Thursday, July 31, 2014

The big Boone adventure!

So we have arrived.  Boone, North Carolina! As I have mentioned before I accepted a tenure track position starting this semester to be the area coordinator for Metalsmithing and Jewelry design at Appalachian State University.  

Over the years Liz and I have been semi vocal about how much we are not fans of New York.  Truthfully, we met some incredible people!  Those people have turned into life long friends.  It was painful leaving.   But, deep down inside we always knew that we would never settle in New York.  I think that this ultimately prevented us from ever being happy.  So many things; the taxes, the cost of living, politics, peoples attitudes (including my own) all of this and some other things I will keep to myself sealed the deal.  When it came down to it, moving closer to home made sense. Closer to our family, cheaper cost of living, slower lifestyle, closer to our property, a front porch to hang out on, CHICKENS! We are stoked. 

So on to Boone.

So far so good.  It is amazing.  For some reason we thought it would be HOT but apparently it never gets above 80 degrees "except during rare heat waves". We are quickly settling in.  We just built out our studio and we are unpacking all of our crap.  As of this post we have been her for a five days.  

We barely fit all of stuff into one twenty foot Uhaul and Liz's tribute.  Taco had to be drugged right before we left town.  He kind of freaked out on the trip and started getting a bloody nose in the carrier.  After getting a shot he pretty much spent most of the trip with his eyes rolled back into his head.

I have had the keys to my office for one day now and I am already re-arranging things.  I am now painting and building shelves.  I had to pick from the state approved colors so I picked  "agreeable gray"  which I think will work.  It is agreeable.

We are renting an amazing house which is walking distance to work (all up hill).  It has a chicken coop, a front porch and a bath tub.  You know the essentials.

More later as things unfold.  Right now I am frantic.  I have two shows a lecture and a semester to get ready for.  There are million things to do.

The new adventure begins now!

























Here are some shots of the metals studio and my office. 





Tuesday, July 8, 2014

blog tour!

I hardly ever participate in these things but.... I was tagged by a friend Amy Tavern (AKA Ice cream sandwiches)  to do a "blog tour".  These things always seem like a pyramid scheme.  I am supposed to post three blogs on my blog and then they post three on their blog.....well you get the idea.  It also kind of sucks because I do read Amy's blog a bunch and I can't use her.  Her icelandic adventures would make for an amazing blog post.

The hardest part about this is picking three.  Seriously!? THREE!? If you know me I spend a lot of time in front of this dumb thing called a computer clicking away.  I am pretty sure I spend more time on my computer than most programers.  So much to see.  I could list about a million blogs everyone should read.    

First, a blog I visit daily is http://frankieflood.blogspot.com/  When Frankie Flood is not posting epic videos on motorcycle repair or making 3D printed prosthetics for children he runs and teaches classes in the Digital Craft Research Lab at UW Milwaukee.  He is an amazingly busy person it is kind of insane.  I sometimes think he is a robot sent to earth to make the rest of us look bad.  Take a vacation buddy!

Seriously though amazing things are happening.  Very inspiring.  



Gary Schott makes wonderful kinetic sculptures that are often wearable.  There is an amazing aesthetic that he has cultivated through play.  His posts have been a little thin being that he has just come off of a major kickstarted campaign to build himself a new studio.  When he is not making babies, teaching or building studios he is making beautifully crafted work that begs the wearer and the viewer to interact. 






The third and final blog that we are visiting on the "blog tour" is Harrison Krix's http://volpinprops.blogspot.com/. This blog is full of amazing step by step awesomeness.  I am not a huge fan of cosplay but man seeing this stuff could turn anyone towards the darkside of prop building and attending comic-cons. I would recommend his Daft Punk helmet posts. These days Harrison's blog isn't getting much love being that he has migrated to other social media outlets like facebook.  He does however have an epic fickr photostream







I realize now my blogs are super dude-centric.  I really don't know what that is about.  It is just where my brain is today. 

Here are some other things I look at:

Tested.com
http://lemanoosh.com/
http://momofuku.tumblr.com/
http://current-obsession.com/TAKEAWAY
http://www.artjewelryforum.org/ajf-blog
http://www.helencarnac.co.uk/
http://99percentinvisible.tumblr.com/


Ahhhhhh too much interneting