Bode and Bella

Last semester I did a terrible final project for photojournalism on a family that lives near me who was in the process of adopting two children from Ethiopia.  After a very long process, Brant and Karen Schelhaas went there to pick up Bode and Bella and brought them home to Highlands Ranch.  Karen says that the language issue is slowly being worked through and mostly communication happens through a charades-like pantomime to get the point across.













Today was the first day Bode and Bella have been out to play in the cul-de-sac with the other neighbor children.  Bode is all boy and loves to kick a ball around soccer-style.  Bella is fascinated by bikes and wants to ride, but mostly she wants to be with Karen, holding her hand or just being held.  They both smile for the camera, but after a few seconds their eyes mist over in a faraway glaze and one can't help but wonder what they are thinking.












Bode is around 2, Bella around 5, but no one is really sure. It is easy to compare them to the children playing in the yards around their house, but only their birth parents know for sure, and the are a long long way away not only in distance, but in language and culture as well.

Welcome to the neighborhood kids!

Graduation 2008

It was fun going to graduation, even with all the names that had to be read! I was able to watch friends graduate and it gives you the energy to keep going until YOU graduate.  I got to spend some time with my friend, Stephanie Overbeck who graduated cum laude with a degree in psychology.  She's off to Alaska to wait through the graduate school process and I miss her already.  

Sad news

My favorite art history teacher told me sad news yesterday; a fellow student died during finals this spring.  David Louis Rothbard died from complications of cancer.  Christine Dupont-Patz was his favorite teacher and she  watched his decline in health over the last year. What an honor to be a teacher that a student will come to hear lecture in the student's precious few remaining months of life and continue to take art history classes and participate in discussions.  Trust me, she knows.   

Christine explained that in the final weeks of Dave's life, his wife would sit outside of the room as he attended class to ensure that if there was a problem, she would be there to help him. Luckily, he was able to complete the classes without incident and passed away while remaining engaged in one of his favorite passions: art history.  

I was always comfortable having Dave sit near me, he usually would place himself in the back of the class, leaning against the wall in a slouching manner that betrayed his age.  He read all the assignments and poured over them to understand subtle nuances of art historian jargon and intellectual mazes of theory and criticism.  He understood it all and helped me to understand what I could absorb as well.  To his credit, he even understood what Roland Barthes was trying to say about that damn spaghetti advertisement that Christine made us read.  He was an art historian of the gentle sort, learning about the past for the love of the knowledge and the purity of the appreciation for high art.  Through his eyes, art history took on its richest colors and its most delectable stories.  He gave the rest of us permission to stop and look at what has come before us. 

On a personal note, I look back at that last year with Dave and wonder I was in such a hurry to get things done, move from one thing to another and not stop and spend some time talking to my friend.  It's not that I don't know how to be with people who are dying; all of my paternal family and most of my mother's 17 brothers and sisters have passed away and I've been there to see it and be part of it.  But in Dave's case, why didn't I stop and take the time to listen, to ask questions, to document a life that is now over?

NPR has a fund-raising gig going on right now, and one of the rewards for donating money to the organization is the book and CD entitled, " Listening is a Gift of Love" which recounts thousands of stories of ordinary people in this day and age. I listen to stories of people whose ordinary lives had moments of everything from passion to power.   I wonder why I didn't take the time to listen to try and tell Dave's story in his own words, when supposedly I'm supposed to hear and see what's going on around me.  I missed an opportunity to give a gift that keeps on giving long after the occasion has passed.  

Dave's buried out at Fort Logan National Cemetery in Englewood, and it's my mission now to go there and find Dave and say "hi."  I also am trying to track down his widow and hope she has a few moments to tell me about her husband, who he was and how he lived his life.  

Christine says  Metro State College is looking into awarding Dave a posthumous degree in art history that would be announced at next spring's commencement.  He had earned all the credits he needed save for his senior experience/thesis credits.  Seems to me like he earned the ultimate senior experience/thesis credits during finals week and probably now is pow-wowing with Roland Barthes and asking him to explain further that damn spaghetti advertisement.   

Spring Cleaning

I'm cleaning out the Mac to make more room for new stuff; this is one of the images I came across in my sorting.  I wonder who wrote the word on the side of the can, and I wonder why they did it. I think everyone feels like the can is where their "self" ends up at times.   

Not today, though. 

:) 

Mo-mo Mariah

My granddaughter Mariah (DGD) was here for a few hours this evening.  We have our usual routine, I change her out of clothes she comes in and into something I think would be better, we trim and paint her fingernails and toenails, I let her raid my fridge and eat all the fruit in sight, we put on a movie, eat popcorn, and then she retires to her corner of toys.  

Today, we washed "Shiney," her precious stuffed dog who has some serious miles on him, and she left him here with her Beanie cat collection.  Today is pick-up day for her to return to her mom, and mom and dad share custody and she has a back and forth life.  Precious toys get left behind when life is transient and she has learned that her prized possessions will be waiting for her at grandma's house if she leaves them there.  Shiney is a constant for her, but she left him here tonight as a kind of breadcrumb back to grandma's house for her next visit.  

I saw a billboard at a bus stop when I was living in Seattle in 1979 and it said, "Grandparents and Grandchildren Dream About Each Other."  I never realized what that meant until I became grandma in 2003 because I never dreamed about my grandmother.  She used to drown kittens right after they were born because they were too much of a burden to her and to the mother cat, and later I learned that kind of cruelty was only the outward manifestation of 95 years of hard living.   

Mariah changed all of that way of thinking for me, and we have a special relationship that started the minute she was born.  The picture I have on my dresser is of a woman with tired eyes from a waiting vigil for a long night's labor holding a newly born, newly swaddled baby, and as the woman with tired eyes looks at the camera, the tiny 1/2 hour old newborn is smiling up at the woman. The tired woman?  Me.  The newborn?  Mariah.  It was pure magic, and being tired didn't matter.  For the uninitiated, newborns don't smile.   They are a tired tangle of stress and perplexed energy, and they don't smile.  This one did.  

If I never have any other grandchildren,  I would be happy with just this one.  I know Paul will probably fall on top of a girl at some point and have another kid, Jill and Matt say no, they don't see kids fitting in to their lives, and Katie and Jason have nixed the idea, although I think both Katie and Jill  would be fun moms to have.  But then again, they learned from the best. 

Grandma.  

This is from my food portfolio, and although it didn't make the cut, it's still one of my most favorite images.  My mother carried these wine glasses home in her luggage along four others as well as her china set she purchased in Bavaria. She shipped her clothes and personal things home, and they arrived a few months later. That's right, months.  

We lived in Munich for a few years in the late 60's-my dad was a design engineer for Boeing and not only did he make superior airplanes, he spoke fluent German and he looked German as well.  

Dad died in 1976, mom in 1990.  

Evening Architecture

This is a concert venue is lovely uptight Highlands Ranch, and the combination of light and dark was fun to play with.

Resources

It's a shoe leather kind of day; lots of gathering information and yes, a shopping trip.   I took advantage of Metro State's Career Services department in the Tivoli.  For me, it was worth the time and effort, I was able to talk with Judy White, an experienced career counselor.  Granted, Career Services is in flux right now, but what I really needed was to talk to a profession career counselor about making the degree change from BFA to IDP.   I needed to talk to an objective professional about aspects of going into journalism, freelance work and employment when my degree is done.  Diversity is the key here, and I've known that for many years and it's true for any field, not just art/journalism/photojournalism.  I also have my appointment with IDP to begin creating my degree and I see some light at the end of the tunnel.  

Mother's Day

I'm blogging instead of studying for my final test in 20/21st century art class.  This is not my favorite class.  I like less "controversial" art; high Renaissance and medieval art, Byzantine stylings and in America, Native American art.  

Last week we got to see an image of a man who had nailed his penis to a board and called it art.  Another man was hanging from hooks pierced through his skin and he is suspended in Superman fashion.  I'm sorry.  I don't get it.  I don't want it, and I don't want to learn about it anymore.  I really think all this is ruining my ability to see through my own lens.  There are so many images and stories out there that have nothing to do with nailing genitals to wood.  

I am so close to my BFA, only 6 classes, but finishing those classes that have nothing in them that interests me is depressing.  The photography program at times has nothing to do with photography.  A semester that doesn't deal with the stunning affects of color and how to manipulate it.  What a pity. 

The IDP program at Metro tells me there are options for me that would allow me to have a better experience and get more for the money I'm spending on tuition.  We'll see.  

I'm tired of complaining about this, I'm tired of fighting the tide of "art."  I don't belong there.  I hope I can find where I do belong.  

Mother's Day?  Kate and Jason are doing lawn stuff and planning for Jason's bike races in the near future.  Our dinner together is on Tuesday evening.  Jill and Matt are safely home from Costa Rica this afternoon, and for MD they took me to the Morrison Inn for an impromptu strawberry margarita and enchiladas.  Also, they wanted to say thanks for taking care of Syndey and Schmidty Kitty even though Schmidty decided to jump off the 2nd floor balcony in the midst of a psycho cat moment.  Paul, Mariah and Kristen?  I don't know where they are today. 

Happy Mother's Day.      :)  

Busy Intersection

I don't know the name of this little hamlet, Bisio was flying low as he piloted the 15-passenger rented van on our trip to Taos, NM this last weekend.  This area has a great old church and an ancient unkempt cemetery and it stands at the corner of Main St. and nowhere.

Taos Portrait

In the Santa Fe main square the sights, sounds and colors of New Mexico are in every corner. In this particular corner next to a large cottonwood tree sits Felicita Fernando, a 35-year veteran pinon vendor. Injured in an accident in 1995, both legs were crushed when she was caught in between two mail trucks as she was loading her mail for the day. Unable to return to work, she supplements her disability income by selling pinon nuts to the customers who come to browse the over priced turquoise jewelry of the neighboring vendors.

The pine nuts she sells are "alive" and have matured naturally "coaxed" as opposed to the nuts whose life cycle is accelerated by the use of a blowtorch. Fernando shares some of her philosophies on life along with a $5 bag of nuts.

"People are stupid; Mother Nature is smart," she explains, "she ripens the nuts while the animals are sleeping, and when they wake up, the wind brings the food down to them."

She also credits her late husband, an "old fashioned" type of man who spent his time with his family for a good portion of her success in life.

"We would make our food outside when we lived in Tucson when it was hot, and we shared all the work," and as she remembers, she smiles and continues, "on his day off he would just sit under the shade tree all day long and rest."

Fernando says she knows she was lucky to have a good husband, and she misses him since he died of a heart attack a few years ago.

"Today, if a woman makes a correction of a man, she'll end up in the cemetery." She acknowledges her marriage "wasn't perfect, but it was better than some."

For now, she will sit on her corner under the big cottonwood tree as she sells her pinon nuts and try to make ends meet. She hopes the cold weather is over because it hurts her legs and prevents her from selling her making her living at the corner of the Santa Fe square.

Finals stress

Christ!

I am trying to get my video project ready to go by noon today.  I have all the parameters done, but I don't know how to burn DVD's with all the title pages and credits, and forget the Lynda.com videos.  I hate 'em!  Whatever happened to good old fashioned books?  Argh!

How is "art" judged?

Printed on Kodak Supra Endura E paper, a really nice paper to work with.  Digital scanning doesn't so the images justice, analog prints are beautiful.

What do you think?

Color print film shot in tungsten light manipulated in enlarger using CMY

Tweak Assignment - Final Grade-75-what do you think?