Moving on

I've moved my blog over to Wordpress (sorry blogger, i just want to learn how to use both platforms) so if you want to continue to follow my posts, check out my new blog!

Obsessing over color

Okay, this is the 2nd post today about color but I had to. Maybe I'm obsessed with color today because of being sick for the last few days. All day sleeping in a dark room seems to have made me love pink today. Weird, I know. This is a cool find and even greater that a quote comes with it. I always need a good quote for the day!

Visit The Media Collective to get their book on color with lots more quotes.

Festival of Colors

Below are some photographs of a festival that started last week. Holi, a Hindu tradition, celebrates the beginning of Spring. It looks like it would be an amazing experience. I wish we had beautiful festivals like this one in the U.S.

Here's a few of my favorites, but visit Boston.com to see the full photo montage.

(photos courtesy of Boston.com and AP Photo/Gemunu Amarasinghe)

Public Relations... some should be banned from speaking to the public!

While I'm in the journalism and the marketing field, I still find this repulsive and the reply brilliant. Visit Gawker to read the whole story.

"...to use the death of an esteemed colleague as the peg for a pitch (however notable the cause may be) seems to indicate that you possess less humanity and empathy than a staff infection."

Poetry from a journalist... who knew?

Music Fridays

I decided to begin posting some of my favorite music for the week. It's basically whatever catches my fancy and I've found myself listening to over and over this week. It may not be new music and it may not be your kind of music. But this is my blog and like my boss said yesterday, "This is not a democracy." Ha! So enjoy if you can!

Piers Faccini's "A storm is going to come"

Share you favorites with me and I'll post them! I always love listening to new stuff. No headbanging stuff though. Sorry, more the hippy or soft rock kind-of girl.

Can't wait!

Okay so I just watched the trailer for Sunshine Cleaning and I can't tell you how excited I am to see this. Amy Adams and Emily Blunt together? It could only get better if Zooey Deschanel was in the movie too. The movie seems like it will have the same quirky charm that made me love Little Miss Sunshine. Can't wait. Just hope it comes to the Midwest before July. I had to wait to watch Rachel Getting Married till it came out on DVD. I know. Very sad... I guess that's what you get in fly-over zone.

Cy Twombly exhibit at Gagosian Gallery

Twombly, one of my favorite artists, has an exhibit on view at the Gagosian Gallery in London. The 5 paintings consist on brightly colored roses painted on 4 wooden panels. The paint runs down the panels, opening the roses in bloom even more. He mixes art and poetry by writing pieces of Rainer Maria Rilke's "The Roses" cycle on the last panel of each painting. They are beautiful and wish I could be there to see them in person. I know the photos don't do justice to the colors and texture that I love Twomby for. You might remember this artist from the news a few years ago when a viewer of his work became so enraptured with his art that she kissed a painting worth $2 million with red lipstick. Click here for the article on the lover's kiss. I would pay more for the piece with the lipstick stain on it, but maybe that's just me...

(photos courtesy of the Gagosian Gallery)



The Rose IV


The Rose IV (detail)



The Roses Installation


The Roses II

Bloggers Unite

Join in on March 8th to blog about anything related to women.

Sri Lanka and human rights

Two summers ago I worked for Index on Censorship, an International Human Rights and Free Expression organization. We worked with Amnesty International, Article 19 and other organizations to document the pain and suffering of those whose rights were taken away or forgotten by their own country. I still am deeply affected by these issues and will not be one of those that ignore the terrible things that happen every day to young children, women and men. Below is a beautiful showcase on child soldier's in Sri Lanka. Please share this videos with others if you can.


INNOCENCE - Sri Lanka's Child Soldiers from Benjamin Chesterton on Vimeo.

100 Days

Inspiration and art

Last night I received a very nice email from Jason Hackenwerth, an artist from the St. Louis area. I had written a review of his exhibition at Webster University for the Riverfront Times in October. He thanked me for the review and said it was his favorite review thus far. You can't imagine the amount of happiness I felt when I read his email. I love art and while I have never gone out to a show thinking I want to write a positive review about this artists, I usually find that the artist has done either beautiful work or it is based on an interesting concept. Jason's show was one of those. It was my first piece I wrote for The Riverfront Times (a Village Voice publication that I had always loved) and when my editor asked if I wanted to review work by a balloon artist, I must confess I laughed.

But I loved his work and loved even more promoting not only the work of an artist but a Missouri artist. It is one of the pieces I am most proud of and in this moment I deeply wish some art magazine would scoop me up and let me trapse around an gallery, translating images into words, describing aestics with letters and concepts with small sentences.

While this blog has served as what I call "therapy," the simple, one line email sent to me last night made me realize how much I love writing and art. I have been so discouraged about writing, journalism, and my professional career in general lately that I had just tried to forget about writing and art. Inspiration and encouragement has come from an unexpected place — the heart of a former clown.

Got Skittles on the brain...

Okay, I thought I understood social media.
Facebook? no problem.
Blogging? got it.
MySpace? stupid and for teenagers
Twitter? maybe and now...
Definetly not... Not since this morning when Skittles changed their home page to a twitter feed with a flash navigation bar over it with links to Wikipedia, Flickr and Facebook. I'm not joking. I'm just wondering if this is a joke. Check it out...