the sea x love

recent reads

One of the best post-undergrad experiences is being able to leisure read. It also slightly satisfies my yearning to return to an academic setting. So today, I wanted to highly a few of the books I’ve read recently; since I often receive inquiries into what I’m currently reading or have read.

  1. The Battle for Paradise: Puerto Rico Takes on the Disaster Capitalists by Naomi Klein
  2. I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes within Us and a Grander View of Life by Ed Young
  3. City of Segregation: 100 Years of Struggle for Housing in Los Angeles by Andrea Gibbons
  4. Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City  by Matthew Desmond

If you’re wondering what I’m currently reading, I’m actually reading two main books at the moment:

  1. Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight Against Medical Discrimination by Alondra Nelson
  2. The Design of Protest: Choreographing Political Demonstrations in Public Space by Tali Hatuka

I’m also technically still reading Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance but it’s a trek to get through so it might be a while for I finish it. it’s pretty bad.

phillips collection

Van Gogh’s House at Auvers

 A few weeks ago, I visited the Phillips Collection in DC. It is the first modern art museum in the US. I was absolutely taken aback, even considering that they were in the process of installing new exhibitions (which I am over the moon to see). I checked this place out for a few reasons but its biggest draw was its proximity to my hotel. I was in DC for work so I had limited free time. I am also a huge fan of smaller art museums, one of my all-time favorite museums is the Berggruen Museum in Berlin. I also love modern/contemporary art, I definitely lean more towards sculpture but I’m down for some good 2D art. While there were many beautiful paintings, my favorites were the Wolfgang Laib’s Wax Room, Per Kirkbey’s untitled works, and Van Gogh’s House at Auvers; to be fair I’m a sucker for Van Gogh so if his work is present then I’m definitely going to include it.

Wolfgang Laib’s Wax Room

For brevity, I’m only going to discuss one of these works—Wolfgang Laib’s Wax Room. As far as immersive and thought-provoking built artistic environments go this is tied with/second to Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Carne y arena VR experience. There is nothing quite like the Wax Room. It’s about a 5ft by 3ft by 9ft room covered in beeswax and illuminated with a single lightbulb. It smells warm and slightly sweet but also very waxy. The walls are kind of sticky but it feels extremely cozy. The way that sound moves about the room is also pretty interesting as noise and sound immediately stop. There was no echo or reverberation. I couldn’t help but imagine the amount of work and energy the bees who produced this wax had to expend to create it. It is also worth thinking about the amount of work people had to expend to harvest and process the wax into something usable. It would be unfair for me to also not mention that this room reminded me of time in Colombia, my childhood, and my design work which has focused on bees and sustainability in the past.

Per Kirkeby
Per Kirkeby

blaschkas glass sea creatures

A few months ago, I went to Wien to visit some art museums (mostly to see Wes Anderson’s exhibition at the Kunsthistorisches Museum) and practice my German! This was my second trip to Austria but my first-time visiting Vienna. While I saw many amazing works of art and fragments of history, I want to focus on two sets of works that really blew me away—the Blaschka glass flowers and sea creatures. The Blaschkas were a father-son glass artist duo native to Czech-German borderland. They sold thousands of these glass invertebrates as models for scientific and academic study.

I wouldn’t go as far as to call myself a glass artist but my foray into glassblowing has deepened my appreciation of glass art and the skill required to produce such realistic and proportionally accurate replicas. Harvard also has a collection of their sea creatures and commissioned the infamous glass flowers, but I hadn’t seen the glass flowers before visiting Vienna. Both of these collections are breathtaking and so realistic, I am absolutely awestruck. These models are both art and scientific models, and quite honestly, these photos don’t do them justice.