September 2nd, 2010 | General, Health
My first class starts at nine o’clock tomorrow morning. That means I will rise at six, shower and dress to create a proper first impression, eat, scan the Baltimore Sun, and get on the road by seven. I-95 is a horror show during rush hour. It shouldn’t take more than...
August 31st, 2010 | Genealogy, General
One finds relatives in the most unexpected places. I know a lot about my relatives. I am that family member—and there is always one—endowed with the genealogy gene. I inherited the published books, the old photographs, letters and diaries, and the odd notes and...
August 21st, 2010 | General
The effect is not quite as I wanted. Pam’s bridal bouquet included flowers that shone like molten gold in the Texas sun. The stripes I hook are wine-red, heather-ish green, coral, eggshell and black. The colors are close enough, though. The blanket is for the baby, a...
August 13th, 2010 | General, visual arts
It’s over and done with and Abdi, as the “Next Great Artist,” will exhibit his work at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. The check for $100,000.00, he says, will go to his mother. In ten years, however, or ten months or ten days, will anyone remember? Will anyone care? Just...
August 5th, 2010 | General, the world and Mother Nature, visual arts
Bill Powers led the Final Five into the woods. China Chow, draped in earth-toned cloak, presented them to “Nature herself” and gave instructions to incorporate something they found, something “without a pulse,” into their works. She also mentioned that this task would...
July 30th, 2010 | General, visual arts
I found a certain irony in Challenge 8. Last week I railed about the triviality of the challenges. I even weighed in on the subject on Jerry Saltz’s New York magazine blog where some of the more interesting discussions about the show take place. This week the Great...
July 22nd, 2010 | General
I cannot begin to express how much I dislike China Chow. I dislike everything about her and when she turns to the “winner” and says, “You made a true work of art,” I just wanna send her to her room for a permanent time-out. A list-serve friend described episode seven...
July 18th, 2010 | General, Popular Culture, visual arts
In episode 6, a collaborative challenge was custom-designed for drama, an art school equivalent of shirts and skins in gym class. BRAVO producers determined that interpersonal tensions are entertaining in a way that the creation of art is not. In the first five...
July 17th, 2010 | General, Travel, United States
I love horses. I always have. I was a typically horse-crazy girl, collecting china figurines, assembling the stable of my dreams on note cards (drawing on one side, statistics on the other), reading everything published by Walter Farley and Marguerite Henry as well as...
July 9th, 2010 | General, Popular Culture, visual arts
I predict that Miles will take home the prize. I thought this might be the case as early as the first challenge and was moderately certain by the second. I will be genuinely surprised at this point if he loses. Miles will win, not because of Simon de Pury’s...
