senseless acts of beauty

Back in boxes
4.13.2008

Next week we'll be pulling our rental house and garden apart to pack up and move again. My shoulders instantly slumped when the letter arrived saying we had 30 days to move in order to renovate and sell the place.

I'd become really smitten with this house, because it seemed like such a perfect fit for our arrival in Ashland. But as John Lennon once said, "Life is what happens when you're busy making plans". So, please wish us luck!

Labels: photography

posted by Liquid Sky Arts at 6:25 PM

Downtown in China Town
3.29.2008

We just came home from a whirlwind trip down to Southern California, to visit our family and old friends over Easter. It was so warm and sunny down there, just look at that blue sky!

My Aunt lives near China Town (one of our favorite old haunts in Los Angeles), and suggested we take a visit together to check out all of the eye-popping colors that they recently painted the buildings. It was definitely one of the highlights of our trip.

(I took these photos with my iphone. I'm so amazed at how well it captured all of the saturated colors. I'm terribly hooked on this gadget!)

Labels: photography

posted by Liquid Sky Arts at 10:08 AM

1.15.2008

I'm writing this post while we're on the road through the miracle of wireless Internet. Oh, the novelty!

I took these photographs at Ecola State Park, over the weekend. Every time I visit it's always just a little different in atmosphere.

Amazing, isn't it?

Labels: photography, The_North_Coast

posted by Liquid Sky Arts at 6:18 PM

The principle of moments
12.24.2007

This is one of my favorite photos of all time. I was 20 years old, roaming the streets of Rome with my father who had taken me with him on one of his business trips in December. We passed this alley way and there it was, the perfect Roman holiday scene. Lined up vespas, a tiny fiat, surrounded by enchanting old buildings with graffiti on the walls.... with a living tree decorated in white lights so slight of hand. Like a Christmas magic trick.

This Christmas Eve was so unusual. We unexpectedly went 4 wheel driving on the beach, a very Oregon thing indeed. This time though we found ourselves avoiding all of the scattered tree logs and driftwood that had washed up from the recent storm. So many foreign things on the beach we'd never seen before. Clouds of weird foam bubbles were gliding over the wet sand as if they themselves were living too. While the sandpipers skipped over them. It was a little alarming, but there was also something that felt truly wabi sabi about it, when the sun began to set.

Before we moved up here, I had read stories of beachcombers finding interesting things after a big storm like, messages in bottles, and lost cargo fallen off of ships. So, Shawn kept teasing me, "now go find the rich stuff"! (Rotten luck, not even one Nike.)

Happy Holidays Everyone, see you soon.

Labels: Everyday_Magic, photography

posted by Liquid Sky Arts at 4:58 PM

Our extreme home make-over (a.k.a. architectural botox)
11.16.2007

The other day I was looking through all of the messy renovation photos from our first home. There's such a strong story that emanates from them. I really wanted to find a special way to put them all together in a special place for us to look back on them as we grow older. So I was excited to rediscover the link on making linen bound books, sitting right there in front of me on Iphoto the other evening. That ping of inspiration hit me. Since then I've been forging my way through all of the hundreds of photographs I've taken over the past few years putting together this book to give to Shawn this Christmas. (Shh-- it's a secret.)

The previous owner was using the home as a domestic agency, and hadn't given the house any love since the 1970's. It had all of the ugly details that would scare off prospective buyers in a trendy historic neighborhood. Dark faux paneling throughout the living room, old brown industrial carpeting, wooden shingles and mirrors on the bedroom wall (yes, that's true!), and a front yard that was 3 inches deep of rocks with overgrown yuccas and sego palms.

Her own decor was really interesting too, as the house was chock full of religious icons, faux flower arrangements, & old autographed celebrity photographs... for goodness sake, there was even a large poster of a holographic Pope on the kitchen wall! That and well, nothing was functional. But it had cute lines, and was in a really good neighborhood at a decent price, so we couldn't help but see it as anything less then a gem in the rough. A lot of people thought we were crazy, and told us so repeatedly. Yet something about it still felt right about it to us, and all of the doors opened up one after another to make this crazy feat possible.

We affectionately called the blue painted front of the house, the "hollywood effect". As the rest of the house (the sides that weren't visible to the street traffic) were still covered with old white crumbly paint for the first few months.

I loved our kitchen. It was huge! You can catch a glimpse of how it originally looked in the upper right hand corner. Our first mission in the house was to clean up everything, so a coat of white paint and sticky tiles were our quick fix until the floors were later striped down to the fir wood floor underneath. We also added wainscoting and subway tiles. (We couldn't part with our vintage stove, it later moved up here with us to Oregon!)

Most of the "before" photos are too scary to show here in public (at least for my taste), my favorite pages are the "after". I still like to look at them with a deep knowing that anything is possible. Even with our tight budget.

It helped to build an Oasis around the chaos of the mess of renovation and the noises of saws and hammers. 4 years later when we decided it was time for us to move on the buyer told me that it was our little "paradise on Glassell". Hmm, now wouldn't that be a great title for the book!? (I really need a good title though, any brilliant ideas?!)

Labels: photography, renovation

posted by Liquid Sky Arts at 7:30 PM

6.03.2007

My neighbor has some serious garden mojo! She has these enormous Oriental Poppies trailing over her stone wall, that's certainly snared me envious. Aren't they gorgeous?!

Labels: photography

posted by Liquid Sky Arts at 7:15 PM

4.30.2007

Since our move I often find myself missing things of the familiar. Silly things that were once so accessible I would've never thought twice about them. Like five minute drives to Target, and escalators. (Yes, you read that right. I miss escalators!) But on the flipside one of the best things I can atest to about moving out of state is that there are an abundance of things to do that we've never done before.

This Sunday we decided to take a drive, blissed out by the sunny weather we headed across the bridge that crosses the Columbia river into Washington state to go see the lighthouse at Cape Disappointment.

Amazing how Shawn talked me into hiking with the bad shoes I was wearing, up the hill and down again. But even out of breath, with shoelaces that begrudgingly kept untying themselves it was so worth it. It always is. When I really stop to think about it, Target and escalators were a pretty good trade off. Just look at all of the beauty that surrounds us here, we definitely made out like bandits.

Here are a few photos of our garden's "mystery bulbs" that I had been wondering about. It turns out (the hundreds of green stems) were all bluebells waiting to open. Utterly enchanting. I love the sea of endless color, I wish I could better capture it on film to mirror the way it looks in person.

I hadn't realized just how out of date my Projects section had become on this website. I built it back around 2002, crazy how quick time flies. It's in dire need of broken link fixes and new material. This week I'll be updating with fresh photos and links in the miniature section. Big thanks to Jill, for reminding me!

Labels: photography, The_North_Coast

posted by Liquid Sky Arts at 9:00 PM