I am finally giving in and admitting it. All of my classes have officially started and it is back to business as usual. (Not that I’m complaining… I’m very pleased with my classes so far.)

I can’t believe the summer is over. It was truly a wonderful one. Which only makes it that much harder to go back to the usual grind. The major highlights were: Penland, printmaking, fresh delicious tomatoes from the dirt bird garden, a New England birthday weekend, painting, finishing an animation for Artscape, wild blueberries, and daily seafood in Maine: lobster rolls, whole lobsters, clams, mussels, scallops, haddock…

The only thing I say good riddance to: the heat. This was the worst summer of heat ever for Baltimore. Please don’t ever happen again! It is so beautiful today, though, I have already put all that behind me.

And I leave you with a few memories of summer fun.

Penland printmaking studio

MASS MoCA

Maine beach walk

mushroom family at Roque Bluffs State Park

the beach at Great Wass Island Preserve

I had an amazing birthday weekend! I drove up to see Ben in CT, we had my birthday dinner in Providence at Nick’s on Broadway, and we went to MASS MoCA to see Petah Coyne (thought it turned out the best exhibit there was the Material World sculpture show). We also ate a lot of ice cream, went thrift-storing, and did some grilling for the 4th. Doesn’t get much better than that.

Birthday Dinner! Eyeball Soup! Well… it wasn’t really called that, but it should be. It was actually yummy tomato zucchini oregano basil soup at Nick’s. We had lavender black pepper panna cotta and malted milk chocolate custard for dessert. Nom nom.

Mmmm. Ice cream. This was our first ice cream of the weekend. We had Guinness Creme Brulee and Black and Tan ice cream from The Brewer’s Cow (the shop itself was not The Brewer’s Cow, it was just selling it). Delicious! And they had an awesome sign too.

On our drive to MASS MoCA, we saw Three Sisters Sanctuary on the side of the road and decided to stop and check it out. They have gardens, sculpture, random collected junk, and the guy who runs the place restores old stoves that you can see in progress. It’s definitely worth the stop if you’re passing by.

Here’s Ben in an installation at MASS MoCA. We had fun playing with exposures on the camera. It looks like we did a Photoshop filter but we did not. Ooooh! Aaaaah! Ben’s idea; I’ll give him credit.

Turns out Sol LeWitt drawings are really fun to take photos in front of. Who would have known? I’m on an animated gif kick today…

See what I mean? More Sol LeWitt. OK. I’ll stop with all the annoying animated gifs now. And this post altogether.

I took a road trip with my friend Missy this weekend to Philadelphia. Thanks for asking me to join you and suggesting some great destinations, Missy! Every time I go to Philadelphia I have a great time and see super-duper (I used the thesaurus to get that word because I didn’t want to use great again and my brain wouldn’t come up with anything interesting - thanks thesaurus!) things and convince myself I want to move there. Are there any out Philadelphians out there? Is it as awesome as the awesomeness I am projecting onto it?

Part 1: Jason Hackenwerth Show
Missy introduced me to this artist (which I believe is what inspired her idea for this trip in the first place). We saw his large scale balloon sculptures at a gallery whose name I can’t remember but was an amazing restored warehouse style space and was in the same neighborhood as the restaurant we went to below. The fingery parts of the uninflated ends reminded me a lot of some of my more obsessive amoeba-like drawings.

Part 2: Lunch at Johnny Brenda’s
We met a friend of Missy’s for lunch here, thanks to her friend’s wonderful suggestion. At my insistence we began the foodfest with a whiskey donut. Delicious! And very whiskey-ish. I couldn’t help but be reminded of my grandmother’s super soaked rum balls that I love now but was disgusted by as a kid. Also at my insistence we sat at the dark table with pulsating lights (pictured above with the beloved donut). I proceeded to order ham and cheese grits which was covered in sunny side up eggs. Also very yummy! I finished it all off with some wonderful local beer - they had a lot of choices on tap. It looks like this place has it all: good food (both savory and sweet), good drink, interesting decor, and apparently live music as I see from their website.

Part 3: Eastern State Penitentiary
I have always wanted to go here but for one reason or another all my trips to Philadelphia have not allowed the time to squeeze it in. Until now. If you have not been there, it is worth checking it out! We happened to pick the perfect kind of day to go (dreary, overcast, and chilly) and the sun was setting toward the end which added to the creepy factor of the place. The detritus, textures, and gloomy atmosphere forced me to have to restrain myself from taking a photo every time I took a step. Artist installations appear here and there in some of the cells. I wouldn’t suggest going there if you are expecting something amazing installation wise. While some of the pieces were great (again that great, but too lazy for thesaurus this time), you aren’t going to run into one every time you turn a corner and a lot of the technologically dependent ones weren’t working. Oh, and if you decide to go, you have the pleasure of a walking recorded audio tour with Steve Buscemi to look forward to.

We had a few other interesting adventures but I think you’ve heard enough and those are some of my particularly favorite highlights.

Here is another slightly odd shaped fruit… this time an orange. This one was so enjoyable, though, that it never got eaten. It just ended up hard as a rock while observers looked on and heckled (in a good way).

Nothing like a perfect Saturday morning: sleeping in, walking to the farmer’s market, and making a yummy brunch. Ben and I made a frittata, some bruschetta, had some fresh locally grown strawberries, and drank some bellinis! And it was nice enough to enjoy it all out on the front porch.

Look at this strawberry! It’s almost like a two-headed monster (or something). This is a stop motion animation waiting to happen. But I ate it. It was very tasty!

This is an image from Fatz, a restaurant I experienced with lots of fried southern cooking (appropriate name, I guess). Their specialty seemed to be anything fried placed on top of cheese grits. Who could resist that?! I took a roadtrip with some friends (we rented a van - that was exciting!) to South Carolina last weekend for a wedding. The wedding and the cabin we stayed in was at Table Rock State Park. It was beautiful but it was very bittersweet because we didn’t end up with enough time to do any hiking or exploring. On the drive home we stopped in Asheville for some brunch at Tupelo Honey… mmmm, so good. I highly recommend the pesto grit cakes and the homemade honey frozen custard. Of course we had to stop for the obligatory (and always delicious) boiled peanuts at a roadside stand. And lastly, I had to take advantage of the now rare opportunity to guzzle down as much sweet tea (REAL sweet tea, thank you) as possible in two days.