Apfel at Age 90: More is More and Less is Simply Less

Forget the old saying “Less is More”. Minimalists thrived on that belief because it validated their art but the contemporary fashion niche embraced by Iris Apfel makes a different statement. Turn your head 180 degrees and open your eyes wide and your mind even wider. There she is; a fashion maverick, an irreverent renegade, a defiant creative spirit and a marvel of exquisite opulence of wearables.

“I’m a geriatric starlet, my dear, don’t you know,” she said “All of a sudden, I’m hot; I’m cool; I have a ‘fan base’.”*

With a rising cult of diverse people spilling around her amazing presence, Apfel is taking her show on the road. The HSN road, that is. Middle America is fascinated and wants this design eccentricity to be a brand in their lives. Naturally much will be in translation. For example, her classic owl shape eyeglasses will be featured in a scarf print and tribal type necklaces are modified with respect to design and price.
Iris was always a fashion maven. “My mother worshipped at the alter of accessories and I got the bug. She always said, if you have a good, little, simple black dress and you have different accessories, you can have 27 different outfits.” So she learned early. “The fun of getting dressed is that it is a creative experience and I never know what it’s going to be.” She assiduously edits her ensembles often wearing a basic architectural type of garment that can be accessorized dramatically. In 2005, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City presented an exhibition about Apfel called Rara Avis (Rare Bird): The Irreverent Iris Apfel. It was so successful that they created a traveling version that could be viewed by other audiences.
“Composing the elements of interior and composing an ensemble are part and parcel of the same thought process” says Apfel. So she was a natural watching her father in his business working with high end mirrors that focused on interiors. This passion for interiors catapulted the careers of Iris and her husband, Carl. Serendipitously they started working with Old World Weavers in search of a certain cloth and then began to travel worldwide looking for both exotic fabrics and historically based designs that could be replicated by these foreign specialty mills. It was through this work that she was asked to consult for the White House interior for Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Nixon, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, Reagan, and Clinton.
Married 64 years, she and her almost 100 year old husband wear the same perfume called Yatagan by Caron which is hard to find so they store it in big containers in the refrigerator. They also wear similar round spectacles. An amazing couple, they have been very successful in their fabric business and, despite retirement from Old World Weavers in the 1990s, it’s clear that Iris’s fame is soaring. This radical fashion icon will be featured in an upcoming documentary by Albert Maysles while she continues to design products for various companies and has the magnanimous vision to donate more than 900 pieces from her wardrobe to the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts.

Iris Apfel is an iconic legend with the bravado and mastery of greatness.

“You only have one trip (one life) so you might as well enjoy it”
Iris Apfel

Origami & Creative Possibilities

Origami is the exquisite trilogy of paper, math and art. It’s recreational play for children and serious play for adults; everyone extracting his/her own purpose and pleasure by engineering forms using old Japanese techniques. Using only paper and without scissors or glue, extraordinary forms from bugs to moose to the more traditional flowers can be created with the understanding of folds. Experts cannot agree about the origins of origami. Some say that it began in the first or second century in China when paper was very rare and the art was therefore reserved for the wealthy. But others trace its roots to the 1600s in Japan. Today, there are online clubs, more formal worldwide associations and about every five years a unique conference is held in a country where people are invested in exploring the art, science and technology of origami at an advanced level that focuses on tessellation algorithms, tree theory and other mathematical approaches. Considered the father of origami because of his important innovations to the craft, Akira Yoshizawa created a bridge from old classic origami to the new contemporary art. He designed the notational system which is a pictorial diagrammatic guide with dots and arrows that documents a piece of origami as a pattern and therefore allows it to be understand and replicated. The technique of wet folding was also developed by Akira and was used for manipulating thick paper. Passionate and prolific, he created more than 50,000 models before his death at age 94. Robert Lang (http://www.langorigami.com) is a great Western master of origami who practices his craft using skills as an artist and an engineer. His large range of work includes both very tiny and very large pieces and among his most inspiring is a 1000 scale snake. By creating a computer program to generate crease patterns, his work truly takes on the infinite possibilities of mastering the crease for art as well as technology. In his TED presentation (http://www.ted.com/talks/robert_lang_folds_way_new_origami.html) , he talks origami based products that have been used successfully in our everyday lives. The concept for all of these is simple: it has to fold small with the ability to expand on release. One example is a heart stent that holds open a blocked artery that was designed by Zhong You and Kaoru Kuribayashi and manufactured in stainless steel. Another product that is used more frequently is the air bag that resides in our car and pops out quickly to expand and protect us when there is a sudden impact. This air pillow has been compressed using folding techniques to minimize its volume on rest. For a visual story, the independent movie Between the Folds beautifully delivers a comprehensive look at origami by showing its complexity, its beauty and the people who make it an art form. Vanessa Gould, the Director, says “At its heart, Between the Folds is a film about potential. The potential of an uncut paper square. The potential of a wild scientific idea. The potential to see things differently”. The transformation of two dimensions to three dimensions can be a transformation of what you believe is possible. Yet, origami is all about creative possibilities. “Origami may someday even save a life.”-Robert Lang

Reinventing Embroidery: Experimental and Extraordinary Art

New work has emerged that has revolutionized the concept of embroidery as a traditional handcraft. Gone are those little blue “x”s printed on cloth for following an embroidery pattern. These new artists have transformed the basic concept of this craft and have elevated it to an exceptional art form.

Shizuko Kimura is 75 years old. Born in Japan, she studied painting and then received a degree in textiles from the Royal College of Art in London. She uses thread like a pencil to explore the human form and create portraits that are both exquisite in detail and mysterious for missing detail. There’s excitement to her work created by the movements of her threads to capture images that are so extraordinarily graceful that they appear drawn like an old master with pencils and charcoal. Fabric backgrounds are quietly small and solid or elegantly thin transparencies as long banners of organza.

A Yale University and Brooklyn College graduate, and now about 70 years old, Elaine Reichek’s work is in the 2012 Whitney Bienniale. She studied painting when it was a predominantly male centric circle, and then began to explore changing her media to express her art and, as she says “translate information from one form to another”. Using the computer for printing, for Photoshop, for pixilation as well as the computerized embroidery machine, much of her art is technology driven and Elaine explains “The idea of using the computer isn’t incidental to my work, it’s not just a technical shortcut; it’s part of the work’s hybrid character.”

Abstraction that expertly plays with color, form and stitchery thrives in Bette Uscott-Woolsey’s art “With a painters eye I approach textile materials (using mostly heavy silks) incorporating historic textile techniques as well as contemporary painting” says Bette who holds degrees from the University of Wisconsin and New York University. Never hesitating to incorporate different techniques and media, Bette, now in her 60’s, professes that she “loves to work with silk and thread”. This is evident in the splendor and range of her work which has been shown in numerous galleries and featured in many fiber art books.

Another approach to redefining embroidery is the art by Daniel Kornrumpf. He’s a young artist with a MFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, and has honed his visual and technical skills to create modest sized and extraordinary embroidered portraits. Using natural linen fabric stretched across a classic painter type frame, he expertly commands a full palette of colored fibers (believed to be the classic embroidery floss) to depict faces that are so densely stitched and complex in tone that one has to look closely to see that it is created with thread and not paint. The subtleties and nuances of both texture and color elevate his art to extraordinary.

These artists are also renegades in their approach to integrate embroidery to the world.

Clyde Olliver “started stitching and making objects in paper and cardboard at around age 6” but it was not until he was in his 40s that he enrolled in art classes and then stone carving and life drawing. Now in his 60s, Clyde says “Much of my work lies between the disciplines of sculpture and embroidery, since typically it consists of stitched slate or other suitable stone.

Laura Splan created a series of “traditional” doilies using computer machine embroidery to depict biomedical complexities.

Christa Maiwald whose embroidered portraits are socio-political commentaries.

Trained in art, many as painters, these fiber artists have utilized the traditional craft of embroidery as a new language in their art. As fiber artists, they have explored, created and launched new approaches using age old embroidery techniques.

Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.
Oscar Wilde

I don't paint things. I only paint the difference between things.
Henri Matisse

Culinary Greats-Legendary Chefs at age 60+

Food is trendy. It is no longer about TV dinners and microwave popcorn. The following chefs began their journeys many years ago to transform good eating to a fine art, a nutritious experience and big business.

Cecelia Chiang-(91)-Chinese- Raised in a very wealthy family in Shanghai, she was not allowed in the kitchen. As a young woman, Cecelia escaped occupied China and years later traveled to San Francisco to visit her sister. Serendipitously she met a friend there who planned to open a restaurant and then reneged but Cecelia went forward with the lease since she had already written a large nonrefundable check to the landlord on behalf of her friend. And so her restaurant Mandarin began and remained active for over 40 years. Chiang has taught Julia Child, James Beard, Alice Waters, and Danny Kaye.

Madhur Jaaffrey-(79) Indian- Born in Dehli, India, she did not cook at home when she was young and traveled abroad to study in London at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. After marrying she moved to New York City and in 1973, she published her first cookbook, An Invitation to Indian Cooking.She has written numerous cookbooks of Indian, Asian, and world vegetarian cuisines, and has won James Beard Foundation awards for some of her books. As a result of the success, Madhur also developed a unique line of mass-marketed cooking sauces.

Diana Kennedy-(88)-Mexican- Born in the United Kingdom, she arrived in Mexico with her husband who was a New York Times correspondent. She traveled throughout Mexico researching cooking techniques as well as the history of Mexican cuisine. Craig Claiborne urged her to give Mexican cooking lessons in New York City and then in 1972 Diana published her first book The Cuisines of Mexico and 8 more books would follow.

Jiro Ono-(86)-Japanese- Born in Japan, he is considered the world’s greatest sushi chef. After his father left the young 9 year old Jiro left home and never returned. He has been mastering sushi for the past 76 years and now is the subject of a documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi. Jiro’s tiny restaurant, Sukiyabashi Jiro, is in Tokyo where he holds the Guiness Book of Records title for being the oldest 3 star Michelin chef. Reservations are not easy; you are encouraged to book up to a year in advance with a cash deposit of about $368.00.

Jacques Pepin-(76)- Born in France to restaurateurs, he learned to appreciate food at an early age. In the 1950s he was the personal chef to Charles DeGalle and then moved to the United States in 1959. He has appeared on numerous television shows and received a Daytime Emmy award in 2001 for his show Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home with Julia Child. Today he serves as Dean of Special Programs at the French Culinary Institute, teaches an online class for Boston University and writes a quarterly column for Food & Wine magazine.


Georges Perrier-(69)-French- Born in France and although not from a poor family, he began working at 14 and then moved to the United States when he was 21 years old. In 1970 he opened Le Bec Fin (French colloquial translation: fine palate) in Philadelphia which gained a 5 star reputation and was known as the leader of the "Philadelphia restaurant revolution". In January 2009, the French government awarded Perrier the Legion d'Honneur. In February 2012, Georges announced his retirement from Le Bec Fin by selling it to a former Le Bec manager. George still maintains ownership/interest in other restaurant venues.

Wolfgang Puck-(63)- Born in Austria and trained in France, he learned much of his cooking skills from his mother who had sometimes worked as a pastry chef. At 25, he moved to Los Angeles where, 15 years later he opened the award winning Spago restaurant. Now he has a gastronomic empire under his name which includes over 20 fine restaurants, catering services and more than 80 Wolfgang Puck Express operations, and kitchen and food merchandise, including cookbooks and convenience foods. He is the official caterer for the Academy Awards and his favorite food is macaroons.

Alice Waters-67)– Born in New Jersey, she moved to California to attend college. It was during her study abroad time in France that she began purchasing fresh foods directly and it was this experience that resonated with her and led to the development of her food fresh sustainable beliefs. In 1971 she opened the Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley, California which quickly became famous for its organic, locally-grown ingredients and is ranked among the World's 50 Best Restaurants. Waters created the Chez Panisse Foundation with a mission to transform public education by using food to teach, nurture, and empower young people. In 1992, Waters was the first woman to be awarded the Best Chef in America by the James Beard Foundation and has received numerous other awards, written about a dozen cookbooks and is a Board member of relevant institutions. Alice is an internationally acclaimed food activist who has inspired the organic food revolution.

The greatest delight the fields and woods minister is the suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vegetable. I am not alone and unacknowledged. They nod to me and I to them. -Ralph Waldo Emerson

Great food is like great sex. The more you have the more you want. -Gael Greene

Creating Age Friendly Cities: Part 2

Two senior women who had successful careers refused to retire. They met serendipitously. Now Lucy Marco, a Canadian, and Jean Kincade, an American residing in Canada, have been revolutionizing the age-friendly-cities movement in Brantford, Ontario. With high level careers in the health services, they have utilized both their knowledge and passion to be a driving force in creating a master aging plan for their community and pioneer the movement across the country. By forming a steering committee, providing webinars to various organizations, gathering political support, and obtaining grants, these women are developing a model for urban entities to follow.

"Today's seniors are better educated, more technically sophisticated, have more disposable income and are healthier and living longer." says Lucy Marco. Now Lucy and Jean are making sure that this new demographic gets the support they need to continue to live dynamic lives.

As an indicator of the global awareness on the importance of urban environments for the elderly, The World Health Organization held the First International Conference on Age-Friendly Cities in Dublin, Ireland this past September 2011. It brought together people from all over the world, from public, private and voluntary sectors to share their thoughts and plans, their challenges and opportunities. With the forecast of 2 billion people who will be aged 60 and over by 2050, the urgency is immediate. Ideas will be for large scale transportation and housing and also innovations on a small scale such as increasing public seating by encouraging private donors to dedicate benches in memory of loved ones (Saanich, Canada).

Locally, Philadelphia has the highest proportion of older persons (age 60+) of any of the 10 largest cities in the United States and therefore understands the critical importance of providing an age-friendly community for its seniors. The Philadelphia Corporation for Aging (PCA) has taken the lead as a catalyst by bringing partners together to build this change through programs and services that meet and embrace a new urban model. The Age Friendly Philadelphia initiatives collaborate on:

1. Making parks more age friendly
2. Helping public transportation become more accessible
3. Increasing opportunities for flexible housing
4. Improving walkability
5. Enhancing neighborhood social capital
6. Improving access to fresh foods
7. Educating the next generation of leaders

And there are many organizations poised to help older people in Philadelphia. Coming of Age was founded by WHYY, AARP, United Way and The Intergenerational Center at Temple University to help people age 50 and over explore their future and connect to their community. Director Dick Goldberg says” Communities must respond or miss the opportunity of fully engaging the largest, most educated generation of social innovators in the nation’s history”.

The future starts right now. It starts with knowing what’s ahead and optimizing plans for success.

“It’s no use saying ‘We are doing our best.” You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary.”
-Winston Churchill

EMOTIONAL PHILANTHROPY

It’s a phrase I spontaneously created in 2009 when an interviewer asked about my contributions to a charity. Although it was a quick creative response, in retrospect it was an important one.

We live in extraordinary times. With the economy lagging and joblessness, mortgage defaults and bankruptcies at high levels, many people are still struggling to stay afloat. Giving money to charity is not a possibility when there is barely enough for oneself. Yet giving does not have to be financial. By extending yourself to help others with services or simply by listening and offering support, you have opened yourself to emotional philanthropy.

I have identified three basic paths to channeling kindness through your life to consciously be a better social human being. The first is more psychologically based and the second is more reactive.

The first path starts with gratitude in one’s own life. Everyone has faced hurdles and disappointments yet everyone also has realized positive experiences. Taking positivity and transforming it to gratitude and then transforming the gratitude to giving are lifetime processes. It is important to realize that when you feel sated emotionally, you will be more likely to be generous with someone else. The second path is based on empathy. Knowing someone who is facing a critical situation that you can identify with and support will likely inspire you to reach out and help. It might be someone with a particular form of cancer, child support issues or job loss concerns that will trigger a reaction to help. The third path is an immediate emotional response often accompanied by a physical act that, without planning, will bring a person to hero status. For example, this might be seeing people hurt in an accident, hearing about a family tragedy or learning about the needs in a local shelter. It is usually a spontaneous response to tragedy or hardship.

There’s also scientific evidence of what is happening inside us while we are responding outside. Paul Zak, a neuroeconomist, has demonstrated a strong link between oxytocin and generosity. “We drew blood before and after people watched one of the two videos and found that doing nothing more watching the emotional video produced a huge 157% spike in oxytocin levels. Oxytocin levels actually fell for those who watched the neutral video. We then asked people how they felt after seeing the videos. For the emotional video, the change in oxytocin was correlated with feelings of empathy…. Oxytocin connects us to others and lets us understand their emotions.”

So if you are ready to do good and just do not know where to start or how to begin, there is a wealth of suggestions for taking a path with kindness at this website. The site provides a cyber deck of cards divided in the predictable suits of clubs, hearts diamonds, and spades. The categories are designed for people you know, for strangers, for yourself, for our world and offer thoughtful suggestions within each category for opportunities to show gratitude in one’s life by reaching out and seeking opportunities that will make a difference.

Everything is not all about dollars and cents. It is also about actively giving and living life with purpose. The unchartered waters abound for ordinary people to do extraordinary things for each other.

“If you want others to be happy, practice generosity and compassion. If you want to be happy, practice generosity and compassion….” The Dalai Lama

“A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving… ”- Albert Einstein

Beautiful Art That Disappears

Paintings by the masters such as Rembrandt, Botticelli and Rubens have been delicately preserved and treasured to last for centuries. Yet some artists today create work that will knowingly disappear in hours. Puff; it’s here. Puff again it’s gone. Much of this art is vulnerable to its environment.

Sand. A wonderful element that conjures unique memories whether you were building with it or just sunning on the beach. Sandcastle contests are fabulous and held at many beach locations across the United States. The work can be dramatic or playful but the world of sand art has been forever elevated by Jim Denevan. His work is graphic, linear and huge; aerial photographs must be used to capture the entire work which can stretch for miles. Not limited to warm weather and sand, he has also traveled to the other extreme. With his crew, he has created frozen two dimensional art on over nine miles of the world’s largest lake, Siberia’s Lake Baikal. The finished piece was a series of circles representing the Fibonnacci sequence and its monumental size has been considered the world’s largest drawing.

Scott Wade does not require vast space for his art. He calls his work Dirty Car Art and his brush work on windshields is remarkable. Scott achieves amazing detail and shading to create portraits that show subtle expressions and has also captured a studied work of Vermeer. Alas, the work will not last on those windshields; weather and air particles will alter it.

Do you ever think that amazing art can be made with your cup of coffee? How about what can be made with 3,604 cups of coffee and 564 pints of milk. An Australian team recreated Mona Lisa with coffees of varying intensities to replicate the sepia tones. At 20 feet high and 13 feet wide, it involved a team of eight people three hours to complete. Yes, this is ephemeral art but it will last longer than the single cup of coffee that is made into art by using steamed milk for contrast. Baristas should be sharpening their creative skills and watching for global Latte Art competitions!

Not intended to be edible, there are beautiful ice sculptures exquisitely carved and destined to gracefully melt in their environment. Some special culinary events showcase ice art for the table such as the classic swan or fish while there are monumental pieces that stand alone in their glimmering elegance. Predictably wherever there is art, there is competition. The National Ice Carving Association runs regional and national competitions and Kevin Gregory and Tony Young have won awards for their extraordinary work. Ice sculpture as a sociopolitical statement was created by Marshall Reese and Nora Ligorano. Mainstream Meltdown was created on 10/29/08, the 79th anniversary of the stock market crash. Pristine and elegant, Mainstream Meltdown on 10/29/08, the 79th anniversary of the stock market crash. In its pristine elegance the word ECONOMY was carved in block letters weighing 1600 pounds and measuring 15 to 20 feet across and about 5 feet high. Its strategic New York City location was in front of the Supreme Court Building and next to Wall Street. Yet it was doomed; it could not last 20 hours and was an “economy meltdown” disintegrating right before your eyes.

Unlike ice sculptures, food art does not usually get affected by the weather. Time and human consumption are its culprits. Beyond the traditionsl radish rosettes, food elements are composed in such a way that their original state is transformed. Vegetable and fruit art is insightfully creative with the potential of being both sophisticated and humorous. And then there are edible portraits that are delicious mosaics of all sorts of food and can capture the aesthetic essence of Rachel Ray, Rosey O'Donnell and others.

A tribute to the glory and purpose of food art was on exhibition at the recent Pennsylvania Farm Show. A 1,000 pound refrigerated butter sculpture by Jim Victor beautifully created this piece to depict a boy taking his calf through a county fair. This work was remarkable yet at the end of the fair this sculpture would be tossed in a manure pit. Steve Reinford is the farmer in charge who will oversee a bacterial breakdown process that can take a month to turn the butter to methane gas which can be burned in an engine and can be converted into electricity. This butter sculpture will have had many lives.

For the ephemeral nature of all these art forms, there is photography to document its presence in time. Perhaps it also speaks of the preciousness of time and beauty in our own lives.

If you want to experiment, do something temporary.
Andy Garcia, Actor