ALOHA FROM OREGON

A beautiful sunny day, instead of cold, grey and damp!

      As some of you may already know, it has been an epic journey of tears, nervous breakdowns, planes and paperwork, but here I am, at the Sitka Center of Art and Ecology for an artist-in-residency program. I'm still in a bit of a daze that I actually made it here, but I'll need to get over that soon.

     So what am I doing here? I was told I could do anything I liked, which freaks me out (in a good way). The area is fairly isolated and I don't have a car, so I can't go procrastinate in a local bar too often. 

     My introductory show and tell presentation was last night. I don't think I was very well prepared, so I just replaced real content with a few photos of Kali (my cat), which worked, kind of, I think.

Look at that little ecosystem!

     I'm forming a vague idea for my project, which I will have to later rewrite to make it sound all thesis like, because I'm surrounded by smart people. I'll be walking around with my camera, taking photos of moss, lichen and mycological life, and I'm growing mold in my studio, which, at the moment, is like watching paint dry. Perhaps I should just leave the samples in the fridge, and forget about them, like what normal people would do? The overall concept is to investigate our relationship with these lifeforms, using metals as the medium of expression. It will be narrowed down eventually, but for now, I'm quite happy to be all over the place. 

    Quite a few people were enthusiastic about my proposal ("My daughter had a pet slime mold! I'm so excited for you!"), so thank you all for the moral support! I'm glad I'm not surrounded by hypochondriacs.

     I am eternally grateful to Sitka, and all its lovely people that make it happen, for giving me this wonderful opportunity to be a citizen-scientist-artist. If you are in the area, feel free to drop by and check out the progress of the work!