Photo Challenge

I've never participated in a photo challenge before, but I've always wanted to try it out. When I saw this challenge posted by Elle Moss Photography, it seemed doable; so i signed up. It's very low pressure, and I like the categories.

I decided that I'd keep it simple for myself--I'll be using my iPhone to complete the challenge, and posting the results to the ferocious tumblr. 

Part of the challenge, for me, will be finding photos every day in a place that I'm not particularly fond of. Even though Pitt's campus can actually be quite pretty, I have a hard time seeing it sometimes. I'll have the most luck taking pictures on my lunch break, though, and it's already doing me some good to look at campus with a new set of eyes.

Yesterday was day one: Favorite Colors. We'll see how long I can keep this up.

Creative Spaces

A clipping from my grandmother's jade plant, on the art room windowsill.

I've been thinking a lot lately about creative spaces.

My environment is very important to me. Where I live, where I work, where I cook...atmosphere is everything. It puts me at ease. But it definitely takes me a long time to settle in and make a place feel like my own. 

When I moved into my new apartment last August, I was so excited to have an extra room to devote exclusively to art related endeavors. I couldn't wait to roll up my sleeves and get to work, painting and cutting and pasting, without any worry of having to clean up after myself or take over the dining room table with my projects. But as the months rolled on, I slowly decorated the living room, the kitchen, the bathroom...leaving the art room untouched. I didn't want to work in it because it was a disorganized disaster. It wasn't pretty, it wasn't functional--every time I went in to try to work on something, all I could think about was what to hang on the walls. 

Yesterday, I finally decided it was time to give my art room a little TLC. I moved the furniture, hung some things on the wall, and finally attached my desk lamp to my make-shift work table. I put away piles of crap, and paper, and magazines--and suddenly, it felt like a place where I wouldn't mind spending time.

Blogs these days are just exploding with tours of creative spaces. (For instance, did you see Shipley & Halmos' workspace featured on The Fox is Black this week? Heavenly.) I love to see where people work. Sometimes, it's a chair and a table in a corner; sometimes, it's a two floor art studio suite. We all have our own idea of what a work space should be.

I used to think it was silly, that I had to create an environment to work in before I could create anything else. But it seems I'm not alone. Search for "offices" on pinterest--you will be disappointed that you do not have access to at least ten of the spaces you see, I guarantee.

What is it about these spaces that makes us want to roll up our sleeves and get down to business? Are you the type that could work in a cardboard box, as long as you had the right tools? Is your dining room table covered in paper scraps and glue?

I'm still not 100% happy with my apartment space, but every day it feels more and more like home. Like a haven away from the outside world. Having that kind of stability to return to every day makes me more likely to be able to sit down and create things not only for myself, but for other people. 

Hopefully I'll have some pictures up tomorrow of my new creative digs. In the meantime...where do you get your creative groove on?

Melting Point

As a Christmas gift, I bought my little sister two spots at the Pittsburgh Glass Center's Make It Now event, which took place last Monday. She was off school, I was off work--it was a perfect setup. I've taken her to a Make It Now event before, where she made a glass bead and a paperweight. The bead was a huge hit, since she got to make most of it herself, so I made sure that she got to make two this time. I get to pick them up for her this weekend.

If you've never seen people blow glass in person, it's something you definitely need to do. The Glass Center studio is a super cool building, made of steel beams and concrete and giant windows. Just being there makes me want to roll up my sleeves and dig in. One more reason for me to get my own studio space up and running.

((mmmm a ferocious tumblr.))

Giving In to Technology

Tumblr. Instagram.

These are things I never thought I would use. It's bad enough that I kind-of sort-of have a twitter that I use once in a while. But tumblr? Get real, that thing is for fankids to post their fanfiction and fangifs and fanroleplays. And instagram is just a cheater's way of taking pictures (says the girl whose camera has been lying dormant for...oh, maybe a year). Tumblr and Instagram were just fads junking up the internet with...junky junk. Using either of them would totally ruin my street cred.

Or so I thought. Because then I found people who were using them both as a serious tools. Photographers who wanted to capture and share every-day moments quickly and thoughtfully; art bloggers and writers and all kinds of people. I thought...man, maybe this wouldn't be such a bad idea.

And you know what?

It turns out that it's a totally flipping awesome idea.

I signed up for Instagram on my iPhone, linked it to a brand spanking new Tumblr account, and voila! I suddenly have a totally new creative outlet that fits in my pocket.

I can't believe I was ever so blind.

For some reason, I have a hard time accepting this technological wave our generation is riding on. The only reason I got an iPhone in the first place was so I could combine my iPod and phone into one device. I own a handful of apps, that don't even hold a candle to my 12 year-old sister's library of 473,642 (a rough estimate). I'm quick to scoff at social networking sites. But I should really start giving in and riding the wave because...it's pretty freaking neat.

Now all I need to do is find a widget that will load thumbnails of my tumblr pictures in the sidebar of my blog...

In the meantime, check it out at http://ferociousostrich.tumblr.com/. Follow, tweet, tumble...do that thing you do, kids. I'd love to see how other people are using these tools to keep their creativity flowing.

((That first picture is from my living room, filled with paper lanterns. Thanks to Elizabeth from E Tells Tales for giving me the idea, and for directing me to Wit and Whistle to learn how to make them. Well, re-learn how to make them. I’m pretty sure I knew how to make these when I was a kid, but I never would have thought to use them as lanterns. Bravo.))