Sunday 08.23.09

Spent the morning chatting with David, our guest...with him painting a landscape and me fiddling around with my pens. We looked at the work of third generation puppeteer and performance artist, Basil Twist (on youtube>>). Twist is imaginative with his use of screens, film, projection, curtains (the stagemanship) along with his puppets and aspect of his work that might fit into performance (active costumes that help the artist to go to another place. The first film is of his performance, Dogugaeshi,commissioned by the Japan Society and is beautifully described (in the link) by the New York Times.

Twist joined another performance artist who David has been following for years since David claims to have seen in a window of the New York Fiorucci store, Joey Arias.

Arias and Twist presented "Arias with a Twist" off Broadway to David's delight...with this collaboration moving to Los Angeles soon. Arias is an artist who can span gender, age and go from nice to naughty in a blink of an eye. Marvelously funny, poignant and quite a presence, Arias was a featured performer with the Cirque du Soleil presentation, Zoomanity. David made the pilgrimage to Los Vegas for his fiftieth bday to see this Cirque show and take in the LV sights. We looked at YouTube clips on both Twist and Arias which was fun and very inspiring as well.

We visited Petrune, a great vintage clothing store on the Ithaca Commons as well as my new favorite antiques store next to the State Theatre, Blue Bird Antiques. Jenny MacGuire, the owner and buyer has similar interests to mine and always captures the imagination from Odd Fellow and Mason stuff, to circus posters, religious stuff, primitive ephemera to taxidermy. Doesnt get much better. Jenny mentioned that we may have a monthly antiques auction in little ole Tburg at the VFW. This would be a real
ly good add...and what with the activities around the old/new Rongo, things are looking up! (not that they ever looked down, but more in the case of T burg is better).

We attended the Ithaca Sufferjets Bout with Wilmington and left at halftime as we were tired and hungry. Shady got a little walk in Cass Park discovering the dog drinking fountain. We had a late dinner and then to sleep. This morning I used up the two soft bunches of bananas making banana bread (double order) and a banana cake from Joy of Cooking. I chopped up all the left over chicken from this week and made a rather lavish chicken salad (with new and left over ingredients and the pepper bacon we had at breakfast). So, cooking is done and we are planning a later afternoon showing of Ponyo at Cinemopolis. We will see what happens from there.