empty thoughts from a cluttered mind

i would... BUT

2009-02-23T16:58:00.000-08:00

i would post this past week, but i'm on my way to ecuador tomorrow. till then.

p.s. andrew i love your camera and you and i'm forever in your debt. kisses.

the week in polaroids...

2009-02-23T16:52:00.000-08:00

02-11-09

02-12-09

02-13-09 (because of terry evans)

02-14-09 (found on kedzie at armitage)

02-15-09

02-16-09

for rent

2009-01-27T10:04:00.001-08:00

let us know. we're great i swear.

find me a new word for "untitled"

2008-12-01T10:54:00.001-08:00

something old, something new, some residual thoughts in my brain and images laying quietly in my peripheral.

an ode... to columbia aesthetics

2008-09-10T18:23:00.000-07:00

hooray, school has commenced.

geek out moment...

2008-09-05T12:33:00.000-07:00

went to minneapolis and photographed in front of a Dan Flavin piece. got to go up to it, and take an ambient reading. life is alittle closer to being complete.

letters to an ex-lover NEW PROJECT

2008-08-21T09:19:00.000-07:00

Pictures to follow. Have you ever had someone so ridiculous in your life that the two of you can only communicate through letter, mix tapes, and poems? You make so much sense in the world the only thing that makes sense is that it doesn't make sense. Your whole existence is a conundrum.

I seem to attract these people. I've had more than one of them in my life.

We're going to start acting out the simple life we theoretically could posses but neither of us can yet manage to get our shit together enough to maintain or pursue.

These are pictures of the life our parents would want for us raising us so that we now question whether or not it is the life we actually want for ourselves.

8-22-08

2008-08-21T09:18:00.001-07:00

Lover,

I don't know what to say to that... I don't want to be your Brett.

that was a lie, i have so much to say to that that I sat and wrote for an hour yesterday... but now i don't even know if it matters and i probably will never send that to you. you don't listen to anything anyone says anyways... least of all me so why waste my breath.

I hate that you can say one little thing to me and it's enough to make my heart thump and either ruin my day or make me sleep better.

I hate that i deleted you from my phone, but i still have your number memorized enough to text you when i was drunk.

I hate that I can't cut you out of my life entirely... and even if i could when it all boils down I don't actually want to.

I hate that i'm erasing parts of this message right now as I write it and decide i won't actually send it to you...

I hate that i have so much of a response to give you. I won't give it to you, and all i want to say to you is nothing at all, but i can't even do that. so now all you have are lines of incoherent babble

8-21-08

2008-08-21T09:16:00.000-07:00

Lover,

I can't be your Brett. I'm not a character in a book. I don't want to keep moving backwards with you.

You are the one that wants to be " on another path", so let me be on mine.

You clearly don't want to be with me, but you don't want to lose the comfort of having me around as a second choice. I will not be your second choice.

You had a choice between doing something that you knew was going to hurt someone you supposedly care about.... or not. You knew you were going to hurt me, and you chose to do that.

One week you said you still loved me, and days later you have someone new in your bed.

When you said you needed to figure things out, I was genuinely hoping you meant that you needed to figure out that you're almost 25, and have a degree that is almost useless because you're choosing not to do anything with it right now.

But I'm afraid that when you said that, you really meant that you don't want to grow up and you need to stick your dick in every vagina that comes your way.

So enjoy your new vagina, and I hope that you enjoy her because she is beautiful, and interesting, and fun. Because she understands you better than I ever could, and because you actually do care about her and won't choose to hurt her when another new vagina is around.

I guess I'd rather think that our relationship was ruined over something that actually mattered... not an impulsive fling.

Or maybe you enjoy this new vagina because she rides a bike and will do mushrooms with you. I guess that's a measure of character too... although what kind of character I'm not sure.

I would rather not think that you chose to hurt me over the latter... because what does that say about how much I ever meant to you, if you'd rather have a quick fuck and a good trip?

Maybe this is hurtful to hear from me. But at this rate I doubt you'll keep anyone around long enough to tell you the truth again.

I'm not trying to hurt you, I wouldn't intentionally choose to hurt you. Someone has to tell you the truth, and I guess that's the last thing I can do as a friend.

There has always been one person in our relationship taking the other for granted. I think that's one of the things I regret the most. I guess all I've really wanted was for us to NOT take each other for granted and just enjoy having the other person in our lives.

I don't understand why that's so difficult... and if I'm not helping the situation right now I'm sorry but I haven't found a way to do that when I'm still hurt and frustrated with you... just like I still want to (and still do) love you, but I don't know how to deal with that right now, especially when you haven't given me much of a reason to still love you.

Maybe that was your point. Just to make me give up on you. But I don't understand why, when you were the one that has in the past never really given up on me.

I guess that just meant more to me than you ever meant for it to- unless you show me otherwise.

this is a big black hole

2008-07-28T18:43:00.000-07:00

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welcomeback.

flashing blue light...

2007-12-26T10:09:00.001-08:00

out of the corners of my eyes when i scroll down i can hear my harddrive make pittering noises. i have one really big head cold and a case of hives again. merry christmas.

somebody told me a beautiful fairy tale...

2007-12-14T15:30:00.000-08:00

only it wasn't a fairy tale, it was her life. i guess i had my doubts but i might be able to hold my breath a little longer now.

dear self,

2007-12-06T18:37:00.001-08:00

wish you were here...

...again.

a word i abhor:

2007-12-05T15:30:00.000-08:00

co·he·sive [koh-hee-siv] Pronunciation Key
–adjective

1. characterized by or causing cohesion: a cohesive agent.

2. cohering or tending to cohere; well-integrated; unified: a cohesive organization.

3. Physics. of or pertaining to the molecular force within a body or substance acting to unite its parts.

Erichead!

2007-11-26T08:39:00.000-08:00

My buddy from MCAD. Lovely illustrations, and a pretty decent breaker when he feels like dancing.

Eric Schuster

inventory

2007-11-20T18:47:00.000-08:00

yesterday was an interesting day. elise and suzy have been nagging me about making lists thinking that this might help clear the non-linear chaos of my mind. normally i avoid this practical practice because... well because i can't actually say. maybe i feel like if i make it through the chaos in my own time/space/manner of coping then hey!

anyways, the thought came to me while i should have been taking notes on the battle of algiers (which is actually an excellent movie) that i was going to start listing the emotional clutter as well.

then i had a long conversation with a very drunk boy last night that made me realize a few things: we experience the same patterns of behavior with the same situations. all my relationships have consisted of the same components just a new face, a new set of circumstances.

it kind of inspired me ask if anyone else wants to play?

write it down, the emotional stuff you are sifting through. an inventory of heartaches or frustrations that somehow alleviate themselves when they are no longer abstracted thoughts but meaningless items waiting to be checked off a marginal agenda.

i love seeing hand written things. would anyone like to share their "lists"? it's like peeking at someone's journal... I'm going to start collecting and posting if anyone's interested in sharing.

i got a call the other day...

2007-11-16T01:01:00.000-08:00

... asking me when it would be a good time to pick out bridesmaids dresses with a good friend of mine.

A NEW PROJECT IS BORN.

i have never been one to take self-portraits but on the suggestion of someone i might give it another shot.

there were few things i was ever sure of when i was leaving high school except for the fact that i would be the last of my friends to marry. i was usually the butt of the joke... it was often discussed that i would be happily single and living in a foreign country. everyone assumed they'd have to fly me and my foreign companion in from some far-off land. (assuming also that i could return after being an ex-pat. of course.)

i was so okay with this. i'm still okay with this... i guess i just thought it would happen when i was 27. don't ask me why 27... it just seemed like the approriate age. like give me a chance to defect from the country and find a foreign companion first okay? i'll take care of it by the time i'm 27.

i have one ex-boyfriend that's married now, and another that's engaged. i'm 21. was thinking that this was going to happen at 27... so far off? really? was it?

i will attend 3 more weddings in the next two years, two of which i will be a bridesmaid in.

i need to document this because as my friends are worrying about houses and weddings and china and inlaws... and babies? and retirement funds, while they do that i spend 8-14 hours of my day taking/making/talking or thinking about pictures. i need to document this because sometimes i just watch my own life unfold from the perspective of an unattached third party. i just watch myself like i watch a sitcom. because i know this is going to pan out something like i expected... but i won't be 27, and i won't fly in from europe, and i'll still be thinking i'm too young for this to actually be happening.

the first invitation came two weeks ago.

i watch my life like a sitcom, when i'm on my way to the bridal shower and secretly kind of bummed i'm missing a toga party? i'm so fucking mature...

like when my friend in D.C. called me after she was proposed to kennedy style. same booth in the same resturant john proposed to jackie. it was a friday night and Sara B and i were scrubbing trays... and hoping there would be an opportunity to get wasted that night.

i'm happy. i'm fufilled. this is what i wanted.

andrea called me after valentine's day to tell me she was engaged.

i was broken up with acouple days before... she asked me what was new with me... nothing. pictures. darkroom. school.

i'm happy. i'm fufilled. this is what i wanted.

seriously.

but it's true, it is, i don't envy them, i'm just in awe of how immature i am? am i really? i can't balance my checkbook, can't keep my room clean, sometimes i can't bring myself to get out of bed in the morning, and i sure can't keep someone in my life for more than acouple months if i even manage that... because most of the time i'm much too much chickenshit to even do anything about any feelings i have for anyone... so most of the time i just watch the people i care about most walk out of my life from an unattached third party perspective... because i'm watching a sitcom and this isn't my life.

but it is. and i'm not 27 yet. and that's not stopping anyone from growing up much too quickly. so what can i do but take pictures of it? or not, and continue watching like it's not actually my life.

me seeing you through your polaroids with love.

2007-11-10T13:46:00.000-08:00

nadine and i had a photo date. i came over to her amazing apartment and she was already working on our lingere shoot for fashion class. she was photographing the slips in these images with her sx-70 and they are the softest most luminous polaroids. just beautiful. i hope she puts them up on her website soon.

i wanted to take an image of her like her polaroids.

things i must do; prefferably before november twenty-ninth- in no particular order

2007-11-09T14:00:00.000-08:00

. form coherant thoughts

. go to wisconsin

. twice

. articulate said thoughts

. grow third arm

. learn to print digitally... well

. not fall asleep for periods of 36- 48 consecutive hours

. repeat

. become fluent in Italian through osmosis

. stop being cold all of the time

. figure out how to erase someone from my life, mind and memory

. clean my room

. take thought provoking pictures

. unpack from portland

. do nine loads of laundry

. clone myself

. teach clone me to teleport

. pick up a drug habit

. speed

. aquire Profoto battery and strobes

. dream

. stop having nightmares about the darkroom

. take a shower

. cook food that doesn't involve water and a microwave

. remember friends that don't have cameras' permenantly attached to personage

. find friends that don't have camera's permenantly attached to personage?

. stop leaving phone in car

. stop texting while driving

. stop treating the people that love you like shit

. bake pumpkin bread

. stop loving people that treat you like shit

. stop being a bitch

. stop bitching.

mother of corn!

2007-10-28T12:50:00.001-07:00

sometimes things happen in wisconsin. more often than not they don't.

so you play in cornfields.

there's this field in wisconsin...

kind of familiar? alittle brighter, life's in color again.

occasionally it's comforting to be home and still strange to see the things that never registered when you saw them everyday. then you realize that the environment you were so steeped in is actually a world of oddities to anyone else. maybe that's a poignant universal truth... or maybe my family is actually comprised of a bunch of nutjobs.

the drone from electrical towers...

2007-10-23T11:27:00.000-07:00

minus any resulting productivity is the only thing echoing in my head right now.i cannot really articulate a coherant thought and haven't been able to for most of this past week. i keep trying to think of things to further narrow down my projects for this semester and i am continually coming up short.

i know what i want for my portrait class. i know it when i see it. and i know what i DO NOT want to do. i just need to isolate the instances in which the conditions are right so i can continue shooting in that fashion. that's all. it just needs to start happening. i have so much good energy about this semester so far. i have the energy and the basis for the ideas. why is this taking so long to get rolling?

^ I started that post 15 days ago. ^

Intercept that with a trip to wisconsin, a visit from an old friend, a realativly shocking kick in the pants, an entire week of sleeping an average of 3 hours a night and refreshingly clean apartment thanks to elsie. I'm now on some sort of manic creative high I have three projects going right now, and it's off to my portrait class today.

krasnal knocked over the garbage, and now he needs a bath. my wound from last weeks bath is finally starting to heal.

elise is not going to be happy when she reads this:

Sara B took some great polaroids from the weekend after I found him.

susan

2007-10-13T14:36:00.000-07:00

Nali aka sweatpants.

2007-10-04T19:41:00.000-07:00

cait is coming cait is coming!

2007-09-18T17:41:00.000-07:00

tomorrow night. and i can't wait to see her lovely face.

a seat by the window

2007-09-11T17:54:00.001-07:00

waiting for the day...

2007-09-08T13:47:00.000-07:00

i will have a working computer and CS3

i lied... i'm leaving...

2007-08-13T06:41:00.000-07:00

in an hour or so. go west.

two weekends in wisconsin and a car door that closes.

2007-08-06T13:58:00.000-07:00

the tracker door closes!

and i am back in the city most likely for the rest of summer as is dear flatmate elise.

she brought me back a gorgeous set of tarot cards drawn with santeria imagery. she must have been reading my mind because i was walking past a bontanica acouple days ago and there were some candles that reminded me of the little bit i had learned about santeria in my art and ritual class. (which by the way is an excellant class offered in the art history department if anyone is looking for something different to take and is interested in anthropology)

my grand adventure out west for this summer has most likely fallen through which makes me rather antsy, however on the up side with this extra time on my hands i have a few shooting jobs doing portraits up in wisconsin. (senior portraits... blah i know) BUT... shooting with my sister: i can now handle any demanding uncooperative model any agency throws at me from here on out, and i got acouple candid shots that will prove interesting enough for my own work to make it worth the trip.

the weekend before some chicago trekked up to milwaukee for the CoPA exhibition, and honestly the turn out really surprised me. i haven't hung out in milwaukee in a long time and i was plesantly surprised to see a wide array of people and age groups both represented in the show as well as attending it. way to go walker's point.

the third ward used to be my high school stomping grounds first at The Broadway Theater Center and then at Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design where i first learned to pick up a camera. ironically enough i never thought that i would end up in photography afterall it was just something fun to do for the summer...

it was a strange feeling wandering around photographing the same things i used to (acutally knowing alittle more about what i was doing). then a came home to photograph my sister.that used to be one of our favorite things to do. i would dress her up, drag her around the yard and take "model" pictures with my pink and purple plastic 110 camera. i wish i knew what happened to that thing.

i was seven. she was three and a half. maybe i've fallen into what i was meant to do all along.

here are some more polaroids from that weekend. my mom loved nadine and everyone has a big invite back up to burlington anytime.

matt and andrew looking like it's the first day of school.

story time with victor.

it's a perriedactyl.

herald and hark...

2007-07-24T19:34:00.000-07:00

our upstairs neighbor who i was [this] close to introducing myself to... frightened me away by belting hark the herald angels sing in full operatic vibrato while bounding up and down the front entry stairs.

i just needed to borrow the laudry key. i locked MY laundry key in the laundry room.

i have aquired a cold, and i'm not sure if it's from the pools i've been jumping into at odd hours of the night... or a reaction to the few sporatic cigarettes i've smoked lately... or a reaction to the aforementioned pools? either way chicago is somehow giving me a severe sinus headache. good thing i am going to milwaukee this weekend.

i never thought i'd live to see the day when i would say 'good thing i'm going to milwaukee'

dear friends Nadine Reinke and Matt Austin will have pieces exhibited in the CoPA Exhibition opening up in Milwaukee this friday night at 7pm. Nadine has just finished a very lovely website, which features in addition to her work some really awesome photographers like my new favorite Gabi Vogt, and of course Zoe Bare.

monday i was very pleased to have been asked to the Marwen Arts Center by Kris Brailey as a guest artist to show some of my pinhole work. Kris is doing a workshop at Marwen for CPS teachers one of whom was Greg Foster-Rice's mom. A very sweet lady. Thanks Kris I had so much fun!

I've gotten alot of responces and injuries about my cameras so i thought i'd post some info on them below. enjoy!

one of my favorite cameras to shoot with right now is my converted Polaroid 220 land camera.

i have removed the face plate in order to override the automatic light meter. this lets me run the camera on bulb. i work with exposures from 3 secs- 5 mins. these cameras take pack polaroid (i use fuji fp-100) and before i loaded the film i put a brass pinhole on the inside of the aperature. this gives an interesting circular vignette to the image.

i do however love turning unusual objects into cameras as well and this one is a decorative planter i got at target. i just hammered a hole and attached a brass pinhole on top of that. this camera works with 11 x 14 paper negatives.

And to conclude something completely unrelated to photography for the sake of sanity... a music report! Katy and i were at the empty bottle on sunday, to see the lovely St. Vincent . Her tracks on myspace do not give justice to the energetic live performance of her and the band, check it out. well worth seeing live. I'm a sucker for eletric guitar with violin.

my sunshine

2007-07-20T17:22:00.000-07:00

things i have foolishly taken apart and cannot put back together... this week.

2007-07-19T18:39:00.000-07:00

i'm becoming a deconstructionist:

1. pentax smc 1:2 50mm lens

2. 80's era betsey johnson party dress

3. Sear's Roebuck Tower 120 camera

4. driver's side door to pink geo tracker

5. powerbook g4 (most concerned about this one)

sometimes i like to think that if i take it apart and put it back together all by myself, i'll understand how it works. i never get to that understanding.

i have spent the day scanning negatives from all my highschool travels shot with my pentax k1000 and the above 50mm lens which very unfortunately did not survive a particularly exasperating metra ride to Fox Lake last thanksgiving. so i figured what the hell, it's not working now... let's take it apart. it was interesting until i attempted to put it back together.

that camera has been to england, france, germany, italy, romania, hungary, austria, and the czech republic with me. we're rather attached. i don't care how much nicer any of my newer equiptment is... i still shoot with it, take it everywhere, and get what i want from it: my life on film.

i always preffered playing with legos when i was little. i was much better with legos.

i have erased the harddrive on my powerbook twice now and i have decided it is a lost cause.

the driver's side door to my car has decided it's about time to fall off.

my mother called me sobbing today because the cat died. this happened ironically in the middle of a long conversation with pete barerras about parents getting older and dying. looking at too many old photos. sam, niki, jane, kim and i in prague. never knew how good we had it. i would go back in a heartbeat if i could.

it's been a really strange few days. i hate hearing my mom cry.

Miss You!!!

2007-07-14T13:37:00.001-07:00

dearest elise, i have but one request... can you bring me back a jar of nutella? they just make it better in italy. MUAH!

don't forget the skyline.

promise the clouds won't look this good in L.A.

dave eggers on photography...

2007-07-11T23:47:00.000-07:00

i'm writing my final paper for my 20th century crit. class on John Currin (below) but i keep getting distracted because this amazing retrospective book of his that i'm using for research has shorts from Eggers scattered between the essays. this "go-getters" piece made me hurt in so many ways much like this class has caused me to.

spending so much focused time on discussing art, and what defines art, and how and why people make art... and the reason people think they have the authority to label and classify and qualify and quantify art makes me hurt. Jeff Wall's essays on modernism and photography as conceptual modern art... got me thinking about so much. why am i even taking pictures?

i don't know, up until this i've been in a constant cycle of act now think later. photograph now think later. photograph now analyze to death. premeditative photography never works out as well for me, or loses some meaning to me for some reason. i suppose i'll eleaborate on Jeff Wall later, because i honestly a week ago went to see his exhibit at the AI and bought his essays immediately... i've been re-reading the same essay for the past week trying to make sense of it and put it in relation to how i view my artist process.

the one thing i have concluded from this class in particular is that the way columbia teaches photography without philosophy is completey frustrating to me. i know we're in ways as much a technical trade school (especially the photography department) as an art school. but some of us are making art, and trying to understand how and why we're making art and trying to do that with no history or theory behind that is entirely unsettling. i guess i'm just surprised there isn't atleast something addressing the intellectual and psychological ramifications of making pictures... but that like many other things is just left for us to flounder about figuring out. but if generations of people sat down and discussed painting and what that meant to society then why isn't that happening more in this school for this artform?

i'm stepping off my soapbox because if that happened i don't know if i would even be able to deal with it... this class has made me realize how much i'd rather just be making and doing art right now and maybe i'll think about it later. hell some of the most refreshing "art pieces" i've seen lately have been stencils and tags scattered around logan square. and while all of this is bouncing around in my head i come across Dave Eggers' "Go- Getters"

"The woman is a young woman. She wants to make a living as a photographer, but at the moment she is temping at a company that publishes books about wetlands preservation. On her days off she takes pictures, and today she is sitting in her car, across the street from a small grocery store called The Go-Getters Market. The store is located in a very poor neighbourhood: the windows are barred and at night a roll-down steel door covers the storefront. The woman thus finds the name Go-Getters an interesting one, because it is clear that the customers of the market are anything but. They are drunkards and prostitutes and transients, and the young photographer thinks that if she can get the right picture of some of these people entering the store, she will make a picture that would be considered trenchant, or even poignant - either way the product of a sharp and observant eye. So she sits in her Toyota Camry, which her parents gave her because it was four years old and they wanted something new, and she waits for the right poor person to enter or leave the store. She has her window closed, but will open it when the right person appears, and then shoot that person under the sign that says Go-Getters. This, for the viewer of her photograph when it is displayed - first in a gallery, then in the hallway of a collector, and later in a museum when she has her retrospective - will prove that she, the photographer, has an exceptional eye for irony and hypocrisy, for the inequities and injustices of life, its absurdity perfect and absolute."

- we've all been there. we're all narcissists... this might just be THE reason why i sometimes feel like an asshole for calling myself "a photographer". then again most people are assholes. bet Dave Egger's an asshole but boy did he make me laugh.

my new favorite painting...

2007-07-09T23:56:00.000-07:00

and pretty much how i feel...

John Currin's "Heartless"

something consciously unconscious

2007-07-08T23:23:00.000-07:00

my pro-printing final: "chiara's sad pictures because the sun won't shine" (*a reflection on a really great year...).

I'm lookin to edit this down to 5 or 7 images that work well in a short sequence for a small portfolio to submit so i'd be interested in hearing anyone's opinion.

*inwhichilostmybestfriendandcreativepartnerhopewillandmotivationanysenseofgodorlosspulledthroughlikethewalkingdeadonlytofeelcompletelyinadequaitagainwhichisnowaprettystandardfeelingcompletelyinsecureanddistrustingwhenitcomestoanyoneespeciallymyselfwhenithinkofhowfastthesepastthreeyearspassedandwhatihavetoshowforitintheendbutafamilyineverseethatlovesmeanywaystotalstrangersmyparentsareoldnevershouldhavemarriedthereisnoloveeveryonearoundmeisinloveandnowicanreallysayitandmeanitimperfectlyhappybeingcompletelyalone.

misc. adventures in music, literature and fruit

2007-07-03T01:49:00.000-07:00

things of note: sooooo last night susan, katy and i ventured to the empty bottle (ahhhem...to visit my adopted cat) and to see Mysteriam (the project of musicians that accompany at columbia's dance center. it was pretty surprising. i haven't seen alot of mostly electronic music played live, especially electronic percussion... it's still strange for me to see someone walk onto a stage with a macbook, but that aside they had this electronic percussion pad set up in the midst of a few cymbals.. like a normal kit would be. the drummer could play three different tones on this pad just by touching different places on it. i was just amazed. i WANT one. but the band was really good, full sound, swirling and looping plus video timed to the music. it was a trip.(although i still preffer the drummer on a conga, he blew me away when i auditioned last year) aaaaaand more places should bring back the photobooth! a good time was had by all.

i just finished reading Persepolis and its sequal. these are amazing illustrated autobiographies of the graphic novelist Marjane Satrapi. she grew up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution of 1979. i can't tell you how amazing and painful it is to read... told in illustrations through the eyes of a child, we can't even image what it would be like to live through war and revolution like that and she did at ten years old. ever since my middle eastern history classes i've been fascinated with Iranian culture. this is something to check out, if anything just for the style of illustration. it's childish and charming, and interesting to see marjane's character grow up through the sequel.

lastly, i would just like to state that i do not support GMO's and there happens to still be sitting on our kitchen shelf a very small watermelon. "a mini melon" if you will. it's been perched inside a nest of my coffee filters since about two weeks before Elise left for europe. its ominous pressense has been haunting me for awhile now. i could see it staring at me even while sitting in the livingroom... yet the longer it sat there the more afraid i was to pick it up and move it to the trash as it would most certainly disintegrate into a ball of stinky gelatinous mush mold as any other genetically untampered piece of fruit sitting for that long would... except for this one... until tonight. i finally broke down, 3am and halfway through a paper i needed a coffee filter. this melon would not stop me. it didn't. surprisely it has not molded yet thanks to the freakish developments of science... so elise i think i'm going to try to save this one until you get home.

tastee freez has frozen banana's!

2007-06-30T19:11:00.000-07:00

here are some much delayed camping photos... the verdict is that my harddrive "thinks" its okay. it just makes a very high pitched squealing noise from time to time? i guess we have to work on that... when i get loan money and the heart to leave my baby laying in pieces.

a delicious breakfast.

the ascent... up the rockface getting lost and making a new trail.

doing carwheels under the full moon with alittle flashlight painting.

i used to love shooting at night, and i haven't been out in sometime. (above) reminds me. i have a project from this past fall experimenting with multiple exposures and night portraits, both of people and lighted spaces. it was my intention to continue this project in the summer months when shooting will certainly be much more pleasant (since i started it in december). i guess i'm not sure if it has any potential anymore, the mood has kind of passed but we'll see. hopefully those will be up in the next few days along with some pinhole.

now for alittle therapy... maybe if i get this off my chest i'll feel alittle easier tonight. i woke up from a mid-day hangover nap because i had a really startling dream. honestly it really creeped me out. elsie i just had to tell you and i don't mean to scare you.

so i'm walking down a sidewalk with my mother and she and i had just gotten off the phone with you. i see on the grass by the curb a calender. on the calender the date of the 17th is pointed out. i stop to pick it up. my mom gets upset with me and say's what are you doing, that's bad luck put it down. she separates from me and starts to take a different route. as she's leaving me she yells to me "call elise". i keep walking and see another calender with the 17th circled. i think this is too strange, pick them both up and keep walking. there's a guy sitting on the bus stop and i get startled in my dream, i start to walk faster and he asks me what i have in my hands. i call back to him. "calenders. the 17th, are you superstitious? do you think it's bad luck?" he just shakes his head at me and now i'm frightened and i start running. i turn and look around and suddenly there are two dogs chasing me. i tried to scream, couldn't and that's when i woke up. i never saw what month the calender was on. i know the first one i picked up didn't indicate the month.

i don't know why but i just can't stop thinking about it. it really gives me chills. i guess i am alittle superstitious. my phone is dead and i like a dumbass have left my charger at school otherwise i would have called you. love you elsie! be careful.

dear black cat at the empty bottle... i love you as well.

2007-06-21T23:37:00.000-07:00

i should not have eaten mini hot dog roll ups at 1am. however i do wish to steal that little black cat. i can't decide if i'm unfunctionally lonely... or just unfunctional. i don't know for sure that even if i did have company i'd be able to deal with the very basics of life. once again i'm trying to work on this... however i think that if i had something nice and warm that curled up with me in bed to pet i would be much less inclined to try to pet boys.

dear david from the genius bar... i love you

2007-06-20T08:08:00.000-07:00

i have my baby back, and by that i mean my 15in powerbook, and yes her name is geena. don't ask. with that being said i'm quite tempted to spend the rest of the day restoring her to full glory with all my images, music and software (appropriated? at that) however... i have a long paper i have been trying to write for the past week (since she crashed) on the harlem renaissance and the artist Romare Bearden who's work i can appriciate, but who's life and movement i know nothing about.

i just want to put photoshop back on my damn computer so i can put some camping pictures up, but here are some of bearden's images. he's known for mixed media collage though he was trained primarily as a painter. if anyone is interested the met has a fun little interactive web presentation on him. [here] it's geared toward children... i would like to figure out how some of the animation is done on it. there is a long panaramic piece that you can zoom in and out on. how sweet would that be for my pinhole panaramas? I'm still going back and forth as to whether or not i will include some of my mixed media pieces in my website or if i want it to be strict photography. I guess we'll see how they scan.

"The Calabash", 1970
"Enchanter in Time"
"The Dove", 1964 is what I will be writing about.

today is a day i'd much rather be making art than theorizing about it. i hope i will never get to the point where all i can do is analyze things to death... i know i can do that with my own life quite easily so i hope that doesn't seep its way into everything else i do.

too much tahini

2007-06-18T19:43:00.000-07:00

dear elise: please look at these polas and remember how much you adore me when i tell you... i have broken the white vase with the cork stopper. i am terribly sorry. i was quite sad because i also liked that very much... and it did come crashing upon my head quite violently. i shall find you something quite lovely soon that doesn't come from ikea.

i made the worlds worst hummus tonight. it was beyond vile.

p.s. we have basil plants now... and i haven't killed them... yet

fabricated family

2007-06-17T05:01:00.000-07:00

"Real silence-speaking is the kind that comes out of people's mouths when they've got a secret stuck on the back of their tongues. I'm not sure if people silence-speak in order to drown the secret by covering it under so many other words, or if they silent-speak in order to dislodge the secret from the back of the tongue- using all the other words as elaborate levers and pulleys and in this way bring it to the front of the mouth, and then out into the open. Probably for both reasons. Atleast in this family it seemed to me that this was true." -Nomi Eve

I silent-speak most of the time my mouth is moving. I'm never actually uttering the words that are present when the thought of speaking originated.

I just finished "The Family Orchard" by Nomi Eve. This is a fabricated history of the author's family, as if it were pieced together though the handed down legends. It's quite beautiful because where does truth and speculation blend when generations are so far gone and how much of history is really honest to god fact?

I haven't met most of my family, but I know they are there across an ocean. I know them through acouple photographs and antecdotes. I have vivid memories from when I was very young, two and three years. Most people don't retain that, so I wonder if I actually did or if it was engrained in my memory like truth through the photographs and stories my parents would tell everytime they brought out an album.

I'm in a portrait class for the fall and I'm so excited to work again with what originally brought me to photography, yet I'm disappointed because there is nothing more I'd rather do than go and photograph the strangers that are my family in Italy. Who wants to jet me across the Atlantic every other weekend... any takers?

I'm also very excited because my Mom has given me my grandmothers photo albums to scan. I'm hoping to eventially be able to not only record these photographs but also my mom's stories of them.

With that being said Wisconsin is so wide-open and compressing at the same time it makes me very anxious if that even makes sense. I'm so glad to be back in the city and I've decided there are few things better than drunken bike rides at 4am with Jane and Asher.

the one thing bryce ever gave me in return...

2007-06-13T20:04:00.000-07:00

was a renewed love for the outdoors. sometimes now, living in concrete i forget i used to pack a backpack full of snacks and books and spend the entirety of my days looking for a shadier, mossier tree to perch in.

with that being said i'm working on a few things from the first of what will hopefully be many camping excursions this summer. hell even a parking lot picnic was fun. nature photography was never really my thing and it rained for most of this camping trip but that weather must have been just for me. the night before i began photographing a certain kind of light the city gets post- mid afternoon storm. i think these images might evolve into something but until i've made even alittle sense of if polaroid will suffice.

there is nothing more invigorating than the stillness before a storm and i think i might start chasing that soon.

on solitude:

2007-06-10T10:42:00.000-07:00

my roomate/otherhalf elise will be leaving me to galavant around europe for the next two months. i don't want to sound like a terrible person and i will miss her dearly, but i think i will enjoy this time alone. i need to just pull my shit together. this is the time.

i don't know when it happened because i always used to be a fiercely independant person. i was ready to move out when i was seventeen. somewhere along the way i grew incredibly dependant on having a "love" in my life. i got to a point where i was fully capable of taking care of myself so much so that the only thing i wanted to do was to take care of another person. enter string of emotionally and monitarily dependant and draining affairs with the opposite sex. when i begin to fall for someone they quickly become the most important thing in my life, and recently i've realised to the point in which i no longer care for my own well-being. i don't know when this happened but it's stopping right now. my mother is the most self-sacrificing human being i have ever met and i would like to think it's thanks to her big heart that i was born this way and not due to my own weakness.

so many of my friends have used their time in school as a limbo until the engagement, something to entertain themselves until they become wives and mothers. this is not a gateway for me and i'm not killing time until something/someone better comes along. this is it. this is what i want... my work is my life and my life is my work and it's always been that way for me. it was just too hard to see it until now. there hasn't been a single day i wake up and find no beauty in the world and when it's not in my hands my eyes are my camera. it's just that simple. i am revived and refocused.

i have commitment issuse at times, so i'll try this for now like so many others: here is yet another photoblog. let's hear it for instant gratification, this will be easier than a website while something more permanant is underconstruction. isn't that funny? exactly what i said i was done doing.

thoughts on the fracture.

2007-04-05T17:56:00.000-07:00

yesterday in my ethnographic film class we began discussing the qualities that classify our existence as post modern.

waste of space

2007-04-03T17:40:00.001-07:00

and breath, and life.