Frequent poems

I decided I want to write more poems not connected to artwork but I don't want to fill my blog with them. So I created a new blog to post these poems. But don't worry, the poems will be posted on my this blog in the top right corner, just not filling the main space with them!

If you want to check out those poems alone (because you only use an RSS reader and you're especially curious), the feed is:

http://jewishgalpoems.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss

Maybe I can use some of these poems for inspiration for art projects when I am seriously in need of ideas. (haha)

NaBloPoMo

I think it might be time again for me to dive into another NaBloPoMo! It might be challenging because we will be moving next week, but I feel like it's a shame that the last one I did was March 2008 - two years ago! It was such a crazy month, too - I interviewed for grad schools, got into two schools, GOT ENGAGED, decided to move to Chicago, and so much more...

They haven't announced what July's theme will be, but I'm already getting excited. NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month) started with the challenge of blogging every day for one month. It was so successful that they decided to make a new challenge every month so you can choose your challenge month! The inspiration for NaBloPoMo comes from NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), in which writers are challenged to write an entire novel during the month of November. I once began NaNoWriMo and became totally overwhelmed, but NaBloPoMo is more within my reach - though still very challenging! Especially for me, being Shomer Shabbat, I will have to make sure to post late Saturday night.

Who's with me?!

Classic March 2008 NaBloPoMo Lists (the theme for that month), in list form, of course.

• "Donate for Purim" - a list of items JewishGuy, HillelLady and I donated to Texas Children's Hospital Art in Medicine program
  
  
• "Top Remarks Re: Art" - a list of some of the things I hear people say (to me) about art, especially modern art.
  
  
• "Favorite Media" - my favorite art materials!
  
  
• "Things I Capture on Camera" - some favorite subjects :)
  
  
  
  
  

Moving

The weird thing about moving is you kind of take an inventory on everything you have, some you throw away, some you give away, and some you keep. It depends on the move how much throwing/giving away you do.

In our case, we are downsizing our apartment size by a lot in our move to New York. A lot, a lot. On Thursday we're having a big good-bye barbecue with a lot of our friends and we are setting up a "take what you want!" table in the apartment. It's covered in books, board games, DVDs, and other things we think other people might want to take. Whatever our friends and family don't take will be donated.

The hardest things to part with are the books. But we have so many books that we read once and will never read again that have followed us from city to city. It's time to give them to someone who will read them (and maybe take the book with them from city to city). We are keeping the books we care about the most, though. It still makes me a little sad to see them go. But the empty spaces on our bookshelves won't be empty for long - as soon as we find a used bookstore near our apartment in NY we will be sure to restock...

Back

We just had a two week traveling extravaganza. Salt Lake City, Toronto, and New York City, all in one big crazy trip. It was fun and we have an apartment (yay!).

(Photos are from Salt Lake City)

Print of a scribble

Today I made a print! A real old-fashioned linoleum cut print like I used to do in undergrad and the years before grad school.


This print is inspired by this scribble:



I was going to do a reduction print to get more colors, but who am I kidding. I was never a very precise printer and I'm out of practice with hand printing so there's a good chance I'll mess up a majority of the prints and only get one good one.

I wish more of the "messy" surrounding space had shown up. I'll have to make sure to ink it more thoroughly next time. I call it messy because usually one would want to get rid of all of that junk and make it look nice and clean. But I actually like the way it looks, almost like it was cut from wood and not linoleum.

I also have a screen print version of one of my larger scribbles in the works but I'm not as big a fan of screen printing as I am of linoleum cut printing. The process of creating the screen is not as fun or interesting as creating a block for me. But that one I am planning on doing with many colors (I think I have 4 colors), so maybe I will tackle that tomorrow and Thursday.