thrive when we are nourished (by food, education, financial freedom, etc), and that we all deserve to have an equal place at the table. If Novelbite tries to show that references to food and eating matter, that quote packs a pretty powerful message!”

Q: When you read a novel are you always attracted to what characters are eating, naturally? Or, did you come up with the idea and then start combing back through some of your favorite books?

A: “At first I had to go back and search, but now that writing about food in literature is what I do for work and for fun, references to food and eating tend to jump out at me in everything I read. The hard part is choosing which foods to use for the blog – usually that decision is based on what I’m craving.”

Q: How do you pick the recipes that appear on your site? Do you make them up? Do they stay true to the times in which the novel was written, or are they loosely inspired?

A: “I don’t make the recipes up. I find them on my favorite food sites or in cookbooks and the link them to the blog. I never intended Novelbite to be a cooking blog in the “recipe finding” sense, but I try to let people know where they can go if they’re interested in re-creating the dish. The recipes are definitely loosely inspired: there are some great blogs out there that do period cooking, but mine is not one of them.”

Q: What is the best meal you ever ate?

A: “On our third date, my now-husband invited me over for dinner and made me a vegetable soup made with no less than 30 ingredients. It took him hours to make! The soup was probably just okay (and made his house smell like cabbage for a week), but thinking about this man negotiating that grocery list and then watching him labor over that soup—for me!—was an incredible feeling. It was a wonderful meal.”

All images from this interview courtesy of Laura Waugh

Q: What is your favorite book? What is your favorite food moment in literature?

A: “Oh, goodness, I can’t answer that. I have a favorite book for every mood and moment; I’m not very good at playing favorites.”

Q: My favorite post of yours is your one about apple pie as seen in Sylvia Plath. I love this quote: “I’d like to write a book about what went on in Sylvia Plath’s kitchen during the two decades previous to 1963 (titling will no doubt be a delicate matter: What’s Cooking, Sylvia? should probably be left off of the table).” Can you please make this a reality?

A: “Oh, that’s a terrible joke (Plath killed herself using a gas oven)! I’m glad Novelbite readers are patient with my humor. That was a fun post to write (and a delicious pie to eat). Writing a book on Plath’s cooking—or a book on anything, a task I’ve yet to take on—would be a wonderful challenge to take on!”

Due to Laura’s studies, she is currently on a break from Novelbite, but will resume come springtime. Check out more of Novelbite here , and get addicted to the archives.

Follow me on Twitter @emmaedition

RAD TALK: An Interview with Macrame Extraordinaire, Ed Bing Lee

2013-03-01T17:02:00.000-05:00

"Rad Talk" is a new column running on The Emma Edition, for 2013. In this column I interview creative people who make my life all the more rad and whose work I think deserves a wider audience. I’ll be giving them a forum to speak on things they may never been asked in a typical interview. Today I am featuring one of my favorite artist, Ed Bing Lee--a modern day would-be lovechild of Wayne Thiebaud and George Seurat. A new interview is posted on Fridays.

Q: Ed, can you tell my readers a little bit about yourself?

A: “Born and educated in San Francisco CA, 1933. I've a checkered career in employment, like many artist in America. The jobs that most influenced by choice to be an artist were firstly, a jobs with textile manufacturing firms, secondly, employment in educational institutions, and thirdly experiences as a freelance designer/artist.”

Q: How do you think having parents who were immigrants, influenced your view of art in America?

A: “Difficult to measure, my father died when I was seven. My mother like many Chinese women in America, worked in a sewing factory. By today's standard, we fell below the poverty line. Thank God for public education, when art education was still a vital part of getting a proper education.”

Q: How did you get interested in crafting?

A: “A large part because of my various employments in textile manufacturing world. I wanted to work in fibers but was not interested in having to work with any type specialized equipment, namely looms. Knotting as a technique is very flexible, adaptable, and immediate; by that I mean to say, with the first knot you're already into the project.”

Q: What attracts you to working with soft sculptures as opposed to another medium?

A: “Interest in fiber came first, although I started as a painter/printmaker. Early pieces were mostly 2 dimensional with occasional forays into basketry. My interest in art history lead to my very first series, PICNICS, wherein I juxtaposed snippets of paintings with current food images. I quoted Seurat a lot because of the unavoidable parallelism between knotting and pointillism. The concept of soft sculpture followed as I realized that the food images could stand alone, independent of any historic reference. The other part is that my skill level improved.”

Q: Would you consider yourself to be a Pop artist?

A: “If I'm a Pop artist, I guess it comes with the territory. There's a strong urge to classify and codify work in all the arts.”

Q: You often focus on creating macramé erected in the honor of America’s staple comfort foods. Why did you choose these particular foods for your series?

A: “They're so ubiquitous. The burger, despite its origin in European cuisine, is a recognized symbol of America fast food the world over. The loaded image is so convenient, even without any understanding of Art you can relate to the visual.”

Q: Where is the wackiest place someone has displayed one of your sculptures (Personally, I am hoping you do your next installation in a retro diner)?

A: “Haven't been invited to the party.”

Q: What themes do you hope your art addresses?

A: “Food as subject matter for art has a long tradition, (did the caveman paint animals because they were there or because they were food source?). For the few, it is my aspiration and certainly would be a singular honor, if my work were to be seen as a continuance of this historical tradition.”

Q: What else would you like to explore with your soft sculptures in the future?

A: “Newest pieces continue the food image with emphasis on the abstract, less reliant on their worldly counterpart. They are larger, monochromatic and hopefully incorporate unexpected touches. (see above).”

All art from this post courtesy of Ed Bing Lee

Q: Any exciting upcoming projects you want to share?

A: “In the works, hopefully a solo show at a local gallery, Synderman-Works Gallery. More importantly an invitation to participate in the Rijswijk Museum Textile Biennial this summer, special and exciting! Like artist the world over, the future is always an open ended question: the when, the where and what venue. For the moment, the work continues, a curse and a blessing.”

To learn more about Ed Bing Lee, check out his website here.

Follow me on Twitter @emmaedition

RAD TALK: An Interview With Collage Artist, Adrienne Slane

2013-02-22T11:58:00.000-05:00

"Rad Talk" is a new column running on The Emma Edition, for 2013. In this column I interview creative people who make my life all the more rad and whose work I think deserves a wider audience. I’ll be giving them a forum to speak on things they may never been asked in a typical interview. Today I am featuring collage artist, Adrienne Slane. A new interview is posted on Fridays.

Q: What is the process of creating one of your art pieces? Do you serendipitously stumble upon an idea or is everything very meticulously planned out?

A: “As I am working, I create some basic concepts in my head based on what materials I have gathered. If I meticulously planned out an idea, I would probably never be fortunate enough to find the exact materials to complete it. Therefore, I allow what images I do find to ultimately determine my finished pieces. When I lay out all my collage elements (paper insects, flowers, birds, shells, bones, etc.), I begin to mix and match them like puzzle pieces. I can have a general idea of my composition, but the process involves a lot of fluidity. I am always surprised by how a piece looks when it is completed.”

Q: Where do you find the materials for your collages?

A: “Searching for materials for my collages is like a treasure hunt. Because I like to have a physical response to the materials I select, I hunt for old naturalist field guides, dictionaries, anatomy/medical books, religious prints, etc. at library book sales, used book stores, antique stores, and garage sales as opposed to buying them online. The illustrated material I work with needs to have a certain feel to it that only comes from older sources, so I tend to buy books and prints from the early 1800s to mid-1900s. It is time consuming to search for my materials, but completely worth it!”

Q: What would be your dream subject for a collage?

A: “When I travel, I seek out natural history museums, medical museums, curiosity cabinets, and library collections. I fantasize about using the amazing illustrations from the old books, manuscripts, and charts I see within the collections for my collages. But, truthfully, I would never be able to cut them up!”

Q: Why have you chosen collage as your specific art medium?

As long as I can remember, I have been cutting out pictures and text from magazines and books and filling categorized file folders with them. I find something satisfying in the obsessive nature of cutting out thousands of compelling images. Also, the time and attention required to excise a detailed image, especially one with hair-thin appendages, gives me the opportunity to study the illustration in great depth. Collage allows me to make something new with elements of something old. I can create a contemporary piece from elements that reflect a different time because I am using images that have a style, content, and texture specific to decades past. However, I will never limit myself to working solely with collage. I also enjoy such processes as printmaking, photography, drawing, and felting.

Q: What interests you about the natural world?

A: “My interest in the natural world began as a curious, little girl playing outside in my backyard and woods. I was always collecting insects, moss, rocks, flowers, and other wondrous specimens. That interest developed into a scientific one during school. Now, I am interested in a meeting of the scientific and the fantastical, which was something celebrated and categorized in the curiosity cabinets in centuries past. I appreciate the fascinating, seemingly-too-odd-for-truth facts which proliferate in the natural world, as well as nature’s incomparable aesthetic beauty and its ability to inspire myth and wonder. My collages are a weaving together of scientific and mythical elements to express my own sense of wonder and to evoke wonder in the viewer.”

Q: Are you very religious? How do you see the intersection between religion and the modern art world?

A: “I grew up in a Catholic family and attended Catholic school through high school and attended church at least once a week. I have become very attracted to Christian iconography and ritual, but purely in an aesthetic way. I am particularly intrigued by the power these portraits and ceremonies have to influence thoughts and emotions. I have crucifixes, rosaries, saint ossuaries, and religious statues and prints scattered around my room and studio. Although I am not a believer, I treat those objects with respect. Christian iconography is very visible in my work, with images of saints, crosses, and sacred hearts in my collages. I am interested in the meeting of science, myth, and religion. In times past, the line between fact and the fantastical was less defined-- that is a mindset that I relish. Of course, the majority of fine art was expressly religious for centuries, becoming predominantly secular only in the last couple hundred years. Yet, many contemporary artists still explore religion, or the larger facets of spirituality in their work.”

Q: How do you think living in Ohio effects your art process?

A: “The majority of my life I have lived in a pretty rural area. Right now, I live in a house where I can go out my back door and walk into a woods. I love exploring the nearby forests and countryside and collecting specimens. My room and studio are filled with stones and rocks, dried plants, branches, bird nests, animal bones, and seedpods. I have shells, driftwood, and other shoreline detritus from my adventures at Lake Erie and along the Chagrin River. My collages reflect my love for the natural world and my acknowledgement of the cyclical aspect of life, death, and decay that I witness every time I venture outside. I have also spent a lot of time exploring the nearby city of Cleveland, a place that has a very special spot in my heart. As a post-industrial city, there are so many visible layers of history and decay that I find incredibly beautiful. Though it is often subtle, there are also signs of history, wear, and decay in my collages.”

Q: A lot of your pieces are a bit of an optical illusion. Are you interested in creating or referencing psychedelic or optical images at all?

A: “I did not intend to reference psychedelic or optical images in my work, but I have had a lot of viewers mention it. As I create my compositions, I think of each little element as a piece of a puzzle. The pieces fit together very specifically to create a larger, more solid shape. My hope is that viewers will step in closer to examine the individual elements. In almost every piece, I hide an image that has symbolic meaning such as a key, an hourglass, or dice. I like to have a little surprise for people who take the time to observe my work closer.”

All images from this interview are courtesy of Adrienne Slane

Q: I recently co-founded a website called The Do Not Enter Diaries, which tells the stories of teenagers through their bedroom. What was your bedroom like as a teenager?

A: “My bedroom as a teenager was not too different than it is now. I simply hadn’t amassed as much precious ‘stuff’ yet. I have always considered my room to be a map of my history. Everything in it holds a connection to a specific person or experience in my life. My room has always been intensely personal, eccentric, and cluttered-- a big curiosity cabinet of sorts. As a teenager, it was filled with artwork, family heirlooms, old photographs, jars full of shells, quirky toys, plants, books, old tools, etc. and now it is overflowing with even more. The walls are decorated right to the ceiling and every horizontal surface is filled as well. I am the knick-knack queen of art and oddities.”

Q: Anything else you want to add?

I have a blog that gives more insight into my artistic process and the things that inspire me on a daily basis: http://thelittlesunblog.blogspot.com/

To learn more about Adrienne Slane’s work, click here.

Follow me on Twitter @emmaedition

RAD TALK: An Interview with Artist, Sam Jaffe

2013-02-15T11:00:00.000-05:00

"Rad Talk" is a new column running on The Emma Edition, for 2013. In this column I interview creative people who make my life all the more rad and whose work I think deserves a wider audience. I’ll be giving them a forum to speak on things they may never been asked in a typical interview. Today I am featuring Sam Jaffe, a very cool artist who I dream of thrifting with. A new interview is posted on Fridays.

Q: Can you tell our readers a little bit about yourself?

A: “I’m originally from a town called Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin, which is located on the beautiful shores of Lake Michigan, just north of Milwaukee. I currently live in Chicago where I make sculptures and teach a variety of art courses. I’ve been making things since I could pick up a crayon and I always knew that I wanted a creative career. I attended The Rhode Island School of Design for my BFA (’05) and The School of The Art Institute of Chicago for my MFA (’09). I studied painting and drawing for both of my degrees, which may come as a surprise considering my recent sculptural work, but I try to be opportunistic and indiscriminate in terms of media. I absolutely love animals, but I’m allergic to almost all of them so I have to unfortunately admire from afar. I’m a fantastic vegetarian cook and I like to shop (my favorite store is Claire’s), hang out with my friends, travel, and dance the night away for fun.”

Q: What is the process of finding your materials for your art? Is it important that your work is comprised of found, serendipitous materials?

A: “Thrift and antique stores are some of my favorite places because one can just get lost in the disposable and often antiquated material culture of a place. I love to rummage through bins of old photos, postcards, costume jewelry, wooden toys, moth-eaten clothing, and bits of ribbon and thread in search of hidden treasures. These cultural materials are never meaningless. They speak for themselves and provide extensive narratives about the person who owned or made them, about history and conquest, or about me as the voluntary excavator. All material, all objects contain millions of latent artistic possibilities. This includes the most common remnants and detritus of human life. I love that.”

Q: Your sculptures take on a life of their own—some of your bigger pieces even resemble these alien-like creatures. Is giving life/movement to your art something your conscious of?

A: “I think so. I love to make work that seems to have the possibility of function - like things that you could imagine interacting with, but that ultimately undermine this expectation and just sit there. Jim Henson is a huge influence for me. In his film, The Dark Crystal, many of the sets contain these fantastical alien organisms that wiggle and bob, scurry around and make goofy noises. When I’m playing around in the studio, I often imagine what types of movements my pieces might make or the types of gurgling sounds that would come out of them if they were to hobble away. I also take a lot of inspiration from the otherworldly forest scenes and characters in other fantasy films and shows that I grew up with like The Neverending Story, Peewee’s Playhouse, The Last Unicorn, Willow, Edward Scissorhands, and Beetlejuice. Over the last few years, I have also really getting into psychedelic and experimental films like Holy Mountain. Humor and comedy are also important to me and I think that through personification, I try to incorporate a sort of zany backstory to my pieces.”

Q: You also seem to reference domesticity and crafting a lot in your work. What first got you interested in this?

A: “I try not to over-analyze the craft vs. fine art discussion because I’m always afraid that it will make me doubt my use of some of the processes and materials that I love most. I don’t spend much energy interpreting the socially constructed hierarchies that may exist between different types of objects and processes or even between different types of makers. Maybe I’m contradicting myself here because I think there is a conceptual thread throughout my work that makes a comparison between handmade items and items created as a result of mass production, but I think that all objects made by hand at least are equally authentic art forms and of interest to me.”

Q: Would you consider yourself a feminist? Do you think your work addresses feminist ideas in anyway?

A: “Absolutely I do! I think that it is impossible to employ the materials and processes that I’m interested in without thinking about the inspiring women who first pioneered them. It certainly means something different for a woman to knit a sculpture in a fine arts context in 2013 than it did for a woman to knit clothing or quilt a blanket for her family at the turn of the last century, but I would like to think there are considerable parallels in terms of experiencing the finished products. I want the pieces that I make to appear to communicate with the body in personal, emotional, or interactive ways much like a handmade garment or quilt. I make things you would want to cuddle with, sit on, lick, wear, or that might somehow respond to touch. I feel that it is my duty as a female artist to keep these dying craft practices alive as we slowly lose them to more and more dehumanizing, mechanized, and commodity based processes. I’m not sure that my work necessarily always furthers a specific feminist ideology, but certainly I feel fulfillment in the fact that my work is often described as feminine. This also relates back to your question about domesticity and craft practices. Domesticity interests me as a generally gentle and cozy feeling or state of being or experiencing. I try to recreate this feeling in my work, but I’m also interested in the ways in which domesticity can represent something historically problematic and especially for women. It can conjure visions of suburban housewives in the 1950’s, overdosing on pain killers because they were so busy and yet unfulfilled. I know it’s maybe a cliché concept at this point, but I think Betty Friedan called it “the problem that has no name.” I love domesticity (cooking, housework, being a part of a family), but I also love that I can choose the role that these pursuits play in my life. I think for many female artists and artisans today, employing techniques originally associated with “women’s work” is a way of taking back the joy that one can find in domesticity rather than experiencing it as a sort of quicksand.”

Q: Does your personal style influence the way you make art?

A: “My personal style is always changing in terms of what I’m looking at, what I wear, what music I’m listening to, what group of friends/artists I’m spending time with etc. and I think this type of input always activates the work in different and sometimes unexpected ways. I tend to personify my work and I love the idea that a sculpture could in some way follow a fashion trend. I’m not sure there’s too much of a difference between the way I would put together an outfit and the way I would put together an installation or sculpture and I’m intrigued by the overlap.”

Q: What interests you about working with such tactile, soft installations?

A: “It’s all about being really lusty and overdone about the materials that I use. I try to appeal to all of the senses by using familiar materials so that viewers can imagine what it might be like to cozy up to one of these things. I like to play with the taboo of touching artwork by making things that beg to be caressed. I have seen so many people sneaking in a quick touch or poke during an art show and then looking around to make sure nobody saw them. I love that visceral reaction. Hilarious.”

Q: I love the way you install your art just as much as I love the individual pieces themselves. I would love to be consumed by a room of granny squares. What is the decision process like when doing a show?

A: “The installation process is actually my favorite part of my job because you really get to see your work come to life. Typically, when I’m working on pieces for a show, I make sure to visit the installation space often. I’m always thinking spatially about how things are going to fit together and interact with the architecture of the space. I enjoy working with curators because they tend to reign in my ‘more-more-more’ obsessive aesthetic. I try to create physical relationships between the different works first and foremost. I’m often thinking pretty formally (about color, shape, etc), but it’s also important to draw conceptual comparisons between the disparate works through good curation. The process is almost like moving furniture around a room until everything just fits. With that being said, the mind works in mysterious ways and I think that I have a very active subconscious. I often sit on the bus and allow visions of different exhibition scenarios, different pieces, and different ‘worlds‘ just come over me. I’m thinking, ‘What if I pour glitter on the floor of the space, what if I paint one wall orange, what if there’s a goat wandering around, can these two pieces get along the same show - they hate each other...etc etc?’ I also love the idea of being ‘consumed by a room of granny squares!’ Great idea!”

Q: This is more of a personal interest question, since I started a website called The Do Not Enter Diaries devoted to filming the stories of teenagers through their bedrooms. So, I am curious to know what your teenage bedroom was like. Did you have knitting projects all over the room?

A: “Ha ha! Well, I actually didn’t knit much as a teen, but I used to love to paint and draw either in bed or at this awesome drafting table that I got for my birthday one year. I have always put a great deal of energy into decorating and organizing my room - even now and I’m almost 30! I think it’s a great way to appreciate my possessions and collections and also to create a safe and comfortable space for myself. Some of the things I collect are matroyshka dolls, vintage clothing and hats, cowboy boots, strange plants, hello kitty and lisa frank everything, and anything pink and sparkly. I also have a lot of interesting art that I have gotten over the years by trading with fellow artists and friends. As a teenager, I liked to cut out images from magazines and wallpaper my room with them - my mom hated that. At the time, I was really into stockpiling mix tapes, CDs, and books and always had a pretty good section of my room dedicated to displaying them. I went through a lot of phases in terms of my personal style, so my room was always changing! I even went through a phase in my early 20’s where I got rid of my bed completely and slept on a yoga mat because I was reading all about yogis in India who renounced possessions!”

All photos in this post courtesy of Sam Jaffe

Q: Anything else you want to add? What next can we look forward to from you?

A: “I’m super excited to get back into the studio and start on some new projects since I just de-installed my solo show at 65Grand in Chicago. I have plans to work on some wearable pieces and to collaborate with some really cool, creative folks in the next year. I also want to make something moving or animatronic. I think that if I had any advice for your young readers that are interested in seriously pursuing a creative life, it would be to not wait for inspiration. Action always generates inspiration.”

You can keep up with all things Sam Jaffe by checking out her website or by following her on Twitter @TheSamJaffe.

Follow me on Twitter @emmaedition

RAD TALK: An Interview with The Juvenilia

2013-02-08T11:00:00.000-05:00

"Rad Talk" is a new column running on The Emma Edition, for 2013. In this column I interview creative people who make my life all the more rad and whose work I think deserves a wider audience. I’ll be giving them a forum to speak on things they may never been asked in a typical interview. Today I am featuring Nolan Boomer, the co-founder of the art collective, The Juvenilia. A new interview is posted on Fridays.

Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Untitled (Perfect Lovers)

Q: Nolan, How did you and Kolleen meet?

A: “I love to tell this story--it seems fake but it’s really truly real. Kolleen (my co-editor) and I met the summer of 2011 while taking a summer abroad program in Greece. On the first night of the program we were sitting in the lobby of a hotel in Athens waiting for our rooms to be ready. After flying on a plane for sixteen hours or so and not sleeping, all of us were delirious and awkward. I saw her across the room reading my favorite Jennifer Egan novel, and went over to her to talk about it.

Realistically, our relationship is absurd. There was no context given to us to hold us together. We live halfway across the world from one another; our physical bodies couldn’t be more different; and we grew up in radically different cultures. But somehow over the course of that month we became such a complimentary fit to one another. Time, distance and context were no longer relevant. We would roll our eyes at each other when other said something poorly thought out. We would lie on the beach sharing earbuds playing Los Campesinos! and Stars. One night we sat on the concrete steps outside our rooms late at night and told each other we were queer because it felt right. We hugged and hugged and our reclusive hearts synchronized.”

Q: What made you guys want to fuse your friendship into the creation of The Juvenilia?

This project was a perfect way to share something professional together. I knew how to code websites and had a network of artists I loved. She knew how to write with heart and get stuff done. The collaboration was something we remain excited about and always feels relevant.

Glenn Ligon, Untitled (I Am a Man)

Q: What would you say is the mission statement behind the project?

A: “Part of what inspired The Juvenilia was dissatisfaction with the way our generation consumes art. With websites like Tumblr, you can endlessly scroll down a page of images with little understanding of who made the art and how. I think there is something lost when art becomes nameless. In the field of literature, many argue that critical essays and background information should be considered to fully understand the meaning of a work. This collective is an experiment to restore the personal and intimate back to art and writing. It is a carved-out space for us to present ourselves with a face and a story.”

Q: How is it running a collective with a close friend?

A: “Each day when I wake up I look at my messages and normally Kolleen has left me a link to something funny or beautiful. Throughout the day we have one slow but continuous conversation that includes gossiping; making plans for the blog calming each other down when we worry and reminiscing.

Behind the scenes our collective is fairly organized. We use a calendar to organize our posts, and each published piece has gone through a series of drafts and been talked about for a while. But within this structure, we all remain fairly informal. I talk to most of the bloggers every few days because I think their minds are beautiful and it is important to me that they feel comfortable expressing their feelings with me.”

Joseph Grigley, The Conversation Was Going Well Without Me

Q: Is The Juvenilia for anyone?

A: “I think The Juvenilia can be appreciated by a wide variety of people. However, I think young adults will get the most out of our work.”

Q: On The Juvenilia you feature art, writing, photography, poetry, of primarily of those not yet discovered. Was there a particular voice you were trying to give to this group of people?

A: “Honestly, our collective is a fairly introspective, process-oriented place. The other editors and I work with our artists closely to develop a piece of art they are proud of each month. Our artists come from a variety of places and backgrounds, and we work to inspire one another. I’ve found our main priority isn’t to get attention but rather to help each other to develop our own voices.”

Jenny Holzer, Inflammatory Essays

Q: What was your favorite post you ever ran?

A: “There are far too many beautiful creations that have come from this to have a favorite, but a recent one that broke my heart in this best way possible was this photo essay on an old folks community, Sun City.

I didn’t know Anna very well before she wrote created this, so its charm caught me off guard. My jaw dropped.”

Q: Who are some of your favorite artists/writers right now?

A: “Toni Morrison, Mark Morrisroe, Sherwood Anderson, Miranda July, Lorrie Moore, Richard Siken, Rainer Maria Rilke, Elmgreen & Dragset, Félix González-Torres, Jenny Holzer, Henrik Olesen, Piet Stockmans, and Amy Friend”

Elmgreen and Dragset, Prada Marfa

Q: What do you guys do when you’re not working on The Juvenilia?

A: “Kolleen and I do the same things: think of strange hypothetical scenarios, pet cats, have existential crises on the train, roll around, complain about how we don’t want to revise our papers anymore, stand around prettily, eat lunch alone, text each other overheard quotes, try to make change and take long road trips.”

Q: Do you guys have plans to take The Juvenilia onto other platforms?

A: “We have many plans for the near future! The collective itself will remain online, but we plan to start having live events featuring our artists’ work, and to create some sort of hard-copy counterpart to the blog.”

Tracey Emin, She Lay Down Deep Beneath The Sea

Q: Based on the title and the posts, there is definitely a childhood nostalgia that emanates from the site. Is this something you are conscious of?

A: “I think all of us in the collective are at the stage in their life where we have an acute awareness of the place we came from. Many of us are beginning to leave home for the first time, and are understanding that our home culture is just as foreign as any other culture. “Nostalgia” is the wrong word here. We think about our pasts often, perhaps obsessively, but not necessarily in an idealized way.”

Q: Last, but not least, what were your teenage bedrooms like?

A: “My room while growing up was white with one blue wall. It had a large denim window seat where you could sit and look out at a kidney bean shaped pool and further out, the scrappy Santa Monica canyons. I travelled between this room and my dad’s house often, so there was normally an open suitcase or bag in the corner from the last I transferred houses. My walls are covered in art my brother and I have made, and my desk is covered in mail I haven’t thrown away, ugly notes from my Number Theory class last year, zines, and a weird stuffed cat my grandma bought me. I wish I had more collections and shrines, but I have too many spaces to decorate and I tend to give things to people so things stay fairly minimal.”

Gerhard Richter, Overpainted Photographs

To learn more about Nolan, Kolleen, and The Juvenilia, click here.

Follow me on Twitter @emmaedition

RAD TALK: An Interview with Columnist, Kate Carraway

2013-02-01T16:00:00.000-05:00

"Rad Talk" is a new column running on The Emma Edition, for 2013. In this column I interview creative people who make my life all the more rad and whose work I think deserves a wider audience. I’ll be giving them a forum to speak on things they may never been asked in a typical interview. Today I am featuring one of my favorite columnists, Kate Carraway. A new interview is posted on Fridays.

Q: How did first get interested in writing? (did you always know you wanted to be one? Did you keep lots of diaries as a kid? etc. )

A : “I definitely always knew, but it didn't feel like a real possibility until I was almost done at university. I was far too anxious and rules-oriented to be saying something like "I want to be a writer" until years after I thought it.
I periodically kept diaries and journals, nothing consistent, as a kid, but I kept a very detailed journal for much of high school, when stuff started happening, ha. I was definitely more focused on reading as a kid. I read all the time/everything, so, that's definitely what got me into it.”

Q: What interests you about advice columns, specifically?

A: “Actually, nothing specifically; my advice column in The Grid is less a straight-up "advice column" in terms of "do this, do that" and way more about contemplating problems and issues around twenty-and-thirtysomething life. I definitely offer up ideas and even directives but I'm mostly interested in considering the ideas involved, even if it's more implicit than anything. I wish that column was twice as long.”

Image courtesy of Vice

Q: I keep up with a lot of your work, but my favorite has always been your Girl News column at Vice. You recently announced that you are taking a break from it, which makes me a little sad, but I am excited to read the newcolumn you have going in the same time slot. What would you say was the mission statement behind the column?

A: “I didn't really have one for the column, per se, but I wanted a place to write in a way that I don't normally get to. I wanted to do something very immediate, very immersive, very fun, what would be (and was) the opposite of what I was doing for places like the National Post and the Globe and Mail. And obviously I knew it would be fun to write about "girls" in a really broad, appreciative and loving but also sort of absurdist, unserious way. It was also cool and helpful to sort of process parts of my perspective and a bit of my historical experience in that way, very unexpectedly.”

Q: Was there ever an article for Girl News that you felt was particularly hard to write?

A: “Yes! Several.”

Q: I loved the idea behind Girlsplaining. Yet sometimes the people who wrote were so narrow-minded…I wondered if they are even real people at all. What are your least favorite questions to answer when giving advice?

A: “Definitely real people; a lot of those came from familiar readers, the readers who write me all the time. I don't like answering too-general questions; I like specificity. Also, when someone is really struggling with an issue, instead of when someone obviously knows the right thing to do but wants a way out of or around it. As I mentioned above, it's way more fun to, like, collectively consider than to be like "No, you're wrong" or w/e.”

Image courtesy of Vice

Q: My favorite article of yours is A Girls’ Guide to Winter. This line particularly hits home: “Ouija boards are vital to girl culture. Any girl who hasn’t been to a séance or wasn’t a serious witch for a few minutes has no business turning 21.” Can you recall any good séances you’ve had recently?

“Not recently! Ha. I'm far too Capricornius for much of anything like that.”

Q: What is your favorite thing about being a girl?

“Clothes! Why are all boy clothes the same three colors and shapes? So boring.”

Q: What is the best wisdom you can impart to the Tumblr Generation about becoming a writer?

A: “Don't. If you have to do it, do it, but if there is anything else you could possibly do instead you should do that.”

Image courtesy of Vice

Q: I recently co-founded a website devoted to telling the stories of teenagers and their bedrooms called The Do Not Enter Diaries. So, I am interested. What were you like as a teenager? What was your teenage bedroom like?

A: “I was very bored and confused and wanting. Had no center, no peace, total chaos. My bedroom was some combination of what I saw in magazines and envisioned in books and wanted and what my mom's decorator had decided my bedroom looked like. Maybe weirdly my visual aesthetic was and remains very minimal, very white. Maybe that's not weird: I'm so involved with words and feelings and ideas that I think it has influenced my visual sense being skewed, or half-absent. I was obsessed with Calvin Klein when I was a teenager, back when Calvin Klein had a singular aesthetic. I really wanted a room that looked like a very bare loft but instead there were window treatments and dust ruffles and the whole nine. My apartment now is white, light wood, grey, bare, windows, very stark. I love that.”

Q: What can we look forward to next from Kate Carraway?

A: “I feel like I file a story almost every day, so, you know, all of that.”

To learn more about Kate Carraway, click here.

Follow me on Twitter @emmaedition

The Do Not Enter Diaries: PREMIERE

2013-01-28T21:24:00.001-05:00

Photo by Robert Wright for The NY Times

DNED: Emma Orlow from The Do Not Enter Diaries on Vimeo.

DNED: Emily Cohn from The Do Not Enter Diaries on Vimeo.

On a Saturday morning about two months ago, a kind mustachioed gentleman named Michael Tortorello visited me in my home to interview me about a website I co-run called The Do Not Enter Diaries for this newspaper called The New York Times. Michael had heard of our project after I left the NYTimes a long fan-girl voicemail about it. I am still in awe that this happened, and the reactions that have come about since have been humbling (read the full article here). For those of you who don’t know The Do Not Enter Diaries, it’s a weekly webseries I founded with my best friend Emily Cohn that tells the stories of teenagers through their bedrooms. From top-to-bottom our site is of-teens-by-teens, dedicated to broadening our definition of the teenage bedroom.

Emily films and edits the videos, while I interview our teen subjects, created/ run our website (read our co-founder’s diaries here). We currently post a new video every Wednesday at 4PM, but in the coming months we’ll be adding columns on Mondays and Fridays as well. I am most excited about Mondays’ Correspondent’s Corner. Because we are dedicated to making The Do Not Enter Diaries as global as possible, one way of accomplishing this is through our correspondent program, where teenagers with a strong interest in film, help us reach teens in areas to which we cannot travel. Correspondents are responsible for cultivating a unique group of teenagers whom they know, filming them in our style, and sending us the footage to edit as we see fit. You can fill out the application to become a correspondent here.

In addition to the NY Times, other people of the internet have been writing really kind things about our project. Thank you to Refinery29, Urban Outfitters, Rookie, and everyone else!!

We also have a lot of other online and print media projects coming out in the coming months to keep an eye out for. But, as always, we are looking for teens who have a connection to their room. Don’t hesitate to apply or shoot us an email at donoenterdiaries@gmail.com , Tweets us @donotenterdiary or like us on Facebook to share questions/comments .

Follow me on Twitter @emmaedition

RAD TALK: An Interview With Summer Camp's Kayla Mattes

2013-01-25T18:29:00.000-05:00

"How I Spent My Summer Vacation" necklace

Q: How did you first get interested in fiber arts?

A: “As a kid I used to build homemade looms for weaving, and my great-grandmother taught me how to hand-knit. I’ve generally always had a natural attraction to pattern and textures but didn’t fully realize it until I first saw the textiles studio at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) two weeks before the major declaration deadline. The hundreds of cones of brightly colored yarn, and crazy contraptions throughout the studios are what basically sold me. Working with fibers quickly became an obsession!”

Q: Materials seem to be such an important part to your work. How do you choose the materials you want to work with?

A: “I guess I'm kind of an oddball in terms of my attractions to yarns and fabrics because unlike a lot of textile designers I often overlook traditionally 'high-end' materials like silks and natural fibers. I mostly find myself obsessed with plastics and spandex and fabrics with crazy finishes. Something about synthetics drives me wild, but I do often love working with wools and mohairs because you can dye them (NEON) so easily, plus they feel nice. I'm constantly material sourcing and collecting. I am in the midst of designing my F/W jewelry collection, which is mostly constructed with these air hoses I found at this amazing rubber store in NY. The hoses have this really unique flexibility to them, and I have found some fun ways to pair them with knits and metals.”

Q: Your S/S ‘13 summer camp collection is great. I have such distinct memories of camp, when the tradition of the lanyard stitching was passed down to me---a time when making friendship bracelets felt so consequential to relationships. I love how much thought you gave to naming each jewelry piece in the collection…. I can really imagine some tween girl sitting around camp with her lanyard in each of these situations. Do you have close ties to your camp days or is it just a vibe you’re trying to emulate?

A: “Thanks! I put a lot of thought into the names, which were definitely sourced from memories of my own camp days. From the fires, the bunk-beds, the mess hall, and the friendships, all of those experiences along with my textile and material sensibilities are what helped shaped the development of the collection.”

"Friendships 4 a lifetime'" necklace

"Trail 2 the treasure" Necklace

Q: Do you have any specific memories involving lanyard when you were younger you can share?

A: “’I kept all of my lanyard creations tucked away in this special hand-painted box, and I recently realized my Dad still uses a lanyard keychain that I made for him more than 10 years ago. Apparently lanyards last forever.”

Q: I’ve read that you have plans to expand Summer Camp into a large textile collection. Not only am I super excited about this, but I am already dreaming of a collection debut involving roasting marshmallows over the campfire. What do you have in mind?

A: “Well Summer Camp is its own collection, meaning my upcoming Fall jewelry collection will work with a totally new concept, but I'm definitely planning to expand my line to include knitwear of a similar spirit. I've been dabbling with programming my electronic Brother knitting machine to hook up to my laptop so that I can knit out Photoshopped patterns. I love working with really graphic knits, as you can see from the furbies, smileys, and aliens featured in my Neo-90ies knitwear collection. I'm hoping to release a collection of graphic-knit sweaters using this laptop-technique within the next year or so!”

"Top Bunk Dreamin'" necklace

"1st Kiss By the Council Fire" necklace

Q: It’s lanyard-making only from an Internet perspective. A lot of your work seems to derive inspiration from the Internet, right? Can you talk about this?

A: “I'm fascinated with the parallels between the birth of the internet, and the playful aesthetics that the internet embraced in its beginnings. Its childhood was often plastered with brightly colored unreadable text, gifs crawling all over the pages, and midi's screaming unnecessarily. I like thinking about the internet as an actual person whose brain has filled with more information and content and memories. You can still find parts of its aesthetic beginnings intact and unchanged, ex: Craigslist, and some hidden gems.”

Q: I love the video you made to accompany your collection. I thought that was such a creative way to go about featuring your work. How did the idea for the Summer Camp S/S ’13 video come to pass?

Thanks! While designing the Summer Camp Collection I must have listened to the song featured in the video (Jungle Beat by Harold and Bob) at least 100 times. Eventually the necklaces started literally dancing in my head to the beat of Jungle Beat, which is technically how the idea for the video began. My amazing boyfriend Justin Seibert made these ideas a reality with all of the animation featured in the video. While location-scouting we found this actual camp tucked away in the hills of Griffith Park right in the center of LA. The camp was abandoned at the time, which was really serendipitous because it definitely helped add to the eerie, yet playful and psychedelic nature of the video.

Q: Now, this is just a personal interest question. But I started a website called The Do Not Enter Diaries devoted to filming to stories of teenagers and their bedrooms, and I would love to know what you were like as a teenager. What was your bedroom like?

A: “Being a relatively reclusive and contemplative teenager I spent most of my time in my room, so that space definitely meant a lot to me. My walls were painted a super bright combination of salmon pink and neon lime green, and every surface was covered with my treasures and nicknacks. MySpace, homework, drawing things realistically, an AIM addiction, and my CD collection are the things I remember.”

"Craft class BLAST" necklace

Q: I really love the philosophy of Otherwild. How did you first get involved with them?

A: “It's been so great working with Otherwild and I am so happy to have my pieces at their shop. I came across the store soon after it opened last summer in LA. I then met with the founders Marisa Suarez-Orozco and Rachel Berks who immediately expressed interest in the Summer Camp pieces. I recently teamed up with Otherwild in a video series they produced which focuses on the studio practice of various artists whose work is sold at Otherwild. The series gives a perfect depiction of the shop and it's incredible philosophy!”

"Totally Teamwork" necklace

Q: Do you have any other creative projects in the works?

A: “Along with designing my F/W 2013 jewelry collection, I’m also in the midst of putting my ASCII CATZ t-shirts into production. I’m working with the artist Ryan McIntosh of Art is Shit Editions for the screen printing, the photographer Marina Fini for the collection shoot, and the artist/graphic designer Nicole Killian with the lookbooks and promotional materials. It’s great to be collaborating with amazing artists who I feel very connected to in terms of their work and ideas. The shirts should be available by late winter/early spring in three different color schemes which I am super excited about! A variation of the ASCII CATZ print, along with several other prints will also be specially released in February as tapestry wall hangings at Urban Outfitters. I am also designing some knitted wall hangings for the web-shop Beklina. It’s really exciting to be working on such a wide variety of projects. I knew when I launched my jewelry collection this past Fall that I didn’t want to confine myself to jewelry making, but I didn’t think the transition would happen so quickly.”

Q: Anything else you want to add?

A: “You can stay tuned with the launch all of my upcoming projects by connecting with my Facebook Page, Twitter, and Tumblr!”

Shop Kayla Mattes' Summer Camp S/S 2013 collection and see more of her work here.

Follow me on Twitter @emmaedition

Printed Matter

2013-01-21T16:05:00.000-05:00

Printed Matter is a magical store where your traditional notion of an art book goes to die and gets recreated in crafty heaven. You could say that Printed Matter is the fairy godmother to the independent publisher’s world. You could say that and you’d be right. The ruby slippers to the whole operation are the artists who, in 1976, clicked their glittery heels together and wished for a space where art collectives, individual artists, and independent presses could find a safe haven of sorts. Their wish found a space in SoHo, which has since moved to Chelsea, where after years of hard work, has helped culminate the bylines of over 15,000 projects in-store. Totally created by the people for the people.

What you’ll find in Printed Matter is like no other bookshop around, for starters because it’s the largest of its genre. Everything in Printed Matter is filed in a way in a creative yet slightly schizophrenic organizing scheme, where categorizing vibes rules over alphabetization. And I love it just like that. Because without this organization scheme, you wouldn’t be able to stumble upon a book donated from the MoMA teens program sandwiched in-between books about sex. These books are not your typical coffee table art books---they are totally handmade, often ephemera crafts, and about topics as specific as types of fur. Printed Matter’s shelves are always stocked with new pin, book, zine, and t-shirt artists you’ve most likely never heard of, although they do stock some more well-known figures such as Yoko Ono and Sophie Calle (one of my absolute favorite artists who catalogs her performances pieces in beautifully bound books). But after spending but a few seconds walking in through the door, you’ll realize that there is something there for everyone. I know for myself, even their $1 cartoon zines and Barbara Kruger postcards are something to look forward to with my babysitting money. And when I was there, I bought the Guerrilla Girls’ latest book, The Guerilla Girls’ Bedside Companion to Western Art, a must-read for any female who owns, makes, or appreciates art and its history. Everything is super niche-y in a good way in that nowhere else can you find a bookstore that would highlight the weird crap that rolls in their door. Speaking of which! While I was there, Todd Oldham’s assistant came in to drop off all of these boxes books he was donating. Which is another huge part of Printed Matter. They are a completely non-profit organization, devoted to giving back to the DIY movement. However, their vitality is based on community giving. Most recently, with Hurricane Sandy, they lost 9,000 books which were stored in their basement. And now, more than ever Printed Matter is looking for donations. Looking at the photos of Printed Matter immediately after the hurricane was incredibly devastating, but it’s amazing to see how quickly they’ve gotten back up and running.

But Printed Matter is more than just a book store. It’s also a community space—whether in times of a zine reading or cleaning out a flooded basement, it’s sustained by the voices of its people.

Barbara Kruger + Scorpio Rising postcards on the rack.

On this shelf: featuring work by Destroy All The Monsters

MoMA P.S. 1 book fair zine

Printed Matter, 195 Tenth Avenue; New York, NY, 10011; 212-925-0464

Follow me on Twitter @emmaedition

RAD TALK: An Interview With Lelsey Arfin

2013-01-18T12:30:00.000-05:00

"Rad Talk" is a new column running on The Emma Edition, for 2013. In this column I interview creative people who make my life all the more rad and whose work I think deserves a wider audience. I’ll be giving them a forum to speak on things they may never been asked in a typical interview. Today I am featuring one of my all-time favorite writers, Lesley Arfin. I couldn't be more excited about this one, guys! A new interview is posted on Fridays.

Image courtesy of Cafe con Lesley

Q: How did first get interested in writing? Was it the moment you wrote your first diary entry?

A: "Probably very soon after that. I was always a big reader so once I started writing; it was like a key fitting into a lock."

Q: What interests you about advice columns, specifically? What is the best advice you’d give to a girl of the Tumblr Generation?

A: “I am not interested in advice columns. I liked writing "Ask Barf" for Street Carnage because it seemed like a natural evolution from Dear Diary. I totally can't remember what the best advice, or really any advice I gave anyone. I think that's a question for someone who actually took my advice!”

Q: I love reading your writing from the Missbehave era… it’s all so honest and colloquial and sometimes I wonder if you are really reading my own diaries. I know that’s not what you do now, but I personally hope to become an editor someday myself. So, I am interested, how did you get involved with Missbehave? What did you learn most from that whole experience?

A: “Missbehave was so much fun during the short time I was there. The reason for my hiring was Samantha Moeller who owned the magazine. She's a little pixie Peter Pan badass-troublemaker genius girl. I think the most crucial lesson I learned from that job was that I didn't want to be an editor and to always show up early to work.”

Q: What fascinates me about you is that you don’t cap-off at one job title. You put yourself into all these different varying projects: from authoring Dear Diary to DJing to keeping up all of those blogs. Is that something you do so you won’t get bored/ something you’re conscious of?

A: “It's only something I do so I don't go broke! I think that's sort of the me of the past though. I definitely no longer DJ and I rarely blog. I like to think of my title as simply just a writer. I don't think I could ever truly commit myself to just one genre.”

Image courtesy of Cafe con Lesley

Q: You, seemingly out of anyone else from the Girls cast, have received the most flack from the media about the show’s portrayal of race. That really bugged me, because Girls has always been about taking an accurate snapshot of 20-somethings in Brooklyn. Why would you just throw in diversity for the sake of it? Who goes to a Tyler Perry movie and complains that there aren’t enough white people?

A: “Well I got a lot of flack because I made a sarcastic and flippant comment about the movie Precious, which I love by the way, and do feel represented in, which was the point I was trying to make. I felt with Girls that you didn't need to be a certain color, race, gender, or creed to identify with the feelings that the characters were having but I guess some other people felt differently. I think it was ultimately a good lesson for me to have because I have been so careless about the things I've said in the past, never thinking that anyone actually cared or was listening. I'm also schooled by the early Vice generation, which was sort of like a punk rock MAD magazine, super anti-PC and anarchistic, which we idealized as twentysomethings, but now that I'm in my 30s, I sadly need to act like a grown-up and take responsibility for my actions.”

Q: Not only are you working on Girls, but you also started working on MTV’s Awkward. The two offer very different perspectives on young people. What attracts you to working with a young age bracket?

A: “Well Awkward is teenagers and Girls is 20s, so they're different. It honestly has nothing to do with the age bracket except maybe that my reference points are sharper since I've been-there-done-that kinda thing. I wanted to work on Awkward because I LOVED the show and was a huge fan. I begged Lauren Iungerich to hire me and she did. That lady knows how to write one hell of a TV show.”

Image courtesy of Dear Diary by Lesley Arfin

Q: In Dear Diary, you reflect on your experiences in high school. Since writing the book have you kept in touch with any past friends/boyfriends/enemies that make an appearance?

A: “Of course! If anything the book made me closer to a lot of those people I had lost touch with. Everyone who participated in the book was such a good sport about the whole thing.”

Q: What was one of your most "awkward" high school experiences?
A: “I was a Freshman right? And at that time all the punks, hippies, metal kids, skaters, et al. hung out together. We just called ourselves "alternative." We were sitting in a circle and this dude was playing Helter Skelter on the guitar and I think I was so excited that I actually knew the words that I belted it out, full singing voice style. It was really weird.”

Q: If you could be more like any character on TV right now, who would it be and why?

A: “I would be Khaleesi aka Daenerys Targaryen from Game of Thrones because even in the wake of despair and desperation she remains brave and confident. She has so much faith she makes having faith look easy. And she's the mother of dragons, nbd.”

Q: What is the biggest regret you had in your adolescence?

A: “Not getting in touch with my psychic abilities.”

Q: I recently co-founded a website called The Do Not Enter Diaries, devoted to telling the stories of teenagers through their bedrooms. What was your bedroom like as a teenager?

A: “My bedroom was my sanctuary. I had a weird flood on my bedroom floor so my carpet was uneven and bumpy but I was always laying on floor making mix tapes, writing, drawing, etc. I had a huge Lemonheads poster and a huge Beastie Boys poster. I had the Sassy cover that Juliana Hatfield was on and a picture from Reality Bites. Very 90's. My furniture was wood and my color scheme was different shades of mint green: so chic. When I was a senior I was allowed to have a TV in my room. The TV was really small but the remote was a tiny little replica of the TV. Awesome much? I also had my own phone line and a pink and turquoise Swatch phone.”

Q: I loved your “I Never Go Out Blog.” I am sad it died. Can I assume since its defunct, you go out now? What’s your ideal staycation?

“Ha no way! I still never go out, I just got lazy and didn't feel like uploading pictures all the time. I should start it up again. I should do a blog called I'm Really Lazy. My ideal staycation is a rainy day and a delicious book that's no less than 800 pages long. All meals delivered promptly. At night, friends over for movies and jokes.”

Q: On the topic of blogs, Let’s talk about Real 90's. I was born in 1995. Therefore, Real 90’s to me means Tomagotchi games and The Rugrats. Oh, and candy choker necklaces. Those were big in my playdate circle… How do you feel about the interpretation of 1990’s that’s been revivified in fashion/art/music comelately?

A: “Well, White Lightning aka Elizabeth Spiridakis and I started the blog because we were so annoyed with all these younger kids being obsessed with our 90s and totally romanticizing it and getting it wrong. We were working in an office together at the time so it was a good distraction. Plus we were both kinda unemployed. Now Elizabeth is the art director at Bon Appetit and I'm in LA so it got sort of hard to maintain. We both felt territorial over our 90's, now I don't think we care as much. We just kinda roll our eyes.”

Image of Lesley's New York apartment via Cafe con Lesley

Q: I keep up with a lot of your work; I always still cherish the words you’ve written on living in New York. Are you in LA now? If so, how do you think living in New York has shaped your experiences?

“I am in LA now, yes. New York is where I am from so I don't know how it's shaped my experiences exactly, only because I can't imagine having lived any other way. New York is a city for the young and it's a city for the rich. At this moment I am neither of those things but as soon as I get young again, I'll be moving back.”

Image of Lelsey's needlepoint courtesy of Cafe con Lesley

Hobbyist, Part 3 - Lesley Arfin from Opening Ceremony on Vimeo.

Q: Lastly, I watched your video about needlepoint for Opening Ceremony's The Hobbyist series. Do you have any other rad hobbies you want to share?

“Besides Needlepoint and reading I also enjoy buying stuff and hanging out with animals and going to the diner with my friends. I also love singing and dancing. I like talking. I like listening to the radio.”

To learn more about the latest with Lesley Arfin, check out her main website, here.

Follow me on Twitter @emmaedition

RAD TALK: An Interview With Ultra Terrestrial

2013-01-11T17:00:00.000-05:00

For me, an artist’s process is sometimes more interesting than the outcome. For this installment of “Rad Talk,” I interviewed Becca Kacanda, an artist currently residing in Iowa, who has enough philosophies on art to color the page. Raised in an evangelical home, today, Becca speaks out openly about her beliefs in the interplay between psychedelics and religion as it manifests in her own work and life. Read on below for our interview:

Q: How would you describe your art to someone who’s never seen it before?

A: “Ecstatic, childlike, visionary, crafty, girly, colorful, personal, and psychedelic.”

Q: Some artists feel that colors dictate their process; others feel that they use certain colors by whim, and that colors don’t really add a specific meaning to the piece. Do feel like colors are an important aspect of your work thus far?

A: “Colors are very important. I have always felt really drawn to super bright colors and unusual color combinations...it's definitely one of my obsessions. The trick is figuring out how to make a design that shows off the interplay of colors really well and is also emotionally captivating. It's weird to me that so many artists are shy about using color because to me they are the greatest joy of making art..it's very intuitive and emotional and sometimes I will know the color of an object I'm painting before I know what the object is.”

Q: On your Etsy shop, many of your jewelry pieces are made with shrinky dinks. What other materials do you use/ want to use? What role does material play in your work?

A: “I haven't made shrinky dink pieces in a while but I think it is somewhat overlooked as a good medium, its really durable and you can even print or draw complex images onto it before shrinking. Prior to that I had learned that using acrylic on plexiglass is a thing (Jim Nutt did it really well and I recently saw and loved his pieces at the Madison museum of Contemporary Art) and I want to do that, but it's expensive. Shrinky Dinks were the next closest thing. As far as materials go, I am definitely attracted to fake, unnatural mass produced things...like stuff from the dollar store and cheesy craft supplies. I think those types of things have made such an impression on my brain, probably because I grew up in Flushing, Queens and saw a lot of cheap, imported knock-off toys that were really weird and more importantly, not associated with narrated characters on TV, so they felt more inviting and personal. At the same time, I know these things are horrible for the environment and probably all made in miserable toxic factories...the thought of contributing to the destruction of the earth to make plastic wiggly eyeballs or glitter or toys that are going to fall apart in 2 days is pretty nuts. Pom Poms aren't symbols of childhood innocence anymore, because they were dyed with toxic chemicals and made in China... but if we stopped making useless shit our current economy would fall apart. If I was an adult 30 years ago, I probably wouldn't be having thoughts like this... I still really want to make things that are totally beautiful and fake and glorious with all this horrible colorful glittering stuff. Hopefully that makes sense.”

Q: You work under the byline, Ultra Terrestrial. What significance does it have to you and your work, besides just sounding totally rad?

A: “I lifted that phrase from Phillip K Dick's book VALIS, which is an extremely important book to me for so many reasons. I haven't read a great amount of his work, but one of his central concepts is that of multiple universes/timelines existing simultaneously and occasionally crossing over and revealing themselves in unexpected and mysterious ways. I am also fascinated by all of the ancient alien stuff and the idea that our DNA is extra terrestrial. A lot of people like to make fun of that idea but if you think about how fucking mysterious and crazy life is it really doesn't seem far out at all. So Ultra Terrestrial is really just about embracing that alien-like weirdness. I think a lot of people are stuck in the thinking that they're not smart or special, they can't accomplish amazing things because they're not brilliant or whatever, and that's such tragic thinking and it's so wrong and self defeating. The cosmos is massively intelligent ( VALIS stands for Vast Active Living Intelligence System) and since we are part of the cosmos, we are privy to it. That really inspires me to make work. I think right now most of human kind is very out of touch with themselves which is why we are doing so many stupid and destructive things. Most people are operating on a very sober reality at all times. We should not be sober all the time. I believe psychedelic substances were put here for a reason--- it helps us to access that vast intelligence....which we REALLY need right now.”

Q: Is making art your main job? If not, please describe your job below.

A: “I desperately wish it was but that hasn't happened yet. My day job is not creative at all, I work in a call center. It takes up tons of time obviously, but having money and a steady job and being able to afford to live, buy art supplies and have a studio in my apartment has been incredibly conducive to making art despite the time sucking. So the next step is to figure out how to not have the job at the same time.”

Q: You recently moved from New York to Iowa. In terms of the art community, what have you observed is the biggest difference/ similarity? Are people in Iowa more or less receptive to your work?

A: “I feel like I can answer this question two different ways. In terms of my town's "art community" as perceived through gallery openings and art fairs I would say it's pretty safe, the art here is very much realistic/pastoral scenes and pottery and other traditional crafts, a lot of cutesy decorations for your yard, that type of thing. I think the general Iowa populace probably perceives visual art as a quaint hobby here...something older people do when they retire, which is obviously really different than how artists are perceived in NY for sure. So I don't have a lot in common with that and so I'm not actively trying to show work here...but of course I would if I felt there was an appropriate audience. I mean, even though Iowa may sometimes seem hopeless there are still people out there who break the mold and make cool shit and hey, I'm friends with some of them! One of my friends who I have the best art conversations with primarily does organic farming and that probably wouldn't have happened in New York. And really when it comes down to it your art community is your friends. And now that we have the internet your friends can be anywhere, so I think your physical location is not as important as it used to be.”

Q: My favorite art of yours is actually your sculptures. I really hope you continue to do more of those. Where do you get the materials for them? Is it stuff just laying around your house that you choose to refurbish or are you on the hunt for a certain something?

A: “Thanks! I have a lot of fun with the sculptures and they are a very new direction for me. I acquire objects from thrift stores mostly. Like my "Grass Cloud" was made from a cloud-shaped piece of wood someone made for their kid probably and then just gave it away to the thrift store. I had just been collecting those weird objects and picking up vintage craft supplies for next to nothing as well as using coupons at craft stores to acquire anything I found interesting even if I had no idea what to do with it. They are very indulgent and I don't think about them as much as my paintings, but they have gotten the most love on the internet. Funny how the stuff that you slave over the least always seems to be the most popular.”

Q: You integrate a lot of cultural references in your work: psychedelia, organic living, and a lot of tribal references. Where do the ingredients for this melting pot come from?

A: “All of those things you mentioned are my primary areas of interest. I have always been attracted to psychedelic artwork even a kid, just an intuitive knowing that it was getting at something very deep below the surface that's not often talked about ....which was comforting. It wasn't until much later that I had my first psychedelic experiences which completely changed my perspective on life. Its pretty interesting because I grew up going to church and sitting there being sober listening to someone tell me that there's more to life, but you just have to trust that there is. But when you take psychedelics you can experience it all directly- love and understanding and wisdom (even hell) -- it seems like religion is kind of a counterfeit form of the real thing since it just talks about this stuff but says you can't have it until you die. I recently just speculated that maybe early Christians had been eating mushrooms together and that Jesus represented that experience. And then like two weeks later I stumbled across an interview with John A Rush who wrote a book called The Mushroom in Christian Art and it’s this whole theory that is very weighty and well supported with visual art work-- that Jesus actually is the personification of a psychedelic mushroom. That connection totally turned my world upside down because religion and psychedelics were the two things that have affected my life probably more than anything else. And a lot of tribal art is really psychedelic too and just looks so rad. And I definitely think tribal cultures have incredible wisdom and their art work is just totally mind-blowing and beautiful and they had a deeper understanding of life, they were more empowered, but it was also very physical. I think a lot of that is because they weren't disconnected from the earth like we are now-- now things like nudity and living off the land are considered backwards or obscene or gross now, but it's what makes us human. Older cultures realized that certain foods could heal the body and they were holy- they contained wisdom. So that's where the whole organic interest comes in. I've been eating primarily organic food for about 4 years and it's amazing how much better it tastes and how much better you feel. Right now most modern people are just taking in whatever is given to them- whatever the conventional foods are, whatever is on TV, it's very dangerous. We are in a place where we can get away with just following orders, consuming without comprehension or questioning. Our lives have become very ersatz. That's very different from growing and eating your own food and building your own home and creating your community with your neighbors from the natural resources around you. They were so smart and self sufficient and understood life and death in such a profound way.”

Q: This is kind of a more personal interest question, because I recently co-founded a website called The Do Not Enter Diaries, devoted to filming the stories of teenagers and their bedrooms, but I am interested to know what you were like as a teenager. Was your room covered with art projects in-the-making?

A: “Actually my teen years were not very creative and I didn't make art until the tail end of high school. This is probably hard for most people to relate to if they haven't gone through it, but my early teen years were very much influenced by church and youth group and breaking away from that was very difficult and scary and I did not know how to express what I was going through. My brain's thoughts just could not correlate with (Evangelical) Christian thought anymore and everything fell apart mentally. I really didn't feel like I could express myself creatively at home. I was getting into some cool underground music and books through the internet but I wasn't brave enough to start covering my walls with my new interests....although if there had been sites like yours at the time it might have empowered and inspired me. Now that I am an adult with my own apartment I cover my studio walls with all sorts of awesome things so it’s kind of like having the dream teenage bedroom I never had. I think having a space that is personalized is so important. I watched your Do Not Enter Diaries sneak peak and I am really looking forward to the full launch!”

Q: Do you have any projects in the works we can look forward to?

A: “Right now I am working on pieces for a show titled "Works on Paper" on March 9th at the Open Space Gallery in Baltimore. The show is sort of the kick off for the Print and Multiples Fair that will be held in Baltimore. too. So, [it will include] pretty big paintings on paper and then I will be making a zine which I am planning on [devoting] to Jesus and mushrooms. After that I am planning on continuing more paintings on paper and sculptures.”

Thanks so much, Becca!

All images on this post are courtesy of Becca Kacanda

To check out more of Becca Kacanda and her Ultra Terrestrial art, click here.

Follow me on Twitter @emmaedition

RAD TALK: An Interview With Claudio Parentela

2013-01-04T18:52:00.000-05:00

I often interview artists and designers for my professional work. Yet, in the past, I haven’t featured such interviews at my own blog. I founded The Emma Edition to highlight style/art/culture in NYC and beyond from a teenage perspective-and I’ve decided that it’s no less an important part of my mission to highlight those on the Internet who influence me, as it is to write about a thrift store that I cherish shopping at. To that end, I am starting a new feature at The Emma Edition for 2013 called “Rad Talk,” wherein, I’ll be interviewing creative people who make my life all the more rad and whose work I think deserves a wider audience. I’ll be giving them a forum to speak on things they may never been asked in a typical interview. Read on below for the first installment…

It’s not often one hears about zine culture in Italy. Yet, Claudio Parentela: artist, blogger, illustrator, and self-made zinester, has been active in all forms of Italy’s underground art scene, participating in various mail projects, for quite some time. So it makes sense that his own art is fueled by various forms of ephemera. Parentela creates collages that deal with a series of female characters, disfigured by clownish makeup and colorful backdrops.

In a way, they remind me of Pedro Almodovar’s movie, Women on the Verge of A Nervous Breakdown, if one took photographs of the film and then put them into a blender. Parentela’s art is surreal, fun, and yet, absolutely topical, by commenting on the place of women in the media. As Claudio is located all the way in Italy, our interview was held via email, where I got to enjoy his stream of consciousness firsthand. If anything, Claudio is a extension of the world created in his art, exemplified by every mysterious ellipsis and capricious jab. Read on for a Q&A with the artist himself, below.

Q: You occasionally use very famous celebrities in your work, such as Kate Moss or Salvador Dali. Do you always base your paintings off of real people?

A: “It depends on my moods…on the phases of the moon…..on the music I’ve in mind…I never know what I’ll do….the game is always new and different every time….but…sure I’m very interested in weird fashion….and in my art yes there is so much fashion, Salvador Dalì sure….Kate Moss (oh, I love her…..),Mickey Mouse and Diamanda Galas…my natural madness…”

Q: Collage is such an interesting medium because you can piece together so many different forms of inspiration in one painting. What first got you interested in working with collage?
A: “Oh…..for 14-15 years I painted only in black and white with tons of black Indian ink…I needed of colours and to experiment with other materials….it was natural to switch to colour….though I think that there is colour, much colour , in the thousand shades between black and white.”

Q: Did you read magazines as kid? Do you read magazines now? If so, which were/are your favorites?
A: “[I read] many, many, many…. I read especially many books but also magazines…..some of my favourites are Juxtapoz, Ozon, i-D, Dazed & Confused, Chaos-mag, Verve, Soma Mag, Ion Mag, Hi-Fructose, NY Arts Magazine, Frieze Magazine…..and a lot of others…..when I was a kid I read only horror books...I looked only at horror movies…I thought only horror ideas….”

Q: I’ve read that you often work on zines. It’s really interesting because in America, zines were really big in the 1990’s, as a part of a movement of do-it-yourself culture, as a part of rebelling against the magazine world. They are slowly trickling back into niches. But I am interested to know how that translates overseas in Italy. How did you first get interested in making/ contributing to zines?
A: “I started doing this strange work in 1995…I drew crazy comics then….The fantastic Stripburger magazine published my first comics….There was a fervent movement then in Eastern Europe, many fantastic creative people there….many bands…fantastic music…..many many wonderful zines….yes I started to draw there, in Eastern Europe….not in Italy, strange true…...a case…a wonderful case…I’ve great memories of those early years.”

Q: A lot of your artwork seems to deal with the media’s effect on women and domesticity. You mix images typically found in a women’s fashion magazines, and turn them into these amazing surrealist art forms. Would you say that your work has a feminist tone to it?
A: “Maybe yes….maybe not….my works have yes a feminist tone surely….a bit of anarchic feminist tone too….a crazy queer tone too….an alien tone very much… strange beings inhabit my artworks…”

Q: What would you say is the mission statement of your art? What do you hope your art achieves?
A: “I hope to continue to draw, to draw, to draw …..to continue to do this fantastic shamanic journey for all the days of my life…”

Q: Do you think fashion is art?
A: “Sure… a formidable exquisite art form…”

Q: Do you dress as interesting as your art?
A: “Oh not…. I'm too lazy to spend time to choose my own clothes…but my heart and my mind yes….they dress with crazy clothes every day….”

Q: Claudio, how did you come up with idea for your wacky website? I love it. Often times, websites seem like an afterthought, but yours really seems like an extension of your work!
A: “Thanx…you’re really very kind….I’m not [too good at creating] web sites….I can do a few things with my Dreamweaver… I did everything by myself ...how many animated gif…I love them so much…..!!!!!”

Q: What projects can we look forward from you in the future?
A: “I'm working on a show that I will do in the coming months in Kiev, and I’ve to prepare something for [2 other shows] also in the next months....I've started just in these days my new tarot deck and my new comic book....working on some t-shirts....my interviews…a lot of interesting things yes....!”

Learn more about Claudio and his art, click here.

Follow me on Twitter @emmaedition

Review: Portlandia- A Guide For Visitors

2012-12-29T15:43:00.002-05:00

The last time I was in Portland, Oregon it was 2006. I wore toe-sandals and Junk Food t-shirts. My reference of Oregon was playing the Oregon Trail computer game. It was a simpler time when I still remembered my Neopets account password. And yet, as weird as I was, I was in a city that was even weirder. Entering Portland really was like entering an alternate universe. Back then, beanies, gages, tattoos, and the coffee house scene weren’t yet the ubiquitous comrades that we know them to be today. But at the time in Portland, they were still a thriving relic of 1990’s past, transplanted into the DNA of its citizens.

So, obviously, I was ecstatic when my favorite Saturday Night Live comedian, Fred Armisen,teamed up with his best friend, riot grrrl Carrie Brownstein to create their own sketch-based series, satirizing their beloved city of Portland, a place I grew to love, even if only for a few days. In their show, Portlandia, episodes follow the best friend duo as they play almost every role of Portlandia’s inhabitants: from proprietors of a feminist bookstore to a couple who leaves mid-dinner to drive to a farm to make sure the chicken they are about to eat was raised in a friendly environment. It doesn’t matter whether or not you’ve actually been to Portland to be able to key into the pervasiveness of some of the show’s underlying satire. The TV show is nothing if not an accurate portrait of our times and Armisen and Brownstein’s contribution to keeping the spirit of Portland alive and weird.

I’ve watched every episode since the show first aired, and have loved every darn minute of it. In November, Fred and Carrie released a comprehensive guide to their beloved world, entitled, Portlandia: A Guide For Visitors. It was on my holiday wishlist since I first saw the book trailer, and thanks to a Secret Santa exchange with my friend’s group, this little gem is finally mine mine mine! Below are some favorite moments from the book:

The guide begins with an obligatory portrait of Kyle Mclaughlin, who is arguably the main character of the show. Okay, so he’s not even close to being in every episode, I just find his character as Portlandia’s mayor to be so accurate and hilarious. Also, my hope is that years from now, in the show’s series finale, we find out that Portlandia is all a dream had by the mayor. The mayor holds the key to Portlandia in our minds and our hearts.

This is a great idea: everyone should start handing out required reading lists to their friends before parties.

Another feature of the guide is this pull-out zine from the largest feminist bookstore, "Women and Women First," filled with recipes and monthly in-store events.

Is it weird that the back of the book might be my favorite part? This is so genius.

Follow me on Twitter @emmaedition

The Outfit Post: An Analysis

2012-12-08T18:59:00.000-05:00

This is me, doing an outfit post.

Dear readers,

You might have noticed that I haven’t posted an outfit post in a while. I’m acutely aware of this. When I look back through old blog posts on The Emma Edition, I don’t feel that I’ve completely captured my style. No one has seen my lava lamp-patterned shirt, or pajama nightgowns I wear as jumpers, my fuzzy Muppet sweater (actually, that's what I am wearing in the photo above), or gold-plated “Vibes” necklace that are tenets of my wardrobe, except for the people I hang out with IRL. Even when I do feature my outfits here, they aren’t truly outfit posts by bloggers’ standards—typically, I am already wearing the outfit and am usually outside doing an activity that the post is centered on, or, if I am just at home posing for the photo, I include a story along with it. To me, every outfit is not just an item of clothing; it has a story to tell. Still, how could my blog truly ever show every side of myself or style?

I recently wrote a piece on The Huffington Post called “If You Didn’t ‘Like’ On Facebook, Did You Ever Like It At All?” which I think applies here, too. If I didn’t ever post about wearing a certain outfit, it’s assumed that it’s not part of my style. This is a quote from the article:

“It's more about the fact that since I've joined the Internet, I feel really protective over which tastes I share -- which is sad, because really, the Internet is supposed to be a place of democracy. And sure, it may sound shallow, but I am always secretly afraid that if I don't write online that I like a certain start-up company, or television show, or person, before anyone else, then I never really did.”

Something as silly as changing my hairstyle, isn’t as swiftly cataloged on a blog as it happens in real life. Do you know what my hair looks like at the moment? No, because I haven’t announced it anywhere online. For all you know, I could be bald, with 30 piercings (for the record: I am not, I just changed my hair to a middle part, which right now feels exciting enough).

I think that’s something to keep in mind when you read something online. Especially a blog, which is supposed to be the natural, democratized version of a magazine. Although both of those things are in general true, it’s important to still separate an image projected online versus in person. I mean every word I say on this blog, and I really do wear everything I put up images of. Blogs are like memoirs in a way—we have the right to tell our stories, but leave out pieces in order to tell what we believe is the most important truth. However, sometimes people forget that my blog only makes up a fraction of my entire being.

Although I am always conscious of all this, from now on I am going to start posting more of my outfits. This blog is called The Emma Edition, for a reason. I started it for myself, to catalog my tastes and interests, and to be able to look back at them over the years in admiration and embarrassment. And although I am extremely appreciative of each of you who read this, if no one every did I would still keep it up. I want to start doing more cataloging for myself, and that starts with, for me, one of the most powerful mediums and storytellers—clothing.

Follow me on Twitter @emmaedition

Reacting to a World Formed By Irony

2012-11-30T20:22:00.000-05:00

A screenshot of when I searched "irony" on Google. Is this me being ironic? I don't know anymore.

i·ro·ny/ˈīrənē/

Noun:

The expression of one's meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite, typically for humorous or emphatic effect.

“Look around your living space. Do you surround yourself with things you really like or things you like only because they are absurd?” asked Christy Wampole. Last week, The New York Times published one of the most topical pieces for my generation: “How to Live Without Irony” by Wampole, an assistant professor of French at Princeton University. The article was centered on the idea that filling our lives with irony is essentially hiding behind a mask to avoid meaningful discussion. The illustrations in the article particularly highlight her point: the first image is a couple, clearly older than Justin Beiber’s demographic, who wear his concert t-shirts mixed in with their own styles. It is clear to all, that the couple doesn’t really love or listen Justin Beiber at all—or if they do, it’s in a way that makes fun of the teenage singer.

In the article, Wampole asks us to look at our own environments and detect the elements of irony we’ve used to construct it. As I was reading the piece, I really did look around my room to follow her line of questioning. Only, I really couldn’t find much. Now, maybe if Wampole saw me and my room she’d think otherwise, but, with the exception of The Clique movie I bought on DVD in 2008 (as a silly homage to the cliqueness of my own middle school) everything I do, I do because I really want to, not because it is an act of irony. Am I alone in thinking like this? I am some breed of Frankenteen?

Wampole begins the article talking about the hipster as the personification of irony. This archetype she says, “Manifest[s] a nostalgia for times he never lived himself, this contemporary urban harlequin appropriates outmoded fashions (the mustache, the tiny shorts), mechanisms (fixed-gear bicycles, portable record players) and hobbies (home brewing, playing trombone).” At first, when I read this, I thought that to some extent I fit the very mold that Wampole lays out. I am often culpable of romanticizing the 1960’s— I listen to music of the era, dress in vintage flower power dresses, and make art that references the time, too---yet I don’t particularly see this as an indication of irony. I like the 1960’s because I find it meaningful to dip into the past. I do so, not because I think it’s ironic to connect to aesthetics from a bygone era, but rather, because I live in a society where there is so much pressure to create the Next Best Thing—to create the most shocking/ funniest/ darkest painting/ movie/ book, what have you---and sometimes, looking back in our society’s history is my small way of slowing-down this obsession with the new. If this is irony, then I don’t want to be right.

Still, there is something to Wampole’s depiction of irony’s repeated offenders. The people Wampole describes in the article seem more like cartoon characters than real human beings. But there are plenty of real people who say they love Justin Beiber when they really think his music is crap. They do so because they think it’s funny and witty, and it allows them to operate in alternate realm than their own, where they can explore what it feels like to be a JBeibz fangirl for a moment. In dosages, I don’t see what’s wrong with that. I make jokes all the time that involve sarcasm and irony. Irony is a brand of humor just like black comedies are. But if my speech depended solely on irony, that is, saying things that are the antithesis of their original meaning, then I would always be relying on this form of humor to hide the message I am really trying to get at in the first place. On a long-term scale, why is it that we are so afraid to be confident with our interests that we revert to irony as an easier modus operandi? Are we really so scared to be judged as ourselves that we have to cloak our tastes in a veil of irony?

This piece was originally published on The Huffington Post. You can view it there by clicking here.

Follow me on Twitter @emmaedition

Interview: Is Chrissie Miller’s “Club Chrissie” The Face of DIY Television?

2012-11-25T15:55:00.000-05:00

The following is an interview I conducted with Chrissie Miller for BUST Magazine online. Available here.

There’s always that one friend in the group who has the hangout house. Sophomore clothing designer, Chrissie Miller’s is known as Club Chrissie. In the beginning of October, Chrissie turned her clubhouse into the site for her new Youtube web series under the same byline. Produced by Pharrell Williams, the series, which is a mix of Pee Wee’s Play House and a Martha Stewart episode, follows Chrissie as she spends lazy days with one of her many cool friends, taking on equally-cool DIY projects. Some of her guests so far have included recording artist, Maxine Ashley, her business partner, Leah Dell, and Paper Magazine editor, Mr. Mickey. Each week, Chrissie invites her friends over to take on craft projects from tie-dying to bedazzling—all while seated on her granny square-covered couch.

Personally, after watching Club Chrissie, I want nothing more than to hang out with her on her couch. Maybe she’ll invite over her old roommates, The Virgins, and we can take on that googly eye project I’ve been meaning to do. Chrissie Miller’s web series is available for viewing here.

So do you love Club Chrissie as much as I do? If I haven’t convinced you yet, read on for an interview I had with the very rad lady herself.

Chrissie, I am such a big fan of Sophomore. I especially love how you used video to create an aesthetic experience for your brand. One of my favorites was the Spring/Summer 2010 video you shot with Lesley Arfin on Coney Island. What first got you interested in using film to convey your style?

Well thank you! I think that video is like the best thing I’ve ever done. I went to film school, so clothing has always been a part of my life, but I love film a lot. It’s weird; I just always wanted to make little films like that. When we were doing it, maybe we were kind of the first? Or at least the first to do something that was a narrative and not necessarily just a normal photo shoot.

Sophomore Spring 2010 from SophomoreNYC on Vimeo.

Yeah, I always thought that video was such a genius way to get people to look at the clothes as opposed to a “just buy this” lookbook.

Yeah, I think when you’re buying something, you’re buying into the lifestyle. You want to learn more about what that lifestyle is, instead of just having a hired model tell you about it. And, you know, I’ve always used friends. I never even hired anyone or paid anyone [laughs]. So it was just a cool collaborative thing that I would do. Cass [Bird] obviously is a big part of it. She and I are kind of creative soul mates in that way.

But now, you’re on a break from Sophomore, and working on your web series, Club Chrissie.

I am. I got overwhelmed by Sophomore; it’s a lot of work and there are so many other things I want to do that I felt I couldn’t do because of it. I had just been asked to do a bunch of different projects like [Club Chrissie]. Pharrell and I have known each other for a while, and just on whim I was like, “can I do a show?” and he was like, “yup.” And within a week it started happening.

I’ve watched all of the episodes of Club Chrissie so far, and I love the animated quality of the show. Totally Pee Wee Herman meets Martha Stewart. Did you come up with the theme for the show? Are you a fan of the two at all?

Actually, when I was meeting with the iamOTHER people, they kept saying, you know, “Downtown Martha Stewart.” For me it was more about that I like to make things but I also that I don’t want to make complicated things. I want to make things that are easy and can be made at a night home or with your friends. Sometimes DIYs have a lot of ingredients and take a lot of time.

But in terms of the Pee Wee thing, I didn’t even really know till I got there what it was going to look like. We had discussed making it more of an instructional Youtube video. But what I brought to the table was that I wanted to have guests, and have a conversation—that’s really what’s most interesting to me. Moving forward, I want to get more and more interesting people to create that sort of talk show vibe while also getting to make something.

Did you do a lot of crafting when you were younger?

My mom has always been making stuff. Everything was always homemade: my Halloween costume, clothes she made for me. I guess I am just one of those people who can never really find exactly what they want. So if I can’t find it, then I find a way to wing it or make it. I do a lot of vintage shopping and then from that, remake clothes. You know, just changing the buttons, and things like that. But I am also not a real Martha Stewart where I decorate the whole house for Thanksgiving [laughs]. Its more just on a fashion level.

Are there any projects you’re looking to do on future episodes that we haven’t seen so far?

I mean, I think I want to make Club Chrissie a little more with stuff you can use in your closet. It would be cool if guests would bring their own stuff and together we could find ways to remake them. Like, for example, I have an ugly brown dress but I dyed it black. We’re in a recession right now so it’s cool to be able to really look in your wardrobe and make things out of what you already have instead of buying more stuff.

I do think that the whole basis of Club Chrissie is very progressive—to me, I see it as part of this DIY television movement. Cable in general today is so expensive, and people are much more readily on their computes anyway. So I think it’s smart that your show is on Youtube. Is the fact that everything is trending online something that you thought about with Club Chrissie?

TV intimidated me a bit. It’s not something that’s out of the question but I am the biggest Youtube person anyway. Youtube seems more accessible when it’s a DIY thing. I will Youtube how to cook something or how to fix something in my house, I always Youtube instructions, so I think for right now it makes more sense to do this sort of project online.

Anything else you want to add, anything else you want to cover?

Well, there’s more episodes coming—one with Charlotte Ronson and Pamela Love especially to look forward to. So yeah, stay tuned!

Thanks so much Chrissie! Looking to forward to what's next.

Images on this post via iamOTHER

Follow me on Twitter @emmaedition

Handmade Psychedelia

2012-11-17T15:21:00.002-05:00

"Handmade Psychedelia" series by Emma Orlow. Colored stills of lava lamp video projection.

In addition to the writing that I do, I also love making art. Not only do I take portfolio at my school, but I also run my school’s art club… which is kind of more of an independent study where my art teachers and I visit different museums or take on different projects and then discuss and debate. But during the past year, I’ve also been working on a body of work for “Handmade Psychedelia,” an ongoing series that explores the feelings, colors, and politics of psychedelic images, without needing any mind-altering substances to do so. Particularly with this series, I am interested in exploring the intersection between synthetics such as psychedelic drugs and optical images when put in domestic environments such as with gardens or buttons to find the imperfections in a man-made substance. I’ve loved working with this series because it’s pushed me to play more with new mediums. I typically work a lot with ink, markers, and paint, but for this series I experimented with video projections, photography, and even weaving, too. I’ve always been fascinated by 1960’s counter-culture. Aesthetically, I find the 1960’s one of the most appealing decades. I look through life with a kaleidoscopic lens and colors mean the world to me. So, when I look back at clothes, music, and psychedelic imagery of from that time, everything seems to be so saturated and bursting with exclamation points.

People often question my interest in psychedelics, when I, myself, have never indulged in any drug of the sort. However, I find this attitude really small-minded. Sure, I may not know exactly what I feels like to be on acid. But since the idea of hallucinogenics is to access a part of your brain that you wouldn’t be able to normally, with my art I challenge the viewer to rethink this relationship we have with drugs, and translate the idea to art. You'll find a selection of images from the series in this post (or you can check out more on my Flickr.)

Painted flower puzzle by Emma Orlow

"A Lucid Swim" by Emma Orlow. Made with ink, watercolors, and interweaving yarn.

Decapitated Barbie doll & plastic bug sculpture.

Since “Handmade Psychedelia” is completely about the vibes, I made a playlist that mixes new and old psychedelic sounds to complement the series. I suggest listening while you peruse the images, for a full funky effect.

Handmade Psychedelia from theemmaedition on 8tracks Radio.

Follow me on Twitter @emmaedition

All artwork on this post was created by Emma Orlow

Interview: Author Sloane Crosley Talks Sad Stuff On The Street

2012-11-03T11:00:00.000-04:00

Nowadays, it’s not enough to just be a writer, typing away your thoughts on a typewriter in the middle of the countryside like a Sylvia Plath type. You must also have a social media presence to validate your existence, making you worthy of even writing a novel, poetry, or what have you. And some of the most successful writers today are not only Google-able, but use their space online to create a real brand for themselves. There are two ways that this personal branding can go: the first, and more likely traveled route, is the shameless self-promotional branding pertaining to all online personalities, not just writers (See: The Kardashians, Charlie Sheen… or even Walt Whitman, who although pre-dates the Internet, knew the importance of mastering the management his public image.), which involves "pimping" oneself in order to get recognition. However, a more rare type of personal branding is the type of branding that helps you really know the person, not put them on a pedestal of celebrity (See: Mindy Kaling, Kathy Griffin, and Lena Dunham).

That’s what I love about authors like Sloane Crosley. They’re hip to the change in pace of writing, but use the new system in a meaningful way. The online projects that Sloane Crosley has taken on (aside from her essay writings) have been fun and witty, while staying true to who she projects in her memoirs. It’s no coincidence that one of my closest friends Lyris first introduced me to her, as Sloane creates an image for herself that’s so intimate that I really do feel as if I'm sitting with her in her living room, rehashing details from last night. Although Sloane is surely as famous as other media figures out there, it’s the way that she uses her brand that sets her apart from the pack.

This is an excerpt from a post a wrote for BUST Magazine:

From the moment I saw I Was Told There’d Be Cake on the bookshelf, I knew Sloane Crosley was a girl after my heart and taste buds. As a 17 year-old, I have looked to my fellow New Yorker’s escapades as letters from an imaginary older sister. Although I am interested in a career as a style journalist, I also am very interested in keeping up with all of my mini-essays that I hash out in my own diary.

Sloane herself is part anthropologist, part diarist; she is acutely observant of the people, places, and things, around her....she knows her nouns. In 2011, she started an online project, Sad Stuff On The Street, with her then-partner, Greg Larson, which seeks to tell the stories of sad objects lost on the street. It’s year two of the project, and I caught up with Sloane to talk about how the project began, the saddest things she’s ever found, and what’s next for the project. I am so honored to have been able to interview one of the raddest writers out there—read on below.

When and why was Sad Stuff On The Street started?

My friend Greg and I started it over a year ago. A couple of years before that, we met and I began a long-distance relationship, with him in San Francisco and me in New York. I guess I would say that taking pictures of bittersweet garbage on the street was one way we kept in touch, but we probably would have done it if we lived in the same city. The relations part of the relationship didn't continue. We broke up, but we stayed great friends — I saw him today, actually — and we kept sending each other sad things. There's a detailed and self-indulgent version of this story buried within the site.

On the site there are some serious and hilarious debates as to what constitutes an object as being “sad.” Has there been a consensus?

I think our standards have gone up now that we've had such international sadness exposure and we have so much more material. I'm not trying to elevate a Tumblr here, but it has been really fun to watch. One week will bring us submissions from France, Japan, Australia, Brazil, Yemen, North Korea...we had a month where there was an unusual influx from Russia. Guess who does sad stuff really well? The Russians.

Anyway, sadness is a mood. So what goes on the site is subject to our moods. I know if I see too many decapitated dolls, I have an anti-dolly reaction and will hold off on putting them up. Just because we try to go for something a little more unusually sad. We like funny sad things with heart. I personally like the stuff that's very morbid without being disgusting. So a good exception to the doll rule was a recent submission of a clear plastic bag stuffed with about twenty naked Barbies and ties to a fence. That's creepy-sad and that's for us.

There's no real consensus, though. We both like a post where you're left wondering how the hell the sad thing came to be. We also both have veto power and rarely use it. I would say Greg is slightly less dark — slightly — and has a great eye for the classics. If you see a beautiful, busted rainbow umbrella, drowning in a puddle, that's Greg. Or all the "Depressed Teddy Bear Series" and "Depressed Elmo Series" are Greg.

What is the saddest thing you or Greg ever found on the street? Favorite? Weirdest?

That's really hard. I can look but that feels like cheating. Off the top of my head, there was an elaborate toy pirate ship shipwrecked next to a tree on a street in Paris. That's my own longstanding favorite. There was a mattress that said, "Nothing really mattress." Once Greg found a cardboard box full of "Free Bread Sandwiches." Recently there was a drowning penguin stuffed animal and that is a good example of how context can make a post — he was found on the side of a canal in Venice, Italy.

Do you think there’s a place in heaven for lost objects?

I don't think they're ever lost. They just move.

Do you ever take the objects home with you? Or do you like to leave them there as more of a gift of street art?

Eww, gross, no. But Greg and I take very few of the photos these days. So I'm not in Mexico City to pick up said object. I wish I was.

Has anyone ever contacted you after seeing a post on the site, claiming that that was their missing item?

Not directly. People have posted things on their personal blog. Sometimes we get notes if we leave off or mess up a link to a sumbitter's personal page. Another great side-effect to this is that the photography community seems to have gotten in on it. And we'll sometimes get these stunning photographs from professional photographers who just see it as another space to share work that wouldn't go in a magazine or to a gallery.

Have you found that there is a particular place in the world that has the highest concentration of sad stuff?

Because of how we began, just spreading the word to our friends, the site has the longest legs in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles. But it's really and truly everywhere. Lots of Austin, Miami, Boston, Chicago. Small towns too. I'm always disappointed that there's not more Las Vegas. Maybe if you're looking down in Las Vegas it's because you lost a bunch of money and/or are about to puke. You're probably in no mood to seek out external sources of melancholy.

What’s next for Sad Stuff On The Street? Do you two have any plans to turn Sad Stuff into an essay series? It would be really cool if there was some sort of meet-up series around the United States, where people could bring in their objects or photos of their objects, and share their stories!

Oh, well, thank you. We do talk about it, about what to do next. We've had some ideas of our own as well as a couple thrown our way. For now we're both just kind of in it for the love of the sadness.

Thanks so much, Sloane! Check out Sad Stuff On The Street here.

Images in this post courtesy of Sad Stuff on The Street

Follow me on Twitter @emmaedition

Call Me, Beep Me, If You Want To Reach Me

2012-10-26T21:13:00.000-04:00

Yes, that is a naked mole rat in my jet pack

When I was in 3^rd grade I thought I was Kim Possible. If you don’t know who Kim Possible was, well then you missed out on some prime Disney Channel years. Kim Possible was a cartoon, crime-stopping, babysitting, high schooler, who had the coolest gadgets such as lipstick that shot laser beams. Her best friend, Ron Stoppable was a little clumsy, but he was vital to the team because he had a pet naked mole rat who often aided in their escapades. In 3^rd grade I really admired Kim Possible’s unabashed fierceness, so much so that I dressed up as her for Halloween that year. My mom and I searched countless stores for cargo pants that were as close replicas to ones that Kim wore in the show. We then went to a craft store where we managed to find camouflage felt and Velcro tabs, from which my mom sewed a felt satchel just like the one Kim always wore around her waist to hold her beeper that alerted her to a pending mission. I never ate at McDonald’s, but back then I went into their chains to buy their Kids Meal toys. It just so happened that around the time of Halloween they were selling Kim Possible toys and we bought plastic gadgets to bolster my satchel. I even wore a black turtleneck, which my mom hemmed to make into a crop top to match the one Kim wore (perhaps a tad raunchy for the 3^rd grade crowd, but so be it…). Whether or not you were a fan of Kim Possible, she was totally ahead of fashion trends. Back in 2003, Kim Possible was already wearing turtlenecks but experimenting by wearing them cropped and with baggy cargo pants, and camouflage gadget belts. Kim had a style all her own; she was a little bit Tom Boy, too, and didn't dress like the cheerleaders of the school. She wasn't wearing them to be "chic," either. She was wearing them because it was the outfit that made her feel the most confident and was the easiest to move around in when she was stopping crime. This year, every runway from Alexander Wang to Celine to Jil Sander showed some version of the turtleneck for the 2012 fall season, that brought to mind some Kim Possible vibes. Call me, beep me, if you want to reach me, it’s time for Halloween!

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Recess: Behind-the-Scenes

2012-10-15T19:54:00.000-04:00

Photoshoot: "Recess" Model: Melkorka Photographer: Sasha Frolova Stylist: Emma Orlow

Photoshoot: "Recess" Model: Emily, Sophia, and Sabrina Photographer: Sasha Frolova Stylist: Emma Orlow

These are some behind-the-scenes photos for “Recess,” a series I did some styling for , which is featured in this month’s Rookie Magazine. “Recess” was photographed and constructed by one of my friends, Sasha Frolova, who not only is a seriously amazing photographer, but is particularly great at capturing portraits of adolescence. Along with the photos she sent in to Rookie was this addendum: “this series was inspired by the changes and similarities between my childhood and my adolescence. The bullying, the cliquey best friends, and the teasing don’t disappear with age; they just take on subtler shapes. In this sense, we never outgrow the playground.”

I particularly love the contrast between the exuberance of the youthful setting, and her chosen medium of black and white film to depict the underbelly of social politics that dominate the playground experience.

My dinky digital shots don’t the real photos justice by any means, but my hope was to give a a better view of the outfits we used in the shoot this way. In the first day of shots, the model, Melkorka, is wearing a striped t-shirt I sewed a smiley face patch onto, floral leggings I stole from my best friend (that was a staple of her wardrobe in 3^rd grade), high-top Converse, and a butt-load of barrettes and other hair accessories. In the latter, Sophia, Sabrina, and Emily are wearing our own frilly socks and chunky Mary Jane shoes, with school girl uniforms courtesy of Old Navy. To check out the shoot in its full glory click here.

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Six Degrees of Separation

2012-10-06T16:29:00.000-04:00

“Six Degrees of Separation” series, 2011 by Emma Orlow.

I’ve been meaning to post more of the art I’ve been doing. “Six Degrees of Separation” is a series I started in 2011. The idea of the series came about as I was beginning to think more critically about whom I was allowing (or unknowingly allow) to influence my art creations, music purchases, and stylistic choices. Though seemingly diverse, I wondered if subconsciously I had chosen my mentors with some commonality in mind. Looking deeper into these artists’ pasts, I realized that by six degrees of separation they all related to one another—either from spending time in the same place, sharing mutual friends, or being a part of the same social or political movement. Sometimes the way I connected my influencers for my art project was much less concrete: for example, Frida Kahlo was known for wearing flower crowns, so in my brain I bridged her to the list of characters from the 1967 Summer of Love. I’ve since realized that hiding little inside jokes with myself is a thing I often do with my art. I don’t ever expect anyone to crack the code, but often it’s nice to look at a piece of artwork and be able to giggle about it and appropriate outside experiences to a brushstroke that no one will ever bother to analyze (I think I thought I was being really clever at the time, but I used lots of green inks in my John Lennon canvas as a commentary on his fight to legalize marijuana).

So when it came time to display my “Six Degrees of Separation” series in my school’s art show, I attached all of the canvases to a black piece of cardboard and with chalk, drew arrows to visually explain how the connections play out in my brain. The ones I’ve posted to this blog post aren't the total number of ones I've created or hope to create—I made a couple groupings of six for my art show. But color wise, I particularly like the way all of the ones I've shared here, flow into one communal tie-dye. Each canvas was made using a mix of repeated ink washes, drawings, and Citrosol image transfers. You can check out more of my artwork on Flickr by clicking here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/theemmaedition/

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