NCECA and beyond...
So I suppose I should post about my last two weeks or so... May be a bit jumbled, but here goes:
So I went to Phoenix for the National Council on the Education of the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) yearly convention. It was pretty fun. I declined to drive with most of the group due to time and people issues.
The flight was fine except for some turbulence coming in.
It reminded me of why I didn't become a pilot like my dad wanted.
Turbulence makes me sick. I start feeling hot and queazy and more unhappy than a dancer with vertigo.
The weather in Phoneix was rather lovely, albeit windier, drizzlier, and colder than I expected. The dry desert climate made morning and evening cool and midday de-spankin-licious.
I wore my neato thrift store creation pants. That's a pair of teal pants that I combined with a man's shirt to get some nifty one-of-a-kind duds.
While our group was walking in a less savory part of town on our way back from some galleries,* a man who appeared homeless ran across the street and approached me. He was wearing a red shirt with stains and mud on it with a pack of cigs in the pocket, sweatpants, two different colored socks, one shoe, and one sandal. He had a beer in his hand.
Street Man: "Hey there! Man, I just gotta see these pants."
Me: *hiding slightly behind Danny in fight or flight mode* "Um... Ok."
Street Man: "You see, I'm a costume designer and these pants are fabulous!"
Me: "Uh, thanks. I bought the pants and a man's shirt at a thrift store and put them together."
Street Man: "Wow, did you sew those pockets yourself?"
Me: "No, I just cut them off the front of the shirt."
Street Man: *stops dead and smacks himself in the head* "Why didn't I think of that?!?"
He left after a few more sentences and our group walked on.
Me: "Aaaaaaah."
"AAAaahhhhhh."
Danny: *imitating* "Heh, heh. Hey, lemme see your pants!"
Me: "Aaaaaahhhhh!"
Brooks: "What was the deal with that guy?"
Leanna: "He said he was a clothing designer."
Me: "Maybe one of his personalities is a clothing designer..... but he sure as hell didn't look it"
Danny teased me about that all weekend long.
It's funnier now, but still pretty creepy. :P
The most pleasant time I spent at the convention was actually the time I spent with Danny. Our temperaments are very similar and we get along well. He's quiet and I enjoy listening to him speak when he does. He's funny, and he gets my humor, too, so it's fun making each other laugh quietly at the back of the auditorium. I feel relaxed and safe around him and that earns big points in my book. He's so anti-drama that I feel stress-free when we're chillin', and that's BIG points. Love the boy to pieces I do, I do (just don't tell him I said so ;) ).
We saw tons of great art that I shall not bore you with unless you ask nicely. I have pictures of all the stuff I really liked, which was nice. I hate it when places don't let you take pictures.
I went to some great demos and got some great new tools and some pretty nifty cups at the cup sale. Not the cups I REALLY wanted, but pretty nice none-the-less. I woke up at 5am to get to the sale early and snag those two cups i was in love with, but this girl who got there at 4:30 got them before me. D:<
I'm not bitter. I swear.
If anyone else in my group had been game I'd have camped out like last year and gotten them. :/
We went to this Porcelain Party on friday and I got a Virgin Cocktail.
It's a fake epoxy cocktail with plastic fruit and a bust of the virgin mary in it. The sides of the glass even have fake condensation on them. The party was a show and a sale of this New Yorker's work. His stuff was all really amusing. Leanna got a cupcake with an airplane crashing into it. My one problem is that he used hot glue to secure the toys and figurines to the fake food.
Hot glue is only appropriate for elementary school dioramas.
It's a shoddy hold and leaves gobs of messy, obvious gunk everywhere.
The bust and lemon slice detached in transit, so I had to fix it with super glue when I got home. I think I made it better, tho, because I rearranged it slightly and cleaned off the hot glue mess before re-gluing it. Now the lemon slice looks like a halo and it makes me even happier.
Oh, I had to take it out of it's bag and unwrap it at airport security because they thought it was a liquid. :P
Silly X-ray people. Liquids have a tendency to leak out of glasses when they are laying on their side. And who would be dumb enough to try and pack a REAL cocktail into their travel bags, glass, fruit, ice, virgin, and all?
Oh, there was also a dance performance on Friday night. This group has taken traditional native american dances and stories and put a modern spin on them. It involved scantily clad men and women, lots of body paint, and not a little glitter. It was the story of clay and the native americans. One part was really funny, it was a tale about a lady who gets pregnant while treading the clay to prepare it. She gives birth to a pot, which her brothers roll down a hill until it breaks and reveals the baby boy inside. They had papier mache stunt pots. :P
This one girl had short hair done up in a funky mohawk/ponytail do and MAN was she friggin FIERCE. She was a great belly dancer and was such a powerful dancer.
As a whole, though, it made me realize how spoiled I am.
Meadows has some incredible dancers and an incredible dance program. Even the student choreographed Brown Bag show that's put on every semester is generally better than this group was. They were good, don't get me wrong, but they weren't amazing. There are some brown bag dances I would kill to see again.
Which reminds me: I need to go to the dance department and see if they keep records of these things. There was this one dance my freshman year. The girls were all in white flowey shirts and pants and had big, red exercise balls that they danced with. It was aMAzing. I remember this one part were a girl ran full speed at a ball sitting on the floor, leapt ONTO it feet first, and then rolled off of it smoothly until she was laying on the floor. I had no idea that could even be done.
On Saturday, after everything was over, we went to the Chihuly exhibit at the Desert Botanical Garden, and MAN was it awesome. I actually loved the plants more than his work, although he did have some rather stunning pieces there. It's hard to compete with cacti.
Cacti are by far some of the coolest plants ever. They come in so many shapes and sizes and colors and patterns and textures! I took a million pictures and want to start making cacti sculptures, or stuffed toys, or something. They are just..... luscious. Especially the succulents, which have by far the most apt naming in plant-dom. I love succulents. They are the most gorgeous plants. They have such beautiful lines and curves and patterns and colors and just beg to be stroked and squeezed and loved.
I think I may feel about succulents the same way men feel about boobs.
OK... what else was I going to post about?
Lesseee.... Two days ago I learned how to do machine embroidery by hand. It's really neat, like drawing with a sewing machine.
Yesterday I went to Goodwill and was a bad, bad girl. I spent way too much.
But I love having such awesome shopping lists.
Dried glittered lemon slice pin: check
Glow-in-the-dark dinosaur footed pajamas: check
Big articulated wooden watch wall clock: check
Eddie Izzard's Glorious on VHS: check
Two duck decoys: check
Pair of striped and plaid Clown overalls: check
Um.... Yeah. That's pretty much all I can think of. Long enough for you?
*Why are galleries so often in the worst parts of town? It makes me nervous. >_>
So I went to Phoenix for the National Council on the Education of the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) yearly convention. It was pretty fun. I declined to drive with most of the group due to time and people issues.
The flight was fine except for some turbulence coming in.
It reminded me of why I didn't become a pilot like my dad wanted.
Turbulence makes me sick. I start feeling hot and queazy and more unhappy than a dancer with vertigo.
The weather in Phoneix was rather lovely, albeit windier, drizzlier, and colder than I expected. The dry desert climate made morning and evening cool and midday de-spankin-licious.
I wore my neato thrift store creation pants. That's a pair of teal pants that I combined with a man's shirt to get some nifty one-of-a-kind duds.
While our group was walking in a less savory part of town on our way back from some galleries,* a man who appeared homeless ran across the street and approached me. He was wearing a red shirt with stains and mud on it with a pack of cigs in the pocket, sweatpants, two different colored socks, one shoe, and one sandal. He had a beer in his hand.
Street Man: "Hey there! Man, I just gotta see these pants."
Me: *hiding slightly behind Danny in fight or flight mode* "Um... Ok."
Street Man: "You see, I'm a costume designer and these pants are fabulous!"
Me: "Uh, thanks. I bought the pants and a man's shirt at a thrift store and put them together."
Street Man: "Wow, did you sew those pockets yourself?"
Me: "No, I just cut them off the front of the shirt."
Street Man: *stops dead and smacks himself in the head* "Why didn't I think of that?!?"
He left after a few more sentences and our group walked on.
Me: "Aaaaaaah."
"AAAaahhhhhh."
Danny: *imitating* "Heh, heh. Hey, lemme see your pants!"
Me: "Aaaaaahhhhh!"
Brooks: "What was the deal with that guy?"
Leanna: "He said he was a clothing designer."
Me: "Maybe one of his personalities is a clothing designer..... but he sure as hell didn't look it"
Danny teased me about that all weekend long.
It's funnier now, but still pretty creepy. :P
The most pleasant time I spent at the convention was actually the time I spent with Danny. Our temperaments are very similar and we get along well. He's quiet and I enjoy listening to him speak when he does. He's funny, and he gets my humor, too, so it's fun making each other laugh quietly at the back of the auditorium. I feel relaxed and safe around him and that earns big points in my book. He's so anti-drama that I feel stress-free when we're chillin', and that's BIG points. Love the boy to pieces I do, I do (just don't tell him I said so ;) ).
We saw tons of great art that I shall not bore you with unless you ask nicely. I have pictures of all the stuff I really liked, which was nice. I hate it when places don't let you take pictures.
I went to some great demos and got some great new tools and some pretty nifty cups at the cup sale. Not the cups I REALLY wanted, but pretty nice none-the-less. I woke up at 5am to get to the sale early and snag those two cups i was in love with, but this girl who got there at 4:30 got them before me. D:<
I'm not bitter. I swear.
If anyone else in my group had been game I'd have camped out like last year and gotten them. :/
We went to this Porcelain Party on friday and I got a Virgin Cocktail.
It's a fake epoxy cocktail with plastic fruit and a bust of the virgin mary in it. The sides of the glass even have fake condensation on them. The party was a show and a sale of this New Yorker's work. His stuff was all really amusing. Leanna got a cupcake with an airplane crashing into it. My one problem is that he used hot glue to secure the toys and figurines to the fake food.
Hot glue is only appropriate for elementary school dioramas.
It's a shoddy hold and leaves gobs of messy, obvious gunk everywhere.
The bust and lemon slice detached in transit, so I had to fix it with super glue when I got home. I think I made it better, tho, because I rearranged it slightly and cleaned off the hot glue mess before re-gluing it. Now the lemon slice looks like a halo and it makes me even happier.
Oh, I had to take it out of it's bag and unwrap it at airport security because they thought it was a liquid. :P
Silly X-ray people. Liquids have a tendency to leak out of glasses when they are laying on their side. And who would be dumb enough to try and pack a REAL cocktail into their travel bags, glass, fruit, ice, virgin, and all?
Oh, there was also a dance performance on Friday night. This group has taken traditional native american dances and stories and put a modern spin on them. It involved scantily clad men and women, lots of body paint, and not a little glitter. It was the story of clay and the native americans. One part was really funny, it was a tale about a lady who gets pregnant while treading the clay to prepare it. She gives birth to a pot, which her brothers roll down a hill until it breaks and reveals the baby boy inside. They had papier mache stunt pots. :P
This one girl had short hair done up in a funky mohawk/ponytail do and MAN was she friggin FIERCE. She was a great belly dancer and was such a powerful dancer.
As a whole, though, it made me realize how spoiled I am.
Meadows has some incredible dancers and an incredible dance program. Even the student choreographed Brown Bag show that's put on every semester is generally better than this group was. They were good, don't get me wrong, but they weren't amazing. There are some brown bag dances I would kill to see again.
Which reminds me: I need to go to the dance department and see if they keep records of these things. There was this one dance my freshman year. The girls were all in white flowey shirts and pants and had big, red exercise balls that they danced with. It was aMAzing. I remember this one part were a girl ran full speed at a ball sitting on the floor, leapt ONTO it feet first, and then rolled off of it smoothly until she was laying on the floor. I had no idea that could even be done.
On Saturday, after everything was over, we went to the Chihuly exhibit at the Desert Botanical Garden, and MAN was it awesome. I actually loved the plants more than his work, although he did have some rather stunning pieces there. It's hard to compete with cacti.
Cacti are by far some of the coolest plants ever. They come in so many shapes and sizes and colors and patterns and textures! I took a million pictures and want to start making cacti sculptures, or stuffed toys, or something. They are just..... luscious. Especially the succulents, which have by far the most apt naming in plant-dom. I love succulents. They are the most gorgeous plants. They have such beautiful lines and curves and patterns and colors and just beg to be stroked and squeezed and loved.
I think I may feel about succulents the same way men feel about boobs.
OK... what else was I going to post about?
Lesseee.... Two days ago I learned how to do machine embroidery by hand. It's really neat, like drawing with a sewing machine.
Yesterday I went to Goodwill and was a bad, bad girl. I spent way too much.
But I love having such awesome shopping lists.
Dried glittered lemon slice pin: check
Glow-in-the-dark dinosaur footed pajamas: check
Big articulated wooden watch wall clock: check
Eddie Izzard's Glorious on VHS: check
Two duck decoys: check
Pair of striped and plaid Clown overalls: check
Um.... Yeah. That's pretty much all I can think of. Long enough for you?
*Why are galleries so often in the worst parts of town? It makes me nervous. >_>