(image from Taylor Stitch)
I first saw local woodworker Jared Rusten's remarkable furniture at a pop up men's market in the neighborhood a few weeks back. This California Desk is unbelievably beautiful. I could build an empire (or at least write a nice letter) sitting behind that thing.
Clare Rojas is a favorite artist of ours, and she has an amazing installation at the Museum of Craft and Folk Art downtown that you should go see right now. Sure, it'll be up until September, but don't make the mistake we so often have of saying, "Oh, it'll be up for a while, we've got plenty of time to catch it", and then TOTALLY missing it. I'm happy to report that we did not let that happen this time. And neither should you. I took a couple sneaky (and blurry and crappy) pictures with my phone, which don't do the art or the installation any justice, but they give you a sense of the amazing amount of diverse work in the show.
This year marks the 25th anniversary of one of my favorite films of all time, The Goonies. Beginning today, folks in Astoria Oregon (where the film takes place) are kicking off a 4 day extravaganza called "Never Say Die: The Goonies 25th Anniversary Celebration". In addition to screenings of the film, there will be treasure hunts, cast Meet & Greets (with Chunk, Mouth, and one of the evil Fratelli brothers...), a 5K Truffle Shuffle run/walk, bus tours of Goonies locales, performances by Goonies-themed bands like Troy's Bucket, The Whiskey Rebellion (they have a song called The Ballad of Chester Copperpot), and Corey Feldman's group Truth Movement), plus a host of other awesomely geeky events. My sister and her family are on their way up there right now. Damn, I'm jealous.
A celebration of craftsmenship + CBS Sunday Morning.
We're huge music lovers. We listen to it constantly of course, but we also try to play it on a regular basis. It's relaxing and inspirational and fun. And though it's been a while since either of us actually studied it in any sort of academic sense, we've recently been loving (and learning a ton from) the dvd set of Leonard Bernstein's Young People's Concerts.
If you've never heard of it, Leonard Bernstein gave a series of televised performances beginning in 1958 in which he filled Carnegie Hall with young kids and then taught them about music. You can find little snippets of the concerts/lectures on YouTube, but I highly recommend checking out the entire series (we got ours from the library). I love how he doesn't talk down to the children, and takes his time using numerous examples to illustrate a musical point. He even gets the kids involved, doing sing alongs and such that are so magical they'll break your heart.
On a slightly related note (oooh, a pun!) I recently had the pleasure of re-watching Amadeus. I hadn't seen it since I was a kid, but there is a genius scene in which Salieri transcribes a Reqium for Mozart (who isn't feeling so hot) that is so amazing and moving it has been permanently burned into my brain.