Head's Up

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It's called photoblog.

Hunting

Tonight, in lieu of doing school homework, I decided to work on another bit of homework - wedding homework. I've been meaning to look at patterns and fabric for my bridesmaids dresses for some time but haven't gotten around to it. Wow. Have I ever been missing out. There are some amazing patterns out there for all you ambitious seamstresses.
Among the few cute ones, I found countless dresses of considerable levels of hideousness. I'd like to share of few of my favorites with you.Here we have the timeless Tartan, structured dress - with a little swoop in the neck for all you daring ones. Who ever was allowed to put that fabric and that design together?

This pattern is for all those who wish to look 8 months pregnant. Have we not learned from "What not to wear" that one should never wear flowing top with flowing bottom? Why would those pieces ever be brought together on one model?

This is even better - it is so lovely they couldn't bear to put it on a real person... or even try sewing it for real. Perhaps, if you were a French model living in New Jersey in the 1960s where you frequently attended garden parties - maybe - you could wear this. But wait, this pattern was not in the vintage section so no one should ever find an excuse to wear it.


I'm not sure I can even add something to this. Angel - nightgown - costume - thing?

But this one... this one takes the cake. Or maybe it IS the cake. A funeral cake for Count von... Victorian... Queen Isabella?

This Week's Culture

Somehow this week's homework has largely consisted of my professors telling me to go check something out on the internet, and, more specifically, wikipedia (yeah, who knew).

"Dorthea Lange's best-known picture is titled "Migrant Mother".
The woman in the photo is Florence Owens Thompson, but Lange apparently never knew her name. ... Lange spoke about her experience taking the photograph:

I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet. I do not remember how I explained my presence or my camera to her, but I do remember she asked me no questions. I made five exposures, working closer and closer from the same direction. I did not ask her name or her history. She told me her age, that she was thirty-two. She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds that the children killed. She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food. There she sat in that lean-to tent with her children huddled around her, and seemed to know that my pictures might help her, and so she helped me. There was a sort of equality about it."

These are the two films I will be seeing at the Nickelodeon this week. The first is a hopeful, and not required. The second is our weekly film, which this week includes a Q&A session with the director.

THE RAPE OF EUROPA
"The Rape of Europa" is a feature documentary that takes the audience on an epic journey through seven countries and into a violent whirlwind of fanaticism, greed, and warfare that threatened to wipe out the artistic heritage of Europe. For twelve long years, the Nazis looted and destroyed art on a scale unprecedented in history. But heroic young art historians and curators from America and across Europe fought back, mounting a miraculous campaign that would rescue and return the millions of art works displaced by the war. Joan Allen narrates this chronicle about the battle over the very survival of centuries of western culture.


APPARITION OF THE ETERNAL CHURCH BY PAUL FESTA
In this award-winning film, 31 artists and thinkers listen to a ten-minute piece of music through headphones and describe what they hear. What all but a few don't know is that the music is Olivier Messiaen's monumental organ work Apparition of the Eternal Church. A devout Catholic and the organist at the Church of the Trinity in Paris, Messiaen wrote this music to send listeners to the heights of spiritual ecstasy. In actuality however, Festa's listeners respond in wildly different fashions. ... Together, the music and its interpreters conjure something like what William Blake famously called "the marriage of heaven and hell."

Nostalgic Pavement

I love the smell of warm chlorine in the winter - when you are walking down a cold street and you get that whiff of pool. One of those wonderful dichotomies, like smelling sunscreen in the snow. It's as if the world got all rolled up into one awesome day.

Weekend Homework

This being my last semester I've become quite used to doin' some kind of homework on the weekends. That's what weekends are for afterall. This year, however, my homework is taking pictures since I have 3 photography classes. w00t!

Humanitarian Education.

Tonight, in my Arthouse films class, we watched a documentary called Darfur Now. A British girl who works with the I Vote for Darfur coalition was there with letters for people to sign that she would be taking to the capitol. I was at the South Carolina Save Darfur rally in October - it had a great turn out and was very moving and informative, but I am so glad I also had the opportunity to see this film for a class. It was powerful. At the same time as working on the emotions of the audience it also was massively informative. Hearing more details regarding the progress that was being made to recognize, if not try to stop, the genocide was both hopeful and despairing. But it was awesome having letters to sign that were being sent to representatives and the like... it reminded me of going to the Karmans or the Maynards growing up and writing something or signing something that would later change homeschooling laws. It was funny how the professor had just been telling us to think about our experiences and our filters through which we see films, and try to figure out what it is that we are bringing to a film before we see it, and something like signing some sort of homeschool lobbying letter years ago would come back to me in a South Carolina arthouse theater.

Devot

When God works his miracles, we have to laugh at our own foolishness. If we still persist in worrying and planning, then we are no disciples of his. Many, I fear, never see God work for them because they always have a way out - some friend perhaps, who migh help a itle if God does not! Most to be pitied are those who brought to a supreme crisis, still find an avenue of escape. For necessity is the foundation for miracles To escape the one is to miss the other. Great difficulties are meant only to force us out of ourselves into reliance on him. When there is no way forward or back, then God is able. He has a plan. So do not fear impossibilities. They are of no account to him. Fall a his feet and wait for him to act. A miracle is ahead.

See: 2 Kings 6:15
- A Table in the Wilderness, Watchman Nee

I needed this did you?

Surprise

So apparently I was wrong about the new computer. He's here. He also has new iPhoto which allows RAW files which means you get to see some works in progress. Enjoy.

Inc BS

For those of you who don't know... that actually means "Incoming at the Blacksmith." It's from WoW. I've been doin' alot of battlegrounds lately cause I've only had 30 min to an hour to play. Hopefully, I've figured out a schedule to get back to leveling. However, the bigger and better news is that my computer and digital darkroom are arriving this week. Which means I will be able to post new pictures soon.

Photos will be from my 490p class which is photography portfolio class. The first project is on jazz. I'm taking photographs right now and will hopefully be processing and posting them this week.

Intro to Printmaking

My first project in Printmaking is a Linocut.
Linocuts generally look like woodcuts; they use the same tools and techniques, and often use the same styles. I'm a big fan of German Expressionism and love the look that can be produced and the expressive abilities of the medium.
The title of the project is Self-Portrait as Evil Doppleganger (aka: a drawing of me as my complete opposite). It has been mentioned to me that my opposite is perhaps a sorority girl, so I'm going with that idea. The image is supposed to be dynamic, from about waist up, and including hands.

I've done a few preliminary drawings, and I'm getting excited for the actual cutting and printing process.

[Here's a picture I found of my boy Picasso working on a Linocut.]

Snow at Carolina

Last night we had some wet flakes coming down for about two hours. It's not much, but it was enough to give some kids a late opening and make lots of people very excited. My roommate who is from here said she hasn't seen snow since she was in 8th grade. You can imagine the general excitement that has lingered even through the cold rain of today.

What to buy?

So I'm checking out software to purchase for my photography classes. Originally I was going to purchase Adobe Creative Suite, but now I'm considering dropping the suite programs (indesign and co.) and purchasing Photoshop and Lightroom. Now, I don't know...

For those who don't know anything about any of those products. The Suite is actually 4 (5?) programs that can produce any type of image for any type of print (no website design) media production. The thing is I only know how to use Photoshop in the suite While the other option is Photoshop and Lightroom which are together the ultimate photo digital darkroom. Lightroom as a large file management/photo editing program and photoshop the beefy digital photo creation program. Hmm...

For Tracy

First Day of School

Oh my. The first day of school comes so often. It sounds momentous and then it just comes and goes.
I bought a bag full of strange things today, and a few bags of normal things, for strange purposes. The first contained things such as Duralar, transfer paper, a window scraper, a Bone folder, Yes glue and a brayer. The second bag held things like vegetable oil, baby powder, wax aper, cotton swabs and paper towels. The first bag held printmaking items all new to me and was purchased at City Art in the Vista where people are helpful and friendly and the prices aren't bad. The second bag came from Walmart, also for printmaking, apparently for printmaking cleanup. Who knew.
I went through most of the day without eating. I had felt sick when I woke up, so I didn't eat. Then I didn't get home till well after lunch, when I then just wanted a nap. So tonight I was going to cook chicken, but discovered that it takes forever to thaw. And after reading all sorts of scary things on the internet, I stuck them in the fridge to do the rest of their thawing, and proceeded to wipe down all the kitchen with Clorox wipes (we don't as of yet have bleach at the apartment). Now I'm cooking cornbread muffins. They look alright so far, although the cornmeal scared me a bit at first because it has little dark black and reddish flakes in it that look almost like bugs, but the pictures on the front have the same thing so I'm guessing it's okay. And it's brand new.
Hopefully everything will turn out alright.

Monday

Is it a bad monday if you stayed up the night before finishing a book, you don't take a shower cause there is no hot water, you have a cold, and you can't get warm?

Food, What Else?

Dinner was quasi-Asian: terriyaki ramen and green tea. I was planning to eat quasi-Mexican food (spiced up black bean burritos), but was thwarted by lack of a can opener.
Maybe next time.

The New

Early this morning we arrived back in South Carolina to a new year, a new semester and, for me, a new roommate. As we stumbled into the house, tired from some relatively eventful flights and a foggy drive home, we saw how everything was clean and packed up after the Christmas craziness. There was a new verse on the kitchen black board that I thought an appropriate selection for the new year:

"Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creation; old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new." 2 Cor. 5:17

We are constantly being made new: Christ is always renewing our spirits and providing us freedom to live each day with His power and the joy of His love, but it is especially good to remember that promise on the start of a new year.

Update: in case anyone was keeping track of my last year's resolution to read the Bible in one year this is what happened: it turned out that I switched it 'round about September to reading the OT in one year. This I accomplished as of about 11:45pm December 31st. The new resolution is to read the NT in Spring semester and we'll go from there.

Goodbye Portland

So this will be my first post on the new blog. Alli is sitting here reading as I type. Just thought I'd drop a little line to say Goodbye to my soon to be home. It'll be a couple more months, but here's to the beginning of the new experience.

Quelf

"To ancient lands and distant music"
"The chickens on fire!"
"Apple"
"What the heck Batman, I mean Holy heck Batman."
"I need my pills"
"Pardone moi"
"Ned, Ned, Ned I wish you were dead"
"Box blouse"
"I'm the Fat Lady!"
"Holy language acquisition class Batman"
"Holy Batman Batman"
"Ned I wish you would bring me a boyfriend not a timberwolf"
"My favorite was when we sat on Stephanie's lap"
"Say 'Flee!'"
"Alli had to put ice down her pants."

You too could have this great game.

Snowboard Season 2008

This year our snowboarding season is tragically short. Even with all the dumpings of beautiful powder, we cannot ride. But at least we were here for two weeks and were able to spend Saturday up at Timberline.

Josh and I in the day lodge, getting ready to head out.

We were so excited to check out the new Jeff Flood lift and all the rad new terrain. Lisa, in front of the new lift.

Our boys were a little under the weather, as it were, and only lasted till lunch. Here they are, pouting.

This is me, standing in the parking lot to show you how high the snow banks were. Aaamazing.

Lisa digs out the car while the boys load it up after a fabulous day on the mountain. I love snow.