The New York Photo Festival

The New York Photo Festival hasn't been around that long - but my father and I usually attend. It always falls right around our birthdays (our birthdays are a day apart) but this year, my father wasn't able to make it. He has had a love for photography for as long as I can remember (he had a Diane Arbus book when I was a kid) which likely informed my initial appreciation for the medium. In recent years he's taken to getting behind the camera himself. You can see some of his work here. It was not the same without him there! He asked me to take photos for him to share so here are a few. Click the image to enlarge. More photos can be viewed here.

Embroidery + Fine Art

glam.spoon recently wrote about a tea towel contest (brilliant!) at a local art walk on her blog. Not only were all the tea towels pretty great, but she highlighted an artist, Emily Katz, who works with "freestyle" embroidery (top photo). I'm really taken with the idea of using embroidery as a fine art medium. It's nothing new, of course, using the home arts in fine art (see Bauhaus), but it was fairly controversial when it first made it on the scene. Anni Albers, part of the Bauhaus movement, was the first weaver to have a show at MoMA and came to weaving textiles almost by accident (there were no other classes available at her art school). She became, with her textiles and later her print work, truly a pioneer of not only the medium but of twentieth-century modernism. Elle Decor recently wrote an article about her. You can read it here. A more recent artist, Ghada Amer, uses embroidery in her paintings. Although the works first appear to be beautiful abstractions, upon closer inspection, they are layers upon layers of images of women taken from pornographic sources. The Daily Beast has a great article about her and a slide show of her images (NSFW!). You can read the article here and see images of her work here. You can also read more and see more images about embroidery as art on the blog Embroidery as Art.

Information about Anni Albers from the Albers Foundation, info about Ghada Amer from an article by Rachel Wolff for the Daily Beast.

Top Photo of work by Katz by glam.spoon, second photo of work by Amer by the Daily Beast, third photo of work by Albers by the Albers Foundation.

Great Room

This is the bedroom of three little boys. The designer, their mother, had to let go of her own design sensibilities in order to do what they really wanted: the color orange, nothing girly and airplanes. Even though she doesn't like it, I think it's a great room. I also love the airplane painting that she did herself with a paint pen.

See more photos on Ohdeedoh.

Photo by Ashley Ann Photography.

Found Photo: Couple in Paris

I have a weakness for old photos. I'm a bit of a Francophile so this photo immediately caught my eye while rummaging through old, discarded photos at a flea market. I love their suits (and I think she might be a tad taller than he is!) and their serious expressions. I wonder where they are off to next.

The Best Sports Car Ever

The first time I saw these beautiful little wooden sports cars from France I was at Flora and Henri on the Upper East Side (where I also bought my little man the most incredibly soft blue and grey striped shirt). Flora and Henri, by the way, is a charming children's clothing boutique originally from Seattle (my hometown!). These cars are so fantastically made and so nice to play with. I'm a little in love with them.

Photos by Flora and Henri.