California the Beautiful

I am a third generation California native, which means that this incredibly luscious and diverse state has always been somewhat taken for granted by me, and the family I was raised with.  Camping, who wants to go camping?  Yuck.  Let's watch a movie instead.  But, as I have been paying more and more attention to the beauty of color arrangements, shapes, and form in nature to inform my own paintings, I have come to love my amazing state more and more.  I can change scenery drastically from hour to hour in the car, giving me amazing variety.  Also, now that I live in a city, there is only so much nature I can appreciate in people's yards, and it takes a field trip to really open my eyes to all the sublime stuff that surrounded me for my entire childhood in the foothills.  Not that I'm going to go all Back-to-the-Land on you, as I was forced to do from ages 9-14 by living off the grid, but when I go on vacation, I tend to take more reference material from the backyards I am in.  Here are some pics which might not be the greatest photographs in and of themselves, but I can use them for the color, form, and the perfect imperfections of nature for my artwork.

South Lake Tahoe

My family has a condo on the lake in Tahoe, which I spent many a family vacation visiting.  It wasn't until my dad took over the schedule from my grandparents that I was able to rent it out with my friends and really have fun exploring instead of playing cards with my cousins or something equally banal.

The first time I have ever been in a canoe!

We did a lot of lounging, too, (Julie, Mark, and Michelle).

Checking out tree textures

I love the color of this moss

We got some pedal boats and rode around on a breezy day

Julie, the forrest queen 

Hamming it up on my rock pedestal

Nevada City

On another mini-adventure, I went to visit my mom up in Nevada City, CA, where I spent my late teens and early 20's.  Here especially, I lived for years without ever exploring the lake up the road, and rarely visiting the magnificent Yuba River because I hated hiking up and down to the water and back.  I always thought all rivers looked like that, with giant boulders that look like the remnants of an alien planet.  I also thought that all air was that sweet, and the noise of crickets at night and the sights of millions of stars in the sky were, well, everywhere in the world.  Boy was I wrong.  Living in Oakland can make a girl crazy for winding trails, lost highways, and looking up into the night.

My mom's all-wood craftsman house.  I stayed in the room with the circular window and made my zines and dreamed of a city life.

I took one of the dogs on a trail.  It was the same trail we used to go down from the park to drink beer when we were all underage.  It sure looks different in the daytime!

More cool moss on big granite rocks

I love the texture of this fuzzy caterpillar with the shiny river rocks

Sundown at the lake by my mom's house

A man-made lake.  It looks like it's from another world.

A trail above the Yuba River, shot by my mom

I like this weird fungus on the trees

Look at the beautiful color of this acorn!  A dark blue-purple and a warm earthy yellow.  It's exactly this kind of natural dynamic color relationships I keep trying to drill into my watercolor classes.

The South Fork of the Yuba

My little bro, Greg, and his moppet dog, Willis walked on the trail with us

Some giant mushrooms and lush foliage

Lots of wooden bridges and the beginning of Fall colors

Down at the aqua-colored river

The beautiful shapes of the boulders, carved by glaciers so many years and years ago

I'll be back for Thanksgiving!

BOSNIA (Part II)

Welcome to Bosnia (again)!
As my post below explains, I took a much-needed relaxing vacation to Bosnia this summer.  Here are some things I found striking in their cultural richness and unexpected variety, through the lens of an American artist on vacation.

A 500-year-old mosque

I love the details on these buildings

Reminder of the war- have you seen a shell-blast before?  These buildings were everywhere, but quickly being re-developed.

A shiny, state-of-the-art mall in Sarajevo

Those stone walls are the original, centuries-old mall

Graffiti is huge

My boyfriend's great-grandmother!

His great-grandfather was a kind of aristocrat and here is his  adjutant

Gorgeous mountain scenery everywhere

Village life- my boyfriend's cousin's second home

He bought this "village house" for $25,000!

I was totally obsessed with these gnome hut-like haystacks everywhere

A village

Back in Sarajevo- some art nouveau

We found this great art cafe called the Goldfish

It's bohemian insides

Where else can you get 40 homemade cookies for $10?

A fair came to town- here is my boyfriend's cousin and his baby Mirza, who at age one had a better Bosnian vocabulary.

There was really dramatic weather a lot of the time.  Here the heavens are opening up.

In our Sarajevo apartment, remnants of a grenade blast

I said goodbye to my sweet boyfriend.

When I came home I gave my dad a fez.

BOSNIA (Part I)

Welcome to Bosnia

This blog has been neglected like a brace-faced, sunburned, and uncombed red-headed step child.  I intend to post a ton about art in the near future.  However, as it goes in the summer, the art world takes a vacation and as it so happens, so did I.  I journeyed long and far to distant Eastern Europe, where my boyfriend, a native, has been staying for a while.  Having been there once before, I knew the language barrier would be my biggest obstacle, so I brought along books in English by some authors I came to think of as friends:  Willa Cather, Gustave Flaubert, Ernest Hemmingway, Vladimir Nabokov, and Dave Hickey.  I also brought a travel case of art supplies, and a suitcase of clothes I imagined epitomizing chic European travel. While I ended up taking a break from art completely, I did take in my travels like an artist would, focusing on beauty and details.  Here are some moments of beauty and culture I found myself inspired or surprised by.

In case you don't know, (and it's OK if you don't- I spend a lot of time explaining this to my family), Bosnia and Herzegovina is a very, very old country on the Western end of Eastern Europe, situated close to Italy and Germany.  It became part of communist Yugoslavia after WWII, but like Germany, eventually went back to the way it was, (for the most part), after forty or so years of Communist ways.

There it is- that little green country across the water from Italy's boot.

Unlike Germany, however, Yugoslavia had to endure a very bitter and bloody breakup with Serbia and Croatia first, leaving scars of genocide and fucked up reminders of human cruelty scattered across the Muslim towns and villages of Bosnia.  It's been 15 years since the war, and there has been a ton of development and revitalization.  It's still a terrible world economy, however, and countries like Bosnia bear the brunt of a lot of the world's financial instability.  I was reminded many times of my privileged American expectations in a still-developing country, like, where are the art galleries?  That said, it also has so many amazing things that we don't have, like a wealth of history, amazing, normally-free range and organic food, relaxing night life, and cheap beer.

Tuzla

I did a lot of this

And a lot of this- I ate amazing meals like oven-roasted trout for about $5

Tuzla's main square

Sarajevo's old town back streets

Old town tourist route

Beautiful, Austro-Hungarian details

I love these reliefs

There's no way I could find something like these mysterious doors in Oakland

Gypsy wedding!

Punk is not dead- it's just in Bosnia

Fakes, fakes, fakes- I could have dressed in knock-offs head-to-toe

I got stiffed with fake money, too

Look at the size of this beer!  2 Liters!

There are homeless dogs and kitties everywhere that the townspeople collectively feed.  I made little friends all over town.

A wild cat

This swan almost bit me, though

What a cute little buddy!

My favorite one

Stay tuned for Part II !