the truth

('couples' doesn't just pertain to relationships in the narrowed sense, but also includes mother & child, friend to friend, etc.)
"Couples spend years and huge amounts of energy trying to change each other, but significant disagreements are about values and different ways of seeing the world - things that don't change. Successful couples know this and therefore decide to accept each other "'warts and all'."

"Assessments we make in the blink of an eye can be as good as those we make after much deliberation."

"By the laws of probability, most decisions made under pressure should be flawed ones, yet psychologists have found that people routinely make correct judgments most of the time, even with limited information."

"When we make a split-second decision, we are really vulnerable to being guided by our stereotypes and prejudices, even ones we may not necessarily endorse or believe."

To me, this is why we feel we have to label EVERYTHING:
"We feel we need a lot of information to be confident in our judgments, but often that extra information, while giving us the illusion of certainty, makes us more prone to mistakes."

"If we become more conscious of our ingrained reactions and behavior patterns, our life can begin to be genuinely free."

"To the true believer...the perception of their own purity of intent allows them to do anything in the name of that noble intention---including take their own lives."

"If the world is black and white, then action is clear. It is only the open-minded who have to deal with surprises or contradictions."

"...'what is not' is always a more powerful motivating force than 'what is'."

"the need for belonging leads to misjudgments about other people."

bamboo canvases

Made some more progress on my bamboo canvases - weaving them together with hemp - more developments will be posted later on.
and as always, input is much appreciated.



Side view of the lightbox that will I will be suspending the bamboo canvases from:





All the plans laid out, thus far. (at one of my favorite places to work, parent's house up in Orlando, out on the porch)









(Each canvas is 13"x13" | in total we are required to have 4 canvases of the same dimensions)

painting I

So, this is how the 4'x4' minimum free range painting came out : I was frustrated because what I had imagined in my head is not what it came out to be. When speaking with a friend about it, he made a good point, that it never happens that way - haha so I guess that made me feel better. It was definitely a challenge painting on an uneven surface, however, I think I am going to take my teacher up on her idea about taking all the boards apart and painting each of them sepperately and then putting them back together :) So, I will upload the new painting when it gets done over winter break..

progress on my canvas

working on adding more and more layers of paint before starting the subject of the painting.









I played around with some sandpaper and I love how it came out, so I'm going to work that into the painting, and depending on how i do my layers I can buff out the darks and lights to create an interesting effect... Guess we'll see how it turns out.




This is the first color for my linoleum print:

current workings of my canvas

okay, so i'm not going to put my idea out there just yet, but i've got a sweet one figured out. these are the pieces of wood i cut/sanded (and meliza helped me on some of the masonite ones, thank you!) i'm going to arrange them in an irregular shape for a canvas for painting I class. i want to get better at keeping up with process pictures, so i'll be uploading photos while the project develops :) Thanks for checking it out, and for any input.
I plan on going into further detail about my process when it is finished.

san francisco photographs

I had the awesome opportunity to make it out to San Diego in March of 2003, and we road tripped it 9 hours up to San Francisco to stay at a TravelLodge for the weekend. I love that city. Here are some photographs I took while I was there :)


here are some palm trees that were in a friend's backyard in Del Mar




San Francisco





This was one of my favorites, they were sitting up on the roof throwing paper air planes :)









this first one was inside a Tequilla Bar we went to:





and these were taken out on this hill we were all hanging out on around sunset, it was an amazing view of the city





this is the view of the city we had from that same spot





and this was the view from behind where we were sitting





a portrait of Christine

photographs from illinois

went to a small town, population 310, called Orient in Illinois in the year of 2006