Travel blog, Cuba, girls who travel, art, artist
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Artwalk in the Astor Hotel Ruins, February Photography Show, and Hawaii TV Series
I am starting the new year with a solo show at the Astor Ruins in Astoria... this space is epic!! The many design elements of this crumbling hotel lobby will transport you back to the early 1920’s when it was built. My generous hosts have provided this space and will be making sure you feel cozy with lots of room to socialize, a warm fire inside by the couch, and food and drinks for the evening. Please consider hosting an event here, it is amazing for weddings and live music. The host can be reached for booking and questions at www.theruinsattheastor.com.
The large space will be filled with floating tapestries of my local outdoor photographs taken in Washington and Oregon. On the battered walls you will find two sets of images from my early years of darkroom printing as well as my recent outdoor images. If you remember the Pixies album art from the late eighties, that was one of my inspirations for dipping into a style called “photo montage.” You will see layered back and white images with symbolic objects, like old railroad ties or rocks surrounding a photo within a photo. You’ll have to come see it if you’ve never experienced that style, and there’s a poetic story of love and loss behind it - it’s my first time showing these old beauties in Astoria. All my frames are handmade (by me) and are stately in substance, regal in appearance.
You won’t want to miss this one night show from 5 - 8pm Saturday night, January 12, 2019 at 1423 Commercial St. in Astoria, Oregon.
February Photography Invitational Show
Cannon Beach Arts Association will be hosting a photography invitational show in February and March that will include many artists you have probably heard of who sell their work around the Northwest. Please come to this beautiful beach early and check out the tide pools at Haystack Rock. At low tide, Haystack Rock Awareness Program volunteers will be out there to help guide you through naming the creatures you will find and update you on the latest marine biology studies on local species.
Join us for the opening on the evening of February 16 from 5 - 8pm at the gallery located at 1064 S. Hemlock St in Cannon Beach, Oregon. The show runs from February 13 through March 27, if you can’t make it to the opening. I will have several framed prints hung for sale.
Television Set Design
Aloha friends, Astoria take note! You know those old cedar wood floats that get around to half the places you know in town? Well I did a little project with the set designers of the remade television series Hawaii Five-0, which will be airing on February 22. They have not disclosed the details to me, but check out the scenes in that show and see if you can spot the old Astoria floats!
The Hawaii-Oregon connection is real, from one end of the rainbow to the other. I need to see the islands sometime, but for now Cuba is in my sights! More about that later, or just follow my Instagram account link below to see my journey through four cities in the Western part of the island.
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Apple News Publishing | New Ecola Print | Studio Visit
Apple News Publishing: Get Local | Travel Far
After three arduous days of upgrading my decade-old Mac to be ready for publishing this blog, it is finally available on the Apple News app all over the world! It was a very long three days of getting to know my computer in ways I never thought I'd have to... but some things are just worth the struggle, and this was one. My blog will immediately publish on all Mac devices, including a desktop that is running on at least iOS 9. I cover the 'Get Local' portion pretty well, as I keep myself very busy here on the north coast of Oregon planning shows, running two online shops (Etsy and Society 6), and seeking out wholesale opportunities and commissions of my creative work. I'd like to 'Travel Far,' and for now that will probably just be Mexico, Canada, and other parts of the U.S. until I can afford more, so buy some of my work if you haven't! Do you think I'd get a great shot at Banff? Yeah, send me there with a purchase! Want me to document Costa Rica ethnic carvings in process? I do! Yep, buy a print or two from my shop! Spread the word to your friends and family that I produce fine quality landscape photography as my main focus, and send them over. I also give great service!
New Ecola Point Print
This winter, the Oregon Coast felt some strong storm weather. On my drive south from Astoria, I witnessed waves and full-on ocean pounding right into the Arcadia dunes! This is normal stuff that happens out here, but it is still breath-taking to see places which are normally dry become inundated with water. What happens after all of this is we begin living with a dramatically changed coastline. Each shot I create of the same area will be different from then on. Loose soil slides down basalt rock into the ocean, and trees fall in every direction like pick-up-sticks. Small dark boulders tumble and pile on the sand as the softer, lighter sediment is washed away in the following tides. And thus every year, we have a new beach to admire and some to miss.
My last hike was at Ecola Point, just north of Cannon Beach (famous for the Haystack Rock where puffins breed). The trail was a fun and challenging one that took me through deep grass and across a fresh stream, and I dared myself to go to the wide part of the bluff by hiking a narrow path of dirt above a bush whose roots were exposed and hanging off the cliff-side already. Well, I took my chances to get this shot, and it was worth it! The print will soon be available on Etsy, and my first proof looks so dreamy in person!
Studio Visit
I would like to formally invite you to reach out to me via the Contact page and visit my studio! I handle this by private visitation only, for those who are interested in purchasing some of my work. If you are in the north coast area and want to see the prints and products that I have on hand, you are welcome to arrange that with me.
Thanks for all of your support! It helps keep me going on this journey to bring the outdoors into your home, so that you can revel in the beauty of our beautiful earth when you are in your sanctuary away from the craziness of the world. And please leave a comment on my site. My blog feels pretty lonely there without you!
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Our Big Backyard, Spirograph Landscapes, Spring Shows, and Wholesale Newsletter
Our Big Backyard
If I could make it my job to play outside all day... I would. I'm trying. I suppose the best moments in my process are when I am discovering new vistas, soaking in the details, and wondering in awe over the geological clues of our very existence, present namely in rocks that I can observe with my naked eyes. I am no scientist, so I don't do air samples, core samples, water samples.... I'm no Ansel Adams with developing equipment in the back of a van, so I'm not gone weeks at a time making prints on the road. I just use my two eyes and dig into my curiosity using all the resources made available to me by scientists, researchers, and practicing photographers to do what I do and learn about my environment. It is a great, joyful method for me, and the real fun is in making a satisfying print that represents a place and becomes a definition of "place." That's my only job I give myself. I then share this with others in the form of products I design and traditional wall art, hoping that my images of the places you live in become the "spirit" of objects when you invest in my work.
Cape Lookout
Funny thing that I realized on a recent hike where we took the wrong entry and ended up at the beach... is how temporary most of our landscapes really are here on the northwest coast! I took a trip to circle the entire Olympic Peninsula in November and later learned that that region is relatively new land on a geological timescale! This made me think more deeply about rock formations, and I love to look at rocks and even collect them. Well, on the more recent beach hike, which was actually a failed Cape hike (silly me, I led the expedition), I noticed something in the heaping cliff-side that rose high above us on the beach. A sediment layer of blackened everything - blackened soft sediment with hard rocks falling out and blackened tree roots. I looked up at the forest on the hiking trails, meters and meters above me, and noticed a living tree barely hanging onto the precipice, which was perfect for observing root length - they didn't go very deep! What this made me think was that the roots of the tree that I was looking at at my eye level had been buried by new sediment and were very old roots! I guessed first that maybe there was a fire and an earthquake that made this chunk of forest slide down into the ocean and turn black... had to wait till I drove home to do some research.
Well, I found two articles written about an area just a few miles up, as well as another Cape farther south, and I was onto something! It turns out that Oregon's sometimes extreme tidal erosion, of course, was responsible for these roots even being visible, but what was even cooler to learn was that landslides did in fact occur here, exposing "paleosols" (ancient soil deposits) with well-preserved tree trunks in just the right conditions. Scientists believe that these landslides occurred during a previous Ice Age, and just up the coast, similar preserved trees were carbon dated to over 38,000 years old. OMG! What a find! I got to touch them. I saw similar dramatic beach erosion when I lived on the southern coast of South Carolina in my early twenties, and it seems I find myself still attracted to some of the same things.
Spirograph Landscapes
Over the winter, the thought of doing Spirograph designs crept into me, and I went for it head on! It was fun to reconnect with a childhood "toy"... or really an engineer's "drafting aid" is what it was meant to be. These were originally designed in the 1880's by a British engineer, and they soon after were marketed as a toy! Boy would I love to see one of those, if I ever got to search some old attics in England! I drew spiro designs that stand alone on my newest handmade coasters and magnets, and I have just begun to incorporate them into my landscapes, too. I'm pushing out my first "test" designs of the mixed mediums on Facebook (here), and we will see where this goes! I'm curious to hear feedback on these designs... what do you think? Would anyone want them as record covers? Art prints? Pillows?
Spring Shows
January through April will be months for lots of social networking time, if you'd like to discuss my artwork in person. I will be showing for four solid months in Astoria, OR at Good to Go in January, at Three Cups during February and March, and at Cannon Beach Art Gallery in April. THEN it's time for spring shooting, so exciting!
Good to Go is at 1132 Commercial Street, Astoria, OR (thru Jan 31)
Three Cups is at 279 West Marine Drive, Astoria, OR (Feb 2 thru March 26)
Cannon Beach Art Gallery is at 1064 S. Hemlock Street, Cannon Beach, OR (March 29 thru April 30)
Wholesale Newsletter
I am also releasing my first wholesale newsletter-slash-catalog in late February, so if you are a retailer, gallery, hotelier, or business interested in adding my design products to your retail, go to the contact page and let me know with a quick email! I'm happy to do custom projects with my designs and photography.
As always, my work can be found on ETSY. You can contact me and follow my latest using Facebook or Instagram.
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Direction, Purpose, and Instinct. Just.... Yes.
in art, northwest, photography, Washington
It's hard to not get all warm-caramel-goopy inside when I think about where I am at in my art direction right now. It's like "wow, I just woke up, and here I am doing this!" Well, my idealistic thought patterns can often leave out the ride-along hardships when I finally reach a new pinnacle from my efforts. But the trick is, there is always another pinnacle! So I keep ending up in this place again and again, and the effects on my psyche have been amazingly positive.
When I am waking up and not having to go to a day job (let's hope I can hang in there this winter!!), it allows me the freedom to operate with purposeful direction in effecting my creative ideas by putting my energy towards them as much as I humanly can. Going solo also allows me to operate on instinct, which I find to be challenging at times. Having a new professional camera now presents every opportunity to create, and yet I know I have a slew of other things to do to keep bringing up the rear of my online presence and the time it takes to branch out in person. sometimes it's a tough battle to follow the path of what's right to do in the moment! But the instinct is usually right, even if the brain argues it. (if you are curious, the cute new 4lb. camera baby is a Nikon D750!)
Lately, I have done some day-tripping with my new fancy glass. I drove the entire Olympic Peninsula in two days, fell in love with a Victorian seaport town, and returned just a little defeated from not having correct filter sizes for one of my lenses. I faced the nervous challenge of being totally new at a very advanced device that came with a 500 page manual (I sat and read the whole thing before it even left my house!). But, I give myself grace because this is all so new and amazing, and I enjoyed meeting so many nice, curious, supportive people along the way. Washington, you are one Laid-back state.
When I step out my door, sometimes I even wonder what I am doing -- I think this is a factor of the newness of everything and putting my old gear up for sale, so I'm letting go of comfort I have known. The challenge of being completely alone with my thought processes is panning out into gain -- I have greater understanding of myself. I realize, "Hey, it's all okay. You just gotta do this your way. Nobody's rules or expectations apply." I faced a fear, put the big bucks down, and now this ship is sailing and I'm the captain, wooo! And just like a captain, I am on top of the weather, the road conditions, the hazards, the tides... I feel more connected to the earth than ever before. I keep going to sleep at night hoping for another day to do this. One thing you will never hear me say is, "I'm bored."
I suppose this November writing is more a heady thought-release for you to peer inside the workings of my mind as an artist whom you may follow or even admire (I'm honored if you do!). Maybe you could see that the results from going beyond comfort, facing fears alone, and following your gut is all good in the end. For myself, I'll never have to wonder because I tried.
There's Lots more to come this winter, as I just taught myself a budding new skill in the arts. Can't wait to blog about it later!
My work is for sale through Etsy and Society 6, and you will find many links throughout my site here that will take you shopping if you find a print that you like. I recently added two new 'Galleries'of products and prints here to get you stoked on my work and start looking at more. I also re-vamped the whole look and organization of NYED, and I hope you enjoy the new layout!
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BOLT Coffee Bar in Gearhart and Cannon Beach Art Gallery
Hello!
Well when they say put yourself out there... I got as much as I can handle, and more keeps coming just as soon as I push another project or show to completion. This is really an amazing process, and I know the flow will happen in its own way... I hope I can handle it and still find time to cook and sleep!
BOLT Coffee Bar Show in Gearhart
Yesterday, I hung a show at the new BOLT Coffee Bar in Gearhart. This spot is a quick and easy stop for a road adventure coffee, located on Highway 101 near Pacific Way. The owner, John, has had a passion for owning small businesses, and this coffee bar is his new venture. He serves Oregon coffee (with s'mores additions!) and has a wall of my wood photo panels on display. There are some larger prints framed in decorative pine, too! Really, he is using my work as shop decor, but I'll let it pass for awhile.
The show will run for several months, and plan on a fun gathering for a grand opening later in the summer!
Cannon Beach Art Gallery Representation
Farther down the coast, Cannon Beach Art Gallery at 1064 S. Hemlock Avenue is now carrying several of my smaller wall and tabletop 5 x 5 mini wood panel photos. This is where you will find the Haystack Rock photo, of course! You know... that gorgeous sea stack over 15 million years old that everyone checks out for nesting puffins on top and the tide pools around its base.
Stay tuned for future adventures and new art prints that will become available! My shop is always open at https://www.etsy.com/shop/Sweetsere.
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