P r e t t y S k e t c h y

I heart ceramics

I have had a crush on this Pearson-Maron etsy shop for about five years now. I have lusted over the cloud factory piece forever and as soon as I have a disposable income you bet your life I'll be buying it (whenever that may be). I was poking around their shop yesterday and was overcome with the need to show off a few of their beautiful ceramic sculptures (I need to take a ceramic class someday). A few of my favorites...

The beloved cloud factory.

 

Rainbow factory.

 

Heart factory.

They have a lot of different sculptures but I seem to be drawn to the ones that are primarily white. How cute would it be to have a little city cluster of these sculptures?  Love, love,  l o v e .

Stressed & Stripey

 I've been so busy lately. It's a bit out of control. I scored a part-time contract teaching grade three for the month of June. That means a whole lot of planning and marking and not a lot of art or sleep or blogging, sorry. I had an amazing Saturday a few weeks back that of course I didn't have time to blog about so here it is very late. My lovely friend Travis and I went for brunch at the Urban Diner and then headed back to my place for some backyard celebratory summer peony painting. Yes we are old ladies water-coloring flowers and drinking wine in the afternoon. Love it.

 

I met Travis while working at an art supply store and art is one of our mutual loves, as are elitist art supplies. We both have super-snob brand $100 Schmincke German watercolor sets that we bought when we still had discounts. They're amazing.

 

Please notice the most adorable cardigan in the world, my parting gift to myself from my last day at Anthro. Here's a close up from their website...

   

Best cardigan ever! I've worn it almost every day since I bought it, it totally goes with everything.

Our messy table, note my wine glass full of diet coke. I'm so classy.

 

A slightly cliched but adorable picture of Travis, looking all french and arty in his stripey little shirt. Meg came over later and she was wearing stripes too, we love matching, ha.

 

Here's my finished work, I'm too lazy to scan it so here's a macbook camera shot, you can't see the vase cause it's pencilly and light.

 In other news I got a haircut recently, so here it is, and here I am, sitting at my computer with a glazed expression, so hot...

 

I should probably say that by 'getting a new haircut' I mean I taking some sewing scissors into Kerry's bathroom at camp and doing it myself.

Also I've been making some wicked handouts recently so I'll share a few, as requested.

My intro note to the parents.

 

My getting-to-know the kids sheet. Note the Dutchess-esque picture frame. They drew such adorable pictures of themselves in them, I loved it.

Um, okay that's me for now. Stressed, busy, agh. Today I lost the place that I had lined up to live in when I got to Seattle and I am feeling so so overwhelmed. Additionally if you live in Seattle and want the best roommate ever in two weeks give me a shout.

Sometimes...

I love Edmonton. It tends to be in the fall or spring but it is true, sometimes I do love it. I took my bike out this weekend for the first time this spring. The view over the high level bridge was so beautiful I had to stop to admire it and remind myself that yes, sometimes I love Edmonton. It was a good time to remember this as I was, prior to my stop, cursing Edmonton's awful roads. I think I got spoiled biking in Seattle last summer. Anyways, it was beautiful...

 

  
 

In other Edmonton-loving news I finally made it to the Karsh exhibit at the AGA. For those of you non-Edmontonians they just finished the new art gallery building in January. It's kind of a big deal around here as Edmonton is kind of a city with a lot of potential and a lot of construction.

 

It's a pretty cool building. I love all the windows. It was even more amazing inside. The mixture of metal, wood and glass was pretty wild. My friend Sarah went with me and we were such good little art gallery attendees...

   

we read all the information, discussed the artist's lives and influences and took photos with the Karsh camera.

 

We were at the camera for over 20 minutes and ended up with this photo of Sarah. It's in a Karsh-yourself contest so if you feel like it go here and 'like' it. We need to win!

 

We were at the gallery for a few hours taking pictures, reading old typewritten letters by Karsh and his wife, contemplating the spanish war, looking at wax ballet dancers (cast in bronze of course) and freezing our butts off in the air conditioning.
 
 

I loved the Karsh exhibit, his photos were beautiful and I liked the way they had little bios of the people he photographed beside the photos. Of course I loved Audrey...

 

They had this picture all over Edmonton on billboards promoting the AGA when it first opened. It was such a lovely thing to see as I drove down the street. Oh, Audrey...

The Goya exhibit was definitely interesting; his etchings were so beautifully & painstakingly detailed but the subject matter was pretty intense, lots of naked dead guys and war scenes. He was a talented guy who had a pretty tough life.

 

Sarah, checking out the amazing roof.

 

The aforementioned roof.

 

Here I am in my little plaid dress, put at a disadvantage by being shown among photos of Sarah Jackson.

That's all for now folks.

Monday Monday

So Monday was the infamous interview and I had to drive down to Tacoma for it. Tacoma is about an hour south of Seattle and my interview was at noon, not knowing what the traffic would be like and not wanting to be late I left at 9:30.

I got there at 10:30 which gave me a lot of time to kill in Tacoma. Wonderfully enough the area that I had to be in for the interview was super cute so I didn't mind walking around (despite my heels).

Because I'm from Canada, specifically Edmonton I'm not really used to a lot of fabulous old buildings or good architecture. I remember the 14 hours that I spent on a layover in Germany I was so overwhelmed with the beauty of the architecture I used an entire roll of film on pictures of buildings. Tacoma was no different in that respect (except that this time I had a digital camera).

This is the only union station I'd ever seen. Note the arch on the left that I got to walk under in order to take the picture.

It was unknown to me before this trip but apparently Washington is a big deal in the world of glass blowing. The first thing I did when I got to Tacoma was check out the University of Washington bookstore. University bookstores tend to have pretty fantastic art sections (at least the ones in Washington do) so I had to go peruse, I bought a few pens and looked though an interesting book on glass blowing. Then I walked across the street and saw this...

There were a bunch of signs to go to the glass bridge so I followed them...

Ridiculous right? They sort of looked like magical turquoise transparent garbage bags, ha. Seriously though they were really incredible.

The view from right under them was so amazing, they were super high.

Across the bridge was the Museum of Glass, I didn't have time to check it out but I snapped a picture (of course) because it was pretty cool. I definitely need to go back and check it out sometime.

The glass museum is the one on the left and I liked the look of the brick building on the right so I focused on it.

This is the view of Union Station from the back. I walked back across the bridge and thought I'd poke my head into the station, because it looked so beautiful.

When I walked through these front doors a cop came up to me and asked me to see my ID and state my business. I said I just wanted to look around and he said it was fine. I guess it's a courthouse now so they are all intense. The inside had a super high domed ceiling and the main window had these huge glass poppies (you can see them from the back in the picture I took while on the glass bridge).

I could only sneak one photo, I didn't want the guard to catch me. I sat there for a while, it was all white inside with the gorgeous paneled ceiling and it was super quiet.

After I was done walking around the glass bridge and sitting in the station/courthouse I went across the street to the Starbucks where I was to have my interview. I took the fact that she wanted to have the interview at Starbucks as a good sign because Starbucks is sooo my turf.

You can see the Starbucks my interview was at right between the lamppost and the green tree. It was such a cute little street.

Aaaaaand, as luck would have it there was a cupcake joint a few doors down from the Starbucks. I popped in after my interview to have a taste.

It was one of the cutest cupcake places I've ever been in and the girl who helped me was really lovely. She was wearing an adorable printed apron and was all friendly and smiley. There some super cute original cupcakey drawings for sale. I was very tempted but I need to conserve funds. 

Here's a sample... I did some Google sleuthing and found the artist's blog here. Maybe when I start working again I'll snap up a piece. The cupcake shop was called Hello Cupcake. Drop by if you are ever in Tacoma and revel in the cuteness.

Okay, I'm done for the day, exceeeeeept... I got a call today annnnnnnnnnnnnnnnd.............

I got the job. Screw you recession. My contract is being mailed to me and I am now employed here. I'm super pumped to have a job where I can actually use my degree. Hollah!

In the name of procrastination and a reward for last night's work I took a bit of a break from packing this afternoon and met up with Sarah The Jam Girl for some sketch-booking at Starbucks. I discovered Sarah and her awesomeness a few Royal Bison's ago and decided to make her my friend. Unfortunately this decision was ill timed as I leave Monday and we had such a fabulous time. We could have collectively slacked off during the day while other people worked like chumps had we discovered each other sooner. So sad.

We drew and talked and drank chai-lattes for a few hours, Sarah is a pretty lovely girl.

Some more picture taking... note the current issue of HOW magazine I was reading ('ahem', for free).

 I spent last night with Nathan in my basement listening to music and packing the studio. I am feeling early separation anxiety from my drafting table that has to be put in storage until I decide whether Seattle is a permanent move or not.

Things to notice:

1. Oliver, sigh. I love him.

2. Cherries, so good.

3. Separate organizational boxes for magazine pages and black and white photocopies.

4. An old photo of me and my sisters when we were little.

5. My badminton racquet that Kim and I put to good use at the U of A fitness center this morning (I kinda love badminton). 

6. The obscene amount of paint markers I own.

I have lots of last minute things to finish before tomorrow. I move everything to Beth's then because I'll be storing all my crap there while I'm away. Wish me luck.

This is so beautiful. I love how the erased drawings follow the scene like a puff of smoke...