Artist of the Day: Paris - Nichole Robertson

Last Light Nichole Robertson littlebrownpen.etsy.com

My thoughts have been on a Paris loop of late, for a variety of reasons. One, being a new friend recently returned from a trip, filled with tales of Parisian red wine. Another, the current political climate in my own country is sending me on excursions through France's political history. Yet another, I plan to inhabit the city of lights for at least a week in the near future.

Photographer Nichole Robertson's color-themed photographs, are exquisite, and a much needed respite from current news cycles, spinning like lopsided pinwheels in strong wind.

Artist Bio:Hi, I'm Nichole. I began the Paris Color Project when I moved to Paris in January 2009. What started as daily blog photos blossomed into a three-year project. I'm excited to announce that Chronicle Books is publishing a collection of photos this Spring.

When I'm not photographing Paris, eating French butter, or baking cake, I'm writing. I co-run a multi-disciplinary creative studio with my husband Evan and write copy for clients like Real Simple, Bravo TV, Tribal DDB and Estee Lauder.

I hope you enjoy browsing the photos!

Poem Therapy 2:39 - November 30, 2001: First Things at the Last Minute - Robert Hass & The Hour Until We See You - Brenda Hillman

Poet Robert Hass

First Things At the Last Minute
Robert Hass

The white water rush of some warbler's song.
Last night, a few strewings of ransacked moonlight
On the sheets. You don't know what slumped forward
In the nineteen-forties taxi or why they blamed you
Or what the altered landscape, willowy, riparian,
Had to do with the reasons why everyone
Should be giving things away, quickly,
Except for spendthrift sorrow that can't bear
The need to be forgiven and keeps looking for something
To forgive. The motion of washing machines
Is called agitation. Object constancy is a term
Devised to indicate what a child requires
From days. Clean sheets are an example
Of something that, under many circumstances,
A person can control. The patterns moonlight makes
Are chancier, and dreams, well, dreams
Will have their way with you, their way
With you, will have their way.



The Hour Until We See You
Brenda Hillman

When we part, even for an hour,
you become the standing on the avenue
baffled one, under neon,
holding that huge
red book about the capital— ;

what will you be in the next hour,
— bundled to walk
through creamy coins from streetlamps
on sidewalks to your car, past
candles reflected in windows, while
mineral sirens fade in the don’t
return,— driving home past
pre-spring plum blossom riot
moments of your thought...

Those trees rush to rust leaves,
each a time-hinge with great energy—
they can’t bear inexactitude.
News of revolts in the squares —there—
& here, the envious have gone to cafés
to speak in order to leave things out—
Love, literature is in flames,
it was meant to be specific—;
you have driven past these rooms
ten thousand times to make your report;
make your report;
never forget how you felt—

Sometimes poetry is the only thing that is capable of articulating anger,or the very thing to quench anger's fire, or direct anger to more productive use.

We are in dire need of poetry and writers. Lucky for us, we have the shoulders of past and present poets and writers on which to stand, (and in a few cases, we have metaphorical/fictitious shoulders that will serve just as well).

I've posted poems from Poet Laureate of the United States, (1995 to 1997), and Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets, (2001 to 2007), Robert Hass and his wife, Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts award winning poet, Brenda Hillman. I also posted photos of both, because I think seeing photos of both poets, illustrates the outrageousness and senslessness of the violence both recently were subjected to by Berkely police on the campus of UC Berkely.

If you haven't heard, both lauded poets were beaten, as in pushed to the ground, hit with billy clubs, while around them, other colleagues, faculty, students, and alumni, were, without provocation, beaten, dragged by the hair, pepper sprayed, arrested for peaceably assembling or being witness to the Occupy movement.

Hass recounts his experience in the New York Times Opinion section.

Holiday Reading List

I have big plans to sit in front of the fireplace in my vintage sofa chair and read all the books I can over holiday break. Here are the books in no particular order:

Satchmo Blows Up the World: Jazz as the secret weapon during the Cold War.

Longing for Darkness: Tara and the Black Madonna- China Galand: One woman's search for the divine feminine through Nepal to New Mexico.

To the Lighthouse- Virginia Woolf: Family life and all it's messiness reveal the inner world of each.

The Lost Books of the Odyssey- Zachary Mason: Homers tale remained.

Thousand Pieces of Gold- Ruthanne Lum McCunn: A favorite daughter is sold into slavery as a child and ends her life in the Frontier West.

The Anthropology of Turquoise- Ellen Meloy: The color turquoise illuminates the human attachment to landscape.

Parrot and Oliver- Peter Carey: An Improvisation on the life of Alexis de Toqueville and his traveling companion's journey to the New World.

Rules for Aging- Roger Rosenblatt: Basically, a guide on how to never grow up.

Alone with You- Marisa Silver: Stories from the author of God of War

An Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian- Sherman Alexie: A young cartoonist leaves the reservation to attend an all white school.

Little Bird of Heaven- Joyce Carol Oates: A brutal crime and it's aftermath.

Blue Flower- Penelope Fitzgerald: A story set in the age of Goethe.

Emotional Alchemy: How the Mind Can Heal the Heart- Tara Bennett Coleman: A thoughtful book about recognizing and transforming emotional patterns.

The Langauge of Trees- Ilie Ruby: A young man returns home to face his past.

How to Love: Choosing Well at Every Stage of Life- Gordon Livingston, M.D.: How to spot a freaking borderline personality at ten paces.

We Are the Stories We Tell- edited by Wendy Martin: Contemporary Women's Fiction.

Black Friday Journal

What are you doing today instead of shopping? Here's what I'm doing:

7 am: back under the covers reading about Occupy Wall Street Thanksgiving's around the country on my iPhone. (before you say anything about the subject or the phone, just really don't think Apple or individual millionaires are the 99% that's the focus of the movement).

8 am: thumbing through Holidays with Matthew Mead - who is he btw? In any case, the glitter projects remind me of mercury glass.

9 am: coffee at Granny Annie's, a local greasy spoon.

11 am: credit union.

12 pm: craft store. Yes, I bought something - intricate cake stencils.

2 pm: plokkfidkur & turkey leftovers.

3 pm: nap.

5 pm: woke from task oriented dreams to smell of unfamiliar male cologne. I thought smell was the only sense that did not lie.

6 pm: local restaurant for sushi.

7 pm: glazing ceramic peices due at the gallery this upcoming Monday. I confess I am a obsessive perfectionist,adrenaline junkie, ( but I always meet deadlines).

Thanksgiving in the Land of Deseret

I've been up for about an hour now. Both dogs are still curled into themselves, asleep. Neither budged when I got out of bed, thinking to take them outside. I'm back in bed, thinking about the order of what should be cooked first, the dishes that will be best for display and will travel best, if I'll wear jeans or a skirt. I'm mentally going down my list - I'll make my checklist one I'm out of bed for the day. Since Thanksgiving isn't at my house this year, I have the luxury of being a guest rather than the host. Instead of mad cleaning the entire house, cleaning my set of vintage silver and mix - matched white china collection, or preparing the entire feast, I'll prepare my three assigned dishes: honey glazed ham, chocolate chili spice cake, and green salad, then get everybody in the car and head south.

I'd love to know the traditional dishes my neighbors and fellow Utahans will be serving today, how they differ from family to family, and what, if any experimental dishes will be on the menu. One new dish we'll be having is a Finnish halibut potato mash. I'm making chocolate chili spice cake instead of regular spice cake because my father objected, mainly because I made it Sunday and he's been eating it all week and he wants something else.

I am a closet sentimentalist, so Thanksgiving always has me on the verge of making cliched toasts about family and love and gratitude. You'll be relieved to know, I've spared friends and family, what could potentially be long winded, platitude filled, never-ending speeches, because I am unusually prone to being sneak attacked by emotion. I cry easily. I can't help it.

I come from a very large family: mother and father; two brothers, four sisters, and me; twenty-eight nieces and nephews, and fifteen great- nieces & nephews. One branch of the family is tangled right now, but I'm hopeful that there will be positive resolution. The prodigal son sort, not The Godfather sort. Today I am grateful for all fifty- two. And I'm grateful for my own tiny clan of twelve. All we have is each other. Thanksgiving is a holiday that reminds me of Rumi's "Guest House" in which being human is a guest house and each emotion is a guest. On this holiday family gathers together, and each member is an aspect or reflection of ourselves, and we should be grateful to them, even if they clear our house, because, they may indeed be preparing us for some new delight.

I resolve to be grateful every day.

The Coffee Project: November 19 & 20, 2011

November 20, 2011.

November 19, 2011.

Two recent photos from the coffee shop after a long hiatus of not posting daily documentary photos.

Artist of the Day: The Mincemeat Pie - Lucile Prache

The Mincemeat Pie Lucile Prache luciles-kitchen.blogspot.com & lucileskitchen.etsy.com

Thanksgiving is in two days. This year it's at my brother's house. It's two years running now that I haven't hosted the big event. I am making a sugar crust spice cake and a honey-glazed ham.

Last year I had houseguests from Brazil visiting. Thanksgiving was at my sister's house. It was just fabulous to bring a dish, rather than prepare the entire feast. And better still to share a very American holiday and my family with my friends.

Four years ago I had six new friends from China I'd met at work, join me for Thanksgiving. They brought wine. I brewed tea , something I had never done for the day before. Also, I had never seen my father act so solicitious. He helped each young woman with their coat, I was shocked. He complimented them on their hair, clothing, eyes. Shocked again. Then showed them to their seat, and he sat right in the middle and launched right back to the Pacific, ca. 1946. He had an audience, and they had a living library. Not shocked one bit.

One year my father requested a mincemeat pie so I obliged by cooking a traditional pie with meat and brandy. He loved it. It was horrible. Truly.

Prache's lovely mincemeat illustration is a palatable contemporary recipe. To see more of her work, check out her etsy shop, blog, or website.

Artist Bio:l
Hello ! I am Lucile, a french illustrator living in Paris, in France, welcome in my kitchen/studio.

Here you will see botanical plates, illustrated recipes, cakes and macarons, artwork on vintage french letters, silkscreens, I am always trying to learn even more about graphic techniques and international food. If I am not in my studio, I am walking in the inspiring parisian streets ...

Work in progress in the lucile's kitchen blog :
luciles-kitchen.blogspot.com/

Please have a look at my illustrator's website, and you will know much more about my work :lucileprache.com

Facebook fan page :
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Luciles-kitchen/197554960274042?sk=wall