The Cloisters

Chris and I spent a beautiful and relaxing day at the Cloisters in upper Manhattan yesterday. The museum itself is so amazing, and the gardens outside the grounds seem like they're bursting with too much vegetation to be real. It was so wonderful to "get out of the city" for a little while and sit around underneath the trees.

Shakespeare in the Park

Last week I went with a few friends to draw a performance of Richard III in Central Park. Now, I'm embarrassed to admit that I have never read Richard III, so I didn't really always know exactly what was happening, but I tried to keep up! It was easier to get caught up in the beauty of the performance, with the actors moving from one picturesque spot to the next. The whole thing looked like a fairy tale, and the audience was spellbound like little kids hearing a storybook, leaning in towards the actors as they delivered their lines.

I did manage to catch one line I knew at the end of the play, though!

"A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!"

You can view my friends' beautiful drawings from the same event below:

Audrey
Alex
Julia

The Sea Music Festival

A couple weekends ago I got the chance to return to Mystic Seaport, Connecticut while The Sea Music Festival was going on. It was great getting to see the performers and the audience interacting because they were both equally excited to be singing the songs they all knew by heart.

The seaport was full of characters, who looked and sounded like they had stepped out of the 19th century. It was amazing to see how a place can be transformed by the people occupying it, and how the whole place came to life when they sang the shanties.

(They each signed by their portraits!)

The highlight of the weekend for me was seeing The Barrouallie Whalers. They are a group of men from St. Vincent and the Grenadines who, in the recent past, hunted the pilot whales off the coasts of the islands as their profession. Today they sing the unique whaling shanties they sang on the whale boats, many of which share similarities to the shanties sung by "Yankee" whalers in the 19th Century.

It was amazing to see these men sing with such intensity and passion, ,and you could see their whaling days come alive in their voices as they sang.

The even had a short demonstration where they reenacted the sighting and hunting of a whale in a whaleboat out in the Mystic harbor.

Towards the end of the day, there was a concert featuring a group of women from the Mystic area called The Johnson Sisters, the Barrouallie Whalers, and a group of French shanty-men from Brittany, called Nordet. The began by singing songs individually, but as the concert went on, they all began to sing together. Whether they knew the words to begin with or not, they began to show the real power behind songs like sea shanties. The songs were developed aboard ships where people from all over the world sailed, and often didn't speak the same language. The songs have simple, chant-like lyrics, so that, no matter the language the sailor spoke, he could join in and keep pace with the work.

The men from Barrouallie and the people from Connecticut and Brittany could not look any more different if they tried, but these people could come together, from all over the world, to sing songs and fight to keep their world history alive.

100th Post!: St. Patrick's Cathedral

Hurray, this is my 100th post!

Today my plans got thwarted so I ended up going and drawing St. Patrick's Cathedral instead. Not a bad Plan B!

Isadora Duncan in Central Park

Today while wandering in Central Park, I happened to come upon a performance by "Dances By Isadora" in honor of Isadora Duncan's birthday (she would have been 132!). Duncan is considered by many to be the creator of modern dance.

The dancers were beautiful, dressed in flowing tunics with a rainbow of colors. I have always been in love with fabric flowing in the wind, so needless to say I was happy. It was like walking into a fairytale when I came around the corner at the Bethesda Terrace. One of the reasons I love New York so much, is that you can find wonderful things to see without even trying.

The performances featured little girls, teenagers, and women who all danced in honor of the last generation of women that had danced until they passed away in their nineties.

Summer Day

Yesterday I had a beautiful day of drawing in the West Village. I started out a French cafe on 6th avenue and had a delicious waffle, while sitting next to the most awful woman I have ever seen.

• Within seconds of sitting down, our waiter had come to get her drink order and she proceeded to yell at him about some silly thing with the chair.
  
• Once he brought her coffee, she went to yell at one of the busboys that the waiter hadn't brought her a new spoon quickly enough.
  
• When the waiter came back to take her order, she ordered eggs on the side. When the waiter asked if she wanted eggs on the side of something or just a side of eggs, she yelled again and asked for a new waiter.
• She then called over the hostess and yelled at her because a new waiter hadn't been assigned to her yet (it had been about one minute). She asked to speak to the manager. The hostess calmed her down, and she then ordered a side of eggs and toast.
• When the hostess sweetly named all of the breads they carried, the woman then yelled at her for not having "plain" toast, and grumpily allowed them to bring her sourdough. The poor girl looked so terrified, like she was trying to put out a fire that had started for absolutely no reason.
• All of this occurred within about 5 minutes.
  

It was completely baffling to me that people treat waiters like that, but I guess people are so inside their own heads sometimes that they don't realize the people around them are people too! *sigh* Anyhoo at least it made for an entertaining meal!

I then went to sit in the park across from Magnolia Bakery, where the pigeons are quite brazen, and where droves of tourists stand in line all day to get movie-star cupcakes. Personally, I've never really liked the cupcakes that much...but I can't really talk, since I went there my first week of being in New York too.

Magnolia also draws crowds of tour groups, especially from the "Sex and the City Tour" variety. While there, several bachelorette parties came by to stop and sample the famous cupcakes. Everyone was always dressed to the nines, like they were out for a night of clubbing, wearing cropped black jackets (all of them) and five inch stilettos (for a walking tour...gluttons for punishment!).

Other than the cupcake aficionados, there was a sweet, beautiful woman who seemed to be falling more in love with the man she was sitting across from every minute. Her smile kept beaming from across the park.

There was also a woman who was quite the multitasker.

Then I left the park and walked towards the Hudson to watch the sunset.

When the sun started to set across the river, there was a sweet gay couple enjoying the moment under the trees. Then a big wind came and blew my ink bottle all over the table. Ink-tastrophe! Still, a great day!

One Step At a Time

My spring semester just ended! Here is an animation that I was working on for part of the semester:

One Step at a Time from Evan Turk on Vimeo.

Spring begins

Quietly

From the stork's one pace.

-Shoha

(Sound is quiet at the beginning, turn up the volume!)