VII.I Independence Day.

04Jul09

Park across from Saranac Lake Hospital

 

I had planned on trickling into the blog the trip about four days behind to give me time to up load photos, scan images, write. It was working fairly well until everything was turned upside down last week.

I was in Albany visiting Beth bustling around and about from different shop to restaurant excited about her expected nuptials and enjoying NY’s capital when I received a phone call from my Mother. A few hours later I had to drop everything and drive to Saranac Lake to meet my parents and brother. In respect of my brothers privacy I will only publically say he was rushed to the ICU last week and after close to a weeks stay he was released from the Saranac hospital in good spirits and refusing to leave the Adirondacks (for those of you who know my brother and have not received the barrage of emails from my Mother and Aunts the cancer is NOT back). When I left him two days ago he was ready to get back to work and trekking around Massawepie keeping things in order.

As for my time in the Adirondacks I was not prepared or expecting a few days stay in a small cabin forty five minutes from any town in the middle of the biggest forest preserve in the country. At the time that I received my Mothers phone call I had already driven in a week 1/6 of the average mileage an American puts on there car in a year. I had only one pair of nicely kept jeans and two pairs of very inappropriate shoes so after a night of wadding through ankle deep mud and wet knee high ferns I stopped in Lake Placid to look for shoes and socks.  In better circumstances I think the trip would have been quite pleasant but due to the stress of Ricky’s sudden onset illness and my lack of preparation it took a day or two for me to really appreciate the scenery. The Adirondacks are only a few shades of green and blue this time of year and in the rush I started to get nauseated by the endless envelope of green that ran into bright blue lakes and light blue sky. As things are calming down already I am starting to feel much better about the time I am spending in upstate.

 

Tomorrow I’ll start posting the Polaroid’s, I’m thinking maybe I’ll start posting a Polaroid a day until I run out of film.

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VI.V

28Jun09

 

Hotel beds are made for JUMPING!

Cincinnati, The Queen City. At first I loved this city it just sprung up after the endless roads of Kentucky and was a welcomed sight. It had the charm of Buffalo and the hilly aesthetic of a port town. I was so excited to be there for a night and there were so many street festivals going on late into the night that I was able to walk Walter safely due to all the people and police around. While Walter and I were walking near the fountain square we ran into no other then SENYA! He was in town for a wedding it was a real shock (though it wouldn’t have been if I just called people back, opps).

I was enamored and spent some time near the Art Museum (which is free and a beautiful building). The Winograndexhibit was the one that was at the High a while back so it didn’t spend to much time there it also wasn’t as well curated as the one at the High so I didn’t spend a whole lot of time with it. I did love the building that housed the museum and wished I had more time to spend walking the halls and checking out the details. The homes in that area are all cottagey and colorful with decorative Victorian gingerbread trimmings. I wandered around the park near the museum and up a few of the streets surrounding. I went back downtown and intended on taking a few photos of the buildings and checking out the waterfront but these plans stopped short when I was told that parts of downtown do not allow dogs (on a leash or otherwise). So that ended my trip and love for Cincinnati Walter and I packed up and headed to Pittsburgh. Sayonara Ohio!
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VI.IIa

12Jun09

Tom Lowe Skeet Field

The running joke these days is that I’m living in a bad made for TV movie. This part of my life I think just lends itself to that sort of cliché. Newly graduated and trying to enter the “work force” things just all feel like a re-run of My so called Life or Felicity. I’m not sure the road trip, my love of old cameras or running boys down in alleys is really helping matters however. Either way I’m pushing forward and packing up, this isn’t my first big change or it certainly won’t be the last, I wonder how many times over the next ten-fifteen years I’ll bounce up and down the east coast…

The deeper I get into these plans however the more I feel like nothing I do has any legitimacy. I think maybe the cute nostalgic nature of my car is what started it and Walter’s general cuteness defiantly does not help. If he was a golden retriever or a bit bigger and a little scruffier he’d be the perfect made for TV dog. If I were driving from NY to California it would be worse but Georgia to NY is not to much better. I’m hoping that the next three months or so start feeling less like they are happening inside a television screen and more like they belong to me.

As I am a nervous person by nature I’ll have to keep an eye out for outrageous characters and silly road side attractions to snap and share. I can’t wait to drive through Tennessee it’s the kind of state that lends itself to outrageous road side attractions and I know that on the way to Tenn. in northern Georgia there is a giant pig sign I can’t wait to catch a few shots of. For the most part I’m pretty excited about the trip but my biggest worry is that my little old VW Beetle will breakdown in the middle of nowhere Kentucky, I’ll be stranded and my story will take on a horrible slasher movie theme. I’d be ok with something a little more bubble gum and cherry soda themed.

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Update: planning to be out of the Highland place in 7days. Walter and I will be shoving off in 11days.

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VI.II

12Jun09

DLH Park

Donald Lee Hollowell Memorial Parkway and Water Park:
A few weeks ago the City of Atlanta had a ribbon cutting for the new Donald Lee Hollowell Memorial Park. The park is on the Old Bankhead Highway now the Donald Lee Hollowell Memorial Highway. Mr. Hollowell is most famously know for his case agents the University of Georgia. The suit ended in 1961 with a federal court order demanding the admission of two African American students, Charlayne Hunter and Hamilton E. Holmes.
I worked on it last summer for Maria and it’s great to see it finally open and operating. The water will be on soon and I can’t wait to see how the neighborhood uses it.

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V.I

03Jun09

The Trip Home!

As I think EVERYONE knows by now I’ll be taking a road trip with Walter. We will be stopping along a zig-zag rout from Atlanta to Rochester in a number of cities and even taking a little side trip to none other then Falling Water (yippy! I have to finaly go see that place). I’ll be leaving Atlanta around June 24th so for you ATL kids expect a going away outing and for you kids along the way get ready for a very excited Gina and a year old puppy.

Here is the tenative trip and planned stops:

View Larger Map

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V.III

12May09

Again it’s been ages, but just wanted to let you (Mom) know whats going on, on Thursday. I’m hopefully showing my Green PETG Chair in a pin up show for the Young Architects Forum.

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IIII.I

08Apr09

Admittedly it’s been a while since I’ve posted but that’s mostly because I have not had much to share. I did figure out some Holga info that I will post about later in the week (mainly exposure stuff and some hack tips) but I’m posting today to share a “snap shot” of a project I’ve been working on.

I’ve been working on a research proposal for a travel grant and it’s in pieces right now. I have been writing and rewriting it with little improvement. I was working on some illustrating techniques for Ruths class and she suggested I keep working with the same aesthetic but change the topic to illustrate my research graphically.  Below is a first draft of a series of graphic essays I’m doing about architectural theory. I can’t wait to scan in the cartoon I drew of Koolhaas.This image is a little dark, it’s not at it’s best but a final draft of the images will come later.

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III.IA

03Mar09

Another reason personal blogs are silly…….

The lonly box left in the hall for a few days, it’s kind of making me sad.

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III.I.

01Mar09

I woke up this morning and to my great and joyful surprise it was SNOWING! You can tell a Yankee in the south when it snows right away because they are the silly ones running around like they’ve never seen the stuff before.

Here are some images from when Walter and I went to play in it. Tomorrow I’m going to post the Holga hack I did this week.

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II.II

11Feb09

As those closest to me know I’m deathly afraid of needles, simply the mention of them makes me queasy. My mother loves to tell the story of the time I needed to be picked up from high school because they were having a blood drive and simply having needles in the building made my lightheaded. Knowing this you might agree with me when I tell you that the last week has felt like a bad dream I can’t wake up from simply because it seems like I’m being followed by hypodermic needles!

First I found one on the floor of my car, then after dropping my cell phone behind the stove I found more. Here are some (notably ridiculous) photos of me trying to fish out my phone from behind the stove and what I found in the process.

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