uw-madison.....COMPLETE!

After working on it every day for almost a week, I finally finished the UW-Madison collage. This one gave me a lot of trouble. It was like trying to put together a puzzle and having pieces missing. I had plenty of photos, actually I had WAY MORE than I needed, but it was just getting them all to fit in an eye pleasing manner that was the difficulty. It's hard to explain, but I just know it when it's done. I always tell people that I have no preconceived notion of what it's going to look like, I'll just know it when I see it. And this one just didn't want to appear!!

At 60 layers, this is the most complex collage I've done so far. I'm happy with the result, and I'll be putting it up for purchase on my website soon, and I will be sending out an email notification to those on my email mailing list ASAP!

things happen

I just wanted to post to say that unfortunately I won't be doing the 3 Day Walk for Breast Cancer next weekend. I completely underestimated the difficulty in raising such a large sum of money and I was so very busy that I couldn't put my all into it. I thought the artwork would be a larger success than it was and with art fairs almost every weekend, I missed all of the training meetings. I also didn't have the time to organize any fundraising events. The event that I did try to organize fell through. I feel horribly over the whole thing and will know in the future to stick to smaller events. I did do the Race for the Cure in the spring with a friend and that was a fantastic event and I plan on doing that again next year. 

Thanks to all of you who purchased artwork and who donated on the website. I appreciate your donation greatly, thank you for giving to such a wonderful cause!! All of the money that was raised by the artwork and the 5% that I collected from each of the art fair totals will still be donated to the event. Total amount raised was $335.

I intend to continue to display the original print at all art fairs in the future and shall it ever sell, will give half of the total price, $300, to the Susan G. Koman Foundation.

iphone notes

Anyone who sees me fairly regularly knows I'm addicted to my iPhone. It's like super glued to my hand. I'm either texting or checking an application like Facebook or I just like to hold it. But I've come to rely on the Notes application more and more. Today I was in Borders and came across a book of photographs called Suburban World. It was the photos of a local photographer who wasn't in the business to take an artistic or even particularly beautiful photographs. He took them to document the world around him, the world outside his door. Which made my mind wander, which made me write this commentary on my art:

It's not about art. It's about documenting the places that make people laugh, think, remember. It's about seeing things I'd never see through the eyes of someone who loves their town or school. Learning the history of a place I've walked past a million times or discovering somewhere I've never been. It's hearing the stories that we attach to a place and don't realize. It's about discovering my world through someone else's eyes and in turn learning more about myself. Tossing away all pretense about what I know about certain places (a dive, a high class place, expensive, cheap) and just learning. Knowing that it's not how the photo is taken that makes it perfect, it's what someone remembers about that place. It's loving to hear what comes next after "I remember when...". Everyone has their story. I just try to capture it.