On the Beach with Margo Hayes

On a pretty balmy night this past December I met Margo at the beach to shoot some photos as the sun went down. These wound up going in this kind of shipwrecked maiden direction for the first half — with the tousled waves and barefoot pebble scrambling— and ended with a little costume change into my favorite funky dunky collage dress by Bimba y Lola. Margo absolutely crushed this.

If you don’t know her, she made history in 2017 as the first woman to climb 5.15a— this is absurdly difficult— when she was just 19. I remember watching this climb in mouth-open awe at the Reel Rock 12 screening at my college, only about a year into climbing at that point. This was so inspiring for my wee self, who was stoked to see a climber on the big screen close in age, and a woman! She’s still my climbing hero, and now one of my favorite subjects.

The below images are digital, Polaroids, and 35mm.

photograph of climber Margo Hayes by photographer Juliet Furst

Film Journal: Nice

A few standout memories from this beautiful little city on the French Riviera:

-Trying my first escargot, a little plate-bowl thing of five little snails in a garlicky sauce (tasted to me like tiny mushrooms. Loved it), served to me at my table in a pretty dank basement restaurant, which… in a funny way elevated the experience, HA. The mustier the wine cellar, the better the wine, amiritetchy’all

-Wandering the Matisse Museum! AH!

-My travel buddy JJ and I attempting to recline on our backs on Nice’s beach, which is just a bed of LARGE rocks that don’t feel amazing underfoot or under…back. LOL

-Developing a sinus infection and spending three days in a hotel room I hadn’t budgeted for, HOWEVER, enjoying my first break from hostel life in a minute. Which meant no longer hearing a certain street performer’s favorite song from my hostel window :’) This was a good thing

-Watching fireworks crackle in front of a blood moon above the Riviera, as it just happened to be Bastille Day. We did see policemen with machine guns watching the beach and promenade closely. They were friendly. A few months after our visit, there was finally a conviction for the 2016 events.

-Finding these embracing marble lovers at the top of a staircase at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nice. Took a photo and sent it to me mans, who was far away at the time

2022. Portra 400 shot on the Olympus Infiniti Stylus

Scotland Photo Journal

Two weeks in tartanland were really not enough. This place captivated my heart in a swiiirl of fog and misty green landscapes and the sounds of bagpipes. And you really do eat as much shortbread as you expect to in Scotland, btw.

The below three images are digital and the rest are shot on a Polaroid I-Type camera and the Olympus Stylus Infinity Zoom, shot on Lomography Lady Grey 35mm film.

Above: scenes from the Old Man of Storr on the Isle of Skye. Below: scenes from Edinburgh

Below: Glencoe and the Isle of Skye

Film Journal: Barcelona, Valencia, Seville

From a warm June in Barcelona, with visits to Valencia, Seville, and Mediona included here. All shot on Porta 400 and Lomography Lady Grey 400 with the simple-but-sturdy Olympus Infinity Stylus Zoom. It’s autofocus and nothing fancy but gets the job done! I have visions of getting back to making medium format work again, but for now I’m leeeeanin into the grain and goofiness of these.

Film Journal: Nazaré

Some favorite 35mm point-and-shoot shots from sunny Nazaré, Portugal the other week. Was making my way back to Porto from Lisbon and decided to stop for a night at this fishing village that doubles as the home of the famed “100ft Wave.” (Click to watch Garrett McNamara surf it. cray)

Took a cable car to the cliffside village/old town, bought some candied nuts from a street vendor-ette clad in traditional Nazaré garb, and wandered down to the very windy Big Wave viewpoint. Note the cliff ferns!

The next morning I paddled out with the surf school into the much smaller, much less intimidating waves of the “Praia da Nazaré” side of the rocky peninsula. “Praia da Norte,” or North Beach, is where the big waves go to crash on the other side. Afterwards rewarded myself with a Portuguese seafood staple— codfish— dressed in cilantro and peppers, and quickly paid and darted off to a bus I’d already missed. (Read your tickets carefully, everyone!)

Bought a new ticket for a few hours later, which gave me time to get the mango gelato I’d been eyeing. Heard familiar voices behind me in line and recognized my two hostel friends. We sat and giggled with our ice cream cones in the sunshine, with my bathing suit drying on a chair next to me. I love Europe!! The end.

Inspiration Roundup: V

Still drawn to these things. More furniture design, BW mountain film, Richard Serra, Gauguin, fuzzy fashion from Versace, early Renaissance panel paintings, and yellow ochre minimalism! Delishis

Film Journal: St. Augustine to Tampa to Clearwater Beach

Just me, my momma, and a simple setup— Kodak Gold 200 & 400, and my somewhat recently-acquired Olympus Infinity Stylus Zoom point-and-shoot. I love my Minolta & other Olympus, but I reallllllly enjoyed taking a break from manual focus for a week.

This was the sweetest trip and I’m forever glad I was able to take my mom. I had a longtime friend’s wedding to shoot in Clearwater Beach and decided to try to squeeze in portrait sessions for the T21 Project along the route. Was the most wonderful week; laughed and audio-booked the whole way there and back.

35mm developed and scanned by Boutique Film Lab.

Took these along the way too. I luv my little Polaroid so much! Bought it at the start of the pandemic and have taken hundreds by now… which has been pricy (a $17 film pack gets you 8 photos….LOL) but worth it for me. This is the one I use.

Museum Sketch: North Carolina Museum of Art

The NCMA in Raleigh, North Carolina has one of my favorite permanent collections ever. Just stunning. (thank you, Cone sisters!) …and their temporary exhibitions are no less stop-you-in-yer-tracks-amazing.

Below is a Posca paint pen sketch from one of them— the Mexican Modernism a la Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera show. NCMA shared it and other museum drawings to their blog below. Can’t wait to get back here!

Travel Journal: The Bauhaus Dessau

Hello!! I’m excited to share this one! (Like I say every time but I do mean it)

Our story takes place in 2019, on the 100th anniversary of a certain special school in a small German city. Twas that August that my friends Rebecca and Sven and I made the pilgrimage from Berlin to the legendary Bauhaus school of design in Dessau.

The Bauhaus was arguably the most influential design school of the 20th century, and has since inspired decades of innovation in graphic design, industrial design, textile design, furniture design, and a zillion more disciplines and media. (“Zillion” is the word all them academics use, kaaaay)

The UNESCO World Heritage Site is no longer in use but is open for tours, as well as the nearby faculty houses (Meisterhäuser). This Dessau campus is the second and more well-known of the three campuses open during the Bauhaus school’s existence.

The first campus, opened in 1919, was in Weimar. I feel lucky to have visited that one in 2013, even if as a recent high school graduate at that time still naive to the wonderful world of art history… and who knew nothing about the school prior to visiting. (Thank you, big sister Paris, for handing me a water and dropping me off at the museum, knowing I needed a solid couple hours of educating. I’m still so grateful for that)

I ended up coming back to Berlin to study in 2015 and wrote my final paper about the Bauhaus, growing my love for this place even more. The school moved to its third and final location there in Berlin before being officially shut down by the Nazis in 1932.

Interesting fact: After that, a group of the faculty actually fled to the US… to none other than Black Mountain College in the North Carolina’s slice of Appalachia. How bout that?

Buuut anywho, time for some of my favorite moments in this blocky concrete design-lovers’ heaven. Enjoi!!!

The Masters’ Houses

..or “Meisterhaüser,” these four iconic cement structures were built by Walter Gropius as residences and work spaces for Bauhaus faculty members. We slurped down our coffee drinks, got our tickets, and walked through this area first.

I think I most enjoyed the light and dark squares of gray peeking through the pines. It was quiet and breezy out here and just magnificent. We poked around the houses and admired the placement of the windows and them cantilevered balconies. Too cool.

Had the feeling—as I often do—that I still had much more to read and review before I even really deserved to walk through here, but in writing this blog post I’ve filled in some of the gaps in my knowledge about this place via Google articles. I feel delighted anew!

In some houses a door or or banister in one of these would be painted red, or a wall yellow. As I recall they’re mostly empty, with some wall text and display cases in some and installations in others.

the Bauhaus school

This is the school campus itself, a little ways up the road. We found a bench, ate the sandwiches we bought from the cafe, and headed inside for our tour auf deutsch. Below you can see the iconic Bauhaus exterior facade, one of the studio spaces, and the canteen/cafeteria.

Kornhaus

The Kornhaus, a restaurant named after the 19th-century granary formerly on the site, is not technically part of the Bauhaus but is another noteworthy stop on every good little modernism fan’s tour. Walter Gropius’ employee Carl Fieger designed the structure in 1929.

These colors, the little porthole window, and the single salmon light fixture makes this feel straight out of a Wes Anderson film to me.

Below is the view of the fuzzy-tree-lined Elbe River from the Kornhaus. You can see the start and finish tower for the motorboat races held here during the GDR era, as well as the steamship dock.

Another UNESCO World Heritage Site, this white structure perched atop a hill is the renovated Wallwitzburg tower. It was constructed in the late 1790s after a medieval castle style and was used as a lookout point over the “Garden Kingdom,” as this area was called. Can’t miss those crenellations!

*That concludes your Dessau tour. If you read this far, you’re amazing!!! Keep scrolling for more inspiration, ramblings, pics, sketches, etc etc. Love u

Inspiration Roundup IV

Some recent pins to my (very informal) inspiration blog. Some modern furniture design, Delft tiles, cloaked egg tempera skinnymen, black and white film, and more painting. Love it, love it, love it!

Metric 1:50 Group Exhibition

I’m uncovering gobs of material I never published here, so bear with me as I try my best to plow through it! Below are some photos from a group exhibition in the spring of 2019 in Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin. A friend of a friend created these incredible stacking boxes, and invited some area artists to participate. I curated the stack on this wooden pillar, sourcing miniaturized mezzotint prints of my father’s (DonaldFurst.com!) and prints by an incredible German artist Papai Müller.

This was a fun time! Check out Para Foundation here.

How to Display A One-Color Screen Print

Hello! I wanted to drop these two ideas here for anyone who might be interested in adding a screen print to their collection, but aren’t quite sure how best to display one in your space. This particular breakdown is pretty simple: you can try out the gallery wall format or you can let it make a statement by itself! This here’s how I “styled” my Trecento Archway print on my own gallery wall above the Beach Grandma Sofa™ in mine and my roommate’s old Greensboro apartment. (we miss her; she was cute). I hung this on the adjacent wall in the photo after this one just to show you how that could look, but its usual home was nestled on the gallery wall!

The Gallery Wall

This isn’t of course a perfect example of a gallery wall— I’d have balanced out that bright red frame a little more with a dark frame toward the bottom right, but I just worked with what pieces I had and tried to arrange them by size and shape.

Each has its own little “padding” to nest in, ie. enough space left between each frame. They also have visual padding in that competing pieces are kept spaced apart (eg. the white print with the white frame sits in between two more colorful pieces).

The round mirror is there to break up the boxiness of the angular frames, and its pointy gilded edges are supposed to be sisters to the more traditional gilded frame in the middle. The blue and the red are also meant to be frame sisters (is that a thing? now it is!). As always, keep a level handy and try to make a sketch of your wall before nailing.

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Flying Solo

Exactly how it sounds, and a little more self-explanatory— this is just picking a space on the wall that feels like a good fit with your furniture’s placement and/or the room’s architecture/the size of the wall. (This is how I do it, at least!)

You’ll want to most of the time frame artwork so that it’s at your eye level, but of course one can use creative license with this.

I loved that the pillow and throw and lantern are all a bit busy, but the half-blank swatch of yellow lets your eye rest a bit. The wood of this frame also feels like a good fit with the eclectic-60s folk feeling I was going for with our apartment, as opposed to a metal frame. (I typically avoided these because they rarely seemed to fit this look).

There are of course other ways to display artwork (eg. sitting atop a credenza and leaned against the wall), but these are the two I employ most. If you have this print in your home, I’d love to see how you’ve displayed it! Happy framing! <3

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Inspiration Roundup III

Hi! Here are some things I’ve been enjoying pulled from my inspiration blog, julietfurst.tumblr.com. Right now I’m reblogging a lot of images from: art museum archive accounts, editorial and fashion photographers, modern art archives, and this one lovely little account that shares solid color swatches, like the magenta below. I LOVE this part of the inspiration-gathering process; it’s helpful to me to have it all in one place rather than in a jumble in my accordion folder. I have those too, but I just love the tiles! If you’re on Tumblr, shoot me a message! Would love to see what you’re sharing!

Disposable Magazine Interview

happy SPRING, peeps! excited to share this one. now on the Disposable Magazine site is a spot where I wrote some words, shot some pics, and picked some songs (keep scrolling for the playlist link!) I took one of their special pink disposable cameras with me around Ireland and Berlin, goin’ to town with that “brrrrack” plastic winding gear sound. I shipped this back to them and they developed them, now with my failed hat-brim-grab photo immortalized on the internet ;) let me know when you spot it. the rest of the photos and interview can be found at the link below!

link inactive :-(

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to peep the playlist, click here!

link inactive :-(

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Moss Keramik: Studio Photography

Heyo! It’s been a while since I’ve posted photography work that’s not my personal work, but sharing other makers’ makin’ stuff is pretty fun for me. Last week was no different! I had such a good time taking some shots (below—click to flip through a few of them!) of Moss Keramik at its new location in Wedding, Berlin. I first met Mia at Weddingmarkt back in the summer, and after scrolling through her site, was—-and am still—-positive that the ceramics experience offered at her space is myyy cup of tea. I’m so thrilled to get my hands on some gooey clay magic pretty soon here.

Click the link below to see it for yourself!

http://mosskeramik.de

(scroll right)

Flint & Watson Show

Again I’m shocked that it’s somehow already another year (!!!), which is the sentiment for me and probably most every January. Don’t want to let too much time pass before I post the photos from a super sweet little solo show and opening from a couple months ago. Flint & Watson is an awesome little space & cafe in Prenzlauer Berg that hosts an artist exhibition once a month. I had the best time meeting the nice folks that run it and the best time putting together this show.

“Parapetual,” a series of gouache and ink paintings, is centered around the parapets and battlements found allll throughout early Renaissance egg tempera panel paintings. I’m obsessed (can u tell) with these shapes and this era’s color scheme, but with a small bit of black-and-white, minimalist weirdness thrown in. Hard to ‘splain. Easier to look at fotos below. Head to the contact page for purchase inquiries. enjoi!

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favorite two photos from the opening I think. thanks, guys, for coming out! even my sister, pictured with this dog that isn’t ours, who had to come because we’re siblings. <3 :-)

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Inspiration Roundup II

Hey howdy hey! This is my second inspiration roundup (still sticking to this wild west copy—-can’t stop won’t stop). These are some favorites pulled from my inspiration Tumblr blog (link here). Keeps my brain goin’ and lets me take a break from making my own work.

Below are the (linked!) accounts I’m loving lately, along with two photos from each.

First Row

Apenina Coquete: mostly color film photographs of mostly tropical scenes. Grainy, sunny, warm, quirky.

Robert Lehman Collection: paintings, dresses, frames, vases, sketches, and prints from this extensive collection at the Met

Second Row

The Photo Registry: all the best contemporary photographers. stunning landscapes + portraits + street photographs

Vincent Van Gogh: exactly as it sounds! Sketches & paintings by our fave neo-Impressionist hero

Third Row

Boxes of Old Photos: this guy collects film photos from the 1870s to the 1990s, usually from yard sales.

A Palace Store: a fun Portland shop with the cutest Tumblr game. Fashion, film photography, drawings. Colorful with LOTS of marvelous shades of pink prevailing

Very Belated Cabin Weekend Video Debut

Taking today to finish editing my growing pile of various trip video files and shoot them like a confetti cannon into cyberspace (is that dramatic idk).

Here is the first—a lovely winter weekend at Emma’s godparents’ cabin about two hours from Greensboro. I have never been more happy to spend an entire weekend indoors. It was rainy and there aren’t really trails nearby, so we just edited and enjoyed one another’s company over what I am sure is not a doctor-approved amount of coffee and flavored creamer. (2 bad) Was one of the most lovely weekends of my life. I miss these two tons :0

Oh and they’re both incredible photographers, so if you want to check out their work you can find it here: Emma Frances Logan Andrew Neel

~ps I’m a big ole noob/amateur at this, so there’s plenty of camera shake to offer you if you like that :-)