Monday, June 9, 2008
Hometown
I grew up in a small town in western New York. It was so small we didn't even have a McDonald's until I was 12 years old.
When I was growing up, I couldn't wait to be old enough to move away. Then, while in college, my parents sold the house I grew up in and I was suddenly homesick. I decided to do my senior project in college as a series of drawings and paintings of my hometown. Nowdays, every so often I'm able to go back and add sketches to my collection.
Mediums are ink, colored pencil and oil pastel.
When I was growing up, I couldn't wait to be old enough to move away. Then, while in college, my parents sold the house I grew up in and I was suddenly homesick. I decided to do my senior project in college as a series of drawings and paintings of my hometown. Nowdays, every so often I'm able to go back and add sketches to my collection.
Mediums are ink, colored pencil and oil pastel.
Travel sketchbook: Morton Arboretum
One of my favorite places in the Chicago area, so it's not a true travel sketchbook because it's nearby... though going there always felt like a vacation. There are acres and acres of prairie and forest with a few gardens mixed in. I used to be a member and loved to go early before my classes started (I earned a certificate in botanical art from the Arboretum) and walk the trails.
Travel sketchbook: Santa Fe
One of my favorite places on earth is Santa Fe, New Mexico. When I was 27 I decided to take a vacation by myself and settled on Santa Fe after reading about its significant fine arts culture. Plus Georgia O'Keeffe had a house there, and so many artists currently call it home.
Being from the east, I was also intrigued with the landscape of the southwest, so different from anything I had ever seen. Imagining a place with no green fields, no woods, no rivers and streams, but instead red soil, scrub brush and cactus, seemed foreign to me. I ended up loving it so much I almost moved there.
Impulsive decisions seemed par for the course for me in my 20s. When I graduated from college in New York State, I decided to move to Chicago. I didn't have any family here, only knew three people in the whole city, and didn't even have a place to stay when I and my two suitcases arrived in June. I've told the story so many times since then, and everyone's response is, "you are so brave!" I think it's more the blind certainty of youth. I figured, if things didn't work out, I'd just buy a return ticket to Rochester, no big deal.
Here it is 13 years later, I'm married, own a house, have a kid and another on the way. I think things worked out quite well. Now, set in my ways and secure in my life, I can't believe I was ever that type of person who could move 1/3 of the way across the country or spend a week in New Orleans or New Mexico alone. I'm kind of proud of it, I think.
Being from the east, I was also intrigued with the landscape of the southwest, so different from anything I had ever seen. Imagining a place with no green fields, no woods, no rivers and streams, but instead red soil, scrub brush and cactus, seemed foreign to me. I ended up loving it so much I almost moved there.
Impulsive decisions seemed par for the course for me in my 20s. When I graduated from college in New York State, I decided to move to Chicago. I didn't have any family here, only knew three people in the whole city, and didn't even have a place to stay when I and my two suitcases arrived in June. I've told the story so many times since then, and everyone's response is, "you are so brave!" I think it's more the blind certainty of youth. I figured, if things didn't work out, I'd just buy a return ticket to Rochester, no big deal.
Here it is 13 years later, I'm married, own a house, have a kid and another on the way. I think things worked out quite well. Now, set in my ways and secure in my life, I can't believe I was ever that type of person who could move 1/3 of the way across the country or spend a week in New Orleans or New Mexico alone. I'm kind of proud of it, I think.
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