Tuesday, December 18, 2012
Travel Bucket list
While I was procrastinating on my Book Illustration homework (That will be posted after the quarter is over for sure), I was thinking about all the places that I wanted to travel when I get the chance and the money. Here are some of these places:
1: Niagara Falls- I live 90 min away and I still haven't been there.
2: Cross-country road trip- This is something that I've really wanted to do. There are so many places in the United States that I want to visit, and are naturally beautiful. I want to go back to Grand Canyon National Park again, but I also want to visit Mt Rushmore, Yosemite, Yellowstone, and that park where all the giant redwoods are. I want to visit the badlands in the Dacotas and Big Sky Country in Montana. I want to see the Rockies in Utah and Colorado. The Sonoran Desert. There are a ton more places out west that are beautiful or interesting to visit.
3: Shenandoah Valley, Virginia- I hear it's really beautiful, so I'd like to go hiking there, and hiking in the Appalachian Mountains.
4: Washington DC- I've been to three other nation's capitals but I've never been to my own. This needs to change.
5: Seattle, WA- Why not?
6: Vancouver, British Columbia- Great Bear Rainforest. I've wanted to go for a long time.
7: Alaska- I don't know where in Alaska, but I want to see it.
8: San Fransisco, CA, Santa Fe, NM.
9: These places I've already visited, but I want to go again: Crystal Cove, Laguna Beach CA, Boston MA, Ogonquit ME (and elsewhere in Maine), Savannah GA. New York City NY.
10: Saratoga Springs NY, my hometown . Screw Rochester. It's too cold here.
Now for the foreign places which are a little more fun:
1: Mach Pichu, Peru- When I was a child I had this computer game where you could travel to different countries and learn a little paragraph about them. Machu Pichu has always been top of my list.
2: Morocco- I went for a week last year and it was amazing. There were places there that I didn't get to see, and I want to sleep in the Sahara again!
3: Thailand- It looks really interesting. I don't even know what to say.
4: Great Wall of China- Again when I was young, I wanted to do the People to People student Ambassadors program. There was a trip to China that I really really wanted to go on, but that never happened and I still want to go.
5: Venice, Italy- I lived in Italy for almost a year and I didn't go. I kind of have to if I'm going to be living there. I want to go in the fall though so there are fewer tourists.
6: Scotland- I really want to go hiking there.
7: Giant's Causeway, Northern Ireland- Because it's awesome.
8: Dublin, Ireland- To return to the land of my ancestors I guess. Also it sounds like a fun city.
9: Rzeszów, Kracow, Warsaw, Gdansk, Poland and the Carpathian mountains- My Mother's family is originally from Rzeszòw, Poland and I've wanted to visit.
10: Oaxaca, Monte Albàn, Mexico- Mayan Temples!
Well... there's plenty more places that I want to go. Hopefully I'll be able to get there :)
Was Darwin Wrong?
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0411/feature1/fulltext.html
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0411/feature1/fulltext.html
Above is the link for and abstract of the article and another for the full text article. I was really happy to see this because I'm a lady most interested in facts, in history and in science (As well as art, but I tend to be more interested in the technical, graphic, or representational aspects of art. Which is why I'm an illustration student and not a fine artist.)
My personal opinion is that the knowledge that we have gained from questioning beliefs like the traditional creation story taught in the Bible has helped us to better understand our world and how it works. There's really no mysticism about it, just more stuff that we don't know now, but may eventually find out. Rejecting this knowledge is putting us as human beings back to a time where we didn't understand our world or didn't care to. Knowledge is power, and we have the power now to find out more about ourselves as a species and about the Earth and our universe on a broader scale. Why do we hide from that instead of embracing the beautifully crafted beings that we are living in this beautifully crafted Universe? Crafted by a god or by forces of nature, that I can not say and will not comment on.
Of course Darwin was wrong about some things (one of which being that men are genetically superior to women, which as a woman aware of her own intelligence I find that alarming), but his best idea as it happens is one where there is overwhelming evidence to vouch for it's correctness.
Please read if you have the time, I thought it was really interesting.
Paint is thicker than water....
I'm starting a more professional blog, so I'm moving some of my posts from that blog here, so that my other blog is only about my artwork rather than including any personal posts. Here's one about my grandma :)
I was thinking about it, and I think that I'm going to make an Etsy shop soon. Not just for myself and for marketing my own art, but to market my mother's art and my grandmother's art. Also to help them sell antiques and other craft supplies that have been clogging my mother's home and also my grandmother's.
You see, we are all painters. Three generations of us and I'm the first one of us to get a BFA (or so I hope, we'll see if I make it through this last quarter). My grandmother has been painting for about 30 years now about ten years before I was born. In addition to being an awesome painter (medium: oil on canvas, which she on a number of occasions has submitted to art shows), she is a mom of three, grandmother to six and rescently, great-grandma to one! A school nurse, my oftentimes babysitter, constant reader, awesome cook.... Constantly busy, and I love to call her and talk to her when I get the chance (once or twice even from Italy). My grandma rocks. She was one of the people (my mom also) that taught me to not only read (I started at age 4) but to love books with a passion hotter than 451 degrees.
When I was 9, she helped me paint pears on a slate. That was our thing that all the girls in the family did with grandma when they turned 9. She also painted bird houses with my little brother and I at this time. I still have them!
Oh yea, I forgot to mention that in addition to big oil paintings my grandma paints in a folk art style on boxes, slates, birdhouses and other stuff, sews, makes hooked rugs, quilts, dolls, little mouse Christmas ornaments.....
I can't talk enough about how awesome my grandma is.
My mom is also awesome. She also was in the school system, though as a elementary school teacher. Taught my brother and I to read, to love art, to love everything really and to try my hardest and to try to achieve my greatest potential.
She also paints and takes photographs, though the tech aspect is hard :P She also has submitted paintings to art shows, the most resent to help support restoration of Saratoga monuments (I don't remember which, I think it was the Spirit of Life fountain in Congress Park). In addition to supporting two kids in college (of course with the help of our dad :P) she also is going back to school for an associates degree in Interior Design. She began this endeavour while still working full time, and continued after retirement. I am so excited and proud of her.
I'm going to post some photos of where we work, examples of some of our work because though we are all painters, our styles are wildly different, of course, because we are all wildly different people. My art is more graphic and I use digital media much much more than my mother, and infinitely more than my grandma who I'm pretty sure missed the tutorial on how to turn one on. My mother loves watercolours and is experimental with her style and media. It's very soft, gentle in the palette and mark-making though, and you can tell what kind of person she is by looking at it. My grandmother is very traditional, though you can also tell that she has thoroughly developed her style. This is not at all surprising since she has been painting for at least 30 years.
I love them, I miss them and I have the best wishes for their personal projects.
Hopefully more art soon, probably in the Archaeological Illustration realm, and probably more watercolours and stuff. I have probably 18 projects from my sketchbook class and 6 images from my book illustration class. So..... lots of work this term!
Now, back to actual painting instead of just talking about it :P
I was thinking about it, and I think that I'm going to make an Etsy shop soon. Not just for myself and for marketing my own art, but to market my mother's art and my grandmother's art. Also to help them sell antiques and other craft supplies that have been clogging my mother's home and also my grandmother's.
You see, we are all painters. Three generations of us and I'm the first one of us to get a BFA (or so I hope, we'll see if I make it through this last quarter). My grandmother has been painting for about 30 years now about ten years before I was born. In addition to being an awesome painter (medium: oil on canvas, which she on a number of occasions has submitted to art shows), she is a mom of three, grandmother to six and rescently, great-grandma to one! A school nurse, my oftentimes babysitter, constant reader, awesome cook.... Constantly busy, and I love to call her and talk to her when I get the chance (once or twice even from Italy). My grandma rocks. She was one of the people (my mom also) that taught me to not only read (I started at age 4) but to love books with a passion hotter than 451 degrees.
When I was 9, she helped me paint pears on a slate. That was our thing that all the girls in the family did with grandma when they turned 9. She also painted bird houses with my little brother and I at this time. I still have them!
Oh yea, I forgot to mention that in addition to big oil paintings my grandma paints in a folk art style on boxes, slates, birdhouses and other stuff, sews, makes hooked rugs, quilts, dolls, little mouse Christmas ornaments.....
I can't talk enough about how awesome my grandma is.
My mom is also awesome. She also was in the school system, though as a elementary school teacher. Taught my brother and I to read, to love art, to love everything really and to try my hardest and to try to achieve my greatest potential.
She also paints and takes photographs, though the tech aspect is hard :P She also has submitted paintings to art shows, the most resent to help support restoration of Saratoga monuments (I don't remember which, I think it was the Spirit of Life fountain in Congress Park). In addition to supporting two kids in college (of course with the help of our dad :P) she also is going back to school for an associates degree in Interior Design. She began this endeavour while still working full time, and continued after retirement. I am so excited and proud of her.
I'm going to post some photos of where we work, examples of some of our work because though we are all painters, our styles are wildly different, of course, because we are all wildly different people. My art is more graphic and I use digital media much much more than my mother, and infinitely more than my grandma who I'm pretty sure missed the tutorial on how to turn one on. My mother loves watercolours and is experimental with her style and media. It's very soft, gentle in the palette and mark-making though, and you can tell what kind of person she is by looking at it. My grandmother is very traditional, though you can also tell that she has thoroughly developed her style. This is not at all surprising since she has been painting for at least 30 years.
I love them, I miss them and I have the best wishes for their personal projects.
Hopefully more art soon, probably in the Archaeological Illustration realm, and probably more watercolours and stuff. I have probably 18 projects from my sketchbook class and 6 images from my book illustration class. So..... lots of work this term!
Now, back to actual painting instead of just talking about it :P
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