my first completely casual art show in Paris!

Hello everyone! So I have been neglecting my blog...again! But there has been lots of amazing things going on here in Paris, including a little art show I had with Carla Crawford (a South African photographer and amazing human being). Here are some pictures from our opening.

Paris Updated

Hello all! So I am alive and kickin it in Paris still. Its been amazing thus far. I literally have my socks knocked off at every turn...but thankfully for everyone involved I have been documenting the fabulous things I have encountered. So here is some of the photography work I have done here so far. Enjoy!

Bonjour from the Cite Internationale des Artes!

Hello all! Finally I am in Paris in my beautiful and snug (my pillow is literally about 3 feet from my kitchen sink!) little studio. It is unreal! I can literally throw a stone into the seine from my window and I look out right onto Notre Dame...because an entire SIDE of my apartment in floor to ceiling windows. Like I said...UNREAL.

My atrocious french is starting to get less atrocious but its really a very relaxed atmosphere within the Cite's residents because every one of us is foreign. So there are a lot of warm smiles and broken sentences all around but overall there is a real sense of appreciating the fact that language skills are NOT why we came here and that each person you are speaking to is a very special artist (in his or her own way) to even be residing here. In other words, the vibe is totally bitchin.

The other day I had a very lovely pumpkin and trout soup at a Scandanavian restaurant down the block with a young woman I met here named Valentina. She is from Mexico and is an experimental musician! My first experimental musician friend!!! This is all very exciting. She actually just finished touring with a rock opera in mexico before she came here, but this is her album cover from her latest La Valentina...and its hella good! If anyone is interested in more of her work you can find it at www.valentina.com.mx/

Ok thats it for now. au revoir from your favorite American in Paris!

Equally Yours Billboard

So finally here are the pics of my billboard spot I won in the Equally Yours competition. Its on 5th and Muhammad Ali and can be seen driving/walking up 5th street. Thanks so much to Christa Faulkner and everyone who was involved in this event!

The title of the piece featured is

Heroine in Wire: When I Am Old It Will Be Said I Was Once A Strawberry-Seed Kite

Today Is October 14

So I have this odd habit of looking up random dates on Wikipedia to see what events took place on them. It may sound crazy but I love this...it's like telling the "life story" of a day. I always picture little tics on the side of a door (like when you measure your kid's growth spurt) that are labled "the battle of so-and-so" or "judy garland born" or "first whatever produced". So I will let you in on my strange little hobby today October 14, 2009.

October 14, 1789--George Washington proclaims the first Thanksgiving Day (oohlala today marks its 220th anniversary!)

October 14, 1839--Death of Jean-Louis Pons, French astronomer and greatest comet discoverer of all time (discovered 37 comets from self-designed telescopes!)

October 14, 1884--George Eastman patents paper-strip photographic film

October 14, 1888--Louis Le Prince films first motion picture Roundhay Garden Scene

October 14, 1890--Dwight D. Eisenhower born

October 14, 1893--E.E. Cummings born

October 14, 1906--Hannah Arendt (German-Jewish theorist and first female full professor at Princeton) born

October 14, 1926--Winnie-the-Pooh is published by A.A. Milne

October 14, 1933--Nazi Germany withraws from the League of Nations

October 14, 1939--Ralph Lauren born

October 14, 1962--Cuban Missile Crisis begins when a U-2 flight over cuba takes photos of Soviet nuclear weapons being installed

October 14, 1968--First live telecast from a manned U.S. spacecraft Apollo 7

October 14, 1976--Ben Pridmore, World Memory Champion born

October 14, 1979--First Gay Rights March on Washington D.C. (turning 30 this year!)

October 14, 1982--Ronald Reagan declare the "War on Drugs"

October 14, 1990--Death of composer Leonard Bernstein

October 14, 1994--Yasser Arafat, Yitzak Rabin and Shimon Peres recieve the Nobel Peace Prize

October 14-- Teacher Day in Poland!

October 14--Turnip Day on French Republican Calendar!

October 14--World Standards Day!

So just go ahead and chew on that y'all. Happy October 14.

Hello all! So seeing as we are not all in a calamitous state of disaster...I think we will live to tell the tale of the moon bomb. But to be honest...I don't think it was successful as they had planned...due to the fact that it WASN'T visible from space (as nasa had proclaimed to backyard astronomers nationwide)...and also a doofy looking dude in a red shirt was totally snubbed a high five from a guy who rushed out of the room after the "impact". coincidence? you decide. ok on to other news.

I sold a piece of art! The proud new owner of one of my babies is Angela! She is pictured below at the the booth my dad and I set up at the Belknap Art Fair in Louisville. Thanks so much Angela! Enjoy!

Goodnight Moon

FYI America is bombing the moon early tomorrow. Yes. They are BOMBING the moon. Now I'm not a particularly avid or well versed astronomer... and usually I am inclined to give respect to the ideas of people who have made careers out of studying subjects which fascinate them... But seriously NASA? I think this is a completely terrible idea! The mission is aimed at trying to uncover water vapor or ice within the debris to see if the moon has a water cycle.

Yes, we are all very curious about water on the moon... it's a BIG deal and understanding how water behaves on the moon will be added to humanity's "truly-invaluable-information" shelf, I'm sure. But I think that if the most delicate way humans can currently go about collecting that information still resides within the realm of "let's see what happens when we blow shit up"... we're not as clever as we seem. And should this mission be successful, I fear that we will not be able to resist using the same technique to further future investigations of other planetary bodies... and I can't imagine how that WOULDN'T come back to bite us in the ass eventually.

Some links to articles about it... if anybody is actually reading this blog I'd love to hear your opinion.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=nasas-mission-to-bomb-the-moon-2009-06

http://www.abcnews.go.com/Technology/nasa-moon-bombing-lcross-probe-lunar-ice/story?id=8775640

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113620797

And Moon, for the record, I apologize for all this. I had nothing to do with planning it, but I'm sorry I couldn't prevent it. I hope it isn't any worse than the zonked-out asteroids you meet. Please get better soon.

Love,

Sarah