Refreshing Winds: Art vs Photo

I am happy to announce that two of my photographs have been accepted into the juried art Show Refreshing Winds which opens January 21st, and runs until March 5th! I submitted a several photographs to the show at the Mennonite Heritage Gallery, and was very excited to hear that two photos were accepted. The show coincides with a conference at the CMU campus with the theme Here in this Place.

Some black and white pictures I took in London this past summer were accepted to the show. I sometimes forget to mention on this blog that I am a photographer. I tend to separate photography from art in my mind, because the process of each is so different. I love both, and actually have this fear that I am a better photographer than artist. Or rather what I mean by that is that I think my photographs can sometimes be more accepted than my artwork, and I kind of wish it were the other way around. I sort of happened into photography by accident. I was hired to teach a photography class before I had ever been a photography student, and thus spent one summer in a photo crash course covering black and white, colour processing, and digital photography. Thankfully I ended up loving it, but this is a recent development for me. I honestly sometimes forget to associate photography with myself because it's like it hasn't made it's way into my identity yet. Art though; painting and drawing has always been a part of my identity, that's why I still think of taking photographs as second fiddle to painting and drawing.

For the MHC exhibit artists were invited to submit works using the following statement as a guide:
“Our goal is to recognize the importance of context and culture in our worship, to explore and understand how culture impacts us, what culture means in our theology and how worship is embodied in location.”
The photos fit this theme more easily than any recent paintings, and I am really happy to have somewhere to display them especially within the context of the show.
I will include more details about the show closer to the date.

On another note, December finds me falling behind on my image-a-day project. I have the next two weeks off, so I'm hoping to do some much needed catching up on creating.

I have arrived in London!

I arrived yesterday in a slightly dazed state due to not sleeping all night except briefly for one hour on the plane. After finding my residence, I had to find my school's office and show them my passport. Then, after getting that out of the way I wondered around London for a while, whithout a true purpose except to find something to eat and just appreciate the sights around me. I told myself that I wasn't allowed to go to sleep until at least 8 pm, with walking being the only thing keeping me awake. by around 6:30 or so I had wandered over to St. Paul's Cathedral, which is a stunning, stately looking building that is enormous.
I didn't bring my camera with me for this jaunt around because I was just too tired, so I stole a picture of St. Paul's from this site: http://beautyisobjective.blogspot.com/2010/05/london-attractions.html

Having slept well, and waking up at a riduclous hour (4:30 am), I am ready to plan out my day, and actually enjoy London as a well rested individual. My course doesn't start until Monday, so I have a few days of full-fledged sight seeing to do.
On the agenda for today: National Gallery or Tate Modern?

First impressions of London:
It is busy! So many people walking, with a purpose and somewhere to go.
There are a lot of busses.
The English use direct, but strange wording on their signs. For example in the tube stops the signs read, "WAY OUT" with arrows. I find this strange because why not use the word exit?
The tube's signage could use more icons (I think I am saying this because of my familiarity with Mexico City's metro system that links each stop with a sympbol, which I appreciate as a visual person).
I like the accents (something I knew before I arrived...)

Here is something I wrote while waiting in Iceland for my connecting flight:

I'm sitting in the Kevalik Airport in Iceland having spend the past 6 hours on a plane. It is 1 am for me, which means it is approaching my normal bedtime hours, however, a three hour plane ride awaits. Hopefully I'll be able to sleep a little along the way so that all of tomorrow(today) isn't a write off due to lack of sleep. So far, Iceland kind of looks like how used to imagine it before I really ever saw any pictures of Iceland- It looks a little the way the prairies look in spring when there's that transition time between brown and green. We flew down onto the runway which opens up off of the coastline. Unfortunately I wasn't in a window seat, so I couldn't really get the best view of flying in off of the ocean, but the land surrounding the tarmac is made up of varying degrees of low-lying green and brown bits of grassiness. I would say that it is good advice to not judge a country only on their airport. It is now raining, and I am disapointed in Iceland's airport because it is too early for any shops to be open, and I'm just really thirsty right now, and was hoping for maybe some tea or at least a bottle of water. Not even a vending machine in sight. The airport itself looks Scandinavian (or maybe Canadian...). Of course by Scandinavian I mean that it looks like the furniture may have been designed by Ikea. There are large floor to ceiling angled windows looking out onto the ariport runways, which I appreciate because I hate it when airports forget to include windows in their terminals. I can hear change being counted, and perhaps the sound of an espresso machine which tells me that something is open, so I may try to get something to drink before we board in 10 minutes.
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As a note to that, after writing this I ended up chatting with two guys who had also come from Winnipeg and were waiting for the one-hour delayed London Flight. This made the airport waiting much less dull, and one named Garret who lives in the UK gave me some helpful guidance with the trains and underground tickets once we got off the plane in London.

Ace Art's Winter Warmer

AceArt's annual winter warmer started today, and runs for the next two weeks until the 12th of December. Members were invited to submit works, so I entered two drawings in the show. I'm quite happy with both of them. I framed them in some decent frames that I found and I'm fairly pleased with how they turned out matted and framed. The winter warmer is usually a good show because it always has an assortment of items and for me I find it interesting seeing how other people price their work and which items sell. The opening was today, but I have been slowing down at posting because I recently moved and don't have my internet installed yet(But soon! Dec 1st the installation guy is coming).

The aceart Winter Warmer 2009

show and sale continues December 1-December 12

during gallery hours 12-5pm, Tuesday-Saturday

AceArt is in Winnipeg located on the 2nd floor of 290 McDermot.