What are you up to this weekend? It’s Logan’s 2nd birthday. (Hence the photo tribute.) We have two small family gatherings taking place. I can’t believe my little one is already two! Logan is a funny one. He used to get the occasional push or hit by his older brother but now he’s the one starting the fights! What an instigator. I can’t help but wonder what he’ll grow up to be.
I’d love to go to this show (but it’s too far away). Isn’t it cool when you find out one of your favorite artists is a fan of another one of your favorite artists? Murakami –> Yoshitomo Nara.
We’re only halfway through January, so we’re technically still kicking off the New Year. One of my New Year’s resolutions was to read one book a week, but I’ve already surpassed that goal getting through three books in the past two weeks. (High five!) Today, I thought I’d share them with you. I know the picture (above) is from The Martian movie, which I have yet to see, but it’s relevant enough for this post (and I love the detail in that astronaut suit). Ok, here goes.
Author Andy Weir hit it out of the park with The Martian, a sci-fi book about an astronaut stuck on the planet of Mars. His name is Mark Watney and he’s got a hilarious sense of humor, which I guess you have to have if you’re stranded all alone on the red planet. Using his skills both as a mechanical engineer and as a botanist, he overcomes challenge after to challenge in order to survive. The book goes heavy on the science but you come to appreciate all the little technical details. It’s interesting to note that the author, Andy Weir, is a “lifelong space nerd” whose hobby it is study “relativistic physics, orbital mechanics, and the history of manned spaceflight.” The guy was made to write this book. Enjoy the funny scenes (ah, so that’s why it was in the Best Picture Comedy category at the Golden Globes) and then hold onto your seats for the thrilling end. (Can’t wait to see how Matt Damon pulled off Mark Watney.)
I finished the second book by Mindy Kaling, called Why Not Me?, last night. Whereas her first book, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? felt like we were just getting to know a young version of Mindy, her second book feels like she’s all grown up. Each chapter brought something refreshing, especially the last few, her speech at Harvard Law School had me in stitches (you can watch it here), her rant about her weight left me shouting “hell ya!” (we’re the same size), and her speech on confidence/hard work made me fall in love with her. The book is told in such a casual way that you feel like you’re just catching up with your childhood best friend. Mindy, keep writing and I’ll continue to buy your books.
An article on the blog Core77 brought me to Design the Life You Love: A Step-by-Step Guide to Building a Meaningful Future by Ayse Birsel. It’s better not to Kindle this book because it’s filled with pages where you’re asked to complete some fun exercises about your life. Birsel, an award-winning product designer, believes that life is like a design problem full of constraints like time and money. By laying out the life that you have and the one you’ve always wanted, you can begin to see where you want to go. I breezed through this book but plan on going back and really spending time with each exercise so I can get the most out of it. In the new year, if you’re looking to unleash some creativity inside of you, look no further than this book.
New York-based advertising and fine art photographer Mike Mellia is behind a fun Instagram series called “A Selfie a Day Keeps the Doctor Away.” In this subtly awesome series, Mellia strikes a still pose and then animates just one part of his body, usually his arms or his hands. Whether he’s twirling campy eyeglasses or swirling a glass of wine, the photographer looks absolutely serious in his endeavors.
One of my favorites is the one where a dapperly dressed Mellia takes a cigarette out of a box and then proceeds to, nonchalantly, flick it onto the ground. His brilliant caption? “That one time I was an ad man.”
When he’s not creating fun video loops of himself, Mellia works as an advertising photographer. With clients such as Vogue, Harry Winston, and Christie’s, he certainly has his hands full.
We caught up the photographer to ask him a few quick questions.
What made you want to start this fun series?
The cliche about Instagram is that it’s mainly for self-obsessed people taking selfies, so I wanted to have an ironic account of my own with only selfies. Like many Instagram accounts, the mood of the selfies oscillate between unbridled megalomania and mundane nonchalance.
What do you hope others get out of it?
It’s a personal project that I enjoy doing, so I’m hoping people can have fun with it and laugh along with me. Ironically, my commercial work is often inspired by composition or the styling of these outlandish selfies, but done in a very mainstream aesthetic.
How do you come up with your ideas?
I think it’s an obsession to try to keep pushing the selfie series further, and with a lot of people making art, this obsession to keep going is something they can’t control. I have a notebook that I keep coming back to, writing down ideas about styling, composition, the captions, etc, at all strange times and sometimes in the middle of the night. Chuck Close the painter said that the more you work the more you will find creative ideas and I think that’s very accurate.
Every year for the past five years, Zach Tutor, founder of blog Supersonic Art works with San Francisco gallery Spoke Art in curating a special show. Called the Supersonic Invitational, it focuses on bringing the best and brightest artists from the new contemporary art movement together, in mediums that include painting, sculpture and illustration.
The entire exhibition has just been released online. You can now view and purchase all work from the group show. We noticed that this year there were a lot of strong female figures in the paintings and so we collected our favorite pieces together.
Oxford, Mississippi-based Tutor, who is himself an artist, started his art blog in 2008. It began as a personal page but, two years later, it evolved into focusing entirely on international art, interviews and studio visits. He has an astounding 500,000 followers on this Tumblr site. What an eye!
David Bray – “The Summit is a Fool – The Smoke Hides his Shame”
Who can’t identify with this? In this adorable series, Montreal-based photographer Mikaël Theimer shoots photos of his girlfriend, who just so happens to be painfully shy of the camera. Whether she’s hiding behind a book, her hands, or her hair, the brunette finds clever ways to conceal her face.
As Theimer told the Huffington Post, “She hates to pose, and she hates to be in front of the camera. So this became a little game that we have. Whenever I see a scene I would love to photograph her in, she has to find a way to hide her face. I find it results in much more interesting pictures than just traditional portraits.”
We contacted the photographer to find out more about the mysterious woman, aka his girlfriend. Her name is Marion and she is just about to turn 29-years-old. The series started back in November 2014. When asked to describe Marion he said, “Haha, well to be honest I’d rather not say too much about her as she really wishes to keep as much anonymity as possible (we never really expected the pictures would get that much attention), but I’ll tell you that she’s the most generous and authentic person I’ve ever known. She has kept both the heart and the playfulness of the 10-year-old girl she once was.”
It’s such a simple photo series but it’s so authentic and real. Love!
Though it may be hard to believe, these fairy tale-like scenes actually exist! Over the course of a year, photographer Kilian Schönberger traversed 45,000 miles throughout the Germany countryside to find places inspired by old fairy tales like those collected by the Brothers Grimm. The German storytellers made popular such classic stories as Cinderella, Hansel and Gretel, Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty and Snow White. They didn’t actually write the fairy tales, the stories existed long before the two men existed. They were a part of rich oral tradition that was passed down from generation to generation. Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm made it their mission to save the stories from extinction by publishing them as part of a collection titled Nursery and Household Tales, or what is now referred to as Grimm’s Fairy Tales.
Schönberger has now collected his dream-like photos in a new coffee table book called Sagenhaftes Deutschland (Fabulous Germany). As he states, “This book sums up what started as the ‘Brothers Grimm’s Homeland’ project over a year ago. Printed on paper the photos become even more related to the old fairy tales. It’s like a visual stroll through the images we had on our mind while listening to these old stories during our childhood.”
Here we encounter breathtaking scenes of green moss covered rocks, sinuous trees, and grand castles peeping over layers of dense fog. While viewing these photos, one can’t help but be transported back to our own childhood and all the wonder we felt when we listened to or watched folk or fairy tale stories.
Did you catch the Golden Globes last night? How exciting is it that Mr. Robot won for Best TV Drama? (I still can’t believe it beat out Game of Thrones.) These days, I love looking back on award shows by viewing professional portraits taken by big name photographers. This year, Instagram partnered with Dutch duo, Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin (or Inez and Vinoodh), in releasing beautiful black and white photos of the presenters and winners backstage.
“We are thrilled to be working with Instagram for this type of mini studio portraiture,” Inez and Vinoodh told The Hollywood Reporter. “The immediacy of Instagram as an outlet is very exciting to us and this specific Golden Globes shoot event will be the perfect opportunity to capture today’s icons of entertainment in our own timeless way.”
I love the simplicity of each portrait. There were no distracting props, just celebrities in their raw form. Although I don’t think anyone could top Mark Seliger’s Vanity Fair portraits, which were taken after the 2014 Oscar’s, you have to give it to the Dutch photographers for capturing the souls of each celebrity in their truly remarkable way. (Now here’s the billion dollar question. Can Leo finally win that Oscar?)
How was your week? Logan is down for the count. We think he has another ear infection so we’re off to the doctor’s today. Poor guy. It’s his fourth one in six months. We were planning on going to Lake Arrowhead with the family this weekend (it’s my sister’s birthday) but I think we’re staying home with the little guy instead. In any case, hope you have a fantastic weekend! As we look back on the week, here are some fun links.
Designer Emily McDowell is starting off the new year with 14 new cards including some for the next big holiday, Valentine’s Day. It’s not too early to get a jump on finding the perfect card for your loved one, be it your significant other or just a friend. Emily’s the best at coming up with lines that are modern yet funny, she has a cheeky sense of humor that’s refreshingly original.
I fell in love with Emily’s work back when I first found out about her Awkward Cards line. Here are some of her newest Valentine’s Day cards mixed in with some old time favorites. On a side note, I know this word has been tossed around a lot, especially on the internet, but do you know what “bae” actually means? As Emily states on her website, “According to Urban Dictionary (because I had to look it up last year), ‘bae’ is a shortened version of baby or babe, another word for sweetie, or in some cases, an acronym that stands for ‘before anyone else.’ It points out that it also means poop in Danish, but we’re pretty sure only the Danes use it that way.” Funny!
Today I worked with my Korean nanny Cindy on creating a delicious, deep broth of miso soup. Rather than just use the store bought miso soup paste and with water, we added in a bunch of ingredients and then let them all stew until we got a rich soup. Enjoy this dish on its own or with a side of rice. It’s both healthy and delicious.
1. Wash dried shitake mushrooms and then soak them in water for 30 minutes.
2. Put all the water in a large pot and heat on high.
3. Cut up large slices of Korean radish (or moo). Add to the pot of water.
4. Cut up a few slices of peeled ginger. Add to the pot of water.
5. Wash kelp (or dashima) in cold water and break into strips. Add to the pot of water.
6. Measure out 1/2 cup of dried shrimp and add to the pot of water.
7. Clean out the insides of the anchovies and take off the heads.
8. In a separate small frying pan, fry the anchovies on high for two to three minutes, stirring occasionally. Add to pot.
9. Clean with water and then squeeze the water out of the mushrooms (which have now been sitting in the water for about 30 minutes). Add to the pot. Finally, add in the onion. Heat all together till the soup is boiling, then bring down the heat to medium. Heat for one hour.
10. While heating, skim bubbles out of the pot with a hand strainer.
11. After one hour, take out all of the ingredients with a strainer, leaving only the soup behind.
12. Separate into two halves. You’ll only be using 1/2 of the soup base.
13. Add in the miso paste.
14. Soak the dried seaweed in water to loosen it up. Massage with your hands and then wash it. Add it into the soup.
15. Chop up the tofu into small cube size pieces. Add into the pot.
16. Finally, add in the chopped green onion.
17. All of the final ingredients are in. Bring to a boil for 5 minutes and you’re done!
Recipe:
5 dried shitake mushrooms
4.5 liters of water
1 Korean radish (or moo), peeled and cut into large slices
2 slices of ginger, peeled and cut into medium sized slices
4 strips of dashima (or kelp), washed and soaked in water
1/2 cup of dried shrimp
1/2 cup of dried anchovies
1 small onion, cut in half
3 tbsp miso paste
1 handful of dried seaweed, washed and soaked in water
1/3 tofu, cubed
2 green onion, finely chopped
1. Wash mushrooms and let them soak in water for 30 minutes.
2. Add water to large pot and then add in the following ingredients: Korean radish, ginger, dried shrimp, onion.
3. Take off black insides of anchovies and heads. In separate pan, fry anchovies on high 2-3 minutes (use no oil).
4. Add the anchovies to the big pot.
5. Wash mushrooms clean, squeeze water out of them and then add them to the pot.
6. Heat all together till the water boils, then bring down to medium heat.
7. Continuously take the bubbles out with a hand strainer.
8. After one hour, take out all of the ingredients with the hand strainer, leaving only the soup.
9. Separate the soup into two halves. You’ll only be using 1/2 of the soup base.
10. Now add in the following ingredients: miso paste, seaweed (that’s been soaked in water and loosened), tofu, and green onion.
11. Heat on high for five minutes, bringing the soup to a nice boil.
Hope you enjoy this recipe! Mixed with white rice, it’s my kids’ favorite.
Hello, I’m Alice Yoo! I’m founder and CEO of Skylar Yoo, a company dedicated to inspiring and empowering women to be bold. We sell apparel, art prints and accessories to the modern feminist.
In my former life, I was editor-in-chief of the art and culture blog My Modern Met, which I founded back in 2007. I curated and wrote about art, design and photography for more than seven years. (In fact, I published over 7,000 articles which were seen by millions of people worldwide.) I’m also co-author of a book called For Love: 25 Heartwarming Celebrations of Humanity, which is on Amazon and wherever books are sold.
I live in southern California along with my husband and my two toddler boys.
This blog is about what I love, the tough experiences that I’ve learned from, and my journey as a second time entrepreneur. Right now, I’m in the midst of a 365 day challenge, to read one book a day. If you share my passions or want to learn some cool new facts, come along for the ride. I hope to inspire, educate and entertain you!
