Happy Spring Day!

Peonies are by far my favorite flowers and those associated with spring for me. The fact that they start popping up at farmers markets in late May to early June also makes them my birthday flowers! With that in mind I could not help myself but post some gorgeous pictures here, courtesy of my fellow bloggers from awaytogarden.com and hiphipgingin.com. Rustic or minimalist, peonies look fabulous in every shape or form!

On tenderness...

Last night as I was driving home late on an empty highway, listening to the magnificent piano compositions of Yiruma, I was thinking about a million things – the past, the present, the future…All of it came down to one thought:

The search for that exhilarating feeling of falling in love is our soul’s longing for the return to the age of innocence: 

Silent Souls

Today I have attended my first film from the San Francisco International Film Festival this season. I can openly say that it had a good start for me. I saw a Russian film called “Silent Souls”, or “Ovsyanki”, by director Aleksei Fedorchenko. The filmed started out rather dark and lengthy focusing on the burial of a woman by her husband and his coworker in accordance to the Merja people rituals. The close-ups of the naked body being washed then burned by the river, the talks of the past sexual intercourse with the woman who’s ashes are about to be committed to the waters, the seeming simplicity with which people deal with death in this Volga region of Russia – all astonish and repel at first. However, once you get past the shock factor and let yourself surrender to the film, you become enamored with its gentle sensuality and painful lyricism, its poetry of life and love. The movie touches on many topics that rarely lurk in the souls of the modern urban dwellers – those of the abandonment of the small provincial towns and the loneliness associated with those who have left them never to return, the loss of the entire peoples and their cultural identity. “Silent Souls” opens your mind to certain philosophical outlooks that despite the open darkness of the film’s plot make you leave the theater with lifted spirits and love for those around you.     

Vogue musings...

I came across this quote from American Vogue of 1988 and since I have recently cut my hair super short I felt inspired to share it here in case someone is thinking of taking the plunge as well:

“With short hair you begin to crave pearl necklaces, long earrings, and a variety of sunglasses. And you brush your teeth more often. Short hair removes obvious femininity and replaces it with style. When it starts growing out a little and losing its style, you have to wear sunglasses until you can get it to the hairdresser. That’s why you need a variety. Short hair makes you aware of subtraction as style. You can no longer wear puffed sleeves or ruffles; the neat is suddenly preferable to the fussy. You eye the tweezers instead of the blusher. What else can you take away? You can’t hide behind short hair… you may look a little androgynous, a little unfinished, a little bare… but your face is no longer a flat screen surrounded by a curtain: the world sees you in three dimensions” 

- Joan Juliet Buck for American Vogue, c.1988

Letterpress!

Today I took my first letterpress class. Jordan Ferney, of Ferney Art Studio, shared her vast experience of this old fashioned card making technique with a group of eight students who later proceeded to set in motion the mighty precision proof press machine and create incredibly beautiful designs of their own making!  
Check out some designs courtesy of Jordan Ferney, the head creator of Ferney Art Studio:

Ferney Art Studio
766 Valencia Street in San Francisco

Created Equal

Another great photography find - "Created Equal" by Mark Laita. The series of photographs created over eight years cast a polarizing look at the broadening cultural, political and social differences in otherwise "created equal" people. One of those rare striking projects that molds the unique aesthetic vision with strong philosophical agenda and almost a touch of poetic lyricism: