A Week in Pictures

The Sunset last Friday at Pacific Beach in San Diego, CA

Madame Hessel in the Boudoir, Rue de Naples, ca. 1935 by Edouard Vuillard--one of my favorite artists--at the San Diego Museum of Art

The view from the Ocean Beach Pier in San Diego

Where the Keebler elves live. (A tree in Balboa Park)

Mirrors on the wall of my aunt and uncle's living room in San Diego

Young Girl in Front of a Window, 1930. By Suzanne Valadon. At the San Diego Museum of Art.

Flowers at Disney Land

This man rollerblades while dancing to music up and down the sidewalk at Pacific Beach.

Nom nom nom--a panda at the San Diego Zoo

Wenches for sale in the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disney Land

A pillow at the Disney Land Hotel. Really.

San Diego Zoo

My uncle's lamp collection in the spare bedroom

I returned yesterday from a weeklong visit to San Diego, CA to see my aunt and uncle. We also went to Disney Land and California Adventure, and January must be the time to go. There weren't many crowds, and most of the lines were only five minutes long. My dad and I rode 18 rides, and my mom and my aunt rode 17. (They wouldn't ride California Screamin', the roller coaster that goes upside down.) That's a new personal best for us :) The weather was--for the most part--sunny and perfect, and now I am back to chilly weather and piles of snow. Bookish posts coming soon.

Happy Friday,

Revising a painting

I'm trying to start and finish a couple paintings before the school year begins, but I feel like I can't move on until I fix this one that I did for a class in June:

It was my last painting for the class, and I finished it just an hour before final critique. Consequently, I didn't get a lot of time to look at it and let it talk to me. I knew it didn't want the top of the figure the way it was, but I didn't have time to figure out what it wanted instead. This painting stumped me all through July and into August, until I remembered a painting I'd seen and photographed at the Art Institute of Chicago in July:

Portrait of Constance Pipelet by Jean-Baptiste-Francois Desoria, 1797, oil on canvas.

I like the figure's pose and attitude, so I decided to appropriate bits of it. I don't know if my figure will hold a book, and I know she won't have the same hair, clothing, etc. (The high heels stay!) But seeing this painting again got me out of my rut. Artists borrow from art history all the time.

In any case, here's a picture (it's a little awkward-looking because I took it with the camera on my laptop, which was not easy) of my progress so far. I accidentally made this great pink color that I added in a few places, started some apples on the right, and sketched some of the figure in with charcoal. (The lines you see now will probably all be rubbed off; they're just placeholders.)



So now I'll keep looking at it, adding lines and pushing and pulling them back. It's like editing a paper. Almost.

I wish my desk lit up, too.

Behold the marvelous children's circulation desk at the public library in Champaign, Illinois. It lights up and changes colors:

Taking pictures in libraries is awkward, what with all the people studying and browsing. But this awkwardness didn't stop me.

Too pretty to leave un-photographed, no?

I took these pictures on a road trip with my friend Amber last week. Our mission? To check out some graduate programs in library science. Naturally, we also spied on the public library systems near the grad programs.

And Champaign's public library is a win.

Signs don't get much more awesome than this.

Other things that make Champaign fun, besides the Jane Addams Book Shop*:

The artwork taking shape on this fence downtown.

Pekara Bakery and Bistro, which makes great sandwiches, cookies, and crepes. We know this because we went there twice in one day. Amber took this picture after we finished a delicious, berry-filled crepe.

Colorful tabletop at one of the gajillion Espresso Royale coffeeshops in Champaign.

The Sousa Archives at the state university in Illinois. I'm a trumpet player, and I've never enjoyed playing his marches, so yes, I took pictures of period shoes instead of his sheet music.

The Art Theater, a lovely 98-year-old theater.

It was very hot inside, though. One of the owners of the Art Theater came in before the film we saw to explain that the old building isn't set up for air conditioning, and the unit they do have is too noisy to run during a movie. So they shut it off, and we roasted. But it was worth it. If you get a chance, I recommend seeing Beginners.** It made me laugh, cry, and wish my pet came with subtitles, too. Here's the trailer:

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*The Jane Addams Book Shop might be America's coolest used bookstore. Remember?
**Beginners is rated R for a reason, though, and is probably not suitable for an all-ages family movie night--which is too bad, because that subtitled dog is so cute.

America's coolest used bookstore might be in Champaign, Illinois.

I went on a roadtrip with my friend Amber last week to check out a couple grad school programs for library science, and we spent last Friday afternoon in Champaign, where we discovered the Jane Addams Book Shop. Here are some of the pictures we took:

Shag carpeting . . .

. . . to go with the retro furniture.

Matching book-and-chair.

The Jane Addams Book Shop is three stories tall, and reminds me of Shakespeare and Company in Paris, France.

So, what do you think? Have you encountered a similar used bookstore? An even cooler one, perhaps?

Musical Monday (67): "Lady in Spain" by Ingrid Michaelson

Every Monday I post whatever song I can't get out of my head or just can't get enough of, because Mondays are often less than marvelous and music is happy--even when it's sad. If you'd like to join the party make your own Musical Monday post and leave a comment!

This week's song is "Lady in Spain" by Ingrid Michaelson. The woman singing with her is Allie Moss.

Enjoy!





Ladies in Spain. (The beach in Barcelona, to be specific.) I'm the one on the right.

 I haven't gotten to finishing my January travel posts yet, but I think I'll put up some photos and stories over Spring Break, which is in one week. (It can't come soon enough.)

Also, if you like office furniture (like bookshelves, hem hem) you should check out the Spring Fever Contest. I can count the entries on one hand right now, so your chances of winning a $30 gift code to put toward some new furniture at one of CSN's online stores are really, really good.

Wishing you a Marvelous Monday,

Versailles + the Wonders of Google Art Project: Paris Part Cinq

One of the last things I did near Paris was visit Versailles, which I recommend doing at least once if you happen to be in France because it is PRETTY:

The Hall of Mirrors

One could say it's almost too pretty, though. There was so much silk and gilding and decoration of all sorts that I felt like I was attempting to appreciate a too-sugary dessert. I may have said that about the Opera, too.

But you don't have to take my word or my pictures for it. Art Project, powered by Google, is a fantastic new website that allows people to explore museums around the world. One of the available museums is the Palace of Versailles. Go visit Google Art Project and make your own virtual way through its decadent rooms. Visit the Hall of Mirrors and stop in Marie Antoinette's bedroom. Stop in Louis XVI's, too. They both have feathers on top of their beds. I found them humorous in person.

I also found some of the greenery in the garden funny:

Humorous Topiaries.

A nude statue holding her hand out and pleading for some clothes.

Versailles is beautiful, ridiculous, and interesting. I had a couple Art History geek moments; there's a bust of Louis XIV by Bernini and a portrait of Marie Antoinette by Vigee-Lebrun, a female painter. You'll see them if you take the Google tour. I also wondered how the people who lived and worked in the palace in the eighteenth century thought of all the decorations as I explored the palace. I wondered what it was like to be in the palace when the French Revolution was beginning, specifically when a bunch of peasant women marched on Versailles and made the royal family move to Paris. If you're unfamiliar with that story, John Green made a very informative series of videos on the French Revolution, starting with this one:



And if Google Art Project doesn't satisfy your desire to explore Versailles from afar I recommend watching the movie Marie Antoinette. Much of it was filmed in Versailles. I watched it a couple years ago and I watched it again when I came back so I could have fun recognizing all the rooms.

Staci, Becca, Me, and Jaimie in front of Versailles. Check out how shiny the palace is--the gates and roof are gilded with real gold.

And since you asked, Myrna, my camera is a Samsung SL620. It's small, red, and does most things that I want it to except take non-blurry indoor pictures sans flash. But I suppose that's asking for the moon anyway. I bought it in the summer of 2009 in preparation for my January 2010 trip to Italy because I broke my old Canon Powershot doing this project for Intro to Design during my first semester of college:

(You have to pretend those bits of carpet around the piece aren't there...)

I was attempting to take a picture of the circular opening of a traffic cone when I dropped my camera onto a sidewalk. It still takes pictures but the lens protector won't close and I have to be super careful with it to keep the lens safe. I didn't want to be super careful when taking pictures in Italy so I bought a new camera.

Up next in this travel series is the Musee D'Orsay and a night to train to Barcelona!

Cimetière du Père-Lachaise: Paris Part Quatre

I spent a cloudy afternoon at Cimetière du Père-Lachaise, a cemetery readers may recognize from Stephanie Perkins's Anna and the French Kiss or Vanina Marsot's Foreign Tongue. (If you sense a theme of me visiting places from these books. . . well, you're not wrong.)

The first thing you should know about Père-Lachaise is that it is HUGE:

This is a picture of me peering around a mausoleum near a path that goes on for a very long time.

Père-Lachaise features a circle with benches . . . and a speed limit sign. Graves rise up on a hill.

I felt like I was in a tiny town.

Here is a sad statue. (Although when my mother saw the picture she suggested that statue-woman simply had a headache.)

And while I'm on the subject of sadness, it's difficult to imagine coming to this place to mourn. As I wandered the cemetery with my friend, Becca, a chill breeze played with our hair and we heard ravens cawing. (If not ravens, then crows. All I know is that large black birds were making loud noises.)

We felt like we were exploring an elaborate horror movie set.

Crunchy fall leaves still littered the ground. It could've been October.

And I did not find this reassuring.

But at least this necropolis has division signs that look like street signs.

The signs didn't stop us from getting lost, though. Père-Lachaise is an astounding, wonderful (and free) place to visit but I recommend bringing a map of the cemetery or paying closer attention to the map at the front. I glanced at where Oscar Wilde's grave was and thought I could just angle in that direction. False. The graves are jumbled together in irregular lines and--as previously noted--it's a huge, huge cemetery. Becca and I didn't find a famous person's grave; we were happy enough just to find our way out.