fairly

i love to be scared and freaked out sometimes. that's partly why i go to the fair. observe:





i don't know...that was a little creepy on my visit to the fair, but at least i had a reserved seat. but then i saw this little gem...




i don't know if all that information is accurate. i'm pretty sure i don't enjoy dodging poop at any given time.

then i ran into this guy...and he tried to sell me a pewter and crystal unicorn statue.





then i found the american apparel photo shoot...




and then i adopted a bunny that wears more eye makeup than i do...

thoughts on the small and mighty

although i am not a native, i grew up in the sticky swamps of southern and central florida. admission of the land of my youth is always met with surprise and a detectable note of revulsion. considering that i live in minneapolis, i guess i can understand why people are so shocked that i moved from florida (orlando to be precise, which is a double whammy.) over the years that i have resided here, i've found that minnesotans LOVE to camp, and they really have good reason to, especially regarding the northern borders. this is one activity that i haven't been able to relate to, since my family was decidedly not wilderness-bound while in florida. who in their right mind would want to throw their sleeping bag down in a sandy, red ant infested, flat, mosquito ridden forest; a landscape with no promise of glittering lakes or charming wildlife or rocky cliffs? i do remember taking some lovely canoe trips as a child, but it seemed kinder to just sleep in the boat rather than try to camp. alligators, anyone?

anyhow, this weekend, i think i passed my final induction as a certified minnesotan of sorts (after all, my parents are from here!) rob and i drove up to lutsen to camp with his sister and her best friend. rob's family is the sort that camp regularly every year, are NOT intimidated by yellowstone (nor do they confuse it for jellystone...) and are perfectly capable of cooking amazing meals on an tiny propane grill in the middle of the dark. this goes against everything i knew growing up. really, my parents and i even went out to eat on christmas eve. it's kind of sad in a way, because i never cultivated that humble sense of hearth and home. i think we ate out so much because we had no other family in florida, and my parents didn't socialize much, so to go out for meals was one way we integrated ourselves with the rest of the world. i think that rob was really excited to bring me into his environment, to show me the tents, lanterns, the rituals.




maybe it is because i have such limited experience in the wilderness, but there is something about being in the fresh air and surrounded only be trees and stars that rekindles a little bit of the fanciful dreamer that i was as a girl. i was the type of child who would stare into forests looking for telltale signs of unicorns and who would interpret unfamiliar markings in the backyard as evidence of a cavalcade or fantastic creatures. i did have two small experiences during my trip that satisfied my more romantic self. one was on the first day, when we were horseback riding in the hills. i saw a buck leaping into the grove of bushes just as i rode past. i know it doesn't sound that wonderful, but for a split second the willowy legs and white tufty tail of the deer looked like something more special. the second instance happened as we were packing up our site. i was scanning the ground for litter, and i saw what i first thought was a broken branch, but later turned out to be an antler. it hadn't been there the day before, so either something dragged it into our site, or a deer just pulled up to shed the horns and vanished. even though you aren't supposed to take anything from the campgrounds, i did bring it home since i didn't remove it from the animal myself. i have no idea what this object will be used for, and i really hope this doesn't signal a weird prediliction in me for tons of animal relic house decorations. yeah, if you come over, and you notice that i have a chandelier made out of horns or something, please pull me aside discreetly and punch me in the face.

“Break, break, break, On thy cold gray stones, O sea! And I would that my tongue could utter the thoughts that arise in me”

when i was 18 or 19, i remember randomly purchasing a copy of blind spot magazine, the fine art photo resource. i'm not sure if i had set my heart on the pursuit of photography in school yet (i did attend art school, but with the initial desire to be a graphic designer. it seems to me that the world has a comfortable supply of both designers and photographers, but i have to fit in somewhere!) anyhow, the cover of the particular issue that i got resonated with me in a way that i don't believe any image had up to that moment.



this image, or rather, this style of imagery, this mode of working...doesn't really look that contemporary anymore, but at the time of my first viewing, i couldn't get the awkward shape of the boys legs in contrast with the remote beauty of the seascape out of my mind. i think it was the first time that i had ever been able to readily acknowledge the poetry in a work of art, or at least in photography. people freely throw around words like "poetry", "lyricism", "beauty" and "history" when talking about any art in particular, but so often i feel that those words ring hollow, or function as blanket qualifiers for work that really isn't anything remarkable. it's no longer of such crucial importance that art embody the traditional ideas of poetry, beauty, etc. especially since really contemporary artists have taken work to a position where ideas trump objects. but i will admit that i like beautiful things, and if they can communicate something more emotionally stirring, then i think the artist has achieved something rare.



i know that people curate favorite things in their lives, and that those cherished items/idols wax and wane with age and experience. for example, when i was a child i adored bubble gum ice cream, unicorns and new kids on the block. now i can't imagine why i would want to take bite after bite of ice cream studded with chicklets, unicorns are still a vice and nkotb induces nausea. however, i feel that i can say that this image of the girl in the green swimsuit will remain a fundamental part of my love for the photographic image. I love the way that she is mirroring the birth of venus by botticelli, the way the the bottom of her swinsuit is still wet from the ocean, as if she has just walked out of the water, the way that the seascape looks like a painting itself. this is the kind of beauty that you don't grow out of.

3 cups of unicorn puree

so, i was baking massive amounts of delicious treats last night and the power went out. well, everything on my block went down to about 10% power, and my regular old oven was reduced to E-Z Bake status. i was expecting a friend to come over and hang out while i worked, so i lit a ton of candles so she wouldn't think i had left. i think she thought i was trying to set "the mood" for her...because, you know, nothing says romance like a hot, muggy kitchen and tons of cupcakes in the dark. i abandoned the food and we went to get a drink. lucia's is close by, and we had a glass of wine, but i think we offended our server by not ordering food because he told us to "stay hungry" as we were walking out of the door. i work in the service industry and i've never heard that epithet as a standard for dining hospitality. but, you learn something new everyday i guess.

i see what i cannot see

beginning to blog feels like trying to condense yourself into your most interesting and charming form to impress a first date.

despite the discomfort, i am going to give this a fair shake.

i don't have a particular agenda, although i'm especially interested in the arts: photography and music being my particular loves. do i think that having a blog is a vehicle through which to share information? maybe. do i think it's a forum for me to communicate with abstract forms? sure. is it an opportunity to shred binary solos? definitely.

i recently returned from a trip to the east coast: chicago, then on to nyc and philadelphia respectively. rob, cameron and i went to coney island one afternoon to see the wretched paradise for ourselves before it becomes condos, or and industrial park or a starbucks or whatever it is that developers are doing these days. we saw the midway, the concession stands, the skee-ball arcade...basically every element that seems to make this place repulsive and magnetic. it's difficult to imagine the glamour of it's history...i wouldn't be caught dead teetering around in heels and garters in that terrain. i felt like my shoes were constantly being pulled from my feet by wads of gum strewn on the boardwalk like seashells.

we eventually made our way to the beach, right up to the water's edge, and i made some photographs of bathers. rob took a photograph of me in the middle of my reverie. it's unusual for me to have an image of myself, since i'm regularly the maker and not the subject, but this image reminds me of my reverence for my camera, for the multitudes, for reineke dijkstra's "bather" series. i'm grateful to have this reminder of the grittiness and the loveliness of that day.