Muse

I absolutely MUST share this with the world, these two stunning leading ladies of off-beat mainstream music have unknowingly collided to create such a beautiful mash-up I stopped everything I was doing to just listen. I suggest you do the same.

Faites moi une robe le couleur du soleil

Peau d'Âne (Donkey Skin) is one of my all time favorite French fairytales, and in movie form it is utter perfection. Here is its synopsis:

"A king had a beautiful wife and a rich castle, including a marvelous donkey whose droppings were gold. One day his wife died, after making him promise not to marry except to a woman whose beauty and attributes equaled hers. The king grieved, but was, in time, persuaded to seek another wife. It became clear that the only woman who would fit the promise was his own daughter.

She went to her fairy godmother who advised her to make impossible demands as a condition of her consent: a dress the color of the sky, a dress the color of the moon, a dress as bright as the sun, and finally, the hide of his marvelous donkey. Such was the king's desire to marry her that he granted all of them. The fairy godmother gave her a marvelous chest to contain all she owned and told her that the donkeyskin would make an excellent disguise.

The princess fled and eventually found a royal farm where they let her work in the kitchen, despite her ugliness in the donkeyskin. On feast days, she would dress herself in the fine gowns her father had given her, and one such day, the prince came by her room and peeped through the keyhole. He fell in love at once, fell ill with his longing, and declared that nothing would cure him but a cake baked by Donkeyskin, and nothing they could say of what a dirty creature she was dissuaded him.

When Donkeyskin baked the cake, a ring of hers fell in it. The prince found it and declared that he would marry only the woman whose finger it fit. Every other woman having failed, he insisted that Donkeyskin try, and it fit. When she had dressed herself in her fine gowns, his parents were reconciled with the match. Donkey-skin later found that her father had remarried to a beautiful widow and everyone lived happily ever after."

What I have shared with you in the images above is the dress as bright as the sun, by far my favorite of the dresses created for the princess by her creepy and desperate father. The photo below is of a piece I made this past Tuesday at my AP art lock-in where we spend the night locked in the art room making, well, art. As a 3D student, I've worked with fashion but this was a bit more of a conventional route than what I've been working on all year. I knew we had a ton of gold fabric laying around and I went into this with no plan. I stacked about 6 stools on top of each other, placing my mannequin on top, and started throwing stuff at it (kinda literally). The dress that resulted feels like a mix between Peau d'Âne's dress and maybe something from the hunger games...but in golden wedding dress form. Regardless, I'm very proud of how it turned out and wanted to share it with you all! 

Keep creating x

Sitting Dancing

If you're looking for a new way to approach dance, this is it. The simplicity of every aspect: the music and its lyrics, the colors, the movement, it all gathers seamlessly here in this 2-minute production that has you mesmerized and inevitably believing you could probably do the same if you worked at it hard enough. It's that level of inspiration that makes me come back to watch this again and again. The more contemporary dance I immerse myself in, the more everyday movement I see. This pedestrian nature makes for more accessible art, which is something I think every artist is striving for - not so that their piece is deemed more successful, but so that they can share it with more people. This piece by Matt Luck does exactly that; it's quirkiness and literal take on the lyrics is something brand new to me, and yet the humour of it does not distract from its overall aesthetic. It really adds to whole mood and enhances it as an artistic endeavor. Clearly I could go on about this forever, but I'd love to hear from you. 

Thoughts?