Happy Halloween!

It may appear that we confused Halloween with Shark Week, but it was so much finding shark and and shark victim costumes. Even Buster participated by sporting a shark costume, though he was less excited about it.

Tim Burton's Magical Halloween Fashion Spread

I love this Tim Burton Halloween Fashion series taken by Tim Walker for Harper's Bazaar. Next year, I'm going to try and rock the Edward Scissorhands look. You can see more here.

New Work: Sally Mann

Sally Mann is a native Virginian best known for her endless photographs of her three children in the early 1990s. I love her series, Deep South in which she photographs Southern landscapes using damaged lenses and a giant camera that requires her to use her hand as a shutter. The work was processed in the dark room using obscure chemicals and glass slide negatives. The results are incredible, photographs marked by the scratches, light leaks, and shifts in focus.

Fortunately for me, Sally Mann will have a show on November 13th at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts here in Richmond! She will be there to talk about her new work, The Flesh and The Spirit that focuses on the body. You can get tickets here.

Encaustic Painting

So excited for an upcoming encaustic painting class I'm taking at the Visual Arts Center of Richmond! Encaustic painting is a process that involves hot beeswax and color pigments. Hopefully, I will be able to create beautiful things like Esty seller BrightDay painted below.

You have to leave home to find home...

You have to leave home to find home -Ralph Ellison, marginal note in an unfinished manuscript

For the love of Feifei

I returned to DC again this weekend to meet up with my favorite New Yorker. Feifei was in town to celebrate a fabulous Time Magazine article, "40 Under 40," that she contributed to.

We haven't seen each other in awhile so it was great to catch up. We're also fairly positive we saw Sasha and Malia enter the White House!

The District

I visited Washington D.C. for the first time this weekend to meet up with my sister. I had never been to D.C. before so we spent the majority of our time checking out the monuments and touristy things. Although I didn't get to randomly run into Obama like I hoped, a large motorcade did pass by us and enter into the White House!






































































We also had a great time at The National Portrait Gallery and the American History Museum. My favorite items included:

Michelle Obama's inauguration dress

Abraham Lincoln's top hat

The flag that inspired the Star-Spangled Banner

Julia Child's kitchen

A Deborah Butterfield horse sculpture

A Michael Jackson Portrait by Andy Warhol

We didn't get to go all of the museums so I'll have to go back soon!

Sweet, Sweet, Daguerreotypes

History of Photography was undoubtedly one of my favorite classes I took at SCAD. The class introduced me to Daguerreotypes—one of the first forms of photography. The street scene below is not only beautiful, it's also the first photograph of a person! (Look closely he's standing next to a bench getting his shoes polished) The Library of Congress has a ton of Daguerreotypes for free to download here. I had way too much fun searching through them all!