New Yorker

This is a little bit late because this month has been SO insanely busy! I feel like I can finally breathe and I wanted to give an update about New York since a lot of people (my parent's friends, mostly haha) have been asking about it! I included a lot of pictures and rambled a little so bear with me!

New York. Was. SO FUN. It was the perfect little mini trip right before all the hustle and bustle of graduation and family visits and grad party madness!
The city itself smelled less like urine than I previously remembered, and although it was busy, it seemed less intimidating than my 10 year old self had first felt. I really liked it.

Everywhere I went, the food was SO GOOD. I'm not super picky about food, but I like eating it a lot so being surrounded by the best restaurants, food trucks...etc was my dream world.

Before I left for the city, I spent a lot of my time printing out little prints of my work and making lots of stickers! So much fun. Seriously. I made little packets with my name and website and I ended up handing them out to people at the Society of Illustrators show, as well as leaving them around the city. In Tucson, I leave little prints and written notes around for people to find because I love being able to brighten someone's day with my words or my art! I thought I'd do the same in New York. I hope people who like my art found them! Or passed them on! :)

 

Took a picture of how they were left/how they would be found. This one was in front of a NYC Blick's Art Supply!

Anyways, my trip was filled with the brim with things I wanted to do/needed to do! I have three friends that live out in the city so I wanted to see them, I had my art show,  I had tickets to "Of Mice and Men" with James Franco/Chris O'Dowd and I NEEDED to see the MoMA (and shop! And eat!)

Shirt from BurgerAndFriends on etsy. Click here to be my twin!

This is the outfit I traveled in the first day. My best friend hates this shirt because she says it's completely untrue, but I think it's funny and it's from etsy and I love supporting fellow etsy artists! (It's so comfy too.)

The hotel let us have a patio too, so I got to look out on the city. I loved it! Minus all the rain made patio relaxing hard, but still!

The Society of Illustrators show was on Friday night and it was so overwhelmingly beautiful... I was in the company of some extremely talented young artists. It was amazing.

I didn't win a scholarship, but I was the only student from Arizona who got accepted. Pretty insane!! I'm still in shock that I got this opportunity!
The show is up until May 31st if you are in New York and want to see everything in person!

There were three floors of the exhibition, mine was on the bottom floor. I'm really happy with how I chose to frame and mat the piece. That teal, man!

The artists wore little name tags identifying ourselves and then we got a program with all the pieces published in them and a certificate. Pretty special!

The show was packed! And it was so fun to be part of the NY art scene, if only for a little bit! Especially since I got to meet some of my art idols that I see online and I got to drool over their pieces in real life, haha.

The rest of my trip was so fun too. I walked a bunch of the city and ended up having a bizillion blisters, but it was so worth it! The play was EXCELLENT. Shopping there was so fun and seeing friends always reminds you how lucky you are to know such talented, sweet people.

Taking pictures next to mountains of trash seemed like the touristy thing to do. But seriously, how is this normal?

This is a beautiful window at the High Line park! That place was so AMAZING. It was really crowded but who doesn't love a park in the sky?

 

The MoMA was kind of the perfect place to end my BFA degree. I learned about all these wonderful artists in art school and finally being in the presence of their work was astonishing. I'm a huge Mark Rothko fan and I have heard about people passing out or crying when seeing his pieces in person so I was stoked on this! I took a million little pictures of the museum but I'll spare you of all those! Basically it was amazing and I loved every second I was there. I was so inspired to go and paint!

This is just a silly little collection of gold things I found in NY. The left and right images are the beautiful wallpaper I found in our hotel and the middle lamp is something I bought at the MoMA design store for my mom for mother's day!

Left some stickers of mine behind in the airport because I was stuck there for four more hours than I was supposed to be! It took me a total of 16 hours to get home. I was not happy, but other than that, my trip was super amazing.

Sometimes you need to take a minute and realize how lucky you are and I've definitely been thinking about that since I've gotten back. I'm so happy I got to go and I can't wait for future opportunities to travel and experience more of the art world! xoxo