#12 - Collecting

I've only just started collecting teacups within the past year, but I'm looking forward to a big collection someday.  For the longest time I only drank tea out of a mug, mostly because that was all we had at my house.  Now almost always drink it out of one of my teacups.

The one in the front is the first one I got.  I found it at a thrift store for a quarter, but I loved how unique it looked.  Right now I see it as a hobby, but one day I would like a whole wall with every inch filled with teacups, like Andy Warhol's soup can art, and I want every one to be different. 

Lately, I've been drinking a lot of tea, and sometimes my roommate/friend and I will have 'Midnight Tea.'  It's pretty much what it sounds like: we drink tea in the middle of the night.  We also talk about our limited knowledge of tea etiquette and how hard it is to hold a teacup with your pinky out.  Cheesy, I know, but I like it.

Sugar cube?

So, Four Women Walk Into Sonny's...

I'm a poor college student, so I love free food.  Today, my aunt, my cousin, and their friend came through town on their way east and they took me to Sonny's.  We had the craziest server I have ever been served by.  The hostess jokingly warned us about him when we came in, but we just thought she was playing.  Oh, we were so wrong...
He messed with us the whole time, and I had to threaten to bring "the look" out.  You know, this one:

At one point, when my cousin asked for more lemons, he came by our table and pulled one out of his pocket to give to her before revealing that he had a whole dish of them.  When he heard about the look, he tried his best to make sure I had everything I needed, but I ended up having to give it to him.  He was quickly swayed by the look, but isn't everyone?

When I surreptitiously took all the napkins, he made a big deal about it.  When we got outside, my aunt said something to the effect of, "What, is buying napkins for Sonny's now?"

I have never ever laughed in two hours as much as I did tonight. 

#11 - Graffiti

First, let's review my experience with graffiti.

For anyone from my class reading this, this is the tobacco barn I mentioned.  For people, from Lake City, you know what I'm talking about.  For everyone else, well, look at it! It's the just the ugliest thing.  This is what I grew up knowing as graffiti, and this is the reason why I've always had a bad opinion of it.  This side of graffiti is what I don't like.  Then, I took this, literally less than a block from my apartment complex:

It's on the back side of a business, and it's just so ugly.  I can't even read it and I can't even begin to understand why someone put this here.  The most horrible graffiti I saw in Tallahassee, though, was a tag on a sculpture.  It's so rude to deface someone else's art with your own.  I was offended and it wasn't even mine!  The lecture on graffiti was one of the hardest for me, but I did see some things I liked, things that didn't harm the buildings they went up on.  That's the stuff I like.

Awkward Naked People

Victory is mine.

To understand why, you need to know that I came from a community college, where models in drawing classes were almost nonexistent, and frankly, they were clothed.  When I graduated, my drawing professor suggested that I should get all the "model" classes in as soon as possible, since she heard that they were cutting the funding for them.  So when I managed to snag the last seat in Figure Drawing I, I was excited.  Then I realized that the models were going to be nude.  I had come to a conflict.  I draw people, therefore I should take figure drawing.  However, I've always found naked people really awkward.  I was THE MOST nervous I have ever been about a class.

Now fast forward to the end of the semester.  Figure drawing? Favorite drawing class EVER.  I win.  In the beginning, though, it was pretty awkward, but I got over it pretty quickly.  I overcame my fear of awkward naked people!  Now, if only I can snag Figure Drawing II during drop/add...

(Portrait of a classmate in charcoal)

(Don't be offended by the unfinished naked charcoal man!  He did the craziest poses sometimes...)

#10 - Art and Life

I love drawing people.  I always have, even from the time I was in kindergarten.  So somewhere in the endless sketchbooks full of people, I started having this "thing" with faces.  The first thing I notice about a person is their face and their features.  Noses, eyes, lips, ears, the curve of the face, the chin.  This leads to the more interesting fact that I have a memory for faces.  I can see someone a handful of times (sometimes even just once), and if I see them again, I'll remember them, even if I don't know their name.  I was best friends with a girl in my dance class when I was four and then we didn't see each other for years. I recognized her years later in high school.  In that whole expanse of time, we hadn't seen each other once.  I've also seen people on the bus here at FSU and recognized them somewhere else on campus.  I'm just a face person, I guess.

(This fabulous picture of me was achieved by shaking the camera while taking the picture.  I am in no way a photographer, but I thought it turned out pretty cool.)

#9 - Identity

Where I grew up is river country.  Looking back can see that now my first experience with the Suwannee River was a huge deal, even thought it wasn't at the time, and even thought I don't remember it.  I feel like the river has always been there in my life.  It's a part of who I am.

(Me, my sister, and our Dog Ranger in the Suwannee,  taken by my mom)

There isn't one single defining event that I can remember, but being exposed to the outdoors and the river so much in my childhood has given me a love for anything woodsy, wet, and organic.  In high school my family bought three kayaks and we started communing with the river that way.  No motors and loud noises, just the swish of the paddle in the water, the plunk of turtles hurtling into the water, and the call of a hawk in the sky.

 (On the Santa Fe River, taken by my mom)

Ultimately, my nature exposure has led to my love of the national parks and the fabulously bearded John Muir.  These things are and ingrained part of my life.

I pretty much have tannin running through my veins.

(John Muir, from Wikipedia)

(My Suwannee River, taken by me)

(Bryce Canyon National Park, taken by me)

#8 - 3x3 Collages

I had to get very creative for this post, because I don't really have "collage supplies" running around my apartment.  This first one I made from my old community college ID and an expired credit card:

Our lives are recorded, nearly everything we do.  We have digital profiles with all of our information.  We've been out into a system.   When does it become overkill?

 This one above I made after scouting around everywhere for bar codes.  As I was making this one I kept thinking about the mark in the book of Revelation.  One day we all will have to make a decision: in the world, or of the world?

Last, I collected leaves from the parking lot and did some ripping and gluing.  Leaves are overlooked and disliked, but they are a beautiful creation, right down to every cell.  Trees go through seasons in their lives, just like people do.  They are renewed in springtime, just like Jesus renews me.

Appalachian

I was born in Florida, and I grew up here too, but from the time I was a little girl I always felt like North Carolina was my second home.  During the summer my family would drive up there to visit my Grandpa and stay in his cabin in the mountains.  When it was time to leave, I didn't want to go.  You know how it is when you visit family.  You have to go, but it gets easier the further you get from their house.  But I had to leave more than just people and a house.  I had to leave the whole place.  For hours I would have to stare at the mountains going by and know that I was leaving them.

 (Trail in Mount Mitchell State Park.  I took this myself)

When I woke up this morning and went outside it was overcast and nippy, kind of like a foggy evening in the Appalachians.  It made my heart hurt.  There is something about mountains that I love, but I can't quite place it.  Maybe it's the seemingly unending wilderness that you can't find in other places.  What I love about the mountains in North Carolina is the smell.  Yep, the smell.  Earthy and damp.  It's how Heaven smells, I'm sure.  I have a friend who once told me that she loved the way a dentist's office smelled, and that's how she knew she wanted to be a dentist.  Well, I love the way North Carolina smells, and that's why I want to spend my every waking moment there.

(I also took this picture, but I'm not telling you where in NC it is...it's a secret.)

Living in the city while I'm at college is rough.  I've never been a city girl to begin with.  But I comfort myself with the hope of the Appalachians in my future.  I just know God is going to get me there.

# 7 - Perceptual Cramp

I have always been a doodler.  My notebooks from all the way back to elementary school have pages in between school work filled with drawings.  I draw on all my notes, usually in the margins.  When I started college and I actually had to have plans and sketches and everything mapped out before I could start on something, I found solace in my doodling.  When my mind would go south after getting a new assignment, I would doodle things out.  Sometimes I skipped the sketchbook and notes, took a dry erase marker, and doodled all over my bedroom mirror.  Doodling helps me clear my head and focus.  It gets all that what-am-I-going-to-do-for-this-assignment-freak-out craziness out of my head and I can calm down.