blendnewyork Fashion Speaks from Inferno Concepts.

An Inferno Concepts Picture

Service in Style is a student organization at Princeton University. The organization orchestrates and hosts an annual professional-quality fashion show to raise autism awareness and to fundraise for The Eden Institute. This show, called Fashion Speaks, is one of the largest single annual fundraisers at the University.

Watch what blendnewyork boutique had to show at this great event!

When first stumbling onto this website, I was a bit taken back by the uniqueness of this product. But being a long time glass art lover, and seeing these beautiful pendants made with ashes of a loved one (or pet), I began to think this was something special. Take a look at these brilliant creations and see what you think:

Glass artist Mark Hamilton will create a one-of-a-kind custom art glass memorial pendant with your loved one’s ashes.

Glass Cremation Jewelry: Every time you put your pendant on, see it in the mirror, or receive a compliment on it you’ll be reminded of your loved one’s continuing presence with you.

Glass Cremation Pendants: A cremation pendant is the perfect way to keep the ashes of a loved one close to your heart.

Pet Cremation Jewelry: Rather than gathering dust on a shelf, your pet’s ashes are melted into hot glass and transformed into a beautiful piece of art.

Why “Psyche” Cremation Jewelry?

The Greek word for the soul is Psyche (pronounced “Sigh-key”). In ancient Greece, the soul was personified as a butterfly and the word Psyche can be literally interpreted as “spirit, breath, life or animating force”. The Psyche is the element within a living being that gives them life and personality and continues “to breathe” even after leaving the body.

About the artist:

Mark Hamilton is professional lampwork glass artist. For the last 14+ years he’s specialized in creating lampwork glass jewelry out of strong borosilicate glass. After experiencing the loss of 2 close friends and his big tom cat Leo, he decided to put his skills to use in the service of others who’d lost people and pets close to them. He still creates many different types of hand blown glass jewelry, but cremation jewelry is the most rewarding glass work he says he’s done. Mark is honored to be able to make beautiful creations out of hot glass that help people hold the memory of their loved ones close to their hearts.

“I take my part in this seriously and am always conscious in treating both my customers and the ashes of their loved ones with care and respect.”

If you are interested in having ashes preserved in a piece of glass art, please feel free to contact psychecremationjewelry.com with any questions you might have about the process.
 

Enjoy the Beauty and Benefits of an Organic Landscape

Heirloom Gardens is a full service environmentally-friendly landscape design, installation and maintenance company.

They are the only fully accredited organic land care professionals exclusively servicing the East End for over 10 years. Heirloom Gardens provides sustainable and traditional landscape design, installation and complete maintenance services.

When this Hamptons landscaping company designs, installs or maintains your outdoor environment, you can enjoy impeccable service, along with deep caring and stunning results. From day-to-day details, to striking outdoor organic landscapes, you’ll appreciate your surroundings and know that you’re doing the right thing for your family and pets.

Every year more and more East End homes improve their properties with Heirloom Gardens — let them do the same for yours!

Their Philosophy…..

BALANCE, by definition, is a biological system that enables us to know where our bodies are in the environment and provides the point of reference, that, if attained, will keep us healthy. Balance is also the lofty goal they strive for with respect to the care of the natural world they work in.

Today we are flooded with the words “organic,” “green,” “natural” and “sustainable.”  However, none of them hold much value without balance, and whether we realize it or not we all strive for it in one sense or another.  By pursuing an organic approach to landscaping for their clients, they create and sustain the natural environment that surrounds their Long Island homes.

Conversely, the use of extensive pesticides, herbicides and insecticides, all of which are man-made and engineered chemicals, does nothing more than control the immediate symptoms or problems that arise. These chemical solutions do nothing for the overall health of the plants themselves in the same way that taking an aspirin does nothing to cure the common cold.

Therefore, Heirloom’s philosophy is simple: they will take care of the landscapes that they are entrusted with in the same manner a personal trainer cares for a professional athlete. They strive for simple beauty, fluidity of movement and most of all, balance.  After all, plants are just like us!

To learn more about organic landscaping, please visit their website at http://heirloomgardensllc.com/

Click to Shop "Plangirl" by S.Pell

• The 16 x 20 pieces are printed on archival paper, signed, numbered, matted and ready to frame. Actual art is about 11 x 14.
• Plangirl – Original piece: Acrylic paint and collage over retro Paris map.
• Original for sale – Please contact Blend for information regarding original artwork purchases.
• S*Pellbinders series.
• SHOP SHARON PELL ARTWORK

As a fashion design student, I never thought when I first decided to go down that route that the choices in careers are in plentitude. I’ve always loved fashion – drawing and sewing in some of my oldest memories. Not to forget to mention Barbie and the phenomena and imagination attached to that… who is she… what is she wearing… where is she going… things that still inspire the greatest fashion designers today.

From the youngest age, I’ve been drawn to fashion- going through my mother’s skirts and shoes, putting on makeup with my fashion-savvy grandmother… It excited me, as with any woman. It just felt good to dress up and feel outwardly beautiful.

Fast forward and I decide to go to school for fashion design after some thought in changing my career direction. Coming from a fine art background, I was immediately drawn to fashion design since that was the next logical step in my life. I went from sketching live nude models in drawing classes, to wanting to clothe them the way I dreamt up in my head.

Since I lived in New York, I chose FIT as the school I would attend. What I learned after taking classes at The Fashion Institute of Technology was that there were many types of roles one can play in the fashion industry, besides the obvious to me at the time (designers, patternmakers, buyers, marketing). Business-savvy students can choose fashion merchandising, marketing, planning, and product development careers. And design students can create original works in art, fashion, interior, toy and product design. Walking through the halls of FIT opened my eyes to many other great ideas that I probably never would have thought if I didn’t go to school there.

Chances are, if you’re looking to pursue an art career, you most likely have a few questions. You may even be completely confused about which way to turn. Don’t worry! That’s completely normal, especially for someone trying to make a decision about the rest of their life ;0) Also, if you’re here reading this, you’re probably already strongly considering a career in art. But how do you start? What type of education should you get?

If you are an art student of any kind, The Art Career Project is a great resource for students to make an easier decision about researching fashion design schools.

You can read more here: http://www.theartcareerproject.com/fashion-design-schools/

“I wanted to get out and walk eastward toward the park through the soft twilight, but each time I tried to go I became entangled in some wild, strident argument which pulled me back, as if with ropes, into my chair. Yet high over the city our line of yellow windows must have contributed their share of human secrecy to the casual watcher in the darkening streets… I saw him too, looking up and wondering. I was within and without.”
-Ch. 2

Say the name Tennessee Williams, and “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” “The Glass Menagerie” and “A Streetcar Named Desire” are the plays that most audiences call to mind. For good reason. Williams was a master of tapping into the human psyche and the heartache of dreams unfulfilled and all these plays strike that chord effectively.

But Williams wrote other works that never found the mass appeal of his biggest hits. These are plays that delve into the deepest corner of human misery and, though they may tread on difficult terrain, bring a spark of understanding in the end.

“In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel” is one such Williams play. Written in 1969, the title is faithful to its setting, and the play offers a voyeuristic look at the waning days of the complex and volatile relationship between a renown — but psychotic — painter and his long suffering wife. The play is being offered through April 29, 2012 by HITFest. An outgrowth of the Naked Stage play reading series at Guild Hall, HITFest producers Josh Perl and Peter Zablotsky have, for a third season, transformed the stage of the Bridgehampton Community House into The Bridge, a self-contained intimate black box theater which Perl feels suits ‘Tokyo Hotel” to a T.

“I really appreciate the little space we have and the economic realities of it,” explains Perl. “We’re not expecting to do the greatest hits and have 300 people show up. That’s not going to happen nor is it what we’re looking to do.”

“This is a terrific little chamber piece by one of America’s greatest playwrights,” he adds. “It wasn’t that Williams couldn’t have written another block buster, but that’s not what he was about. It’s much more interior. An actor heard an audience member say ‘I feel like I’m a voyeur watching the interior of something I shouldn’t have seen.’ It’s that kind of piece and that kind of space.”

This production of “In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel” is directed by Perl with a set by Peter-Tolin Baker and features Seth Hendricks in the role of Mark, the tortured painter, and Licia James-Zegar as Miriam, his embittered wife. The couple has traveled to Tokyo and checked into a hotel where they keep separate rooms. Mark is there to develop a new style of work and rarely emerges from his room where he spends countless hours painting with a spray gun on canvas tacked to the floor, frequently using his own body as a brush.

As the play opens, Miriam is alone in the hotel bar where she orders a stiff drink and makes a none too subtle pass at the barman (Glenn L. Cruz). A callous and calculating “ugly American” with a lack of cultural understanding and a penchant for getting what she wants (men and alcohol seemingly at the top of her list), she makes plans for a side trip to Kyoto and works to convince the barman, who is happily engaged, to accompany her on her jaunt.

One glimpse of her husband explains why. Disheveled, covered in paint, unable to stand and rambling incoherently, Mark enters the bar in the full throes of a physical and mental breakdown — perhaps due to paint fumes. He’s convinced he’s the first artist to have discovered color and is fearful of his realization. He can’t hold a drink properly and Miriam is forced to pour the liquor down his throat. She obviously hopes it will have a curative effect on him.

Meanwhile, Miriam is developing an exit strategy. She has secured many of her husband’s most valuable works back home to ensure her financial future. She has also contacted Mark’s longtime agent, Leonard (Terrence Fiore) and summoned him to Tokyo. When he arrives, she announces she is turning Mark’s care over to him. She expects Leonard to take Mark back to the States where she imagines he’ll be institutionalized. For her part, Miriam has no intention of accompanying him and shares details of how she plans to enjoy her life free from the burden of her husband.

Audiences may find Miriam’s callousness toward her obviously ill husband difficult to fathom. But Williams, who is said to have loosely based Mark and Miriam on Jackson Pollock (whom he knew personally) and Lee Krasner, leaves us with little doubt about her love for the man. This is a couple who, with time and madness, have grown tragically distant. After supporting and nurturing Mark in his career, Miriam finds in his delirium, he has a new mistress — his work.

“In the bar of a Tokyo Hotel” is, at its heart, a love story. But this is love at the end of life when illness conspires to break it in two. The truth is, Mark is killing himself and Miriam can’t bear to watch. We know relief will come with the inevitable, but the façade remains intact as long as it’s needed. And in the end, we find that the best-laid plans don’t, in fact, exist at all.

“In The Bar of a Tokyo Hotel” runs Thursday to Saturday at 8 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday at 2 p.m. Tickets are $20 at tokyo-hitfest.eventbrite.com or 525-2995.

(by Annette Hinkle – original source here)

“One must dare to be happy.”

Sublime Pawn Shop Live at the House Of Blues Hollywood California 4-5-1996

MFA Graduate Exhibition opens May 11 at the Phoenix Hotel, with a special Preview Party on May 10 benefitting SFAI’s scholarship fund. Additional capstone events include MFA Film Screening at SFMOMA and MA Symposium.

The San Francisco Art Institute, one of the nation’s oldest and most prestigious contemporary art colleges, is proud to showcase an impressive body of student work during the 2012 Graduate Events. Continuing the school’s legacy of innovative thinking and experimentation, this year’s events offer an exciting opportunity for nearly 100 emerging fine artists to unveil publicly their work in painting, photography, printmaking, film, sculpture, installation, digital media, and performance.

SFAI will stage its Master of Fine Arts (MFA) Graduate Exhibition and Vernissage Preview Party at the historic Phoenix Hotel in the Tenderloin from May 10-13; the MFA Film Screening at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) on the afternoon of May 11; and its Master of Arts (MA) Thesis Symposium at SFAI’s historic Russian Hill campus on May 7. These unique events give the public a chance to engage with new talents in the Bay Area art scene at some of the most prominent art venues in the city.

MFA GRADUATE EXHIBITION

SFAI’s graduating MFA students will transform the iconic Phoenix Hotel for four days, displaying their art-including many site-specific pieces and collaborative installations-in guest rooms, poolside, and throughout the hotel. Their diverse, ambitious work will highlight distinct points of view as well as new, cutting-edge directions in art today.

“The MFA Graduate Exhibition is one of the most exciting times for SFAI’s Graduate Program, when we see in one place the manifestation of two years of labor, sacrifice, and commitment by a new generation of artists ready to contribute to the landscape of contemporary art and culture,” says Tony Labat, Director of MFA Programs. “The Bay Area has always been at the forefront of artists and curators seeking alternative spaces for exhibition and production, and this exhibition continues that important tradition.”

The public is invited to purchase tickets to SFAI’s exclusive Vernissage Preview Party, the premier annual fundraiser for the nonprofit institution, held in support of student scholarships. Guests will be the first to mingle with and view the work of the graduating artists, while also enjoying food, drinks, and live performance art.

Preview Party ticket-holders at the patron level will receive early entrance and a guided tour of the exhibition by a curatorial guest from one of the region’s top museums, including Lucinda Barnes, Chief Curator and Director of Programs and Collections at Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; Julian Cox, Founding Curator of Photography for the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and Chief Curator at the de Young Museum; Rudolf Frieling, Curator of Media Arts at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Betti-Sue Hertz, Director of Visual Arts at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts; and others.

Location:

The Phoenix Hotel
601 Eddy Street, San Francisco, CA 94109

Preview Party:

Thursday, May 10, 6-10 pm
Tickets start at $200.
Call 415.749.4512 or visit www.sfai.edu/previewparty

Vernissage Opening Reception:

Friday, May 11, 6-8 pm
Free and open to the public

Exhibition Dates:

Friday, May 11 to Sunday, May 13
Open daily noon-10 pm
Free and open to the public

MFA FILM SCREENING

SFAI partners with the SFMOMA to showcase works by graduating MFA Film students. From an experimental documentary about the Occupy movement to an animated short starring an otter and lemur living in a submarine, the films highlight the artists’ engaged and idiosyncratic approaches.

“In the 21st century, it is our mandate to create groundbreaking, original, and hybrid storytelling,” says Lynn Hershman Leeson, Chair of the Film Department. “We are proud to screen works by students who incorporate the spirit of experimental cinema, which artists at the San Francisco Art Institute pioneered, into unique and compelling cinematic visions.”

Location:

SFMOMA
Phyllis Wattis Theater
151 3rd Street, San Francisco, CA 94103

Date:

Friday, May 11, 1-3 pm
Free and open to the public 

MA THESIS SYMPOSIUM

Graduating students in SFAI’s Master of Art Programs in Exhibition and Museum Studies, History and Theory of Contemporary Art, Urban Studies, and the MA/MFA Dual Degree will present selections of their completed theses in a day-long public event. Engaging a diverse range of topics across global contemporary art practices, the Thesis Symposium represents the capstone of a two-year process of research, critical inquiry, and writing. This year’s cohort has taken up such subjects as the place of the Iraqi National Museum in the public imaginary, the resituating of Ana Mendieta for contemporary Cuban artists, and the “crude politics” of aesthetic radicalism in the post-Soviet context.

Location:

San Francisco Art Institute
800 Chestnut Street, San Francisco, CA 94133

Date:

Monday, May 7, 10 am-5 pm
Free and open to the public

About San Francisco Art Institute

Founded in 1871, the San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI), a nonprofit art college, is one of the nation’s oldest and most prestigious schools of higher education in contemporary art. A small school with global impact-notable faculty and alumni include Richard Diebenkorn, Ansel Adams, Annie Leibovitz, Enrique Chagoya, Kathryn Bigelow, Peter Pau, Ruby Yang, Paul Kos, George Kuchar, Lance Acord, and Kehinde Wiley-SFAI enrolls approximately 650 students in undergraduate and graduate programs, and offers a wide range of continuing education courses and public programs. The historic Chestnut Street campus is located in San Francisco’s Russian Hill neighborhood, and the Graduate Center is located in San Francisco’s Dogpatch neighborhood.

For more information about SFAI, please visit www.sfai.edu.

(For the original version on PRWeb visit: www.prweb.com/releases/prwebsfai/2012graduateevents/prweb9422433.htm)

Clothes.ie is a new online fashion blog which aims to bring you the latest and greatest from the world of fashion in Ireland and further afield. Clothes.ie exists to connect the fashion community in Ireland – if you’re a fashion blogger, PR rep, designer, or if you run a fashion shop, own your own fashion label or just love to read anything related to fashion, then you’re in the right place.
 
They manage a fantastic fashion directory which lists fashion shops and businesses throughout Ireland – so that you can find your favorite store, whatever your taste is.

They also hold fashion-related competitions and write product reviews of the brightest up and coming Irish designers out there.

Why not get involved and start sharing your views on Clothes.ie today!

http://clothes.ie/
fb: http://www.facebook.com/clothes.ie
t: http://twitter.com/clothesDOTie

Chai is one of the simplest pleasures you can enjoy everyday – nothing else this healthy can taste this good.
 
Completely natural and delicious, Chai Spice puts the finest spices into your cup in the easiest way.
 
Enjoy exploring these delicious flavors and styles by making one of the finest drinks in the world.

Made in Australia:

Check out their Bush Spice tea and taste traditional Australian flavors such as cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, nutmeg, ginger, bay leaves and star anise. The bush spices they have added are mountain pepper berry and mountain pepper leaf, wattleseed and aniseed myrtle.

Everything can be ordered online at
www.chaispice.com.au

Drink up and enjoy!