time has a knack of changing me...

I've been away from this blog again for too long. I've had a lot of things to write here and I've been thinking a lot in the past couple weeks, but for some reason or another, it hasn't been transferred onto here. Lets see...I'm sitting in my room, on my futon with the afternoon sun streaming in through the window and splashing across the side of my face, so much so that it's difficult to see the computer screen unless I squint. So, what's new. My show at Sugarbowl is coming to a close. It's been really awesome. The owner of the place has already booked me in for another show next year and I've sold over half the pieces which means I've more than broke even! Plus, I've got to meet a lot of interesting people who are purchasing my work. The person who is buying my favourite piece of them all turned out to be this awesome girl who I had a 2 hour conversation with. Turns out she's part of this excellent band called "100 Mile House". And right now, you need to go look at their website and listen to them (www.100milehouse.co.uk) - Jamie and Sarah, I am speaking specifically to you here...but everyone who reads this should go have a listen. My current favourite songs are: Fight, Jonah and Songs we all know.
In other news, I've lined up some refreshing spring/summer work. There's been a lot of anxiety and trepidation for me in the job market area. I've spent the past three years relying on the knowledge that I would landscape in the summer and make a decent wage. Well, three years of landscaping has taken its toll on me. I'm so desperately sick of dust and dryness and dead grass. So I called up a market garden farm I worked on for a summer 4 years ago. They have a spot for me doing work in the greenhouses in the spring and then transplanting into the fields in the early summer. The money is about half of what I made landscaping, but I can't begin to say what growing things and using my hands to bring things to life from soil and water will do for me. It will be healing. And I'm in need of some after this past year.
I went to the King's IS Conference last week. It was on Homelessness and one of the session speakers was a local Anglican priest who is running a photography course for street youth. He was so absolutely passionate about it and I really enjoyed hearing about the project. I talked with him after and ended up meeting him this week to talk about potentially being involved in the project myself. It sounds pretty cool and he's got some awesome long term plans for it, so I'm going to start becoming involved when the next course runs in March/April.
We got to talking about a lot of things during my chat with him and one of them was about recognizing trends in our art and style. I'm starting to notice that my photography is so based upon S-P-A-C-E. I'm still thinking about what that means. Maybe I'll have more on that next post.

Happy Tuesday!

Body to body, heart to heart...

So its been a long time since I've written here. Like a LONG time. So, as per Jamie's request, I'm writing. I don't know what to write about exactly though. I've been working at the University lately and its been fun. Except lately, when the internet is not allowing me on. So I'm limited to having internet only at home. Which I suppose, isn't that different from how I usually spend my summers, but in the winter, I feel like the internet plays a bigger part in my life. However, I feel that this lack of continual connection is becoming a growing experience for me. I'm finding I'm wasting less time surfing around on the web and sending more emails, learning more important things from it and spending more time just listening to music and reading. In fact, I find I'm being more intentional in what I take in in a day (music, video, etc) in general.

That being said, in the past few months I've really been interested in WWII. I don't know where it came from really, but suddenly I'm reading biographies about people on both sides, I'm watching movies and documentaries about it, I'm spending my time on the internet learning about the concentration camp system and the allies who found them and what happened to them after. Its been very interesting.

Also, I've been planning a lot of visits. In february, Patrick's sister is coming to visit for her school break and I'm pumped, despite the fact that I think Edmonton, while FANTASTIC in summer, is only perhaps mediocre in winter (this has less to do with Edmonton than it does with my distaste for cold weather). Then it's off to Vancouver in early March to make a very short, but very overdue visit to some wonderful friends out there. After which, most of the rest of Patrick's family is coming to see Edmonton! From there it's only a burst of hopefully spring weather in April before I jet to LA to see a good friend there. I have only ever been in LA once before, and I spent half that time puking on the curb and half the time curled around my luggage in a gravol induced sleep - this was after a flight from Tokyo which was also the worst turbulence I've experienced EVER. I hope to remedy this view of LA with this trip.

What else do I have to say...I LOVE my slow cooker. I now own two cookbooks for my slow cooker (thanks Jamie!) and have been using it regularly. Seriously, its the best cooking invention ever!

Other than that, I've decided I'm going to try to take photos more regularly in the next few months. I can't remember the last time I took photos for myself intentionally and I need to return to doing that more often.

As a final note, I've been listening to Cher while I've been writing this (not intentionally, but due to "random" on iTunes), and I'm kind of feelin' it.