one

               This is blog post 1/19 or maybe more, you can never assume things. However, I do believe that this is going to be the most fantastic and stressful twenty-six days of my life (so far, there's still college and that place adults call "the real world").
               Today I met my instructors and my anxiety multiplied by about one hundred. We were shone a slideshow of images and mood boards and had to discuss what we saw in the pictures; shapes, colors, value, setting, etc. Afterwards, we split into our classes and then into our groups for our first project; design a garment inspired by a place in the city.
              My partner's name is Jana, she's from New Jersey. When class was dismissed, we set out searching for inspiration. We wandered in circles that got bigger and bigger and we eventually ended up at Union Square. Being that today is Monday, the farmer's market was happening. The two of us observed the objects there, became increasingly hungry, and selected items that we thought could serve as inspiration (I say served because it was all food). After an hour, we found a place to sit and went through the pictures to select an image we could build off of. We decided on the carrots we saw at the farmer's market. Oui, we are going to make a dress out of carrots.
             We were each concerned that we wouldn't be able to keep the dress fresh for a long enough time and that'd it start to go bad. Now that I think about it, though, I think it'd be pretty neat if it did start to rot. For this project, we need to be inspired by New York. That particular area of New York that we are in has a history for being pretty punk. Now, the Dead Kennedy's have an album called Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables. That brings me back to rotting carrots; if the dress were to go bad, it'd be a playful way to reflect upon the history of New York and its punks.
            Here are a few images I took today while we were searching.

I love graffiti. I absolutely adore it. Unless it's Banksy type jazz, people usually think it dirties the city or they don't even notice it all. To me, it's almost like the city is talking to us. If people listened, they'd realize that that's not a vulgar comment but actually a line from a Langston Hughes poem (but yes, sometimes it is a lovely little vulgar comment. But it's New York, what do you expect?). 

Fire escapes, betcha seen ten million of these. It's such a basic shape that you could make so many different things with it though. Skirt with stripes? Metal, angular bustier?  

More graffiti; sometimes text in art can take away from the piece but sometimes it can add to it. When it's the latter, it can end up being fantastic. I really like the yellow and pink and then it's in between, peach, all together. It'd be a fun pallet to work with.