10 on the 10th: School Daze

10 on the 10th is a fun monthly thing instigated by Marsha In the Middle.

For August, Marsha asked us to recount memories about school - good or bad.

I will start by saying, I grew up on school campuses, I went to school (of course), and I've taught Fashion Design at Otis College of Art and Design (in LA) on and off since 1993 or so.

1. I don't remember the days that my parents lived in the dorm at Berkshire School (in Sheffield, MA)

I'm almost 3 here

but I DO remember prowling around in them during the summer, when no boys were on campus. I also loved doing research in the library. Things took a bad turn about 5th or 6th grade when boys would hoot at me from their dorm windows. I started timing my walks across campus to when they'd be in class.

2. Speaking of 6th grade humiliations, in 5th and 6th grade I had a long 45 minute bus ride to Berkshire Country Day School, in Lenox. Maybe it's time to let go of the memory of a busload of mean kids chanting "Annie Fannie" at me. Horrible. This is why I won't let anyone call me Annie.

3. We moved to Millbrook School (Millbrook, NY) in 1969, and I loved it there. The school had a zoo! With a tapir (of all things)! Fun trivia: Robert Kennedy Jr, currently running for president, was a student there then. He was very much into falcons and hawking. 

I went to Dutchess School and there were only 10 kids in my class! I was queen of my queendom and full of myself.  I wore 15" miniskirts, fishnets, and a red bra that showed through tops.

summer 1970 but we're wearing fall clothing
alas, the photo album with all my weird ''68-70's sewing creations can't be found
so no red bra pix

4. For high school, I attended Emma Willard, a girls' boarding school in Troy, NY. I chose it because they had a very free-form curriculum (hardly any requirements!) and a great arts program. I studied Fine Art (duh), Modern Dance, Fiber Arts, Photography, A/V (such as it was in the early 70s: slides, reel-to-reel audio tape and whatnot)... the list goes on and on. Literature classes came with the expectation of 10-page papers! I think the school is embarrassed about those 4 years (or however long it went on) of "free" learning, but I thrived.

dance performance, 1974

5. College, round one: College of Creative Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara. Adventure awaited! Transplant a naive 18 year old onto a coed campus of 10,000 or so students, living in a half-way converted motel with no kitchen in Isla Vista (the right next to campus college village). There were surfers (did not understand their lingo). There was a nude beach (creepy older guy briefly lured me into his net). Boyfriends! Sex! Well, it was a time of discovery for me. CCS was fantastic. The dean, Marvin Mudrick, created it as "grad school for undergrads" in the arts and sciences. No grades, just scaled credits by how much effort one put into a class. My kind of place! I only lasted through Fall quarter of junior year because I fell in love and moved to NYC with a writer in the program. A story for another time!

art show invitation

6. Seven years later, I went to Otis/Parsons for their Fashion Design program. (I had moved to greater Los Angeles in the Fall of '82, too late to start until '83). I chose fashion design instead of fine art because I wanted a creative career that made money and fine art wasn't cutting it, plus I liked to sew. The Otis fashion program was (and is) Fashion Boot Camp. Very much like Project Runway (Tim Gunn was a dean at Parsons and I'm sure he modeled the show on aspects of the department's curriculum) with longer time constraints. (Our projects ran for a few months vs 24 hours). Otis was brutal and rewarding simultaneously. I learned a lot and got good jobs as a result.

I designed, draped, and tailored this red wool coat, senior year at Otis

7. My first return to Otis (93?) as an instructor in the Fashion department was a total disaster. I was to teach Sophomore Design (sophomores are the worst - they know "everything". Yeah, I remember being that way too). I was thrown to the wolves, with no experience and no one guiding me. I had to do 1:1 critiques with students and figured out that I had about 12 minutes with each for the 2-hour class. Then there was my aesthetic. I was also working at Mattel designing Barbie clothes and let's just say my design direction to the students was not based on reality! This came to a head when a second instructor was brought in and she did a class crit of everyone's designs and kept saying "Where would you wear this?" Mortifying. Those students hated me.

8. In '94 I took a class in Photoshop from Otis's Continuing Ed department. Early days with Photoshop, to be sure! A friend sat beside me, and I helped her a lot. This is when I realized digital design was my happy teaching place! Woohoo. Digital classes were also offered in the Fashion BFA department and I let the dean know that I was available. I became a TA. First there were just Photoshop classes, then Illustrator got added. Illustrator I didn't know. So I'd sit in the morning session, learn the day's lesson, and then help students with their glitches in the afternoon session. THAT's one way to learn software fast! But yeah, no design critiques, just solving technical problems. Perfect fit.

9. After a few years of teaching Digital Design in Fashion and the same class in Continuing Ed, I morphed the latter into two separate classes - one for fashion and one for surface design (making repeating patterns). I LOVED teaching the Digital Surface Design class. But a wiley former student stole the class out from under me, to my continued annoyance. How dare she.

10. My tenth memory transpired in 2017, trying to teach Photoshop to Fashion sophomores (sophomores again. Cue doom music). I know Photoshop. I know MY way of using Photoshop. I DID NOT know the techniques devised for the class. Again, I was in a situation of learning during class. The students sussed that out very quickly. I didn't know how to fix their problems. ARGH! And this time, I had to grade the work. Grading took forever. Not fun. Not a positive experience!

me asking fellow instructors how to grade something

I hope you enjoyed this long trip down memory lane.

I sure did!

Be sure to check out Marsha’s post and her link party for more responses!

Linking up with
Marsha's 10 on the 10th
Shelbee's On the Edge

Is This Mutton's WOW on Wednesday

Crazy Quilt Dossier: 2024 Repairs Are DONE!

 

Here it is, all mended for this year.

My "in process" posts fell by the wayside. Too much life happening.

I was more diligent on Instagram, you can click here to see just those posts (probably not in chronological order because IG has ruined hashtags).

Anyhow, I will eventually get to them, and will back date the posts to the proper days (just as I am with this post - haha).

Here are quilt iterations from years past:

2020

2012

Another plan I have is to create a proper index of all the quilt posts.
I'll save that for a day when I want to procrastinate on something.
I find writing blog posts is a great procrastination technique!

Linking up with:
Is This Mutton's WOW on Wednesday

10 on the 10th: Ten Summer Memories

10 on the 10th is a fun monthly thing instigated by Marsha In the Middle.
For July, Marsha asked us for ten summer memories.

1971: that summer I started painting my toenails red
I wrote about it in 2012!

1972: that summer I took a printmaking class 
Woodblock, Dry-Point Etching, Silkscreen, Lithography (with stones!) - a great class through what was then called Munson Williams Proctor Institute, in Utica, NY. It kept me busy.

1975: that summer I mended the quilt (and I'm still mending it)
The quilt origin story
Current mending saga - patch by patch

Mr Lou, the Anti-mender. He's getting ready to bite me.

1976 that summer I backpacked in the Wind Rivers for 10 days
No walk in the park! Photo will come later. Too lazy to look.

1978 that summer in a Upper West Side NYC apartment on the ground floor
and there was a fire in an upper floor and I was taking pictures out the window of "the pretty light"
No image, sorry, still lazy.

1979 that summer of the ill-fated hitchhike around nova scotia honeymoon
If only I'd known it was a harbinger of things to come...
I'll just leave you with a piece of plein air art I did then... Nope, later.

1980 or 81 the summer of Banshee Barbie
Chloe's Barbie was missing her head. So we crafted one out of tinfoil.
Oooooooh! Banshee Barbie!

1994 that summer I learned to paint in the dark in Bennington, VT
It was a week? 2 week? workshop taught by Rafael Ferrer on the campus of Bennington College.
I was super productive.

1996 that summer I lost my mind and lived in Indianapolis for 6 weeks
I turned 40. What can I say? I was thinking with parts lower than my brain!
I got some good paintings done in my basement studio though...

199? that summer I went to NYC and my hair smelled like an old tennis shoe
[Severo and I can't remember what year this occured. Have to consult my old photos].
I'll eventually go into this on my newish Substack Notes. It's a good story!

Be sure to check out Marsha’s post and her link party for more responses!

Linking up with
Marsha's 10 on the 10th
Shelbee's On the Edge

Crazy Quilt Dossier: 6.22 Visible Mend

 

Begone damn spot!

That stain was driving me nuts.
It was at the top edge of the quilt and I saw every time I was in bed.

A nice little visible mend.

Details:
I want to mention the "flag" bark cloth print above the mend.
This came from a vintage skirt that I purchased in Providence circa 1979-81.
The patch came from excess when I shorted the hem.
Though it no longer fits, I still have the skirt, somewhere in the giant mending bag.
I like the print too much to release it.

Crazy Quilt Dossier: 2024 Repairs

 

The quilt in 2020

It's quilt mending season, when it's too hot to have the quilt on the bed.
Last summer, it spent the entire summer draped on the living room coffee table, and I don't think I did a lick of stitching.

I will do better this year!

On the table, ready to mend

Random restitching patch joins are not worth documenting, but when it gets to new patches and/or visible mending (embroidery), I'm going to go into before/afters and my textile memories.

Older posts about the quilt can be found via this link

#thevintagefashionchallenge Day 1: Hello!

The Vintage Fashion Challenge is an Instagram event hosted by
@iliveinmylab, @makethislook, and @tinyangrycrafts.

I'll be investigating individual patches on the Crazy Quilt and telling their stories, both on IG (short form verbiage) and here, longer posts with links.

Here's my intro video that I posted incorrectly on IG:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by anne m bray (@annembray)

For Day 2 (which I combined with Day 1 on the IG post) I actually donned an entire vintage outfit!
See it, next post.

Here is one of the pages I was waving around in the video from my Otis Fashion Textile Class Binder:

I'm going over some of the original pencil in ink, as my instructor suggested in 1985.

Stories

1) The African knockoff print
I still have the top I made out of this! It was hanging behind me in the above video. Lou decided it was a lovely cat napping station after I left it on the bed. (Sorry, no documentation).

I think I bought this yardage at my favorite fabric shop in Poughkeepsie, NY in the '70s.
The top was sewn in 1973.
Here is a post that goes into details.

2) The Vintage Floral
This one I bought at Pilgrim Mills in Providence, RI. There used to be a lot of fabric mills in the Providence area and Pilgrim was an outlet for mill ends. Sewn in 1981, it started as a retro boatneck fit-and-flair dress.
I recently found an old slide with me wearing the dress, but since I'm already so late in posting this, I'll come back and add it later!

Other notes:
Did a full rendering of this print in gouache, plus a colorway for an Otis class. Another thing to hunt for.
I refurbished this into a skirt (currently lives on Mending Mountain).

On the quilt, not sure if any patches have lasted.
This one, in the upper left corner, I covered - look how faded it got!

3) The Couch Fabric
This covered a love seat that my parents gave me when I moved to Manhattan in 1977.
It was my paternal grandmother's, I still have it (in storage in the garage).
Again, a photo search for another day!

[Enid] The 10 Famous People Thing

If you're on Facebook, you've come across some version of this list. It's making the rounds again.
I asked SpyGirl for her list, with anecdotes about each person. If you're on Facebook, you can read lots more fun facts in the comment threads. Very amusing.

Salvador Dali
Ugh! Dirty old man! He pinched my butt.
When I was a junior in high school, I interned at Knoedler Gallery on 70th between 5th and Madison in NYC. They had bought the next door brownstone and during renovation, had an environmental installation set up by Salvador Dali and Andy Warhol. The opening reception was quite a scene! All of Andy's Factory denizens attended.

Geoffrey Beene
Richard Lambertson introduced me after a Beene benefit show (in Beverly Hills?). Backstage. Amongst the Glamazons.

Joan Jett
Such a sweetheart! Met her after her gig at the Nike event at the Colosseum (2005). We hung out at the Standard rooftop downtown. Severo knows her road manager. Some kind of Smithereens/Jersey connection.

Patti Smith
I love Patti. She brought me to tears at a free concert in Waterloo Park during SXSW 2000 during "People Have the Power".
The Smithereens shared the bill with her at  __ in 2011. I had my book signed.

Sonny Rollins
I sold Sonny a birthday cake when I worked at Cake Masters, NYC in 1977. I think it was the 72nd Street location, but not sure.

Leonard Cohen
Rafael, one of Severo's oldest friends, was Leonard's drummer for his final world-wide tour that I think lasted for three years. I was able to go to full band rehearsals at SIR in Hollywood twice -- AMAZING! I took Rafael a jar of my homemade raspberry jam. He gave it to Leonard, who opened it up, stuck his finger in, tasted, and said, "Anne, this jam is sublime."

Elvis Costello
Elvis is Severo's god. He befriended Elvis's road manager (sense a trend here?) and we went back stage many times. I met Elvis once. The other times I sat back on the green room couches while Severo paid homage. Too much standing around waiting to talk to The Man.

Anne Rice
She signed one of her Vampire books for me at Vroman's in Pasadena.

Bob Mackie
Bob is a huge supporter of Otis College of Art and Design, where I occasionally teach. He has mentored many Fashion projects. I met him at one of the Scholarship Benefit Fashion Shows.

Jeremy Scott
I did not formally meet Jeremy. I saw him in the hallway at Otis when the Fashion Department had their campus in the CalMart in downtown LA. He was wearing a Mexican poncho and looked like a 70's surfer. I highly recommend his film bio on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/80064521

A Road Trip into the Past

I did something crazy this weekend. No, I mean outside the box CRAZY, not my normal crazy.
I drove 300 miles chauffeuring an old friend and his dad to a school reunion in Ojai.
If you follow my socials, you've seen bits and pieces of the trip.
Here it is, all in one place, with some context. Beware, it's a long, convoluted journey blog post!

Meet Carmaig de Forest:

Meet his dad, Kellam de Forest:

It was Kellam's 75th school reunion at Thacher School, in Ojai. He wanted to attend.
Carmaig lives in Seattle and was able to fly down to help him get there.
"But what about transport?" pondered Carmaig. "Rent a car? Oh wait, there's Anne, she might do it!"
Indeed I did.

Kellam is the son of Lockwood de Forest Jr, who was a landscape architect well known in Santa Barbara.
Lockwood was the son of Lockwood de Forest, an artist and designer, who knew my Great Great Uncle Howard Russell Butler. Both of them held painter Frederick Church as a mentor. (An interesting coincidence, both of their sons became landscape architects, one in Santa Barbara, one in Princeton, NJ).

After picking up Carmaig in Pacific Palisades, we drove up PCH, making our way to Santa Barbara to fetch Kellam. Before heading to Ojai, we took a detour to the de Forest property on Todos Santos Lane.  < Click on that link -- it's historical info about the property.

It has now gone through two owners since Kellam sold it, but the de Forest name is still on the lane entry sign.

The current owner has made significant changes to the interior of the home (and why the house was completely open with no workers on site was a bit disconcerting to this Los Angelina). The gardens have been neglected, but there are traces of its former glory.

The original bird bath.

View from the house -- the trees have grown above the original vista of the Santa Ynez mountains.

On to Ojai. But first some more history. Scroll down to the next photo if I'm boring you.
We took CA150, the twisty route that I used to take to Thacher when I was going to College of Creative Studies at UC Santa Barbara. You see, my senior year at Emma Willard (in Troy, NY), 30 Thacher Juniors (boys) came to our school (girls) on an exchange program. THAT was a bit wild, for both sides of the equation! I became good buddies with Carmaig and Harrison. When I narrowed down my college choices to either Nova Scotia College of Art and Design or CCS, I chose California. It was 3000 miles away from my family (a good thing, in my adolescent mind) and I at least had some friends within range. I knew no one in Halifax.
My apartment that I ended up renting in Isla Vista was horribly depressing (a 60's era motel mid-conversion into apartments. Mine was still a motel room). Almost every weekend that first fall quarter, I was up at Thacher, staying with a faculty member, and hanging out with Harrison and Carmaig. But by spring '75, I had finally made some friends at UCSB and had "moved on" in the boyfriend department (I performed one of those awful restaurant breakups with Harrison. Sorry, Harrison). I lost touch with the Thacher boys.
Fast forward 20 years.
I reconnected with Carmaig in the late '90s -- he was now a singer-songwriter doing solo performances on the ukulele. Severo and I saw him at The Knitting Factory in Hollywood, and get this -- Severo knew Carmaig too! He had played with Carmaig! (The connections are getting pretty tangled, right?) We became Facebook friends, kept the reconnection alive, and in 2015 I did a de Forest road trip, accompanying Carmaig from LA to Seattle. You can read about that look at art from it here.

Back to June 2019.

At Thacher, on the track.
Finally an outfit photo, right? Thank you for indulging me my detour down memory lane.

Carmaig told me I was in the photo and a made a silly face. I am not a lizard trying to catch bugs.

Posing with the 1974 sign was a must.
My own school reunion is next week.

Pretty table setting.

At Thacher's reunions, each class picks a speaker to give a toast for their class.
Kellam was the only '44 alum attending and gave a moving toast.

That's a wrap.

Carmaig and I overnighted at his mother-in-law's home in Montecito. I took him to LAX the next day. I might go more into intersections and connections with Carmaig's family (because there are connections with his wife Diana too!), but that's enough for now. I gotta pack for my own high school reunion, I leave tomorrow AM!

Going on any road trips this summer? Did one in the past?
Link it up on my Summertime Link Party! I think I'll extend it to ALL SUMMER!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Doing my own linking with
Patti's Visible Monday
Shelbee's Spread the Kindness
Catherine's #shareAllLinkup

#tbt Valentine's: The Aftermath

I think my favorite part of Valentine's these days is what happens the day after: the chocolate sales begin!

Jacques Torres, [various locations in NYC], is one of my favorite purveyors (though most likely none of his chocolates are on sale). Seven years ago, Severo and I visited the branch on Hudson Street and had fun viewing his chocolate factory (which is now located in DUMBO in Brooklyn).
It was the end of February and Easter production had already started. Lots of racks of bunnies, lambs, hens, and eggs.

Did you get your favorite chocolate this year? Share!
(not the chocolate, silly, share a photo!)

#tbt Valentine's 1997

In 1997, the year we met, Severo pitched some serious woo!

I did this:

He did this:

Our penthouse room with a view.

He decorated!

Dinner in Chinatown

Share some Valentine's love (or regrets) -- or an anti-Valentine!

#tbt Hey Valentine, Be Mine

Yep, it's that time of the year again.

[This one predates my birth by 4 months]

These were saved in the Baby Book that my mom kept. She did a great job recording all my "firsts".

Share some Valentine's love (or regrets)!

#tbt Reminiscing on Reminiscence

It's more family-portraits-for-the-Christmas-card outtakes, circa early 1980s:

Today, we put our focus on my legs! the 3/4 sleeve boatneck top, which I wore WAY tighter than this mannequin:

[I can't believe it still exists! Thank you Google! Source: Reminiscence] 

I had at least a dozen.

Reminiscence is a boutique in NYC that became well known for inexpensive garment-dyed and retro-inspired sportswear and quirky accessories and gifts. Aline Smithson first introduced me to the shop in 1978, when we both still lived on the upper west side. After I moved to Providence, and started a costume jewelry line, they bought my glass bead earrings and necklaces (I'm now slowly adding old inventory to Poshmark. You may have to sign in to see the link).

In Providence, my main form of employment was Patucci and Mark's store The Front Porch. They resold many items from Reminiscence, and I purchased a lot of their tops, jeans (the balloon leg jean! Yeah!), and shorts. Fun times. HOW did we ever make a living? I have no idea.

Did you have a favorite tee that defined a stage in your life?
Add to the Fashion Rosebud linkup!