End of Industry

I'm not sure what it is about old abandoned places that baits me so easily.  These places become playgrounds for all sorts of people and critters. Nature revels in its ruin as well, popping life through every crevasse it can find, blowing top soil steadily onto its surfaces to make sure new growth can occur.

I have hunted down many an abandoned buildings in Philly, slipping through the bent bars across the windows in order to clammer around the cluttered insides of old industry, once booming with voices and mechanic sounds and now ghosted just enough for the imagination to run wild.

This is the abandoned Pier 14 that juts out into the Delaware River within walking distance of my house. I have been coming out here for years with friends (always with friends, mom, don't worry, never by myself) to see the evolution of the tags on the walls, figure out where new trees have sprung up, which trees have died, which ones got pegs nailed into them for easier climbing... Something is always different in this familiar place.  

Squirrel Ninja was eager to get down there this week with me and do the old surveying. We spent a few hours wandering around, seeing how fast we could climb the old trees, advising each other not to climb some of the old faithfuls for various reasons, and gazing over the Delaware at our city's scape. This is home.

The barge

Emma, Mandy and I explored an old abandoned barge off a trail in Maine for similar instinctual reasons. And we took some pics.

the light of day

I'm sitting on the very-square couch in Cambria House that my mom says in uncomfortable. I fall asleep on this couch so often... I don't know what she's talking about.  PowWow, my beautifully eggnog-colored longhair cat just hopped down the stairs here, froze, stared wide-eyed at me for a moment, turned, and bolted between the many chair legs scattered around the diningroom, slid across the slate surface of the kitchen floor, and disappeared into the blackhole of bunkworld.   A soft thud tells me she's near the treestump on the floor on the far wall of that room that acts as an endtable.  She'll saunter back out here in a few minutes and sprawl herself over the patch of sun on the hardwood floor infront of me, making sure to always keep an arms-length away.  Such a flirt. Such a flirt.

no, she's not supposed to be on the table. but she's so pretty when she is! ugh.

But its good to be back in Philly.  I'm here for one week before I slink off into the the sunset, only to come back up to the light of Philly once again in December.  It's good to be home right now. I love this house, these people, and my family.  When I was here in April, I wasn't as optimistic. The dealers on my street, my annoyed heartbreak, the east-coast-city rudeness, and the concrete jungle we live amongst dampened my mood significantly.  Those things are all still there (minus the heartbreak), but I think I'm at a better spot in myself, my own head, that provides a slick covering over the shell of my psyche that helps deflect the ridiculousness that is Kensington. I found this blog recently and it kinda says it all: Kensington Blues.

this is a photo from that blog of the street where i live. this is just a couple houses down from where i'm sitting at this moment.  I've written numerous drafts of "I Love You/I Hate You" articles for the paper about this neighborhood.

So the next leg of my life, once I leave this beautiful city, will be touring around the country with the new Mesoamerica Resiste poster.  We go around to colleges, community centers, book stores, chapels, lecture halls, etc. and lead people through the narrative that the poster tells.  I'm really excited. The first leg of the tour will be in NY, CT, OH, MI, IL, IN, PA. The second part is AR, TN, & GA.  Should be good. I look forward to becoming increasingly more fluent in the conversation around the issues within the graphic.

But right now I'm off to an anti-fracking protest and then hanging with a few pastor friends in town. Peace.

Work Hard. Play Hard.

Aaaand we're back!  My goodness it has been a cyclone of a month.  August was so full of PlayHard/WorkHard, that we all took a week at the end just to recover and not do any work.  Well, thats a bit false (we worked a bit, of course), but we did a lot less work than usual.

One of the fun things I did at the beginning of the month was tabling at the KaBam festival in Bangor, ME.  My fellow Bee, Mandy, and I were there selling posters and talking to a lot of people about our very-serious-and-epic Beehive graphics while a zipline directly above us zoomed squealing adults over our conversations.  It was a pretty hilarious day.  These are some pictures:

---

One of the biggest events of the year for the Beehive and for our town, Machias, is the Blueberry Festival and Blackfly Ball at the end of August.  For the last 8 years, the Beehive has been the host of the Blackfly ball.  That means that we make a poster for it (pictured below with Mandy), we set up about 12 bands to come and play, we build stages, set up a zillion lights all over the park area, make & set up decorations, do tons of other prep & day-of tasks, and are stationed around during the Festival & Ball selling posters and being safety crew and running the backend of the whole thing, and of course dancing our bottoms off to the great bands in between everything.  WorkHard/PlayHard.  Over 2,000 people came from all over the States and the World to the Ball this year.  It was epic.  And awesome.

Oh and something I don't have pictures of is that I decided (like a silly over-achiever) to put on a puppet show about fracking during the festival.  So I rallied 10 of my friends, re-wrote an old script I've worked with in the past, borrowed a puppet stage and puppets, had 2 rehearsals, and put on a show.  It was pretty great. Pretty low key but a bunch of people came to watch it.  We performed it twice during the day of the Festival and I got to be on the local radio talking about it and what fracking is.  

Here's Blackfly Ball pics:

a view from over the Bad Little Falls to the Ball

another Bee, Emma, and I.  She and another Bee, Kaleigh (pictured below), recently also dyed streaks in their hair like mine.  It makes me laugh. I like these girls.  We have a hair-uniform now.  What do you know- streaking is contagious.

the Blackfly Ball is a dress-up funny event too.  My roommates in Philly sent up this awesome dress for me to wear without realizing that it was one of our roommate's mom's wedding dress. AH!  I was honored to wear it.

---

These are all the people I have been spending my time with. Living together, working together, sharing life, laughs, and tears.  We are the Beehive and we kinda kick ass.

L-R: Sophie, Zoe, Me, Kehben, Emma, Kyle, Matt, Ethan, Josh, TK, Kaleigh, Iggy

this photoshoot actually happened because Ethan was leaving to continue his life in NYC instead of the Beehive. He is one of the Bees I got closest with, so we'll be continuing our friendship and artistic collaborations in different ways now.  Good people.

I put this in here because this happened a few weeks ago and we all dedicated about 3 nights in a row to lying next to different lakes/oceans/rivers and watching meteors. It was a beautiful thing.

Gordo, pictured center, is another Bee who had a birthday. We all dressed up and danced our faces off in the Grange Hall one night.

---

Gabfestry!  This was the week-long conference that directly followed the Blackfly Ball.  The Beehive also hosted this event.  It consisted of about 200 artistic folks camping in our yard, us feeding them, trying to keep them clean, running tech for all events (4 sessions per day, performances at night), providing childcare, facilitating 6 different venues for the week, and all other the logistics that surround such events.  The conference was for artistic folks who use their art either politically or in some way to be advocates or activists, or other such things.  It was a crazy inspirational week. 

the flyer we made for the event

those are the banners of our Mesoamerica Resiste poster there on the right.  This is the Grange Hall and it is set up here for one of our many night performances that happened that week.

this is a session about artistic metal welding i believe. there was all sorts of things to learn that week!

---

And then... after aaaaaaall that craziness, we circled the week after Gabfestry on the calendar and called it "Chill The Fudge Out Week".  We weren't supposed to do any work.  Just relax and enjoy ourselves and eachother. So I went hiking with my friend Lindsay, who is the trail master for the Coastal Conservancy here in town.  These are some pics from that walk.

---

Then I escaped to Bar Harbor with my friends MaryJo, William, and Betsy.

yeah we went whale watching

That's all I'm going to write for now. I have so much else to say, but i'm having a hard time finding time to write it all down.  So, more to come later.

Hello Mudda, Hello Fadda

... here I am at ... art camp!

Two weeks ago, I went off to Eagle Hill Institute for a week-long intensive study of scientific illustration.  What a fun experience! I haven't been in a classroom for a drawing class for a couple of years, so it was really wonderful to have a wise, objective voice of reason in the class who wanted to talk about the pieces we were creating and bounce ideas around with us and give advice.  Awesome!

The first thing we did was go out and collect our specimens that we were going to focus on for the week.  For this, we went out on low tide to this little inlet of ocean.  It was magically misty.

Then we went back to Eagle Hill, set up our still-life set ups or just totally geeked out over one specimen. Below is Zoe, who drew a beautiful crab in pen and ink.

This is my station, where I'd decided to draw a crab claw and a fern.

This is the classroom we were in.

This is the building that the classroom was in. Eagle Hill is nestled into the coastal forest of Downeast Maine. The ground is covered in thick, spongey mosses, and the forest is dense with vegetation. This are is one of the few places I have been where I would not have been surprised at all if a fairy tapped me on the shoulder and blew pixie dust in my face. It's just magical like that.

About mid-week, we went hiking through a bog to find orchids, carnivorous plants, and pitcher plants. Check. Check. And check.

This is a pitcher plant. The long stalk is topped by a strangely structured flower, and then at the bottom are these open pods that look like pitchers. They eat animals and insects!

I did not draw this, but this is one reason that scientific illustration is super helpful and awesome! Way better than photos!

 On the way back from the bog, we stopped off in Acadia National Park and frolicked around the rocks for a bit.  Seriously, this area of the world is so amazing. Out of every crevice that could have a spot of life in it, life is found!  Like this grass:

This is the most barnacles that I have ever seen in one area.  Have you ever seen barnacles open up to eat? Its so gross and awesome!

This is Zoe and I. She is another Beehiver who went to the Institute with me.

One of the craziest things about the week was that Eagle Hill just opened a french restaurant called Christopher's.  Literally the week we were there was their first week open.  And so our meal plan for the week-long seminar included five 4-course dinners at Christophers.  WHAT!!??  It was so amazing. Oh and I designed their logo for them last month. Here is it:

 Yeah, this is what we faced all week. Crazy.  Amazing.  I gained weight.  It was worth it.

And then on our last night there, we hung our pieces on the wall at the restaurant.

 Class pic. Awe.

 Zoe & her pieces.

 Me and my pieces. I'll put up better pictures another time.

After the institute, this crew hung with us in Machias. In fact, we took these 2 guys (Marshall & Lennart) to a contra dance in Eastport and went crashing through the woods to do some night swimming.  Marshall spent last semester in Madagascar as part of his biology schooling and Lennart is on his Phd track for microbiology. He studies plankton.  And draws it very well.

So yeah, I went to art camp, drew pretty things, made friends, and picked up new skills.  So this past week I've been working on a wedding invitation and got to utilize my skills immediately.  Here's the mint I drew for part of the invitation. It's not exactly accurate, so it's not scientific.  But it's good practice and a start.

And then, just to show, this is another part of the wedding invite:

So, that's my little update for now.  Makin art.  Yeah.