Sunny Philadelphia

I may, finally, be pulling myself up from my deep, dark pit of work. My fingers are clinging to the edge…it’s just one good pull, a last ounce of effort and I’ll be over the top.

It hasn’t been all back-breaking lately, though. The weather has been that perfect mix of sunny and low humidity that comes to Philadelphia once in a blue moon. Everyone is out on the street with their kids or their sweetheart…today I drove for a while behind a tiny octogenarian on an American-flag plastered scooter. I guess it was just a good day to go puttering around South Philly.

Around the block a church is holding a St. Padre Pio festival. Last night D. and I caved in to the sound of rock ‘n roll and the smell of funnel cakes wafting in our windows. We tossed our homework aside and went out to join the party. D. lost a fiver on a game of chance (it all goes to the church, right?) and I had some incredible burnt sugar gelato (think creme brulee in a cup).

D. has been taking lots of pictures walking around Philly lately, so here’s a little taste of our city…

Ai!

Oh my goodness, it kind of dawned on me how bad I’ve been about updating the past couple of weeks!

I’m trying to wrap up the two (2!) websites I’m in the process of building – one in Dreamweaver, for D., and one for me in Flash. You can see one of the image pages for mine, above. Everything is almost done with it, it’s just really busy work (mostly in Illustrator) that I’ve got left. I have to say, I’m really having a lot of fun with it! Hard, sometimes a real pain, but there’s something really rewarding when I finally get the damn thing to work!

Anyways, hope to post a link to the real launch soon!!

It all comes together

I hope everyone had a fabulous holiday weekend – I know I did! We kicked it off Friday with D.’s art opening, which was awesome. Besides spending all summer making the pieces, it took him over 10 hours just to install the birds. And almost all of that was on a ladder with his arms above his head! But I think it was well worth it. Tons of people stopped by to check out his work, gape and ask lots of questions. Almost everyone who saw it thought it was beautiful, especially at night when the lights reflected hundreds of swirling birds on the walls around the space.

The weather was perfect and the crowds were huge. And on top of all that, he got a write-up on the Philadelphia CityPaper blog (our biggest local arts and entertainment paper) and his university is contacting him today to write a news story for their paper. (Publicity was my contribution – I made the postcards, laminated signs, took photos and sent out half a dozen press releases!)

It took me quite a bit of experimenting to figure out how to take some nighttime photos of the installation, but I think I got some decent shots. You can check out the entire album on flickr, but here’s some highlights:

The full installation!

Visitors take a look

A different view

D. talks to the public about his work

Night birds

Get out your party hats!

I turned 26 today! Wowza!!

I probably should write something personal and thoughtful about turning the corner in the direction of 30, or life or somesuch, but I’m frankly pretty tired from workin’ hard, playing hard and generally packing as much into every day as I can manage.

So my birthday present to myself? Going to bed early and waking up late, followed by a four-day weekend! Sweeeeet!

(Oh, you’re wondering what’s that at the top of the post? A juicy blueberry muffin I made from a small portion of my frozen berry treasure trove!)

Breakthrough!

OMG! My Flash site now has LINKS! That WORK!!

It’s starting to feel like a real goshdarn site! Can’t wait until it launchs and you all can see…

The Installation Goes Up!

While I slave in front of the computer screen this week, D. is out on a ladder, making sure that his show looks perfect in time for the big opening day this Friday.

He spent several consecutive days hanging his porcelain birds and they look fabulous! So many people stopped to check them out, stare and ask him questions. I can’t wait until we have the lights up and it’s nighttime, and people can walk in and under the entire sculpture! Also at night you can’t see the microfiliment (fishing line) that they hang on – it just looks like a flock of amazing birds taking off from the center of the park.

The head of our gallery also encouraged him to install the project again in the spring for a major ceramics conference that is coming to Philadelphia  – a huge compliment for his first public work!

These photos are from the first day, so you can’t get a sense for the entire finished design. But I think you can see where he’s going with it, and how realistic and lively these pieces look as they’re hung. Watch out for more pics of the finished work later this week!!