Thursday 31 January 2013

s a i l o r r o s e




my old friend k.m. started this women & childrens clothing company  sailor rose,  a few years ago in nyc. all the fabrics are from liberty of london and all the garments are made LOCALLY. (amazing & wonderful, right.!?)
the dress picutred here is the 1930's fancy dress. we shot this in front of a perfectly colored vibrant blue vintage trailer ( picking up the bits of blue in the gorgeous fabric) at el cosmico in texas
our little friend  (O) , pictured here,  was the most entertaining and wonderful "model" of the whole day...
sailorrose is getting lots of attention, they even were in VOGUE in oct.
if you have girly-girls or if you are one yourself - check them out..every piece is well crafted and you can't beat the fabrics.
photo: ryan goodrich
styling: brienne neumann

Wednesday 30 January 2013

marfa k i d s






































so one thing i have recently realized is that i am a follower of the sun and light.
i loved the netherlands but the weather was tough. i will be honest. a leo like me needs SUN.
so now i am stateside, living on the east coast and we have been enduring a fairly typical winter with very cold temperatures.( it just occurred to me that i have not spent a whole winter here for perhaps 8 years!)
and i am a bit in shock. i am fully embracing the season by c.c skiing & hockey skating with the neighborhood kids...i even insist on shoveling our long driveway myself.
HOWEVER i find myself going back thru all my photos from places sunny & warm.
i am missing MARFA where we usually decamp to for the winter months.
so here is a quickie collage i made to revel in my time there. these images were from a kids shoot i dreamed up & art directed & produced in texas.
if you can - GO WEST. go to texas. go to marfa. get out into the light....for me.

Thursday 24 January 2013

m a r f a . s h a d o w s







































shadows on the wall.
a few winters ago we began renting a wonderful house in marfa that had adobe walls surrounding the backyard. every evening around 5 pm the sun would be beginning to set and i realized i could create these silhouettes against the walls. i began doing them with my son . we incorporated all his toys; skateboard, plastic swords, bow & arrow, cowboy hats - whatever we could find.... eventually it began to involve friends ( among them & pictured above writer daphne beal and L.A  artist susan carter hall ) who happened to be there at the right time. sometimes for cocktails, or an early dinner or a spontaneous visit or playdate.
last febuary penelope green came to do a story on  PHB, my husband and his about-to-be published novel,  for the NY Times Home  section. shortly after her visit the nytimes photgrapher tony cenicola came to document the story and included one these shadow pictures. ( thats his tripod pictured in the upper right photo)
i have continued to make these against sails while sailing penobscot bay and even on the doors & walls of our wassenaar, NL rental apt. but they never had the impact that these do. its that famous MARFA LIGHT  which i am missing quite dramatically right now as we endure the below freezing temps of the east coast.

Wednesday 16 January 2013

bethel. part two

bethel weekend : part 2.
one of our  returning-to-the-states-and-trying-to-embrace-winter activities is cross country skiing.
seeing as this winter we are skipping marfa, our usual winter spot, we are doing our best to get outdoors and enjoy what the season has to offer.
 i've always loved nordic skiing in maine and decided my son, age six is the perfect age to learn.
so we brought our previously owned, used skis ( bought here) to bethel and skiied both days across a gorgeous, expansive lake  - right out in front of our friend's home. we managed to meet up with a family ice fishing and arrived just when this beautiful bass was being caught. the yellow perch came shortly after. so no, i have not taken up ice fishing but i am intrigued and loved the whole scene......
especially bitter sweet was when the kids leaned down to look closer at the just-caught bass and my son said : "mom, its still breathing!"

Monday 14 January 2013

bethel. maine






































     
i intended on doing a blog post on our last chapter in the netherlands and how we spent the holidays, in amsterdam and northern holland but, alas, i am already stateside. so i think i'll work backwards.
this past weekend, my son and i visited a my writer friend melissa coleman and her twin daughters in bethel, me.
one of our most enjoyable weekend kid-centric experiences was swimmming at the outdoor heated pool at the bethel inn    as many parents know: kids + water = fun & happy kids so we lingered and swam around surrounded by snow and winter temps for what felt like hours. ( there are saunas there to warm up in afterwards)
it was exceptionally warm for a maine winter  day - they are calling it a  "january thaw".
the combination of steam and fog created a mysterious and beautiful  scene. i decided to brave the pool   with my iphone and took many photos - a few of them, as you see here.
stay tuned, more on bethel in my next post.

Wednesday 2 January 2013

dutch shipping containers

so this may seem like a strange posting : dutch shipping containers however, there is a story.
a while back i art directed a kids shoot in marfa, tx. and at the end of a long, hot wonderful day we ended up shooting at el cosmico  - a modern day trailer park. it just so happened that our stylist  had my son ( one of our key models) dressed perfectly in coordination with my husband and the shipping containers they had onsight for storage so we shot some great images of them. one ended up being the author photo for The O'Briens.
so - fast forward to this fall and we are living in Wasseaar, NL. as i biked past my son's favorite skatebaan one afternoon, i noticed these shipping containers on a construction sight and they were painted exactly the same as the ones we had as background in texas. so now i know where they came from, a strange coincidence.
in the netherlands, space is a premium and they are the kings of recycling so naturally they inovatively use these containers for student housing, pop up stores, exhibiton spaces, low income housing -  you name it.
in our hometown in maine there is an amazing house made up from 12 of these shipping containers, see the ny times or Maine Magazine pieces on this architectural wonder.
additionally - while researching a bit about these containers i was reminded of the nomadic museum that i visited in nyc in 2005 and santa monica the following year. it housed the ashes & snow exhibit by
photograpgher/filmaker gregory colbert - it was quite memorable.
i am thinking i'd like to have one behind my house as my studio but not live in one necessarily....you?