7 things for friday

Since it's Friday and I feel like taking it easy, I'm going to take a hint from CFHusband and share with you 7 things you may not know about me.

1. I love lists, so this tasks suits me wonderfully. (I will put things on my list, just so I can cross them off!)

2. I like to eat salt. Yes, sometimes, just plain salt. But I also enjoy "snow capping" things as well. (Don't worry I'm not going to die of hypertension because my salt intake can never be too high)

3. For 4 months, 7 years ago, I lived in a convent (yes, with real nuns).

4. My favorite piece in the Art Institute of Chicago is Brancusi's "Suffering." For Art 101 we had to pick a piece and sit with it for a few hours, then write about it. I was totally taken by this sculpture.

5. On one of the columns at the top of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome I wrote the initials of my husband and me, before we were married. They're probably long covered over by now with new initials of fresh love birds.

6. If I have one vanity, it is my hair. I wouldn't trade my hair for anyone's, except maybe Julia Ormond's when she played Guinevere in First Knight. Now other parts of me... that's another matter!

7. I married the first boy I kissed.

it's late...

I really should probably be in bed...
and I just realized I have laundry that needs done, whoops!

So quickly, here's something I was working on tonight.


You get a great view of the city when you ride in the front train car of the el!

neck : second in series

I guess this should really be more like "shoulder" or "clavicle." oh well.

a study of the neck

I need a model for practice.

It's quite hard to get yourself at just the right position, focused on just the right spot, framed the way you want, using manual focus and a remote. So many times I get the photos back to Lightroom and realize that the focus was just slightly off or there's a door jam in the way, or my angle of lighting could have been better. It would be SO much easier if I could be the one looking through the viewfinder instead of being the model.

Anyone want to volunteer?
(So long as you don't mind having hundreds of pictures taken of yourself...)

PS: Somehow I lost my line spacing in my paragraphs. Weird.

self in paint : part two

I actually did these two pieces in college as part of an Art 101 assignment.
I was digging around yesterday and found them.
They were done with acrylics on corrugated cardboard from an old box.
I was attempting to show two seasons of life.

self in paint : part one

italia

Seven years ago today I was living in Orvieto, Italy.

That seems a bit odd to say even though it's true. There's part of that semester abroad that will always feel a little like a dream from which I'm slowly waking.

It was the one year anniversary of 9-11 and one of the local churches had a memorial service. Here's this little ancient Italian town, across the ocean, willing to take a few hours to remember those who were lost on another country's soil. The village's firefighters and policemen came in uniform and we sat quietly in the pews. In all honesty, I have no idea what was said, as the whole service was in Italian (and at that point I was only a few weeks in on my studying) but I remember being very touched by the sentiment of it all. As we walked around town that day, shop keepers had candles lit in their windows and little American flags hung nearby. It seemed a very fitting way to remember. I think they're better at these things than we are. We seem to be too busy, pulled in too many directions to allow ourselves ample time to feel things and sit back to remember. The pace is much slower over there and much more conducive to days of remembrance.

This was my town for 4 months.
Picture thanks to Tuscia Garden B&B.