#izzy wolfson

[izzymccoy]

11/19 - Numbers

The Newborn Intensive Care Unit (NICU) is on the second floor of the Wolfson Children’s Hospital. There are (strangely) zero stairs, but six different elevators can get us there. There are five doors on the right side of the hallway leading to the NICU entrance. The floor’s one and only public restroom is on the left side (it is … busy).

Once inside the NICU, we’re faced with a number we’ll never forget: three minutes. Before anyone can go see their little one, they must wash their hands—fingertips to elbows—for three long minutes with a hospital-provided hard plastic scrubber. This number may feel arbitrary, but it is the law. Above each sink is a button that starts a huge digital clock. Tear open the scrubber, hit the button, and wash. Don’t forget to use the blue plastic stick to get under your fingernails.

Often while taking the scrubber and that weird red soap over my hands for the 400th time, I daydream about attending Isabelle’s 40th birthday. And even though I’ll be so old at that point that I might forget my own name, I guarantee I’ll remember how long I had to wash my hands at the NICU.

The numbers get a whole lot more meaningful once we reach Izzy’s bedside (space No. 218). Her blood saturation needs to be between 88-95. Her heart rate should be between 160-180. The oxygen level in her isolette should be under 50%. Her PIP should be in the mid 20s. The many machines hooked to Isabelle provide us real-time updates on all of these numbers and more. Every day, we go and watch them.

We are now familiar with our stomachs dropping along with her vitals. We know the exact pitch of the alarms sounding, the shade of red on the screen. We know her oxygen level remains dangerously high. But we also have a new appreciation for the uneventful days when we don’t have to count the number of nurses in our space.

And the last few days have been thankfully, blissfully, wonderfully uneventful. Izzy is enjoying one of her best stretches yet. Conferences at the bedside to discuss ways to bring down her heart rate or treat her pneumonia have been replaced with high-fives about how good she looks and laughs about how she just peed all over Dad’s hands when he tried to change her diaper.

Here’s one more number: 3 pounds, 11 ounces. Our girl is growing! Which means Ensley can officially start buying her clothes! Prepare for insanely cute photos soon.

[thejerseybrat-blog]

Cont. from here // @purpleshopkeep

“Fair enough,” Izzy nodded with a half-smile as he unrolled the stack. When he ~relieved~ Vae from it, he didn’t really think about how much it could have been. He just saw it was thick, he didn’t really care whether it was a bunch of fives or tens.

Turns out it was a bunch of fifties and a few twenties. Izzy bit the inside of his lip to stifle a giddy laugh. He probably held half of - if not all - of Vae’s paycheck in his hands. Poor bastard should have switched to credit card long ago, too bad he was old fashioned like that. 

He glanced up at the shopkeeper, spreading the money before her as if he was revealing his cards.

“Andrew Wolfson and Ulyhiss S. Gnarl are at your service, ma’am,” he announced proudly, then he thought of Vae again and bit his lip. Old fart had a lot of patience, but he might flip the table if he finds out Izzy actually stole from him (he stilled considered it lent money), a substantial amount, no less. 

“Um... do you happen to have any protective scrolls or at least mustard gas?”

[vm4vm0]

Sofia Wolfson - Nothing's Real (Official Video) from William Lancaster on Vimeo.

Director • William Lancaster Producer • Izzy Cassandra-Newsam Cinematography • Grace Gallagher Costumes • Riley Street Gaffer • Sean Crump, Will Simmons Grip • Chester Milton, Estelle Cooper Editor • William Lancaster Visual Effects • William Lancaster

[nofomoartworld]

Art F City: L.A. Art Diary: Week Two, Part Two

A Parker Ito transfer painting in the office of Chateau Shatto, One of my favorite images I’ve seen of L.A.

Michael Anthony Farley (lifelong non-driver) is in Los Angeles, checking out the art scene and learning to love the city. Read parts one and two of his L.A. diary. 

Saturday 7/1

“At this stage” Installation view.

I am hungover and terrified that I agreed to go to yoga.

Thankfully, Megan Gordon, artist and L.A. tour guide extraordinaire, is also hungover. We decide to skip yoga. “Sigh of relief” is the breathing exercise I learn today. She picks me up and we head to Downtown’s Chateau Shatto. The drive takes about 45 minutes longer than it should, because there is an anime convention happening a few blocks away from the gallery. Megan explains that L.A. drivers aren’t used to this many pedestrians (let alone ones in giant wigs and spandex outfits) so people “just kind of sit at intersections waiting to see what other people do”.

We arrive at the gallery, and the current show At this stage seems to reflect many of the same uncertainties as True Lies, the show I had seen the night before. With a hangover, however, the show here is mildly panic-inducing rather than commiserative. There’s a small mountain of American flag scraps in the middle of the gallery. The piece, Gardar Eide Einarsson’s “Flagwaste (Stars and Stripes)”, is made up of waste materials collected from flag factories. Around it, monitors display works by Jordan Wolfson and Elaine Sturtevant, among others. One Wolfson piece, “Con Leche,” follows a gaggle of animated Diet Coke bottles as they cheerfully traverse post-industrial suburbia. All the while, a narrator flatly discusses things like the bioaccumulation of toxins in our bodies. It’s upsetting on a level my hungover self isn’t prepared for.

We embrace the healing power of greasy/spicy eggplant in a Chinatown eatery where Rush Hour 2 was filmed, apparently. We’re ready to see more art.

I’m told Chinatown is fading as an arts neighborhood, but there are still plenty of galleries—many occupying niche specialties. The Los Angeles Contemporary Archive is an artist-run library with the near-impossible goal of indexing the city’s vast art scene. It’s unfortunately closed when we attempt to pop in, as is the Institute for Art and Olfaction, where artist Saskia-Wilson Brown teaches workshops about the potential of scent. The Good Luck Gallery, which specializes in “outsider artists” is open, however. They have a show up of self-taught Anna Zemánková’s mixed-media illustrations of imaginary plants. The late artist, who began making work in her retirement, left behind a relatively small portfolio of drawings incorporating embroidery and pieces of fabric. We’re told a substantial number of her surviving works are on display here. We decide to skip Velveteria: The Museum of Velvet Paintings because we don’t feel like paying the admission while we’re already short on time.

Christine Stormberg, “Virgin and Child”

The highlight of Chinatown is undeniably Christine Stormberg’s solo show Tina Warrior Princess Gallery at Leiminspace. The show features lumpy figurative cement sculptures and oil paintings depicting everything from grotesque Madonna-like icons to a huge painting titled “Lesbian Twins”. All the work is high-femme but exaggerated and slightly ridiculous—a diptych features feet bulging out of stripper heels and the shorts one of the sculptures is wearing sit about an inch off her butt, exposing her crack. Everything in here is great.

Christine Stormberg, “Standing in Line for the Club”.

Paul McCarthy at Hauser & Wirth, installation view.

It’s a bit of a disappointment, then, to arrive at Paul McCarthy’s solo show at Hauser & Wirth. Here, he’s going for a similar grotesqueness, but in massive wooden sculptures that resemble toys warped in both scale and perspective. They’re monumental but disconcertingly illegible—the luxurious wooden carvings don’t lend themselves to the same graphic sensibility as Stromberg’s vulnerable sculptures. They just look expensive and large—unapproachable in a way that negates their sensuous potential.

Hauser & Wirth

Then again, everything about Hauser & Wirth’s Arts District location feels expensive and large. It’s a massive warehouse complex around a central courtyard, complete with “a ridiculously expensive brunch spot” at the center of the compound. The works in the other galleries aren’t all that impressive either. Monika Sosnowska’s massive sculptures—in which architectural details are crumpled into inutile abstractions—are memorable only due to their size. The curatorial ethos here seems to be “shock and awe” with scale, rather than providing any opportunities for intimate access to actual content. After roughly twenty minutes walking around the cavernous spaces, I decide my time is better spent at a dinner party.

Sunday 7/2

I notice a peculiar tendency in Los Angeles: people frequently make oddly specific plans without going into any details explaining precisely what they are. I am told to meet at a friend-of-a-friend’s apartment because we’re being picked up to attend *something* that another friend-of-a-friend curated. I am told it involves the beach, and to dress accordingly.

Myself and a group comprised mostly of male models and artists assemble in Hollywood and are picked up by a party bus. No one seems to know exactly where we’re going, but champagne is flowing so there are few complaints. About an hour later, we’re herded into a VIP area (I can’t tell if it’s a house or restaurant) and handed whisky. I still have no idea what this curatorial endeavor we’re here to see is.

Hours later, we’re in an Uber to Malibu (despite my best protestations to the fact that Malibu is really far away) and I find myself at a house party, stranded over an hour away. I fall asleep in a guest room, and the last thing I see is a Jeff Koons Da Vinci purse for Louis Vuitton.

Monday 7/3

I’m performing at Exposure Drag, an eclectic queer night at a Highland Park punk bar. From the start of my time in L.A., Highland Park has been an uncommonly hotly discussed topic—the neighborhood is rapidly gentrifying, as yoga studios and chain stores push out taquerias and laundromats. Many Angelinos speak about spaces in the neighborhood as “a white people thing” or “a Mexican thing”. This night, however, is jam-packed and pleasantly diverse—with perhaps a slight majority of Latinx queers. There are performance art weirdos alongside more traditional drag queens, and the crowd is a nice mix of gay, straight, male, female, and everything in between.

#happy4thofjuly everyone from #unclesam singing #yankeedoodle . . . #dragking @spaceekadett making his #debut at #exposuredrag #theoffbeat #highlandpark #dragnight #dragshow

A post shared by Exposure Drag (@exposuredrag) on Jul 4, 2017 at 8:25pm PDT

The night is Independence Day themed. Two queens, Izzy A. She and Maebe A. Girl, put on a veritable soap-opera of a performance in which they alternately lip synch to prerecorded dialogue of housewives bickering about Fourth of July barbecues, and music. It’s so good. The drag king Spacee Kadett emerges as the world’s most terrifying Uncle Sam. For the first time since I’ve arrived in L.A., I feel at home.

from Art F City http://ift.tt/2syWdg4 via IFTTT

[izzymccoy]

1/27: Happy Tired

If our adventure with Izzy was a movie script, this would have been the perfect ending: Ensley finishing the last lap of a 5K in support of Wolfson Children’s Hospital, turning the corner into the crowded baseball stadium for the final few steps, then suddenly she’s mobbed by me and about 30 of our closest friends. We all cross the finish line ugly crying and happily chanting “IZZY! IZZY!”

When we look back on Izzy’s journey, yesterday’s run will always be a part of the story. It was a celebration of the spirit that has imbued us since she was born: We’ve all become happy fighters. 

From the first email Ensley’s friend Lauren sent proposing the idea of doing the run, so many people rallied. We ended up filling four teams of 11. Pink “TEAM IZZY” shirts flooded that race area. The show of support was difficult to fathom; the amount of time and effort given by all of our busy friends and family was remarkable. At one point early in the day, I looked and Ensley and said, “Can you believe they’re all here for Izzy?” She hugged me and said she didn't want to think about it too much because she didn’t want to cry yet. 

The tears finally came at the finish line — It was a powerful, cathartic moment for us. It’s been a long, difficult few months, and we knew how much our friends did to keep us going.

And we’ll need them in the coming months as well ... When we bring Izzy home!

She’s been a little rock star the past few weeks. She’s putting on the pounds — over 8 now! —and getting stronger every day. So much so that we’ve been moved to Weaver Tower. Up here, she has her own room with a bathroom and a shower. Why? Because this is the final step before taking your baby home, and the staff wants you to spend more time with your little one. 

Feedings every three hours. Like a normal newborn!

How’s this for head-shakingly great: Izzy’s lungs are already healthy enough to come home. The last hurdle is learning to eat from a bottle and breathing at the same time. So we are ramping up — started at one bottle a day, now we’re at 4. Once she shows the staff she can finish bottles regularly, we can officially start packing up to go home. And since she is a Hill, we have no doubt she’s going to show everyone she can eat like a champ. 

One of the best lessons we learned from this experience was to celebrate the little victories. Well, yesterday was not small. It was a huge win, and a celebration we’ll never forget.