Awesomely Bad Movie

Yay for Grease 2!  The boredom of the grave shift drove me to it.... but c'mon...Michelle Pfeiffer is hot no matter what age she is and whoever that guy is that played Michael was smoking, even if he also later played Rex Manning in Empire Records.  

Aww

Soooo damn cute.  Yay my heart monster!!

Please Please Please....

Let fancyguppy be making more of these to sell in her Etsy shop.  How freaking adorable are they?!!  Totally mine and my sister's if and when they're back in stock.  Go check out more of her stuff!!  All adorable!

**UPDATE**  So I got an email back saying they were back in stock this morning!! so I just ordered them.  My sister and I are so excited :D

Time for a New Color Job? hmmm...

These pics are about a year and a half old and I know they're not the best or clearest pics of me, but I've gotta say that I miss that hair.  The length was great and I miss the dark color.  What's everybody think, time for a new color job?  

PS- Obviously I'm not the hot blonde.  That's by bff Shannon :P  I've never been blonde....just don't think the color fits me that well.  

YES

Ummm....How did I not hear about this movie till now?  It looks soooo goood!!  I adore Daniel Day Lewis.  Looove him <3

Emily's Graduation

Emily, my younger and only sibling, graduated high school this past Saturday afternoon from Faith Christian Academy.  Her graduating class was 25 people and she had a 4.1 GPA....yeah, she's amazing.  I love her, she's my best friend, and I've never ever been so proud of her than I was on that day.  

Because the class was so small and personal, it was a very different graduation ceremony than what I'm used to.  For starters, each graduate had they're own presentation board like the one above.  She spent a ton of time putting that board together and it looked amazing.  I got an entire side panel devote to pictures of us :P

My mom's sister is very very close with our family; her and her two sons lived with us for a few years and because of this we just feel like one big happy family- these two guys feeling more like our brothers than cousins.  Randy's in the brown; he's 12 and almost taller than me.  Jay's in the green; he's 7 and hilarious.  

So so pretty.

Accepting her diploma...

Like I said, the ceremony was very different than what I'm used to for a graduation ceremony.  As each person was called up to receive their diplomas, a slideshow of pictures of them from childhood to now would be projected up on the big screen and a pre recorded message of them speaking would play over the loud speakers.  The message was just them thanking their family, their friends, and their teachers for the years they spent at Faith.  The student accepted their diplomas and then got a rose and came down into the crowd and presented the rose to their parents.  By the time it was my sister's turn, I was in tears as was my sister, my mom, and my aunt.  I'm pretty sure my dad even shed a few tears.  Such an amazing moment.  

She's going to Eastern University in the fall on a pretty major scholarship.  She's going to attend the nursing program.  God, she's amazing :)

Hex Signs

Lately I've had tattoos on the brain even more so than usual (hmmm....wonder why :P) and I've decided to revisit an idea for one that I had a few months ago and then abandoned.  It's of the distlefink, a stylized version of the goldfinch used in Pennsylvania Dutch hex signs and artwork.  It's the symbol of good luck and happiness as well as good fortune.  I'm half PA Dutch, my father's side of the family being so as far back as we can trace.  It's always had special meaning to me; my dad can speak some PA Dutch and therefore I've picked up on it, our family's recipes are all PA Dutch, and the artwork has surrounded me my entire life.  The old folk's home I work at too is primarily PA Dutch folk.  I love it when they get pissed at each other and start yelling at each other in German.  

I think this double design is what I'm going to go for.  When the distlefink is doubled, the meaning is doubled, therefore doubling one's good luck and happiness.  I'm working a little with my own designs and colors.  I'd love to work with yellows and golds because yellow distlefinks have special significance- they push the idea of life, the sun, and gentility.  However, given my skin tone I'm not sure how well that will work.  We shall see.  

Adorable

I just started following a new person on Twitter named Naked Tile and she just happens to have a fantastically adorable shop on Etsy.  This is my favorite piece from her collection- the Time Stood Still Necklace.  Yay :)

Karl Persson

I heard about this painter, Karl Persson, through my good friend Nick McKnight.  I'm torn about this guy- some of his work I really really like and other stuff I feel could be done better or I just don't like the subject matter as much as some of his other things.  I couldn't really find much of a pattern from the times when they were done like you often can.  Like I said, I'm just not really sure.  The details in some are spot on and then in others I feel like he could've pushed them further.  Because, honestly, his work pops the most in the gruesome details he's able to display.  Definitely go check out his site to check out more of his work.  I do really like his stuff and he's well worth the time.  

Love

Many people don't know this, but the all-great and all-powerful photographer Alfred Stieglitz, creator of Camera Works magazine, was married to and completely obsessed with long-time partner Georgia O'Keeffe.  O'Keeffe, well-known for her flower paintings, was 23 years younger than Stieglitz when they met.  Stieglitz was married and after 6 years of living with O'Keeffe, finally divorced his then-wife and shortly there after married O'Keeffe.  From 1918, the year they met, till 1937, the last year Stieglitz photographed due to his health problems, he took over 300 portraits of O'Keeffe.  I mean, I'm sure he took more than that, but he palladium printed the majority of the 300 of them.  Now that's love.  The two were complete partners as far as the understanding of the word can go.  He was her muse and she was his; they supported each other, took care of each other, and existed completely with each other.  

She was fantastic.  The best part of these portraits is the trust and honesty and sincereness you can see that O'Keeffe, as the subject, shared with Stieglitz, the photographer.  That's what makes these portraits so special.  He adored her and that was beautiful.  

This is Stieglitz.  This photo was taken by the magnificent Imogen Cunningham, whom I've talked about at great lengths before, and as you can see he chose to stand in from of one of O'Keeffe's paintings for the portrait.  I need to find me my own O'Keeffe :P

Meh

So these are a few of my diptychs from my Junior Seminar final.  The whole idea stemmed from thinking about the strength in architecture and the strength in the human body and comparing the two.  From there, I started thinking about the places that have existed in my life that have helped to make me the person I am today.  I photographed these buildings and then photographed myself mimicking the shape and form of the architecture and then presented the sets side by side.  I took out all of the space around my body and the building because I wanted the focus to be on the icon of the things and not the landscape as a whole.  I'm not at all happy with these yet; I didn't have enough time to let the idea germinate and I felt rushed with it.  The next step, I think, is going to be taking slides of buildings and then projecting them onto planes on my body and then photographing that.  I think once I start doing that I'm going to get deeper into the idea of what these places mean to me and represent that by what part of my body it's projected on.  The ones below were the ones that I felt were most successful with doing this already.  

I heart the Venture Bros.

For as much as I love the Venture Bros., I think I love their dvd artwork even more.  The spread that was done for the Season 1 dvds was by Bill Sienkiewicz.  Bill's an artist that works mostly in illustrating graphic novels and comics and the like since 1980.  

Season 2 spread was done by Jackson Publik, show creator.  Love, love, love them.

Ridiculous

Soooo.....these paintings (yes, paintings) are fantastic.  They're done by Gottfried Helnwein.  Judging by this guy's website, he's a pretty big deal, and judging by his work, he completely deserves it.  The painting above and immediately below are from his Los Caprichos series.  Both are oil and acrylic on canvas, 160cm x 107cm.  

The Disasters of War 13, 2007.  This one is also oil and acrylic on canvas, however its 180cm x 125cm.  This series is in memory of Francisco de Goya.  

Head of a Child III, 2000.  This one comes in at a whooping 299cm x 218cm.  Wahhhh?!  The details are just insane.  

Here's a portrait of the artist working on Kindskopf.  This gives you an idea of how difficult working on these paintings must be.  It's nearly impossible to get details like that on a painting a quarter of the size of these.  Go check out his website- there's a ton of other stuff to marvel at.