Butterflies like to stay in my stomach.

Warning: This post will be heavy on the images!

I realize it's been a while since I mentioned the exhibition that I somehow managed to get a piece in... About a week ago was the opening, and of course I went to it. God bless my dad for driving all the way to DC and back again.
The closer and closer that we got to the gallery, the more anxious I got. You know that feeling.. when your chest tightens and it feels like there is a dozen butterflies trying to find a way out of your stomach. That's how I felt most of the time I was there, although it started to ease once I got to talking to some people. I couldn't help but keep thinking in the back of my head, "Wow, all these other artists are so good. What am I doing here??" The echoes of that are still in my ears.
I got to meet three of the jurors, and found out that there were about 100 + applicants, 28 of which got into the show. I don't know how I got in there. One of them named Peggy seemed interested in me and she thinks that I should join the Washington Printmakers' Emerging Artists group that just got started. Yikes! The scary thing about that is just that I don't know how often I'm really going to be able to make prints anymore. I want to (I really, really do), I just don't know how that will work out with everything else that's going on in my life at the moment. Things are just.. wow crazy.
I also got to meet some other artists (some not from the show). Another man named Ted was interested in seeing more of my work..

Of course, all of the people I got contact information for (about 5?) I need to email yet... This past week was just all over the board with things to do.



In other news... I went over to the studio Saturday and took pictures of the space. I'm so excited about it, and to be honest I can't wait to start doing stuff again. When I have space to do work, I will make work. At home, I don't have space, so I haven't really been working on the pieces that I started. I'm ready to pop; there are so many ideas in my head rattling around, waiting to get out... sketching would probably help, but.... well. My habit with sketching is just toliet water. Anyway, here are some photos:

From the other blog..

I thought that I would add this here, even though I'm just cross-posting from my other blog (weeklything.blogspot.com).

Psalm 47:1,2
Clap your hands, all you nations; shout to God with cries of joy. How awesome is the LORD Most High, the great King over all the earth!

Romans 12:1,2
…I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.


Hey everyone-

How’s it going? I hope that this week went well for all of you, or if nothing else that you were able to see God’s goodness throughout the week.

This past week I’ve been reading Romans (yes, again; it’s my favorite), and also thinking a lot about the nature of our salvation. Think about it. Regardless of if you grew up in church or not, you and I are saved not by our own merit but by something far bigger than that. God’s grace, as the song goes, is amazing. It’s incomparable with any sense of grace that we have here on earth.
Yesterday, the 15th, was the day that God implemented that grace to save me six years ago. I for one did not grow up in a Christian household, and didn’t really grow up going to church either. Romans 5:10 mentions that we were God’s enemies before knowing Him, while Romans 8:7 mentions that the sinful mind is hostile to God. It’s interesting to think about because I was one of those kids that rarely would do anything “wrong” on the outside: I obeyed my parents, I did my homework, I didn’t drink, didn’t smoke, didn’t hurt people intentionally… All around good, right? And yet, Scripture says clearly that before I knew Christ, I was an enemy of God. I’d say that’s about right. If nothing else, it got to the point in my life that anything to do with Christianity was trite idiocy (or arrogance) and I hated it. I hated the Christian God and wanted nothing to do with Him. I didn’t have a problem with there being a “god” whatever it was, but Yahweh? Please, I wanted none of it. Not just that, but the garbage that went on inside could not be compared to any outward misdemeanors I may have done. So, yes, I was an enemy of the LORD.


Yet, here I am now, loving God and just floored at the fact that He reached down and extended His salvation to me six years ago. And it’s all to Him that I have faith and a desire to write these Weekly Things every week. It’s to Him that everything in my life has changed since I was in High School… it’s to Him that any one of us have the faith we have, and it’s to Him that we were saved at all. Praises be to God!
The verse that I pin-point as the one that finally broke the camel’s back was this:
Matthew 16:24-25, “If anyone would come after me [Jesus], he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.”
So I ask you to ponder these questions with me… Do we recall the days before we knew Christ, and praise Him for what He’s done? Have I really shouldered my cross, denying myself for Him? Have I really lost my old life to have new life?

Praise the Lord for your salvation, not just today but every day.

I pray that each of us would be humbled by how amazing God’s grace really, truly is, and praise Him continually for salvation. I also pray that we extend that awe with others, sharing Christ with those who are enemies of God so that they can know God, and be saved in just the same way as we were. I ask that the Holy Spirit would continually be working in our hearts to protect us from temptation and sin, and that He would also work in us the likeness of Christ. I pray that our lives would not be our own, but His. May we all praise the Lord, always, for everything that He does.

In love and in Him,
Your sister,
Yvonne

P.S. I wanted to include this snippet… It’s from a local band called Kurios, and the name of the song is ‘Sing, Fall Down.’ I absolutely love it.

“One day You'll come again with open arms to hold me.
I'll see You face to face and bow before Your glory.
With all my strength, with all my heart,
with all I am my soul cries out.
With all of me I lift my voice to worship You.”

“We sing. We fall down. We worship You. We sing. We fall down.”

Random Days

So the past two days have had their share of random and/or awkward moments. Let them share them with you. Then art.

Random: Yesterday morning, I caught a hawk (or a Peregrin Falcon) swoop in on a squirrel in a tree... and miss.

Random: I went to go buy shoes at Army Navy yesterday, and parked nearby a group of guys who were standing around with the hood of their car up. They asked me if I had jumper cables, and I don't... They asked a few more people if they had cables, but nobody seemed to have cables for these Peurto Rican men. So I offered to drive someone up to PepBoys, which was just right up the street.
I know what some of you may be thinking at this point, "OMG DON'T EVER ASK A STANGER TO GET IN YOUR CAR IF YOU'RE A WOMAN." ... Relax. It's not like they were hitchhikers.
So anyway, the lucky volunteer was Joel, and when he got in the car I found out that they were from Peurto Rico. Had some random chat in the car while going up.. He offered to give me gas money, but I said it was cool. I mean, seriously, they needed some help and it seemed like no one was going to help them. I didn't want anything back.
We got up to PepBoys and it took forever to find the jumper cables because they are no longer called jumper cables; oh no, they're called Booster Cables. Grabbed them and headed out. Proceeded to miss my turn and feel like a tool in my old stomping grounds.
He decided to ask me if I was single or married or whatever. Not to intrude. I said of course that I was single, smirking on the inside and wishing I didn't answer the question at all. But, anyway, as I was beginning to pull back into Army Navy, he asked me for my number.
Dude.
C'mon.
I kind of laughed and suggested an email instead. I doubt he'll email me; I'd be shocked if he did, and I kind of hope he doesn't.


Random: After I got gas at Hess this morning, my van (GiGi) got assaulted by one of those metal-horse-things that are in front of gas pumps. I have no idea what they're called. But here's the story: as I was about to pull out from the pump, a guy in a big blue truck was trying to get around a Semi near me, so I decided, "Oh okay I'll get out of his way, and be nice so he can get by." Good idea, right? So has I begin to turn to get out of the way, I hear this horrid crunching sound and immediately realized what had happened. Apparently I was well enough out of the way, because the old man in the big blue truck went on through. I will affectionately call the large dent Susie.
Awkward: So later this morning I went to the doctor to see what's up with my back. To get you up to speed, I've always had back pain to some degree or another, so this is nothing new. I usually ignore it, and this wouldn't be any different but I decided, "I want to go to a chiropractor, maybe the doctor can tell me what to do." Uh, well, first of all he suggested I get my back X-rayed and second of all he didn't even say anything about going to a chiropractor. So I go to get myself X-rayed. I've only had two other X-rays in my life: 1. Pnemonia, 4yrs old. 2. Wrist was hurting because I'd fallen while attempting to snowboard, but there was nothing wrong. That was two years ago.
Of course, I forgot that getting an X-ray meant wearing one of those hospital gowns. Oh joy. So not only was I cranky from my car earlier this morning, I then had to deal with being practically naked with little more than a drafty sheet between myself and the rest of the world. Great.
One of the three X-ray people was a male student learning how to use the equipment.

But I survived. Awkwardly. At first, I was cool on the outside and horrified on the inside. Then I just became increasingly uncomfortable. Like a lot of people, hospitals make me a little edgey. I'm not scared to be in them, just nervous, since the only time I've ever been admitted to the hospital was when I had pneumonia when I was four. The last X-ray was at a family practice. But I survived and all is well with the world.

I hope I can have copies of my X-rays. That would be totally sweet and well worth the awkward-ness.

Anyway. Art update. I finally got in to get my plexiglas inked up and printed once. Woohoo!
The photo is extremely bad, but it's laying on a couch and there's really no way for me to pin it up somewhere. Silly me didn't think to take a picture of it while it was in the printing studio.
I would love to do more prints but alas, this is the only one that there will be. I'm still trying to think of a title with all the different things that go into it.




And this is the PlexiGlas all inked up....





And so the process continues. There's a lot more that I need to do with it, yet... like make the box and figure out how I want to do the lighting. I'm not sure quite yet how I want it to look.. There are some blue elements that I want to add, but I don't know which direction I want to go with it. We shall see.


There's not much else to update on, at least nothing I want everyone and their mom to know. Take that.

-Y

I just woke up...

Normally I don't post anything about the weird dreams I have, but I thought this one was warranted particular attention because it was so odd.

My friend Barbara and I were hanging out in a city that we kept saying was Pittsburgh, but it definitely was not Pittsburgh... I don't know what we were doing there, but I think we were driving around for a while and then we decided to crash in an apartment because it was starting to get stormy. Aparently, Barbara lived in this tiny apartment with like just two bedrooms and nothing else. Our mattresses were on the floor, and it must have been hot because all I had was a sheet to cover me.
I woke up early in the morning for some reason and went to get a drink of water and look out the front door. Now, mind you, the apartment was on the third floor and it had a front door. There was a fire-escape sort of deal to get in or something... but that wasn't the odd thing. The odd thing was that the city had flooded up to two or three stories. Of course I'm suprised, shocked, and feeling sick all at the same time but I remained calm... I went to Barbara's room just as she was waking up and she asked me how I was that morning. Then I told her to look outside.
Then we ended up on like a porch or something, and the neighbors in the complex were also on their porches. They were college-aged. Barbara and I, and everyone else, kept commenting how we couldn't believe what happened over night while peering at the water that came up to the edge of the porch. Then, suddenly, Barbara jumped in. I freaked out because she sank like a rock and it was two-three stories of water. (so that's what, 20-30 ft deep?)
She comes back up after a while... and then all of us are intrigued and decide to have a little fun since there was nothing else we could do. I jumped in to reach the bottom--of course, I did--and so did a handful of other people. It turned into a contest to see who could do it fastest.
I climbed up out of the water and sat down with a random group of people and I looked over and somehow there was a highway nearby that was just above the water, and a sidewalk. Suddenly my pastor comes up behind all of us and asks for my help in doing something. He seemed so insistant about it, I went with him. We came out onto the sidewalk and onto a little grassy area that had a tree in it.. somehow it didn't get flooded, and it had a road that lead back out to the highway.
He was pointing to the tree, decimated and looking very worse for wear, and held up a garbage bag saying he was doing an AOK (act of kindness) for a neighbor of his who loved birds. In the tree, there were all kinds of dead birds stuck to the branches. One of them looked like an owl, and it was so large I thought it was a child at first. For the most part, they had dried up, and as we got to work pulling the birds off of the tree so his friend wouldn't see them, we talked about what could have happened to them. I was really hesitant at first, but eventually got to work.
At some point, I mentioned that it was a shame we were getting rid of them all and my pastor looked at me funny and asked why. I explained that I tend to have birds in my art, and wanted to use the birds as references. He didn't understand, so I explained again, and he still didn't understand what I was saying. He said it didn't make any sense. Then someone else came along (I think it may have been my friend Jake) and started helping us. We were all quiet, and I was thinking about how I needed to call my parents to tell them I was okay.

Then I woke up.
I don't know what's weirder... that the city flooded like that, or that we were pulling dead birds out of a tree and I wanted to keep them.

-Y

Progression

So, here are some photos of what's been going down with the projects. The photos are kind of not so good, but I figured they didn't need to be nice while the projects are in-the-making.
This one to the left I've been waiting to work on more for a while, since I didn't have enough material to do the next step. That, and I've been waiting to go to KU to use the printmaking studio... However, as I was on campus, I bought some mylar sheets to continue the project.

Words, words, and more words to come. Here's a tip, kids, that I had to learn the hard way: Do not roll off a rubber band from a tube of mylar sheets, because you will slice your hand. My thumb got a nasty "paper" cut from the mylar... I was going to take a photo of it, but a) figured no one would want to see, and b) my camera doesn't do micro. Just know that it was very stingy. Don't get a paper cut from a mylar sheet. It hurt more than a cardboard-paper cut.




Ah. The self portrait piece. ... Well, it's been in this state for a while now and I haven't touched it again yet. This is partly because I'd been waiting for the paint to dry, but also partly because I'm timid in doing what I want to do next. I'm unsure if it's going to look right, but I like the idea so much; well, for the most part. It's still kind of new and weird for me. I'm really excited to be in the studios because then I'll have more vocal input than just my own. That'll be sweet.


The last thing I wanted to share is a piece I'm working on for my dad. Honestly, I'm not taking it too seriously, which I don't know if that's a good thing. The plan is to put a horse figure contour in there using white sand or powder, similiar to my black contour stuff, buuuuuut... Eh. I'm not particularly into this piece, but it's supposed to be a gift. It's kind of more experimental and my dad gets to keep it. It's also kind of just a release to get SOMEthing with color out of my system. I'm just playing with it, more or less, and my dad gets to have the aftermath.

That's all I have. There's a whole lot of ideas floating around in my head and I really need to get around to sketching them out. That whole kinda-sorta idea about making an art object out of my mom's old jewelry case? Yeah, it kind of decided to root itself in my brain and now it won't go away. I keep adding on more thoughts including bits of glass that I recieved from my best friend Heather... which is a whole other story on its own, but basically her car got broken into in front of my house.
I don't know why I keep thinking of that jewelry box now. I'm not a 3D artist, you know (watch me limit myself).