Here is my latest piece for the Brooklyn Love Exchange, "The 12th Annual Love Hangover."

A friend from my neighborhood, Boerum Hill, has been producing the Love Hangover in Brooklyn for quite some time. This paean to love is an annual musical event co-occuring in several cities. The Brooklyn installment has been in Gowanus for the past couple of years.

The text for this piece is taken from last year's (2010's) invitation:
The 12th annual Love Hangover
is only a week away
You still have time to fall in love
and break up
just in time to be soothed, vindicated or mocked
by your favorite musicians
singing duets of love
the happy kind, the sad kind, the mean, weird or mad kind
It's one more round around the heart
February 15th, what the day after brings.

To create the patterning in the background, I laid a doily down on top of the fabric and sprayed fabric paint on top. Trying to give voice to other people's tales of love has helped me expand my vocabulary and working methods. I'm enjoying incorporating new techniques into my work.

I had hoped to give the text in this piece a somewhat old-fashioned visual feel. I liked the idea of lace, but didn't want the piece to be too feminine, or the lace too literal.

Slow Falls

As I work on multiple embroidered pieces, I thought I would share something beautiful I watched today: a series of dance performances as public installations along an industrial stretch of 3rd Avenue from 1st - 8th Streets in Gowanus, Brooklyn.

The dance performance, called "Slow Falls," consisted of a series of stop-watch timed "descents" marked by tape along scaffolding, brick and other structures. The dancers, four in each piece, were barefoot. The dancers started each piece 6 minutes apart. After finishing a dance in one location, the dancer would move to another location as viewers either stayed behind to watch the remaining dancers, or followed.

Created by Abigail Levine, "Slow Falls" is one of numerous performances in the Movement Research Festival 2011 in New York City. I am so glad I found out about it and caught a little of it. (My secret dream is to be a dancer. )

Left behind on my run: Third Avenue and Third Street

Third Street is a great block to run on. It's quite hilly, and also traverses the Gowanus Canal. I particularly like this part of Brooklyn.

"With each step,

I feel

our connection renew."

This is a map of another one of my running routes.