ay marieke ss'13 look book

This Look Book for my spring and summer '13 jewelry collection was shot a few weeks ago, and I am excited to release it here as well as on my new website!  All of the jewelry pieces in the photos below are available here.  

Images – Anja Verdugo
Hair and Makeup – Amber Blasco
Models – Theresa Guntli and Consuelo Wise
Styled by Theresa Guntli and me, Marika Emerson.

rear window

I love Hitchcock (who doesn't?) so it was a pleasant surprise to come across this Rear Window inspired shoot from Vogue, shot by Peter Lindbergh with Tobey McGuire and Carolyn Murphy.  Of course, no one can top Edith Head's costume design (and no one can talk like a sober drunk the same as James Stewart) but nonetheless, I like it.  Here are my favorites, see the rest here.

emeralds

Green has been my favorite color for as long as I can remember, but I'm not a big fan of St. Patrick's Day.  In first grade, I had just gotten this super cool pair of shorts – blue and calico with denim ruffles, about as high fashion as a six year old girl in the suburbs could get in 1994.  I wore it with my favorite blue button-down sweater and got pinched all day – I hadn't known it was St. Patrick's Day, and I've sort of resented the holiday with it's perfunctory green dressing ever since.

It's always nice to have an excuse to assemble a collection of favorite emerald-hued things, though.

 1 • 2

 3 • 4

 5 • 6

7 • 8

 9 • 10

 11 • 12

13 • 14

1 & 2: The Emerald Gorge in Oregon's Oneonta Canyon, Kim Novak in Vertigo.

3 & 4: A favorite street style ensemble, Climbing Leopard rug by Diane Von Furstenberg.

5 & 6: Colette Vermeulen, the prettiest antique emerald ring.

7 & 8: La Perla green silk lingerie set, Maggie Gyllenhaal wearing something similar. 

9 & 10: Jean Paul Gaultier Spring 2010, a photo of me by my friend Anja from last summer .

11 & 12: Dieppa Restrepo oxfords that I covet, charming swan tights from Italy.

13 & 14: A deeply saturated emerald room, my new favorite food, aka kale.

(I hated kale until a few months ago, now it's practically all I eat.  Miracle food.)

all things ocular

magritte

I've been really digging Magritte lately.  I never studied his work en masse, and occasionally encountering the frequently-cited this is not a pipe and apple over face and rock by a window pieces didn't stir me to consider him as anything more than another Surrealist.  But no!  He's amazing!  (Art school graduate friends reading this: please excuse me if you've had to deal with a million people fan-girling Magritte more intelligently than me throughout your schooling and lives.)

A few notes, in no order of import: 

I love his early advertising work, and how the influence of other artists – like Sonia Delaunay and Matisse – and movements – from impressionism to pop art – shows up in some of his pieces. The precision with which these paintings are executed are (for me) really relaxing to look at – it's been a tiring weekend and perusing them is making me feel settled and calm.  Those color palates are all perfect!  The paintings are also to me incredibly physically evocative – they embody emotional personas, and sometimes they are so funny!  Some of them remind me of the types of iconography you might see on tarot cards.

The metalwork pieces are fantastic.  I have such a hard time conceptualizing how I would paint interestingly whenever I try to paint for fun, so seeing a painter's approach to metal sculpture really appeals to me.

I had a print of the blue woman from the Black Magic series (itself a fantastic name for a series of women disappearing against the fabric of the sky) but didn't know it was by Magritte.  It got torn when I moved to Oregon, which made me sad.

I found most of these (there's even more where that came from!) on this great website.  I know, I'm posting a ton but whatever – they're all too wonderful to narrow down.

There's a bunch more after the break!

villes éteintes / the stars (are out tonight)

Thierry Cohen explores what night skies could look like over large cities without the star-cancelling effects of light pollution in this project, Villes éteintes / Darkened cities, that I just learned about via The NY Times.  There are a few more images from the series not featured by the Times here.  Cohen uses images of night skies at similar latitudes to the cities pictured and edits the photos of cityscapes to remove all light.  

In Portland, we are so deprived of seeing stars at night, due to light pollution and also to (what feels like) nearly constant cloud cover.  I grew so acclimated to seeing stars in Colorado during camping trips and even just nighttime drives in the country and that's one of the things that I miss most of all.

On a star-related note, David Bowie has a new album for the first time in over a decade, due for a March release!  (Does this mean the possibility of a tour?!)  Either way, I am really excited.  The icing on the cake is this movie / video for Bowie's new single, "The Stars (Are Out Tonight)" starring – is that?! – Tilda Swinton!

hello

Hello! My name is Marika.  Some friends call me by that name, others call me Molly.  I am a jewelry maker living in Portland, Oregon, originally from Colorado.  You can see some of my previous jewelry designs here (new website coming soon.)  I live with my boyfriend David and our cat Arthur.  I decided this morning that it is time for me to turn a new leaf on the internet, so I will be posting here from now on (previously here.) 

In the past week, I've been very inspired by two friends whose presence on the internet I'm incredibly glad about.  My friend Baxter is an artist, musician and frequent traveler currently living in Seattle.  Baxter is one of my favorite people and he owns more Micron pens than anyone I have ever met.  These are three of my favorite of his recent pieces.  You can see more of his work, some of which is very funny, on his blog, Baxter Blue.

My friend Tyler has recently returned from travels in India and through Europe and posted hundreds of film scans on his Flickr account.  I spent a happy hour clicking through all of them – it was really nice for me to see a good friend's photos and live vicariously through his voyage.  You can see loads more here.

It's discongruous, but I want to end this first post by sharing this excerpt from Robert Creeley's Graduation series:

This walking on 


and on, this
 

going and coming—
 

this morning 

shines such lovely 

light on
 

all of us
 

we're home.