quick and dirty recap of last saturday's afternoon jaunt:

on a wonderfully + bitterly cold day i ventured to newbury street for a number of reasons, including checking out the "red is..." exhibit (i use that term loosely) at the school of fashion design, cashing in my 20% coupon at karmaloop, and drooling over the old-school rowhouse architecture.

i dropped into french connection, and there's a mega 70% sale.

with good reason, i say.

to you i present the fug of fcuk:




can we say gem sweater? and check out that crochet monstrosity. the skirt reminded me a little of santino's gypsy palliette number.

anyway, i carried on. down the street i went, into the school of fashion design. the window display boasted a typical fit-flare ballgown in a lipstick red fabric. typical, but okay. i went in and the 'gallery' is just the lobby, if even. about eight dressforms were clad in various red getups designed by fashion school alums. it's really not worth the visit unless you just happen to walk by, but here's the best and worst of the fug:



yes, that heart dress really is that bad.

cringing, i skipped off to harvard square to catch the part2 exhibition of double hung at the carpenter center (ves). it was a little confusing (lack of placards can do that) but i was surprised to see a conceptual (?) piece en tricot...



although i can sort of understand that she's attempting to knit a cozy of her own silhouette, it just doesnt reach any sort of ideal. the calculations are a bit funny (she writes the gauge as 16 sts x 6 rows = 1", which is a conflation of a 4" and 1" gauge), and although i dont think all her increasing and decreasing is linear, the calculations are crude enough to make the contours more reminiscent of bowling pins than organic curves. what's up with the pointy head? and the loose end? that was driving me crazy. also, the printout of the chart was not that mindblowing, but also it was poorly, poorly mounted onto the wall. it looked like an anti-masterpiece of plotter paper, a good wrinkle, and 3M clear tape. execution counts heaps!



anyway, you should go to the carpenter center to plop down and watch the animation exercises and pieces on the video. they're quite inspiring, and (to the non-animator) jaw-droppingly elegant.



this installation took up about half of the space. not sure what it was trying to get at, but i liked the organic wall sculptures composed of the kidney bean pans. [as niknak reminds me, the nth rule of successful art is use multiples of anything! numbers seduce.]

see the fox? cute.



this was also pretty cool -- at first glance it looks like a ratty sheet. but up close, you realise it's plastic garbage bag-like white stuff that's undulatingly textured, perhaps baked/burnt/heated into a sheer, rippled textile. quite beautiful with the sunlight peering in the le corbusier glass window...



and finally, i trekked down to the basement where i spent many-a-light-deprived-hour making prints for my b/w photo class junior year. utterly surreal to revisit the place where i slaved and acheived for soooo long. a small but intense photo exhibit about buffalo, ny by grey halpern.

admist the snow, the boy just stares back at you.