This/That

Hello All!

see video copyright info at the bottom of this post
Click the "play" (aka the ">"-looking) button, then please allow several seconds for the video to load. Please bear with me if it's choppy, and try pressing "play" again if it is funky/completely skips back the first time through. There are sudden motions in the video, especially towards the beginning, and if it is not properly loaded you will miss the fun. P.S. - full-screen it!

Above you will find the video for my latest big art project, entitled This/That. I used a graphite pencil on one piece of 16 x 20" white paper, then cut it with a blade, and folded it according to my prepared plan. Above, you see the video I made for the project. Here's the artist's statement:

Upon the challenge to use both sides of a piece of paper, I created this systematically folded, double-sided piece. The project is best experienced in-person, where one can flip and fold the project to reveal the various possible combinations of faces. The bespectacled face is my own, the other is my identical twin sister’s (Daphne's). I initially intended for the project to be a physical, paper-made study of our intimate and complex relationship, but the project developed beyond this to become an exploration of fun, of physical space, and of perplexity. The accompanying video I made better translates this three-dimensional excitement for those who cannot play with the piece in person; the video also serves as an instructional video of sorts for those who can.

I recommend that you watch the video, read the statement, then watch the video again. Here are some flat scans of the project, just in case the video doesn't do it for ya. However, keep in mind the piece is meant to be seen with the flipping and folding and the scans alone just don't cut it.

Above: My complete face, Daphne's complete face, the complete front (one 16 x 20" piece of paper), the complete back (the reverse side of that same one 16 x 20" piece of paper). Click all images to zoom.

Enjoy! Happy Holidays!
Alice

VIDEO COPYRIGHT INFO

This/That folded drawing demo by Alice Taranto is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

This/That

A lil preview...

Can you guess what this is? It's for the upcoming FAD issue.
xDaphne

A lil preview...

Spotted: NYFW

**click all pictures to zoom**

Although it's a bit belated (New York Fashion Week was in September) - here are some cool shots from NYFW. Daphne and I were fortunate enough to be able to attend the Badgley Mischka runway show, and wow was it incredible or what! I feel very lucky to have been able to go (through FAD networking efforts) to 2 New York fashion shows, one (ADAM by Adam Lippes) during the last season at Bryant Park, and one (Badgley Mischka) during the first season at Lincoln Center. You can check out the article Daphne and I wrote about the show for FAD Magazine right here:

Open publication - Free publishing - More art

 The runway was remarkably long (about 100 seats in length, with a shutterbug press pit at the end) and had a beautiful/soft video projected in the background. The runway was dappled with blue light, and it made the show all the more dramatic. 

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Here, Vlada Roslyakova walks the runway in one of the final looks. Left, Style.com's shot; right and above, mine. (Note how she walks so extremely backwards-tilted - just goes to show that runway walking is a whole different animal from hallway walking.) Daphne and I gasped when we saw "Vlada" written on the program - she's a very prominent model. The collection was largely delicate, cloud-esque blues and whites...until the last few looks - the closers - where coral popped up. While the clothes are more glamorous than my lifestyle affords, I would wear these painstakingly embroidered dresses in a heartbeat if I could. Interestingly, the one runway show included looks from the Badgley Mischka (very expensive + posh Red Carpet-ready gowns) and Mark + James (like the Marc by Marc of Marc Jacobs) lines.Check out all the professional documentation here on Style.com.

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Right, Siri Tollerød stomps the show in Style.com's photo; below, my photos of her strutting the catwalk. We also gasped when we saw her name on the program - Siri has been one of our favorite models ever since the Harajuku Lovers fragrance campaign and since she started modeling for J. Crew a couple of years ago (notably, Siri is in Miu Miu's FW 10 ad campaign.) Siri was the closer for the Badgley Mischka show. 

 
Loved how the models' teased hair picked up so much light - runway shows are all about opulence and drama. As one fashion teacher once told me, there's no scraggliness on the runway. (I think Christophe Decarnin would have something to say about that.) The woman sitting in front of us had a very aggressive, tight spinny bun which reminded me of that scene in Zoolander where Derek swish-fixes "Matil"'s tight bun so she doesn't get wrinkles.

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After the final boom of the runway music (which was, by the way, totally energizing and made-for-runway - check out the video/music here), the lights went up and the busiest editors literally ran out of the tent to get to the next show (I believe Vera Wang was setting up next door). We noticed that a literal sea of well-heeled people was flowing into the backstage area. Daphne and I pondered for a second if they had backstage passes, or if their famous faces served as such, but decided there was no such thing. We just kept subtle and flowed on backstage with the journalists and taste-makers...

 Two women checking out the look board backstage at Badgley Mischka. (Note: on the left is this woman). So cool to see that professional, totally "legit" designers make these boards too. We always make them for our fashion shows - it's the only thing that keeps us sane backstage!

 In the same aforementioned fashion, we shuffled along with the other hopefuls and actually got a picture with the designers,  Mark Badgley (leftmost) and James Mischka (rightmost). Daphne is 2nd from the left, Alice is 3rd (in a dress of her own design).

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You (of course!) saw the interview with Jenny Carter Fleiss (an '01 graduate of our high school, Horace Mann, out of which FAD is based), co-founder of Rent the Runway, in FAD Vol. 1 No. 2. Here, RTR interviews BM designers Mark Badgley and James Mischka about the collection that Daphne and I got to see.


 Enjoy! Happy Holidays to all, and good luck to any high school seniors in this telling week!
Alice

p.s. Some pics from outside the tent in the plaza of Lincoln Center. NYFW did an excellent job of making a camouflaged façade for the tent setup. Very camouflaged, except for the 5-foot tall "Mercedes Benz Fashion Week" aspect. Anyway, below is a pic of someone getting snapped for a street style blog!

Spotted: NYFW

Sketchy-book

hey all -
remember how I said, prepare to be silk screened? See below!

I always print extra runs on my notebooks when I silkscreen - this time I brought some of these extra red notebooks specifically for that purpose. (The notebooks are red, the ink is green, as below.)

Here is a spread from my notebook that I printed and scanned. It's what I think is the best part of the screen. Of course I am incapable of going through the printing process without totally messing something up ---! This image was supposed to be the opposite, with the ink on the jewels part, but instead the white background is inked. Oh well! It worked out anyway, basically.

The cover of my notebook has a Takashi Murakami sticker on it that my friend got me at the Gagosian gallery gift store in New York.... it was the only thing we could afford...... ;)

I had this Daisy Marc Jacobs ad on my desk for a while but was not sure of how to use it. I was in a similar situation with these extra butterfly wings from the below picture from the last issue of FAD. (They are real butterflies, but not to worry, Alice and I collected them from the side of the road and from windowpanes where they had already died.) I got the fortune cookie a while ago and kept it since I think it's hilarious - "you are a person of culture :)" -- who says that??

Open publication - Free publishing - More art

Enjoy! I hope you are scrapbooking/whatever-you-call-it, as well, because it's very fun + a nice creative outlet that's not stressful (ie, meant for a portfolio......)
xDaphne

Sketchy-book

Prepare to be silkscreened.....

photo from J.Crew, digitally edited by Daphne.

Prepare to be silkscreened.....

HOPE!!!

A new addition to the painting below the communal painting.

HOPE!!!

AUSSIE TIME

This week at school, a bunch of Australians have come as foreign exchange students to our school. ('ELLO MATE!) They are art students and so are following the classes of a bunch of the students in our art classes. We have all collaborated on a huge painting as a cross-cultural arts exchange experience. Below find pictures from the first day's work. Alice, Zoe, and I have all assisted in the collaboration.

The whole painting, a collab between about a dozen Aussies and about 20 Americans. It's about 20 feet wide, in acrylic paint.

Paint I dripped

I brushed the countries' flag colors first, then whipped/jump-roped a painted string on the canvas for the Pollock-esque effect.

I painted this image from an old yearbook. It's sideways on the canvas.

Enjoy! We'll probably have more pictures as it comes along and then once it is finally hung in the school, wherever that may be.

xDaphne

AUSSIE TIME