Wednesday in Los Angeles: The Getty Villa, Malibu Seafood and El Matador Beach

I have always had an incredible passion for western art, and since my first trip to Italy, I have had an incredible passion for ancient Roman art and architecture. Since that time, I have had the amazing opportunity to work with Dr. Eleonora Del Federico and Dr. Bernhard Blümich

in Herculaneum, Italy where we studied and had access to some of the greatest examples of Roman architecture, wall paintings and mosaics. We had the opportunity to research in the newly excavated Villa dei Papiri which few people are allowed to enter, and we were only allowed to go in two people at a time to prevent any excess change in humidity.

Standing barefoot on the remains of the tiled floors of the patio in Herculaneum, I would wonder how the columns would have stacked up around me to the intricate sculpted and painted ceilings and how luxurious the sculptured gardens would look if I had the opportunity to see them in their prime. The Getty Institute has been doing a significant amount of research in the Villa dei Papiri and has recreated the original site in their Getty Villa museum. I was thrilled at the opportunity to see the Getty's recreation of the villa and to have the opportunity to walk its halls mumbling "I touched the real one."

The halls of the museum are sheltered within a just, if not somewhat enlarged, recreation of a roman villa. The entrance leads to a handsome atrium from which a series of small rooms spider out in every direction. Within these rooms are held glass artifacts, stoneware and beautiful ornaments excavated from the Herculaneum site and other sites of the same time period. After wandering through the maze of rooms, a brightly lit doorway leads you out to a small garden in the center of which is a shallow pool flanked by at least 16 bronze statues. This garden seems like quite the main event, until you walk through to the central garden which boasts an incredibly symmetrical plan with a vast pool and fountain, beautifully sculpted bushes and a variety of fig and pomegranate trees.

It seems the Romans were just as fond of gardens as I am: every entryway leads to another garden. The eastern gallery boasts mosaic structure which serves as a fountain and water source to a small pool filled with water lilies and lotus plants, and the side of the mansion is flanked by a huge herb garden, planted with all of the plants that have been depicted on Roman wall paintings. Thyme and rosemary fill neat, rectangular plots while ripening pomegranate and fig trees contour the plots and provide an incredible shaded walk.

Each piece of statuary and carved scenery in the museum's well rounded collection is an inspiration to any painter, and my particular interest in figural compositions and relief-esque sense of space made the Getty Villa an amazing museum for me to visit. I would recommend it to anyone.

After the museum we drove over to Malibu Seafood, a great place to get fish and chips about 20 feet away from the shoreline. I was introduced to this place a year ago on my first visit to Los Angeles and couldn't wait to go back. We sat on their opened air patio in the sunshine eating fried fish and watching waves crash onto the beach.

We continued on our drive along the coast line and arrived at El Matador beach. The amazing beaches on the Malibu coast are surrounded by cliffs and provide safe heaven from the freeway that stretches along the coast. We parked and made our way to the edge of the cliff and as we followed a curving, dusty pathway down the cliff-side, we were honored by an incredible prospect of the wide open sea and the sculptured rocks it repeatedly crashes into.

El Matador beach is known for its romantic nooks and as we descended to the beach we found no more than 10 couples within eyes' breadth and settled by a private cavern by the famous Matador. We had no neighbors in site save for the albatross, who was incredibly interested in my purse and would saunter across the beach to it any time we were more than 15 feet away from our camp.

For as long as I can remember, I have had an incredible passion for the ocean and romantic caverns by the sea. This beach was perfect. A great stone structure abuts the edge of the beach, the strength of the waves has carved out caverns in the stone and years of dust and debris have given refuge to flowers and succulents that grow atop the rock structure and droop down its sides.

Walking around the rocky shoreline, we discovered a vast display of sea life, biding time until the return of the high tide, a seemingly dangerous lifestyle, but it seems they have been surviving in that manner for years. Giant orange and violet starfish clung to the undersides of rocks and hid covered by disturbed clumps of seaweed. To my amazement, a large population of anemones clustered behind every shady rock. They drooped lifelessly in the low tide, but awakened instantly as the waves ushered water between the crannies of their rocky homes.

The Pacific Ocean is incredibly cold, at least in the summer, as that is the only time I have yet visited the west coast, so most of our meanderings on the beach were in the safety of the warm sand. Only once did I venture past ankle deep in the waves, and had to recuperate for quite a while afterwards.

We walked up and down the shore and amused ourselves with photoshoots and feeling the sand shift under out feet as the waves hit our feet. We would have waited for the sun to set behind the glistening sea had we not been recalled to the present and packed our things to join our friends for dinner.

Los Angeles on Tuesday: Getty Center

We arrived in Burbank, Los Angeles, and after some troubles, rented a red Volkswagen beetle (our excuse is that it was the cheapest car available, but really we thought it was fabulous). We were staying at Rafael’s friends Kit and Christine’s house and we drove over to Christine’s work to meet her for lunch, she works at Dreamworks studios. Turning onto Flower street, we expected a futuristic compound of animators and studios, and in its stead we found a commanding Venetian façade of orange spackling crowded with climbing vines and topped with ceramic tiled roofing. The buildings were all connecting Venetian villas with cypress trees guarding each entryway and flowered hedges silhouetting the sidewalks.

We ate lunch at the cafeteria, which provides free lunch and breakfast everyday, even to us, and took a tour of the buildings and gardens. Dreamworks has built a beautiful brook into their grounds, which leads to a waterfall, that supplies a lake, which in turn runs off to a lagoon stocked in koi and goldfish who hide beneath the shade of water lily pads.

After our tour of Dreamworks, we headed over to the Getty Center in Los Angeles. My first visit there last year was during a private reception for a conference I was part in, but I longed to see the complete art collection and stroll the gardens in the warm afternoon sun.

The Getty Center boasts a truly wonderful prospect. The museum is situated atop a giant hill, and the modern limestone structure contrasts wonderfully with the trees and shrubberies it has surrounded itself with. The museum is comprised of a cylindrical set of buildings surrounding a fountain and limestone courtyard.

A multi-leveled patio overlooks the entirety of Los Angeles, which is so much more extensive than the compact vertical cities I am accustomed with. Clumps of buildings and metropolitan areas are surrounded by romantic hilltops and mountains scattered with palms and eucalyptus trees. From the highest overlook, you are enchanted with a huge succulent tree garden. A grouping of tree aloe plants hedges a stairway to a circular preserve of a wide range of cacti.

Peter Paul Rubens and Jan Bruegel the Elder "Return From War: Mars Disarmed by Venus" 1610

We toured each set of galleries in turn and I was overjoyed to find a substantial collection of Peter Paul Rubens paintings and studies as well as the works of several of his students and contemporaries. One painting in particular caught my attention, Return From War: Mars Disarmed by Venus, because the style of the figures and setting did not seem to belong to the same artist, yet both styles of painting seemed incredibly familiar. I was surprised to learn that Peter Paul Rubens frequently collaborated with Jan Bruegel the Elder who would work on the backgrounds. Rubens and Bruegel are two of my favorite artists of that time and have both had an incredible influence over my work.

Peter Paul Rubens "Miracles St. Francis" 1627 and Peter Paul Rubens "King Ferdinand" 1635

The Getty Museum has an amazing collection of European art ranging from pre-Renaissance works through the Eighteenth Century. The collection is separated by period and nation in the separate buildings surrounding the courtyard. Traversing the galleries in one trip is easily managed by taking breaks to stroll through the courtyard gardens.

Gérard Audran after Charles Le Brun "Crossing of the Granicus"1672

Apart from its permanent collection, the entirety of which I was unable to see on my last visit, the Getty Center had an incredible printmaking show. Printing in the Grand Manner is a collection of large scale prints reproduced from the paintings of Charles le Brun and his studio. In general, I am always very fond of figure drawings for reference, if for nothing else, but these works were quite to my taste. The Grand Manner is a genre very focused on a heroic protagonist of sorts, the imagery surrounding whom, depicts the protagonist overcoming some evil, celebrating a battle or avoiding a vice. The images are incredibly complex and reproduced quite well in catalog format.

One of the main events, at least in my view, is the Alice in Wonderland-like central garden created by Robert Irwin. The garden follows a sloping hill, through which a gushing stream meanders between planted succulents, flowering shrubs and drooping trees. The stream falls off into a waterfall which leads to a calm pool encasing a labyrinth of finely pruned shrubs. Surrounding this pool is a series of walkways and plantings of gorgeous colorful blooms and mint green succulents, leading to mushroom like structures from which roses emerge in full bloom. Every time I visit the garden, it looks completely different, but never does it fail to put me in a reverie.

As the sun began to set, we took the trolley down the Getty mountain to continue our adventures.

It's Rarely Sunny in Seattle!

For weeks, if not months, I have been obsessing with my trip to the West Coast. My best friend and roommate, Rafael Soldi, moved to Seattle a few months back and I have been missing him terribly. I got a week and a half off work and showed up in Seattle, from where we planned an epic road trip from Los Angeles up the coast to San Francisco.

I arrived in Seattle on Monday afternoon and began a comprehensive tour of the city. My first afternoon there, we had lunch at Oddfellows Cafe in Capitol Hill and walked down a steep set of hills towards downtown Seattle. I was surprised at the variety of cute little shops and cafes in Capitol Hill. Rafael's uncle was grilling us salmon that night, so we stopped by Pike Place Market to pick up the fish and veggies and look around the local shops. An incredible aroma accompanied the gorgeously colored assortment of flowers and bouquets available at every other stand.

I have been dieting lately, and a few strawberries are as close as I dare approach a dessert, so we bought a carton and continued our exploration of the city. Contrary to the sunny afternoons I was led to expect, Seattle graced us with its customary grey skies and drizzle, but there is a certain romance in pacing cobblestone streets in a light rain with a basket of strawberries in hand. We stopped by Anthropologie, because I can't seem to keep out of that store no matter what state I find myself in.

On Tuesday, we took a tour of all the lovely little houses in Capitol Hill, as Rafael needed to convince me that it is in fact somewhat logical to leave New York and move to Seattle. All the little houses, scattered up and down the hilly roads sport green turfs and cobblestone walkways, rosemary gardens and ivy and flowering vines climbing up the fences and porch columns. Each house has a distinctly unique architecture: a little pink house may sport stained glass windows and carved columns, while the white one next door a glassed in porch and a sloping roof. Rafael's dream house matched my outfit, so I felt the need to be photographed with it.

After brunch at Volunteer Park Cafe, a cute little cafe island in the midst of a completely residential area, we walked to Volunteer Park which is home to beautiful forest and gardens and a surprisingly amazing botanic greenhouse. After fulfilling an odd necessity to climb into a beautiful multi-trunked tree, we headed towards the park's greenhouse.

Amidst towering pine trees and shrubberies, stands a Victorian glass enclosure of quite substantial dimensions. Inside we found three distinct microclimates: The central tropical enclosure held most of the collection's orchids and ferns. Leafy palms of different varieties supported climbing orchids and air plants on their trunks. Flowering trees produced huge white and pink bell shaped flowers that drooped into the walkways. The right wing held mosses and higher humidity ferns as well as bog plants, pitcher plants and a variety of other carnivores and the left wing housed an extensive bromeliad collection as well as many huge air plants that have spent years multiplying and sending out shoots to cover all of their branchy supports.

The rest of the day we spent wandering the cute boutiques and walking around a completely deserted lake beach, which I hear tale is incredibly populated during sunny summer afternoons.

On Wednesday, we decided to take a tour of the Seattle Underground. Seattle, a city that was built directly on the sea level and suffered for many years from muddy streets and backwash into their sewage systems. After a huge fire that destroyed the majority of the city's commercial district, the mayor decided to raise the streets between ten and twenty feet to lift the city off the sea level and eliminate all of the sanitary issues. Businesses could not wait for the streets to be completed to rebuild their businesses, thus they built entrances on the first and second floors of their buildings, thus, after the new streets were built and paved, an underground city was created which for a long time was home to excess businesses and petty crime and is now a popular tourist destination.

After the tour, which although cheesy and touristy, was incredibly entertaining, we headed to Fremont where we had lunch at a cute greek cafe where we received instructions on how to get to Theo's, United State's last chocolate factory that produces bars completely from scratch. Theo's factory makes use of antique machines that they bought from closing factories and estate sales and prepare unique bars of chocolate in limited runs of 2000 bars. Beautifully designed wrappers depict animals and kids holding up figs and tossing hazelnuts and the factory shop has bars stacked over wooden cutting boards where chunks of chocolate are available for tastings. I bought eight bars to bring home to friends, and to hide in my drawers for special occasions.

We strolled through the streets and entered little shops selling vintage clothes and letter pressed greeting cards and walked up the hill to the famous troll under the bridge (featured in moves like 10 Things I Hate About You), which is incredibly tricky to climb in a billowing white dress and ballet slippers.

Early Thursday morning we boarded a plane for Los Angeles California where we visited both Getty museums, the beaches and a variety of other spots, so check back in the coming days for photos of our road trip.

Also, I recently reworked my format to allow for larger photographs which you can click on to see even larger. Woohoo!

A New Dress for Seattle

I have been losing a lot of weight lately, and it seems only few of my entire collection of dresses are fitting properly. Thus, the time has come to make something new.

During my visit to the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum with Vicki a few weeks back, I purchased a few spools of gorgeous ribbon for sewing. One was a "Renaissance" pattern, which you will see later, and the other a ribbon called "Mating". It is a beautiful seafoam and silver white with an image of a young woman and chap in costume approaching each other from different sides of a tree, and this image is partnered with a simple design of a three layer wedding cake. It is an incredibly beautiful pattern that I decided to pair with a white cotton weave with raw linen stripes.

Summer is waning, I know, but I wanted to have this dress for my trip to Seattle and California. I wore it in Seattle to see the famous troll in Fremont!

Vote for My Apartment for the Selby in Your Place Contest

Hello all,

I recently submitted my apartment to the Selby in Your Place contest and I would love to have your vote! You can vote through your Facebook account, by clicking on the link below.

Please vote for my apartment here!!

Thanks so much for voting guys! I truly appreciate it!

Love,
Daria

Lovely Day with Vicki: National Design Museum, Ristorante Il Melograno and MGMT

Our plans for Tuesday the 17th revolved around finally seeing the Otto Dix show at the Neue Gallery and lunching at the museum's Cafe Sabarsky. Stepping ceremoniously onto the first step, I almost landed in a pool of wet cement. The Neue Gallery and the Cafe were closed.

Standing in the center of New York's museum district, we were not completely disheartened. A few moment's indecision past, we were heading towards the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. The National Design Triennial: Why Design Now? exhibition encompassed the first floor of the museum and featured some amazing energy saving and alternate energy prototypes as well as some inventions that we often take for granted like twitter and the iPhone. No photos were allowed, so my apologies. I bought some incredibly designed ribbons to use in dresses which I will post as soon as they are realized.

After a walk across the park, we headed down to Ristorante Il Melograno for an early dinner before the concert. Il Melograno is Vicki's favorite restaurant to go before heading to the Met (Opera), and I am incredibly thankful to her for discovering it. We started off with a Caprese salad, which has been our go to appetizer since our first trip to Italy: delicate slices of fresh mozzarella and tomato drizzled with olive oil, balsamic vinegar of Modena and a basil pesto sauce on a bed of arugula. Incredibly delicious! Vicki had pasta with shrimp and peas in a light sauce and I went for rack of lamb over broccoli and roasted spinach.

I do not know much about MGMT and decided to go on the knowledge of one song and hoped for the best. The past few weeks many of my friends have been mocking me for going to a hipster concert, but alas, I gave it a chance and it was a lot of fun. Not all the songs were as successful as others, but it was an entertaining evening full of dancing and singing along where one could. Vicki took a video of "Time to Pretend" which you can find below.

I had an amazing day and look forward to many others once Vicki finally moves back to the city.

Fire Island with Daisy and Lola

My usual beach spot is Robert Moses Beach, but this past weekend Daisy and I decided to give Fire Island a try. Fire Island is wonderful beach spot known for its gay scene and beautiful surf, and the beaches are rarely crowded.

An incredible number of New Yorkers head to Fire Island every weekend, so although it is a multi-step process, the transit authority has set up a very streamlined time schedule which was incredibly easy to follow. From Penn Station, you can take the Long Island Rail Road to Babylon, cross the platform and a few moments later take the train to Sayville. At the Sayville station, white vans wait for you a few steps from the platform which take you to the Fire Island Ferry.

A half an hour's ferry ride, with the scent of salt water and nail polish, deposited us on the yacht strewn port of Fire Island with at least two dozen bikini clad men waiting to see the newcomers. The walk to the shore is amazing. A raised wooden platform leads through a forest of bamboo hiding beautiful newly built summer houses, already equipped with amazing fairyland landscapes of tropical ferns and seasonal flowers, arching trees and flower boxes exploding with vines and begonias. Houses are on tiny hills surrounded by foliage, only accessible by somewhat haphazard wooden bridges.

The beach was beautiful and almost completely vacant and the surf incredible. The water carved out a three foot recess in the sand, so we set up our camp on the edge of the cliff and watched the crashing waves from above.

The water, was chilly and refreshing and a good cool off from the sun. Lola was terrified of the water and refused to let it go past her ankles. Most of the afternoon was devoted into tricking the three year old to get close enough to the water for the waves to hit her legs. No easy task.


We had a great afternoon and a picnic on the beach and escaped with only second degree burns.

My New Handmade Bed

For the past few months, my tripod bed has been supported by a stack of my heaviest and most sturdy books. Since shoving the precious volumes under my mattress, I have had an increasing longing to flip through their pages.

Over a month ago, I purchased a beautiful piece of live wood from eBay with the intention of making it into a platform bed. Since then it has been leaning against the wall gathering dust. This Sunday, I finally purchased the rest of the wood I would need, four casters and a $1 phillips head screwdriver, since my power drill refused to work.

Here's how to make a platform bed:
1 Beautiful piece of live edge wood
1 piece of 3/4in wood cut to same dimensions as live edge wood (15x79in)
3 pieces of 3/4in wood cut to 30x15in
2 2x4's cut down to 70"
6 2x4"s cut down to 43"
4 4in caster wheels
16 washers
16 L brackets
a plethora of screws

The 2 long pieces of 2x4" and 2 of the shorter are built into a rectangular grid, and of the remaining three, two are placed 4 inches to either side of the center of the long piece, and two, 8 inches from the foot and head of the bed, to support the wooden slabs placed on top. The joints are secured with an L bracket on either side. A caster is attached to each corner, wheel parallel with the shorter sides.

The four pieces of 3/4" plywood and my live edge slab are arranged as seen above and screwed into the 2x4"s. My three legged fold out couch bed is released from its remaining three legs and placed on top of the platform. Tada!

Although I sustained excessive bruising in my left hand from putting in over a hundred screws with a screwdriver, I am excessively proud of my slightly creaky platform bed on wheels! I no longer have to worry about dust under my bed because I can just move it out to sweep.... My dad said I couldn't do it, I feel justified.

Tiny Dress for Tiny Girl

Walking around SoHo, I constantly pass by kids stores displaying tiny mannequins donning frilly dresses and striped onesies with piles of hand-made toys and blocks spilling around their feet. These constant visions cannot help but make me daydream of dressing up my own son or daughter, if I am fortunate enough to have one in the future.

My mother made most of my clothes when I was a child. She made me adorable sweaters that I still tried to pull over my shoulders when I was fourteen. I had amazing summer dresses and crochet collars on my shirts. My first attempt at sewing, I remember clearly. I woke up early one morning, before my parents or grandmother. I found a piece of fabric in the kitchen, which I decided to make into a shirt and skirt set for myself. I cut out a rectangle, and cut a big hole in the center for my head, and wrapped the rest of the fabric around me like a sarong skirt. My mom freaked out and tried to make something decent out of my blunder. I have learned since then, and I look forward to making all of my kid's clothes.
My friend Daisy's daughter Lola recently turned three and I got to make her a dress. My first dress for a little girl. I bought Alice in Wonderland fabric from Purl Soho and a lovely pink fabric for the lining and bow. I love the idea of a tiny person with a huge frilly skirt that makes them look like a squishy triangle that is soft and comfortable to wear.

Boy do I love kids.