Brookhaven Arts Festival coming up

I'll be at the Brookhaven Arts Festival for the first time this year. It looks like a great event.

Dates: October 11th and 12th.

I hope to have more lith prints out in time for this one! My darkroom has been more of a storage room since installing the new floors. Maybe the upcoming Labor Day weekend will be THE weekend I clean up in there at last - and get back to some serious work.

I like the echo-o-o-o of an empty room

So I've painted 4 rooms in my house in the last 2 months. (During which I kept getting annoyed with the way my longish hair seemed to be a paint magnet, so I've chopped off quite a bit. muahahaha....)



There's nothing that will make you want to paint your walls more than having new floors put in. Being the type of people who seem to do things in a grand way, we ripped out all the floors of the entire downstairs.


So long, crappy builder's grade carpet!


Farewell, cheap wood parquet!


I was on the ball enough to take some "after" shots, but fell short of being smart enough to take "befores". I've rummaged around my files, but this seems to be the best "before" picture I have of the foyer with the pukey parquet floor....it just happens to have a cat in it, too.








Here is the "after" view, sans cat:



















Okay, the cat shot is cuter because of Jinx, but what the hell. There it is - my new fieldstone foyer, with a glimpse beyond into the (newly painted!) study showing my new hardwood floor in there - and a glimpse of a new rug.


One of the BEST parts about hardwood floors is that you get to spend stupid money on seriously beautiful, hand crafted rugs to place on them.

And your dog approves.






The BEST-best part in all this is....

the studio!





















I hated even putting my drafting table back in there, it was so perfect in its emptiness. I liked walking around listening to the echos. Sadly, this floor seemed to resist my efforts to slide...or maybe I just need thicker socks. ??

Anyway.

The drafting table and the oak work-table are back in, as is the little bookcase crammed with my art books and supplies. I want to better display my antique cameras, so eventually there will have to be some kind of display case in there....but I'm in no hurry.

Right now, I'm having a great time just resting my painting arm, getting used to feeling air on the newly exposed back of my neck, and listening to the echos bouncing around in there.

ooo-HOO....OO....OO....OO...... [fade to black]

PH8 and sand in the tub...or, the Mystery Tour revealed

Ah, the mystery trip....I've already bragged on this trip to several people and almost feel guilty bringing it on here. But when you know you've had one of those trips that can classify as one of THE trips of a lifetime, you get over that real quick-like.

heh.

So, I honestly never had a clue where we were headed, and had the fun of hanging back at the airport when checking the luggage so Brad could tell the harried-looking Delta employee that this trip was meant to be a surprise and not to blow it with a casual mention. Apparently his charm is infectious and so was his effort, as I watched the agent's facial worry-lines smooth away as she broke into a smile while they exchanged a few more comments. It can't be easy being on the front lines of an airline these days. I appreciated being a happy customer. Baggage checked, onward through security and then, finally, coming up to the gate whose sign read...."MIAMI".

.....Miami? Brad almost laughed at my doubtlessly comical expression while I carefully arranged my face to look more pleased than puzzled, while my peripheral brain was doing a rapid-fire check of what could possibly be down in the city of Miami that would suddenly register with a click so I could leap into the air and shout, "YES! MIAMI!!!!"

It didn't happen. Amused and patient, Brad carefully explained that our actual destination was South Beach, Miami....and that he had rented us a room in a restored 1930's hotel in an area called the Art Deco District. I'd never heard of it, but then, neither had he, so we were going in relatively blind - he with the upper hand, of course, since he'd been avidly studying the area and restaurants online.

What, me worry? Foolish Terri.

It.was.amazing.

Brad had landed us a penthouse room - no doubt smallish for a penthouse by today's standards, but it was all about the balcony patio and the art deco feel of the whole place.

We were here:

on the top floor towards the back, where the penthouse patios overlook the pool. We were in PH8. For 5 straight days, we either swam in the pool or camped out on the beach, and endlessly walked the area. Block after block was little more than architectural eye candy; I tried to take artsy shots and breathe it all in. There was a long street closed to through traffic, given fully over to pedestrians to access on foot all the shops, restaurants and bars that remained open to silly wee hours. Whether we walked down them at high noon or at midnight there was the same level of music, laughter and general street-party hijinx type of people-watching. No one went home, it seemed, and the stores never closed and people shopped and dined and drank and laughed and wore South Beach clothes. It was a world unto itself, unreal and glittering, and we were happy to wander in it.

We were barely becoming assimilated into this particular collective when the ugly reality of check-out time was upon us.

I'll have more pictures to pop in. This image of the Albion is from a quick test print of an HIE negative. It looks a little blown; I'll do better after more time in the darkroom. I returned having shot only 2 rolls of HIE, a roll of slide film that's sort of blah and one still-undeveloped roll of 120 from the Holga. Could be a handful of potentially interesting shots...could be crap. We'll see.

But South Beach is a delicious place to go lose oneself. And "PH8" will forever be a buzzword in our household.

He is the one to make me cry

Have you listened to the new Crowded House record yet? If not....do.

Of course, the title of this post is a play on words of track #13, which might be the best song I've heard in...well, in a long, long time. Not too many musicians get to me like Neil Finn. He draws the slow sighs from me.

I think of Neil Finn as one of those miracle musicians. The kind that seem easy to dismiss at first, but once your mind and ears have settled in, you discover yourself having an ohmygod moment. There are a couple of songs off this new record that are giving me those, and part of me lives to experience them. They're damn rare. When I was driving home through the thick, rare Georgia snowfall a few weeks ago, track #8 began to play....as ethereal, light and, for me, as full of wonderment as the snow. The odd chords swirled about me as the wind blew the snow around my car, and I was moving as certainly through the music as I was the snowfall. I could have stayed suspended in that moment forever.

This is the magic that Neil Finn gives. As long as he's around, putting out songs like this, I know there's hope for music, after all. Finn's voice, so immediately identifiable, is in fine form throughout the record, sometimes full, sometimes raspy - and always on target with his strange melancholy chords that still manage to lift the listener.

Ah, Neil. Sing to me, baby!

InsOmNIa! $#@&*

...it's been kicking me about a little bit. I know why, it's wintertime and I'm more cooped up. A passage I read long ago (from a now-forgotten novel) has stayed with me: "My stomach is empty and my mind is full. And when your stomach is empty and your mind is full, it's always hard to sleep." Okay, that might explain the banana and peanut butter snack at 2:00 AM last week, shivering barefoot in the kitchen, which did seem to send me happily back to bed and 4 hours of blissful sleep before the next workday. But the times when my brain feels blank and the belly well sated belies the easy banana-trick.

Ah, well. It passes.

Today is another birthday. I have celebrated by chopping off my long hair. A new bio-photo will eventually follow, but since photos of me are scarce it may be awhile. For now, I'm still enjoying reaching for the back of my neck and encountering the blunted ends.

Happy birthday to me. I like growing old. I like feeling the passage of time, looking back, looking forward. One nice thing about having a January birthday is that it goes so well with looking ahead - planning the year, planning my life.

My favorite piece from last year:





This year, I want to continue the trend of reading more. Reading, and spending more time in the darkroom - I've missed it terribly over the holidays, which were screamingly busy between work and home. The above lith print reminds me how much I love this technique - another reason to go play in the darkroom!

Over the past several years, I've put myself out there quite a lot - both personally and professionally. 2008 is the year I am pulling in. I've been doing it almost unconsciously for the last several months, and have noticed how happy it makes me - contracting my life into a little circle between home, work, with only a few excursions on the side involving close friends or family. It feels really good.

Note to self: hang in there, old girl. It wasn't nearly as important as you thought it was. You know?? You're doing just fine!

Happy New Year!

I hope everyone had some time off from work, school, or whatever it is that keeps you from play-time.... ;)

Here's to a wonderful 2008! (I was going to say, an interesting 2008...but interesting doesn't always = wonderful, so I skipped it.) heh!

all moved in, and feeling tingly....

So, as long as I have to work at a "serious" kind of day job, it's nice to have pleasant surroundings in which to do so. My new office is not only the largest one I've ever had as a manager, it's also the only one I've been able to design. Well, re-design, as it was more than a little bit used when I first walked through it several months ago. I walked through and started a list of everything I wanted to see done to it, and plotted the course. This kind of thing is entertaining for me. I liked knocking out walls (on paper of course), picking out floor tiles and carpet and paint schemes. It's all come together quite beautifully and my own office, as I've said, is BIG - with 2 windows that actually open, with old-style hand cranks! yowza. So I've lined the faux marble windowsills with plants and unabashedly hung eight of my own pieces of framed artwork along the walls. (Some of my stuff that's not straightforward photography confuses people - another source of entertainment. I explain my processes much more thoroughly than the inquirer really wants me to.)

Work is work, and I really do yearn for the day when the alarm clock goes off only because I have an early class or maybe an early flight to someplace fun. But as long as it goes off every morning, forcing me out the door to work in health care management, I can think of worse places I've hung my coat. I like it here. No, really.

Busy, crazy times - on more levels than work, of course. Life is suddenly interesting in many new ways. I'm digging it, along with some of the new people I've met.

Shine on, you crazy diamond

I met him when he walked into the doctor's office where I was working as a medical assistant. Later, we both would swear to recognizing the phenomena of love at first sight; those first few meetings, however, were all business - and the business at hand was ridding him of his abdominal ailment. We were both in our mid-20's and each of us had already accumulated some baggage. He was recently divorced and meeting me apparently shot to hell his resolve to never marry again. I was married at the time we first met - 2 years in and, already realizing I had made a terrible mistake, I was in the process of getting pep talks from my friends while casting about for the cheapest apartment I could find, so I could move out. Needless to say, neither of us needed the automatic complication of having laid eyes on each other at this particular point in time; suddenly, all bets were off.

Though it took a couple of years, which were full of angst and distasteful drama that doesn't belong in this post, we eventually found our way to a small, non-denominational chapel - very old, with a gray stone exterior and a bright red door. We liked the door. It looked good in the wedding pictures, too.

It's been 22 years since then. Today (well, Friday, November 30th) is another anniversary marking a long romance that we periodically marvel over - knowing we're among the few who really are living "happily ever after". We've been through many highs, many lows. One of the high points is taking place on this very day, as he is officially retiring from the GA state DOT, where he has worn many hats over the years. He was a young, hot photographer when I met him. He didn't make much money, which seemed to matter to him more than it did me, since he seemed to want to impress upon me that he did have a good retirement plan, and how he could arrange it so his pension would take care of me for life - should I follow my heart and go with him. The pension didn't matter, or course. For me, it was more the realization that I had somehow met this person who was sincerely offering to give all he had - and this, while I was fresh from leaving a marriage that had come to seem more like a joint venture, where each party kept his own bank account and expenses were shared fifty/fifty (each month I was presented a list, detailing what I owed). To be presented with this tender, giving heart, with this simple "but of course" attitude towards sharing everything we had - maybe I wasn't so bright in my twenties, but I did recognize my soul mate.

It's been a long journey, getting to this day. There were times we were scared his job would vanish - being the aerial photographer for the state's Office of Location was quite the tiny niche, subject to repeated scrutiny by each new governor looking for ways to say he had slashed state expenses by outsourcing anything that seemed frivolous. However, the aerial photo lab performed such a variety of functions that somehow it escaped the red line; term after term, it proved its relevance. So my husband Brad is retiring now, in a management position, as someone who can turn and look back over a long, fruitful career with the same outfit - a growing rarity in these shifting times.

I couldn't be more proud of and happy for him. He's one of those people who should have good things come his way. I've been disappointed in many people over the years - people I thought I knew, who ultimately proved my judgment wrong. That's never a good feeling, of course. Brad has never been among them.

I wanted this to be some kind of tribute, but listing his good qualities seems so trite. I'd rather just say: animals instinctively gravitate to him. That tells a lot, you know. Our horse used to follow him around like an oversized hound dog; Brad rarely needed a lead rope with old Dana. And when I would periodically bring home feral kittens, rescued from a drainage ditch by my office that was inhabited by a cat colony, he was always up for the challenge of helping me foster them until they were ready for adoption. Peering into the cardboard boxes I had swept the tiny demons into, he was met with baleful stares from tiny eyes, accompanied by much hissing and spitting. None of them could have been more than 6 weeks old, which probably accounts for why I was able to snatch them. When Brad decided to befriend them, within hours they went from five ounces of feline ferocity to purring under his gentle touch, secure in their new knowledge that human hands could be kind. Our adopted pug, Odin, was inherited from his former owners through a broken relationship that led to separate moves to places animals weren't allowed. He was a frightened little dog the first night he came to us. We tried to relax with him out on the patio, giving him the run of his new back yard. Feeling the acute anxiety of the newly separated, Odin wasn't interested in exploring. He was unable to relax until he decided to crawl up Brad's chair and settle his fat little body square on Brad's chest, where he remained for the next couple of hours. He wasn't exactly the type of puppy you'd want to cuddle - he was crawling with fleas, sorely in need of a bath and we still couldn't quite believe our eyes when we looked at that tongue. But Brad welcomed him as if he were a prize, did not shoo him away but scratched his ears and talked to him - and Odin has worshipped him ever since.

See, this is just part of who Brad is.

Now, Brad - if you ever read this - you should know, babe, that I'm very aware of the excess of wine you have stashed in that cellar. I know who your mistress is, and we actually get along just fine. I accept her presence in every bottle you think you've smuggled in. I just wanted to say: it's okay, baby. I like wine. Just, maybe ease up on the French stuff now, will ya? I happen to like what's coming out of Tuscany right now. Just a suggestion.

This is a picture I took of Brad with Odin (aka: the O-dog) last summer, when I was testing a new lens. I decided to hand color it, since I will probably always remember our patio and back yard like this, in high summer.

Happy retirement, my love - and happy anniversary!

Ye Olde Thanksgiving holiday

Being one of those tiresome sorts of people who are always acutely aware of how lucky we are in life, I don’t become particularly misty-eyed around the holidays. However, this IS a blog – as such, it would seem an oversight of sorts not to comment on a holiday that, at its very soul, was inspired only as an occasion for people to pause and reflect on all of life’s goodness – even when it might seem that the good stuff is outweighed by the bad.

The news is always full of stories about horrific things that happen around the globe. There is never a shortage of war, famine, floods, drought, stupid politicians, animal cruelty and basic human injustice on a wide scale. When you catch yourself thinking, “The world’s gone mad”, that’s as good a time as any to clutch closer the nearness of beloved things or people that keep us sane. It should be a daily event.

My best friend is my amazing husband – who I really think of more as a boyfriend, even after 21 years of marriage. I am still humbly grateful for the combined circumstances that led to my crossing the country during my 20’s to land in the same town he grew up in, so I could meet him, marry him, and have this amazing relationship. Those were some very long odds that I beat - I don’t see myself taking that lightly. That’s the main thing I’m grateful for.

I can roll out of my bed every day with two feet to hit the floor, and I have a job to go to every day. Okay, sometimes my aging legs feel tired, my back hurts, I’m grumpy, sleepy, and feeling the hate of working full time – but it’s a momentary indulgence to what are actually minor annoyances, since if any of that were to be lost, I’d be one sad sack.

So, hurray for everything that’s good in my life, feel the bliss of knowing my family and friends are alive and well - and I have nothing more pressing to do today than start mixing the dough for my delicious crescent rolls. I made the cherry pie last night at 11:30 – late start because I remembered at 9:00 PM that I was out of shortening, so my best friend made a little store run to help out. After finally settling the top crust over the cherries, I thought about making my vent slits into a giant smiley face, but instead made a little round center hole and slashed sunrays all around it. Yeah, I’m living in Georgia during a 100-year drought, but what the hell. It’s actually raining at the moment. So hurray for the sun, too.

Hope you all have a lot to feel thankful for, too. Enjoy the day.

The smell of books (and why I always follow my nose)

Ever since I can recall, the notion of a musty old attic filled with musty old books that no one read or wanted anymore has been my ideal of the best place to hide out from the world. I was a bookworm as a kid – I spent so many hours curled up with a book I'm surprised my spine didn't curve. Of course, reading curled up on my bed or a living room armchair left me vulnerable to interruption: my mother's call to do my homework, practice the piano, or my sister's imperious suggestions that I pick up my dirty clothes or comb my hair - all were assailants upon my peace.

A visit to my uncle's farm house in the countryside of southern Missouri one summer made a fantasy come true: just off the kitchen was a narrow door with a wobbly glass handle. "Oh, that leads to the attic," was my aunt's disinterested reply to my query. "Nothing up there now, but old furniture and a buncha books." She did not react to the sudden bursting rendition of the Alleluia Chorus that filled her sunny, gingham-checked kitchen, so I guessed she didn't hear it. But it was ringing in my ears as I opened the creaking, whitewashed door and peered up the dim stairway. At the top of the stairway was a bookcase filled, as she had promised, with dusty books. I climbed the narrow stairs and entered my new domain with the soft footsteps of reverence. For hours I was enchanted with both my discovery and the realization that my heretofore vague notions of the tranquility of book-filled attics were now suddenly and irrevocably replaced by the real thing. A fantasy come to life, with the turn of a rickety doorknob! There were stacks of cast-off paperbacks and faded comic books mixed in with gilt-edged volumes of poetry and history, some boasting print dates from the 1940's. There was an odd book of 12th century torture techniques, complete with carefully wrought etchings, printed in a strange typeset with page borders 2 inches wide, browning with age.

It was here, watching with solemn pleasure as kicked-up dust swirled in the sunlight that filtered in from a high, dirty window, that I first breathed in that incomparable smell of aged books. In a lesser location, the incessant buzz from the dirt devils that were crawling busily in and out of a bent air vent overhead would have sent me scurrying; here, they were merely my tiny sentries, guaranteed to frighten off unworthy invaders – my cousins. No one bothered me in my hot, airless kingdom. It was Nirvana!

Back in those days, I could read hour after hour without ill effects. My, but things do change. Since becoming a regular working stiff, coming home in the evenings and picking up a book after dinner gradually turned into little more than a sure-fire fast track to being asleep by 8 PM. I've grown progressively more jealous of my time away from work; demanding more from those waking hours – so, eventually, and almost without my noticing, the act of reading for pleasure simply became something to avoid.

But a bookworm never changes her spots (yeah, I typed that out and I'm sticking to it) – so there came a period of compromise – I discovered I could skim through what I loosely thought of as "lighter fare" without falling asleep. For a time, I read nothing so intricate that I couldn't have the ending pegged before I was halfway through. It was like having a steady diet of fast food: I knew I wasn't starving, but couldn't remember the last time I'd had a meal that had really left me with the sense of well-being that comes only from having been well sated. Reading a wide assortment of books on alternative photographic techniques was informative entertainment - but nothing can beat having a book that lights a spark, as well as amuse and delight you. So, I vowed to return to the old-fashioned pleasure of reading. Stumbling across the like-minded folks over at Library Thing has been all I needed as a final push.

They recently gave me the welcome occasion to go on a book hunt, having come up with another "group read" suggestion. It fell on me to find a copy of Sinclair Lewis' Elmer Gantry. No luck at the usual brick-and-mortar booksellers; so, it was off to search on Amazon. I found a used copy for six bucks, and paid slightly more than that to get express delivery. Nothing could have prepared me for what I received: a 1960 Dell paperback edition, complete with yellowed edges and the undeniable smell of my former book-laden lair. A highly pixelated B&W image of Burt Lancaster clutching a Bible adorns the front cover, under the words: "The book that shook the nation!" A nugget from my former trove had been mailed to me!

It's old news that our memories seem hotwired to our sense of smell. The fact that I am thoroughly enjoying this old chestnut is secondary to my gratitude at having had the rush of memories of my wondrous attic hideaway flooding my brain. By its release date, its slightly tattered appearance and, especially, by its distinctive browning-page smell - the book could have come from there.

I am finding some strange comfort now, amusing myself by pretending that it did.

Happy Halloween!

One of my favorite times of year!

I'd love to post something that fit the mood, but I just realized I don't have anything even remotely "Halloween-ish" in my online portfolio.

I'll have to drop back and punt with a picture of Odin - or, as he is more commonly called, the O-dog.

Admit it - he's kinda scary.

Stay safe and have a great Halloween, everyone!

Cleanliness is next to boredom

bah! Festival season is officially over for me for 2007. We spent most of the weekend packing stuff up. Last night was getting the last of the print boxes back up into the attic. As much as I appreciate the illusion of neatness and order, there is always part of me that misses the ruckus. I like seeing the smooth white walls of my studio, empty but for the tiny glitter of unused picture hooks. They are like a challenge to put up something new. My drafting table is no longer a mess of contracts, slides and stacks of prints that have yet to be matted and bagged.



So....I'm neat, I'm tidy, it looks pretty sterile in my studio right now.... and the best way to get over it is to make a new mess.



Thanks to all who made it out to Candler Park this year!

Hello, at last.

I know - I should have started this blog many months ago. Thanks to those of you who continued to berate me for procrastinating: I knew you were really only encouraging me. And now look! I finally did it! So back off!

It has been a busy year, which is good in some ways but not so good in others. Things like starting the blog were easily kept on the back burner. I’ve always found it extremely hard to spend much time at a computer when I get away from work; this is one of the reasons I know I could never “go digital”. Aside from that, I think I will always prefer the darkroom, or my drafting table, to the PC for working on my images. I just don’t see a time when I’d be ready to say goodbye to the unique pleasures of the darkroom: the glow of the safelights….the excitement of seeing an image bursting onto what was a blank piece of paper… the developer stains on the floor….all of these things that mark the thrills and spills of analog photography.

So, here I am, and I promise to use this space to keep you all up to date as best I can.

The recent College Park Arts Festival was wonderful this year. It’s always fun despite the extra work involved in doing a one-day show. Thanks to all of you for coming out. I apologize again for running out of the updated business cards – that was lame.

I scaled back the festivals this year; the only one left is at Candler Park in Atlanta, October 13-14th. There is always good food, great music and, of course, wonderful art and crafts from my fellow artists on display – so come on out!

For those of you who asked, I do plan on the hand coloring workshop at the Spruill Center of the Arts early next year- tentatively scheduled for March 8-9th. Watch this space for details!