happy birthday anne!

dear anne, here are 10 reasons why i'm so happy you were born:

1. you are my oldest friend, and i never would have survived 6th grade without you. seriously. middle school was rough.

2. you're so kind and giving. you have been volunteering, teaching, or caring for kids since i met you.

3. you're always up for a trip to cy's, bao ju's, or victoria's—and you usually let me pick.

4. you never give things up. if you had sundance & tom's wedding story episode on anything else but vhs, you'd watch it everyday.

5. you bravely left home and traveled throughout india.

6. you know and love every lyric of total eclipse of the heart and every line of super troopers.

7. i'm not sure if you still play minesweeper, but i bet you do.

8. you always had me over for thurow family dinners and i loved every single one of them.

9. you always hated being the "cute" one.

10. you fell in love, married a wonderful guy, and moved too far away. i miss your face.

Grandma Erma

I traveled to Iowa this week to be with family and to say goodbye to Grandma Erma.

Grandma always had sugar cookies, lefse, or fresh rolls waiting for us when we visited. Her handmade birthday cards were the best.

This Kodacolor photograph of my grandparents was taken on their wedding night in 1951. Grandma looked ravishing. I will miss her terribly.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Letterpress Prints

A few things that Meredith and I created during our letterpress class at the Richmond Visual Arts Center this fall.

Now that our class is over, we've joined an encaustic class. More projects to come...

"In Budapest, surgeons operated on printer's apprentice Gyoergyi Szabo, 17, who, brooding over the loss of a sweetheart, had set her name in type and swallowed the type." -TIME Magazine, 1936

500,000 Cigarettes

Contemporary artist Xu Bing has a wonderful exhibition at the VFMA that focuses on tobacco. My favorite piece is a large tiger-skin pattern rug that was made from over a half a million cigarettes. From one end of the gallery the rug is white and orange, on the other end the colors are brown and white. The exhibit also includes tobacco advertising & slogans as well as a 30 foot long cigarette.