Happy New Year

 
A rundown of the year - because I know you've been wondering, "why doesn't that woman write?" I've been busy.

Keeping busy in arts, this year I've been elected as a board member to Ignition Northwest ignitionnw.org here's the blurb; Ignition Northwest is a membership based non-profit organization created to foster radical self-expression, participatory art, and sustainable community through regional events, art grants, and information sharing and education for the Burner-based community in the Pacific Northwest. All of our activities are the results of the amazing collaborative efforts of our members, with guidance by our member-elected board of directors. Our primary activities include sponsoring art, organizing events, and building community.

I've been in a relationship for the last year, I do hope it continues, he's a great guy. His name is Barak (sounds like Eric with a B). He's a good guy from a good gentle family, he does guy stuff, he's nice, and tolerates me most of the time. Seriously, he's amazingly supportive of my "work".

You may or may not know that I have been participating in a project called 365days, where I make a self portrait every consecutive day for a year. It's harder than it sounds... it's harder than I thought it would be. It's hard. I'm 1/3 of my way through my third year. I use the time to myself as an opportunity to give a mental and physical check in. As a result of the project I've grown immensely as a person and a photographer. Not every picture is great and that's okay.

I have been taking pictures of other people as well, some of them are pretty good even. I'm working on a series where I guide people to taking self portraits in my studio. We all have a picture face - however if we're in control of pushing the button, the resulting pictures can be alarmingly open and honest. The pictures have been really wonderful! I look forward to getting more people in. I'm not ready to show that group of pictures just yet, but I'm close.

Back in spring I hung a photo series of a potato at a group show at Form Space Gallery. It was amazing to see my photos blown up and mounted. And it was a cool experience watching people really get into looking at them. I'm looking forward to more shows in the coming year. None scheduled so far, must get busy on that.

I've self publishing 2 books of my "work" 365 Days of Self Portraits, Vol. 1 I didn't tart it up with words or anything, it's just pictures. The second book has words and stuff, no promises on their quality, just that they are present and offer some juice to the images. They're honest and sometimes uncomfortable, well at least they were for me to write. Woman Of A Certain Age, it's a little spendier, it has words after all, and it's bigger. I haven't set any price on them yet, so I'm not raking in the cashola or anything - I haven't figured out how yet - so act fast if you want one! I'll put the link/badge at the bottom of the mail.

This summer I worked at The Fremont Arts Council on the Summer Solstice Parade. And this winter I've been pulling my weight at the Seattle Center doing some production coordination for a Winter Fire festival. We were supposed to run the show on the winter solstice, but were snowed out and have postponed until 1/10-11, if you're in the neighborhood, consider checking it out.

I've been making funny little felt 3d soft sculptures of cameras all of which are goofy squishy replicas of actual cameras. This activity clearly falls into the "WTF?" category of past times, however I'm really enjoying the creative process, the results and then the magic of giving them away.

Other than that, really I don't do much, life is life, stuff is stuff.
You?