Grandma in the flower bed

As I was walking back to my house after taking my last final on Friday morning I saw something that made me smile. On the St.Paul campus of the University of Minnesota there is beautiful landscaping. Every day I walk down concrete steps from the street and into a perfectly design green space with trees, lush grass, and blooming flowers in the warm months. Friday morning when I walked my usual route I noticed an elderly lady, dressed in a crisp camel colored pantsuit, crawling in the flower beds. Her tan sweater lay across her arm as she held up her camera lens, crouching low with her knees in the dirt to capture the beauty of that day in white tulip petals. I didn't want to stop and stare at her, but as I was walking by I slowed my pace just so I could observe her. Slowly moving from one spot to the next, she calculated the exact shot she wanted.  As I continued walking past I kept glancing back to see her make her way through the flowers. Maybe her hobby is flower photography, maybe she will put the pictures in wooden frames to remember the late spring day, or she will add them to her bathroom decor.

Like a child in a candy store admiring the vibrant sugary delights, her tender gaze caressed the tulips. Even though she was old in years she still hadn't lost that fresh fascination with the world, when everything is new, waiting to be discovered, when you still have the humility to admit that this world is so wonderful and you're only a small part of it. 

A few times this semester my roommates and I have run about the house yelling "Ice cream! Ice cream!" usually late in the evening, and on a Friday. (Well by late I mean 9:45pm) Our ice cream run consist of driving to Cub foods where we all select our flavor we are craving at the moment. Deciding on an ice cream flavor is a complicated process, chunks of stuff? no chunks? chocolate? strawberry? caramel swirls? One particular evening I was thoroughly involved in the ice cream selection process and reading about what wonders the ice cream containers held. It was not until I said, quietly to myself, "double fudge" that I realized my face was only an inch away from glass door that separated me from the creamy delights. Both my hands were also pressed onto the cold door, like how a small child looks at the monkey in the zoo behind the glass. I glanced to my right and noticed my roommates looking at me and laughing at my child-like behavior. Ice cream flavors fascinate me, the colors, the chunks of stuff they add like cookie dough and sprinkles, and the end result when you finally get to open and taste your perfectly selected treat. In that moments when I was totally engrossed in my ice cream selection I begin to act like that small unashamedly fascinated kid in the candy store without even noticing. I never want to lose that amazement for even the small things in life. 

I hope to grow up and be a grandma who crawls in the flower beds in my camel colored pantsuit.

Obscure

I check my stats here on my blog, my small corner of the internet, often….maybe so often it’s probably vain… but anyway. It’s awesome to see that people from all around the world visit my blog randomly. I receive hits from Google searches actually, mostly attributed to the fact that I wrote about Stoney Tangewizi and a Cabinet of Curiosities. You can even Google search ‘stoney tangewizi’ and in the 2^nd page of the image search you can see a picture of me with a can of the pop! *sigh*  I can now die happy because I have received my 15 milliseconds of fame…

But this brings me to an interesting point, one that I’ve wanted to expound on for awhile…

I happen to be a dabbler, which happens to mean I feed on shallow-water vegetation with rapid,splashing movements of the bill…er wait, wrong definition. Here’s the right one:  to play and splash in or as if in water, especially with the hands; to work at anything in an irregular or superficial manner: to dabble in literature. That lovely definition comes from Dictionary.com. (One of my favorite websites, I have it bookmarked.)

Obscure and random things generally happen to be my favorite things or things that I’m interested in at least.  When I was a kid, I would go to the library, find a section and a topic and pick out all the books I could find on it, ones that mostly had lots of photos. I went through comic books, cooking, baking, architecture, sculpting, art history, interior design, rock gardens, Japanese gardens, bonsai trees, archery, cake decorating, crocheting, poetry, geography, travel, and whatever else you can imagine. I would get interested in a subject obsessively for a short period of time and read as much about the subject as I could. 

I think there should be a name for that, like, a SuperLearner or something. I would completely immerse myself into the subject and exhaust all the resources I had to learn about it. I would not only read about it, but I would actually participate some as well. I took an archery class one summer, I went to the bonsai show at the Como Conservatory, I visited all the Japanese gardens around the city of Minneapolis, I painted, crocheted, and made small rock gardens.

Ignore the 3inch tall sandals, I thought they were cool 

I know all of those things aren’t necessarily obscure and unknown, but I don’t think a normal person researches everything they can possibly find out about it. It still continues to this day, I’ve tried skydiving, kayaking, karate, step aerobics, cake decorating, speaking Spanish, surfing, fishing, traveling, sewing, bicycling, hiking, swimming, camping, writing, bowling, horseback riding, kite making, collecting, ocarina playing, bird watching, paintball, rock climbing, and so much more. If you haven’t noticed by now, I also like to write lists.

So the point to all this…It’s not to brag about how awesome I am because I like to try so many things, or to let everyone know I’m famous in my own small world because of liking a certain carbonated beverage… no the moral of the story is, I’m obsessively curious about random things, and it seems awkward and strange sometimes. Yet, variety is absolutely necessary, it’s not that I just like to explore other things, it’s that I MUST. Curiosity is necessary food to me.

That's one reason why I write this blog, because somehow there's tens and tens of you who read what I write, no matter what it's about. I can slip into looking at other people's lives and thinking they are so much more exciting than me because they do x, y, and z. So I just need to embrace who I am and my strange interests. So who knows? Maybe that person from Denmark will check my blog again and read about national kumquat appreciation day, or that stranger from Uganda will read my praises of yogurt cups.

We live in a massively large and strange, beautiful, amazing world, and I’m just contributing to the weirdness of it all.

Design Process

I have never been happier for an acrylic box. 

I was smiling all the way home as I held it on the bus from Rapson Hall on East Bank to home last friday. No one understood why I was clutching my box so tenderly. The tall man in tan exited the bus to the right, and only glanced at my wonderful creation. I wanted to stand up in the middle of the bus, arms outstretched holding my box at arms length spinning around like those cheesy lovey dovey scenes in moves, then I would slowly and tenderly hug my creation and continue to spin in dizzying circles. I felt like announcing to the whole bus of bored blank faces of ipod-induced-coma college students “LOOK! My beautiful creation! Yes it may look like a simple acrylic box with circles cut into it, but it’s so much more don’t you see? I made it! I took it from an idea, a sketch on paper, and now it’s a thing! I’m made something! Isn’t it wonderful?”

Okay…even though I wished to do all those things I sat silently with my heavy backpack in my lap, balancing the box on top. Then I slowly made my way home. Not really anything theatrical. But why would a simple box give me such joy? A simple creation? Well, because it really is so much more than that.

It’s more than a box because it’s part of the whole design process. Taking an abstract idea and ultimately making it into an physical thing is wonderful. For example, I am currently fabricating a luminaire (fancy design talk for a light fixture) for my lighting class. This project is coordinated with my interior design studio work where I designed a coffee shop, and now I am making a luminaire that would be placed in said shop.

A Cabinet of Curiosity by Domenico Remps

I start with an abstract idea or an image, such as the above image which I used as an inspiration for my coffee shop design. Then how does that get translated into a physical thing? I make many hasty sketches on notebook paper, sketchbooks, the back of class assignments, and post it notes. Eventually I come to drawing out specific dimensions. 

After that I mock it up with paper, then a crescent board model, where it really helps me figure out the exact size I want. For this luminaire specifically I wanted to see the size of the box in relation to the light bulb that would be placed in the acrylic box to be made.

I figured out the perfect size! After that I put the design into AutoCAD so I could bring the file to the workshop and cut it into acrylic on the laser cutter....

Presto! After about a half hour I had this wonderful object which I carried home one the bus (as noted above). It took little time to glue it together.

While I was home on Easter weekend, I put the lamp kit in, and screws....and that's where the process ends for now! I'm going to finish the luminaire this weekend and present this coming week!

Now you can see into the world of a wonderful design student! Things don't just magically come to be because there is so much that happens in between an initial idea and a finished product. 

Maybe I'm strange, maybe I'm crazy, maybe I have no life (well as a design student homework=life), maybe I'm a nerd, but I LOVE school. I love learning,and curiosity really seems to be a major theme in my life recently. There's so much to know about the world, things to make, inspiration to be had. 

I'm just enjoying the process.

North Side

*Gasp!* What's this? Two blogs two days in a row? This is actually a repost of a note my sister Elisabeth posted on Facebook, and it was so wonderfully well written and to the point that I had to repost it here. She blogs over here about teacher art, a blog she hopes can be a resource for homeschooling parents, and other parents wanting to teach their children art. Anyway, this blog describes something that I have had to deal with as well, people looking down on me just because of where I've grown up.

Minneapolis = the ghetto?

I live in North Minneapolis. I have resided here for the majority of my life (20 years and counting). My family has a nice house with a yard filled with flower and vegetable gardens. We're about ten minutes from downtown, conveniently located near several major highways, shopping centers, art museums, great restaurants, etc. I like where I live. And yet...some people insist on telling me (or inferring) I live in a horrible place. That somehow, because I live in an urban area, I'm less well off or lacking in some way. Some people seem to believe and act like that as soon as you cross the boundary into Minneapolis, you will be mugged, raped and murdered. You will be pulled from your car at gunpoint, they'll steal your shoes and leave you dead in the river. Or something to that effect. Ummm.....yeah. Let me set a few things straight, friends. Yes, it's the city. Not the countryside or suburbia, where you leave your doors unlocked and your purse sitting on the seat of your car with the windows rolled down. Yes, drug dealers do conduct their business on some street corners...whereas in other areas that's behind closed doors, so it's easier to pretend it's not going on. Yes, there is more crime...but there's also more community. How often do you see, let alone talk to, your neighbors in suburbia? One of my neighbors is like another grandfather to me, we've lived by each other so long. You see your neighbors on good days and bad, they're there and you can't really ignore them. Your back doors are closer together, their apple tree drops fruit into your yard, you can hear a back door slam and the conversation held outside. (and I'm not saying there's zero community in the suburbs, you're just forced to interact with the people around you in a different way here)

Yes, it's the city--where sirens and train horns and traffic on the highway are part of the background noise of everyday life. People drive by playing their music too loud, and some person lets their dog crap in your front yard.

Yes, it's the city--where recent immigrants struggle to acclimate, boys strut by with their pants too low, and the girls mince past in jeans too tight. As a white person, you're not always in the majority. Black, White, Asian, African, Indian, mixed. Diversity is a fact of life, not something weird or unusual, it just is.

Our houses don't match, the grass isn't perfectly green, and someone's garage definitely needs a paint job. But I do not live in the ghetto. Don't look down on me because of my zip code.

If I were to list all the awesome things about my city, it would be far too long for a note on facebook. Suffice to say, I like where I live.