Gabby Gaustad / Lisbon 2009 / Photo by Jeff Povelaites
Lisbon is one of those cities I’d like to move to for 3 months just to look cool and have my friends back home say, “Yeah, I think he’s in Lisbon at the moment,” whenever people ask about me. If people ask about me.
My cousin Jeff just sent me this photograph he shot of his wife Gabby Gaustad on a city street in Lisbon. They’re both graduates of MIT and probably built the camera the photo was shot on. Gabby is easily one of the smartest people I know—a PHD in something that could potentially make the Earth implode. But look how stylish she is. Scientists, take note: more of you need to learn how to pose.
This photo pretty much captures my whole idyllic vision of the lost European city. It makes me think of Berlin in the early 80s when David Bowie was living with Iggy Pop and writing “China Girl” in the wake of a punk club riot.
Today, Kodak announced that they will be discontinuing Kodachrome, one of the company’s longest standing film products. If you ever flipped through an old National Geographic, and wondered how they got the colors of the photos to look like that, Kodachrome is your answer. As a boy from Rochester, home to Kodak and the Kodachrome legacy, it’s particularly sad to see it go.
There’s something quintessentially American about Kodachrome film. Vibrant and rich, earnest and humble—the spirit of the poet, the rebel and the monk all blended within its chemistry.
“We Saw,” Antoni Ooto & Sparrow Hall. Copyright 2009. All rights reserved. Photo by Sparrow Hall.
“We Saw” is a piece my father and I created while I was in Rochester this weekend. It’s comprised of found wood debris and a Stanley hand saw. The photo was taken in my father’s studio.
My father recently began incorporating three dimensional objects into his work. One of his new pieces, entitled “Mixed Metaphors,” is currently hanging at High Falls Gallery in Rochester, NY.
“We Saw” (pictured above) was an experiment in using found objects to tell a larger story—the naturally dismembered tree limbs and hand saw playing a dual role of stroke and subject matter.
A friend took me to the New York City Ballet for the first time this weekend. It was incredible. Especially the Philip Glass pieces, which were all about color and space and synchronicity. I felt like I was watching an 80s music video. If you’ve never been to the New York City Ballet (NYCB), I highly recommend it. Just make sure you go when their featuring at least one of Glass’s pieces. You can view the schedule here.
The NYCB is housed within Lincoln Center at the the David H. Koch Theater, designed by Philip Johnson. The space is immense and elegant and a temple to all things 60’s mod. Walking along one of the lobby terraces, you feel like an assassin from a James Bond film.
I started collecting art back in college… when it was called stealing. I still do. Collect, that is. But these two have taken it to an entirely different level. If you have a favorite artist who worked sometime during the 20th Century, it’s likely that Herbert Vogel, a postal clerk, and Dorothy Vogel, a librarian, have an original under their bed.
