Eating at Dad's House

Today I went over to my dad's house to have some stir fry. For dinner almost every single day, my dad has a very simple diet, and he eats stir fry with kale, chard, rice, hot sauce, and sweet sauce. When I hang out with my dad, it has become a ritual that we go back to his apartment and he makes me stir fry while I sit on the rocking chair or his desk chair and watch him make my meal. Here are a few moments from today's ritual:

YUM:

Sitting in the desk chair:

My view:

FOOD:

Washing dishes and moments in between:

Walking together after eating:

My dad was also affected by a car crash last night; he was standing in a bus shelter, when all of the sudden someone pulled an illegal U-turn and rammed into the shelter. My dad was pushed back and fell into a bunch of broken glass. The other man who stood by my dad was able to get out of the way before being affected, but his groceries, which had been sitting on the shelter's bench, were completely smashed. If either my dad or the other man had been sitting on the bench, my dad said, they would have been in the hospital, "at best." 

The peculiar thing is that a few minutes before the crash, my dad had intuitively thought, what if a car crashed into this bus shelter? That's a lesson in listening to your intuition.

Look at my dad's hands. My hands are his hands, just a lot smaller. When I was little (and my hands were even smaller), I used to take a piece of paper and trace my dad's hand, and then I would put my hand inside the tracing and do the same thing again. A hand inside a hand. Our hands have always been exactly the same, and it is quite a comforting feeling. 

Extra Reading:

Steph Telesco: Telesco recently graduated from MassArt. I like her work because it feels familiar, yet it is a bit mysterious at the same time. There is enough mystery in her photos that keep you looking. Telesco's photographs explore home and the self, and all of her work feels very personal. 

Too Many Mousse

This evening, I made this chocolate mousse. I ended up learning that though you might think that one batch isn't going to suffice, three will probably be more than enough. The ending result was what I will call a "Sofia-amount" of chocolate mousse, which will make sense to those of you who know me well. It could also be recognized as a barfable amount of chocolate mousse; a month's worth. I really hope it condenses while it sits overnight in the fridge.

There are enough typical baking images in the world, so I decided to make some abstract work tonight. Here is my cooking experience,
mountains and peaks of mousse,
constellations of dirty water and whipped cream

In color:

And black and white:

Extra Reading: 

Redbubble (various photographers): Here are many more abstract images of food that I hope you'll enjoy.

Thanks for reading!

Watered Down

Water,
the small bodies and the big bodies
each one is seducing
once you're sucked in
you find yourself dripping
with wet madness

the black sea swallows up the world like a sea urchin

absorbing the lights,

the bridge,

the sounds and the cars,

those bikers biking

those walkers walking

you could almost just fall in

inside

that sea is cold, colder than hell,

but sometimes you sweat in a hot bath 

the skin on your legs getting red

and the sweat just rolling right off

becoming the large sea you bathe in

the steam is hot enough to burn you

as it always does

just as the black sea is always cold enough

to kill you from fright

Extra Reading:

Skye Del Viscio: The first thing that attracted me to this artist was the photograph she took of her mother from below, clad in a sunhat. I like Viscio's work because it is about home and the self (self-portraiture), which are subjects that are very near and dear to my heart. Photographs that are personal always have a comforting feeling to them, even if the subject matter is strange, sad, or angry. Viscio is about to finish her BFA at Massachusetts College of Art and Design, a huge accomplishment! You can also check our her blog here.

Green World

My favorite color is green, which is derived from the Old English and Middle English word, "grene," having the same root as the words, "grass" and "grow." The color is associated with life, growth, vivacity, and nature, as well as rebirth and immortality. Green is also a calm, grounded, and tolerant color, yet youthful at the same time. On the flip side, green is the color of envy and jealousy, and serpents and villains are often portrayed as green in color. Of course, green is also associated with money and wealth. We relate forward action with the color green (a green light at an intersection). My birthstone is green (peridot).

Today I took a walk, surrounded by my favorite color. Everywhere I looked was green, green from the rain. I began to capture everything in my favorite color, and now I have a plethora of little memories, little frames:

Extra Reading:

Daniel Hjorth: I love Hjorth's project about young ice swimmers from Denmark. The kids he photographs are as young as seven, and submerge themselves in water that is as low as negative two degrees. Hjorth captures the kids' expressions directly after they come out of the water (after about ten to fifteen seconds of being under). Their skin is so bright, their expressions raw. 

How I See My Grandmother

My grandma, Donna, came over today for Easter. She was able to leave the little room she lives in right now, the one she has to obediently stay put in for six weeks while the latest of her many hip surgeries is given time to heal. In the past year, my grandfather has developed dementia, and now he and my grandmother, who have been married for over fifty years, are growing too old and fragile to take care of each other. Grandma wants to go home so badly in order to tend to my grandfather, but she has to wait through the slow healing of her hip. It is interesting to watch Donna have to be in a place I know she hates--she cannot walk, or do hardly anything on her own while she heals. On top of that, she has lost much of her eyesight. Still, she has such a sunny personality that if you didn't really know her, you would think she was as happy as ever. To watch this internal battle of sunshine and darkness go on inside her, is what it is like to be a part of her family.

Extra Reading:

Allison Diaz: You can view Diaz's work on both her blog and her Flickr. Diaz makes beautiful, kaleidoscopic images that look almost woven. 

Melinda Gibson: Gibson, from London, creates photo montages with images from the book, "The Photograph as Contemporary Art" by Charlotte Cotton. Gibson's final images, which have the same name, question copywriting laws and our educational system. A book, as Gibson argues, has its own copyright, and only ten percent of the work can be reproduced lawfully. However, anyone can go on the internet, save an image, and do whatever they wish with it. Each image that Gibson has created to question the way we define copywriting laws is dynamic both aesthetically and conceptually. Go take a look, and have a happy Easter!

Collaging Myself

Today I began cutting out many different things from a magazine so I could make a collage. I came across one large photograph of a woman whose eyes I liked, and I cut them out. Empty holes were left in her head, and I realized the altered photograph now looked like a mask. I held up the page to my face, and this is what I got:

After seeing this happy accident, I decided to collage a few more self-portraits, and here they are:

Extra Reading:
Daniel Gordon: Gordon creates interesting, almost violent-looking portrait collages that I love. There is something about the art of collage that looks so cool, as it is usually a little undone.