Author: Confessions of a Jetsetter

Confessions of a Jetsetter w/ Delia Flanagan

“Bosphorus Sea in Istanbul, Turkey…It is the exact meeting point where calmness prevails against the chaotic nature of this binary world…The East merges with The West, the old with the new…It is the exact location, where I recognized that you can indeed achieve the balance; the divide is an illusion. And this illusion is nothing but a sea of which you can navigate with ease, between the spirit of The East and the innovation of The West…”  – Delia Flanagan   024/100 of #100DaysofConfessions Instagram Project

Confessions of a Jetsetter w/ Tamar Adler

“Oh, there are so many, but the one that feels most right now is watching my now-husband act thoroughly bizarre on the beach in the Basque town of Deba last summer… He and I had spent the day bicycling from San Sebastián, with all our clothes for several days on our backs. We had stopped for lunch at the port town of Getaria and eaten goose barnacles and drank Txakoli. Then we stopped at the top of a mountain and ate peaches then promised to meet each other at the bottom of the long descent, at nearly sunset, into Deba. We got the last available room in the hostel in town, ate sheep’s cheese and drank hard cider we’d bought earlier in the day, then walked the few meters to the beach to watch the very end of the day… Pete was terribly jumpy, and kept running off to collect shells, then looking back at me, then running further. I couldn’t figure out why he was so frazzled and odd. Then suddenly, he jogged back …

Confessions of a Jetsetter w/ Cesarin Mateo

“Music and old classic films have a major influence on how I shoot and edit. It is what made me love photography to begin with. The two coexist within each other, one cannot live without the other… When I decided to travel to Rome on my own, all I had was my music and the classic films I have watched to visually guide me through the city, as well as a map. What made it more of an epic trip was waking up one early morning right when the sun was rising to explore the empty streets of Rome. Nothing is more beautiful and incredibly inspiring than to be in a place where there is so much history and having that all to yourself. Moments like these, that are the most simple and mundane, are what I typically find to be the most gratifying.” – Cesarin Mateo   022/100 of #100DaysofConfessions Instagram Project

Confessions of a Jetsetter w/ K. Tyson Perez-Harris

“A quick story about how I was able to sleep this well on a plane… I was supposed to be on a flight to Paris the day before but as I went to check in, I was informed that my passport had expired a month ago! So I had to get up at 6AM the next morning to get my passport renewed and stay up until my 9PM flight, which was only half booked. My luck because I was able to sprawl out and not wake up until arriving in Paris the next morning! Yes…True story. Mind you it was the day before the government shutdown of 2013. So I was extremely lucky on top of it also being Paris Fashion Week! Hahaha! I swore I wasn’t going to make it…” – K. Tyson Perez-Harris   021/100 of #100DaysofConfessions Instagram Project    

Confessions of a Jetsetter w/ Ericka Tapia

“Before Vogue’s poll of Brooklyn being the coolest place on the planet, before the hipster invasion, before the lovely art adorning our street corners– Brooklyn was always cool. Cool because of its raw diversity, attitude, style, and culture. I have some fond memories of why I love Brooklyn… I remember Bushwick block parties were always pop’n until they got shot up, I remember playing skelly top in Red Hook Projects and taking strolls up Court Street on hot summer days…I remember Coney Island on Easter Sundays and everyone from the hood had their very best on… I remember when Thrift Stores were second hand stores and you didn’t want to be caught dead in there because that meant you were poor…Now you’re actually considered cool and frugal if you shop Vintage — who knew! I remember taking the school bus from Red Hook Projects to an almost all white elementary school in Park Slope called Brooklyn New School. I even went to a high school called Brooklyn School For Global Studies– can’t get anymore Brooklyn …

Confessions of a Jetsetter w/ Miss Jetsetter

“Venice, Italy surprised me beyond words while I was visiting…I was in my early 20s and was taking a minor in Shakespeare at the time of my trip. Up until that point, my greatest interest besides traveling was Holocaust history & Shakespeare. I would have never thought that reading the play “The Merchant of Venice” would have linked my two interests as much as it did… Do you know where the word “ghetto” comes from? Well during a class session I learned that the word “ghetto” was first used in Venice, Italy to describe the part of town that the Jews were forced to live in during WWII. Many of these Jews, living in the Ghetto, were sent to concentration camps in the early 1940’s. The town is really off the beaten path and finding the right bridge to take to cross over can be a bit confusing. Visiting was actually overwhelming and weighted heavy on my heart. There’s such a strong sense of the past in the air and the plaques depicting their history sure …

Confessions of a Jetsetter w/ Shannon Hemmett

“After flying overnight from Vancouver to NYC, I found myself at the Museum of Modern Art standing in front of Pablo Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon… I was having a creative drought at the time and was eager to experience paintings that I’d only encountered in my books…I’d always been interested in Picasso’s attraction to masks and they play a central role in this piece. The brush strokes are confident from afar, but they are not clean on close inspection and one of the mask-like faces on the right hand side has been aggressively reworked in comparison to the rest of the painting… Yes, I realized that even Picasso reworked his canvases! It was important to see the potency of the imperfections, it was a pep talk about letting go and keeping an open mind in my own art practice…” – Shannon Hemmett // @shannonhemmett   018/100 of #100DaysofConfessions Instagram Project

Confessions of a Jetsetter w/ Guzman

“Cobra a Sans (known as first people)…man we met in Botswana’s Kalahari. He is a tracker, and medicine man, Cobra speaks to and understands the sentient beings in his environment…birds, scorpions, snakes, lions, meerkats, etcetera… He can read the markings and tracks of a myriad of animals, he is one with his environment. Meeting Cobra was absolutely life altering. Trackers reading prints, the landscape, intuit where when how … To quote Marcel Proust …the real journey of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but on having new eyes…” – Guzman AKA @lesguzman   017/100 of #100DaysofConfessions Instagram Project

Confessions of a Jetsetter w/ Mike Schultz

“When I am traveling, drawing helps me to see what is right in front of me. Not only is drawing a grounding, peaceful activity for me, but it truly helps me digest what is happening wherever I am. It slows me down, makes me really look, and connects me to the situation at hand. Living in South East Asia, drawing has helped me work through my culture shock many times. Also, because I am an art teacher, drawing has proved to be an incredible mode of communication between myself and my Burmese students, even when there is a language barrier…”   – Mike Schultz AKA @mike_schultz_studio   016/100 of #100DaysofConfessions Instagram Project

Confessions of a Jetsetter w/ Brianne Miers

“Even though I’ve never really had a lot of money – with school loans, going to graduate school full-time and working mostly for non-profits – I’ve always made travel a priority. For as long as I can remember, I’ve preferred to spend what money I do have on new experiences instead of material possessions. This philosophy has allowed me to see a lot of the world, meet a lot of fascinating people and make a lot of memories that will keep me smiling well into old age – from sharing a seat with an armadillo on a bus in Belize to drinking wine on the banks of Seine with a handsome Parisian man. On the flip side, I drive a 2003 Honda Civic.” – Brianne Miers AKA @brimiers   015/100 of #100DaysofConfessions Instagram Project