until I started having to make hard decisions about my toiletries. Honestly, I don't why I have half of these things. It's a packing day for me. : )

I love my little voodoo office man. He's been my cubicle mate for a few years now. He's one of the things I was a little sad to pack up, along with my collection of Chinese Buddha figures. This was my last full week in the office. Next Wednesday is my last day and then I'm off. Rushed as everything has been, I've still had the time to get nostalgic over New York. For example, I took a cab through a McDonald's drive thru last night. How amazing is that? And this morning I can see a water tower with an orange roof against the blue sky. I love being in the city. That said, I've been itching to travel for the past year. I traveled a lot before settling in New York, and I didn't realize when I took my first job that I really would have only two weeks vacation. With holidays and and family, two weeks goes quickly. Not to mention, one job leads to another... Next thing you know, years of your life have passed. Quitting may be the best thing I've ever done for myself. Being in an unknown place awakens me to my surroundings. It's easier to notice the different patterns of life. New York isn't going anywhere, but this is a great chance for me to explore and write. It sounds incredibly indulgent, but I'm proud of myself--even if my novel is utter crap. And of course, I won't miss these stacks of papers!

I noticed Richard Wood's new work being put up at the Lever House the other night. The artist is covering parts of the exterior with patterned fiberglass panels. The British artist designed William Morris-inspired natural patterns and mock Tudor styles in saturated colors to liven up the facade of the once-sleek, Modernist structure. Prior to this installation, the Lever House had commissioned Barbara Kruger to cover the walls with her typically graphic slogans. Here we have another design-oriented, saturated, flat approach to taking over the building by covering it in the respective artist's trademark style. It is as if different artists each have their chance to tag the building. Except of course, this is hardly illicit behavior. It is instead commissioned, no doubt for a pretty sum, authorized, and displayed like the status mark it is. Installation by day- mostly complete While Kruger's installation got some flack on this blog, at least it said something. A trite, literal something--but it attempted a statement. Wood's installation has no such purpose. It is a design--patterns I would buy an H+M skirt or IKEA tiles in quite happily. I think it is attractive. I cannot think of something more devoid of content. hThe interest is supposed to lie in playing historical styles against one another. The title of this project, Port Sunlight, is a reference to the history of the building just as his designs refer to the history of architecture. I don't know--do you think that there is anything more to be said about it? If so, you can check out this press release with more details on it. k

The internet has everything in spades, not least of them t shirts and magazines. But these two enterprises came to my attention lately, and I quite like them. 1) kafkacotton Put your favorite book on your chest, with these literary inspired t-shirts. My friend Brian just started this operation, so kudos to him. The design at left is from Kafka's Metamorphosis, thus the cockroach on his back saying "Oh Bother." I love it, but I'm tore between this and the Alice and Wonderland t shirt. (Hint hint, nudge nudge, Christmas is coming.) 2) Escape Into LifeThis webzine is like culture megalomania at its best. Want poetry, fine art, and general thoughts on creativity and genius? It's here. Not to mention, the site helps artists sell their work through an auction process (which, granted, I don't fully understand.) The people writing for it are the Web 2.0 version of citizen journalists with an interest in the arts, and, full disclosure, I hope to submit something really spiffy to them in future. So that makes for two great endeavors, completely despite my status as an interested party. Hopefully I'll be able to give both my more thorough attention when I have a permanent residence again. I moved my stuff into storage yesterday morning, and took my few-too-many bags over to a friend's house for the night. You know you've overpacked when you can't carry everything by yourself. I need to edit my luggage down. But luckily I have some really nice friends who I'll be staying with for the week while I tie up a few loose ends, i.e. my job and finding a place to live on St. Maarten.8 days until I leave!

The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer This sculpture is actually a 1922 cast done from a mixed-media sculpture by Degas modeled around 1879–80. It is bronze, but-unusually for the time-included a real bodice, skirt and hair ribbon. This unorthodox use of materials and the realistic manner of sculpting the dance student led to a divided opinion of Degas's work at the time. He was not then known as a sculptor; indeed, he sculpted much as some artists sketch, in order to work out compositional problems rather than create a final artwork. Degas died in 1917. This cast was made 1922. More than 150 pieces of sculpture were found in his studio, and used in limited series of 20 pieces produced by the Paris foundry of Adrien Hébrard. Given this timeline (more here), it is remarkable that "a complete set of 74 plaster sculptures of dancers, bathers and horses attributed to Edgar Degas" have recently been discovered amounting to what The Times refers to as "either one of the most extraordinary art finds of the past 100 years or one of the most exquisite frauds to be attempted." You know I love a good art fraud, but this one slipped under my radar, so how pleased was I when the article's author Zoe Blackler emailed me about it yesterday? You can read her story here. The plaster casts pictured above were made, supposedly, during Degas's life from wax models that were found in his apartment at his death. Of course, bronze statues cast from these plaster ones would be worth a huge amount of money, assuming they are genuine. (A separate argument would ask if something cast to replicate a Degas is quite the same as if Degas were alive and part of the process of creation.) Which is the crux of the thing. The story goes that these plasters were made for a friend and forgotten about, eventually ending up in the storage at the Valsuani Foundry in 1955. Odd for them to end up there, and be discovered now. I vote fakes. But then having read Loot and all about Vermeer forgeries, of course I am suspicious. What do you think?

Excuse the saccharine image, but I have good reason to be chuffed and post image of baby ducks in rows. In my long hiatus from posting I have sublet my apartmentquit my jobbought a plane ticket to Saint Maartenall the while enduring horrible travel ordeals to spend Thanksgiving with my boyfriend's family, only to rush home yesterday and spend it packing up all our personal possessions, in order to put them in storage before the subletters move in tommorow morningIt's all worked out so well so quickly I've hardly thought anything through. That's not exactly true, of course; I had been trying to move to the Caribbean for the winter ever since my boyfriend's was approved to work remotely. But nothing was working out until last Tuesday morning, and now suddenly I have a whole new adventure ahead of me. We'll be there until March. I'm going to focus on my writing. I plan to finish my novel and start sending out query letters. I also am going to do some travel blogging, and hopefully scour up some other freelance opportunities. It's a pretty amazing opportunity, even aside from the beaches and sun. That's kind of like the icing on the cake. I feel very, very lucky.

Ah, love that title. It's from my new article on the Tim Burton at MoMA exhibition up on Blogcritics. To wit: It certainly must feel strange for an isolated kid from the suburbs of California to have hundreds of his drawings and objects ensconced in an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. No less so because he is known for his films rather than his drawings. Yet if the opening crowds are anything to judge by, most museum-goers are nothing but thrilled to see this exhaustive exhibition of 700+ works related to Tim Burton's career. The crowds are right, for the same aesthetic binds Burton's early work to his later films.Face the crowds you must, if you want to wander through the strange byproducts of Burton's imaginative mind. MoMA created a great entrance: through the mouth of a monster you enter a black and white striped hall lined with TVs playing a series of Stainboy animations. Then you enter a dark room where a carousel turns to creepy carnival music and glow-in-the-dark paintings on black velvet stare out at you. Next you enter the well-lit, white-walled galleries of MoMA – but even here things don't return to normalcy. The walls are filled with hundreds of sketches of monsters and people on everything from canvas to cocktail napkins. Rest here. And a happy weird Tuesday to you all. h

So you can expect the crowd to be double the size of the one pictured above, of people waiting for the Tim Burton book signing from Wednesday. From what I saw over the weekend, this is going to be a very popular exhibition. Tim Burton did this great ad for his show at MoMA (although I'm a little unsure where MoMA would advertise). Luckily it's up through April, so if you want to see it you can wait until the crowds die down a little. Exhibition entrance