Kish’s Blog

Art is great because it’s accessible by nature. You can literally just look at it and see whatever it is. It’s easier to grasp than literature, which can sometimes require you to know certain vocabulary and also require more time/some patience.  I hate how many things have become so “intellectualized.” A big part of the reason I didn’t like art when I was younger was because of my English classes in middle and high school. They were pretty bad at encouraging you to come up with your own opinions. I remember I once turned in a quiz (on something related to Egyptian mythology) in 10th grade English, and I got pissed because I got marked off for a “defend your answer”- type question. When I asked the teacher why my answer was wrong, she essentially gave me a “because I said so” response. There were many instances of teachers saying “as long as you provide compelling supporting evidence, I’ll accept it,” but not following through. I think this contributed to me internalizing a narrative of

I visited the Reformation store in SF (on Valencia) before my trip to Europe to buy some 80/90 degree-weather appropriate clothing. It was Reformation’s 4th brick-and-mortar store, out of the 6 stores now in existence. I was really confused when I walked into the store; I had walked past it multiple times but this was my first time actually entering. There were several other customers in the store, and their behavior was abnormal in a way that I couldn’t pinpoint. I am terrible at asking for help from customer service reps that aren’t in-your-face friendly, so I just started browsing the racks and pulled a dress off to try on. A sales associate quickly came over and semi-explained the system to me: she’d create a virtual dressing room, and I should notify her to add anything to the room. She asked for my name and added that dress to the room after verifying what size I wanted, and then put the dress back on the rack and walked away. I was a bit confused at this point, and thought, “I h

The reason is actually pretty simple, but I wanted to have a public explanation in writing. I visited the Bauhaus-Archiv in Berlin, and they had a wonderful special exhibition on the works of Jasper Morrison. There were two parts to the exhibit: one was Thingness, a retrospective that showed various works of furniture and other everyday objects that Morrison had created or collaborated on over the last 35 years; and the other was The Good Life, a selection of photo essays from his book of the same name. I really enjoyed reading about the Morrison’s design/thought processes in Thingness, but I was truly ~inspired~ by The Good Life. In each of the photo essays in The Good Life, Morrison writes about something that he noticed and photographed - he reflects on why that thing piqued his interest and imagines what sorts of conditions caused it to come in existence. I’m doing an awful job describing them - you’d probably get a better sense by reading a couple. I was fascinated by these seemin