Somewhere to Waste Your Time

The illusionist.

2010-09-04T09:26:00.002-06:00

Remember the Triplets of Belleville? The same guy did this. It will be released in New York and LA this Christmas and everywhere else sometime after. Sometimes I wish I lived in one of those two places or that Salt Lake would be included in the initial release. New York, Los Angeles, Salt Lake City. Why not?

Impressionable.

2010-08-31T12:21:00.003-06:00

I got into this show down in Salt Lake that the Saltgrass Printmakers are putting on at U of U. I was hesitant to tell anyone about it until I saw the show, just in case it blew, but I just got the postcard for it and I saw my teacher, Kathy Puzey's work on it too. I guess that gives me a green light to announce it. Being in the same show as her makes me feel so grown up.

Also, for the few of you who I did tell before, note that the opening reception date changed.

Living quarters.

2010-08-21T16:06:00.002-06:00

Someday I want a house filled with stuff like this. And secret passageways. Is that too much to ask?

Avatars.

2010-06-24T07:56:00.005-06:00

One thing you probably don't know about me: I'm a sucker for making avatars. It really should come as no surprise to you since I'm such a narcissist. As you can tell from the picture below, I like to make my avatars extremely life-like. While I appreciate everyone that makes these "avatar generators" and believe me I understand the work that goes into them, but I have a couple issues with most of them. Those issues are glasses and curly hair. I realize having them is this bifecta that puts me in a minority, but there have to be enough people out there in the same predicament as me for the creators to address the issue.

First, glasses come in many shapes and sizes. Don't just draw John Lennon's perfectly round glasses and check that item off your list. At least give me 2 or 3 options so I can relive a few of those precious seconds from Lenscrafters.

Second, curly hair can be tricky, I know, but I'm pretty sure nobody would draw my hair as one of those perfect 70's afros (yeah, I'm talking to you xbox 360). Just like straight hair there is more than one way to style curly hair. Curly hair also comes in a variety of lengths. So please, more than one option there too.

My regards to the Scott Pilgrim website for making a pretty unique feeling "avatar generator" (is there a real term for that?). Also is anyone else excited-but-worried-it-won't-live-up-to-the-hype about this movie?

Moving mcallister.

2010-06-14T18:34:00.003-06:00

Do you remember that one time you were watching that stupid movie Moving McAllister? You watched the entire thing, weren't entirely satisfied with how you just spent a few hours of your life, but then came the credits and that one last scene and you saw someone that looked somewhat familiar, but you couldn't figure out who it was. Let me help you out. It was me. I was taking the Bar Exam.

Record club.

2010-05-28T11:16:00.003-06:00

No, this isn't a post about Columbia House or BMG. Have you heard about Beck's Record Club? Probably. I'm usually the last one to hear about things like this. One of the advantages to having a new computer is that I now own a computer that has a fast-enough processor/graphics card (or whatever) that I can actually watch video on the internet. I recently found out about this series of videos that Beck has been releasing on his website and on Vimeo that is called Record Club. In his words:

Record Club is an informal meeting of various musicians to record an album in a day. The album chosen to be reinterpreted is used as a framework. Nothing is rehearsed or arranged ahead of time. A track is put up here once a week. The songs are rough renditions, often first takes that document what happened over the course of a day as opposed to a polished rendering. There is no intention to 'add to' the original work or attempt to recreate the power of the original recording. Only to play music and document what happens.

Who are the musicians involved, you ask? Well, there's St. Vincent, Feist, MGMT, Wilco and Wolfmother along with a bunch that I am less-familiar with but are probably your favorite band.

My only wish? That they would actually release the albums. My favorite is Kick by INXS.

Frolf.

2010-05-26T07:00:00.003-06:00

This is a message for all you in- or out-of-the-closet frisbee golfers here in Logan. Have you heard that they took down the frisbee golf course? That's just one more strike against living in Logan. In fact, I'll bet if Emily had known that before moving back it would have been a dealbreaker.

If you're in the neighborhood.

2010-04-30T07:38:00.004-06:00

Dear friends,

Somehow I got into the Springville Museum of Art's Spring Salon. It will be up until July 3rd.

Respectfully,

Me

Die gestalten verlag.

2010-03-25T07:40:00.002-06:00

Those jerks at Gestalten did it again. Don't they realize that I don't make enough money to buy all their books? They just keep churning out book after book only to very quickly be added to my already expansive Amazon Wish List. The latest two to make it to the top of my wish list are Impressive and Beyond the Street. Impressive's subheading reads: "Printmaking, Letterpress and Graphic Design." Wait, Printmaking and Graphic Design? Aren't those the two things I emphasized in getting my bfa? Now if it only covered Arrested Development, curly hair, sporadic video game playing and my wife I could get all my passions between two covers.

Beyond the Street promises to be an exciting volume to add to your library. It contains interviews with "the 100 leading figures in Urban Art," including my favorite, Herakut. The one big surprise I had was that Banksy is not included in the list of leading figures. Beyond that I can see little disappointment with this book. It's 400 pages, so it'll be heavy, and with Gestalten's reputation for putting out very well crafted books I can see I'm going to have to do some quick calculations to figure out when I'll be able to get this one off the wish list and on to my shelf.

Quote unquote fantastic.

2010-03-24T07:33:00.006-06:00

Fantastic Mr. Fox came out on video yesterday. Needless to say I picked it up on my lunchbreak and we watched it again last night. I had forgotten just how much I love that movie. It quickly made its way into my "Top 5." What else is on my "Top 5" you ask? Well, at the moment all I can remember is Groundhog's Day and Stranger Than Fiction. I really like the Brothers Bloom but I'm not sure it can replace the two movies I can't remember right now. It might be number 6. And there are great movies like Son of Rambow and (500) Days of Summer, but I don't think they quite make the cut either. Turns out I might not have a physical list of 5 films that I hold closer to my heart than any other. It might just be a euphemism for saying, "I really, really like these movies" where the ones that don't make the cut I only really like (only one "really"). Then there are those movies that I hold in whatever body part is the opposite of the heart, like Eragon and Jumper, that I wish I could go back in time to convince myself to schedule a dentist appointment for the showtime of the movie instead of subjecting myself to sit through it. Even the painfully bad Riding the Bus with My Sister doesn't quite make that cut.

I wish I could find good bandit hats like these.

"I wonder if I can find a good burger around here."

2009-12-13T08:02:00.004-07:00

I was asked somewhat last-minute to take part in a print exchange between students of Ohio State and USU. The theme was "Wanderlust," which is a word that makes me somewhat uncomfortable. You could use any media and the (final) paper size was 11x11. Mine is 6 colors printed in 4 runs on machine-made Mulberry. You'll notice that it's a portrait like 99% of my other prints. This time was the smallest face I've ever done and I'm happy with the addition of an environment. Doing this made me wish that I had more time to spend in the print studio. It also made me question whether I'll ever finish a print that I don't wish I had done something different with. I'm generally 90% satisfied but there are always little things here and there that I wish I could change but by that point I've generally carved 2-4 blocks for the print and can't see how carving one more would actually help it. Anywho, hope you like it.

"Steve Zissou's a sell-out."

2009-11-16T08:44:00.004-07:00

Remember back in June when I posted a picture of a block I was working on? Well, I finally finished printing it on Friday. Why did it take so long, you ask? Turns out employment muscles its way into time that could otherwise be spent in the print studio. That, and I ended up laying down 2 more colors than I had originally planned, which also included carving a 3rd block to get the finally print how I wanted it. Anywho, it's a multiple-block suicide, 10 colors printed on machine made Mulberry. The final paper size is 12.5x16.5" with an edition of 25. Later on I'll post some of the process photos because I always think it's interesting to see what goes into the final piece.

Now, if you want to pick up one of these little suckers, they will be available this Thursday and Friday at the annual USU Print Sale along with whatever other prints I can find floating around in my drawer here at home. Most of mine will probably be in the 40-60 dollar range, so bring your checkbook and support a good cause (me).

Jonas Bergstrand.

2009-11-15T13:51:00.003-07:00

I can't get enough of his work lately. Check out his website. I love the juxtaposition of the 1950's style illustration and the photography. Plus his sense of humor comes through, which is great. And if anyone wants to get me a print of this for Christmas here's a link, I'm sure I've got an anonymous rich uncle out there that wants to add to my art collection since I can't afford to do it myself.

The ark project.

2009-11-12T08:49:00.005-07:00

Dear friends,

Lately I've been incredibly bored with the internet. I feel like I'm going to the same sites and seeing all the same things and for some reason can't come across anything fresh. One ray of sunshine into this desert of boredom is the ark project. I stumbled across it earlier this week and wished I had heard about it with enough time to submit something. I have a weakness for illustration... compilations? The only other word I can think of is annuals, but that doesn't work. Someday I'll get those Gestalten Illusive books (1, 2 & 3) off my wishlist and now I find that I've got to add another book to that wishlist. The book contains submissions from illustrators across the world of animals indigenous to where they live, so you end up with a book full of what must be at least one of every kind of animal. Now, while the website doesn't feature any pictures aside from the book cover, it does have a list of all the participating illustrators with links to their individual websites. I can't guarantee all of them will be golden, but there will be enough jewels in there to make it worth your while, including one of my all-time favorite illustrators, Mads Berg.

Heist music.

2009-09-07T11:06:00.005-06:00

A couple weeks ago Oceans 12 was on tv. I was a big fan of the first one and when 12 came out in theaters I went opening night, then promptly decided to never watch it again. It was bad. Julia Roberts playing a character who just happens to look like Julia Roberts? I guess they didn't realize that Brad Pitt looks like Brad Pitt, not to mention George Clooney, Matt Damon, Don Cheadle and Bernie Mac. Now, I was pretty resolute in my decision, but I had some friends tell me that it was a lot better the second time around. That didn't convince me to ever rent it but when it was on tv I thought that maybe I'd give it a second chance and after having watched it for the second time I now know that it is still just as bad as before and I really don't ever have to watch it again, but I didn't leave the movie empty-handed. While the movie seemed like nothing more than an excuse for these celebrities to make a couple bucks off us, the soundtrack was great. I immediately went to my computer and added the soundtracks to my already extensive Amazon Wish List. And then I came across Brian Gossett.

Those of you who know me well know how I'm a sucker for anything free. You know all those commercials that tell you to go to such-and-such a website for a free granola bar/stick of gum/individual box of cereal? I do all of them. Every one. iTunes free single of the week? I download all of them with very few exceptions. I don't know how many times I hear about a group from a friend, go home and find out that a month earlier I downloaded one of their songs--for free. Months ago I found out that Urban Outfitters periodically releases downloadable compilations with their project LSTN. So far there are six. Then very recently I found out that Amazon does a new free single every day (today's is great. It's Sondre Lerche who scored Dan in Real Life. Just check out Amazon's MP3 Downloads section).

A couple days after watching Ocean's 12 I saw some of Brian Gossett's compilation album covers on ffffound and, following the link, came to his website where I found out you could download the albums--for free. He's done 20 of them, each with beautifully designed album covers and each inspired by heist movies, the people who scored them, and exotic locations (Detroit's exotic, right?). Quite a few include David Holmes who did the scores for the Oceans movies and I'd also check out any of the Shawn Lee comps. Anywho, ever since then I've been listening to the music pretty much nonstop, wanting to drink (virgin) martinis and cruise around European mountain paths in an old Aston Martin. Can you blame me?

I never thought I'd see the day.

2009-08-31T08:18:00.002-06:00

An In-N-Out in Orem? Is anyone else worried that this will make the chain less "special?" Pretty much every year my dad takes our family to Disneyland for a week and while we're there we go to In-N-Out every day. Now, I wouldn't normally go there every day but I know that this has to last me for a whole year until we go down again. But now are we to get rid of that blessed tradition, now that I'll be able to pick up a Double-Double Animal Style every time I'm in happy valley?

It's for moments like these that you go to the parade in happy valley.

2009-07-06T09:41:00.002-06:00

Now fighting even more dangerous enemies...

This is not real.

2009-06-26T08:49:00.003-06:00

You have most likely seen some pictures of items from this fictional Wes Anderson film festival, they were making the rounds on most of those bookmarking sites we all frequent so much. The work was done by Alex Cornell, a SanFran based graphic designer who did this incredible project as part of his graduate studies. What really impressed me was the scope of the project. DVDs, posters, billboards, a trailer and so much more all had to fit the identity system he created for the festival and were all done so well that, according to this blog post, he received more than one email from confused fans wondering where to sign up for this film festival. I can't say that I don't wish that it were a real thing too though.

Proof.

2009-06-24T16:24:00.003-06:00

It's been a while since I've posted anything so I thought I'd show one of the things I'm currently working on. Here's proof that I'm alive and I'm still doing some printmaking even after graduation. I'm exactly half-way through this print. I've got 4 colors done and 4 more to go. I've got my fingers crossed that I'll be able to get into the studio tomorrow to lay down one more.

Takach brayer.

2009-05-11T18:27:00.003-06:00

For quite some time I've been worried about post-graduation printmaking. It's something that I love to do and yet, with the exception of some woodcarving tools, I don't have any of the tools and materials to do any of it. I've been pretty content to use the school's supplies, complaining the whole time when another student wouldn't take care of or clean the community supplies. Having now graduated I find myself in a bit of a pickle. But thanks to my amazing in-laws, I am now one step closer to home-printmaking. As a graduation present they pulled out all the stops and bought me a brayer. Not just any brayer but the queen-mother of all brayers, a 4-inch Takach Brayer. I can't find the words to express how excited I am about this. Now I just need to sell a couple prints so I can buy some ink and paper and figure out how to hand-print so I can take advantage of said brayer.

"Capital G Potatoes"

2009-05-08T11:41:00.003-06:00

I just finished this print last night and thought I might go through the start-to-finish with you. It all starts out with an idea in my sketchbook. In this case you're getting something special because you get my idea and also some vegetables that I drew and some weird squid-thing (does anybody else look back in their sketchbook and wonder what their train of thought was at the time?). You'll notice that the mushroom has a mean face, that's because mushrooms are mean. I don't like them. I'm pretty obsessive-compulsive about the whole process and from the beginning I figure out composition and at least the ballpark where my colors will play. I figured out that I was going to carve two blocks and what would come from each of the blocks and then I started carving.

First thing I did was put the brown in the background of the portrait. I added some vertical lines to break it up a little bit and kept the brown pretty transparent so it wouldn't be too overpowering but help separate it just a little bit from the wallpaper. Then I laid down the light gold color that would end up as highlights in the frame and the lighter color in the pattern. The pattern was heavily inspired by a pattern I saw on a poster in Switzerland last summer.

From there I cut out a stencil that would cover the frame so I could finish the wallpaper and not get any green on the frame. After the two greens were run all I had left with that block was the darker gold color in the frame.

Now, one thing I've learned about registration: when working with multiple blocks it's generally easier to wait until you're finished carving the one block, trace the image from the actual print and then transfer what you need on to the second block. When I haven't done this I've noticed that quite often things tend to shift a little bit during the carving and then you end up with areas that don't register as nicely as you may want.

My original plan was that the second block would only be the grey, used for shadows and as fill for the fur, and the black linework which would (hopefully) pull everything together. But after printing a couple with everything black (including the linework around the frame), my teacher, Kathy Puzey, suggested that I do a darker brown on the frame because it was too harsh a contrast with the warmer colors that were in the frame and were taking away from the portrait itself. And so one last color quickly became two, but in the end I think it turned out quite nice.

And here it is. A print of a portrait of my cat, Capital G:

Graduation and a lot of other people's work.

2009-05-04T09:00:00.008-06:00

I guess this means I graduated. Now what, you ask? That's a valid question. Find a job, that's as far as I've gotten. My website is now up. Go to woodandpixels.com. I've got a list of things that I've got to do in the next little while to get it all finished up but overall I'm pretty happy with it.

Yesterday being the lazy Sunday it was I decided to go through some of my stuff. I pulled out a bunch of the work I have that isn't framed and laid it out to see how much room it would take up when it's not stacked on top of itself. My goal is to someday hang all of it salon-style in my house. The sad thing about this is that there are still quite a few of my friends that I don't have any of their work and need to get some. That, and I need to convince Nicki to mount my deer like she did her own for the BFA show.

Here are all the prints from the last print exchange I took part in. We teamed up with Montana State University and had theme "What would a woodcut cut if a woodcut could cut wood?" or something along those lines. I apologize for the crappiness of the picture but if you look closely you should be able to see that there are a few in there that are pretty freaking good.

I really don't like this layout. I like the pictures left-aligned but I also don't want the text to wrap around it. I guess this will have to do until I get a new blog done with Wordpress.

Herakut: the perfect merge.

2009-04-20T22:55:00.005-06:00

A couple years back I found the book Graffiti Women for sale on Amazon and picked it up. Through it I was introduced to the work of Hera and immediately started searching the internet for more of her work. I found out that she was part of a two-person team with another graffiti artist named Akut and they did the whole Hollywood couple thing and smashed their names together creating HERAKUT. Since then I have periodically checked out their website and myspace page to continuously be blown away by the work they were doing. Their work combines this spontaneous, sketchy style with photorealistc portraiture and it's basically all done with a spraycan. About a month ago I checked their homepage and found an announcement for a book they were releasing in April. I did some more searching on the internet and found a couple sample pages and decided that I needed to get this book. Starting April 1st my daily routine was: wake up, take Whit to work, check my email, check Amazon to see if it had been released yet, start doing school work. As more time passed I found myself becoming increasingly antsy which is weird, I'm usually a perfect model of self-control (ask Whit) and kept searching for more and more about the book. I found one website that posted about a dozen pages and it was like heroine (so I'm told), I was wired. I kept worrying that I was just building myself up to be disappointed and the more time passed, the surer I got that it couldn't possibly live up to what I was expecting. But I couldn't help myself (again, heroine), and finally about a week ago I found that Amazon finally had it for sale. I ordered it and waited patiently, until it came today. The UPS guy rang the doorbell, I tore open my package and was awe-struck at how much better the book was than my already inflated expectations. I can't stop looking at it. And it makes me want to pull another all-nighter in the printmaking studio, which isn't good since I have a website due in 3 days.

Long story short, I give it two very enthusiastic thumbs up.

BFA show.

2009-04-20T08:33:00.004-06:00

Anyone who wants to come see the work of the Utah State graduating art majors come this Friday. This does not include the Graphic Design emphasis which will have a presentation Tuesday, April 28th. I'll put the poster up as soon as I can get a link to it.

How much wood could a woodcut cut if a woodcut...

2009-04-13T13:08:00.003-06:00

This morning I finished my print for an exchange we are doing with some school in Montana. The theme was "How much wood could a woodcut cut if a woodcut could cut wood?" I took a picture of my most lumberjack looking friend, Jackson, and made him into a kind of Urban Lumberjack. In fact, I think that's going to be the name of the print: "Urban Lumberjack." It has a nice ring to it. I had toyed with the idea of doing the mash-up and calling it "Lumber Jackson," but I don't think I will.

Sometimes I forget how nice it is to work small. These prints were only 8x8" and they were ultra-quick to ink up.

The ting tings.

2009-04-10T08:04:00.005-06:00

I forgot just how much I like this band until I saw them live. For those of you that aren't familiar with them, you've heard their stuff before: 1st their song "Shut Up and Let Me Go" was on the iPod commercial, and shortly thereafter the song "Great DJ" was one of the iTunes "free downloads of the week." Anywho, it's just the two of them that make the music and it's incredibly entertaining to watch it happen. They had two roadies that would dash on and off stage to switch out their instruments so that they could play seamlessly. After each song Katie White would just stand there and stare out into the crowd half fashion-model, half dear-in-headlights. She kept talking about how great the crowd was and the level of energy but I swear I never saw her smile once. The best part of it all: Thanks to my amazing wife and KSL.com, the whole night only put us out 20 bucks.

An explanation of "Chicago"

2009-04-06T09:39:00.003-06:00

I don't know how blogger works. I really wanted to put words at the bottom of that post full of pictures but I couldn't figure out how to get my cursor down there, so here are the words that would have gone there. Use your imagination.

After being back from Chicago for a week and not having time to post anything I finally decided to put up some pictures from my trip, not that I really have time now but here I am anyway. Last week was the Southern Graphics Council annual printmaking conference. We spent most of our time in demos or galleries but made time to see the bean, go to H&M and we didn't see Batman, which was one of my goals going into it.

And here's another picture that I couldn't get to work with the layout of that last post. That whole portrait/landscape thing.

Chicago.

2009-04-06T09:29:00.011-06:00

Procrastination is an art major's best friend.

2009-03-18T09:23:00.006-06:00

I've got quite a bit to do today and so of course I'm procrastinating and writing a post on my blog instead of being responsible and working. I finally finished my print of the banjo player that came onto our train in Switzerland. It was my first real foray into the world of color woodblocks and I learned a lot from it. One thing we ended up having to do in this print was use a dark brown instead of black. It still reads about the same with the added exception of some warmth. The black was too stark and cold and just didn't flow well with the other colors.

Today I looked out my window and saw this doll that somehow made its way onto our roof. Naturally I grabbed my camera, crawled out the window and took some pictures. Truth be told it kind of gives me the creeps. Why is that? If instead some little girl were playing with it I wouldn't give it a second thought but since it's on my roof I can't help but think that it crawls over to my window in the middle of the night with homicidal thoughts and watches me sleep, just biding its time for the perfect opportunity. Well, it seems to me that said opportunity was today, when I walked out on the roof without a safety harness. It could have waited until my back was turned and given me a little push towards the edge. Matt: 1, Creepy Doll: 0. Better luck next time.

I may have gotten a little carried away with that last paragraph. But here are some pictures:

I also learned today from Scott Hansen's blog that one of my favorite bands The Whitest Boy Alive has recently released a new album. Scott has a single on his website you can listen to (I already have 4 times) or you can download the album in its entirety on iTunes now, or wait until the 30th when it will be released on cd.

And the winner is...

2009-03-06T12:49:00.000-07:00

Thanks to everyone who gave input, but the polls are now closed. I decided to go with woodandpixels.com. It has a certain feel to it that continues to grow on me. Don't bother going there, it will be a while yet before I can get something put together. As soon as I do I'll post a link so you can all check out the showcase of my work.

A contest for people who like my prints.

2009-03-02T23:31:00.002-07:00

I've been in the process of trying to find a domain name for my yet-to-be-designed website and I'm having a bit of trouble. Turns out that Matt Nelson isn't altogether a unique name and pretty much every variation of that theme has been taken. I had toyed with the idea of matthasnarcissistictendencies.com, but I really have a hard time spelling "narcissistic" and so it's probably a lot to ask of anybody else, though I feel it is somewhat memorable. Then I though that I could just shorten it to the more user-friendly "n.t.," as in matthasnt.com, but then it reads Matt hasn't. Matt hasn't what? And I don't want people going into the experience of my website with that negative conotation. I've toyed with a number of other ideas, most of which are completely unoriginal, which probably speaks volumes about who I am and the level of my creativity.

And so I am opening it up to you, whoever might read this, to give me any suggestions you may have to help me out. Knowing that people like winning prizes (at least I do so I assume that other people do too), if I pick your idea, or even if your idea inspires me to do something else I will reward you with a print (of mine) of your choice. That's a 30-100 dollar value. You can't put a price on that.

So here comes the fine print:
1. My website will showcase (that's a nice word) my portfolio of both printmaking and graphic design work so the name needs to either incorporate or ignore both of these aspects. 2. Jurying these ideas will be done entirely by me in what I will assure you is a completely unbaised manner. 3. Please don't be offended if I don't choose yours, it doesn't mean I don't like you or think you're great. It just means I don't like your idea. 4. All entries must be in by 11:59pm mst on Thursday, March 5, 2009. 5. I have a "plan b" in case I don't decide to go with anybody else's idea, I'm just not completely sold on my own idea.

Game on!

Warehouse show.

2009-02-27T10:36:00.008-07:00

Last night was the annual student warehouse show. This year it was a combination of artwork and music where the entry fee and 20% of all artwork sold went to help out the wife of this guy that died unexpectedly. Congratulations to by best friend for taking "Best in Show" for the above piece. She's so talented.

Ryan Gregson played and did an amazing job, even if much of it was the guitar-equivalent of lip-syncing.

One of the highlights of the night was seeing my Graphic Interface professor play the keyboard with his band, Resistor Radio. They were LOUD. Before they started a bulk box of earplugs made their way through the crowd.

And these guys actually put on a really good show. They're called Battle School and as near as I can tell the guy on the left side of the stage was up there only to control all the lights, but it really added to the performance.

Hair.

2009-02-23T09:17:00.004-07:00

Announcement:
Due to all the self-esteem building comments about my hair last week, I have now cut it all off.

For people who notice hair-growth.

2009-02-17T11:58:00.003-07:00

Last Thursday and Friday was our first-annual printmaking Tshirt sale. $10=1 tshirt. Overall I think we did pretty well, though I don't know the final numbers. Our number one seller was the shirt on the manikin that says "keep your love to yourself." Mine is on the edge of the picture in red. Maybe later I'll post another picture of it. In the mean time here's something else for you to enjoy:

I thought I looked pretty emo in this picture, but I've heard that I look like a lesbian. If you want more check out Whit's blog.

P.S. I'm sure all of you have heard about In-N-Out coming to 12195 South Factory Outlet Drive in Draper. That is the Draper in Utah, yes. In celebration I wore my In-N-Out shirt in the picture above, as I'm sure you could tell....

banjo

2009-02-06T16:30:00.003-07:00

Here's about halfway through my current woodcut. On top of this will be two values of brown in the hat, hair and banjo. Then on a separate block I will carve black line work that will (hopefully) pull it all together.

free music video of the week.

2009-02-06T11:55:00.002-07:00

I've got a huge project due and so naturally I'm not working on it at all and instead opted to work on printmaking. I've got a picture of my current work-in-progress that I'll post later but I have no way to get it from my camera on to my computer to post it right now.

If anyone hasn't downloaded the Music Video of the Week from iTunes this week you should. I enjoyed and there's a good chance you might too. The artist is called Metronomy and the song is "A Thing For Me."

photogravure

2009-02-02T12:42:00.005-07:00

A little about photogravure. It's like the unwanted lovechild of photo and printmaking. I say unwanted because most of the photo people I have talked to say it's more of a printmaking process while the printmakers claim the opposite. Nothing like nobody wanting you for Christmas.

That said, it's a great process. The jist of it is that you take a photo like the one above, make a transparency out of it and through a series of tedious steps etch it onto a copper plate then print said plate Intaglio-style. My result wasn't as good as some of the others and I don't feel like it's done. Aside from lacking a whole lot of contrast I'd like to try some multiple-plate stuff and maybe add some color just to see what happens. I'll post the results as they come.

happy accidents

2009-01-31T13:38:00.008-07:00

Last weekend I took part in a workshop on Photogravure (I'll explain in a later post) and had a lot of down time so I started scanning in some of my photos from the blackbird, fly. Here is an example of how amazing the Sam's Club technicians are, though I think this one is something of a happy accident. Notice how the picture changes half way through? Two of the 16 pictures I got back were like that and about 6 more had a small strip at either the top or bottom of the photo.

I was only able to get one negative strip scanned but I'll try to finish up the rest later this week, along with posting an image of my photogravure print.

jazz game

2009-01-22T11:38:00.003-07:00

Here is a great picture of my mom after the Jazz game we went to last week. You'll notice the logo on her jacket is an RW for Rocawear, which I believe, and confirmed on Wikipedia, is the clothing line started by Jay Z. If you know my mom you should realize just how out of place this is. Apparently sometime in the past couple years that I've lived away from home she got some street credit and is now representing it.

bbf

2009-01-20T08:49:00.002-07:00

I've developed my first roll of film from the blackbird, fly but it'll be a little bit before I can get them scanned. My conversation with the "technician" when I was dropping the roll off:

Me: The film has been exposed over the sprocket holes too, is that going to be a problem?
Them: Probably. We don't have photoshop.
Me: ...? I don't follow.
Them: ...We can only print what's in between the sprockets.
Me: Ok, just do that. It'll at least give me an idea of what's on there.
Them: We could just process the film.
Me: No, I want prints.
Them: Are you sure? Then you could just scan them in.
Me: I'll do that anyways, but I want prints. And can I get them printed with a border?
Them: No... well, yes.

Needless to say I was pretty surprised to find that when I got the prints the "technician" had taken some "artistic liberties" and printed most of them with a bar of the next shot on one side of the print. Most of them were pretty small bars but two prints came back with it split right down the middle. I actually really like the way those two turned out.

I hope that all made sense. I've found out in the past couple years what a horrible explainer I am.

moosen

2009-01-08T10:28:00.002-07:00

This is probably my favorite picture of Whit and I ever. I just found it again.

blackbird, fly and new year's weekend.

2009-01-05T16:47:00.004-07:00

Well, I hope everyone had an enjoyable New Year. I did. I figure any New Years adventure that involves cops showing up has to be good, right? No, it wasn't anything alcohol or nudity related. Instead it involved some friends getting booted and throwing a snowball at the booter's car. An hour and a half later the cops, who I'm sure had nothing better to do on New Years Eve, showed up and gave us all a good scolding, because it is their duty to do so.

Beyond that, we went down to Provo for Whit's brother's wedding. We decorated his car and went through all the standard fare of oreos, shaving cream, plastic wrap and a large box of condoms, but also involved a 5 foot high bag of packing peanuts. Come to find out that last part should only be done on the very rarest of occasions to your worst enemies. It really crossed a line. I found out first-hand what it is like to clean out a car like that when we found out that the bride and groom missed their flight and spent the day in the airport trying to get another flight to Houston so they wouldn't miss their 3000 dollar cruise. After a day like that nobody should have to deal with a car full of packing peanuts. It all worked out in the end, today they are flying to Jamaica where the boat will pick them up on Wednesday.

More good news, as you can tell from the photo above my Blackbird, Fly arrived! It comes in this great plastic birdcage for storage. It's a little bit smaller than I had imagined but I'm excited to really try it out. I found a roll of film that very well could be from before my mission (8+ years) and I took a couple shots at the wedding on Saturday. I can already tell that I've been spoiled by digital photography and fancy DSLRs because I forget that I have to manually focus and wind the film.

Also on Friday I went to the BYU museum of art to see their show on Japanese Wood Block prints. All the prints are from their permanent collection and we actually got to talk for a while with the curator of the museum about the history of the prints. I've always been impressed with the prints but it's nothing until you see them in person. I always assumed that the prints were actually mixed-media because of the amount of detail, particularly in the typography, but it has all been meticulously carved to look that way. I tend to spend a lot of time working on my prints, but seeing these prints made me feel like I rush my way through all of it.

I found this on Scott Hansen's blog:

"If you count yourself among the ranks of web designers you know that Internet Explorer is still the bane of our collective existence. At some point, long ago, when Microsoft ruled the browser universe, some genius over there decided to give a big middle finger to all of us designers and our so-called 'web standards'. The result is that things just don’t look the way we as designers intend in IE: CSS elements don’t render properly and various functionality breaks down forcing us to implement IE-specific hacks and tweaks to make it all work. Well, MS, in their infinite wisdom, have finally decided to back down and have announced that the forthcoming eighth iteration of their Internet Explorer browser will embrace web standards. What a novel concept! Embracing web standards in a web browser? What will they think of next?"

don't wait up.

2008-12-30T14:10:00.008-07:00

The other day Whit's niece helped me find a name for my new camera. After some heated words we settled on Marcella.

Today I was running some errands and decided to spend some time getting to know her. I rifled through the user's manual and took a couple shots around town, all the while falling more and more deeply in love. I'm thinking that this might be it: the human/digital camera equivalent of soul mates.

As you can see I've been having fun cross-processing my pictures, but it's just for pretends. And the vignette might be a bit heavy on the above image, that is my kryptonite.

I also ran across this list of the supposed 100 best photoshop tutorials of 2008. Some of them are pretty standard, nothing too special, but others do seem very promising.

post-christmas rambling.

2008-12-29T13:45:00.005-07:00

It's funny how easy I find myself complaining about how nobody is updating their blogs enough, and then I look at the last time I updated mine... 5 weeks ago?! So in an effort to not be so hypocritical, here I am updating my blog.

Christmas was spectacular. I really don't deserve the great family and friends that I have. Some hightlights:
1. My incredibly understanding wife getting me a new camera despite my inability to hang on to one. This time will be different, I swear.
2. Finding out that my nephew's nickname is Cracker.
3. New bikes.
4. Playing Ticket to Ride with my wife, my bff, Adrienne, and her sister, Brooke. Then playing Cranium with all of them and Brooke's husband and finding out that my team will always lose, no matter how it's made up.
5. I always look forward to the visits from Santa Bookie (not the betting kind of bookie) at Whit's house every Christmas.
6. Whit got a Wii.
7. I may or may not have gotten a Blackbird, Fly. Right now I have a paper that says one is coming but apparently the only US distributor isn't very reliable so for now I'm sitting in eager anticipation.
8. Cats + Laser pointer = good times.
9. Being done with buying Kidrobot Simpsons after successfully getting Homer and Maggie.

Depending on if the print studio is open this week I will post soon showing the progress on my Intaglio plate.

"The Secret World of Onions"

2008-11-21T12:18:00.005-07:00

Well, I'm half way through printing my edition of 12 and I think the lack of sleep is catching up to me. There's that and my right forearm is killing from the combination of carving for hours and my unenthusiasm for going to work out--ever. I'm happy with the print though so I guess it's all worth it.

Oh, and if you have the chance, our ceramics program is having their annual holiday sale through Saturday. You can find some what, to my untrained eye, are some pretty amazing flasks, pot, cups, plates, etc. I still have the question of if they are intended for use or solely artistic display? One vase even comes with fake flowers, to sweeten the deal. I probably should have done something like that to sell more prints at our print sale.

A work in progress.

2008-11-18T11:46:00.005-07:00

Here's progress on the latest woodcut I'm working on. Considering I should have at least 4 more prints done by the end of the semester (3 weeks) this one should be done by the end of the week. Right now I'm finding that it's hard for me to be motivated to do anything for any class outside of printmaking though all of them need work.

I'm trying to decide if I'm liking my new layout. I was having a hard time before feeling like things were really cramped and I am definitely liking the breathing room but I'm feeling like it needs something else. When it comes down to it, I think I would have been just as happy if I could have simply tripled the size of the gutter in between the columns.

Well, I enjoyed this.

2008-11-14T11:28:00.002-07:00

.

I've always wanted to do one of these but it will probably have to wait until after graduation. Or... maybe over Christmas break. Hmmm...

sometimes i don't like coming up with titles to my randomicity.

2008-11-11T14:39:00.003-07:00

Have I mentioned how much I love the "Universal Wishlist Button" from Amazon? You set it up as a link in your browser's toolbar and when you're on a page of something that you just can't live without (like the Black Bird, Fly camera for example), you press it and this convenient window pops up and you add it to your Amazon wishlist.

I find myself at school with not as much to do as I thought. Not that I don't have a thousand projects I'm working on, instead I seem to have left something critical for each one at home where it can't be put to use. Boo. I think I'm going to have to head home earlier than I thought.

For anyone interested the Undergraduate Art Show starts November 17 and goes through December 5 up here, so come see all the amazingly talented students we have here.

Oh, and for those of you in school. Don't you love when two classes you have to take are scheduled for the exact same time? That's my favorite. The art department seems to be really good at that.

The end.

Just a Reminder

2008-11-04T18:52:00.004-07:00

Come to the Print Sale!! If you do you'll be able to see this fantastic chalkboard collab done by Dave Dilworth and Derek Wall.

Frida

2008-11-03T14:35:00.003-07:00

Here was my favorite costume from Halloween, my friend Dorthea Brundage.

08 PRINT SALE

2008-10-30T09:06:00.003-06:00

Unless you are having open-heart surgery or have a broken femur you should come to this. It's a great way to get some of the amazing artwork that my peers do. I'll have some of my work in there (My Steve Zissou print Belafonte, The old man you've seen recently, the buildings I did for my final Spring semester, and like the true narcissist that I am I'll throw in a self-portrait for good measure, they've sold in years past). Thursday night is the time to go, but if you can't make it then come Friday.

If you want to see our cat Capital G in his halloween costume go here.

Kidrobot, Art Auction, and Disneyland.

2008-10-29T08:37:00.005-06:00

I guess I might as well take advantage of some of this free time I have before class and start writing.

After spending a week at Disneyland I've learned a few things:
1. The Matterhorn is much better at night.
2. It always pays to only have two people, especially on the Matterhorn. I don't think we ever waited through the entire line.
3. Don't ride Big Thunder Mountain if you're stuck in the very front. The hills aren't that big and you're half way down them before you actually start to move.
4. I still love Monte Cristos (It's a sandwich).
5. The new Toy Story ride is worth the wait.

And, as you can see, my collection of Kidrobot Simpsons figures is growing. I'd like to get them all but I'd be happy just getting Homer and Maggie to complete the family, and for some reason I really like Mr. Smithers.
And here's progress on my print. The only thing I really need to do with it is work on his left hand a bit. And there is still some debate on whether to add a background or not. I'm kind of worried that if I do background it will just take away from the figures and it seems like everyone I ask tells me something different.

back to school

2008-10-22T10:28:00.003-06:00

As usual, here is a crappy cell phone picture of a work in progress. Hopefully I'll have the print done tomorrow. That's all for now but I promise to post a real entry soon including our adventures in Disneyland.

The Hush Sound

2008-10-07T21:55:00.003-06:00

If you haven't heard this cd you should do so now. It's very nice. Below is my latest Illustration Concepts assignment. We were to do an advertising illustration for a fictional search engine called "TurboCrawler." Truth be told I don't really like it but it is growing on me. I would need to spend about an hour with a magnifying glass cleaning things up before it is actually done but I'm out of time with Disneyland right around the corner. Yes, we're leaving to Disneyland for a week on Monday. I'm equal parts stressed-out-of-my-mind and excited to get away for a week. Tomorrow Skullcandy is coming to my class to introduce the project we will be doing with them.

And before I go here's an interesting (or not) insight: I love hoagies.

KFB

2008-09-28T09:34:00.005-06:00

For my last assignment in Illustration Concepts we were given an article by Garrison Keillor called "Poor America" and asked to do an editorial illustration on it. Here is mine.

Would you believe...

2008-09-22T23:50:00.003-06:00

About a year ago I stumbled across something announcing the Get Smart movie with Steve Carell. My dad and I used to sit and watch Get Smart and Dragnet on Nick at Nite a couple nights a week, so I was understandably excited and ran to tell Whit assuming that she would be equally excited. I think her response was: "What's that?" Now the movie has come and gone and I really need to see it again before I'm comfortable saying whether I like it or not, but thanks to my brother-in-law Trent and his wife Amy I am now the proud owner of Get Smart: Season 1. I've broken away from my homework a couple times now to enjoy the nostalgia of watching a few episodes. I had forgotten how over-the-top it is and only recently learned that Mel Brooks played a part in creating the show.

Anywho, something else I'm excited about is the Kidrobot Simpsons series. My brother Rob has all but 3 of them and ended up getting some duplicates that he passed my way. Here's a crappy cell phone picture of them in their new home on my shelf. I really like Snake.

Getting some stuff off my chest.

2008-09-11T23:58:00.004-06:00

1. When people post a comment on my blog how do I answer? Do I post a comment on that same post hoping that at a later date they will remember which post they had commented on and check to see if I wrote back? Or, do I go to their blog and comment on a random post? I have to ask questions like this here because my mom, who is my go-to for questions of etiquette, doesn't know anything about blogs.

2. When updating my "status" on Facebook do I continue to refer to myself in the third-person since it starts out with "Matt Nelson [is]...?" Because I really don't want people to start referring to me as "The Matt" a la Seinfeld.

3. Though I have heard some good music on some, I hate when people put music on their blogs because I am invariably listening to music myself and then I start getting that really bad mixing thing happening and I can't ever figure out how to turn their music off, or if you even can. No offense to my wonderful friends who have music on their blogs, I still love you I just hate your blog.

And on the subject of music:
4. Genius on the new version of iTunes. Love it.

5. Weezer's Red Album. I'm really liking it. It could very well be my favorite complete album of theirs.

Ok, I'm done ranting. My Illustration Concepts class had the project of designing a book cover for a book by Ernest Heminway. Here's mine. There are still things I would like to change (as always) but overall I'm pretty happy with it.

We also found out about our Print Exchange for this semester. It will be called "Light My Fire" and will envolve using an Intaglio process to do a matchbox cover. We're all pretty excited about the prospect. None of us have worked on anything that small before so it will be interesting to see how it turns out.

"Studying" for a quiz.

2008-08-29T18:39:00.003-06:00

I'm in this Greek and Roman Art History class right now. The teacher is really concerned with helping us to place what we are learning in its original context and as part of that she gave us a list of 40 historical sites that pertain somehow to what we are studying. For a second I was concerned about how I was going to study for it when suddenly I was inspired with the thought "I wonder if I could make a geography quiz out of it?" The only two things I really ever do on facebook are: 1. Accept people who want to be my friends (this doesn't happen too much, at last count I think there were 54). And, 2. Play the geography quiz. Turns out it's very easy to do, I simply plugged in my 40 locations and each game it randomly pulls up 15 of them. It's basically taking flash cards and adding a level of interactivity and points.

I got such a feeling of satisfaction doing this that I had to bring Whit up and show her. She wasn't quite as excited as I was and will probably give me a hard time for posting about it on here but if I can't toot my own horn on my blog where can I?

cake

2008-08-19T16:54:00.005-06:00

Have you ever thought to yourself: "I wonder if Nutella would be good as frosting on a chocolate cake?" I have, and the answer is: Yes, it is.

Today my final birthday presents came from my mom. Maybe I should clarify, the things I bought with the money my mom gave me for my birthday. I bought 3 books: Things I Have Learned in My Life So Far by Stefan Sagmeister; Making and Breaking the Grid; and Thinking Course by Edward de Bono. Oh and I bought my very own set of Frolf frisbees. All in all I'm very pleased.

26

2008-08-17T17:07:00.004-06:00

Well, my birthday is officially over. The celebration started Friday night and went until around midnight last night/this morning (whatever). Friday night we had a bunch of people over for beer-battered halibut and chips. Then on Saturday we went to Lagoon with my family and the painters and ended the evening at the house of my bff, Adrienne.

Many thanks to everyone who contributed to the festivities: My dad for flying me to Alaska so I would have Halibut. Kirk and Dorthea for providing the deep fryer and recipe. Spencer and Mel Lifferth for the awesome 63 piece Simpsons puzzle, that great lime drink, hours of playing Ticket to Ride, and ultimately for feeling guilty enough to come despite having family stuff at Bear Lake. The Athas for drinks overall but specifically the Virgils Root Beer Party Keg. Josh, Auj and Jack-Jack for the amazing WWF poster, truly inspiring. Whit and Dorthea for slaving away in the kitchen making what was the best fish and chips I've ever had while the rest of us kicked back. My dad and brothers for taking their employees and the rest of us to Lagoon every year. Everyone who called, texted, thought about calling the day before or the day after, or are only now thinking about it, I can't hold it against you since I don't know when your birthday is either. Adrienne Smart for throwing an amazing double-birthday party with Sparkle Cake with pinwheels and money inside and playing Ticket to Ride: Europe. And most of all to my wife for always worrying so much about making my birthday so great and also for putting up with all my stupid jokes all day, that's quite the cross to bear. If I've forgotten anyone I'm sorry, the music has begun to play....

Alaska

2008-07-29T08:47:00.006-06:00

I just got back from Alaska yesterday. Above is a picture of my brother Mark on the lake behind the cabin where we stayed in Soldotna. And below is a satellite shot of the lake. The river running down the left side is the Kenai River where I caught two kings: one was the 40+ pounder I posted about earlier and another, much smaller, 12 pound "jack" king. All in all we brought back between four and five hundred pounds of meat, about 220 of which was halibut.

Overall I had an incredible time. It was cold and rainy and there was a certain amount of drama on the last day that I have come to terms with and I enjoyed it immensely. We caught a lot of fish, played a lot of cards, and ate way too much great food every night. Thanks to my dad for investing in this experience for his 5 sons.

After getting home around 4 o'clock yesterday afternoon Whit and I killed some time at Ikea before going to see the Dark Knight on imax. WOW. That's all I can say.

I caught a king.

2008-07-22T09:17:00.005-06:00

Here are the King Salmon that my brothers Mark and Robert and I caught yesterday. Mine was the biggest on the bottom. Though there was no official weight our guide said that it's a 40+. Just smaller than mine was Roberts who caught his first King ever, but caught something of a mutant. Our guide thought it was a girl by looking at it but when he was making filets out of it was surprised to find that it is in fact a boy. I hope I don't get any of those filets. The little guy was Marks. He couldn't handle bringing a bigger one in.

I left my laptop at home so I don't have access to any of the pictures I've taken, but I'll update with those later. It's been drizzly and cold here but we're generally done fishing in the early afternoon and have the rest of the day to bring up our core temperatures and play cards.

A digital graverobber.

2008-07-17T19:36:00.009-06:00

Shortly before Whit and I got home from Switzerland I sat down with her to have what to me was a very serious discussion. I love the advent of digital photography and everything it brings to the table. I love that it has liberated people and allowed them to take as many pictures as you want and there is that instant gratification, being able to see the picture immediately after taking it. The one disadvantage of digital is that probably 99% of photos never escape the digital realm. The computer has become a graveyard for photos and that is something I feel is borderline sinful. There's something much more intimate about being able to hold a photo and see it on paper.

After devoting so much of our time in Switzerland to taking pictures I wanted to make sure to not disrespect the photos and convict them to a life of nothingness on my hard drive. Especially after having my hard drive crash this past Spring Break and losing everything in the six months or so that I hadn't backed up. So I talked to Whit about investing in a good photo album to display some of our pictures. I searched all over town trying to find an album similar to our wedding photo album, something that would hold 200-300 photos, preferably in red. Much to my avail all I found was scrapbooking crap. Through becoming increasingly frustrated it finally dawned on me that maybe our wedding album would have the brand name in it and I could just look it up online. And the rest is history. We ordered a nice red photo album from Kolo that holds 300 photos and I took it in to work and printed a white swiss cross on it. And there you have it.

The best SnoShack in town.

2008-07-09T09:34:00.006-06:00

If you live in Logan or ever come here you should know that this is the best SnoShack around. The ice is so finely shaved that it is as close to snow as you can get during the summer. They put a scoop of vanilla ice cream in the bottom and pour cream on top and they make it extra saucy for me. Eating one is what eating an angel must taste like. Aside from the fantasticness of the cone itself, they also do punch cards and once you spend 20 dollars you get a free 16oz.
We're junkies.

A betrayal and a fresh start.

2008-07-07T22:44:00.004-06:00

Today I feel like I stabbed an old friend in the back. But in doing so I have made a much better friend, one that won't cost so much, plays music and takes pretty good pictures. After being with Sprint for as long as we were, we switched over to T-Mobile today. Now I don't want you to get the wrong idea, Sprint is not the old friend I was referring to. That honor goes to my old phone. I am really sad to have to leave him behind but I feel this change was akin to saying forever goodbye to a good friend because his family is part of the mafia. I'm debating whether or not there will be a formal funeral service or not, I'll keep you posted.

In the mean time, let me introduce to you my new phone. Notice the juicy orange color. I spent most of the night personalizing the buttons and entering contacts. It was a great first date (though now that I'm getting all romantic I'm wondering if I should go back and change any reference to a phone being masculine).

Also, we saw Hancock tonight. It was much better than I thought, in fact I enjoyed it quite a bit.

All Caught Up

2008-07-06T10:14:00.002-06:00

Okay, I filled in all the story that goes along with the pictures for our last week in Switzerland. So if you're interested you can go back and read about it, if not I won't hold it against you, it's probably a waste of time anyways.

Snowshoeing in Italy

2008-07-03T12:39:00.004-06:00

I was scrolling through the blog when I realized that I had never posted these pictures of us snowshoeing. This was the day after arriving at the St. Bernard's Hospice. We crossed the border into Italy and went up the mountain as far as visibility would allow us. On the way back somehow the tip of my snowshoe got buried and I slid on my face for about 20 feet. Then at the bottom of the mountain there was this 3 foot drop you had to slide down to get to the road. Thanks to Dominique who helped Whit get down safely.

HOME

2008-07-02T13:30:00.026-06:00

Well, after leaving at 4am yesterday, traveling 28 hours and arriving around midnight last night/this morning, we are finally home. As each hour passed I got more and more excited to be heading home: to sleep in my own bed and eat burritos, eggs, snowcones and hamburgers, all of which I've been craving since we left. But it was on the last stretch of our trip, riding in a car through Willard that it really hit me that we were home and I'm not in Switzerland anymore. That sucks. It is such a beautiful place and while Logan has its merits it just doesn't compare.

The last week since the school portion of the trip got wrapped up has been incredibly busy. We felt like we had to take advantage of each day and go somewhere, but at nights I had to edit photos to turn into my teacher by last Saturday. By the time that was over I was so burned out from looking at the computer that I didn't want to post here, so I'll try to make up for it now.

MONDAY (06/23)
INTERLAKEN AND GRINDELWALD

Since this is the one place that my dad told us that we should go, and seeing how most museums are closed on Mondays anyways, we decided to check it out. Originally we had planned on taking the tram up to the Jungfraubahn, which is known as the top of Europe (or maybe just Switzerland, I can't remember), but tickets would have cost us about 100 bucks a piece. Then we found out that they have Zorbing in Interlaken, you know, the giant hamster ball that you get in and roll down mountains, but that would have cost us the same and I hadn't realized that you are strapped in there so that you don't break your neck. That doesn't sound to me like as much fun because you wouldn't be able to just slide, you'd be forced to roll around in there and it makes me wonder how many people lose their lunch and get trapped in there with it. We ended up just taking it easy for the most part. We walked around and enjoyed the scenery. I can't believe how spectacular the mountains are there.

With about an hour and a half left before our train left Interlaken, we decided to try this funicular that takes you up this hill that overlooks the town and then you ride an alpine coaster down. The lady talked us into doing 3 ("you only pay for 2!") trips and I'm glad we did. Since the carts are on a coaster you can basically floor it the whole time with no worry of flipping off the track.

TUESDAY
LAUSANNE

After finishing up with the guided section of our trip I had a number of place that I wanted to return to in order to photograph things differently than I originally had and Lausanne was high on my list. There we were able to kill a few birds with one stone. By this time I had finished all of the books that I had brought with me (Love those trains.) and the guidebook said that Lausanne was home to one of the best bookstores in Switzerland. They housed an enormous English section with plenty of overpriced paperbacks. I quickly found a soft spot for the British covers of the Stephen King books and bought Cell. It was also in this bookstore that I found a whole section of Gestalten's books. It was great to be able to pick up and peruse many books that have found there way on to my wishlist in the past few months.

For the most part we just wandered around. I shot the cathedral again, Whit bought the shorts at H&M that she had been thinking about since we saw them in Basel and we went to a photography exhibition entitled Teen City. There we saw the work of many artists addressing different aspects of teenhood, but the photographer whose work stood out the most to me was Julia Fullerton-Batten. Google it. Particularly her piece Red Dress. Another artist did a series that was based on all these teen girls and the contrast between their actual lives and the lives that they portray on the Internet with Myspace and blogs.

WEDNESDAY
GENEVA

Wednesday we went to Geneva. A large group had gone there the day before so we were able to hear what stuff was worth it to see and what wasn't. What I remember most about the day was hot humid it was. Before leaving for Switzerland our teacher told us that since there is only one washer and dryer at the hotel that we should plan on wearing our clothes multiple times before washing them and I was perfectly ok with that until we got over there and realized how much our clothes reeked after one day.

We did a lot of walking. First we walked around the river and checked out this fountain that is the highest in the world. Then we went to the Museum of Art and History. They had some really cool exhibits but what I was anticipating the whole time was the printmaking room. According to the description I read they focus more on contemporary printmaking so after spending some time going through the main exhibits we headed over there to find that it was closed for renovations. From there we walked around this parade route and eventually found the Patek Phillipe watch museum which was amazing. I am amazed at the amount of detail on these watches. Most were pocket watches and were either hand-painted or had little animatronics or both. Amazing that someone could figure out how to make this little bird 1/2 inch tall open its mouth, turn its head, flap it's wings and tail feathers and spin around. Seriously incredible.

THURSDAY
BERN

We were able to go to the temple just outside of Bern on Thursday. It was a really amazing experience. It took so long to get there that we didn't have time to get lunch and then afterwards we only had about 15 minutes at the train station before our train left, so being so phenomenally hungry we ran into the little coop there to find something to tide us over until we could have dinner. It was then, with only 4 days left in Switzerland that I found out that the whole time I had been there I could have been enjoying Mango Lassis. They were my new addiction for those few days, underscored by them only being 1.75 as opposed to the 3.00 at the Indian Oven here in Logan.

FRIDAY
MARTIGNY AND VEVEY (LAKE GENEVA)

Friday marked the day that Jackson and Eliza got back from Austria and we had roommates again. While they were gone most people avoided hanging out with us, apparently married people are only safe to be around in larger numbers. So with them back we had people that would come with us and that gave other people the green light too.

We started the day in Martigny because that is where you can find the St. Bernard Museum where they keep the dogs when they're not up at the hospice. Whit was bummed that the dogs weren't there when we were up so we decided to pay a visit to the museum. It was kind of a bust, the dogs were like zoo animals in their pens: they just sat there and slept. And there really weren't any puppies, much to Whit's dismay. But next door to the museum is this old Roman Amphitheater that they've set up bleachers and a huge screen and every night they play movies. I thought it was pretty cool.

From Martigny we went to Vevey. I had been pretty anxious to try out my new swimsuit and we also wanted to rent a pedal boat. We went out and it was one of the most fun things we did the whole trip. Jackson has a waterproof point and shoot camera so we were able to take some pictures that you normally wouldn't be able to.

SATURDAY
BASEL

While we were on the train going to Basel for the first time I was looking out the window at the scenery. The last stretch of track before entering the station was filled with some of the coolest graffiti I've seen, at least with my real eyes and not just in a book. I tried to grab my camera as it was speeding past but by the time I was able to get it out of my backpack it was gone. So ever since then I had wanted to go back and capture some of it as we sped past. Saturday we got a couple of us and were able to do this. Some of the pictures turned out, some not so much, but at least I got a second shot at it.

The group that went was my BFF Adrienne Smart (who incidentally accomplished her goal for the trip of growing calves), Ashlee Clapie, Riley Onyon and Sara whose-last-name-I-can't-remember, our roommate Eliza Couch (while Jackson stayed at home working on photos), Whit and me. It was fun to go up there and be the team-leader, playing "Bob." Maybe fun isn't the right word. What's a word that means "to induce suicide?" Hmmm, it's right on the tip of my tongue. Oh well. All we need to remember is that ultimately I got us where we needed to go, no need to remember how long it took us to get there.

We started the day going back to the old town area for some lunch and shopping. I bought another shirt from H&M, this one not as cool but still very nice and we looked for some swim shorts like those I got there to give to Jackson. Eliza spent her time scouring the area for a Hummel to give to her mom. By the time that was all finished we jumped on a bus that in a very roundabout way took us to the Jean Tinguely Museum and left us with only an hour to check it out and get back to the train station to catch our train. That was my only regret for the day, that I didn't have more time to spend there. Jean Tinguely is an artist who made all these kenetic sculptures. Each is made up of gears and belts and chains and lights and things that rattle and shake. In front of them is a big red button that you step on to turn it on. It was such an entertaining museum.

The last funny thing was about getting to the train station. We left the museum at about 20 minutes to 5. I had told everybody that the train left at 5 o'clock so we had to hurry. So we jump on a bus then take a tram and get to the train station with about 3 minutes to spare. The Swiss are notoriously punctual so we book it to the platform. With Riley in the lead we are weaving in and out of people, up one set of stairs and down another. Riley gets to the train first and stands in the doorway to keep the door from shutting while the rest of us catch up. And we did it! We're finally sitting, all of us gasping for air and I say, "The funny thing about all of this is that when I said that the train left at 5, I really meant that the train left at 5:04." I've never felt so hated in my whole life. I think Whit was probably the closest from tearing me limb-from-limb and it just got worse as the minutes passed and the train still hadn't left. In the end we all had a good laugh about it though.

SUNDAY
SION

Not much to say about Sunday. We went to church and I took advantage of some downtime to shoot some graffiti I had seen from the train in Sion. Oh, and the train station bathrooms in Aigle. I was really freaked out the first time I went in to use the facilities because of the blaring blue light. It definitely helped me take care of my business as fast as I could so I could get out of there, but I guess the blue lights serve another purpose: You can't see your veins in it. Sorry junkies, you'll have to find somewhere else to shoot up.

MONDAY
MONTREAUX, VEVEY, LAUSANNE, VEVEY

Monday was a sad day on many levels. Being our last day in Switzerland we wanted to go out with a bang and we had had it all planned out for a while. Since most galleries and museums would be closed on Mondays we would have to find something else to do that would be exciting. Luckily Whit and I heard about this adventure ropes course and we started spreading the word. There were a bunch of us that were going to go and Sunday night we got on to their website to figure out what time they opened to find out that they are not opened at all on Mondays! We were so mad because had we known we could have gone there earlier and planned something else! So all of the sudden the rug was pulled from under us and we had to figure out something else to do. It came together pretty quickly, pieced together from some of the small things that we wanted to do.

In Montreaux there were a few other spots of graffiti that I wanted to shoot and I had heard about a statue of Freddie Mercury, the lead singer of Queen. In Vevey there was a shop that we wanted to find that sold purses that Whit wanted to get. And somewhere along the way we had to eat one last Doner Kebab and buy a bunch of chocolate to take home. It only made sense to start our day in Montreaux, make our way over to Vevey and then head back home. And that's how it started. Come to find out there wasn't a whole lot in Montreaux aside from the statue and the graffiti so we decided to head to Vevey early. It only takes about 3 or 4 minutes on the train so we figured that we would just follow the boardwalk and walk over there. After an hour or so of walking and only making it maybe two-thirds the way there we decided to hop on the next bus to take us the rest of the way. We got to Vevey and walked around for a while and couldn't find either the shop with the purses or a place to eat Doner Kebabs. Luckily, having been there twice previously, we knew where a good Kebab place was in Lausanne. We ate, shopped around a bit and then went back to Vevey for one last shot at finding the purse and buying our chocolate. We found the purse, got the chocolate and Whit got me one last Mango Lassi. All in all a very good day and close to our trip. I can't believe it's over. It's nice to be home but I miss so many things.

Zermatt... again

2008-06-22T14:02:00.006-06:00

After going to Zermatt and failing to see the Matterhorn on Monday due to such crappy weather, when we woke up yesterday morning and saw it was a clear day we decided to head back and try again. It was a 3 hour train ride to get there and when we got there we realized we had done just about everything there is to do in Zermatt on Monday. So we found a nice shady spot and I sat and drew until my pen ran out of ink and then went back to the restaurant where Whit got the Vegetable Lasagna she regretted not getting before and I got the same pizza that I got before. And that was it. But now we've seen the Matterhorn so we can mark that off our bucket list.

Today was really relaxing. We went to church and then went back to the Cathedral there in Sion to photograph some of those stained glass windows again. Whit assured me that it was the last time we would do that. I approached it differently this time, taking smaller, more detailed shots and letting photoshop stitch them all together. This one is still somewhat distorted but I'm not going to mess with it until I get home and can work with the RAW files. Of all the stained-glass we've seen here these have been my favorites. I love the geometric style. It actually reminds me somewhat of the covers to the Harry Potter books. But I love how much story there is in all of them. And can anyone figure out what the story is in the lower left corner? It might be part of the Garden of Eden, I mean, they are naked but who's the guy with the triangle around his head. Then there's that little rainbow that got me thinking that maybe it has something to do with Noah? I really don't know and any input would be appreciated.

Tomorrow we're probably going to go to Interlaken and Grindelwald. Later.

done with "class"

2008-06-20T15:12:00.005-06:00

Well, I didn't get a chance to write yesterday due to the fact that today our sketchbooks, which I've been pretty on top of, and our European Visual Culture writing assignments, which I haven't been as diligent with as I should have been, were due today. That marks the end of the "class" period of our trip and from now on we will be on our own. Another good thing is early tomorrow morning our roommates are leaving for Austria which means Whit and I might get a late start on the day.

Aside from all the catch-up I've been doing, the past couple days have been pretty relaxed. Yesterday took a nice downhill "hike" from Murren to Gimmelwald. It was a hike that could have easily taken 1 hour but we made it take 4. The highlight of it was actually leaving Gimmelwald on the tram. For about 50 feet you are only maybe 20 feet of the ground and then you go over the edge of a cliff. You look at the cables holding up the tram and they look like they are going straight down. If only it let you freefall for a second or two. That's really the main difference between the mountains and valleys here in Switzerland and in Utah. Logan is actually a higher elevation than we were there but while the tops of the mountains are comparable to the mountains in Utah, the bottoms of the valleys are much closer to sea level.

Today was the chocolate factory day. Truth be told I did have images of Willy Wonka's chocolate factory in my head before going. I could picture myself grabbing bars of chocolate and stuffing them in my mouth whole, drinking from a chocolate river and an incredibly eccentric tour guide. When it came down to it I was actually quite bored. It started off with this movie that reminded me somewhat of the Dick van Dyke show, then we had a tour guide tell us about the difference between white and milk chocolates and then we went to the tasting room where after about 10 small morsels I started to feel nauseous, a feeling that continued on for the rest of the day.

From there we went to Gruyeres, a quaint little town that is home of the H.R. Giger museum, which was incredibly disturbing. It was nice though, while I was sitting on a shady bench drawing, a band started playing those long horns that you always picture when you think of the Alps. It was really a very nostalgic moment.

Oh, and check out this kid we saw at the chocolate factory. It's not often that you see a black kid with a mullet. Who does he remind you of?

Bern

2008-06-18T14:25:00.006-06:00

Today we went to Bern. We started the day at the SBB's poster archives which was pretty cool to see some of there really old posters and hear about the different campaigns. From there we went to the Communication Museum which was pretty fun. Whit really liked it. They had a lot of interactive displays and we ended up spending most of our day in there. And, that's about it. We also saw 3 H&Ms on the same street! It was crazy. But it's a pretty good store so we were happy enough about it.

Well, I really need to get in the shower.

Nothing really to write today.

2008-06-17T15:30:00.003-06:00

Today we went to the Oberhofen Castle and then to Thun. That's really about it. I really want to go to sleep and my legs are killing me. Later.

Sunday and Zermatt

2008-06-16T14:24:00.007-06:00

Okay, I'll try to make this quick. Yesterday we went to the branch in Sion for Sacrament Meeting. The opening hymn was probably the closest I've ever felt to being at Hogwarts. They handed out English Hymns to everyone who spoke English (3/4 of us) and the rest had their French Hymnals, and then we all sang together. There wasn't anything even close to resembling a harmony. After that I went back to the cathedral there to take pictures of the stained-glass windows there. I took multiple exposures so I could mess around with the HDR stuff and overall I'm happy with the results, the pictures definitely turn out better if you can do it. The new pictures I took were really only slightly better than the old ones and I think I'm going to go back this Sunday. It was incredibly weird to walk over to the cathedral though. Last time we were there it was the middle of this street festival and the beginning of Euro 2008 so all the streets were packed. This time the streets were dead. Everything's closed on Sundays so nobody goes anywhere, it was actually really nice.

Today we went to Zermatt to attempt to see the Matterhorn. Sadly it was covered by clouds all day but the day was pretty nice anyways. We didn't have anything to do aside from take pictures and we had over 5 hours there so we just got to wander the streets and take things pretty easy. I've been going back and forth about getting a Swatch and after two weeks of debate and checking out every Swatch store I've seen I finally made my decision today. I'm really happy with the one I've got and I think I've figured out the whole cronograph thing.

Most of my pictures from the town didn't really work out, or will need some time in Photoshop to get them ready so the rest of the pictures posted are ones from the train.

This was taken in a tunnel that had slots along the side to let light in. If you looked straight at it there was this feeling of looking at a flipbook so I thought I'd see how the sensor in my camera would pick it up.

And this one I focused on the reflection in the window. For the first few days we were all so excited about the trains and constantly stared out the windows not wanting to miss anything, now it's just part of our life. The outside world is screaming by and we're busy sleeping or reading.

Lausanne and the Cow Fights

2008-06-14T10:02:00.006-06:00

Well, our internet was down again last night so here's some pictures from yesterday. We went to Lausanne and made our first stop at the Cathedral there. It's in the process of being renovated but they had one area done which was very cool. It combined the old gothic architecture with new contemporary windows. I really like the way it turned out. For 2 franks a piece we were able to climb to the top of the bell tower to look out over the city and take some pictures. Well worth it. From there we had lunch, Whit and I shared another Kebab, but this time with the suggestion of Jackson we tried a chicken one. I wasn't disappointed but I do think I like the other way better. After that we went to the Olympic Museum and then Bob took us with his bad directions on what felt like a 20 mile walk. My legs are still tired from it. We went to an old Roman museum that would have been a lot more interesting had we been able to read French, but since none of us do we were all pretty much done in 20 minutes or so.

Today we went to the cow fights. It wasn't really what I had expected. I thought they would only stick two cows in a ring and let them beat the crap out of each other until one dominated the other. Not quite how it went. Instead there are about 50 cows in the ring, mostly grazing but every once in a while a tussle would start and end shortly thereafter. They say there is a method behind it, that by the end one cow would end up at the top of the hill and it would be named queen. It really didn't look that way at all. The herds tended to stay wherever they started out. It was exciting for about 10 minutes and then it got to be pretty boring. We did have a great BBQ there though. 1st course was Brats and the second was a marinated pork chop.
And tonight we're having stinky cheese fondue. Yum!

Basel

2008-06-12T14:55:00.006-06:00

Today we went to Basel. It is found on the northern edge of Switzerland, bordering both France and Germany. It was a pretty cool place that we want to go back to. We went to a Paper Mill/Museum where we made our own piece of paper, which was the highlight of our visit there. It turns out that if you have taken Printmaking and/or know Mike Atha you've probably seen most of that stuff before. From there we went to a Homer exhibit that was a compilation of many works inspired by the Iliad and the Odyssey. We were lucky to have a really good guide that tied things into popular culture so it made it entertaining for us and easier to understand. Sadly it takes so long to get there and back that that was pretty much all we could do there so we're already planning on going back during our last few days.

We did have some time right after we got off the train to get some lunch. I got a Brat and Whit got a small margarita pizza and then as we were walking around we found me some new swimming shorts that are a really nice European style made of 100% Lycra.

Apparently Basel is one of the hottest place in Switzerland so to help cool the shoppers as they walk around old town they have these semi-transparent sunscreens hanging between the buildings. I love that they have been printed on too, instead of just picking a simple color or whatever. They're very concerned with the overall look of things.

Just a picture of my roommate Jackson while we were on the train leaving. I'm not sure why I'm so happy with how this one turned out. I think it might be the reflection of the sun in his palm. Both of us had our cameras out because as we were coming in we saw some rad graffiti and we were hoping to shoot it but didn't have much luck. The train was slowing down when we were coming in, this time it was speeding up.

Wednesday

2008-06-11T14:59:00.007-06:00

My apologies for not posting last night, the internet here at our hotel was down and then today I had to do a preliminary slideshow, a sample of 10 images from the photos I've taken so I had to get some ready. Now it's late and I'm tired so this will be a short post of just the highlights.

First off, I forgot to mention how excited I was the other day to step into the convenience store next to the train station here and find that Green Apple Hichew was sold there.

So yesterday we went to Nyon on the shore of Lake Geneva and went to a small museum that deals with the lake and then a couple of us went and got some Doner Kebabs for lunch which is probably one of the best sandwiches I've ever eaten. From there we jumped on a boat that took us across the border into Yvoire, France. We were mostly restricted to the old town sector which is pretty small but known for all the flowers that are there, especially in the windows. Very pretty, but I've found that generally I like greenery more than flowers. The highlight of that portion of the trip was seeing this old lady sunbathing topless. Wow.

Today we went to two museums, one a stained glass museum and another was one devoted to the artist Eugene Burnand. He does some incredible work but what really caught my eye were his portraits done with pastel.

Oh, another highlight from yesterday was learning about HDR (High Dynamic Range). I've known about the concept of it for a while but never knew where to look for more information on the technicalities of it. Basically you use a tripod and take 3 pictures, one metered normally, one overexposed and one underexposed. Then this program takes different values from each picture and mashes them together into one. It creates an amazing amount of depth because it pulls more detail out of your shadow and highlight areas. Clouds are what really seem to stand out but it also adds a ton of texture.

Anywho, enjoy the pictures. I'm off to bed.

Luzern

2008-06-09T14:46:00.006-06:00

We had a four hour train ride today to get to Luzern. When we got there we had an hour before our tour was to start at the KKL so a couple of us went into the old town area to check things out there. It was weird to be in the German-speaking part of Switzerland. We had just started to get used to hearing French everywhere and then it felt like being in a whole new country. I found a shirt at the H&M that I'll probably wear tomorrow, so I'll try to get a picture of myself and post it on here so you can all be jealous of it. Anywho, the KKL is so neat. It's this stark contrast from the rest of the old-towny buildings in Luzern because it's this incredibly modern building that houses a conference center, a multipurpose area and what it's truly known for, a concert hall with acoustics basically as near to perfect as can be achieved. Each section of the building is a different style but it's all held under one roof that juts out so far that you wonder how it can hold all that weight. It was truly an architectural masterpiece. From there we went to see this panoramic painting that was kind of boring and then went to see this lion carved into rock.

If you are familiar with the new library at Utah State you may recognize the lion from the basement where a reproduction of it is done in wood. For some reason it just doesn't have the same effect as standing here in Switzerland looking at it.

I'm off to bed. We've got another early morning ahead of us and I need to get some rest. Later.

Sunday

2008-06-08T14:20:00.007-06:00

Finally a day off. We took advantage of it and slept in and then just kicked it around here until around 1 o'clock. Finally we started getting pretty antsy so we decided to head down to Aigle, just down the mountain and check out the castle down there. So many castles are in Switzerland that many of them have started to put museums inside or some other kind of gimmick to try to bring more people in, and this castle was no different. It is surrounded by fields and fields of grapes used to make white wine so the inside of the castle is mostly devoted to that, including a small museum/gallery of wine labels.

I've loved just about all of the food we've had here with very few exceptions. Dinner tonight was delectable. They took the same stinky gym sock cheese and would place the front of it close to a heat source. When a layer would get melty they would scrape it off onto a plate and we would then eat it with bacon, potatoes or bread. I just couldn't get enough and went back for a total of 4 times until I finally ran out of things to eat the cheese with.

Here are a couple pictures from today:
The fog finally cleared and we woke up to this view out our window.

Here's a view of the castle from one of its windows.

I really liked this wine label.

And for some reason I really like this room. It's in the process of being restored/renovated and there were a couple drawings on the walls.

Tomorrow we go to Luzern.

Sion

2008-06-07T15:02:00.007-06:00

We spent the day in Sion today. It was also the first day of the Euro 2008 soccer tournament so there were a bunch of fanatics on the street. So let's see, first we went to this church to see this altarpiece that is made of solid gold. It was cool to see but we couldn't get up there very close so I don't think most of us appreciated it as much. What was really cool were the stained-glass windows. The picture posted here is one of maybe 15 fantastic windows in the building that seemed to be glowing. I apologize for the the distortion, it was in an effort to show the picture a little better. Hopefully I'll be able to get back there sometime with somebody's tripod so I can get some better pictures of it all. From there we made our way through Old Town Sion up one of the two huge hills in the middle of the city to this church that houses what is claimed to be the oldest playable organ in the world where we had the opportunity to hear a half-hour private concert. When we were done with that we were left with the rest of the day to ourselves to roam and take pictures. One major highlight of the day was my first experience of a Kebab, which despite my preconceptions is not grilled meat and vegetables on a skewer. I was instantly converted.

We have the day off tomorrow, which feels weird. Even when we were up at the hospice and had quite a bit of free time we were forced to keep our eyes on the clock so we wouldn't be late to one of our many meals or informational meetings, whatever.

I Finally Understand Why They Put Those Wavy Stink Lines Over Cheese in Cartoons.

2008-06-06T09:27:00.005-06:00

Ok, we got back from the St. Bernard's Hospice just an hour or so ago. It was actually really nice getting away from all the iPod's and computers and really not have to worry about anything. The trek up there was fun, the first two-thirds were hiked up the road and the last third was done with snowshoes. It is a requirement of the hospice that anyone who is to stay the night there has to make a pilgrimage, otherwise they'll just feed you and send you on your way. We got up there and we were soaked from the light rain that constantly fell as we were going up. So we went to our rooms to change and pulled our clothes out of our backpacks to find that in many cases they were more wet than the clothes we had on. Overall things were pretty open. Thursday morning a snowshoe-hike was organized for any who wanted to go (including Whit and I) and we went into Italy, a 5 minute walk from the monastery and went about half way up this mountain. I'll post more pictures of that later. It was really crazy because basically the whole time in Switzerland it was incredibly foggy, but as soon as we crossed the border it cleared right up.

We did have a couple assignments while we were there, just a simple writing assignment and a requirement to do a couple drawings but aside from that we relaxed a lot, ate tons of incredibly delicious food (including this cheese that tasted fantastic in soup but smelled like old gym socks), and heard one girl from our group give us some private violin performances a couple times. Anywho, I've got to get off and give Whit a chance to use the computer before dinner.

Apparently Snowboarding Isn't Allowed in the Train

2008-06-03T15:10:00.009-06:00

These stickers were found on the ceiling every five feet or so on the train that takes us from Leysin to Aigle. Today we went to Vevey. It was pretty cool. We got there a little early so we walked around a farmers market for a bit and then went to a museum that actually had quite a few prints in it. It was cool to see some of Albrecht Durer and Picasso's originals, along with a couple Japanese woodcuts. From there we went down to a photo museum which was probably my favorite building I've ever been in (as far as the style of it goes). The buildings seem pretty typical of what you will see in Switzerland. It's such a great style that has so much character. Once you get inside this museum it's all very modern. The museum actually takes up segments of two buildings and is connected both underground and by a bridge on either the third or forth floor. Vevey is right on Lake Geneva and after that we got on a boat that took us to Chateau de Chillon, this big castle right on the edge of the water.Tomorrow we leave for St. Bernard's Pass where we are getting away from our normal lives in order to slow things down for a bit. What that means is that for the next couple days we will not have our computers with us, nor access to one. So hopefully in a couple days I'll have a bunch of cool pictures to post.

2008-06-03T15:10:00.001-06:00

Day 1

2008-06-02T12:47:00.007-06:00

After being on 3 different planes through Phoenix, Philadelphia and finally to Zurich, and then on a bus for 3 hours to our small town of Leysin, we're finally here. I'm blown away with how well thought out everything is and how well designed. I was also somewhat surprised to see how urban it was in Zurich. All the pictures you see of Switzerland are of the smaller towns and all the older houses surrounded by green and mountains. While everything is still very clean feeling it was somewhat comforting to see graffiti on the overpasses. We mostly slept on the bus but I did get a small taste of what small-town Switzerland is like while passing through. Leysin has the same feel as Park City to a large degree, only greener, smaller and more spread apart. This is a picture taken just down the road from our hotel. After getting settled and having lunch we went down and were shown where the ATM is (Swiss Francs are so cool), and a grocery store for our lunches, we went on a small hike up to a point where we could see the alps even better (hard to believe it can get much better than the view from our hotel window), and also Lake Geneva in the other direction. We're all incredibly tired and it's weird to me to look at the clock on my computer and see that it's only 1:39 at home while it's nearly 10 o'clock here.

So long

2008-05-31T12:12:00.002-06:00

Illusive 2

2008-05-19T23:46:00.002-06:00

For the past hour I've been trying unsuccessfully to find out who did these. I'm wanting to do some research of that strong b&w graphic style and I found this picture on Gestalten's website for the Illusive 2 book, but the caption for the illustrator is too small and I can't read it, nor does our school library have a copy of this book. Anywho, I'm off to bed.

FotC

2008-05-18T01:46:00.005-06:00

My friend Nikki has been in New York ever since school got out. A couple days ago she posted this autographed poster on her facebook page. I really like the poster and was really excited to find out that it comes with their new cd. Apparently they are trying to reward the people that actually buy the cd instead of just downloading it, which works for me since I'm old school and for the most part am pretty hesitant to download full albums. Anyway, I found the artist who did the illustrations for the album, you can see his page here. More than the autograph I'm jealous that my friend got to see their live show, playful banter and all.

Sticks and Stones

2008-05-15T08:29:00.002-06:00

Here are all the prints from the exchange I did entitled "Sticks and Stones." 3 schools participated: Sacramento City College, University of Arizona and Utah State University. While I've done a couple print exchanges before and they've all been fun, this has been my favorite, mostly due to the size of the prints and the great work that was done. All we were given was the theme and size of the prints (8x10), and the rest was left to the creativity of the individual.

Advanced Printmaking

2008-05-14T21:31:00.004-06:00

Here are the three portraits I did for my Advanced Printmaking class. Earlier on I posted the first print I did of Christian Bandley and asked if anyone could guess. Matt Mildenstein was the only one who guessed (sort of) and won by default so I delivered his print to him last Saturday. Anywho, I'm going to keep going with them over the summer, my plans being to probably do nine of them, each with a different color background.

I can't get enough of this guy's work. His name is Scott Hansen. Check him out here.

Anyways, the Jazz are playing so I better get downstairs and be supportive. Later

ToChu

2008-05-12T07:28:00.002-06:00

This is about as far as I can take it until I get ink for my printer and can find a good background picture. I had my pre-switzerland classes last week. To a certain degree they were something of a waste of time, just going over the very basics of digital photography, though Thursday we did the drawing portion and Friday we went over Swiss culture and posters which was pretty interesting.

I don't feel like I have much to write right now. While this break from real school work has been nice, I'm starting to miss going into Printmaking and working on a block. Aside from just the work that I enjoy (I've been told I smile while I'm carving), there is a real sense of community in the studio. Also my internet has been down really hit and miss since the small power outage we had Wednesday or Thursday and that has kept me from being able to do much.

There's Always Money in the Banana Stand.

2008-05-04T14:45:00.004-06:00

Here's something I'm working on just to play around with using Illustrator to do colors. I drew this picture of my friend Chewie six months to a year ago and finally pulled it out to do something with. He went vegan so I had him in a banana stand selling chocolate dipped tofu. Mmmm.

Advents in photo and printmaking

2008-05-02T22:40:00.004-06:00

Well, today the government gave us some money. How nice of them. So we decided to do our part and try to stimulate the local economy by buying a new camera. We can call it my Finally-out-of-the-woods-and-can-breathe-again (aka: end of the semester) Present. While the lady at Inkleys was extremely helpful and I feel like the price was right, buying it reminded me why I prefer to buy things online. It's the social recluse in me. I don't like the small talk and when I'm online they won't try to pressure me into buying more than I really want or try to give me a guilt-trip when I don't buy the extended warranty on the spot, assuring me that the second I walk out the door the camera will spontaneously combust if I don't. It's like how she talked me into a memory card and as soon as I got home I found a better memory card online for half the price plus I can finally replace that quick-release plate for my tripod that Inkleys doesn't ever keep in stock.

On a slightly different but still related subject, the USU Bookstore put on clearance the Holgas that were required of all the Photo students taking an Independent Projects class. Thanks to Mark Dungan who structured the class that way and enabled me to pick one up for 10 bucks.

Soon enough I will post pictures of the portraits I did in woodcut for my Advanced Printmaking class, including the answer to the one-entry contest (but does it count as an entry if the guess was "I have no idea?" I'll have to look that up). Sadly, due to focusing most of my time on my other class I was only able to complete 3 portraits, including my self-portrait. But shortly I will finish 2 more, including Matt who was actually the second one I started, now that I don't have much to distract me.

I'm not sure if I've posted about it before but in a couple weeks I'll be taking a silk screen poster workshop. The big assignment is to do a rock poster. I'm thinking I'll probably do a Flight of the Conchords poster, but there is still some debate.

"05-09"

2008-04-30T17:33:00.003-06:00

Well, I'm done with this print. Here's a crappy camera phone picture of a crappy newsprint print of it. I'm not out of the woods yet but at least I'm feeling like I can breathe again.

Making progress.

2008-04-27T01:37:00.003-06:00

Here's a crappy camera-phone picture of what my print is looking like right now. It's due Tuesday at noon so I've still got a couple late nights left. Anywho, I'm tired and off to bed.
P.S. This was my layout for my Visual Continuity class. There are some obvious things that need to be touched up but considering I did it in two days I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

The Sportsman [detail]

2008-04-22T16:55:00.001-06:00

Big Block

2008-04-19T03:43:00.002-06:00

I just got home from school a couple minutes ago. My fingers are getting pretty sore from carving but overall I feel like it was a pretty successful Print Jam. Just as I was leaving I snapped a picture with my phone of the block I'm working on. I'm really excited about it until I remember that it's mostly due in less than a week.

As a bit of a challenge, here is the first print for one of the portraits I'm working on. Any guesses who it is? If anyone figures it out I'll let them choose one of my prints to have or something of equal value (so maybe just a combo meal from Wendy's).

Anger Management

2008-04-16T17:48:00.004-06:00

Well, I didn't get it loaded last night because the ink was still wet, so here it is. I'm glad to have it done. Now I can get started on my 25x37" print and work on my other portraits. I also found out that I won't be starting any more books until all my projects are done since my lack of self-control led me to finish The Subtle Knife in 3 days instead of concentrating on what really needs to get finished. Later.

Sticks & Stones

2008-04-15T15:42:00.003-06:00

Today I printed my edition for our print exchange titled "Sticks & Stones." Later I will scan one in and post a detail of it. Now the hard part: writing an artist's statement.

Kathy Puzey

2008-04-09T22:32:00.002-06:00

I was really excited to find out this morning that my incredibly talented teacher Kathy Puzey got her job! I don't know all the details of how the process works but she was a temporary assistant professor and now I think she's on tenure track. All I know is that she'll be back next year. She's one of those teachers that really make a difference in their student's lives so I'm glad that the administration was able to see that and do what was necessary to keep her here.

THRILLER

2008-04-09T10:17:00.001-06:00

Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova

2008-04-08T23:50:00.006-06:00

I hate when I fall asleep on the couch. Without fail after doing so I can't fall asleep when I finally wake up and drag myself to bed. So here I am at midnight doing some "electronic scrapbooking." I had two critiques today and they successfully wore me out. My Thriller print is finally done and I'll get it scanned in and posted tomorrow morning. With that done I only have my magazine layout, a print for a print exchange, my 29x37" final print for relief prints and a bunch more portraits to do for my advanced class. I get a bit overwhelmed just thinking about that I only have 3 weeks to get it all done.

Anywho, one of my sibling-in-laws gave us the movie Once for Christmas (I thought it was Bree, but Whit says it was Trevor). It sat happily in our movie case for 3-4 months without us ever touching it until one day a friend recommended it to us and I thought "Hey, we have that movie. Maybe we should watch it?" And so glad that we did. It really was a good movie. I've found that I like those more Indie films lately, and this definitely falls under that category. The story is pretty simple, this guy plays guitar on the street but wants to make it big so he enlists the help of a fan who sells flowers and other street performers to make a demo album. Probably 60% of it is music and it's amazing. Promptly after watching the movie we acquired the soundtrack and bought the remaining songs off their album. Sadly, I cannot recommend the movie without a disclaimer: It is rated R. As far as I can tell this is basically all due to the opening scene where, thanks to Clearplay, two people's heated discussion is almost completely muted. Whit and I looked at each other with that look that says, "I hope the whole movie isn't like this otherwise we'll have no clue what's going on," I'm sure you know the look. Anyway, if you don't check out the movie at least check out the music.

Oh, and Whit started her own blog. She said she felt weird posting on here after I was the only one to do so since it was created in December, so check hers out here.