Let’s all get together and dance. The world would be a much better place I think:

Exactly one month ago I wrote an entry about the things I want to do in this life and one of those things included a trip to Fairbanks, Alaska to see the Northern Lights. I have heard before that writing down your goals, illustrating them with images or simply visualizing yourself attaining those goals is a good way to make them happen. Since I wrote that post, I have checked prices on tickets, sent for a travel guide, planned the dates I want to go and even started thinking about how to get the money to make it happen.

Here is were things get interesting. While reading an entry on one of my favorite blogs today, I decided to check out the comments and then clicked through to the blog of one of the commentors and, lo and behold, she is leaving this weekend for a roadtrip to Alaska! She has the whole trip all mapped out in google maps. I sat forever clicking through the stops marked along the way, all the time getting more excited about my own journey there, hopefully in the beginning of next year. The other thing this discovery did was to give me other options than the ones I had limited myself to in my mind. Plane tickets are expensive and I had not even though about a possible road trip. It may be just as expensive but then again it may not. At least I have opened myself up to other ways of making this dream happen.

But wait there is more! Yet even later tonight, I was checking my flickr account to see if any of my contacts had updated their photos and one of my contacts that I don’t follow closely had indeed uploaded some new photos so I thought I would quickly scan them. Well…. He is Alaska right now. I’m not even making this up! Yea, a lovely landscape photo of Denali National Park just looking up at me from his photostream.

And finally, I have managed to land a couple of extra freelance jobs just in the past month that could potentially pay for a couple  of plane tickets to Fairbanks or gas and hotel room costs along the way.

Maybe I’m super hyper to all things Alaska right now and am therefore seeing things that were there before and I had not noticed until it became an interest of mine, sort of like when you decide you want to purchase a particular car and then you see it everywhere. I’m going to say there is something way more cosmic going on here though. I think I have become open to the possibility of a great adventure and therefore it is making itself achievable. Isn’t life interesting?

Sometimes seeing something in a different context makes all the difference. Stats and data are not always easy to visualize. Chris Jordan translate some very sad statistics into a more meaningful picture in a recent TED talk.

Tonight my friend Shannon and I decided we would skip our weekly planned yoga class and head over to the Lexington Art League for an ARTalk. Tonight’s artist was Phillip March Jones (I love that his middle name is March) and his presentation was fascinating and inspiring and witty!

ARTalks are regular events were an artist is invited to speak about their work and its evolution and the processes they use. First off, Jones’s journals intrigue me. Many of his thoughts and drawings in the journals become larger paintings but the journals themselves are little works of art. And he has SO MANY journals. He is constantly writing and drawing in them. Second, his exploration with medium and techniques was really interesting. It was great to hear his thoughts behind the works and how those thoughts evolved. The one thing that he reminded me about the most was the need for a sense of exploration and play in creativity. He started a lot of his pieces just seeing how different elements (paint and beer in one painting) react to each other and he worked with the results. It was very liberating to hear him talk about that.

I came away from the talk tonight inspired and excited about my own art work. I often get caught up in the final results I want and don’t do enough playing and experimenting. I think it might be time to brush off the moleskin journal and art supplies and see what happens.

A couple of Jones’s journals from his website:

Read More about him on his mySpace page, http://www.myspace.com/phillipmarchjones

A couple of days ago I was watching one of my favorite tech video podcasts called Tekzilla and they were talking about DSLRs. They mentioned the new Canon Rebel XSi which is a pretty significant upgrade from the XTi that I owned and one that I was not aware of until watching said podcast. “Owned?” you might say… “Don’t you mean own?”

Well I did own it for approximately one hour after watching the podcast and then I sold it by simply asking through twitter if anyone might be interested in a camera because I was thinking about upgrading to a new one. I got a response in less than 30 minutes and after some Q & A back and forth it was sold! It sold so fast that I almost panicked when I realized that I had just sold my camera without having a new one…. even knowing if I could get one of the new XSi.

Everything worked out in the end and my brand new camera is on a UPS truck on the way to me now.

Thanks to my good friend, I was introduced to a wonderful artist yesterday. My friend Kathy emailed me a few weeks back and asked me if I had heard of Charley Harper and if I knew about an exhibit he was part of at the Contemporary Arts Center (CAC).

CINCINNATI’s Contemporary Arts Center ends 2006 with the most anticipated exhibition of the year. Graphic Content: Contemporary and Modern/Art and Design unites the internationally praised work of Cincinnati’s modernist pioneers with the work of today’s most exciting emerging artists. Designer/celebrity Todd Oldham’s enthusiasm for Modernist painter and illustrator Charley Harper’s work sparked the inspiration for this exhibition.

I had not heard of him and, being one that is always open to a road trip, I agreed to drive to Cincinnati with her to see what it was all about. I’m happy to say that I love his work, his wonderful sense of humor and his dedication to environmental causes. Part of the exhibit was a video of his life and work described by him himself. It is always nice to hear what the artist was thinking when they were creating a piece of art.

Read more about Mr Harper on Wikipedia
A large collection of Mr Harper’s works for sale at Fabulous Frames