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Art

Made It Out Alive…

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…and I’ve got the photos to prove it! The building was amazing, the tour guides were pretty knowledgeable and overall ambiance was creeptastic. But, I think the key to taking a photo of a ghost is to have a truly cheap camera and a trembling hand because I caught NOTHING worth noting that I didn’t paint in with one of our flashlights. That being said, the photo opportunities in the hospital were spectacular – full of beautiful textures and gorgeous mixed colors. So, if I got nothing out of the experience, it was amazing photos. I apologize for the blurred images…Kate was insistent that I keep them “because they show the frenzied feeling of being there.”

Fun with Fireworks

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Last night marked my first ever trip to the urban landscape of Franklin, PA for a fireworks watching excursion. Usually we go to Clarion’s river hill for this, but there was just no way (save for teleportation) that I was going to be able to go to work and make it home in time on Thursday. However, despite changing tradition, we actually had a better time of it in Franklin. The show itself was more spectacular and the location – the back lawn of one of my dad’s coworkers – provided a much better view of the festivities. My cousin, Seth, took it upon himself to orchestrate a miniature fireworks display before the main event started. All of these sparkly lights provided me plenty of opportunity to play with the Nikon D80 work just bought me. I’ve made a really lovely Flickr set, which you can view here thanks to the wonder of Flash!

Pins & Needles

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For awhile now I’ve been quietly dealing with a nihilistic quality in the very core of myself. Maybe I was consciously aware of its presence and maybe I wasn’t, at least not entirely. This little voice deep down inside has been there, always causing me to negate the value of things I really want to hold valuable. For example, I may think “Man, that is a truly beautiful Mercedes…the lines, the color, the presentation of the design language!” but my personal Nietzche will then counter with “Think of the resources depleted to build it and the money required to buy it…it’s destroying the world! How dare you care!” I get really, really excited about art and design and purpose-built beauty – but then find myself feeling guilty because of the impracticality of these things, or the attention they may draw away from what I perceive to be bigger concerns.

Of course, some things fall outside of this sphere. Love, friendship, family, humor, sadness, sex, achievement and learning are just a few “pure” elements that cannot fall victim to my analytical dissection. They do, though, occasionally get lost in the silt clouds as I muddy the waters with near-constant mental struggles.

How sad, right? How utterly ridiculous…how arrogant to think that it’s my sworn duty to worry about “the BIG picture” at all times.

Well, enough is enough. I can’t be rid of my nihilism – indeed, I think it’s probably one of my most important characteristics, one that creates a tension that’s extraordinarily valuable for viewing my world – but I can decide that some things are worthy of passionate exploration, devotion and interest. I think I’m going to start listing these things as they come to me and I’m not going to allow myself to question them.

Today’s items that matter are:

  • “the future” – as thought of by people who believe in rocket packs and jet cars
  • German automobiles
  • sustainability in the realm of the environment and the economy (not separable anyway)
  • games
  • the technology that confounds and defies what we expect – even when Apple is being evil
  • the sense of calm that comes from cleaning my apartment
  • a new pair of shoes
  • traveling someplace new and exploring on foot, in no particular direction, just because I want to
  • the first steps into a museum that I’ve never visited before
  • painting, even when I’m crap at it
  • listening to a new album and finding the hidden lyrical gems that will make me smile every time I hear them
  • designing something that’s wholly mine – and being a pain in the ass to protect it
  • spending the whole morning in bed and then eating a totally pancake-filled breakfast and drinking way too much coffee
  • watching an Almodóvar film and marveling at the wicked plot twists and character quirks
  • a straight row of just-planted grapes – or even a crooked one

Since I’m at work, I should probably stop and, you know…work. But, this list had to come out this morning while it was still fresh and felt important.

Frankly, I feel better already. 🙂

One Year On…

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I’ve been in Chestertown for over a year now. And, I’ve been working for the school for exactly one year today. To commemorate this (and mostly because she wanted to take photos,) Tara and I took a walk to capture the blooming things. I recalled as we were finishing up that about a year ago I did the exact same thing, captivated as I was by the blooming EVERYTHING of this little town.

For your perusal:

A very good weekend, indeed.

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I just saw Dusty off, on his way home from a totally excellent visit to Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Well, that’s how I’d describe it, anyway…I hope he’d tend to agree. This weekend was the Lit House’s “Literature at the Margins Festival” featuring two webcomics, Jeph Jacques and Aaron Diaz, as well as the H.P. Lovecraft scholar, S.T. Joshi and a local science fiction author, Peter Heck. It was two days of readings, panel discussions and general geekery. Very fun, overall, though poor Kate had to work herself silly to help the students pull everything off. But, we all did get to hang out with the honored guests on Friday evening and she made it over to spend time with us last night after the events. Dusty picked a rather excellent three days to spend here, as far as there actually being things to do in town goes.

When not listening to smart people talk about their incredibly clever lives and works, we spent our time eating huge amounts of Mexican food, drinking lots of the Easter-appropriate Awesomer Than Jesus cocktails and listening to excellent music. Dusty discovered he loves “Xavier: Renegade Angel” and I rediscovered how fantastic Hard ‘n Phirm really is. We played a bit of Mass Effect (read, I played) this morning while Dusty alternated between napping and reading his first few pages of “Transmetropolitan.” Then it was time for Easter dinner with Tara (aka: Shannon) and Kate. I experimented with making a vegetarian moussaka…and was told it actually turned out quite well. This impresses me because it was a complete leap of culinary faith.

And then, just like that, the weekend was over. Dusty departed, Kate went to get some groceries (maybe…if the store is open) and Tara went back to her own tiger cat. So here I sit, in the dark because I’m too lazy to reach two feet to turn on the office light, listening to MGMT and drinking my second cup of coffee. But, it was a great last couple of days and makes me look forward to the next time I have a visitor! Dusty, you may bring yourself back anytime you so desire. Hoover, you are next!

New Painting…Not Sold On This One

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I just completed a painting I’ve been working on for the last two weeks. And when I say working on, I mean I started it two weeks ago, got fed up with it and let it sit idly in my office for the last few days while I tried to figure out what to do with it.

See the lime looking thing in the corner? I had a dream about that several months ago (a time with no water colors.) I wrote down a description of it and thought “well, now I’m set to paint.” However, I did not realize that I had nothing to go off of other than that small description so filling the rest of the paper was a bit of a challenge.

I eventually decided that I’d put some words on the rest of the space and settled on a quote from Matisse about color. The text reads: “Seek the strongest color effect possible…the content is of no importance.” I’d say this pretty well sums up my life as a designer.

I dunno, though. What do you think?

Thank you, Versailles…

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…for giving the world such a spectacular fountain! Something seemed so alien about this photo from Flickr so I just went all out. Bioluminescent insects: check. Ancient map of Europe: check. Crazy colour scheme: check and check. I call it “The Frog Prince.” Enjoy at 1440 x 900 by visiting my portfolio.

The Frog Prince

A day in Baltimore…

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My mom and sister are visiting me this weekend which is all kinds of exciting. It’s been wonderful having people in my house for a change, even if their stuff has completely overtaken nearly every room. Today we drove into Baltimore where the American Visionary Art Museum was putting on its Kinetic Sculpture Race. The event is completely crazy and the “winner” is the vehicle that comes in dead middle after the amphibious run through the city. We were totally late arriving but – as with everything artsy – the race started 30 minutes behind schedule. Parking on Federal Hill (illegally) we made our way right to the best vantage point quite by accident. I snapped a goodly amount of photos, hosted on Flickr, of course. I even made a video:

Afterwards, we toured the Museum and enjoyed an awesome seafood lunch at the Inner Harbor followed by an impromptu tour of the city (read: I got lost.) Then there was shopping in Annapolis and pizza dinner back at mine. My mom – fully caffeinated – decided that we had to drive to Dover for a Target run and DQ binge. Fun, but exhausting. We are regrouping with Divine Design and computers at present. Tomorrow: breakfast with Kate and a bit more kicking back before they hit the road. Hooray for weekends!