Lake Forest benches

More images to add to my visual encyclopedia of benches!

Walk to the Lake

I've been able to walk to Lake Michigan a few times since I've been here, it's only a few miles away and it's been a great way to clear my head. It was so nice to hear and see the water, there was no one around so I had the whole beach to myself.

So Far So Awesome!

Can't believe I've already been here 1 week! Photos above are my studio on the first day, all nice and organized. It now looks like a total disaster area! I'll post photos tomorrow. The window is what I see when I open my eyes in the morning-not too shabby.

Ragdale Studio

I'm getting ready to leave for Ragdale this Thursday-can't wait! I hope I bring everything I need, I'm sure I'll bring way more supplies than necessary...here are some photos of the studio I'll be in. One half of the building is a musician's studio and the other half is a visual art studio which is where I'll be. I took these photos last fall when I stayed at Ragdale over night for a work retreat. I can't believe I'll have all that space to myself-woo hoo!

Relationships from A-Z/Artist's Residency

Here are a few images from a new-ish series entitled, Relationships from A-Z. My roommate had a teacher's edition atlas from the 90's and for each country they had a graphic that superimposed the size of that country to scale on top of the U.S. I found this to be interesting on a few different levels and decided to recreate this part of the atlas. So I traced each graphic from A-Z of the whole atlas (some islands were omitted as they were too small to register). It was definitely a time consuming project and an interesting process to retrace the shape of the U.S. so many times. Images above from top to bottom are details of: AB, CDEF, OPQR
They're done on vellum so it's a little tricky to document but I hope to have better images soon!
I'm heading out to Ragdale next week for my 2 week residency that I feel like I've been talking about for ages. I'm so excited to finally experience being able to focus solely on making art. I'll have my laptop so I'm hoping to blog while I'm there.

Coming and Going

This is a series I did when I lived in Boston for grad school at MassArt.
Shortly after I moved there, I got mugged on my doorstep. Going home and leaving my house suddenly became pretty stressful. I made this series as a way to document the seemingly simple act of coming and going. The sequence got all jumbled as I was adding the images to this post so to see the proper order, go to my flickr page.

Comer e Beber

As I try to escape the frigid Chicago air (but Spring is on the way!), here are some more images from my trips to Portugal. Food and drinks always trigger memories for me and I make it a point to enjoy some specific items whenever I go back to Portugal. Included above are: pasteis de nata (enjoyed in Belem of course), hot dog (Boca do Inferno, listening to AC/DC), grilled chicken, bread and cheese (Belem), pasteis de bacalhau (Cascais), grilled cheese and sumol (Ave Liberdade, Lisbon), SuperBock (Cascais waterfront).