excuse the weird hair on my part - but otherwise you get the pic 

a poem, if you will...

today i was organizing my studio in one of my distracted fits of mood and i flipped through an old sketchbook and found this - i wrote this in november or december of 2000. this was a stage in my life when i was probably the most stressed out i've ever been for a period of about (7 weeks?) - not quite 2 months. it was the kind of stressed out when you feel like someone's got a good grip on your stomach and won't let go. it was the end of my first college semester and yes, my artwork was sucking and eating up my days - and my drive to succeed was controlling me. (by the way, that's not really a good thing). and also, this wasn't the fun and frustrating but therapeutic (sp?) artwork - this was foundations assignments dry technical "artwork". anyway, having said all of that this is the poem - i think it is quite good

"i miss reading
ridiculously long amounts of time
when there's nothing else
i could be doing

nonExperiencing

i miss clean carpet"

oh yeah - i'm marrying the most wonderful, most caring, most huggable with the cutest beard man on june 10, 2006!!!

by this all men will know....

it concerns me that there are so many churches (of the same denomination) in close proximity to one another down here. what's the deal? am i missing something? maybe i am. but i think its a bit ridiculous. i think the little town of woodruff must have 20 baptist churches. weird. i mean, is that really necessary?

john 13:35

if you build it

ya know the farm house that belongs to kevin costner in field of dreams? it would be so cool to have a house like that one day. i don't know about iowa. but i do love big fields.

a cosmic war stands behind human conflict

Daniel 7

i went to see the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe yesterday. i really want to pet a lion!

october 2005

as you could probably tell the past month or more has been a little in sane for me. i called a temp agency at the beginning of october hoping for something part time at least. a week after i called, i was placed in a full time assignment. then two days later i received a deposit check for 8 paintings. the big job had finally become a reality. unfortunately i had already given the client a deadline for the work to be done, not knowing i would receive the temp job so soon. the same day i got the deposit check, my grandmother passed away. then two weeks later, my beau popped the question. and one week after that i finally realized something had to give. so i quit my temp job. and now i'm working on my art business and planning a wedding and apparently, i'm subconsciously keeping myself very busy here in south carolina so that i don't run away to atlanta before next spring. gosh, that's hard.

wisdom from a 5 year old. "if you see a cross star, it's Jesus's" thank you, rhea

me and my fiance! woo-hoo! go jackets! hope you enjoy the art pics. i'm about to get some zzzzs. a few anyway - i promise i'll post soon!!!! 

red horse inn - hmmm 

westin poinsett hotel 

greer 

a new thing 

surprise 

friday morning, october 21, 2005 

this is my competition - second cousin, grace. i know - i should be worried, right? i am 

much more work to be done........ 

an old newspaper article

treating them like kids

"young people became teenagers because we had nothing better to do with them." So writes Thomas Hine in his new book, "The Rise and Fall of the American Teenager."
according to Hine, teenagers were created by the Great Depression, which cost them the jobs they'd traditionally held and forced them to go to the one place left open to them: high school.
for the first time, Hine says, "a majority of high-school-age Americans actually enrolled. We defined maturity primarily in terms of being permitted adult vices, and then were surprised when teenagers drank, smoked, or had promiscuous sex."

i must have clipped this article or statement when i was in high schoo. i guess i thought it was interesting. it is.

chasing sunsets - a new hobby of mine 

poetry from a seventeen year old girl

"she spent the summer away from the sun
said she couldn't stand the glare anymore
summer's done
it was no fun
no one knows what she's crying for

the moon will be her best friend
and will talk to her when she can't sleep
insomnia set in
again, when
instead of dreams she has moonbeams

her life is a contradiction
all she needs is a new addiction
she knows it's a shame to discard dreams
but, the sun burns
and she longs to be pale like the moonlight"



for your reading enjoyment - i know i enjoyed running across it again. "instead of dreams, she has moonbeams" made me laugh out loud. people should write poetry for the simple fact that naturally it will be put away or lost for awhile and then found one day, read again, and they will be reminded of how wacky they really are.
i think i wrote this poem several weeks after i returned from my summer at governor's school. i'm still trying to interpret it. i'm not sure that it's possible.

art crit

"a vandal is somebody who throws a brick through a window. an artist is somebody who paints a picture on that window. a great artist is somebody who paints a picture on the window and throws a brick through it."
quote found in New Yorker at some point in time.

in college i had to take art criticism. i think it was my least favorite class. even moreso than public speaking and chemistry. being a part of that class was like being in a conversation, or debate rather, with someone about the coexistence of predestination and free will. like riding an eternal ferris wheel - you never really get anywhere. i mean, art is art. it's awesome and it works - just leave it at that. that's my opinion anyway

if you like duct tape and you're a girl, look up www.carlystipe.com.

the portrait below that i did of my grandfather was done in chalk. i really like that media. it's fast and it's forgiving.

grandpa burton. picture taken october 2003. passed away february 2004. piece completed september 2005. 

watercolor painting by Z L Feng. an amazing artist that i found out about and met on sunday. his stuff is soo the bomb 

a sweet surprise from my sweet tea 

me and my crazy grandpa. ole blue eyes. we like to call him "big ears" too. 

hotlanta 

this one's for you, rob 

what a pair! go jackets! 

a true blog

i love my old oscar schmidt - did i spell that right - it is a good friend. its one of the things that keeps me sane. just like my easel and just like blogger.

chestnut ridge youth group - you guys rock! remember to be salty and to be light (matt. 5:13-16)

i had a pretty busy weekend. helped with a lay renewal retreat in laurens. lay renewal retreat = revival led by lay people. what it really means is - you better be ready for anything. you have no idea what to expect except that the Holy Spirit will move. it was cool.

then yesterday afternoon i washed my car - that was a desperate situation.

right now i'm at my old primary school. i'm gonna sub for my old music teacher this afternoon. 1st graders. this should be fun. they don't have to sit on those awful risers anymore. now they have these colorful hard plastic bleacher type things. they still have gold bears. they don't give piddly points anymore - you just get your name written on a blue slip.

i'm considering getting certified to teach art at public school. i think it might be fun. i just have to go back to school for a little bit in order to be certified - i don't know if i'm quite ready for that yet. i've been free for a little over a year. i will have to know for sure that that's what i really want for me to willingly go back to school.

'what did the bald man say when someone gave him a comb?

i'll never part with it.'

i'm going to the state line to meet my boyfriend tonight. its been almost seven days since i've seen him. and i'm still breathing and functioning - wow! okay, i could get really sappy here fast, but i'll spare you. i am excited to see you though, lee. but you know that already.

i've been reminded recently of an old dream of mine - to be an author and illustrator of children's literature. really, just to be an illustrator would be the bomb. yes, the bomb.

i think this tree will be pink - what do you think? i'm taking votes... 

silver shrubs - under construction 

august 31, 2005 - blessed assurance 

squalls in mississippi

my brother called me yesterday - he lives in jackson, mississippi. he said they had no power and he could have probably gone water skiing in his backyard. he wanted to know exactly where katrina was and where she was headed so i went on weather.com and typed in his zipcode. it was the first time i'd ever seen the word "squalls" on there. not just rain, or heavy rain, or storms - SQUALLS. he thought that was so cool. i could hear the wind and the rain on my end of the phone.

in jake's words - don't mess with mother nature, cause mother nature will mess..you...up.

a little update

i'm noticing that the pictures i posted of the red horse inn really do not look as awesome as it was in reality. but you still get the idea. it really is one of the most beautiful places i've been to in a long time. victorian - love it!

i'm sitting at the toyota dealership in greenville right now. waiting on my oil to be changed and my tires to be rotated. yes - it's been three months and i've already hit the 5000 mile mark. is that typical? i don't feel like i've been driving that much but obviously i have.

i'm getting a lot of good use out of my digi cam lately. i'm having to take a lot of pics of different landscape scenes in greenville county. so i'm parking my car in random spots and walking on very busy city roads as well as very nonbusy country roads to attempt to get some good shots. its been a little adventure.

august night 

pretty, huh? 

in the clouds - www.theredhorseinn.com 

doesn't this look like a rural American version of Charlie Bucket's house? i love it - this is located just down the road from my house.