inspirations on a cloudy summer sunday morning

I often get carried away, reading about my favorite artists, musicians and people of letters and culture on wikipedia. it's the ultimate lazy way to obtain knowledge or refresh it, for that matter, on the cluster or group a certain individual ran in as well. all of the collaborators are links right there.

say you want to know more on Twin Peaks, as I did this morning. This leads to Peggy Lipton, the Jewish mod squad actor/model who happened to be married to Quincy Jones, the producer of Thriller. I'm sure you all know how wikipedia works and this is no news to you.

But I'm just saying, the reason I am now listening to the Miles & Quincy live at Montreaux recording is because of this particular morning's ADD pursuit.

Along the way I came across several fascinating interviews with David Lynch (one of which highlightened (or reinforced, rather) just how much of a dunce David Letterman was/is/ most likely will be. 

A story in the New Yorker left me 

Project Submittal

Today is July 1st, and also my first project permit submittal to the City of San Diego building department! I'm excited, because the project is all my own. In actuality, the process of submitting an architectural project is much like going to the DMV. More on this after the appointment!

ill

"no one can survive doing as much as you're doing and at the pace that you're doing it. the stress you're putting on yourself is too overwhelming."

words from a close friends I have to examine more closely these next few days, as I lethargically shuffle around my apartment, at the tail end of a strong bronchitis.

solstice

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Yoga Is My Evening Job

Apparently I'm not nearly the only one who has chosen to practice and teach yoga as a second job.

Today I read this article that talks about the many who train to become yoga teachers as their second or third career.

As for me, maybe one day I'll own my own studio and delve into yoga full time, but for my yoga teaching will continue to coast along, concurrently with my architecture career development.

It's a fantastic balance to being a designer; designers self sacrifice to a fault. We don't sleep, we hardly eat or put ourselves first when a deadline or a project is at stake. Yoga, for me, is the complete opposite end of that destructive spectrum - yoga is about balance, self-nourishment and clarity. Even when you're giving selflessly to your students, the gratifying effects are deep-felt.

So if any of you out there are considering yoga teacher training as a means to deepen your personal practice or an a possible second job, I say go for it.

I was lucky enough to complete my 200 hr training at Prana Yoga Center in La Jolla, CA under the renowned Gerhard Gessner. It's a studio that specializes in Vinyasa Flow yoga and has a very impressive roster of teachers who are part of the training.

Even though this week has been so incredibly busy at the architecture office, I'm putting together a summer outdoors practice schedule. Watch out for the launch of my yoga site, I'm aiming at a June 15 release date!

Today I'm moving to South Park. But for now I'm going to yoga!


The entire loft is stacked high in boxes... Hadley's suspicious & knows somethins up.

I'm back! Almost...

Tonight I'm putting yogurt & honey on my skin, chamomile tea on my eyes and avocado in my hair. Then I'm going to bed at 9. After I shower of course...




I haven't written a thing for the past few months, but it's for happy reasons.

   Reason_1: I'm gone to work as a designer for a wonderful little architecture firm! We work    on alot of residential projects, and the office is on Cedros, in Solana Beach. It's two blocks from the beach in the charming little design district. I'm thrilled, but haven't stopped running around since mid-January.

   Reason_2: I've been teaching 7 yoga classes a week, some during work hours, some before / after work in addition to JLC. Being employed at two different places,  it's needless to say my car looks like I live in it full time. 

So I haven't had much time for much else. I miss Hadley and when I come home at night she gallops toward me through the loft, eagerly slipping on the hardwood. My heart melts and I forget how exhausted I am for a few minutes as we embrace and say hello. 

But I'm not complaining; I am overjoyed and grateful that my opposite dual careers are both starting to take off. I'll begin to retro-document soon, and post, now that I'm starting to adjust to my 80-hour / week work schedule.

New Year's Eve 2013: A Style RETROSPECT

WHAT I WISH I WAS WEARING:

this is my new years eve girl: I really like her attitude!

 

WHAT I ACTUALLY WORE:

// Cluny silk kimono dress

// Anthropologie lace & velour green/yellow/black pumps [a Spanish shoe designer called Anastasia]

// Marc Jacobs evening cross-body purse/clutch

// Teased hair + eyeliner, blush + mascara  [I only wear makeup on super big deal occasions! or when I feel like    getting creative for the sake of an outfit]

My long time tradition of bathroom photos continues... As our celebration was fairly low key compared to the usual big deal I like to make of this annual evening, I snuck a quick photo in the restroom mirror of Craft & Commerce, since we didn't have a camera!

E l e v e n days into the N e w Y e a r

And now on a happier note [and I realize this is a bit late]: Happy happy new year everyone! You may not be aware, but New Year's Eve day and its late night celebration are my Christmas. Well, quite literally actually. 

Since the former USSR was a strictly secular country when I was growing up, New Year's Eve was the most glamorous, cozy and exciting night of the year. The morning of, many women would get facials, take long baths and prepare party food for the evening. The gentlemen, as I recall, would buy champagne, take the kids to the park for a bit, and clean the house for guests. 

I recall multiple years taking a nap around 2pm, and not waking up until 5:30, so I'd be able to stay up later. I'd wake up tingling with excitement, take a bath and put on the new party dress bought for the occasion.  I'd welcome family friends as adults walked around in glamorous dresses and edgy suits, spreading cream table spreads on combined tables. There would be a Christmas tree with a plethora of presents, music, dancing, champagne and I'd get to stay up past 4 in the morning.

So as a keepsake from my childhood, I take waving farewell to the old year and welcoming in the new one really seriously. 

On the Last Friday of 2012, it Snowed

These past two weeks I've spent in the Midwest. As soon as I land and step off the plane, a deep comfort begins to awaken somewhere deep within me, radiating through me, somehow making a crumpled up piece of paper laying by my favorite corner bar feel sentimental.

But this past year has come with alot of mixed feelings. Too many sad events. I have been so scared lately. Worried. About my family, that's had to suffer the deaths of two family members this past year. But more than anything I'm worried about my Mom. I could try to explain here how much I love her, and how completely alone I'd feel without her by me, and how I'm starting to feel that I've lived too far, having moved here to the West Coast, and for too long, without living une vie quotidienne near her. This past year has made me morbid and scared. But it wasn't without joy either. Despite it all, every day there is something to feel incredibly giddy about. This dichotomy of life is so fascinating, so much happening simultaneously, taking us from inspired and exuberant to devastated. Tragedy interlaced with sheer, pure happiness.  That's what makes the experience of oneself and all that's around us so thrilling.

And seeing as how this is the last Friday in 2012, and it's snowing gorgeous soft snowflakes in Milwaukee, I can't help but feel grateful amidst harsh realities. Grateful for every moment, every sensation, grateful for my beautiful mother and her soft voice and for how she still handfeeds me berries [read: stuffs them into my mouth as though I were 2] as I sit at my laptop, designing or researching.

There's a new year around the corner that I'm completely not ready for. Or maybe I am. Maybe if I keep living in the moment like this I won't mind that the year is here before I'm ready for it.

I'd like to wish everyone who reads this a mindful, introspective new year. May you live in the moment much more often, stop to acknowledge how grateful you are to be where you are, and enjoy all of the beautiful ephemera that life gives us.

Happiness Is A Warm Puppy, Even If Said Puppy Might Be High

Pauli's MKE Guide _ part I

Milwaukee has a fantastic scene of laid-back gourmet that I feel compelled to write about.

coming very soon...

a  x p o l l i n a t e  s t u d i o  guide to MKE's authentic cool and delicious

-Alterra Foundry
-Beans & Barley
-Comet Cafe
- & more

crepe + design work sunday

inspiration for myself... and hopefully you too!

whether you think you can

or think you can't,

YOU ARE RIGHT.          Henry Ford    (unfortunately)

A C T I O N

Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action. 

                                                                                                        William James

Baking Without Rules

I've heard before that cooking is an art and baking is a science. I'm not sure where, perhaps my grandmother said it. I suppose it's true,

the most evident difference between cooking and baking is that baking is often times a precise chemistry and the specific intersection of proportion to degree of heat; therefore it's success, in large, is directly correlated to one's ability to follow a recipe closely. But something strange happens every time I attempt to commit to trying a new recipe: I begin to analyze and immediately deviate from it almost immediately. And unfortunatley [or maybe quite fortunately] as positive reinforcement, the baked good turns out delicious anyway.

Yoga Teachin

I'm on the schedule! Yay!!

This past month I went to work for Hapa Yoga, a fresh new San Diego studio right off the 805.

I got the job thanks to my friend Lisa, with whom I did the 200 hr YTT at Prana. She brought me to a challenging Ashtanga class taught by Roberta, [previous owner of Bird Rock Yoga] at Hapa a few weeks back. I began by subbing several classes, and now I'm on the schedule Mondays and Tuesdays! I love designing new sequences and having this balance with the design life, but most of all, what makes it truly worthwhile is seeing students walk away satisfied and visibly more happy than when they  came in. If you're in San Diego, come take my class! First one is on Hapa Yoga!! Check out the schedule and studio at Hapa Yoga


I'm designing my yoga resume and website today. For a long time now I've had this dream of teaching urban intervention yoga classes outdoors, for donations, since as far as I see it, the money's less important than people expanding their practice into the urban and outdoor environment, and getting comfortable with focusing on themselves anywhere. I figured a well-designed site will help me spread the word, since I've been really bad at emailing my friends and those I know to spread the word.

So far other than a grid layout I've designed a chart of what type of yoga I practice and teach. I used Excel for the accuracy and Illustrator for aesthetic. I realize designing sequences isn't part of teaching, but it does fit into time I take out of architecture and tutoring French and that's solely devoted to my yoga practice, education and teaching.

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Snacking is critical to designing yoga graphics

The Time Kengo Kuma Lectured In San Diego

My frustration of not having a proper, full-time, salaried position was temporarily alleviated during the Kengo Kuma lecture at Woodbury University two weeks ago. For those who aren't familiar, Kuma is a Japanese architect.

His design theory touches materiality and structural design. There is a quality of emergent complexity to his work, where the structural rationale begins with a component that is iteratively and uniformly applied and repeated, until it populates a spatial span.

He was humble, soft-spoken and inspiring. He sounded like an architect devoted to and fascinated by his methodology and approach, and is committed to seeing an idea through, with a relentless patience.

Hand-drafting Sunday: the beginning of an isometric projection.

And I'm still wearing my hat on a daily basis.

Possible Design Portfolio Segment

Last March, after working on several personal projects with X - P o l l i n a t e Studio, I went to intern for Estudio Teddy Cruz, a local theoretical celebrity whose speculative work is published frequently and reaches architecture schools and publications globally. 

His Social Contracts tactics, the socio-economic and political groundwork for realizing architecture, is critical today more than ever, with the economic gap so drastically disparate. I'm a huge admirer or his design activism, and thus really want to include some of the info-graphics I worked on in the office in my portfolio. However, I'm just not certain that the story-boards read as well out of the context of his retrospect.

Those of you who are design savvy, please weigh in, I'd like to hear your opinion, on whether a diagram like the one below reads well enough to make it into a design portfolio. I've been toying with the idea of other info-graphics, but this one is critical to a local skate park project in San Diego. Thus far I've removed it, but I might add it back in, in some other capacity. Maybe play with scale, add text,or just feature an excerp. Thanks for the feedback!

Knitting As Therapy

So it's taken me about a year, but I've finally finished my first ever knitting project, which I began in Milwaukee last October. The awesome object you see hanging out on my head is my scarf-turned-slouchy hat.


Originally, I began knitting at a time when things were tough for my family in Milwaukee. Last year around this time, my grandmother spent many months in and out of the hospital, following an unsuccesful heart surgery. I flew home in October and helped out by staying at the hospital with her, as the Russian - English translator for the doctors and support and company for her. I decided to take up knitting to pass the time, as she mostly slept throughout the days. One of my mother's piano students, a teacher and expert knitter by the name of Rebecca, sat down with me and patiently showed me how to cast on stitches, then how to maneuver the knit and the purl stitch.

It was a bittersweet Autumn; spending time with my family in Milwaukee and being back home was amazing, while the inevitable situation with my grandma Ida was pressing and terribly hard on all of us. I found comfort in slowly working on my architecture portfolio, practicing yoga, spending time with my grandpa [the funniest and most upbeat individual I've come across in my entire life] visiting local firms whose work I admired, hanging out with friends from high school, drinking way too many cappuccinos at Alterra, and taking walks with my mom and Hadley in the autumn leaves. And knitting at the hospital. Often making mistakes, even starting this scarf-hat over a few times.

My grandma passed away in early February of this year. Tragically, and completely unexpectedly, my uncle, her only son, died suddenly of a heart attack six weeks before this. To even attempt to write about the sentiments and feelings my family has been experiencing wouldn't explain the half of it.

But strangely, as I reflect on last year's events, I can honestly say that knitting helped me; emotionally, it taught me, like yoga, to be more patient and introspective, and less hard on myself. Apparently making stitching mistakes is actually really really good for detail-oriented perfectionists like myself. Go figure. This may come across contrived, but it truly did change me. And even with the uneven stitches, the random switching of pattern and the occassional hole, I am going to wear my hat proudly, as I am doing today, and will be until California becomes too warm for one again.