I came across Daisy Lew‘s design portfolio today and was immediately drawn to her pop-up series of New York City icons.
I have a crazy mad love for pop-up books. My roommate has a How-To book in the bookshelf for making your own pop-up…one of these days I’m going take a serious crack at it. I swear.
I’m really digging these hand-cut paper maps of cities by Charlotte, North Carolina-based artist Karen O’Leary. Karen says of her work, “”I love the idea of a completely familiar object made new and even more beautiful.”
Here’s a map for Audrey to use when she comes to visit me in New York.
And here’s one for me to use when I visit her in London.
We definitely won’t find our way around using these maps, but hey, that’s not the point.
If you’re able, go see the Yoshitomo Nara exhibit at the Asia Society before it closes on January 2. Nara is a culty neo-pop artist from Japan, whose work exemplifies the Japanese concept of kowa kawaii, or “creepy cuteness”. The show is a retrospective of his entire career, from the 1980’s to today. Many of his images are well-known so I was especially interested to see some of his pen-on-paper drawings and sketches.
Yesterday I stopped by one of my favorite places on Earth, The Doughnut Plant. Owner Mark Isreal bakes and sells doughnuts on the Lower East Side using his grandfather’s recipe from the 1930’s.
The Doughnut Plant sells both cake doughnuts and yeast doughnuts, and the flavors change often depending on the season. Currently the seasonal flavors include Pomegranate, Panetton, Marzipan, Roasted Chestnut, and Gingerbread.
POMEGRANATE
PANETTON
MARZIPAN
Tres Leches and Coconut Cream are two of my favorites that are always on the menu. Yesterday I also spotted a Peanut Butter Glazed Doughnut with Blackberry Jelly that looked right up my alley. Mmmmmmmmm doughnuts…..
..More than anything else, however, what he liked to do was walk. Nearly every day, rain or shine, hot or cold, he would leave his apartment to walk through the city — never really going anywhere, but simply going wherever his legs happened to take him.
New York was an inexhaustible space, a labyrinth of endless steps, and no matter how far he walked, no matter how well he came to know its neighborhoods and streets, it always left him with the feeling of being lost. Lost, not only in the city, but within himself as well. Each time he took a walk, he felt as though he were leaving himself behind, and by giving himself up to the movement of the streets, by reducing himself to a seeing eye, he was able to escape the obligation to think, and this, more than anything else, brought him a measure of peace, a salutatory emptiness within. The world was outside of him, around him, before him, and the speed with which it kept changing made it impossible for him to dwell on any one thing for very long. Motion was of the essence, the act of putting one foot in front of the other and allowing himself to follow the drift of his own body. By wandering aimlessly, all places became equal, and it no longer mattered where he was. On his best walks, he was able to feel that he was nowhere. And this, finally, was all he ever asked of things: to be nowhere. New York was the nowhere he had built around himself, and he realized that he had no intention of ever leaving it again.
(Paul Auster, City of Glass)
Come On Closer 