Franny packs and Zoo-ey

Despite my religious dedication to waking up at least after 2, I have friends who get up before lunch is finished. So I dragged myself up and went with my buds Danielle and Sophia to the Bronx Zoo on free Wednesday to sit with some peacocks while they sketched like people with their art degrees. I took pictures like a scowly tourist who almost has their art degree.

I'll let the photos mostly speak for themselves. Enjoy the photo bomb of cuddly and scaly animals.




It's Mardis Gras favorite, George Clinton!


Don't use flash on the animals! I did on the mice by accident that will shame me forever but luckily these guys didn't flinch much.

Bronze animal street cred.













I felt these pants were most appropriate for the occasion.

The difficulty with awesome print coat is getting one long enough or to match with whatever is sticking out. I'm usually guilty of ignoring that which drives my mom nuts but it's hard to argue if you're wearing all black.



So if you want to avoid the zoo's horrible crowding in the summer, the winter still has opportunities for (mostly) peace and quiet. Just bundle up comfortably with style still in mind.

Also insertminipromotion, cannon powershots may not be cool professional cameras but they're really good for trips like this.

I want to come through so badly

I'm a research hoarder. A regular hoarder too, but I don't intend to discuss that because you guys know enough about me as it is. I have a gazillion little links and images for future projects in countless folders that I often end up forgetting what they inspired me to do. They will sit there for eternity but occasionally I will write about it (thus the use for my blog) so I feel less guilty about having them stocked up in said files.

In one of my typical insomnia rabbit trails to which I blame Billy Corgan on a reality show red carpet with Tila Tequila and somehow ended up reading the letters and various materials of Percy Grainger.

Image via Modernist Maundering

Hottie with half a dis-em-body

To give a quicky background on him, he's a (supposedly, I am not trained to make that distinction) brilliant Australian composer who thought a great deal of himself to prepare a museum on his life and the people who influenced him. He documented his history from the mundane to his mostly sado, occasionally masochist, penchant for flagellation. Of course it's related to mommy issues and surprise, she was a controlling racist.

He's like the tolerant, rich man's Prussian Blue.*

Aside from the self-involved bigot thing, he also had a lot of hobbies i.e. the non-sexual kind, like making little inventions and to my interest, clothing.

With the help of his wife Ella, they made these really cool garments as well as beadwork. The museum sites seem to refer to the process as "towelling" but I don't actually know if they are referring to huck towelling, meaning for you non-weavers is taking a woven towel where 2 threads are skipped or "exposed" (Grainger would enjoy that word use) and embroidering, or sewing a weave in it. It sounds more like they just cut towels, sewed them and tied the fringes as this article suggests. On off chance you click that article, for the record, no, I do not consider him a Dada artist. Sorry, bro.


*Though a recent article has revealed their inevitable shedding of their white supremacy propaganda spiel to Urban Outfitters potheads.

Ella, Ella, A, A, A ::gurgling sounds of being strangled::

Drawing for beaded chest piece

Eat your heart out, Fiona Paxton

Madonna needed this for her Blonde Ambition Tour, as would I
(not sure if he made this, it did belong to his wife)

Images via Music Australia

Image via Australia Art Monthly

Image via University of Melbourne

I wish I could see his house he ended up moving to in White Plains, but I have no reason to go to upstate New York unless I need freezing snow or something.

These works are historical but so could be worn today in a non-exoticizing history kind of way.
Percy Grainger and his wife Ella are perfect examples of this recurring trend of doing all different mediums but in a casual way and not being half-assed about it. I'm enamored of people who can show they're multi-dimensional personally and as creative people, his wife was also a painter to add to their list of Renaissancery talents. Yeah, that's right, color me jealous. Or bad.

To see more beading and such from the archives, here's one page of it at Music Australia.