12.12.10
4.12.10
Open Windows
This is an image from the film Bright Star about John Keats and his love, Fanny Brawn. A lovely film. The scene is so quiet and beautiful. The colors, the sound, the feeling...everything. I can't quite shake it.
29.9.10
22.8.10
Squash Blossoms
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My mom sent me this picture with her iPhone yesterday. It always feels like a small miracle to me each time that she conquers technology to send me these visual nuggets from back home. She titled it "Anna Time/Harvest Time". Baskets nestled in the grass with their garden treasures. Usually around my birthday she calls me to tell me the story of when she was in labor with me, listening to the crickets at our old kitchen table, stopwatch in hand. Timing contractions on a hot and still summer night. Almost 30 years ago. Wasn't that long ago that I was just a squash blossom in a basket...fresh out of the garden.
It's been an amazing year.
8.8.10
16.7.10
18.6.10
New Momma
A new little gosling has arrived back in Minnesota.
John Ringer Leavenworth
sending all my love to this new little man and my lovely Libby. xo
27.4.10
Blooms
I'm in heaven. I was recently hired by one of the most incredible design showrooms in the world to do what I love to do...make things beautiful. I am pinching myself every day. I work with fantastically lovely people, work around drop-dead gorgeous product and it's all set in the most stunning showroom you've ever seen. It's like walking into the pages of Architectural Digest every morning after I step off the train. Pure and crazy bliss. One of my many happy tasks is to tackle the floral styling of the weekly flowers as well as all arrangements for events and parties.
I grew up on a big country farm, where we gathered armfuls of lilac branches in metal buckets and bunches of Lily of the Valley crammed into milky glassed jam jars. Flowers were everywhere....on the kitchen table, in tiny vases in by the bathroom sink, abandoned on the picnic table next to baskets of ripe tomatoes. It was a different kind of "styling". The beauty was in the untamed nature of the arrangements. Huge single blooms of dinner-plate Dahlias on the dining room table were dropping petals in the most heavenly likeness of freshly fallen snow. Nature took most of the styling into her own hands. So here I am, in this outrageously sophisticated showroom in the most phenomenally design savvy city in the world,trying to translate what I know of floral styling on the farm into this big deal-big city situation....
After an early morning exploring the Chelsea flower market, this is what I come up with for week 1: a low lying bowl of peach and green Parrot Tulips arranged in a sweeping wreath, a swooping arc of greyish purple blossom in a giant hand blown glass vase and a leaning wall of Lisianthus flowers in a narrow grey acrylic vase. More to come...
25.4.10
14.4.10
Jumping off
photo credit: Jay Erickson
Park Rapids, MN
It's a big, big world out there. Lots of movement in my life. Purely joyful, supremely challenging, entirely purifying and strengthening change. I'm holding on tight to that feeling. The huge feeling of letting go. Before the fear sets in. Before the worry. Holding on tight to the feeling of flight...
14.2.10
10.2.10
8.2.10
4.2.10
3.2.10
Morning walk
I snapped this picture around 6am, on my way to Chelsea Piers this morning. For the past year and a half I have been working out at the CP Sports Center and just last July I joined the Full Throttle Triathlon team. We practice 5 days a week, starting at 5:45am. Swimming, running and weight training at the Piers and when it's above 30-something, riding up to Central Park to do a few laps before they let the cars and yellow cabs swarm through.
I've always loved the early morning. When I used to ride and show horses, the most amazing memories I have are of walking through the quiet stables at 3 and 4am listening to the quiet munching and snorting. Elegant and muscled show horses slowly turning circles in their stalls, padding down the hay and bedding to make soft nests for themselves. All of them seemingly oblivious of the mayhem that would descend on the show-grounds as dawn quickly approached. The experience felt so private. Time was suspended. It was bliss.
I get that same swelling emotion on my walks to the Piers. The city is so quiet. A little village. Especially after a snowfall. My favorite stretch of the walk is by the boat docks. The clanging and swaying of the sailboats remind me of my early morning walks through the stables. A fresh dusting of snow insulates me from the world. A whole new kind of bliss.
1.2.10
Yves
Yves Klein (1928-1962)
Anthropométrie sans titre (ANT130), mars 1960
194 x 128 cm
This color makes me crazy. I freaking love it. It literally raises my heart rate. That combined with the utterly seductive fact that the artist has used a woman's body to create this life sized swoosh on the canvas. Amazing.
31.1.10
The Nest
I've been in my W. 12th apartment for about six months now. I am in heaven. It is my little white sanctuary. So tiny, but airy and soft feeling. It feels like the negative image of my Fremont house with all its dark woodwork and stainless steel, but still with the same mood. Quiet and cozy.
30.1.10
28.1.10
27.1.10
Buddies
Charlotte and I became fast friends last year after meeting at Christie's. We "get" each other. One of the most creative, spirited, hilarious and dynamic individuals I know. My experience in New York wouldn't be the same without her.
Happy Birthday, Charlotte.
26.1.10
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