London Calling[me to live here]

I have fallen in love. Deeply in love. Not with anyone, but with a school. Central St. Martin's College of Art and Design. I am currently taking a Experimental Fashion Knitwear summer course, and I can't get enough of it. I wish the days were longer and I could live there. But where I am staying now is pretty cool: Old Street district. There are tons of fashion forward boutiques, art galleries, bars, cafes and even a health food grocery store. Who could resist? Also, a huge number of kids riding fix gears and road bikes. And my secret addiction of graffiti and street art is greatly satisfied.

For my first week in London, I ran into one of my favorite british actors from my favorite TV show Misfits, was almost arrested jumping over a fence into an abandoned structure, and was completely moved by the Martin Margiela exhibit. Those were just some of the highlights amongst great art shows, Dover Street Market, Liberty, amazing people watching, and pretty good veggie food(which always adds bonus points to any trip).

Cheers

Two Talents One Castle

This is the end of the first week of the Ovanes Berberian(my dad) Outdoor Painting Workshop in Idaho. I come up every June to help him run the show and get into some painting and creating myself. My dad has created the most artistic setting for the students to paint still life's outdoors. As part of the Workshop, every Tuesday and Thursday nights there is demo in which my dad will paint an entire painting live in front of his student audience. This year we were to have a special treat, with Peace's son Casey Wilkinson, master pianist, playing all sorts of exquisite musical pieces (some of which he composed himself), along to my dads painting.
Last night was quite a performance due to the fact that my dad chose the biggest canvas he could find to demonstrate a landscape painting on. The combination of Casey's beautiful playing and my dad's intense painting was enough to make any art buff weak in the knees. Painting straight for almost three hours, my dad had pretty much finished the entire painting that was ten times the size of him. With vibrant colors that sang throughout the piece, that could only come from years of experience, I heard one of the students ask if he had done any drugs in another lifetime. Drugs or no drugs, it is something to see. My dad records every demo night and has a collection of his paintings on dvd. I always wish I had a recording of my some of my favorite classical artists painting my favorite paintings so I could pause and rewind if I wanted to.

Square Dress Srikes Again!

This past Sunday was my last day at my job at Ron Herman, and I had the pleasure of making my coworkers now ex-coworkers some lovely outfits before leaving. I was thrilled to learn that my employers also loved the dress I made for my friend Regina. (In hopes that they will pick up the line.) Please Dress Up! of course. Her dress is a beautiful silk print of dictionary pages. This was made exclusively for Shotwell boutique in San Francisco as a limited edition print. Regina was lucky that we still had some left over fabric. I just adore the print!
As for my next venture, (because everyone wants to know what you're gonna do next) I will continue to do Please Dress Up! and for the next two weeks I will be in Idaho helping my dad run his outdoor painting workshops. Stay tuned. City girl goes to the country and is always eager to come back after about a week or so of honky tonk living. Well, only when I leave my dads property do I feel like I am entering the twilight zone.

Gettin' Back Up!

This blog is a recording of mi vida loca. Or so people tell me that it is. There are so many projects and activities that I dabble in that I need to restrain myself sometimes, but truly I am a fashion designer and an artist at heart. I have been doing both for such a long time, I don't think I could do anything else seriously."Hey Jude", said Paul, "don't let me down, just take a sad song and make it better."........ I feel like that right now. Having just moved out of a warehouse mansion that I called home for a year has changed my course a bit. The Catalyst Artist Collective is a place where some of my favorite people reside and create beautiful works of art of all sorts. But I'm not here to tell you about why I left and all that, I'm not Gossip Girl. Although, I did start this blog to fill a huge social void that consisted of living with 13 people. One of them is an amazing photographer by the name of Aaron Paul Rogers who takes beautifully captivating photos of people and fashion. This was a fun little shoot that we did the other night. Aaron Paul had the same idea I had but I hadn't vocalized it to him. He just got really excited when he saw my artwork I told him I was more than eager to do it. I think the result was really fun. We will continue the series of Miss Dress Up getting up.