FAUX-BEAU » My Life

I graduated.

Kathryn Proulx — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 12:45:33 +0000

A little over a month ago I graduated from Parsons. My senior thesis project, as it stood in the thesis show, was kind of a failure. I built the staging for it, and thought I had everything covered, but I left too many things up in the air for it to work properly at the show. However, in terms of learning and progressing and pushing myself—it was a complete success. I’m viewing it as version 1.0, and have plans to make it better… maybe I’ll post about it sometime?

Now I’m interning full time at HUGE in Dumbo—I love it.

Daily Guilty Pleasure: Roller Derby

Kathryn Proulx — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 02:18:58 +0000

So, if you don’t follow me on twitter, or you’re not my friend in real life, you might not know that I recently started getting into roller derby! It all started when Chino’s old roommate (who is a referee) invited us to our first bout this past summer. It was a double header so we saw the Yankee Brutals and The CT Death Quads jam it out against the opposing teams. I was in love the whole time. Then I saw Whip It! and I was reminded how much I wanted to give derby a shot. About four weeks ago I was in the car with Chino and I finally admitted it out loud—”I think I really want to try out for roller derby.” I found out that try outs were in a week so I borrowed skates from my friend Jay, practiced in the local high school parking lot after work a couple of times, and 3 weeks ago I tried out. And guess what?! I made the cut to stick around for rookie practices! Today I got my first pair of skates and I can’t wait until practice tomorrow to start breaking them in. Ahh! So exciting.

PS: My favorite roller derby name is Em Dash, a jammer from Gotham Girls Roller Derby. Hopefully I’ll make the team and get to pick a name of my own!

Where has the time gone?

Kathryn Proulx — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 19:14:25 +0000

You didn’t think I’d let October go by without posting, did you? I never imagined a semester full of liberal arts requirements would be so time-consuming. Written assignments instead of designed assignments has been a weird change that is proving hard for me to adjust to.

I haven’t made much progress on my thesis yet, either. We spent the first half of the semester doing semi-unrelated assignments like visualizing a book, designing a personal timeline, and bringing in our favorite piece of work we’ve created. To say the least, it wasn’t inspiring. I kept producing info graphics for any assignment that called for a designed solution, and I got reprimanded for stealing typefaces from an old internship and using them on a personal project for school (that was also one of my favorite pieces that I planned on bringing into class.) Word of advice: even though everyone else does it, that doesn’t mean it’s OK to steal typefaces from your internship… even if you’re a poor student and are using them for school projects only.

At first I thought I wanted to make a mash-up of fffound, flickr, and delicious where you could upload inspirational images and tag them. If you found an image you liked on the site it would automatically download it to your ‘inspiration folder.’ Then I realized how boring and uncreative that idea was, and that even though I’d learn a lot by building it, it is just too big of a project to take on and build in 4-6 months. Then, in an effort to scale down, I thought I could tag all the images I had saved on my computer and create a data visualization of what inspires me. Then I realized that nobody cares as much about me as I do. And so… I moved on.

I read Dear Diary by Lesley Arfin for fun—and it reminded me of my experiences in middle school/high school (I think honestly every girl could relate to it.) Then I found Culture Jam by Kalle Lasn at my local library and started reading it (I think everyone should read this book, I wish I had read it sooner.) This was around the same time we started talking about media and body image in my Psychology of Eating Disorders class, the Situationists in my Urban Branding class, and cultivating identity in my Uniform Fashion class. All of a sudden it was like I finally felt that fire again—like I had discovered something to care about enough to make/design/build something around it. I’m not really sure how this will tie together in the end… but stay tuned.

Back to School / Senior Thesis

Kathryn Proulx — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 16:48:44 +0000

It’s back to Parsons on Thursday. Kind of unreal to think that this will be my last year! I’m mostly fufilling my liberal arts requirements (French, Urban Branding, Psychology of Eating Disorders?) but my biggest class is Thesis. I’m not sure of the parameters yet but I do know that our first semester hinges upon research, and our second semester is when we build, fabricate, code, and/or design our project. I know that I want to do something involving technology; web design (including interface and back-end), an app/widget, or something of the sort. I really want to use this as an opportunity to teach myself skills that I haven’t had a chance to learn in school; designing databases or programs for example. I have just one idea so far that involves gamers (so far from my interests/personality!) and I’m hoping to brainstorm more ideas. I know ideas are money but if you have an awesome idea for a website, widget, app, light computer program, or anything of the sort—let me know! I’ll probably be posting more about my progress as school starts so watch this space.

A Week in Chicagoland!

Kathryn Proulx — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 14:30:38 +0000

Stop at the Sign of the Lemon

Vacation began by visiting my grandmother’s house in Rhode Island. Anyone that’s tried it, knows that Del’s Frozen Lemonade is UNREAL (aka very delicious). I cannot go to her house without stopping at Del’s.

Family Time

My family and I went to Chicago to visit my brother who started working there last September. We spent the weekend and early this week hanging out; going on architecture cruises, bike tours, seeing Beyonce (she was staying at our hotel!), going to the beach and then some.

The Big Bean

We went to the bean, which is a huge stainless steel sculpture by Anish Kapoor (and is actually called “Cloud Gate”). Cloud Gate is a staple of Chicago’s Millennium Park. My brother tried to convince me that it was made out of one piece of steel, I believed him until I just read the Wikipedia article and found it’s made of 168 welded steel plates. It looks so seamless though.

Jay Pritzker Pavillion

We also walked around the Jay Pritzker Pavillion. The band shell is like it’s own sculpture!

Barefoot Sailors

We went down to the harbor to look at all the sailboats. Many of the sailors were readying their boats for the Chicago Yacht Club’s Race to the Mackinac, one of the longest fresh-water sailboat races in the world. If you downloaded Youth + Constellations you may have read that my Dad used to race sailboats, which is part of my obsession with all things nautical. (Not to mention that I think it’s really cute that most of the deckhands go barefoot.)

Carved Turtles

I took a visit to the John G. Shedd aquarium. The architecture there (much like the rest of the city) was amazing. They even had sea turtles sculpted into the ceiling.

Underwater Garden

At the aquarium my favorite exhibit was these sea anemones that looked like an underwater garden. I love the colors! I was bummed that the aquarium didn’t have any huge sea turtles. But they had baluga whales!

96th Floor

On my last night in Chicago, I went to the top of the John Hancock building, to the 96th floor and looked over the city. It was an incredible view, and a perfect ending to my vacation.

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My Top 8

Kathryn Proulx — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 13:04:12 +0000

It’s about that time to start think about places that I would be psyched to work for. I love web-design (and a similar post on the topic should be coming shortly), too—but today is about magazines. After my internship last fall at W Magazine, I realized I’d love to be in the art or online department of any of these glossies; Preen – for their design and photography with a hint of psychedelics, i-D for their articles and history, V Magazine for being a magazine that knows how to translate to web, Interview – especially with M/M Paris at the helm (their website is great, too), W for the art director/group design director/everything, Bust for the perspective, Russh for the layout and photography (and location!), or Good Magazine for their design, website, overarching principals, and basically everything.

Beaches, Aquariums, Fireworks!

Kathryn Proulx — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 13:51:19 +0000

The past couple of weeks have been so much fun! Here’s how I’ve been enjoying my time off:

Chino and I drove to Boston to visit the New England Aquarium. Myrtle the turtle is my favorite! After, we went and saw the Under the Sea 3D Imax show, and it was awesome!

On the way to pick up his brother in Newark, Chino and I stopped in Teaneck, NJ to eat at Veggie Heaven (pretty good Vegan restaurant for those that are interested). We had time to kill so we walked down to Lark Street Music. Chino was in heaven, and I was just taking it all in. The owner collects rare vintage guitars, which I obviously know nothing about but as objects I loved the vintage Paisley/Flower Fender Stratocasters he had, and these amazing carved wood electric bodies he had hanging up. In the end Chino made an impulse buy and bought an Orange.

My friend Chris moved home from Santa Barbara. We’ve been going to the beach and playing with my dog nearly everyday. We’re making plans to go camping in Cape Cod soon.

I spent 4th of july jumping off the Bell Island Bridge in Rowayton and going to a barbeque at my friend Bianca’s house. I met a lot of new friends, ate a lot of desserts, tried shrimp cocktail for the first time (and liked it!) and watched a full-scale illegal firework show in her back yard. I still have individual cheesecakes I’ve been treating myself to. Yum!

What have you been up to lately?

Chino Gets a Haircut

Kathryn Proulx — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 13:09:30 +0000

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Beach Day!

Kathryn Proulx — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 01:10:38 +0000

Yea still rocking that Prada turban-inspired scarf head wrap. Gotta keep my bangs out of my face! Today, I spent the afternoon at the beach with my best friend, Ashley. Ahh to be funemployed!

Greetings From…

Kathryn Proulx — Fri, 22 May 2009 03:13:21 +0000

I just got home from a long, perfect summer day. The weather was amazing! After meeting up with my old art teachers from high school, I drove to West Haven and met up with my friend Chrissy. We rode our bicycles down to the water, where there is a long bike trail along the beach. It was low tide so we walked out onto the sand bar, about a quarter of a mile from where the high tide would be. We found 3 horseshoe crabs, (2 were spawning with each other—I looked it up and the males latch onto the females for months… so crazy!), what seemed like billions of little sea snails, and a lot of huge clam shells. It was super fun. On our way home we got ice cream and then I passed out on her couch so I could miss rush hour traffic on my drive home. PS: to me, nothing beats the feeling of taking a shower after a long day outside!

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