Barbi Does Miami

mostly from my oxymoronic years between Miami and Milford

Category Archives: miami beach


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Steve Jobs, TED and thinking different…

Beach plastic necklace. Crosses made from crate embellished with seed pearls

Today the ether is atwitter with quotes from Steve Jobs to “think different”.

Everyone is encouraging everyone to think different.

(A paradox I think)

The TED movement is based on this Steve concept, in fact TED has branded thinking different with “Ideas Worth Sharing” and encourages people from all over to share their ideas, their ways of different thinking, around the globe.

Many people are asking about my TED talk, “How did you get in? How did you do it?”

To be honest it had not occurred to me until I was invited by TED to share my recent work at their next event in Miami.

The evolution of my relationship to what I find on the beach and what I do with it has been organic and compared to the speed of my previous life on 7th Avenue where a new collection was due every six weeks, it was slow.

Very slow.

Slow is good. Slow gave me more time to think . But, because the thoughts happened over an extended period of time, they no longer feel different. They have become part of who I am.

So when I talk about my passion for beach plastic it does not feel like I think different.

Different may well be in the eye of the beholder and it’s in constant flux.

For instance.

Sixty years ago plastic was a “different” material. It was introduced as the material that would give nature a break because we were depleting wood, bone, ivory etc. Now there is not a moment in our life when we do not interact with it. The entire planet is awash with plastic. Oceans carry plastic particles around like cells in a bloodstream. Plastic has been found in tens of thousands of living species, including us. Single use plastic is no longer giving nature a break, it is suffocating life.

In the past I put my creative work out there, but not the thought behind it. I have always been more interested in the outcome rather than the explanation of the creative process and believe that authenticity resonates on its rightful frequency.  But because my work now has an element of activism I succumbed.

Still

I’d hate to preach. I am not here to make any individual feel guilty. I can inspire but I cannot tell you what to do.

(Corporations, hell yes, I’ll make them  guilty all day long, as well as government and policy makers).

But as individuals we have free will. We are in charge of our own destiny. We can inform ourselves and choose to act. We can decide to  bring our own bags to the supermarket instead of using 20 plastic bags instead. We  can recycle, reuse, repurpose and refuse. We have the choice to take responsibility.

in between the lines

My personal transformation started  in Eleuthera 8 years ago.

On my first beach walk  I noticed,  in between the lines in the sand,  bright flecks of color. My initial thought was how pretty but then I realized these specks of plastic were  not supposed to be there.

By the end of that first walk I had encountered everything that mankind had ever made in plastic.

Crates, chairs, brushes, lids, containers, barrettes, flip flops and sneaker and endless lengths of nylon rope.

Even on this remote “pristine” beach I realized that we live in a man made world.

Being a designer I look at almost everything as shape, color, texture and inspiration and what I saw that day I’d never seen before.

The beach plastic had been tumbled in sand, salt and coral. and was bleached by the sun. It had been in nature for so long that it had taken on a natural patina. Some pieces looked like stone, like little colored gems.

I started picking them up.

My love hate relationship with plastic started in that moment .

Back  home I tried to find out more.

I learned that we each consume roughly 300 pounds of plastic a year of which a mere 7% is recycled and 8 million pieces of plastic find their way into the ocean every day.

What could I do?

I had an ever increasing “collection” of beach plastic in my studio and I started making earrings.

Eventually I had an awakening to the possibilities of this material that was never really owned but had been thrown to the mythical place called away.

To make jewelry was a transformation, not just for me, but also for the material.

Think of a water-bottle top. Does anyone ever feel that they own a plastic bottle top? It just keeps the liquid inside the bottle, right? Which you don’t feel you own either. Does the manufacturer of your water feel he owns that bottle?

Nobody owns single-use plastic.

I like finding weathered bottle tops. They make great earrings, and I love selling single use plastic, beach plastic, into ownership.

If plastic is made to last forever then maybe, like diamonds, it can be loved forever.

I got this comment yesterday:

“Keep cleaning up the beaches lady.. but what are you gonna do with all those balloons with the plastic string ties and can you make something with all the garbage those people in Miami leave on the beaches while you’re at it???”

He does NOT think different!

I am not cleaning up the beaches for him or anyone. I do it for me. Creating beauty with beach plastic makes me happy and by getting your attention I implicate you in the tragedy of our single-use throw-away culture.

I hope I make you think.

Not just different.

Different is fleeting.

But think.

All the time

About everything.

website:

http://www.plasticisforever.net/


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my new website

My new commercial website is up, glitches and all, final version moving at laid back Miami speed. Please check it out, I welcome any feedback on look and how it works. Thank you!

http://www.plasticisforever.net/


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Back and Doing the Other Miami…

I’m back.

From pastoral Pennsylvania to crazy Miami.

To the bachelor pad which is being de-bachelored by turning the “pool” room (as in shooting pool with your mates at 3 am, after getting home from the Wall without scoring)  into a third bedroom for the twins so they can do homework, hang out, bicker and sleep behind a wall (instead of the exposed upper mezzanine).

Tiesto mural in pool room will be preserved

Of course this was to be done in the ample two months that we were away and of course it was started on the Friday we returned. So now we neither have an office (pool room) nor a bedroom for the girls since everything from one room is piled in the other.

But thats OK.

They say they will be done by Wednesday.

They say.

They said they’d be done by now.

But I’m not bothered. There are bigger problems.

Like school uniforms.

Maybe one has to be genetically programmed to deal with procuring kid’s uniforms. Maybe I’m too hippy-dippy Dutch to even think about universal clothing for creative kids. See I always look to blame myself first (Have you noticed? Do you do that too? I wish I were a bit more Teaparty, and blame everyone else. Like only everyone else all the time.), still I was proud to have gathered, at Woodbury Common (Like/Love), four khaki bottoms that my trendy twins would deign to wear to school, and one pair of black pants that may get them sent home (while the color is right, the fit will be deemed too sexy, which in this city of underdressed exhibitionists is paradoxical but don’t get me started, I already wrote that blog.)

The preppy polo tops have to be bought locally since they are emblazoned with the Miami Arts Charter School logo.

lime, teal, white or black with MAC logo

Another bigger problem was getting an e-mail from TED, shortly after arrival, requesting a full run-through of my talk at 1 pm on Wednesday. This Wednesday? This Wednesday!

TED? But I was still on uniforms. Saturday was uniform day on my “what to do when we get back” list. Which also has finish homework with the girls, unpack, get food in fridge, get 2nd floor toilet and phone fixed , you know the drill.

TED!

So while I should be writing and practicing my TED talk, I’m chasing uniforms.

Yes, I’d ordered them online as the school suggested, but got a notice a few days ago that the polo’s would be ready for delivery in 5 weeks!

WTF? Right?

What are the suggesting? Homeschooling for five weeks? I mean the school is clear:

All students and parents have agreed to abide by the school uniform as described in the parent/student contract signed during registration.

Students not in uniform will be required to contact their parent and sent home.

I’m scared!
Ibiley suggests I visit any of their conveniently located Miami stores.
They lied. None of them are conveniently located. All of them are in scary shit neighborhoods that are at least  40 minutes away.

I settled on North Miami and was wise enough to call first, just to make sure they had said polos in stock, but of course got the robot who told me that August is too busy to answer the phone, and tells me to leave a message.

They’re also too busy to answer.

I find out just how busy.

But not till after getting lost in the maze of NE and NW 159th street Drive and Street and Court, at the very place where 95, the turnpike and 539 intersect in a spider-web of flyovers and underpasses and of course the exit ramp that Mapquest told me to use is Closed for Construction.

What?

You are sorry for the inconvenience?

Fuck you!

Why not just post some signs up telling how to get the fuck to Ibeley Uniforms in the industrial park (with one entrance) that I can see from the overpass which points towards the Everglades, at 70 miles an hour.

OK. So.

50 minutes later, and isn’t it amazing how proud those moments can make you (forget about a TED talk), I pull up in front of Ibiley.

Pride turns to nausea in a nano second.

Swarming around the  huge warehouse, are hundreds of people of many colors (none quite as white as the three of us), several  stainless steel quilted food trucks are randomly parked, and something that resembles a long line, made up from entire families (bring the kids, the toddlers, the babies, the grannies, aunts, uncles and don’t forget the neighbors) comes out from the front door into the 95 degree sunshine.

We “politely” battle our way inside only to find many feet of empty shelves and another line that resembles immigration at JFK before Christmas.

Determined (if nothing else) I find 8 tees (4 each), while yelling at the twins to help me. Unfortunately they’re catatonic with the otherness of it all, like in some culture-shock transition from the verdant woods to this urban jungle.

We join the immigration line.

After ten minutes we move close enough to spot a tiny sign over the counter.

We are out of the folowing logo patches. (you buy the tees and pay in line #1, they give you your school’s logo patches, you join line #2, the one outside, and they apply the patches).

Come back on the 28th and we will apply them for free,, it also read. (You’d have to bloody well pay ME to come back!).

There’s no actual list of said missing patches posted. I guess it changes by the minute.

So.

I grab an Ibiley sales girl who looks like she will get really drunk that night.

MAC is not on her list of out-of-stock patches.

I ponder if this is good news. I’m rather praying for an excuse to leave. But it sounds like we will be there for the next few hours. (Could I get into this Cuban/Caribbean/South American block-party atmosphere?).

The girl walks away.

The girl comes back.

“You are at the wrong location”, she says. “MAC uses special embroidery and is only available at our Little Havana store on SW 8th Street.”

We are on NW 167th street.

You have to be from Miami to know what that really means, but imagine flying to London instead of Sydney.

We are fucked.

We leave the line.

We are hungry and buy three sandwiches, and three Cuban drink cans ( sexy looking mixed mango. papaya, passion fruit that taste like water) from the guilted truck.

“Mom, these are the best sandwiches I’ve ever had,” the twins chime, “Yes, at least we got some really good sandwiches out of it.”

They encourage me. (Afraid that I might have a shit-fit meltdown?)

Instead I find 95 South (easy), and head towards Little Havana.

I call husband who is on the porch in PA and tells me its the first nice day in weeks.

@#$%^&* !!

He also tells me to give myself a break.

He often tells me this.

I listen. The only breaks I take are the ones he tells me to take.

He’s good to me in that way.

“You did your best,” he says. “Go home, have a swim, enjoy being back.”

He has a point.

I compromise with myself. I settle on Target, which I happen to be passing, buy the last three (a terrible number for twins) white polo’s and  HP iron-0n tee shirt transfer paper.

I feel clever.

I shall go home, get the MAC logo online and iron it on.

Which I do.

While arguing with the MAC principal in my mind that this is as good as the real thing from Little Havana and that the Ibiley store was completely out of stock (good chance of that anyway, right? Given the odds so far?)

While the trip to Little Havana still looms, since three tees between twins won’t last me the promised five weeks.

They wont even last two days.

And then there is TED.

TED needs attention.

As soon as the girls are in school TED will be my lover.

I promise TED my undivided attention….


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TED and me… a budding love affair ?

Away is Here

Away is Here I wrote as the title of my TEDxMia talk application six weeks ago.

Two weeks ago I heard that I was on the shortlist of fifteen applicants out of almost seventy and was summoned for an audition.

Through the stage door at the Adrienne Arsht Center I went, up the elevator and into a quiet and impersonal office where I sat and waited, straining my ears trying to hear the genius inspiration on the other side of the door.

All I heard was muffled voices.

I checked my check list like I was cramming for an exam. My key words and new statistics like the plastic industry employs over 1 million Americans, is the third largest US industry, generates about 450 billion annually, and each American consumes and disposes of about 300 pounds of plastic per year, ten times more than in 1960, and that we have produced/consumed as much plastic in the last decade as we did in all of the 20th century.

Then the door opened and two TED potentials (male variety) walked past me, looking ever so pleased with themselves.

I wanted to run. Like in the other direction from the judges, three female and one male,  who were left behind in the room. But they invited me in and told me to sit at one side of a large conference table while they faced me across the great teak expanse.

You have fifteen minutes, they said, to tell us why you should be a TED Miami speaker next September.

Wow, this is a first for me, I thought. Like a huge fucking first.

J Lo, Steven Tyler and Randy Jackson came to mind while I worried about flubbing my well-practiced spiel.

See, I’m not a natural performer. At least not historically speaking. Yes I’ve done public speaking, to as many as 300 people, but I never sought it out.

I didn’t seek this out either. This TED audition American Idol style. I applied because I was given no choice by two enthusiastic friend-fans who sent me the link to the TED application form, like daily for two weeks, and kept asking whether I’d filled it out yet. I did not want to disappoint them, and also my approach to Plastic is Forever has been to go with the energy that is generated by the project itself. Which means say no to nothing, and trust that the path is right and unfolds as a I move with it. ( A Zen approach that’s also very new for me and has come with age and a better understanding of the way expectation can screw with process).

Anyway I’d filled out the application with the integrity beach plastic pollution deserves. Putting into words my passion to take this orphaned material and introduce it to the design world as something new, something desirable and create a new way to approach beach plastic ownership.

So I did my spiel. Or rather I started with it and then, as happens with this project, it took its own direction. It speaks for me as if the message is so burning, so urgent, so real that my simple mind has no control over it. Really! I know that sounds ever-so New Agey, but what I mean is that I engaged the people in the room, they became curious, started asking question and then the subject just directs itself.

Next they asked to see my images, and when that was over my fifteen minutes were over and I got a wee appreciative applause.

Well, I thought, at least I did not hear any applause for the two guys who left before me. Ha!

So.

Now I’m hanging in suspense, checking my e-mails several times a day, while I tell myself that I really do not care, that I am fine without it, that getting it will just be fabulous, but but but…

Of course I want it. Once I put my name in the hat, my spiel in the ring, myself on the line, there is no going back emotionally.

I’m engaged.

I LOVE TED talks.

They are awesome and I must be a TED talker.

I have entire arguments in my head convincing whomever why I SHOULD be a TED talker. I put my imaginative competitors ( I have no idea who they are) down for having old and stale ideas (I have no idea what these might be).

I have become a fierce TED competitor.

I do not want to be send home.

I do not want to be voted off.

I want to do an awe inspiring Ted talk.

And I want it NOW!


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Plastic is Forever but I am not….

I am now of the age where, when faced with a photo of myself, I cringe and only see the wrinkles, double chin(s?), roots etc. You know what I mean, and I think maybe I’ll like this one in ten years time, as my mind is forever a decade behind my appearance.
So when dear Gina Rudan from Practical Genius posted this video of our interview last week I watched with my eyes shut until Kiki said, “mom you look really pretty.” It was the surprise in my daughter’s voice that made me look.

So, here  some anti beach plastic pollution advocacy that I do not mind sharing, and thank you Gina for making me watchable…

Click here: 

 

 


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Barbi Feels Miami’s Dark Side…

me

Could it be that the much talked and anticipated (by some) Rapture is just one interpretation of a long predicted energy shift in our universe that brings chaos to our sense of safety?

Certainly the people that were sucked from their cars to the heavens, in Joplin last week, must have wondered if this was the end of the world.

It was the end of their world.

My ten-year-old twin’s sense of safety was rocked ten days ago when, for career week, a neurosurgeon was brought in by their Elementary school to give a presentation. I guess the school was glad to get a surgeon (an honorable career) after a series of career presentations by corporations like Burger King who use these weeks as an opportunity for marketing and recruiting.

I had done my own presentation, on how to be a fashion designer, earlier in the week. The one I did at Lynn University last March. Only for the Elementary students I spend hours removing all traces of sex from my PowerPoint. Kate Moss’ breasts and Marky’s pecks were replaced with more demure image like Claudia Schiffer in a cozy CK cardigan.

(I wasn’t going to give that righteous principal a reason to call me into her office…)

The neurosurgeon with (what should have been) a red flag name and title – Dr. Wolf from the Miami Knife Center – was less enlightened to the minds of fifth graders when he put together his PowerPoint.

He surprised them all, teachers and children.

Just imagine: One hundred and thirty ten-year-old boys and girls filing into the auditorium, laughing and joking, happy to be let out of their classroom, sitting together, seeking out friends, and then the theatre goes dark and Dr. Wolf starts his show.

The room goes quiet with the first image. It is a pencil stuck deep into an eye. The next image is a bloody brain spilling from a split skull – motor cycle accident, Dr. Wolf explains. It goes on. Dozens more gory bloody images follow, from gunshots to a toothbrush in an eye socket. (How did that get there Mom?)

Kids feel faint. Kids feel nauseous. Kids leave the auditorium escorted by adults to get air and water. To throw up in trash cans. Some kids cry. Most of them just hide their faces in their friend’s shoulders or behind their hands, make jokes and try to make each other laugh.

One of my daughters sat by herself, without friends to distract her.

When she got into my car, at the end of the day, she burst into tears. That night she would not brush her teeth (did she imagine her unruly toothbrush ending up  inside her skull?). She had bad dreams, threw up in the morning and for the next few day she would not eat, nauseous from the images that still played around her mind.

I had spend ten years carefully protecting her from this kind of stuff and within ten minutes Dr. Wolf had undone all that parenting.

You may think I exaggerate. Some parents certainly did not seem as bothered as I was. But many were equally upset and angry and complained.

A few days later one teacher apologized to her class and said:

“Raise your hands if you have been mentally scarred.”

The point that was neglected, I think, is that schools have to feel safe for kids. They need stability, nurturing even predictability to do well, and Dr. Wolf’s graphic X-rated ambush took with it some of their innocence and trust.

I told the other parents I would write a letter to Dr. Wolf explaining, politely, that his show was not age appropriate for fifth graders. That he should keep it for his med students who had made a career choice.

But.

When I read the tag line on his website about the Gamma Knife which he’d developed…

” The Gamma knife is more accurate, efficient and faster and works on more than just brain tumors”

I thought maybe not….

*

A few days later, as the emotions Dr. Wolf had stirred up subsided, I found myself downtown Miami. I had lunch with a friend at Little Lotus, shopped for fabric and jewelry supplies and was waiting to cross the street.

Spacing out.

Like one does.

When waiting for the pedestrian light to change.

Not feeling safe nor unsafe.

Just waiting.

Next I felt a searing pain go through my nose.

A bold skull hit me.

Hard and fast.

I saw stars.

I stumbled.

Shit! What the fuck? I thought, and, don’t pass out…

I looked at him. A short man, unshaven, homeless? He’d run into me, carrying a metal cane, a weapon?  and kept running as I stood – reeling.

Was I being mugged?

My bag was still on my shoulder.

My nose hurt. Was it bleeding? I felt the left inside nostril closing up.

Ice. I needed Ice.

I got it at a coffeeshop.

I drove home, ice pack pressed to my face, eyesight swimming.

I went to bed.

Rattled.

*

Two days later, the swelling had disappeared, I was at my desk, working.

Sirens, so common in Miami, stopped abruptly.

Right here it seemed.

I went onto my terrace and saw several police cars and an ambulance entering our gate.

Later that day I found out that a friend and neighbor had died suddenly, in his apartment, leaving behind his lovely young wife and six-year-old son. Iona used to baby-sit for them. His wife is my friend. I have not heard from her and can only imagine what she’s going through. I think of every moment we spent together, like the dinners, time by the pool and at their house in the Keys.

Isn’t that what we do when friends pass? We think of them, bring them closer than ever before so we can let them go…?

*

Yesterday.

I was working at my desk.

And there were sirens. Hundreds of them it seemed. Their noise came towards me as it does, but then they did not fade.

They seemed to stop.

Right here.

Again.

I looked from the window and saw fire engines and ambulances enter.

Oh fuck!

A helicopter appeared from nowhere and hovered overhead.

I went outside.

It was right over me. A news helicopter.

As I went back inside the girls came running down from their room.

“Mom, mom, there is a house on fire, right here in Aqua, we can see the smoke..”

We ran into the street, onto the quay along Indian Creek, and there at the end of Aqua island, in the water, was a sky high blaze, 30 feet flames lapping the air, black smoke billowing, and popping explosions came from the hull of the yacht.

Dozens of curious boats kept a cautious distance.

We walked down slowly as it seemed to be drifting into the tip of our island.

One police boat got close enough to throw a hook and slowly pulled the yacht away from our shore.

For the next forty minutes we watched the dousing of the fire as hoses pointed their spray from the gardens of the mansions on Pine Tree Drive.

We saw it all from our pool and found out  that the family on the boat, a mother, father and two kids had jumped into the water and were picked up by another boat,  leaving their burning vessel to drift down Indian Creek towards our pool area, gas and propane tanks exploding one at a time.

For local news footage of the fire click here

Then, last night, I went to a dinner party.

Alone, since husband is already back in PA.

I had not realized until I walked into Iran’s new apartment how weird and out of it I really felt.

I was completely discombobulated.

And completely unaware how these surreal events had affected me because I’d been with my kids throughout, trying to shield  and keep them safe.

I walked in and wanted to find an adult shoulder to fall and cry on.

But.

This was the glam Miami party crowd.

So fun. So rich. So beautiful.

I was an alien.

I was hardly able to speak.

Like string an interesting, funny, flirty sentence together.

The freaked-out tabby kitten in a room full of playful Persian sex kittens…

sexy Persian kitten...



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Hell Hath No Fury Like Mothers Scorned # 1

evidence of unruly behaviour

OK

So.

Aqua, where we live in the Dutch DJ’s bachelor pad, is a community. As in gated. As in there are rules and regulations handed down by the board and enforced by “management and security”. These rules and regulations are of course to protect us, the owners and tenants.

(From each other?)

Now, husband and I spent about 19 years of our union sneering at these kinds of communities. We’d never live in one of those !

But.

Here we are!

We chose this pad when we cruised Miami Beach two years ago with Esther Percal, the super realtor, because Iona liked the furniture (Italian decorators do candy-land bachelor style ), husband and I liked the huge pool overlooking Indian Creek, and the twins liked the three TV’s, one on each floor except for ours, after their TV-less nine-year-long life.

the pool in Indian Creek

And.

Aqua seemed safe for the kids. They could play outside, ride bikes, scooters, boards, play ball, swim, play hide and seek, walk the dog, all without much parental supervision. Just like home in Milford where they ran in and out and played on their own ten acres.

Still.

When we moved into Aqua almost two years ago it had only a 40% occupancy and was way too designer-exclusive for its own good and our first year was spent alongside three Maserati and Lambourghini owning bachelor neighbors who returned from the Wall@ the W at 4am revving their $350.000 engines, while several (as many as fit in Maserati/Lambourghini) perfect female bodies clicked twice as many Louboutin heels  on the pavement, went inside only to reappear on the deck across from our bedroom where they would either discuss or have sex until I loaded the kids into the car to go to school.

Mom, what was that noise last night?

It woke me up!

I heard girls screaming!

The bachelors frowned upon us. We frowned upon them.

As in breeders versus non-breeders.

Until last summer when the leases were up and they moved on to the next playboy hotspot.

And we left for Milford. When we came back to Aqua new leases had been signed all around us.

The low occupancy rate brought the prices down and had attracted….

… families!

Big and noisy families!

The Maserati/Lambourghini house was taken by a spivvy-looking couple with two girls  the twin’s age.

The house across the alley, aka The  Israeli house for Young Army Bachelors (yes, they flew the Israeli flag and over the year several amputees spent time in the Jacuzzi one-upping each other with tales of battle and atrocity), was taken by another young family with more twins.

Two houses on the other side contained families with only rowdy boys.

Result: A lot of biking, scootering, ball playing, running, hiding and seeking and corresponding screaming and laughing and shouting.

TERRIBLE!

Those DANGEROUS-noisy-wild kids!

So.

Two days ago this was decreed from above:

No more kids in the streets.

No playing.

Play was dangerous.

A peace-disturbing threat to the status quo.

Not to mention a liability.

No more bikes, no more scooters, no more roller-skates.

No more riding bikes to the pool.

I saw a boy being reprimanded by the security guard for riding his skate board.

Minutes later I saw his mother wagging her finger at same security guard.

Minutes after that I was in cohoots with the mother.

We agreed on the message that we heard:

Kids were best not seen and not heard. Kids were best indoors in front of the TV.

Soon after my new neighbor called me.

Had I heard?

And then followed a groundswell fueled by e-mail and Facebook.

Libya, Egypt, Syria had nothing on us.

Us.

The Mothers of Aqua.

The Happy Hooligans of Aqua in action

Did you follow the story on CNN?

About the clandestine meetings in Aqua’s back alleys, where we usually fight over parking spots for our SUV’s but are now united in our indignation against the board. Did they tell you about the demonstration outside the gym? Our manifesto with demands? The Chinese rocket launcher that’s on backorder?

rocket launchers can be fun...

While we were drawing up our demands we threw in some other stuff for good measure, like no more cutting of the mangoes, we have a right to eat the mangoes in our grove, and open up the lap pool (which has been closed for several years because tiles supposedly pop off the overhead building and oh-the-liability), and how about some fines for those dog owners who don’t scoop their poop! Huh? Why don’t you go after them instead of our kids you board/management/security bullies?

There!

A neighbor drew it up and sent it out.

A scary e-mail. A we-take-no-hostages-without-killing-them e-mail. A get-the-fuck-real about who you’re dealing with e-mail.

Get your priorities straight!

They caved.

Kinda.

They compromised. Yes to bikes and scooters on the sidewalks, no to bikes and scooters in the streets and alleys. Yes to opening the lap pool (soon), but no mention of the mangoes and the entitled non-scooping dog owners.

The spivvy neighbors are moving. To a house on the beach further north. A child-friendly place they say.

We’re staying.

Another year.

Soon we will be back for the summer at our non-gated, no security guarded home in Milford.

Alongside neighbors that shoot at children.

But that’s another story which one day I may be brave enough to share and will be called  Hell Hath No Fury Like a Mother Scorned # 2…..

summer home


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Barbi goes native…

Vogue.com: – “While vacationing on Eleuthera in the Bahamas, artist Barbara de Vries began collecting colorful bits of plastic she found on the island’s powder-soft beaches. Having been smoothed and contoured by the elements, the synthetic material more resembled small, precious gems. So once she returned home, the Miami native …”

Miami native?

What the fuck?

Barbi? … Miami Native?

Me, a Miami native artist?

I bristled. I bristled good. Like hackles all the way up. As I read the much anticipated Vogue article in postage size on my BB.

While walking through the Lynn University campus where I had just spoken to about 70 lethargic fashion merchandising students (I was told they were designers) but from the show of hands – I speak to the out-of-the-box part of brain – there appeared to be none. And all my “be unique follow your creative genius rara, jokes and digs” fell like dusty hat pins on the well-worn blue and crested gold carpet. Soundless. Echoless.

Oh well.

But out in the parking lot the combination of the dulled crowd and “Miami native” got my goat. Like got my goat by the balls (or teets?)

Was I not Dutch born?  A former Paris model? A fashion designer from London? Former director of design @ Calvin Klein in NYC?

My ego was pretzelling out of control.

Then my sobering alter-ego said: “But weren’t you last seen as mother, wife and housefrau in Milford PA?” Huh? You think you are so hot? You should be so lucky! To be in Vogue! Huh? Who do you think you are?

(Do you have that who-do-you-think-you-are voice? I don’t think everyone has that voice, as in *Donald Trump, Charlie Sheen or Sarah Palin?)

I have a big ego and then this who-do-you-think-you-are-voice which makes me rather schizo, inside my head, and sometimes it comes out, and I lash out and then feel guilty, and confuse the hell out of everyone.

Like who’s that  guilty nice bitch?

So, as I’m driving back to Miami, I’m arguing with myself. And, as usual, my ego loses and I listen to the alter one.

And I’m starting to like the idea of Miami artist. Like could I be an artist from Miami?

Go native…?

I’m used to shape shifting. I’ve had my incarnations from painfully shy school girl to cosmo model to young London designer to Senior Veepee to country mom of three…

And…

Wasn’t I looking for that new life? That new me? Was I not sick of  feeling invisible as a mother?

So.

It took Rickie at Vogue to make me see. To open my eyes to more and endless possibilities of me.

It also took embellishing 750 tees with beach plastic to drive me almost insane.

thank you Vogue

I spent the last four months doing little else, as my husband, daughters, dog, friends and hairdresser will attest, but, while doing my manual labor, I had  time to think.

About beach plastic. About plastic pollution, About its impact, about solutions, about re-purposing some of the plastic that is already out there. How we buy the product within; the laundry detergent, the water, the toothpaste, but do not feel we own its container. Nobody owns the container. Its not our problem. And therein lies the problem. We have come to treat plastic as a cheap, throw-away material. We forget that it was heralded as the substance that would stop us from plundering earth’s natural resources like wood, tortoise, ivory etc.

Remember Mr. Maguire to young Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate?

“I have one word for you young man”

?   (Dustin looking dumb)

PLASTICS!

That was forty years ago and now we’re sinking in the stuff and don’t know how to get rid of it!

Fuck Mr. Robinson and his plastics!

So now its my problem? I thought. As I slowed down  to a place of understanding.

And this what I would say to young Dustin:

“Slow Down”

Stop.

Dustin, take ten minutes to really scroll through this (art by native artist?) and you will notice that every piece of beach plastic has a mysterious story. How did the barrette, the crate, the tooth brush, the toy soldier, the bead end up on that faraway Bahamian beach? Who owned it? What did they do with it and why did it get into the ocean? Did it come from a cruise ship? A seaside garbage dump, was it casually tossed away or accidentally lost?

And if you slow down enough to think  then maybe you can stop just long enough to change the effect of disposable plastic and realize that you can reinvent plastic’s destiny  by making it desirable and yes, maybe even beautiful.

black and white, ying and yang, ego and alter ego, there's always the other way

Interviews about the process, (thank you Viv and Christine) courtesy of Loomstate:


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Barbi’s Bottle Shack at Art Basel Miami…

Ok, I know,  its been a week.


 Bruce Weber at his Haiti show opening        Iona at Design Miami opening

I’m sorry I did not get to it sooner, but if you were here you’d know that after one week of Art Basel Miami and all its trimmings from parties for Isabella Rosselini, Bruce Weber, Julian Schnabel, Sean Penn to art events in at least 320 different locations on the beach and midtown causing traffic that puts the Paris peripherique at 7am to shame, if you’d lived through all that you wouldn’t want revisit it, well, till the frenzy has not only worn off, but a sense of objective relativity has settled back in.

And also.

In the middle of it all Kiki got sick. On Thursday night, after a party I co-hosted for Water.org, and meeting Alastair at the Schnabel/Maybach/Sean Penn/Haiti (yes all in one breath) event, where I posed as gallery owner Angela Westwater, the one who had nabbed husband away from me for the #1/a-list/VIP studded event that evening (of my very civilized dinner for water.org to which husband did not come because Ms. Westwater’s offer was superior ). Are you getting the escalation of frenzy and stress? (I must remember, I tell myself, that when I’m 70+ and would like a handsome, younger, entertaining male on my arm to a #1/a-list/VIP studded event, I can invite any married man out there. No problem. And I will. I promise I will. Fuck it, I’ve spent a lifetime being perceived as a threat, when I am 70 and no longer perceived as a threat, I will take advantage and tempt younger men with my #1/a-list/VIP studded events).

speaking to 40 dinner guests @ water.org dinner about Arts for a Better World and my beach plastic

But I’m way off topic. That night, when I posed as Angela Westwater, because it turns out she’s way too A-list to pick up her name tag, and I turned up under her name it was assumed I was her and ended up with her tag, and passed  Sean Penn in the corridor who threw me a look like he’d just blown up the headmaster’s car, but apparently I’d just missed his angry rant about Haiti and the lack of help which resulted in the sale of  four Schnabel drawings raising over one million in a few minutes. Well, that night Kiki got sick. I had a few, not my fault, I was served quite a few, wines, scotches, champagnes. I was tired, bone tired. So I was sleeping like I really needed it.

Leila walked it at 3-ish, and said: “Kiki just threw up all over the floor.”

!

And.

For the first time in 14 years I said:

“I can’t deal with that right now.”

I turned over and went back to sleep.

Guess what? Husband got up! Maybe it was my total coolness about his date with Angela, but he got up and cleaned up the puke, and I experienced a very steep learning curve. Which is: I can say things like “I can’t deal with that right now,” and he’s there. Ready to jump in.

That was huge and has NOTHING to do with Art Basel Miami.

So.

My promise of blogging about my installation as it evolved, which named itself the Bottle Shack after it was built because it was not quite as slick as I had imagined but took, like all good art, a life of its own determined by material, circumstance, timing and mood,  and ended up quite random and gorgeous and shacky and textured in a messy luminous kinda way, that promise was way more than I could live up to.

So this is it how it went:

It started with 2400 recycled bottles. 1000 from my local school bottle drive. 500 from Recyclable Planet a reverse vending machine where you drop off your soda/water bottles, and 1700 from South Eastern Recycling. Not all were usable. Some were really disgusting with like gum stuck on the outside, food stuffed inside, mold, grease, like you dont wanna know what people do to/with their water bottles.

We, the kids, their friends and I started by removing all the labels. In order of popularity: Dasani (tap water, hello!), Zephyrhills (from a natural spring near Tampa Florida, yum!), Publix spring water (paradox), Coca Cola, Sprite, Perrier, and so on.

While we peeled labels a wooden cube structure was built by the show’s carpenters. We strung bottles on wire with Lara, Gabriella, husband  and Jennifer and hung them on this wooden cube which collapsed right away. Shit! Now I was behind schedule.

A new steel tube structure with sloppy horizontals was built next. I had to let go of my Dutch sense of perfect parallels and become more,  lets say, island…?

By Sunday noon my “installation” was nowhere near installed.

It soon became a case of, if I’d know what it takes I’d never have done it. Those are the projects I like best because I go into some strange obsessive state of mind. I drilled holes in 2400 bottles. I strung them on wire and tied them. I had some help from Steven, a DASH fashion student, but was mostly alone at the cavernous hall till midnight. I crept through some time-worm-hole and by Tuesday morning I moved into my pop-up studio bottle shack and got ready for the opening party.

Which was that night and I posed in my perfect dress, in front of the shack with an American Indian Chief who had blessed the event…oh for  global and good-cause culture clashing!

Tuesday night held many other opening parties. There was Design Miami, there was the Mark Newson Riva boat at the Standard, there was Nadja Swarowski’s dinner party at Soho House, there was Bruce Weber at MoCA and a dinner to follow. Huband went to most of them and took Iona (14) as his “date”. It was like Iona’s coming out night at Art Basel Miami 2010. She was chatted up by a married man who asked her if her guy was in the film business. “You mean my Dad?” she answered. He then told her he ‘d come to the dinner with his buddy, acting like he was single but the next day she saw him swinging his wife and baby  in the hammock chairs outside Design Miami. Another steep learning curve in the Gordon household – men will say anything to get your attention….

But I wasn’t there. I was at my own opening with my team.

My first ever art opening in fact. I’ve done countless fashion shows and their after parties, I’ve given many of husband’s book launch parties but I’ve never had my own Art Opening! 100 sq. feet of me. Of what I wanted to express at that moment in time. In my time. In Miami’s time. In the world’s time.  An opportunity to make a statement.

I took on plastic pollution.

I worked in my pop-up studio and showed how to turn catastrophe into beauty hoping to inspire. Hoping to educate.

My favorite was when  kids poked their heads through the bottles and asked me all sorts of questions which usually started with, “what are you doing in there?”

I loved it when Michele Oka Doner breezed in  like a luminous fairy, with a posse of Micky Wolfson’s glamorous women friends. They all came inside the shack, and then called out to Micky to join us. Luckily he declined. The shack was not built to hold visitors, it was built to be peeked into…

I joined Alastair and Iona at the Swarowski dinner. I flirted with Michael Tilson Thomas in the elevator, having no idea who he was other than rather cute. I saw my long time Dutch friend Li Edelkoort, we kissed and hugged like long lost loves knowing that the next time could be years from now. I embarrassed my dinner partner by making rather harmless comments about the other guests but when we parted he said I was his favorite new friend and he was the first to visit the Bottle Shack the next morning. A rather nasty writer called Derek to my right told me gleefully that Julie Gilhart had just been given the boot by Barneys.

Julie! My champion! The one who had introduced my beach plastic tees to the Barneys buyers! I e-mailed her when I got home and three days later she came to my Bottle Shack. My new favorite friend. The wonderful awesome Julie Gilhart! Not rattled at all by recent events, but inspired by its possibilities….

Julie and Barbie

Loomstate‘s Berrin and Vivienne came down to Miami too.

To see me  and their tees inside the shack. They took millions of pix and did an interview movie and we had a long noisy lunch at Joeys. They placed a great story about the Bottle Shack in Ecouterre and posted a glowing report on their blog. Thank you Loomstate!

Sunday 5 pm it was over!

I had loved it. It felt like I was whole again. After several years of not knowing how to redefine myself in a way that was fulfilling and meant something in a modern global context, realizing I had grown out of being a traditional fashion designer and did not know exactly how to fill the void. My creative void that was like a gaping hole, which made me unhappy. Unsettled.

Now, well, it seems I’m back on track….


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The Art Basel Circus is Coming to Town….

OK.

So.

Once a year the art-circus comes to town, given legitimacy because the prestigious Art Basel, as in Basel Suisse, as in most uptight city/country in Europe, is behind it. I’m sure its been asked before, but surely Basel and Miami in the same breath are an oxymoron?

Anyway.

It all started with Art Miami and then Basel came and then everyone who is anyone in the art world followed. And then the design world… for catching some rays before settling into the long dark northern winter? Who knows. They, the art world, thought it was an excellent idea, and so now there are many, many satellite shows. One is called Scope, one called Pulse, one called Red Dot as in SOLD (so you cant have it), one called Nada, and    so    on….

Now, you may remember, last year husband and I were Art Basel Miami sluts, like we didn’t care, we hung with every and anyone, at every and any party.

BUT.

I must speak for myself when I say that, even though I enjoyed the unbearable lightness of it all, I wanted a bit more green, as in Green. Like some art that dealt with issues of the planet? Was that too much to ask? Like a bit less stuffed deer and doe and fawn, less Michael Jackson likenesses and a bit more Chris Jordan?

So. As Basel approached this year, and I sat  assembling beach plastic tee after beach plastic tee, which gives me a lot of time to think since its manual labor, I thought to myself….. I should be at Basel… like Barbi does green, or blue, at Miami Art Basel week.

Well.

This year has been the “Year of Be Careful What You Ask For”, for me (after three years of getting shit I did not ask for). Like I wished to be in Barneys and they called me for 900 tees, driving me into beach plastic nervous breakdown. I think Barbi does Basel (yes that blog title I shall use next week), and low and behold, I get a call….

Thirteen days before the show!

But I said yes.

YES. YES. YES!

So.

I committed to showing.

At Arts for a Better World.

Sounds good doesn’t it? Sounds like it could be me, no? I mean who cares about art if its not for a better world?

Isn’t one definition of art that it gives the beholder a sense of hope, of seeing and experiencing a whole new emotion? A new paradigm, a moment of connection to the divine? The divine in another human being who somehow connects for a moment to what is true and enlightened and real? And isn’t the divine a moment of connection to our spiritual origins? And does nature not have something to do with this?

So. A better world through art sounds good to me. Thats the place I want to be.

Fuck the brands like Gagosian and Marlborough, aren’t they just like out of control Wall Street brokers?

OK. OK. I’ll shut up. Before I dig myself in too deep.  No, I do not claim any superiority  or connection to the divine. I just want to experience more. Like  something I haven’t done before. I want to feel good not poor. I want to feel part of something not inferior. You know what I mean?

For now that’s all you get. I’m busy you know. very very busy.

But.

Stay tuned.

I will record all right here. From the day I start, Sunday, and build my amazing recycled installation and somehow move into it.

Here’s the name of the installation and an idea….of what’s to come: