Vacations

I have about a million pictures on flickr. Here are several:

Baltimore, MD

We went to Baltimore recently, to visit friends and see the sights.

We climbed the stairs to the top of the Washington Monument in Baltimore.

Went to an old library (I love card catalogs).

Saw some of the local color.

pictures I didn't take: west coast

In addition to all the pictures I took during our trip, here are a few I didn't take:

4/14 - Seattle: A man on the sidewalk outside the Westin (I think an employee?) in a dress shirt, praying toward Mecca.

4/15 - Train to Portland: Bald eagle, landing on a rock by a lake.

4/15 - Train to Portland: Man with one arm, walking along the railroad tracks.

West Coast of the USA

Maybe you know, but we went on a little tour of the west coast:

We were in Seattle for about seventeen hours.

Maybe you recognize this Portland skate park from Tony Hawk 2.

David looks a little uneasy in the Mystery Spot in Santa Cruz, CA.

Maybe you recognize this San Francisco bridge from Full House.

This pigeon was all by itself on 101.  I was afraid we killed him when we got back on the highway.

Our last stop was Los Angeles. Mark and I shared a frozen banana.

austin pt. 2

We went to the LBJ museum while in Austin.  The building is really cool.  It's under construction right now because they're making it even cooler.

West Coast Tour

Dear Friends,
In mid-May Nomen Novum is going on a west coast tour, Seattle to Los Angeles, and I'll be going along for the funs.  We're looking for places to stay and places to play.  So let me know, yo.

Love,
Leigh

austin

Last weekend we went to Austin for my friend Scott's wedding.

Museums

While in New York, I visited a lot of museums.  I visited a lot of museums.  Of particular interest was an extensive exhibit of photographs by Catherine Opie at the Guggenheim.  I really like portraiture, and Opie's photographs are portraits, of people mostly, and places and things.

I also enjoyed the Alexander Calder exhibit at the Whitney.  His circus, wire sculpture portraits, and various other sculptures/mobiles were on display.

My favorite exhibit was William Eggleston retrospective at the Whitney.  Eggleston's photographs are very intimate, enhanced by the dye transfer process he often uses which intensifies colors and focuses the viewer's attention.

I've been in New York

Panama City part dos

Not this past weekend but the one before we went to the beach with Mark's family.

These guys were all over the place.

Birds were waiting to get into Club La Vela, "Largest Club in the U.S.A.," and of MTV fame, I am told.

It's from a Neruda poem

Many wonder, I know--
What's Pablo up to?

Well, friends, I saw the Panama Canal.

And moved. We're near this building:

And went to Charlie B's art show at WonderRoot. We made him pose.

we went to the beach

Korea pt. 3: Food

Yes, the food in Korea was really delicious. The only thing I ate that I didn't like was a silkworm larva, a tasty treat for Korean children, but something I didn't enjoy at all. Of course, all the kimchi was delicious and I also really liked kimbap (I made some for a thing-a-day thing, you can see here) and really everything. But my favorite dish was bibimbap:

Mostly I just wanted to post this video because of the music. There are more recipes and etc here.

Korea pt 2: the bug museum

The weekend I stayed on Jeju Island with Korinne and Joey, Joey hired a car and we went to PsycheWorld. Korinne's ten year old students say it's Psyche like Greek mythology, not, it's gonna psyche you out, but you wouldn't know the difference by visiting. I believe there are many worlds of adventure at PsycheWorld, however, it was snowing when we were there, and much of the adventure was outdoors, or at least, you had to go outside to get to them, so we stuck to the bug museum. There were a few displays detailing the life cycles, diets, habitats, disguises, etc. of many bugs. And then there were a lot of "exhibits" with real bugs dressed up and posed in very unbuglike behavior. Here's a fave:

That's PsycheWorld's main building those industrious bugs are building.

Perhaps the strangest thing about PsycheWorld was not the bugs working out, boxing, getting hair cuts, but the "interactive" section where they had, among other things, parakeets and hedgehogs to hold, and a cat and puppy tied up to be petted. There were also many displays of what appeared to be an attempt to showcase live bugs, but all the bugs were dead when we visited. Or maybe they were just sleeping.

Finally, there were no bug snacks to be had in the gift shop.
Later in the trip, when we were in Seoul, I did get to try some bugs, stewed silkworm larvae. I thought they were gross.

Korea pt 1: Korea and Art

A few good things from the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea:

• Christian Boltanski's "The Theater of Shadows" installation
• "No Exit" by Kim Sang-Yu: I know there is more to it than this, but I just love variations on/homages to the "Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb"
• "Walls and Conduits" by Bernd and Hiller Becher
  
• Kim Suk Whan's very lovely vessels
  
• Something I think was by Nam June Paik that I didn't think was that great at first but I can't seem to stop thinking about it, it was a rock with a length of wood on top of it, and another rock and piece of wood on top of that, and on the top, a TV with an image of a rock. The piece formed a wedge sort of, with everything stacked on one side. He also did a tower of TVs that dominates the central stairwell, but unfortunately, this was under construction when we visited.

The museum is a joy to walk around, with lovely gallery layouts and lots of natural lighting. In addition, this museum has one of the coolest children's sections I've ever seen.

I took notes on more things but I'm having trouble finding images online to jog my memory. I guess that's just another reason to go back sometime!

Christmas travels

I spent the first part of my Christmas in Mobile with Mark and his fam (pictures are of the Mobile area, not Mark's relatives):

Then I flew back to Atlanta and drove to Trussville AL to spend some time with my own parents. I didn't take any pictures there, but my sister got a new digital camera from her new husband for Christmas, so maybe we will see some pictures soon. There was this one amazing house with lights of all kinds, including a light up sign from what appeared to be a defunct airline? Still, this house was no match for the house in Chattanooga off Standifer Gap Road (I think it might be on Daugherty Lane...?).

Really what I wanted to discuss was this really cool tripod Mark got me for Christmas. It's bendy and can be positioned in many different ways and wrapped around tree branches and such.

Christmas crafts

Mark and I went to Auburn this weekend:

so I didn't get as much done craft-wise as I had planned. However, I did receive the moo cards I ordered for my mom, and got a chance to work on some shopping bags tonight. I got the pattern here (I added the pocket), and have been making some out of old sheets. It's a pretty easy pattern and the bags fold small and are easy to carry, so you don't have to get a bag every time you get a couple of things at a store. However, I usually feel anxious as I'm checking out, busy thinking about when to say that I don't need a bag, hoping to catch the cashier before my gift card or whatever is already in a bag, hoping that it won't be a big problem for this person.

We had a really good time in Auburn, it was very relaxing hanging out and not doing anything all weekend, but now I feel kind of stressed because I had all these projects planned for Christmas and now I only have about 3 days to complete them, as Mark and I are driving down to visit his parents in Fairhope on Thursday. But I guess I just need to accept that some things will be late and there's nothing that I can do about that and it's no tragedy anyway.

I'm very interested in starting to sell some quilts and other crafts online or elsewhere. Step one is trying to post on this blog more to drum up some interest in what I'm doing with my craft life. The actual craft-making I plan to start after all this Christmas business is over. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Oh and one more thing, Mark wants to start a blog for his thesis in Music Technology and is looking for suggestions for the title. Something punny.

Art Basel Miami

This past week Mark was in Miami for Flock at the Carnival Center during Art Basel Miami. I joined Mark on Thursday and saw a lot of art, some of which was very good. A lot of what I saw, however, was more along the lines of the kind of thing that makes you wonder, "what is art?", or at least, "what is that?" I think one of the most unfortunate things about so much art these days is that many artists seem to be trying so hard to make their work mean something, or mean nothing, that it ends up seeming, to me, trite and uninteresting. I guess I'm of the school of thought that believes that art should be expansive, moving from just what it is to everything, the sublime. And so a work that already knows what it is, what it wants to be, relegates itself to being only that. But that's just the philosophy degree talking.

I took some pictures of some of the arts that I liked but I don't want to post them because I didn't get permission to do that and in most cases I didn't note who the artist was or what gallery it was from. But here are some nice pictures from Miami.

Haile at Huset

Well, here's the robot playing in Copenhagen:

And here's another clip.

I didn't take very long movies of the robot, I guess I got a little bored.

Northern Europe!

Well, as most of our avid readers probably know, Mark and I are in Copenhagen right now. It's much cooler than Atlanta, a welcome change from the horrible August weather we were enduring there. My hope is when we return the summer heat will be almost over.

We have come for ICMC (International Computer Music Conference) because Mark was presenting a paper and showing a Jazzbot. Below is a video of the robot, not in Copenhagen but at a previous performance, I think at Eyedrum in Atlanta.