Cemetery Season: Poetry Month + The Grief of April

April 13, 2025

I’ve always associated the start of spring with what I have called “cemetery season” for as long as I can remember. My family always gets together around this time of year and visits relatives buried in both NY and PA. The tradition is known as “Hong San” and is associated with the Chinese tomb-sweeping “QingMing” festival. My mom always vaguely refers to it as “the Chinese holiday” (and we have never once called it the QingMing festival). For me, it was always just an association with the season - always occurring sometime after the first day of spring but before Easter.

We plant flowers, set out food, and burn incense. After my uncle passed away from COVID (three years ago this month… just days before his 60th birthday), I also started painting rocks and bringing those to leave on top of the tombstones, too. It was something I had started doing for myself during the pandemic (as a way to process trauma and grief) - and now has become something I do annually for this occasion, too.

Refinery29's #29Rooms NYFW Installation 2016

September 23, 2016

A couple weekend's back, I got to experience this year's version of Refinery29's ultimate fashion / technology funhouse: 29Rooms. This is the second year that they've done it, and I'm sure it will continue to be an annual thing. I remember being completely blown away last year, and this year was equally as fulfilling. The visual stimulation of texture and color and overall interactive experience is just a real treat, and I'm already wondering what they will do next year!

The Armory Show 2016

March 4, 2016

Last night, I got to attend this year's Armory Show for the #ArtsyArmoryMeet! If you're not familiar with the Armory Show, you can read up a bit on the history HERE.

This actually wasn't my first Armory Show - I went to one a couple years back while I was still in school. I took a 6 week course that focused entirely on the show and it's history - and ever since then, I anticipate it's return every year. Essentially, it's a giant smorgasbord of both contemporary and modern art. There's a LOT to see (drawing, painting, photography, sculpture, interactive installations, motion, etc) - every artist / art lover's dream, basically. If you decide to go, I recommend going early so that you allow yourself enough time to explore! I was there for an hour and a half yesterday, and definitely didn't get around to everything. I'm actually planning to go back again tomorrow to try to see some of what I missed, haha

Dan Flavin at David Zwirner

October 16, 2015

This past weekend I went to see Dan Flavin's "Corners, Barriers, and Corridors" show at the David Zwirner gallery in NYC. The DZ gallery is one of my favorites in Chelsea, and they always seem to have the best exhibitions going on. I've been to two great Yayoi Kusama shows hosted by DZ in the last few years, and when I heard Dan Flavin was going to have an exclusive show there - I could not get my butt to the gallery faster! ;)

Refinery29's #29Rooms NYFW Installation

September 22, 2015

A little over a week ago, I got to experience one of the best interactive art installations I've ever experienced: #29Rooms. It was the only NY Fashion Week event I attended this time around, but I'm okay with that because it fulfilled all of my wildest dreams, haha..

For their 10th anniversary, Refinery29 put together an epic 29-room funhouse inside a Greenpoint (Brooklyn) warehouse. Each room was created by a different artist and offered a different experience than the one next to it. It was an extremely overwhelming visual experience to say the least, lol... I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to see it Thursday night before it went live to the public on Friday / Saturday. Despite this exclusive viewing opportunity though, I still felt like I could have easily spent more time in each of the rooms. There were even some rooms I didn't go into at all or failed to photograph because I was so overwhelmed trying to just take it all in. 29 is A LOT! I think I would have been overwhelmed had there been only 10 rooms... so imagine 3 times that. I unfortunately wasn't able to catch the name / artist of each room because I felt so scatterbrained through out the night, but will try to share that info with you for the ones I was able to catch or recognized on my own.

Lorraine Loots #ANTSinNYC Exhibition

July 12, 2015

Yesterday, I wandered into Brooklyn with Kristyn Brady to see the #ANTSinNYC exhibition by South African artist Lorraine Loots on display at Three Kings Studio. We walked over from the lower east side via the Williamsburg bridge. It was my first time walking that bridge, so I was pretty stoked to be doing something completely new. We stopped in at a bunch of cute boutiques on our walk towards the gallery, and it was a super fulfilling (and super hot) day. It was totally worth the sweaty trek, though!

Today I decided to write up this quick blog post - in hopes that it inspires you to also stop on by to see Lorraine's incredible show. It is only open for a few more days (closing on July 15) - so if you are in NYC, I highly recommend going to see it before it's gone!

I have a habit of hoarding all print collateral / entry tickets / etc. whenever I go to events / exhibitions ... #designerhoardingproblems — I have a habit of hoarding all print collateral / entry tickets / etc. whenever I go to events / exhibitions ... #designerhoardingproblems

Storm King & Jeff Koons

October 16, 2014

This is my first art / design related post on my blog – and after a month of blogging, I think it’s long overdue haha. This past weekend, my family drove through upstate NY, and I got the chance to finally experience the wonderland that is Storm King Art Center. It’s been on my “places to see” list for a little while now, and I keep hearing / seeing good things about it from multiple sources (mostly Instagram because… let’s be real: that’s my main source of *news*). The Jeff Koons exhibit is something I saw about 3 weeks ago at The Whitney (in Manhattan, NY) but never wrote a post about. The exhibit is the last to be hosted at the Madison Ave Whitney location before it relocates in the spring to somewhere in the Meatpacking District. I made it my mission to be sure to see it, and that was one of the reasons why. Both of these trips could have easily been separate blog posts, but since the Jeff Koons exhibit is winding down, I figured I would include it with my most recent venture to Storm King. Both of these exhibits have to do with sculpture – and while that isn’t what I studied in school - it’s one of my favorite fine art fields to go out and see. This may or may not have to do with my love for dimensional design in my own (graphic design) work. I love the interactivity of sculpture; you can’t “walk around” a flat painting to observe different angles like you can with a 3D piece. Sculpture is also affected by light and shadows – which is recipe for epic photos ;) I took a bajillion (photos) during both trips, so brace yourselves.

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