Hey Tumblrs!

My sister, Laura, has a new blog where she is posting recipes, photos of her daughter & documenting the daily disasters that are her adorable dogs. If any of those items interest you, bop on over to her corner of the internet.

Happy 44th Birthday, Dan. Every time August 5th rolls around I can hear you singing the birthday cake song in my head… “Al is great, she made me a chocolate cake!”

Dan’s been gone a little over a month now, and I haven’t written a post about this yet. I’m not sure what to write, to be honest. There is a lot about this experience that I don’t want to share on a blog. I don’t know that I will ever share more than this one post. Part of me is unsure of even putting this much out there.

I suppose that for now, this is enough. I hope that where you are there is cake and ice cream aplenty. I’m thinking about you today.

Have you ever been in a full parking lot hunting for a spot, only to have someone come out of nowhere and steal the spot you’ve finally located after what seemed like an hour of searching? Well, my grandfather had that experience today in the grocery store parking lot and it reminded him of a story about his friend Beryl.

Beryl had been driving around the parking lot for awhile, when she finally located a spot. As she put on her blinker and started to turn into a spot, a young whipper snapper swooped in driving a sports car and stole her spot right out from under her nose. After he parked, he jumped out of his car and swaggered over to Beryl where he said…

“It’s great to be young and sporty!”

Beryl looked at him, revved her engine and rammed into the back of his car, venting out all her frustration at his rudeness. She then smiled back at him and said…

“But it’s better to be old and rich!”

As my grandma has gotten older, she has a tendency not to mince words. Things come out a bit harsher than they did before. Yesterday, I was home in Atlanta and decided to stop by her house for lunch before I went to get my (much needed) highlights & haircut. When I walked in the door, the first thing she said to me was:

Grandma: “What did you DO to your HAIR?!”

Me: “Huh?”

Grandma: “Your hair?!”

Me: “Oh, well, I’m getting it cut today… Do you not like it?”

Grandma: “Hmph.”

Me: “Well, I guess you’re just gonna have to cope with it for the next hour…”

Grandma: [scowling] “MmmHmm.”

*side note: I hadn’t done anything drastic with my hair, it was just back in a pony tail and desperately needed to be touched up. Lesson: Don’t let it go that long, and if you do, schedule the visit with Grandma for after the haircut.

When I was in my 6th Quarter at the Portfolio Center, I was in a class that challenged me to design a chair by combining an art movement with a personal narrative. It was a difficult task, but over the course of two months a chair came to life out of millions of small sketches. I built a 5 inch model of the chair to present as my final project for that quarter out of a broom and some balsa wood. It wasn’t quite enough to give my vision life, and so I located Walt Wittman, a man who does beautiful work with wood. We had a series of conversations and he took on my challenge. When I graduated from Portfolio Center, my chair was finished and it was beautiful. I had it professionally shot by Peter Hobbs and it looked great.

I submitted the work to a few design shows and was pleasantly surprised when I found out that I had earned a place in the Graphis New Talent 2010 Annual. After that, I sort of forgot about the design shows and continued on my job hunt.

Yesterday, I was informed by Hank Richardson (President of Portfolio Center and my instructor for the Chair Class) that I had been honored in the National Student Show and Conference. To make it that much more exciting, Chuck Schiller chose my piece as his Judges Pick in the Awards Show. His comments can be seen in this video.

I do feel that it is important to say Thank You to the people who helped me make this chair. All the other students in my Chair Class who pushed me, Hank, Walt, Peter and my family (who my personal narrative is about). Thanks so much.