Notes from the Studio: New York City Here I Come!

New York City Memories from When I Lived There 20 Years Ago!

Right now, I'm heading on a big jet plane to New York City! I'm off on a girls weekend, meeting up with a college friend for fun. I just can't wait.

It's hard to believe it's been 20 years since I lived in New York City. What?! 20 years? How on earth has time gone by so fast? In some ways, it seems like just yesterday, and in others, a lifetime ago. So many things have changed, but then again, so many things remain the same.

At the top is a collage of pictures I took of New York when I lived there. I was going to graduate art school at Pratt Institute and thoroughly engrossed in computers and art. At the time, multi-media (on CD-ROMs) was blossoming and I wanted to be a part of it. I got my first email address through a very progressive community called EchoNYC. It was dial-up with a command line interface, but the "chat" feature was very cool. The web was in it's absolute infancy. There was talk that the Whitney Museum (in New York) was building a website, and everyone wanted to know more. There were no cell phones, no iPads, no digital cameras, no texting. These things may have been invented, but were definitely not part of everyday living like today. When I think how far technology has come since I lived in New York, it's clear 20 years has passed.

But when I look through the images above, it's fun to see that a lot of what was attractive to me then, still interests me today. Finding back streets with colorful street art, exploring the whimsical Coney Island, the adventure I took to Fulton Fish Market at 5AM, the beauty of the subway that got me everywhere - at any time... For this weekend away, I hope to have some crazy adventures like those back then.

I'll definitely be posting some pictures from the road. As the saying goes, "The more things change, the more they stay the same." Look forward to finding out if this is true!