Free Manual Labor

Yes I said it, I have been chosen for free manual labor and creative ideas for erecting ezup's, hanging circus flags, painting lines, moving tables and chairs, organizing and cleaning. Also to add to my great week so far, the lines we spent hours painting yesterday were mowed in the afternoon (most of them stayed but a few needed to be redone...poop). So, yeah, today was a preparing for the fair day, moving, cleaning and organizing and everyone was doing it... however I even had the special job of getting coffee in the morning hours. I put up a few more flashy hot pink signs (which I have to remember to take some photos of) and hopefully they will stay put. Tomorrow is the artist check-in day and the last minute check list time before the fair begins on Friday morning at 10am. Last night I was also invited to a "Seen at the Museum" lecture and cocktail hour at the Museum of Wildlife Art for a lecture/demo by Ben Roth who talked about a sculptor (whose name escapes me now) who was influenced by jane goodall. It was really interesting and fun to do something different and talk with the intern who was working there as a curatorial intern- she was excited about helping someone hang a show. Glad I did that on my first day at the art association and will be doing it again next week too...
ok, time to get ready for some more LONG days and of course, free manual labor. However, I can get paid in another 78 hours of working!!

Dirty Work Day 2

I was too frustrated and exhausted to write a post yesterday. But for the most part I can sum it up in one long sentance. For 6 hours, Sarah and I drove around town asking business owner's permissions (since we had the town's permission) to put signs up along the road to inform people about the art fair... and we were quite successful. However as I was driving to my soccer game I noticed that none of the signs were up anymore and all our hard work was for naught... soo frustrating; later to find out that it was WYDOT who decided that the signs were too close to the road and took them all down!! *insert swear word here*
Today was a better day which started off at 7:30am painting lines for each of the 173 booths for the 240 artists in the fair. It took us about 4 hours, but was fun and the spray paint smell helped too! After that Sarah and I decided to put some more signs in the ground the way WYDOT informed us they won't take them from us (20ft from the road) and hung some more signs and went to two storage places to pick up some other last minute supplies! Overall, I very thrilling work day! Tomorrow is the day of the schlep! whooppee!!

Art Fair 101

Today was the first day of the long week ahead of setting up for the Jackson Hole Art Fair. In the morning I accomplished some very exciting organizing of Sharon's desk. For the afternoon, in fact for 3 hours, I drove around town putting up art fair signs everywhere!! It was super exhausting- in fact I am laughing at myself about how exhausted I was, but I was whopped. Here is a link to the art fair website: http://www.jhartfair.org/

Webmania...and more

On this beautiful Wednesday, I came to work all dressed up and ready to go. Today I did a little web analysis of the center's and the association's websites and came to the conclusion that they both need alot of work... i am supposed to be helping out with it, but Thomas has been procrastinating teaching me what to do. so maybe it will happen and maybe it won't! I also had a meeting today with all the staff, all 9 of us including me, to discuss getting ready for the art fair next week! Should be fun and super tiring as I will be working the next 2 weeks straight with no break on the weekend. FUN!! It should be really interesting to see how things are organized and the art work in the fair, so i'm looking forward to it!! I also walked around town today hanging flyers for a kids singing and theater concert coming up! fun, fun, fun...

Advertisement from the Class

Today was the last day of the class... it has been so great learning and teaching. I'm sad to see it end... next time, i guess! I forgot to post the info about the class before that is in the art association class list, so here it is:
Encaustic & Photographic Processes
Eve-Marie Bergren & Bronwyn Minton
July 5 - 8, 2007Thursday – Sunday, 10am – 5pm
4 Day Workshop$650 ($625 members)
Photography & Painting Studios
This four-day, hands-on workshop will provide artists with a basic working knowledge of combining alternative photographic processes with encaustic. We will explore creative ways to work with photography and encaustic. Experiments with various photographic processes include: toning, coloring, cyanotype, digital prints, and transfers. These experiments will then be incorporated into the encaustic process.
Eve-Marie Bergren received a BA in Painting and Printmaking from Whitman College, and an MFA from Vermont College. She has taught encaustics at art schools around the country. www.evemariebergren.com Bronwyn Minton received her MFA in photography from the San Francisco Art Institute and has a BFA In photography from the Rhode Island School of Design. Bronwyn teaches for the Art Association and is the Adult Education Coordinator at the NMWA.

Working on Stuff

Today was a creative day until I lost my creative juices... it was cool because I was able to come into work and work on my own stuff for a few hours and then I got tired... hehe... wasn't feeling the creative flow, so I called it a day. But I still helped out with setting some demo stuff up and figuring out cool methods to apply wax. Encaustic stuff is really cool, toxic, expensive, but super fun and i would recommend it to everyone to try out (at least once)!

Hooked...

So I am completely hooked on the encaustic process and can't wait to incorporate it into my work. Today was fun, eventhough I scanned and printed images and negatives for 5, yes thats right, 5 hours!!! after that there was a demo that Eve Marie performed about the first layer of wax on the boards (I can't wait to try it myself tomorrow!) and then I did a demo about polaroid emulsion lifts. it was cool because neither Bronwyn nor Eve Marie knew how to do it so I actually taught them something! Today was mainly a work day, but nice and tomorrow and Sunday are work days as well... I can't wait to test out the wax and see what I can do. I already made a cyanotype with one of my water pieces and glued it onto some wood to prepare it for tomorrow! so cool... i will be doing this in school in the fall!

Encaustic Photography

Today was the first day of a visiting artists series on encaustic practices and alternative photographic processes. I helped Bronwyn Minton and Eve Marie (can't remember her last name from R&F) teach the class. We started the day off setting up for the class, testing polaroids, finding colors for the wax and the very important job of finding box fans to help with the fumes that come with the encaustic process. Eve Marie started the day off talking about wax, what can be done with it and just techniques in general. We then had a slideshow to show examples of encaustic work- diego rivera and many, many others whose names I can never remember. In the afternoon the photo part started and Bronwyn and I taught about polaroids, polaroid transfers, cyanotypes, and using marshall's to paint and draw on photographs! It was really cool and fun to see the students (all adult females) so excited to get started learning the processes. I was also assigned to computer duty (since I was the only one who knew photoshop- whooppee!) so I scanned, edited and then printed the students images onto photo paper, inverted images to print them on film (that's used for overhead projectors and in this case, cyanotypes) and did other computer related activities! The day, after that, was over, and it seemed to be a very successful first day of a visiting artists series!

Summer Internship

I have made it out to Wyoming, finally, after a few weeks of puttering around the east coast. I began my internship at the Art Association on Friday with doing little things such as hanging signs for an opening that evening, some organzing and cleaning and just really getting acclimated. I also made a terrific trip to the post office to check the mail and mail some mail! Very exciting stuff :)

Today, Monday July 2nd, I worked with Thomas in the photography lab where he showed me the ropes: the darkroom, printers, scanners, all the equipment. I also found out that I am working with Bronwyn Minton on a visiting artists seminar at the end of this week for 4 days. So we met this afternoon to discuss what the course was and she is teaching all about alternative processes. I am also more like a co-teacher than a helper, so i'm psyched! It should be a good experience. Okay, more later.

Housatonic Museum of Art Opening!

I had my first big opening in Connecticut last night at the Housatonic Museum of Art in Bridgeport, Ct and it was great! I had three pieces in the juried show and here's the video. We didn't have a mic so they sound is a bit funky plus I don't have the slighest idea what i'm doing with video editing, but my bro is interviewing me. Enjoy!

Stacy's Birthday Bowling Adventure...

In celebration of Stacy's Birthday, we decided to go to this swanky bowling/club/restaurant/bar/ something else and we had a great time. Here is a quick scene of Valentina bowling for the first time ever!!

PhotoAwesome Commercial

Okay so the sound sucks... turn up your volume! It's being fixed at the moment, so i'll post another one when it's fixed by Zubair... also look closely into the background (hint: my photos are hanging on the wall)...
the sound is fixed now in this version...

Emerging Visions Show

The opening of a show I had a little while ago...

Rhinestones and Lipsticks!

I arranged a Rhinestones and Lipstick photo shoot for all of the females in the grad photo department. This is one of the shots that didn't make it onto the final poster, but it's still really cute and I'm posting it anyways. So enjoy! The real poster will be up shortly, when my photoshop decides not to freeze and close on me in the middle of editing. Whoopee!!

So I just noticed how weird it was that I have 5 posts a month for the past 3 months... interesting. Anyway, I guess I 've been so busy the last couple of weeks I haven't had time to write or post anything, let alone sleep. I'll try and get better... even if i'm just writing this for myself. oh well, my phone rang... more later buh bye.

Leo

So I don't normally read my horoscope, but I found this today on facebook, of all places, about a Leo in general and thought I would post it... first of all because it actually does sound like me and second of all, because it's good...

"Great talker. Sexy and passionate. Laid back. Knows how to have fun. Is really good at. Great kisser. Unpredictable. Outgoing. Down to earth. Addictive. Attractive. Loud. Loves being in long relationships. Talkative. Not one to mess with. Rare to find. Good when found."

So does it apply to me?
Personally I think it's "Great when found!!" :)

Ne cherche pas midi a quatorze heures!

Ne cherche pas midi a quatorze heures... meaning "Don't overcomplicate things." Literally it really means don't look for noon at 2 o'clock. Nice phrase.. how they get from the time to the phrase of overcomplication, who knows. However, it's a great phrase that was on my french calendar today and it rings true for many things. In fact, it should be a national motto. Just like Keep it simple, stupid- in laymans terms. Well i guess i could keep rambling on about this, but I am not one for discussing politics, at least not in this arena, so I will cease this topic. But remember the phrase; it's a good one.

So this was our shot at Piedmont Park today... The dancing teddy is on point in the air, yeah! The title of this piece is Pink Bear Ganesh. The clouds were perfect and the on camera flash made the light sweet. You can also see the art fair in the background from the Dogwood Festival!

So i'm working on a new project modeling after the renaissance paintings of the fruit bowls, but bringing it into the 21st century and placing the bowl of fruit in different locations to make it seem almost out of place and/or surreal. I am also using a Holga for it, so it will look awesome!

Going to the Dogwood Festival tomorrow, so will report back afterwards!

Oh Valentina and her Nerd Sex!