bubbling over

Petersburg feels smaller and smaller every day. Yesterday Andre invited me to go to the Sound the Alarm concert tonight. Then, Sasha called me earlier today to invite me to the same event! I showed up and ran into Frank, Maria and another Andre I know, after having just run into Piper on the street on the walk over.
There's an American music festival going on right now featuring contemporary classical composers. The show tonight was pretty incredible- a free show at the Hermitage theater, a rather small venue with amazing acoustics. I hadn't heard of Sound the Alarm before and they blew me away. The ensemble will play again Saturday, so I might have to go.
Whenever i talk about Russia and all the time i spend here, I always explain it as a love-hate relationship. It had been an abusive one for a while now, but right now I can genuinely say that I love it here. Superstition is making me pretend to spit over my left shoulder three times now as i type this (the traditional equivalent to knocking on wood here), but these last two weeks have just come up roses and here's why:
First off, I have really amazing friends here, it's humbling to be able to develop really close genuine friendships despite language bariers, and keep those friendships going over these past few years when i've been in and out of Russia.
Also- this week has been full of so many fun things that i've been rocketing off into happy moods in spite of ever shortening dark cold and wet days. The mouse on mars concert and this sound the alarm concert were fabulous, and I've been meeting so many fun people this last week.
Having this article due for the St. Petersburg Times this weekend really made me kick my butt into shape with the research I'm doing. I scoured the articles I'd brought with me and read throught the OT'TiSK print journal that Yuri leant me and typed up a 4 page overview of artist books in Russia from the Futurists to artists working in contemporary Petersburg. I'm really satisfied with how it turned out! i can't wait to see it in print in December. I didn't realize how much I actually missed working on my thesis until I started writing up this report. I love nerding out over a research project. Anyway, I learned Monday that I'd have to turn in any images to go along with the article on Wednesday (yesterday), so Tuesday I had to scramble around finding what I could. Tuesdays I meet with Yuri at the printmaking studio to work on my own book project, but this time we just discussed the Petersburg art scene. He gave me some Jpg's of his works to include with the article and let me photograph a bunch of books that he has on hand. The art community in St. Petersburg is really wonderful because it truly is a community. Yuri has a rich collection of hand-bound books from contemporary book-making artists which were all given to him because all these artists know each other and collaborate together. We were looking at "book object" works by Pushnitskii on his website and I said they'd be great for the article, Yuri just popped open his phone and his cell number handy. Yuri has just been a magnificent help in working on this project. From the first time I discussed it with him he has been nothing but enthusiastic and excited to talk about artist books and arrange for me to meet with everyone working in the field and always encourages me to grab books of the shelf "anything you need" he offers, to read and write away. He even assembled a light for me after Piotr refused to let us borrow his worklamp for 10 minutes so i could shoot pictures of artist books for the magazine. By assemble don't mean that he just screwed in a lightbulb, but he actually assmebled a light- hooking up wires and all!

alright, i know i'm gushing and sounding overly sentimental, but I have to overindulge in feeling so much at home here because it's been so rocky for so long. Things didn't start out so great when i was bumming around for the first month waiting for Yuri to get back in town and wondering how to work out my project. I hung out with friends a lot, i caught up on a good chunk of the TV that i missed out on over the last four years (having internet at home acts as such a vacuum sometimes) and I wondered how these next ten months would look.

also, i'm extremely thankful to have wonderful supporting parents who are willing to lend me some money via western union as I wait for my bank stuff to get sorted out. It took me three trips to Western Union before i got the money (the first time i didn't have the code i needed, the second they had just closed 15 minutes before) but if it were effortless and convenient, it wouldn't be Russia.