Wayfarer by emdubs

ayfarer

August 2013

Joanna Harkins Abby Kron Emily Dubovoy

For your wandering eyes... Wayfarer is an exercise in making something tangible out of the ephemeral. We are an art, culture, and lifestyle publication created by and for people who do not have a solid path carved out for themselves. While we may not be physically traveling, our minds and our creations are never static. We are the wanderers within our generation of blurred lines. We find our home in the search. In our art. In our culture. This publication is an accumulation of those who have found a home... at least for the time being.

»Contributors«

Sonya Kozlova is a twenty year-old NYU student, photographer and illustrator living in Manhattan. Born in Moscow and raised in Milwaukee, Sonya’s aesthetic draws influence from her previous and current homes. sonyakozlova.com

Drex Drechsel is a photographer and graphic designer residing in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Hailing from the small Australian town of Warrnambool just outside of Melbourne, he is currently working on several projects including an exhibition with friend and fellow photographer Kimi Selfridge of Tan Camera. drexdrehsel.com

Esme Blegvad is an illustrator and type geek who lives between London and NYC. She draws for Rookie and inconnu Magazine among others. You can see more stuff she’s drawn on Tumblr: esmeblegvad.tumblr.com

Table of Contents

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These are our favorite things that make any destination feel like a homey oasis.

brain pickings Brain pickings is like an online library for all things creative and interesting that swim through the interwebz. Ad-free and supported by its readers, Brain Pickings is curated by Maria Popova – a writer and self professed “curious mind at large”. Popova has an eye for gathering information that always spark’s the reader’s curiosity. In an age when so much information is constantly coming at us at once, it’s a relief to have something so well curated -- this website is never a waste of time. Subjects range from art to books, technology, anthropology and everything inbetween. There’s something for everyone here, and if you ever feel creatively stuck in a rut, this should be your first stop for inspiration. brainpickings.org

lipstick Poppy King has a simple philosophy: to give a woman the right lipstick is to give her the world. King is, ironically, the reigning queen of lipstick who founded her own range of lip rouges under the label Lipstick Queen. The cosmetics line’s most popular product is undoubtedly the Medieval lipstick, which has developed a cult-like following of bohemian babes and fashion fiends alike. The sheer red is equal parts sexy and demure and, as King promises is “impossible to detect as anything other than a sensual melancholic hue.” $20, available at www.lipstickqueen.com

povery hollow by poverty hollow Formerly known as Suns, these four guys from Connecticut have been making music together for over 5 years - and it shows. Will, Peter, Bill and Will are quickly becoming a fixture in the DIY scene of the northeast. It’s probably because they sound just as tight and put together live as they do on their new self titled EP. Poverty Hollow is an album that comes to life with each listen -- it waxes and wanes, the guitars build up and the energy is pulled through again by the vocals.

studioMF etsy shop StudioMF is the online destination for all the band and vintage film tees you never knew you needed. Part of the Etsy network, StudioMF screenprints all tees and tanks by hand and currently offers nearly 200 different prints. With most styles priced at around $17, these tees are all at once affordable, classic, and comfortable. Some of our favorite prints include a Led Zeppelin album cover, Marlon Brando shaving, and a skull made out of pills. What’s more is that you won’t likely fall victim to the “Urban Outfitters curse” when you’re rocking one of these babies. And even if you did happen to encounter someone wearing the same badass tee you have on, well, it seems you’ve made a friend. $17, available at www.etsy.com/shop/StudioMFshop

For the brain bright lights, big city by jay mcinerney One of the most definitive books ever written about New York City in the 80’s, Bright Lights, Big City follows the life of a man whose life seems to be deteriorating more and more as each week passes. A common, almost cliche subject, Bright Lights, Big City gives new life to the white-middle-class-malewriter-with-a-drug-problem trope. What sets this novel apart is it’s use of the second person narrative - one of the only internationally known english language books to ever do so. We also never learn the protagonist’s name, perhaps there is a little bit of him in all of us.

For the body maracuja oil One of the most highly-praised beauty products this year, Tarte’s Pure Maracuja Oil is the closest thing you can buy to youth in a bottle. The undiluted organic and moisturizing maracuja oil quickly absorbs for firmer, brighter, smoother skin and boast anti-aging and healing properties. Users who swear by the product claim it clears up acne, evens skin tone, and hydrates flaky, dry spots. Extracted from a rare Brazilian fruit that harvests only once a year, the nutrient rich oil has a high dose of Vitamin C for instant skin brightening. Priced affordably at $48 for a 1.7 ounce bottle, there is no reason not to include maracuja oil in your nightly skincare regimen. $48, available at www.tartecosmetics.com.

For the soul brewhaha super happiness tea There are not many bad days that a good cup of tea cannot improve. It’s a warm and familiar treat that makes you forget your troubles for long enough to sip slowly and enjoy the herbal flavors. English tea company Brewhaha has gone further to ensure tea time becomes a vital part of the daily routine. With a line of “Super Teas” that boast Anti-Aging, Slimming, and Cleansing properties, Brewhaha tea comes in colorful, retro packaging that complements the vintage decor in your charming flat – and also makes for a great gift. While all the teas we’ve tried are delicious and reviving, the Super Happiness Tea takes the cake. The makers of Brewhaha promise “this tea will give you a lovely glow.”

$6, available at www.brewhahatea.co.uk/

macarons from mille feuille A favorite among locals and NYU students alike, macarons from Mille Feuille are as close as you’re going to get to authenticity without boarding a plane to Paris. Which makes sense, because the place is run by real Parisians who you can hear chattering in French in the back of the kitchen while you order your little treasures. Perfect for a hostess gift or a midday treat, these (always fresh!) macarons are available in a variety of flavors, ranging from black currant to coconut and chocolate. Price varies per quantity, avaialble at the storefront at 552 Laguardia Pl or from their online shop www.millefeuille-nyc.com.

pork buns from baohaus Eddie Huang may have the personality to propel himself into the realm of celebrity chefdom, but it’s his signature pork buns from Baohaus that truly deserve the attention. The Chairman Bao is fatty, slippery pork belly with crushed peanut, cilantro, tangy Haus relish, and Taiwanese red sugar – all stuffed into one round, sweet bun. What may be an old classic to some, has become new again – and undoubtedly leaves you feeling warm and fuzzy inside. $4. 238 E 14th St. New York, NY

Halflings Emily Dubovoy

inn drives across the Hudson River into a leafy abyss. The thickness of the foliage on the Rhinecliff side of the Kingston-Rhinecliff Bridge creates the illusion of diving into a zero-visibility fog of plants. The illusion is only broken once he pulls up to the toll booth. He continues on his route in his rackety old Saab sedan, stopping at Bard College for the third time that day for rehearsal with his new music ensemble, Contemporaneous. He feels as though the bow of his violin has been shedding hairs more than usual lately. On his way back to his house that was built in the 1860’s, he passes thick forests and bucolic farmland to pick up an apple cider donut (with sugar coating) at Terry’s Country Bake shop in Red Hook. Then he’s off to the local bank which he swears does not charge foreign ATM fees.

m u s i c

Photos by Emily Dubovoy

Finn and Jake play an acoustic show in the Lower East Side

100 miles away, Jake is sitting on a lawn chair on his roof. He cracks open his third bottle of Yuengling, or Tecate, or whatever the cheapest thing at the bodega downstairs was. He takes a gulp and gazes upon the Manhattan skyline and a complex of loft apartments that he is convinced is inhabited by a freakishly tall seven and a half foot man. On the ground, he can hear a car cruising by blasting reggaeton. He debates whether he should get food before or after he starts practicing that one riff that has a ridiculous time signature for his NYC band, The Roofer’s Union. He decides to go get pizza before people start fleeing towards the bars and restaurants of his “up and coming” neighborhood (Bushwick) and he might need to interact with drunk strangers. He drops his cigarette butt in an empty bottle and folds up his chair. Finnegan Shanahan (violin/vocals/FX) and Jake Chapman (guitar/vocals/engineering) are the two core members of the The Sifters. The two 20 year-olds first discovered their musical chemistry in high school. Finn’s classical violin background, Jake’s self-taught maverick musicianship, and both of their skillful whistling abilities naturally drew them to adapting a sound from their biggest musical influence, Andrew Bird. They began to pick up sporadic gigs around the Hudson Valley as a cover band. After high school, Jake moved to New York City to attend school at New York University’s Clive Davis School of Recorded Music. Finn enrolled in Bard College’s school of music continuing his study of violin. Despite their distance,

The Sifters on MTV’s Streamed Dumplings

the two remained musically active with one another. At NYU, Jake met former band member, Joshua Yun. The two began collaborating and decided to form a band themselves. Despite New York being a hub for musicians, Jake and Josh quickly decided to bring Finn into the band rather than choose a local alternative. And like that, The Sifters (fittingly named after an Andrew Bird song of the same name) came to be. Over the following year, the Sifters began to develop their own unique sound through musical experimentation and live performances around New York City and the Hudson Valley. Because of their home base of two different universities, The Sifters have been comprised of a web of musicians from across the country with Finn and Jake as the backbone. By the winter of 2012, the group had accumulated enough original material to begin work on their debut EP, Halfling. The project was completely DIY as it was recorded, engineered, produced mixed, and mastered in Jake’s house upstate during January and February of 2013. The Halfling EP was released in March 2013 that is compilation of music that dates back to their founding. The EP was no easy feat for the band to complete. Being split between locations creates plenty of existing and potential challenges for The Sifters. Half of the songs were written by individually by Shanahan with Chapman writing the others. Recording the EP was the time they used to work out a sound that would work for each sound. The result is a compilation of songs that are very detailed and interesting, but lack a cohesive sound that weaves it together.

“We have a basic framework laid out on the EP. We’ve taken the first tentative steps towards getting our style down and finding our ‘gimmick’,” said Chapman. “What I want to do now is take what we’ve done and just blow it up. I want to make it crazier and more fun, emotional, deliberate, and exciting.” Finn said, “it’s going to be cool to do things with our findings.” “One of the biggest problems is getting people together. Usually, practices and shows end up being Finn and I.” Jake said about their vagrant band set up. “We rarely have a steady lineup going. We always try to do more with what little resources we have.” Their EP is this mentality in one package. So why don’t they find a way to set up a steady band? Finn answered, “We are perfectionists. We both care a lot about being really happy with what we can do together just the two of us before we bring other people into it. Asking other people to play without really being very certain and confident is frightening.” “Our act started with just us, so we just have a connection that’s hard to get with other people,” said Chapman. “This isn’t the kind of music that you can just invite people to play in. It’s relatively intricate.” The band is currently on a necessary hiatus as they gather up their efforts and resources to for their first full length LP. Songwriting in the same space mentally and physically is the next step to explore more sounds and avoid sounding like a well-crafted jukebox. Shanahan said, “I’m really excited for us all to be in one room and working 100% collaboratively. I want to see what we’re capable of working together. It will change everything.” Their LP will be out March 2014.

A still of Jake in the video for “Madeshwara”

thesifters.bandcamp.com facebook.com/thesifters twitter.com/thesifters vimeo.com/thesifters

Hybrid

Alchemy

Joanna Harkins

All photos of dishes from Wylie Dufresneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s wd~50 courtesy of flickr.com/phanatic

f o o d

Molecular Gastronomy is sort of like happiness in the way that it’s nearly impossible to give a hard and fast definition, but you know it when you see it. It’s fancy and somewhat elitist, yet good for the soul. It’s based on science in its purest form, but would be nothing short of a lab experiment without the creativity that the chefs themselves bring into the picture. Imagine that instead of making a traditional gazpacho out of ground up tomatoes, cucumbers, and bell peppers you take all of the tastes and elements of that gazpacho and turn it completely on its head. You use Xanthan gum to create tomato-flavored spheres and infuse cucumber oil with gas to create a foam. This is a most basic example of molecular gastronomy – taking traditional flavors, ideas, or methods (much of it coming from the French tradition of cooking) and using science to turn that tomato or that bell pepper into something new – gaining a new and modern perspective on a traditional food or flavor.

saw it…It encouraged each chef to invent personally distinctive dishes, artistically presented, showcasing the best-quality, seasonal ingredients” said Cathy Kaufman. As with molecular gastronomy, if you had to give the definition of nouvelle cuisine on paper, you could, but there would always be a struggle to find a definition that could please everyone. You could identify nouvelle cuisine when you encountered it; it was new and fresh, but still hard to put into words. Cooking, like any other form of art, progresses – and why shouldn’t it? If there were no progression in cooking we would still be eating plain meat thrown onto hot stones like early humans. This is how we can understand molecular gastronomy as a movement that is the result of its own history. In the same way that nouvelle cuisine developed form haute cuisine, because of chefs and the landscape of food culture changing, molecular gastronomy developed from nouvelle cuisine – this time it just got an extra kick of science to take it to the next level.

The problem is that molecular gastronomy has long been subject of much debate -- even the top chefs who practice it can’t seem to agree on an exact definition, and many even reject the term “molecular gastronomy”, some choosing to call it things like “experimental cooking” or “modern cooking”.

It’s not all rainbows and unicorns though. While the idea behind molecular gastronomy is one rich in history that sounds great in the abstract, the reality of it is much more complicated. The degree of elitism that comes with molecular gastronomy speaks to both it’s degree of accessibility to the public, and the process these chefs go through to create food that could be considered molecular When I asked chef Justin Warner of Brooklyn’s Do or Dine new- gastronomy. Molecular gastronomy is not a type of cooking that American-molecular-gastronomy-light restaurant over Twitter ‘Why just anyone can pick up after spending a few days in the kitchen, the do you think chefs have had such a hard time even defining the term?’ truth is that you need a lot of money and the education necessary he cited the connection to the use of molecular gastronomy in an to understand the way food reacts to chemicals and how it can be industrial setting, saying: “because all cooking happens at a molecular manipulated to even begin to think about cooking it. level. Also the compounds/techniques used in MC have existed for a long time in … industrial food preparations, so they needed a new word to describe the application in a commercial setting…a term that sells.” To the outsider, molecular gastronomy seems like just another hot food trend of the moment, bound do die out in a year or two. Looking closer, however, you see that molecular gastronomy is a movement decades in the making. It is in the history of this movement that has become a hybrid of so many different parts that one can find some sort of understanding of this most delicious marriage of science and art. Before molecular gastronomy was ever brought together and solidified as an idea, there was nouvelle cuisine. It would be fair to call nouvelle cuisine the grandfather of molecular gastronomy. Nouvelle cuisine developed in France in the 1960s and ‘70s, and that its main distinction from classic haute cuisine was that it was lighter, fresher, and contained a certain new clarity of flavor that was missing before. While nouvelle cuisine was practiced mostly throughout the US and France, it was an international form of cuisine. The closer you look into the way nouvelle cuisine was received by the public, the more it mirrors molecular gastronomy. “Nouvelle cuisine seemed a bit like pornography: hard to define, but people knew it when they

Image via tumblr

Wylie Dufresne of New York’s molecular gastronomy mecca wd~50, thinks that the term “molecular gastronomy” doesn’t make the style of cooking sound appealing. When asked by The Braiser’s Laura Norkin a few months ago about the alienating element of molecular gastronomy and its relation to his own technique, he explains: “The idea of food being alienating is a terrible thing. I think if you eat good food, you’re eating good food… But I don’t like the idea, notionally, of it being alienating. That’s not what I’m looking for”. Even if creating a certain type of cuisine involves complicated and expensive measures, that doesn’t have to be the point. For these chefs, it’s all about the creative process and finding a new way to create great tasting food. Dufresne goes on: “I think that that is a very fulfilling aspect of my job, the ability to be creative and to work with other people who are creative to create a creative environment, or an environment that encourages and fosters it. For us it’s all about, ‘Is this delicious?’” Molecular gastronomy is a progression of a hybrid - a moving forward in the art and science of cooking fueled by the desire for chefs to better showcase their creativity. However this doesn’t mean that it is, in fact, not accessible to the masses. Not yet at least. Many restaurants that serve food in the style of molecular gastronomy are also some of the most expensive restaurants. Dufresne’s own restaurant serves a $155.00 tasting menu with a $95.00 wine pairing option, Grant Achatz’s Alinea in Chicago serves one for $210.00 These restaurants are not cheap, and for the average consumer would most likely be reserved for special occasion type visits. Molecular gastronomy is also almost completely unknown in the average home cook’s kitchen. There is now a specification kit on sale for $92.00,

brought to us by molecular gastronomy’s reigning sovereign, Ferran Adria. A sous vide machine, however, which is one of the most basic appliances used in molecular gastronomy, can cost anywhere from $300.00 – $1,000.00 or more. America, along with the rest of the world, seems to still be at a crossroads with molecular gastronomy, still unsure quite what to think. On one hand, we have elBulli, the most popular restaurant in the world. At elBulli they receive 1,000,000 reservation requests a year, where only 8,000 lucky ones get a table. Harvard has even done case studies on chef Adria. Molecular gastronomy has won a position worthy of cultural capital. On the other hand, we have former Top Chef competitor Marcel Vigneron, who had a TV series called Marcel’s Quantum Kitchen that followed his adventures running a molecular gastronomy themed catering company. The show was cancelled after only six episodes due to low ratings. Why has Adria been so wildly accepted while a TV show that attempts to spread more information about molecular gastronomy can’t even last one season? It has evidently become “trendy” enough to be noticed; yet not fully understood. America is not ready to embrace molecular gastronomy because its not fully equipped to do so – it all comes down to being problem of accessibility. Despite the pure intentions of the leading chefs in the movement, and despite the interesting and mouthwatering creations they produce, molecular gastronomy will never be fully accepted into mainstream American culture as long as it remains expensive and inaccessible to the greater public.

fa s h i o n

Photos courtesy of Mark Goldenberg

A bb yK

ro n

Bird of a Different Feather

sraeli-based fashion designer Mark Goldenberg is a bird of a different feather. His latest collection not only emulates the physical characteristics of a bird, but also alludes to deeper, more conceptual qualities of the animal as a symbol. Using innovative weaving techniques to create an organic, feather-like aesthetic, Goldenberg’s latest collection is aptly called “Woven Bird.” Goldenberg was inspired by the work of Russian sculptor Naum Gabo, a prominent figure in the Constructivism movement. The artist’s “calm charisma” and the resemblance of the sculptures to a bird’s wing are traits that initially attracted Goldenberg to Gabo’s style. The young designer also incorporates the architectural quality of sculpture into his own designs, fearlessly playing with shape and volume. Also notable is Goldenberg’s expert use of color. With many of the collection’s pieces crafted from a luxurious off-white material, the occasional pops of lime, cobalt, and coral add an element of playfulness. Coupled with Goldenberg’s unique fits and textures, color keeps the designs from becoming too literal while still maintaining the cohesiveness of the collection. After receiving the award for the 1 Hundred Designers Best Graduate, Goldenberg won a highly covetable internship position at Diane von Furstenberg’s New York City headquarters. His experience working with von Furstenberg and her team motivated the designer’s aspirations to break into the haute couture industry, or what he calls “the mad world of luxury fashion.” With an ample amount of ambition to match his talent, we are sure to see Goldenberg and his designs soar to new heights.

C O M M E N T A R Y

Murakami

Mondrian

The combination of delving into post-internet art theory, my current distaste for the art market, and my unyielding skepticism manifested into a project that emerged from a serious topic that I didn’t take seriously. I decided to play with art. It is so easy for me to take an image of a work that is priceless – a masterpiece, and make it silly. A few clicks in photoshop, a bit of html coding, and boom – it’s on the internet. The works I played with have characteristics that have made them last, but even still... I am able to screw around with them from the comfort of my bedroom whilst in my pajamas. I, ultimately, have power. I am the final touch on the work.

Picasso

And this act is the most influential art in this moment in time.

Ford Colon Van Gogh

LOVE, InterNEt Emily Dubovoy

ust the other day, in an attempt to open up lines of casual communication between coworkers, someone at my job asked me what current TV shows I follow. I commend their attempt to create a superficial connection with me by means of such an arbitrary and palatable subject, but the question made me quite uncomfortable. It dawned upon me that I could not name a TV show that is running this season, or last season, or which ones have culminated their plot lines, or have overstayed their welcome on the air. After some hesitation, I thought of a show that I watched in high school, and said, “That 70s Show. That one’s a classic!” After we went back into our silent lull of tedious tasks, I began to reflect. What are current mainstream musicians? What is the last box office smash that I’ve gone to see? My ignorance hit me in the face. Am I really that out of the loop? I consider myself a cultured individual. I know art movements, I’m creating my own concentration of study, I can tweak around with new technology and complex computer programs, I have refined taste, I have watched almost everything Wes Anderson and IFC have spat out for me to discuss with other cultured people, I go to museums, I know the latest bleep-bloop booty-shaking electronica, I go to college, I live in New York City. Everyone around me is inferior. I’m super cultured. But am I really? Am I really as cultured in these respects as I look on paper? What is the substance behind these claims? These questions are the driving factor in how I have come to identify myself as an artist. As someone who is exploring a hodge podge of artistic areas: web design, creative direction, street art, etc, my art form(s) or areas of interest could not exist without the production and sheer volume of material from other artists who create art in the more classic sense of the word (aka: an individual that makes something). In my quest to find the meaning of artistic production and the time period we are in, I have gone on a relentless quest for quality or purposeful work. Weeding through thousands of images for a few that stick out, editing, theorizing, writing, I have a huge breadth of visual knowledge, but then when put on the spot, I am at a loss. In the times when I am “tested” on my “artistic knowledge,” I cannot “perform.” Why? My lack of substance is a reflection of the lack of substance that comes from “post-internet” art, and the manner of consuming images and taking them as everyday banalities. As defined by Louis Doulas in his article, “Within Post Internet,” he defines it as “a term that represents the digitization and decentralization of all contemporary art via the Internet as well as the abandonment of all New Media specificities. Post-Internet then, is not a category, but a condition: a contemporary art. But because Post-Internet opens up such a large pool of work, new, temporary classifications as a strategy for comprehension must be carried out.” There is no distinct time in which Post-internet began or ended, and it is impossible to tell when it will stop. Being “Post-Internet” carries ramiﬁcations beyond the

art context of our current societal condition in its entirety. Art that has been created in the wake of the Internet, even if not intended for this purpose, has to come prepared to be de-emphasized and theoretically discarded and shat on. Much like artists and creative types themselves, the sheer volume of what is available makes it exponentially more difficult to create something of substance, something that sticks. As an unnamed blog writer on 122909a.com writes, “On some general level, the rise of social networking and the professionalization of web design reduced the technical nature of network computing, shifting the Internet from a specialized world for nerds and the technologically-minded, to a mainstream world for nerds, the technologically-minded and grandmas and sports fans and business people and painters and everyone else. Here comes everybody.” Anyone can contribute to the Internet, so in the emergence of the digital age, substance in regards to art, relationships, anything really, is diluted. In our quests to come off as being “cultured” the way that I do, we actually lose much of the actual qualities that a truly substantive and cultured individual, artwork, or realm of society would entail of. Compared to media and art that was available preceding the internet, the works of today get lost in a sea of scrolling, rapid information exchange, and round-ups, playlists, and being paired with other, similar forms of media that create a similar aesthetic or sentiment. Take the current popular sites, songza.com, Pandora, whatever other playlist generator you prefer. A musician or producer may have slaved away to create what he or she saw as a piece of work. But hey. I want music that will be good background music while I’m cooking, or doing homework, or having sex. Just give me something kind of jazzy, or ambient. That piece because one of a sea of other similar works. That attention to detail is lost. Who plays this? Whatever. Art that I had seen or movies I watched as a child, I know inside out, but a film I watch with my college-educated smart ass perception does not resonate nearly as much because of the fact that that film was the fourth one I’ve watched this week. I can recite lines from “The Lion King” verbatim and with the same tonality as the characters themselves, but I couldn’t tell you what the main theme of the indie flick I saw this summer, “Safety Not Guaranteed” is. Among a slew of so many artists, images, and materials floating around and readily available because of the digital age, what is actually meaningful? Is it money? Is it fame? How about none of the above? The most valuable thing that anyone can provide for another human being is attention. Time is so much more valuable than money, and attention is the direct result of time spared. Artie Vierkant writes in his essay, “The Image Object Post-Internet,” “attention has always been a currency, but with the proliferation of networking methods and inﬁnitely alterable and reproducible media, that attention has diverged and become split amongst anyone and everyone who wishes to seek it.” That is what advertisers are thirsty for. It is what people search for with telling people to “Like” their page on Facebook. Something that is so innate in human interaction is now a commodity rarer than currency.

Money comes and goes,

and so does attention.

However, the time and support that emerges out of attention is something that is the ultimate prize. What does it take for a piece of art to get attention in this day in age? The notion of “the death of the author” is in full swing, so the readers and viewers are those that dictate that is the winner in the end. I want to be noticed. This artwork is noticeable. I’ll post it. Now I am noticed. Cool. Hey artist, can you keep making things so I can be noticed? Is that really what we want art to be now? Either something that gets lost in mountains of other work, or something so gaudy and extravagant that it can’t not be noticed? I don’t really like the idea of either of those. In the attention that everyone is fighting for, we also get a skewed perception of the information that we actually attain from the internet. Filter bubbles, as described by Eli Pariser (http://www.thefilterbubble.com/) use our browsing habits, personal information, and location to refine our searches in a way that we don’t even receive objective content anymore. A Google search by an NYU student in Manhattan versus a fruit salesman in China would be vastly different, even with identical search criteria. So not only is art diluted by the post-internet age, it is also inaccurately portrayed or searched.

There are holes in the bigger picture. In the information that we get, no matter the volume or how targeted the audience, we judge good art by what sticks, what resonates. What can we take from this very moment in time in regards to art that we will look at 50 years from now and think that it mattered? I can only think of one thing:

the Internet.

I’ll look back when I’m old and think about the art of now and realize that the cloud of the Internet as a whole is what has come out. When we look back at art that has resonated, we see paintings, sculptures, and tangible works: works that immortalize the time in which they were born. That is beautiful. Since the Internet is not tangible, we cannot archive it. We cannot restore it in the back of a museum. Is that beautiful too?

I think that the Internet represents a lot of the

ugliness in society today: the hunger for immediacy, for more, for anonymity.

However, there is something beautiful about the Internet and the digital age that gets lost when looking at specificities. I would argue that the concept of the universality of the Internet is our downfall as a contemporary society, but is also the

greatest art piece in and of itself. To think of the Internet as a relationally aesthetic piece, rather than looking at the mind-boggling volume of content available, that is how I find an appreciation for it. To think and work outside of the realm of the Internet is how I could find meaning in what it has come to represent. In this sense, the Internet and the loaded societal questions in which is raises and creates is the most current and perpetual form of conceptual art. It is the greatest “fuck you” to works that require a gallery wall and the art market. While conceptual art typically needs a gallery space to even be considered art, the age of digital art and the internet relations we form brings us into the question of how we appropriate

importance to objects according to our relationship with the space they exist in. Seth Price writes in “Dispersion,” “if an object before us in a gallery is only one of an inﬁnite multitude of possible forms that object could take, its value to the viewer becomes little more than a curiosity. The viewer can judge it only by visually and conceptually relating it to every other project they are aware of by said artist and the other artists within their aesthetic community.” When you can view a piece on your smart phone while sitting on the subway or can project it on any wall you want (which is technology that exits today, mind you), the importance of where you see art can be interpreted as much less meaningful.

Man is temporary. And art is a way that we can immortalize ourselves. It is man’s way of escaping his inevitable fate. When art itself is now rarely immortalized, I think that we will have to find a different way to attribute meaning to our existence in the world.

D e S I G N

Wayfarer: Tell me about Occulter. Derrick Cruz: Occulter began as sort of a—it was always meant to be a collective idea. Essentially, me and a bunch of friends, designers like Odenbach and Marvie from Marvielab, she was related to Carpe Diem. A lot of these people wanted to promote their lines or collections or their work—pretty concept-heavy work — on their own, outside of sort of the mercantile fashion systems we have. As an experiment, we started showing in Paris by just renting an apartment and showing as a group. I called it Occulter. Johannes Kepler was an astronomer hundreds of years ago. He was very intent on the cosmos being this perfect machine, because he was both a scientist and very devout; so, he wanted everything to be reflective of where he thought God was. He wanted everything to be a perfect circle and when he found out it wasn’t, it kind of drove him crazy. It was perfect in a different way than he had expected. It got me to thinking and looking more into extrasolar planet research. Somehow that got me to what an occulter is—which has nothing to do with the occult as everyone assumes that right away. The logo itself is a drawing by Johannes Keppler of concentric platonic solids, which are the basic building blocks of geometry. An occulter is this thing that NASA was building in order to put out in space in front of really large in-orbit telescopes; so, [an occulter] would hide the brightness of a large body and you’d be able to see everything around it. Say, it would hide Jupiter and you could see the moons around it. I thought, that’s perfect, we never want to be giant brands, it is not the mission. The goal isn’t to be Jupiter. The point is to control the design so that it does not get exploited and watered down. We never want to be Jupiter, we always want to be the moons of Jupiter. Occulter became the shield that hides the big brands; so, you can see the little ones. I’ve been working here [in this studio] for about six years. Now, the collective consists of three visual artists, Nadav Benjamin, Jeremy Dyer, and Gabriel Shuldiner. The accessories designers are Jonathon, who does Bevel, Moratorium, my stuff, and Gabriel also does accessories that resemble his paintings. Your own line, Black Sheep and Prodigal Sons, seems to be heavily influenced by mythology and nature. What specifically about those areas speak to you? There’s a funny thing going on right now and I want to try to avoid it. When I started doing Black Sheep and Prodigal Sons, it was like seven years ago, it was a while back. It was really different back then. Even the name, people were like, “This is ridiculous. It’s too long and it’s too weird. Why don’t you just call it like ‘The Sheeps’ or whatever?” And I was like, “No, this is what it’s going to be. I don’t care, if you don’t like it, you don’t like it.” Before you know it—

and I’m not saying it was my doing, but perhaps I was just in the stream of the zeitgeist in a way—it became the thing to do, to be dark, and occult-y. I find it super interesting. In my head, I’m sort of an anthropologist, a sociologist. I’m always trying to figure out why, why is it that this is appealing to folks? I think, for me, it had to do with personal meaning and the idea that mythology is what creates meaning in life, and conviction, and substance. Growing up in Puerto Rico, there was a lot of really intuitive interpolation of mythology from our background, which is African and Indian, and a little bit of European. It turns into something very emotional for Latin American people. It just seems very natural. I don’t know why; maybe because the cultures are really young so they just allow themselves to be influenced by everything. Whereas, when I moved to the United States to come to school, and just regurgitating, just spitting it out. It’s very shallow. And it’s fine, because I think sometimes, even at that point; maybe it’ll turn into something. You have got to start somewhere, so it’s fine. My only fear is that it will be treated like another trend, it’ll be a flash in the pan, and then we’ll forget the use of it; or perhaps maybe it will have some gripping power and people will be like, “Oh, well what is our mythology?” What do you mean when you talk about pop culture as our mythology? We love to put0 it in our mouths, chew it, spit it out, and never absorb the nutrients. Next. What’s that one taste like? It’s not about processing any of it; it’s about tasting it. It’s all about the instant gratification of the taste but not what it takes to make it part of you. It’s a habit of following and trying to find substance in acquisition of things; so, I think we do have one except for the Gods at be are very far removed from us. We don’t have communion with the Gods like a Native American would in a Shamanic ritual. Our gods are so far from us and everything we are consuming is thrown from the clouds, and we just kind of eat it and don’t question it. That’s the only dangerous part for me; yes, there is mythology and yes, it is affecting us every single day because we are worshipping these ways of consuming to the point of almost creating a religion out of them. We have very religious attitudes, but the God is missing. I guess the gods would have to be the ad men and PR professionals. Exactly. The gods are missing. We don’t know who they are or what they look like, but we worship the stuff they are doing.

Beneath the Black Robe Abby Kron

Derrick Cruz, founder of the artist collective Occulter and designer at Black Sheep & Prodigal Sons, sat down with writer Abby Kron to discuss his thoughts on technology, mythology, and pop culture.

Photo by Adam Hribar

That’s interesting. As a media student, we discuss advent of public relations and the ethics of using psychoanalytic theories to facilitate consumerism. It’s about creating an insatiable desire. “I want it and I have to have it and I’m going to get another one, too. And the moment I get it, it’s old, it’s done, I need another one.” I think that speaks to the way we consume information these days, as well. We have very shallow understandings of lots of things. Everybody knows everything. [laughs]. But not that much about it. I don’t know if I’m any different… I think we are all part of it, but we have a choice. We just have to figure out whether or not we can handle the repercussions of making the choice, which are potentially being shunned. The moment you express a very convicted opinion, you don’t get as many likes. If you’re too convicted, you’re choosing sides and that takes a lot of effort. People love to be neutral. Cool is the mass. Anyway, I’ve forgotten what the original question was. These are the kind of discussions everyone here [at Occulter] talks about; always trying to find that balance between commerce and authenticity. Sometimes, one fails the other. Authenticity and strong convictions might cause you to lose some business. It happens. You hate to make choices. I still have to eat, so what’s going to happen? I feel like Occulter has a lot of integrity behind it. From speaking with you, looking at the pieces, and even the branding, I sense it. You know what’s funny about the branding—I did all the logos, I designed it all myself. I was trying to get to a place where it felt like it always existed to me. I made the stuff and later I realized why I chose those fonts and why I chose those details. It wasn’t as contrived as branding usually is for me—I used to work in advertising for a while. That is kind of ironic. Yeah, I was in advertising. But when it’s personal, I don’t want to be as contrived about branding, doing what I know will get a reaction; so, I tried to work from instinct, kind of work backwards. I realized later that the Black Sheep and Prodigal Sons font—the reason I thought it felt so right and established is because it’s the headline font for the New York Times. We associate that with legitimacy, authenticity, and truth. I was like, “Weird.” It just came together. The other font, Baskerville, which I used for the Occulter logo, was one of the first fonts used in print, ever. No wonder this stuff feels like it’s set in stone. I think branding is very important. I was wondering about your artistic background. I went to a really great school that no one knows about, East Carolina University, in North Carolina. It’s known better for nursing than art. It’s a state school. I was the first of my family to graduate from college. I just picked what we could afford and was available nearby, what I could drive to. I kind of had low aspirations to begin with,

but it turned out great because I loved the school. It wasn’t a large art department, but they had really amazing painting and drawing instructors, with a focus on drawing. I think I got a lot out of it. I also had an art gallery for a little bit, while I was in school. It was called Cruz Gallery, in North Carolina. I was mostly painting. At the time, I would say, it was a—not politically, but aesthetically—more socialist, surrealist take on things. Not necessarily politics though. You weren’t painting Stalin? [Laughs.] There were some references. But just the aesthetic of it, a public art sort of feel. When did you get into making jewelry? When I started Black Sheep and Prodigal Sons. That was in 2005. That’s when I was getting sick of advertising. Somehow, as soon as I graduated from school, I ended up in an advertising agency. I was an art director, but it was hell the whole time through. It wasn’t for me because I always wanted to make something that wasn’t what they wanted me to make. I always took is as being “the man.” Now that I’m a little older, I’ve realized it’s not a democracy. An ad agency is not America, it’s a private company and they want you to do something and they’re paying you for it; so, you need to do it. That’s one of the best things that one boss told me, that I will always remember: “This is not a democracy, Derrick. This is my company.” I was like, “Ohh yeah! I get it. Sorry, I was trying to change it, but I can’t change it.” I felt I needed to be doing something else, it was too much and it was not my thing. I went home, quite cold turkey. I started sculpting stuff because I didn’t have much room to paint, and then jewelry making started coming about. I wanted to make things that you could carry with you, not art that you always had to have a show for. So, jewelry seemed like the right thing. How do you distinguish your work from that of these other brands that pop up and latch onto the trend? I don’t want to knock it. I want to critique, I don’t want to criticize. Or perhaps it’s critique versus passing judgment. I’d rather have a critique, which is a conversation. I think the way the work of the collective differentiates itself is that we have some tenants we ascribe to that we will not waiver from, including quality of materials, flexibility for experimentation, and, like I said before, authenticity. Always maintaining a very personal connection to who they are to the point that you may not like it. I may not be the right time for it. It may be ugly. [Laughs.] We run a lot of risk a lot of times. I think that’s probably a good description of it. What separates it from a lot of other things is the lack of fear for risk. We don’t fear risk. That’s okay. I don’t care if you don’t like, I mean I care if you don’t like it, but you probably won’t. And that’s okay because I’m not sure if I like it either yet. I may make a piece and develop it over a time, but you have to hang on and invest a little bit in it so you can watch it develop. That freedom to be risky and always assuming your audience is smarter than you may think. Which opposes the mentality of advertising and PR men to simplify everything. When I left advertising, I thought I’ve got to change this. I’m going to flip it and say, “No, they’re smarter than me.” I’m going

to speak that way and I will make the paragraphs that references Gestalt or psychology, and assume that someone is going to know it. And if they don’t know it, nowadays you look it up and then you’ll come back and say, “I get it.” Suddenly, you have an investment in it. That’s a good approach. It gives people the opportunity to discover new ideas and interests and potentially grow from them. It’s fun to share knowledge. I think a small company—which lately I’m calling nano-companies because a small company, according to the government, is a company with 500 people, at least. This is not a small company, this is a nano-company. There’s like 3 of us and mostly it’s just me here and the designers come in and out. The opportunity that we have, that a big organization doesn’t have, is to teach. Big organizations don’t have the opportunity to teach because they have too many things to protect. They have patents to protect and proprietary information to protect and things that are coming out to protect. And there’s just too much, too much investment and too much risk involved; so, they’re not going to tell you how to do it, they’re not going to tell you every piece about it, they’re not going to start selling it the minute that you made it because they have to PR. It’s a big system. So, for us, we can teach. We can be like, “Let me tell you more about how this is made or more about where the design came from.” I’ve even brought people in here and been like, “If you want to learn how to do this, I’ll show you how to do it.” You don’t feel threatened. It’s the Bobby Flay approach, I call it. Because you’re going to show them how too cook it, but they’re still going to go to your restaurant. It never stops people from going to Mesa, just because he had a TV show where he showed you how to cook. What does the Occulter collective strive to communicate through their work? To create a sense of wonder or marvel. Like, “This is crazy!” or “What is that?” It’s that childlikeness that we try so hard to push back. So, here is the childlikeness with a black robe on. It’s a child on stilts with a black robe on. That is what this is. I want to appeal to that repressed desire for wonder and marvel. I think everyone else here does, too, through the materials they use, the way they sculpt things, the detail they put in. I think Bevel’s work and his exploration of the human condition is interesting. Tell me more about him. His name is Jonathon and he’s a very spiritual person. I always say 90% of his day involves trying to reach a different plane, to the point it’s almost comical, because it’s so different and he’s such a different person. He’s a super gentle person. He doesn’t actually come off as anything in particular; he only comes off as Jonathon. He’s a very individual person. My point is that what he did for the Ball Game

All images via Occulter

collection was try to explore his own vision of Mayan myth from where he came from, from his perspective. One particular myth is about these heroes that go to the underworld to try to recover control over the Earth. What he did was, he sort of sculpted the characters for the story, abstractly, and so, he could understand what it was about. How he came out the other end was understanding that his culture was very much one of resilience. Where he came from, their stories were about resilience of people and collective work. I thought, that’s obviously a study on the human condition and very personal to come out with something so abstract. There’s something so beautiful about his designs, but they manage to be terrifying at the same time. There is something terrifying about them. To me, it’s very other. This doesn’t look like anything. I’m like, “Where is this from?” Do you feel that our culture, in turning to shortcuts and simple answers, largely neglects the journey? It’s funny. Every philosophy that you go into deeply, the journey is the valuable thing. It’s not the answer. The journey is the answer. We sort of skip that. We tend to think the answer is the answer, but there is no answer. What you find in New York, you—especially at your age—will evolve really quickly and change really fast. And from every couple years, you’ll change again. I hear you become a new person every seven years. Here it happens, quicker sometimes. Your peers that are not here are going to have a little bit of a hard time with that. They’re going to look at you and judge you and they’re going to be like, “Who the fuck do you think you are?” It seems a lot of people are okay with being complacent and not challenging themselves. Okay with good enough. The amount of things you can do in a year here is crazy. It makes life seem longer because you’re experiencing a lot more. Everyday your brain is opened up to new things. One of the reasons I called the company Black Sheep and Prodigal Sons is because I was reading a book about the West Village called Kafka Was the Rage. It was set in the 40s. This guy moved from Brooklyn after coming back from the war, moved to West Village. He met all these weird people. There was this building full of old ladies, drug addicts, and all these people. He was like, “they were black sheep and prodigal sons or a paradoxical kind.” They were either shunned by family or shunned family and came here to redeem themselves or remake themselves. I was like, that’s it. That’s the name, because that’s most of the people I know. They come to this place looking to bloom out. They either were thrown out of the house or they left. It. was really about New York.

P h oto g r a p h y

An Eye for the Ugly Joanna Harkins Landing his first public solo show by age 17, Jackson Krule is the type of photographer who never turns “off ” his artist’s eye. Today, at the young age of 21, he has already developed a distinctive style recognizable by anyone who glances at his body of work – he makes the unusual or the harsh seem beautiful and worthy of attention. Krule is versatile, but his true passions are found in street photography, taking after early French street photographers of the 1930s and 40s. Residing in New York City, Krule is currently a student at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. You can find more of Jackson’s work at jacksonkrule.com.

T’S ELECTRICK Abby Kron

When Rebecca Thomas took the stage at the IFC Theatre on March 4th for the New York City premiere of her first feature film Electrick Children, there was no lengthy thank you speech or superfluous explanation for what the audience was about to see. She uttered softly into the microphone, “I’m so nervous right now.” The audience responded with endearing laughter and applause. A few days later, Thomas met with me to discuss the film at a bustling café in the West Village. The 28-year-old director, who might appear timid at first, offered a beaming smile and a quietly confident tone that makes her as engaging as she is relatable. Thomas seemed both relieved and exhausted after nearly a year of promoting the film, including premieres at 2012 Berlinale Film Festival and South by Southwest before it reached NYC. “I feel like I’ve aged a lot since making the movie. I have so many grey hairs now I have to pull them out every morning,” she joked lightheartedly, sipping some tea. For the last two years, Thomas had been consistently at work on writing and directing Electrick Children, her first feature-length film. The film tells the story of Rachel, a 15-year-old fundamentalist Mormon girl who believes she has experienced an immaculate conception after listening to a forbidden rock & roll tape. While Thomas was raised as a mainstream Mormon, the film is hardly an endorsement or reflection of her particular religious tenants. Instead, it proves to be a coming-of-age story more about a love for music and the power of faith—which Thomas and her protagonist Rachel both explore in individual ways. Although Thomas began writing a rough version of the script before attending film school at Columbia University in 2011, it was a photography course she took during her final semester that inspired her to direct her first feature. “The class was taught by a great photographer named Thomas Roma, who would take our photographs and tell us why they sucked and how we didn’t have enough courage,” Thomas laughed. “I was inspired by that class to gain the courage to want to say something. By this point, Thomas had already completed several short films, the first of which “Nobody Knows You and Nobody Gives a Damn”—which she wrote and acted in—went to Sundance Film Festival in 2009. “I already knew the consequences of having a short go to a festival

and didn’t really want to do it again,” said Thomas. “If I was going to spend money, I was going to try to make a feature.” After Thomas invited her friend Jessica Caldwell on as executive producer, the two began actively trying to fund the film via Kickstarter in May 2011. “We thought we’d make it for $20,000 by raising half on Kickstarter and each taking out $5,000 loans,” said Thomas. “We planned to make this low budget film with help from our friends and if it totally fails, we figured we already had $175,000 in grad school loans, so what’s the difference adding another few thousand? We just said, “let’s do this.” Caldwell randomly sent the link to executive producer Richard Neudstadter, whom she had previously met at an audition and was stunned when he personally contributed a quarter of the film’s total budget. Thomas followed up by sending the script to Neudstadter, who saw potential in the young director and offered to help make the film for a higher budget. Virtually overnight, the micro-budget project between friends developed into a million dollar production thanks to an angel investor. “We were super lucky, it was like a miracle. Basically, a bunch of money fell into my lap and I was feeling a lot of faith. I thought, ‘I really love this story, I would have made it with or without money.’ ” Thomas chose to keep much of the original production crew in tact, including her sister-in-law, Tennille Olsen and her brother, Will

F i l m

“I couldn’t believe I was making a film with more crew and more talent than I could ever have imagined,” said Thomas. “It was so magical, I was already happy on the first day.” One of the first auditions Stern and Thomas received was from veteran actor Billy Zane who earned the role of Paul—Rachel’s father and leader of the colony. Zane, who has worked with notables like James Cameron on Titanic and Robert Zemeckis on Back to the Future, claims that Thomas had an approach to directing that was all her own. “Rebecca has the director gene,” said Zane. “She has the vision and confidence of relaxed specificity shared by few established directors I’ve had the great pleasure of working with.” Liam Aiken, who previously starred alongside Susan Sarandon in Stepmom and as Klaus Baudelaire in The Series of Unfortunate Events, was cast as Mr. Will—Rachel’s rigidly obedient older brother who undergoes arguably the most drastic character transformation. The other lead male role of Clyde—a struggling misfit who falls for Rachel—went to Rory Culkin, who Caldwell specifically suggested for the role. “I looked him up and thought he was perfect,” said Thomas. “So, we offered him the part and he said yes.” Ironically, the film’s protagonist was the very last to be cast. Thomas and Stern had seen auditions from several hopefuls but none quite fit the specific image the director had for Rachel’s character. Julia Garner, the doe-eyed blonde indie actress, snagged the leading role just a week before production began. “After seeing Julia Garner, I can’t remember who I imagined playing Rachel before,” said Thomas, “Julia has this sort of ethereal quality; she just kind of glows, she’s just very virginal and angel-like. When I saw her, I thought, ‘That’s it, that’s what I need!’ ” While Julia Garner has landed several supporting roles in indie hits like Martha Marcy May Marlene and The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Electrick Children marks the 19-year-old actress’s first starring role. Even though she did not have much time to prepare for her role, Garner said Thomas “immediately put her at ease” and was able to effectively communicate her vision for the role of Rachel. “She is one of those directors who can direct anybody—she has a true gift,” Garner said. “I never felt when working with her that she was a first time director. She has an inner confidence and a natural ability to guide and direct her actors, yet always gives them freedom.” Even though the mood on set was positive and synergetic, Thomas admits that initially it was nerve-wracking to work with such an experienced cast for her first feature. “It was overwhelming to be working with a cast had years and years on me, in terms of experience,” said Thomas. “I was nervous everyday, to say the least, but I felt like there was a lot of love on set. Rory said to me once—the nicest thing someone’s ever said to

me—‘I wish we could make this movie every year.’ ” The loving atmosphere between cast and crew during shooting had to do with the emotion of the film and its protagonist’s story. “I think everybody sort of felt it,” said Thomas. “That’s what the movie is about; while there’s something dark boiling under, I do think Rachel’s perspective is so faithful and so loving. I hope I get to make another film and have it be as loving.” Ultimately, Electrick Children tells the story of a young girl’s first experiences with love and music—discoveries that inspire a more organic understanding of her faith. Growing up as a fairly obedient Mormon child, Thomas found music to be a viable source of rebellion, which also became the driving idea behind the plot to her film. She recalls overhearing her older siblings’ choice punk and hiphop music from a young age, an experience that partially inspired Rachel’s fascination with the forbidden cassette player in the film. “I probably heard music that I shouldn’t have been listening to at a much earlier age because I shared a room with my sister,” said Thomas. “Hearing it when I was really little did give me big emotions—similar emotions as when I sang hymns in church.” Rachel’s experience with listening to the music on the forbidden blue tape and the succeeding events drove her to question her faith, but never stray from it. Thomas has, too, wrestled with her faith in a similar manner. Asked if she was still a practicing Mormon, Thomas admits, “I don’t really know is probably the answer that is most accurate.” She added, “I still believe in God and can’t deny some of my experiences in that area.” Although Thomas is already writing her next film—a doppelganger thriller set in New York City about a girl who meets her exact lookalike, Miss New York—she maintains a strong connection to the film that has solidified her as a serious director. “Even though I still feel very connected to the film, it is much easier to talk about now that it is coming out in theaters,” admitted Thomas. “I feel less attached to it, but in that way, I’m almost more open about it.” The initial script she had written for the film over four years ago now seems like a hazy, distant memory. Thomas cannot exactly recall how she originally envisioned the film, but she is genuinely happy with the outcome. “Everything happened so fast that I sort of had this blind boldness, this courage,” said Thomas. “It almost feels like I haven’t made a film, like I’m about to make my first film because now I know all the mistakes I’ve made—somehow it all miraculously turned into something better than I could have imagined.”

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NED HEPBURN

Too cool 4 Skool Joanna Harkins

Ned Hepburn is a writer and editor based out of Brooklyn. Having worked for everyone from Mötley Crüe to Interview and Vice, Ned has been around the block more than a few times. More recently, he currently serves as the editor-at-large at Death + Taxes and is the Co-Founder and Editor-in-Chief of The Worst. Having lived in England, LA and Chicago, he always has a pocket full of good stories and the accent to show for it. Oh, and he also writes novels. Was your decision to drop out of school based on a feeling that college was simply not the right environment for you or did you have other plans? The ultimate decision was literally one conversation with my college advisor, Will Casey. I failed to see how some of the classes would teach me, and it seemed that they would hold me back until I completed them, so I said “Fuck it.” I regret not majoring in something like journalism or english, but them’s the breaks, I guess. What’s the worst piece of advice you’ve ever been given? If you followed said horrible advice what did you learn from the experience? It’d probably be from Will Casey in that very meeting. The class I kept failing (Re: getting in blow out arguments with teachers) was Voice 1. I took it 4 times. Will said something along the lines of “How do you expect to make it as an actor if you have a lisp?” I remember being very taken aback by it and not knowing how to respond. He was right, I have a little bit of a lisp. I honestly thought “maybe he’s right” but the dude had a Marlon Brando poster in his office, and I looked at that and remembered Marlon Brando had a lisp, too. Our perceived “problems” can be things that set us apart and make us stand out. You know what those “top actors” from my year are doing now? One’s in real estate, the other’s a bartender and still lives in Chicago. You know who made it? The girl with the weird hair that could make everybody laugh. She’s on SNL now. In what ways did not going the “traditional” route of attending college enrich your career and/or life? I think if I’d stayed in college for another two years (that’s what they offered) I would have stayed in Chicago, done theater for a few years, and then moved to LA. To be totally blunt I’m glad I got the life experience. It’s one thing to learn about, say, anthropology or science or being a doctor by going to school for it. It’s another entirely if you’re trying to make your way in the arts. What has been the most surprising moment of your career? Probably the email from Wheaties, or the email about the Colombia trip. My differences set me apart. Sometimes they hold me back, but ultimately they set you apart from the crowd. It’s all very Pixar-movie, that lesson, isn’t it?

Photo courtesty of Ned Hepburn

LIFESTYLE

JORDAN STERN Jordan Stern is the hypnotizing front woman of the surf-punk/shoe-gaze band SURFING. Their newest single “Hollow Sparrow” was recently featured on Stereogum. Originally from New York State, Stern spent a few years in Harrisonburg, VA finding her future bandmates and realizing her sound. She now lives in Brooklyn. Wayfarer: When did you realize that college and going the “traditional” career route was not for you? In what ways do you think this alternative life experience will help you? Stern: I always had this feeling that college wasn’t right for me. It wasn’t out of apathy or disinterest in my classes necessarily, it was more because I constantly felt like I was wasting my time. I didn’t understand why at the time, but I knew that whenever I was studying or going to class, I was constantly asking myself, “How is this applicable to any of my future goals?” I have always set extremely idealistic goals for myself. I have very naive optimism, if you will. Because of this, I had no one to talk to about these goals. I couldn’t tell me parents or friends that I wanted to play music for a living. I wasn’t even that good at guitar at the time, and most people that set out to be successful musicians end up failing. My parents would have obviously not supported that decision early on in college, nor my peers. Also, my parents are teachers, so they have played it pretty safe their entire lives, in terms of a career path. so I just went along with whole college thing for a while, wasting tons of money, but it seemed better than looking like a total failure if I dropped out. This definitely motivated me to prove something of myself though, to show everyone around me that I wasn’t the person that I projected on the outside, that I was/ and still am someone with vigorous passion. This “alternative lifestyle” is actually a more stable and predictable path for me. I’m no longer crippled by depression because I have COMPLETE control over everything I want in life. I’m completely motivated by a vision I have for myself, and I no longer run my life based on what others want for me. It’s liberating as hell. Now my naive optimism can become a reality. What has been the most surprising moment of your journey with Surfing so far? I’m most surprised by the direct results that the band is witnessing. We have a vision. We make it happen. It’s so simple in that respect. Because of this, our vision keeps getting bigger and bigger. I’m beyond confident in the future of this band. I’m also surprised by how much it Photo courtesy of Paul D. Murphy has consumed me. My plans for SURFING are immense. It’s the only thing I think about, and the only thing I can talk about, which has made me pretty socially awkward actually because I have such a one-track mind. I’ve lost most of my friends because of my focus and my inability to care about anything other than my goals. I used to have a pretty vibrant social life too. But i’m happier now than I was back then, because I feel like I finally have purpose. If I would have asked you three or four years ago what you imagined your future life/career to look like, how different would it be form where you are today? It’s pretty weird actually. I remember promising myself a few things the summer before freshman year of college. I told myself that I wouldn’t stay at JMU. I told myself that in two years, I’d be pursuing music. I told myself that I would excel in my musical abilities, that I would be able to write elaborate songs and master my guitar playing. I told myself that I would be able to perform on stage with complete confidence. It might have been a little off, but only because I did even more than that. And I stayed in school for a semester longer than i told myself i would stay. But it was pretty spot on. Because of this, I really do believe that I have full control over what happens next in my life, and I’m incredibly optimistic.

ovo y ub D ly mi yE nb tio tra us Ill

THe LION, the SUN A

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Emily Dubovoy

A u g u s t

YOUR TAROT The Sun

This card is associated with attained knowledge. An infant rides a white horse under the anthropomorphized sun, with plenty of flora in the background. The child represents possibility in life and holds a red flag, symbolizing the blood of renewal while a smiling sun shines down on him giving its blessing of accomplishment. The card collects the conscious mind to get over the fears and illusions of our unconscious realm. Your innocence is cyclical and renews through discovery. This brings a purity that allows for a hopeful future. This is a generally positive card. It reflects happiness and contentment, vitality, self-confidence and success. Sometimes referred to as the best card in Tarot, it represents positive outcomes to current struggles and all around good juju.

YOUR SUN SIGN Leo

Leos are filled with a vast amount of energy and presence. They are warm, bright and selfmotivated, and want to make an impression in everything they do — work, love life and social life. They tend to not stay in the background of things. They grab life by the balls and have a fiery approach towards the world. Their strong sense of self can be misinterpreted as arrogance — understatement could sometimes be a more effective way to show loyalty and express generosity (which are things that Leos prioritize). Leos can give the impression of being show-offy, but this too is a mistake. Their dramatic flair is an innate part of their zest for life, love of people and optimism. They look at life like it is a stage which they can perform on. Leo’s totem is the lion, lord of the jungle — full of muscularity, grace and ferocity. This means that their physical appetites and general level of energy are extraordinarily high. They feel a need to be physically mobile and fully engaged in meaningful work and social activities to feel good.

TOTEM: The Lion FACTS: 5th sign of the zodiac, fixed, hot, positive, masculine, dry ELEMENT: Fire KEY CHARACTERISTICS: Ambitious, loyal, physical, charitable, majestic, imposing, inflexible YOU JIVE WITH: Leo, Sagittarius, Cancer, Libra, Aries YOU BUTT HEADS WITH: Virgo, Pisces, Scorpio and Capricorn GEM: Peridot DOMINANT CELESTIAL BODY: The sun KARMIC PLANETS: Mars and Jupiter MANTRA: “I am calm and satisfied” Illustrations by Sonya Kozlova

All in a Day's Stroll

Joanna Harkins

Walking down

street on a NUMBER Adjective afternoon, I had somehow managed to wake up on the Adjective side of the that morning. As I reached into my Noun bag to pull out a cigarette I got distracted by some CoLOR graffiti of a dancing . Adjective ANIMAL ADVERB Instead I pulled out a . Feeling I Noun Emotion decided to treat myself with a bagel. “An everything bagel with please.” I told the Food Item Once I got outside, about to

deli attendant. Descriptor into my bagel, a verb pigeon swooped down and stole the bagel out of

Verb ending in “ING” my hands. “Curse you,

!” I yelled, shaking my POPULAR TV CHARACTER fist at the sky. Just then I stopped short “Oh my gosh, is that

turned around and SAme Celebrity ”. Walking in the direction of CATCH PHRASE I spotted Bill Cunningham taking a photo of NYC TOURIST ATTRACTION when suddenly a flew out of a taxi Female Fashion Icon TYPE OF SANDWICH cab window and completely covered her dress with DEsigner namE . Her , who has followers Condiment Type of ANimal Large Number on started licking it off. captured Social Media Platform favorite rapper the scene with his and turned it into a performance Type of Camera art piece featuring . Just when I thought my day Famous Artist couldn’t get any weirder started falling from the sky. Type of Dessert Little did I know ’s pet monkey was throwing them Celebrity Chef from the story of the . Number Name of Hotel Celebrity exclaimed “

?!”.

Photos by Kimi Selfridge: tancamera.com