myakiznak

hello, i'm a phd student in edinburgh (though i am from the bronx in new york city, and birmingham in the uk, if one can be from two places) studying post-war architectural design and planning. i paint and make things in my spare time as it is much more fun then reading more books on my subject. I often get painters block and so having a goal in creating things for others will be excellent! I love architectural things, especially between the years 1910 and 1978 (adding to this anything victorian and made of brick, and the new york city tenements), specifically mass/public housing of the post war period. I speak russian, though not fluently, and think cyrillic is one of the coolest looking alphabets (and the russians have some amazing housing left over from the soviet period, as do estonia, latvia, etc). other random interests are little birds (house sparrows), graphics, post-war design (furniture, patterns, clothing, anything really from 1945 until 1975, though not all that time is considered 'post-war', it kind of is in planning terms, one day i'll see the 20th century like a normal person again), design as in alvar aalto chairs, marimeeko fabrics, mod mini dresses, tube like tables, anything on skandium basically.my favourite painters are the photorealists, egon schielle, soviet realists, and architectural drawings by most anyone.

since many people seem to have a dislikes part, i will too. i'm not very taken by victoriana, cherubs and scrapbooking, or at least the ones i've seen. that doesn't mean I hate it, if you do something alternative with scrapbooking i'd be interested, but those cherubs with mothers and babies with some words doesn't do it for me. sorry. don't get me wrong, dickens is one of my favourite authors, henry mayhew, blah blah blah, but for the working man there was nothing to be nostalgic about in the victorian period...slums, back to backs, work houses, poverty, yep. otherwise, anything, as anything can be done in such a way that i will like it. even pink.

i'm new to this swapping thing.

cabaret voltaire, depeche mode, eagles of death metal, eddie flashin fowlkes, adult., g-unit, yat-kha, ESG, parliament and other funk, sister nancy, tv on the radio, madness, portishead, joy division, and erm, snap music, baltimore club music.

most anything korean (old boy, lady vengeance), zoitochi (spelling probably incorrect), early hal hartley, spirited away (though in general manga stretches my nerves to, well, past breaking point), cold comfort farm, withnail and i and the stalker (absolutely beautiful).

poirot, cadfael, the wire (the greatest and most consistant cop-esque show ever), peep show, black adder, black books, nathan barley, spaced.

oil painting (i mostly make portraits, mostly), watercolours, intaglio printmaking, drawing. those are not really crafts i suppose, though i do occassionally paint on found objects, which makes it all a bit more crafty, maybe.