What Is Sleep?

I don’t get much anymore. Lately it’s in the 2 hours a night range. But between my day job, my creative work, and a dash of social life, all of a sudden I’m busy. My little online shop is slowly increasing. People are finding me, discovering me. I have just finished and sent off a pretty good sized consignment order to an arts organization outside of DC which had contacted me. Next, I m working on artwork for a new Underground Art Magazine (details later) which had discovered my work, and I have a personal project I have been chomping at the bit to get started. I’ve got to get back to scanning and processing my vacation photography; this is a huge, several-week job, but if I wait too long, suddenly it’s winter and they just don’t seem appropriate for uploading to my Flickr account. I was going to try to get a little more sleep tonight since my lower back is in such a spasm I really can’t do very much. But even though it’s so late, (too late) and I’m not likely to get more sleep than usual on this night, I feel so excited to have finished this latest order and for the prospects ahead.

As The World Flickrs

moonlight sail, originally uploaded by original_ann.

This is a photo my sister took of me on our recent stay at the beach house. We saw the full moon cast the brightest light upon the ocean, and danced in fields of blowy Queen Anne's Lace under the stars. Yes, that is a sailboat out there behind me.

I Am NOT Packing Up Any Bikinis!

At least, not yet. But it is sort of necessary to start putting some holiday items in my Etsy shop. I made a sneak preview collage of some of my illustrations and doodlings you might find over there.

Want a Free Bikini?

So I've taken the 8:30ish train out to Long Island where I can lay on the beach all day and jump in the waves; pretend the city doesn't exist for a bit, and that summer is not really 'done'. I'm minding my own business when a nice-looking beachy sort of guy comes up and says those very words to me. I sat up and responded with a "yes" spoken almost as one would a question, like when someone rings your doorbell, ala 'who is it?' You know. He plopped down and removed his backpack, fished around for my size, and voila! New black bikini. Mine now. Even better he asks if I'd like one for a friend as well! So Ann, (my twin sister) it's waiting for you when you visit me next!

Note: the above photo is one I'd taken a few summers ago while at the beach house with one of my Holga (plastic toy) cameras. It's in my Flickr stream.

My Sneaks

They'll be waiting for me at the beach house when I return next year. Boy, did summer ever go fast this year. I need a rewind button.

What I Did On My Summer Vacation

As I've mentioned, I am at the family beach house in New England, and I've brought a big collection of cameras to play with. My twin sister, who I feel is an incredibly amazing photographer, (though she thinks I'm looney in the nut about that) does the same but with better equipment suitable to her style. She develops her own black and white film and brought all the chemicals and equipment for us both to do that here while on vacation. After shooting medium format (120mm) Kodak TMax 100 film, (she with a Hasselblad, and I with a Holga) my sister walked me through every step until we ended up with wonderful long ribbons of developed negatives. We hung these with special hangers and weighted clips to make them dry straight and uncurled, and once dry, cut them into scan-able strips and used masking tape to adhere one of our cut strips to a window to take a photo of with our digital cameras. In Photoshop we inverted the digital shots so we could get an idea of what we had come up with. (The dark blue areas are from something outside the window, not the photo itself. Also note that once home, we will use our scanners to do this correctly...this window/inversion is called the 'poor man's scanner'.) Here's mine taken looking out of a room into a hallway of the beach house. Pretty neat.

Hows About a Little Smooch?

, originally uploaded by mia.in.the.sky.

I really love the work of this artist I discovered not too long ago on Flickr. Her name is Maya Bloch and I find her style speaks to me in my language. She calls herself mia.in.the.sky there on Flickr- - check her out!