I try to make it to at least one free play in Central Park every summer, and this year I decided to join some friends to check out New York Classical Theater‘s plein-air production of Moliere’s super-entertaining 17th century Vaudevillian slapstick classic The School for husbands. Central Park becomes both stage and auditorium for these productions, and the [...]
Here are a few more recent drawings from the rehearsals of the New York Repertory Orchestra. I used a quill pen and a reed pen with india ink for these, and I am really happy with how these came out. They really capture the feeling of the music and the atmosphere in the church and [...]
Who knew that my testosteronic salesguy-collegue harbored the soul of concert cellist? Certainly not I. Originally I had started coming to his orchestra’s rehearsals to get some much-needed drawing out of my system, but soon enough I found myself enveloped by the breathtakingly beautiful sounds he and his fellow musicians managed to coax from their [...]
On a recent trip to California I stayed in a classic Old Hollywood haunt called the Culver City Hotel, an idiosynchratic red brick wedge of a building that towers over the diminuitive Epcot-esque Art Deco buildings around it. The hotel lobby greets visitors with august, dark-wooded, faux-Patrician charm complete with piano bar, wooden globe, and enormous [...]
Despite thunderstorms earlier that day I found myself seated in the heart of Times Square to attend the premiere of Mad Men season four, an hour ahead of the rest of the country. I was later upgraded from puddle-seat to VIP area (admittedly way comfier than the wet bleachers (thank you V!). The majority of [...]
The Washington Heights barber wraps a young Latino in a cape emblazoned with day-glo palm trees, and nods into the mirror. They’re both silent and serious, the only sound is the boxing match on the wall-mounted television set. The young man is about to get a shape-up, a term referring to the removal of any [...]
The male Hammerhead bird of South Africa has figured out that his girlfriend gets amorous when he presents her with items to spruce up the 300 pound nest the couple share atop a knobby tree in the “open” style bird house at the Bronx Zoo. He goes out again and again to find suitable gifts [...]
Summer is now upon us, and that means the joys of iced coffee, kids shrieking in the spray of fire hydrant fountains, and of course the pied-piper melodies of the ice cream truck. Toward the evening, when the heat comes as much from the pavement as from the sky, the humid air vibrates with reggaeton [...]
When I was a little girl growing up in Germany I remember staying up long past my bed time to join my mom to watch “the Reportage”, a weekly television program dedicated to stories from around the world. I loved the show because I never knew whom I was going to encounter next, yurt-dwelling nomads [...]