Bad at Blogging

So, I know I have not blogged in over a week.  We are still alive. We made it to Santa Fe, spent a couple of days there and then went and camped at the Grand Canyon. (Mon-Tues. ps. I saw a bunch of cool art here and met some awesome artists. tell you about it later...)

The next day we made it and checked in to Vegas.  I would love to describe our stay in Vegas, but its Vegas. You have to come out there and see it for yourself.  It was lots of fun and we survived. We didn't win a ton of money.  Oh darn. (Wed-Sat)


We then headed down to Los Angeles, CA where we met up with my lovely friend Megan.  We stayed here over the weekend just relaxing and recovering.  (Sat-Mon)










I know this was a terrible update. They may get worse from here on out.  We are on week 4, moving into week 5 and its going to be a ton of camping from here as we head north towards Washington.  Not sure exact destinations, but Redwoods are for sure on our list.  After that, who knows.








Well, off we go.  Miss you all.  Sorry this update sucked.  Like I said, they may get worse.

Better Update: Amarillo, Texas

So, I am currently sitting in a Motel 6 in Amarillo, Texas. It's not exactly like all the country songs but its hot and desert-like with all the wonderful accents. Yesterday/last night we drove from our campsite in Radford, Virginia all the way through Tennessee (and a wicked 50 mph thunderstorm equipped with hail and green skys to boot), Arkansas, and Oklahoma to arrive here in Amarillo around 7:30am. Long night, but got our hotel, and oil change and have been resting for the day since the forecasted highs were 108 degrees for the next three days. Hence the nix on the camping sites.

I need to go back through and cover all the highlights of the week, but I think I will start with some museum pictures from NYC last thursday. Remember my camera died halfway through so there are only a few but the MoMA was pretty amazing in itself.

 This one is Jennifer Bartlett, named "Rhapsody" who was an American minimalist artist of the 70's.  As you view the small panels from left to right they tell a story of seven different themes using color and shape.  We studied her in Contemporary so she caught my eye.

 This is a close up of another of her pieces using color and line to create patterns and a narrative.

 This one was done by Bruce Nauman called "Punch and Judy II Birth & Life & Sex & Death."  He was obviously a slightly more controversial american artist of the 80's displaying his strong viewpoints on homosexuality and the AIDS movement.

 This piece was done by the Guerilla Girls who made art displaying their viewpoints on feminism in the art world.  They wanted to get the message out there that females in the art world were under-represented and under-appreciated.  The pieces are pretty identifiable and quite straight forward.

 This piece is by Alexander Calder, an American artist called "Lobster Trap and Fish Tail." I am always fascinated with sculpture and although the picture doesn't do it justice it is quite large hanging over one of the museum staircases.

Shanna, this one is for you.  I saw it and immediately thought of you and your passion for art.  It is done by artists Gilbert and George, british artists of the 70's.  The first line says it all.

 Well, I had to get a picture by the famous Elvis right?
 This piece is of course done by the famous Andy Warhol.  An american artist of the 60's well known for many of his pieces including Gold Marilyn Monroe (which I saw and have a picture) as well as the Campbell's soup can prints.

I have more pics from the MoMA you can all look at later.  It just takes forever for these things to upload.











 These are the few I salvaged the battery on my camera at the Met.  They are part of the Oceanic and Pacific Islands Era.  The art in the those rooms were amazing, large, elongated sculptures carved from wood.  Some were 20 feet longs with sharp, elongated figures striking different poses representing different aspects of their cultures and practices.  I definitely can see myself looking into their style and practices more.  The shapes and negative space of their work was really intriguing and somewhat similar to some of my design aspects of my jewelry??

 

Well, onward from New York. Monday we went to Baltimore and walked around Inner Harbor, where the National Aquarium is located.  Checked out all the sites there and the Aquarium as well.  There were tons of neat exhibits and we got to see seat turtles, sea horses, urchins, jellies, sharks, and any other kind of fish they find in the ocean! Along with a really cool jungle with all kinds of pretty birdies.

Stephie, enjoy the birds and please show Damian the fishes. I know he will be incredibly jealous.

OOOO. Very exotic. Ok, just threw in the sturgeon for fun. It made me think of the boys and Rainy River.

 

Just some of the cool species we came across!

And now for my favorite: the birdies!  Denny thinks it nuts I like birds but they were just so darn cute. The one even yawned for the camera!

After that, Denny's cousin Michael met us down there and took us to a little dessert diner in Little Italy called Vacarro's.  Apparently Monday nights are all you can eat for about 15 bucks, so Denny and Michael opted for that.  They definitely got their moneys worth and I am not sure how impressed the waitress was, but I thought it was crazy and went with a nice piece of italian cheesecake. The boys did some damage.

Michael then graciously let us stay at his apartment so we could take the train down to DC the next day.  We got up bright and early, hoped on a shuttle, then a train, then one of those nifty little "hop on, hop off" buses that tour all the major hot spots.  We saw everything (and visited most) from the Washington monument, Jefferson Memorial, WWII Memorial, Lincoln Memorial, Capitol, White House, Pentagon, and much much more.  We even made it into a few museums including the National Gallery of Art.  I will not put all my pics up, but a just a few so you can get a little taste.  

 

 

As you can see, unfortunately the reflecting pool (the thing Denny and I wanted to see the most) was under renovation.  Not as pretty as I imagined.

 

After DC, we jetted towards Front Royal, Virginia which is the beginning of Shenandoah National Park and Skyline Drive.  Stayed overnight, then got up grabbed some groceries and made our way through the park.  The Appalachian Mountains are quite beautiful as well as the park, but it reminded us a lot of MN except with large overlooks and mountains.  We hiked down Dark Hollow Falls Trail and got to see the parks lovely waterfalls. 

  

 

During this we also stopped at Luray Caverns, which was an awesome one hour tour full of cheesy jokes and sweet cave structures.  I really loved this part and I am not really sure why.  I think caves are wonderfully mysterious and beautiful and there is something artistic about the natural configurations of caves and stalagmites and such.  My favorite kind of landscape.  

There is water in this picture. Its call the "Dream Pool" and it was amazing.  It only like 20 inches deep but reflects so perfectly you can't even tell.  I could have stayed there a long time, but the lights go out after awhile behind you on the tour so we couldn't linger too long.  

 

I have so many pictues of these caves and I could see myself doing something artistic with them in the future.  The repeated lines and natural patterns are too intriguing to forget about...

So, after the caverns and the drive we hopped on Interstate 81 and started heading south towards Tennessee.  We ended up camping at a state park near Radford, Virginia called Claytor Lake.  It was a nice little campground and we were pretty pumped it had showers.  We also had quite a few visits from all kinds of critters that night.  The first was a lovely little raccoon that Denny wanted nothing to do with.  I think it was all the Rabies Alerts in Maine that got him all excited.  After that two little kitties wandered through.  And THEN, even a little later we had another critter rustling about.  I went to go check it out and found out it was a furry little spotted skunk.  Needless to say, I didn't stick around to make friends with it.  

So that was our experience in the wild of Virginia.  We ended up taking off around noon that day (because we both needed to sleep in a little bit) and started driving to Tennessee.  About two hours from Nashville, Denny brought up the idea of driving through the night (which we agreed not to do again) and well that was that.  Flew through TN, taking on a rager of a storm around Memphis, and that was that. Amarillo, TX here we are.  

Hope this was an alright update. Like I said before, I have a ton more pictures as well as Denny because he finally picked up a camera when we were in Baltimore.  Still trying to work on the art aspect, but I got my major museums in.  Now for the crazy southwest art stuff I am going to dig up.  And then off to Vegas on Wednesday. Yay.  100 degree camping until then; here we come.  I will leave you all with the lucky picture I managed after an hour of driving through lightning in Arkansas.

Love all.  Miss you more.  

west.

Oh boy, I just looked at my blog and its horribly boring without pictures. Cripes. Well, I am not going to update much because I am using Denny's phone and its really sweet but I have fat fingers and it takes forever. However, we are currently on I40 heading west. Not quite to Memphis yet, but we may drive through the night to Oklahoma? Anyways I promise to update soon with tons of pictures so its not so boring. Love you all!

This past week: Maine all the way back to Jersey and more

Alright folks, so I left off last blog over a week ago. I know it has been awhile and a lot has happened but I promise not to leave much out.  This past week has been busy in a few different ways, with plans being changed and taking care of other things.

Like I said, I left off on our way back from Maine on last Saturday morning.  Our plan was to drive to Boston, make it there in the early afternoon, grab a hotel and go to the Boston Center for the Arts among other cool sites and whatever we felt like for the next day or two.  Well we got into Boston, sat in traffic fro about 3 hours, finally made it to the south part of town and started looking for a hotel.  We maybe should have know better since it was a Saturday in June, but we tried 8 different hotels within (I don't know??) 10-20 miles and they were all full.  Except for an executive suite for like $289... which we turned down.  By this time we were incredibly hungry and smelly after 3 days without showers and said SCREW Boston.  We headed south got turned down by two more hotels and finally stopped in Smithfield, Rhode Island and called it a night.

Next day flew down to northern Jersey, stopped in at Denny's Uncle Mike's to visit Mom, Grandma and Grandpa and the rest of the family.  Spent the afternoon there with good company and food, then headed back to Erik and Marissa's to take it easy after two days of traveling.  Monday we got up and ran some errands and met up with Denny's sister Kaitlin and her friends later that evening.  We started making some plans for the week including New York City.

Tuesday rolled around and instead of NYC, the girls, Denny and I opted for Six Flags and Safari Adventure which was conveniently only half hour/45 minutes or so away in Jersey! Spent the day having a blast on a wild Safari  :) and riding coasters.  Then went back to Manasquan, where Denny's cousin Jess and Walter live and hung out on the shore and ocean all night.  I learned that Bruce Springsteen has a beach house, oh I don't know like 3 houses down the road and after that: it was Bruce hunting all night.  Unfortunately, he didn't show up and I never actually got to meet him.  I also heard it was rude to knock on his door, but I am from Minnesota.  I'm not familiar with New Jersey Bruce hunting etiquette... right??

Wednesday, to be personally honest we didn't really accomplish much because NYC got pushed back again to Thursday.  So we took it easy, did some laundry and planned out our day trip to NYC.

Thursday morning we got up at 5:30am and made it back up to Manasquan to pick up Kaitilin and catch  the 7:07 train (2 hour ride) to NY Penn Station off of West 34th Street in New York City!  Of course, we picked the hottest day to go with a high of 93 degrees.  Between the three of us we had a a goal of about 5 things:
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Crumbs Bakery
Canal Street
Central Park

We accomplished three of them.  The MoMA, Met, and Canal Street.  I would love to say that our day in New York was smooth sailing but that would be mostly false. HOWEVER, it was a ton of fun and we experienced all kinds of crazy things among our hectic attempt to pretend the three of us knew how to get around NYC.  After we got off at Penn Station we walked to the MoMA. (about 20 blocks?? I think?)  The MoMA is seven floors of mostly contemporary art and other special exhibitions.  It would be in comparison to the Walker Art Center in MN but much much larger and I think, bigger names.  I am going to apologize now because amongst my planning I forgot to charge my camera battery and it only lasted about halfway through the MoMA.  Denny's phone was dead and Kaitlin did take a few pictures for me later though.  So unfortunately most of my NYC trip is not documented through pictures.  The few I did get are pretty neat though!

I will finish the trip details and put the pics of the museum at the end.  After MoMA we were starving and had lunch. Afterwards, we attempted the Subway but had no idea how to really go about transferring and finding our way, so next option: cab ride.  I am pretty sure none of us really knew what we were getting into but a black lincoln town car, 50 bucks, a few new Indian swear words and the quote of the day later... we arrived at the Metropolitan Museum of Art at 3:30 with 2 hours to experience the art.  We kind of rushed through the building but we hit all the "eras" we wanted to see and checked those out pretty well.  After that we decided we were pretty tired, so the last stop was going to be Canal Street so Kaitlin could shop.  We braved the Subway this time with much success and made it to Canal Street.  Found some pretty impressive deals but in the process got caught in a crazy thunderstorm.  We ended up ducking into some random shop, asking some random worker how to get to the Subway and back to Penn Station and followed him running through the rain down the streets of South Manhattan.  It was pretty exciting.  After that, don't ask me how, but we managed to catch the 8pm train back to Jersey arriving at Erik's again around 11pm.  Quite the day in NYC. If you want some of the juicier details of NYC just ask and the stories get better.

Friday, we woke up and spent the day getting ready for and attending Denny's father's burial.  The service was very nice and the whole family was there to see him off.  The rest of the night was spent honoring  and celebrating with family, while getting ready for the next day: Denny's graduation party.  Not a whole lot to say about Saturday except the whole family got together and partied hard to celebrate Denny's accomplishments.  There was tons of food, fun and everything else that goes with a good party. Sunday of course followed with mostly recovery, cleanup, a few errands, and planning for tomorrow.

The plan for tomorrow consists of an oil change, then heading south to Baltimore for the day where we will hit up a few things and stay with Denny's cousin Michael.  Next day we plan on heading into Washington DC and after that south to Virginia and the Shenandoah National Park.  Got a few good ideas for that area and Tennesse and who knows after that.

So there is my always late, but hopefully fulfilling update on the past week.  I have been having a wonderful time in New Jersey, but it is time to get going.  Special Thanks to Erik and Marissa for being absolutely wonderful and letting us stay over the last 2 weeks.  I appreciated it so much.

Love you and miss you all!

Catch up on Adventure #1: Acadia National Park & Bar Harbor, Maine

Alright everybody, time to recap our trip to Acadia National Park.  I am going to do my best to do this in an organized fashion while including everything, but I am bound to ramble somewhat. Its what I do best, with probably a lot of useless information.

After we got up in Belfast, we took off towards the park.  The weather was looking a little dreary and they were forecasting thunderstorms all day.  As we got near the park it definitely started raining on us and was pretty nasty but we obviously we went anyways.  Got our park maps and pass and experienced our first encounter with the "Rabies Alert."  Apparently it is a big problem with the raccoons in the park???  I was obviously excited to get a glimpse of a rabid raccoon but Denny; not so much.

Anyways, since the weather was a little nasty, we decided to drive around Bar Harbor and the Park Road Loop most of the day until it cleared up.  (I think by the end of the three days we were there we drove the loop and every other road on the Island about 18 times.  Totally worth every mile.) I guess I am not sure the best way to go about all the sites in the park but I will list them and explain/picture them.  We saw:
Cadillac Mountain
It was crazy windy up here but you could see all the coast and bays along the Island.  Absolutely beautiful.

Jordan Pond

Sand Beach

Thunder Hole

Otter Point
Abbe Museum
Wild Gardens of Acadia (this is where we climbed Dorr Mountain: 1.6 mile trail (all stairs) with a 1270 foot summit)
We first tried to start hiking this trail on Wednesday afternoon when it cleared up.  Little did we know it was one of the hardest trails and we were both wearing flip-flops with no water or anything.  Got probably a half mile up the trail and made plans to finish it the next day when we were slightly more prepared... The hike was super fun, took us a little over an hour and we both made it to the summit. Denny will claim he beat me to the top, but he completely cheated.  Damn near knocking over another hiker as well as stepping on natural Acadia vegetation, while I carried all the gear to the top for us. But whatever helps him sleep at night.

 At the summit. Lucky one other hiker was there to take a picture.

Downtown Bar Harbor (as well as Northeast Harbor, Southwest Harbor, Seal Harbor, Bass Harbor, & Bernard)
I definitely got my first live lobster dinner in Bar Harbor, at Geddy's downtown restaurant.  I named him Timmy and he was absolutely delicious. However, I am not sure I will ever do it again.  It is a lot of work and a little too intimate of a situation for dinner.  I don't exactly enjoy ripping body parts off of my dinner.  Denny even tried a little though.  The picture is horrible but oh well.  I was excited.

Seawall Campground
This was the campground we stayed at for two nights.  We had alot of fun just hanging out and having campfires and relaxing on some downtime.  I didn't take any pictures of our camp, but I will try to remember from now on.  I am not very good with remembering or knowing what to take pictures of.  I usually leave somewhere and regret not taking more pictures or grabbing any souvenirs and that is exactly what I did in Maine.  But oh well, just another excuse to go back.

Now onto a little bit of art.  Since I suppose that was the whole reason for my trip.  As we toured Bar Harbor and drove through Maine, I started to realize a lot of different things:
#1 I need to just go right away; not put it off.
#2 I need to plan better. And research more. Timing might be more crucial than I think.
#3 Galleries come in all different types from just resellers, little hometown owners that sell from nice to chincy to whatever they think will sell, and those that just do it and hope they might make some money later.  I may avoid small town galleries right in town, they tend to be nice but nothing really exciting. Plus their studios are not there for me to snoop around in.
#4 I don't have any clue how to approach people with what I am doing on this trip.  Mainly because I have no idea what I am really doing either.  I am worried I come off kind of stupid or just unprofessional.  I may have to sit down and figure this out.  And what I really want to accomplish/see.
#5 I love looking at art and learning, but I am really enjoying just seeing everything else and being somewhere else.  I have been super content with just waking up and being like "What do we want to do today?" But I am sure reality will catch up with me. As well as this internship.  Only anxiety on this trip so far...

So anyways, I did visit a few galleries in Bar Harbor where I met Scott from Evegreen Gallery who turned me towards the other side of the island to a studio called Seal Cove Pottery and Gallery.  There I met Lisbeth Faulkner, a potter who teamed up with her partner Ed Davis, an oil painter, to create Seal Cove Gallery.  She has been doing pottery professionally for about 8 years and before that just as a hobby.  I did my best to explain what I was there for an asked for a bit of a tour and we actually just got to talking as she showed me around.  I tried my best to ask informative questions and all but we really did just chat about pottery and some techniques and how she got into it and selling and her influences and all that.

Her work definitely has a coastal influence.  I pointed out the differences of that influence and she told me how she grew up in Maine, but her and her partner travel to the Bahamas every year so she gets a whole different kind of ocean influence which shows up in her glazes.  She likes to use glossier and brighter finishes rather than the "earthy dull tones that everyone else uses up here."  She mixes her own glazes except the bright red one because, we both agreed, that a bright red is just really hard to create.  She fires at cone 5/6 which is a little cooler than what we use at school which is cone 10.

Most of her platters are slab built and hand built add ons, just using styrofoam cut-outs for large fish or other shapes that she then alters to her liking.  She also creates wheel-thrown plates and bowls (and mugs when people ask for them, because she doesn't really care to make them)  I noticed she trims her plates differently then me, so I asked and she gave me a quick demo on them.  I have trouble with cracking in the middle of my plates, which I blamed on not compressing enough or drying to quickly (which obviously causes cracking), but after seeing her plates I realized if I trimmed with more support rings I may not have so much trouble.  Which means I learned something new. Woohoo!

 Some of her work in her gallery.

 Trimming the edge with homemade tools.

 Forming the rim.

 Much better feet than mine... great ideas to take home...

So that was my trip to Seal Cove Pottery. I thanked her and we went on our way.  It was really nice to see different influences on others pots and just see some art in general.  

After, Denny and I eventually took off from Maine on Saturday and headed back to New Jersey.  We tried to hit Boston but I am getting tired and that is for the next blog. Maybe later tonight.  I will go over our plans for the next couple of days and all the other random junk that has been going on.  

Still can't believe this trip has been happening and we still have so much more to go.  I hope I can get everything I want done, but who knows. Maybe we will just end up winning a bunch of money in Vegas, flying to Hawaii and living there for a year or two. Wouldn't that be something.  More to come tonight or tomorrow morning.  

Love and miss you all.