Perfect summer days

Last week I had the pleasure of escaping to Queens to hang out with Hillary for a few days. The times I get to spend with her are the best mini vacations ever. Not that my life is so trying during the summer that I need breaks, but it is good to leave thesis research and studio work for a few days, get to a point of missing it, and then return feeling excited again.

Between games of Scrabble accompanied with copious amounts of coffee we attended a TuNe-YaRdS concert at Hudson River Park. Let me tell you, this young woman is amazing, she records several rythms at the beginning of each song and then loops them on playback for the remainder of the song. It's incredible the way she builds and modifies the song, and the vocals she can conjure up, holy buckets. Plus for the tour, she has added two saxophonists. Awesome. Check out the clip below from the concert and look her up. You won't be disappointed. Oh at the end of the concert, fireworks. Not too shabby for a free concert!

The following day I took a jaunt to MoMA to catch the Francis Alÿs exhibition. It was nice to see some of his seminal video works like Rehersal I (ensayo I) with the Volkswagon attempting to mount a steep hill, its movement and perpetual failure synced with musicians playing during the acceleration and then fizzling off when the car slips backwards down the hill. There were also one of his hand drawn animations, my favorites of his work, selfishly, I wish there would have been more of those.

Finally, we met up with another friend, Jason to check out the Jim Henson exhibit that opened at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria. We took in a screening of The Muppet Movie, and then looped around the rest of the museum. I loved seeing the drawings of Henson creatures I had never been introduced with alongside old friends from Sesame Street. Needless to say this had me waxing nostalgic and made me realize what a brilliant person Jim Henson was, focusing on young children in supremely imaginative ways and making it entertaining for the adults that are along for the ride.

Giant moth invading Mid Town...