This past Sunday, I spent the day in Flushing, Queens, as part of my nonstop quest to visit every borough. My first stop was Flushing Corona Park, the site of the New York World's Fair. To my design friends: it's the fair Mickelson was all about in lectures right around the time he showed the film Metropolis, with the weirdly sexual robot. You know the one. To all of my other friends: that scene from Captain America where Tony Stark's dad is showing off some wicked cool stuff was at the World's Fair. Anywho, this month they're celebrating the fiftieth anniversary, which is pretty neat. Unfortunately, after the fair most of the buildings were demolished/repurposed and there isn't a whole lot of it left.
Right in the neighborhood is also CitiField, home of the New York Mets. Admittedly, once upon a time I bought a hat because I thought it was just a girly New York Yankees logo. As embarrassing fate would have it, it was actually a Mets cap. Besides the point, it's easily one of the most comfortable items I've ever worn. I wore the hat to Queens as an insurance policy (nobody likes getting beat up) and didn't realized I'd end up as close to the field as I did. Best spontaneous photo op ever. And as an added bonus, I stopped at a Greek place for dinner and the waiter sent me over a free glass of wine - from the chef. He said he liked my hat. And I like free wine. So, in the end, everybody won.
After the Park scene, I hit up another item that's been wearing down on my NYC Bucket List: the Socrates Sculpture Park. I'll admit it, I had this idea in my head of just sort of a random hideaway with marble sculptures and a sweet view of the Manhattan skyline. I was only half right. The sculptures are actually all local originals - how cool, right?! - and I came in the middle of the process of building the new exhibits. There were little girls hammering and sawing, and it may have been one of the cutest, most hands on community service opportunities I've ever seen. I then experience one of the coolest things I've seen since I got here: massive sculpture fort. I thought this girl was cool enough as it was from the outside: she was pieced together from found objects: from a headdress of cowboy hats to wooden plank fingernails. But then like a vision sent from the Lost Boys of Peter Pan: you could actually climb inside this thing. Bangarang!
In class news, this week I led a session in Art Therapy! As part Method & Techniques, each week one of the students researches a demographic and technique and runs the class for the day. My assigned medium was Acrylic Painting (one of my favorites!) and I demonstrated a session I envisioned as a sort of ice-breaker for future clients entitled "What does your soul look like?", where the students portrayed their fears as what they felt like, how they envisioned their future, and what made them happy as well as other prompts I offered. I was a little nervous running the session, seeing as how my education and training is pretty minimal, but the girls were great and I was thrilled with the results. In Digital Media, I started work on my final project, which is an animated music video which I'm honestly pretty psyched about. 
This weekend the entire campus closed down for the holidays, which unfortunately included dining. And I didn't realize this until Saturday morning (ha, who am I kidding, I rolled out of bed at noon) and went to grab food only to find LOCKED DOORS! The horror! So I geared up to head into Manhattan, because I'd been wanting some Shake Shack and finally had a valid excuse to wait in that legendary line. On the bus ride over, I checked my Facebook, and lo and behold, some Thetas from Iowa State arrived in NYC that morning and were already posting pictures. I quickly messaged them, and we met up for dinner at a pretty nifty little Italian place near the MoMA. That little taste of home was pretty sweet. Oh, and if you were wondering, Shake Shack was well worth the hour long wait. Never has a burger and peanut butter shake been quite as satisfying.
Today, I spent some quality time with my Sharpies and paper in Central Park. The true horror of the caricature business is that every day starts out the same good or bad: with a quite lull. Just as I was debating whether the trek into the city was worth it, a family came up to me.
"Are you the Hernandez?" they asked me, a question my more noticeably Caucasian self has heard quite a few times these past twenty one years.
"Yup, that's me." As it turns out, they, too, were also of the Hernandez clan. Though they were Cuban, I'm pretty sure we were distantly related. Actually, probably not. I digress. They kicked off my drawing spree, and I ended up breaking my sales record out here, so needless to say I'll be munching down pretty hard on my lunch breaks this week. Nomnomnom...
More nom's to come.
Thanks for reading :) I'll be sure to report back on those noms!
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