Nature Narratives, Fairmount Arts Crawl, APRIL 25

Tomorrow is the big day and I'm psyched!

I'm calling it Nature Narratives and each piece is a series from one walk once in a place. The only piece that is a collage of different times and places is the grid wall hanging in the back with small 4 x 6" photos of color and chaos. The majority of the images are in wall border strips that wrap from one wall to another and are in sequence from the start of the trip to the end. I selected walks from Ocean City, Cape May, the Wissahickon trail here in Philly, Tigertail Beach in Florida and the Cherry Blossom Walk (21st Street between Parrish and Brown). Also in the show are a wall of quads, four images in a grid, of pictures from my hike in the Ashville, NC Blue Ridge Mountains, taken just last month.

I hung the show last night and it was really strange to not have any frames and trying to get everythig level and flush on the walls was a challenge, as was the huge wall in the back of the Beehive Hair Salon. I'm not a big fan of rickety ladders and heights, I just imagine stories of people breaking their backs or scenes from America's Funniest Home Videos of people doing stupid things, but all want well.

I'm not sure how poeple will respond to the images, since they are not just pretty pictures of flowers or waterfalls or something. Some are dark and wintery and have fungus and lichen and bare trees or pictures of birds partially obscured in tree branches, but I wanted to show the honest spaces, not just the edited pretty bits, the whole experience. I've been working on this problem since I was in college, and I think this is an exciting way to present a place and a time.

Let me know what you think.

I'll be there tomorrow from 2-6 pm selling quad prints of select images from the show and cards. Stop by, despite the rain. They'll be a band, food and drinks and hair demos going on! Beehive Hair Salon is closest to 23rd and Fairmount Streets, across from the CVS at 2323 Fairmount. Everything in the hood will be open for the Fairmont Arts Crawl with artists and free food and drinks.

Street Photos

On the street in Philly.

Write in Your Caption Below: What Are They Thinking?
The best caption wins a free card of the image and caption, so check back to see if you won!

Caption Contest: What Are They Thinking?

Write in Your Caption Below: What Are They Thinking?

The best caption wins a free card of the image and caption, so check back to see if you won!

Etsy-Tastic Spring Items!

Weekend Garden Project

Today I finally got to this project, making a marker for my bed in the community garden, so I can be friendly with my neighbors who ask where is your bed? And this makes it easy to see. It reminds me of houses at the shore that have the cute names and signs.

I found a cement remnant in our rock pile that was about 8" tall and 6" across, cleaned the surface with a rag, and applied a layer of white acrylic paint, then went back over the edges with more white. I mixed blue, green and white together and painted a graduated fade from top to bottom.

The letters were harder to paint, so I painted the letters, then outlined them with a slightly darker green, then went back over the interior of each letter. I thinned out the paint to paint the flowers and it was much easier to work with. My garden has a huge lavender plant, so I wanted to make sure that was featured on my sign.

I dug a shallow trench for the bottom and back filled dirt behind the stone and stepped on it to firm it up so the rock doesn't fall over. You can see there's not much happening in the garden in terms of growth, so this is a bright happy reminder that all will be colorful again!

Silent Spring

I'm finishing the book Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, which if you have not read, I think you should. Even though it was printed in 1962, the historic systematic poisoning of our environment is something all people should be aware of and it just makes me want to know more about what is happening now.

Rachel was a marine biologist for the US Fish and Wildlife Service and she blew the whistle on the use of super strength industrial poisons in the water, air and soil, meant to kill a pesky plant or bug but actually killing humans and wildlife and their children for generations to come.

Her observations are supported by studies and stories of rivers where all the fish were killed, sprayings that killed livestock, and people dying of nervous system damage and cancer.

The book was widely read when it came out and lead to public outrage (as well as death threats) and the banning of DDT one of the worst offending pesticides. But as Al Gore points out in the introduction, we still produce DDT, we just ship it off to foreign countries for them to use.

Some of Carson's arguments are very relevant today. She compares the fight against cancer to the fight against infectious diseases of the last century. Instead of just treating people who had diseases like Tuberculosis, scientists looked for the environmental causes and prevented the disease (by removing contaminated communal pump handles). For some reason, though, we think of cancer as a disease we fight through treatment of the afflicted. We don't spend research dollars removing carcinogens from our food, air, soil and water. And she points out, there will never be one magic pill to cure cancer because it has too many causes and forms in the body.

I thought this was going to be an environmentalist book about the planet. But, it turns out this is a book about humans and how we have poisoned ourselves.

Some of the things we can do to combat all this is think about the soap, detergent, bug spray, air cleaner, bathroom cleanser, fertilizer, paint stripper we use and how we use it. Even phosphates in the water can make us more susseptible to cancers. We can think about where our food comes from and how it was treated while it was growing and what was in the soil it grew in and the water it was watered with. We can learn about the companies we live around and buy from and the by-poducts of their manufacturing. And we can learn about the historic dumping and desecrating of our surroundings. I found out recently the place where I work is next to land where lead was being processed for decades. Yikes! We can also support great folks like the ones below: GRID magazine is a Philly free magazine focused on local sustainability. What more could we ask for. I love all of their projects, restaurants, articles, it's just great. The Green Project is in New Orleans and I wish we had one here in Philly. They recycle paint and housing materials and household items, fixtures and furniture. This stuff just heads straight to the landfill in Philly. They have awesome craft workshops, used clothing redesign contests, art supplies and a warehouse and yard full of items for your house. It's fun to look at their items on flickr.

On the upside Philly is now doing Recycling Pays! Yeah! They scan your bucket, weigh your recycyclables and you can redeem points for stuff online! Now if I can just find a container big enough...

LOVE GIVEAWAY on CHIC & PINK BLOG

Don't miss the giveaway on Chic & Pink's blog of LOVE items: an 8 x 10 Photograph, a 5 x 7 card and a chunky LOVE magnet! Follow the link http://chicnpink.blogspot.com/2010/02/etsy-extravaganza-giveaway-day-3_10.html

and leave a commnet on her site about your favorite etsy item of mine! You can also win a 10oz Sugar Shaker Pure Soy Candle in the scent of your choice from Flower Child 417!

Thanks Chic & Pink for the feature!

New Banners for My Shops! Let Me Know What You Think!

I just created two new banners since my trial of Adobe Elements is getting ready to time out. What do you think? I changed the photo shop banner because it still had paintings in it from when my shops were united. I also found a seller on etsy who makes coffee cup sleeves out of your shop banner! How awesome is that! I ordered one of each of the shops. Here's the old one:

I'm not sure I love the overall color tone, I may keep working on it.

I really like the painting shop.

I'm also working on a ceramics shop banner for a shop COMING SOON!
Bookmark it now! I'll be getting pieces up there soon!

New Painting!

Here's my newest painting! It's another scene I photographed at the Woodford house in Fairmount Park, here in Philly. I have to tour these other houses.

PHOTOGRAPH GIVEAWAY:

Giveaway Day Has Arrived!

And the Winner is...............

Paintingpam!

Congrats! You'll be getting a free 8 x 10 photograph of your choice from my etsy shop, www.allisonostertag.etsy.com

You can follow Pam at her blog: http://paintingpam.blogspot.com

I went old-school and put everyone's name on a piece of paper, folded it, put it in a bag and asked a unbiased party (Emily, my coworker) to pick a name. Sorry for those of you who didn't win, but I was really excited by the response so I'll be doing this again soon! Check back for more info! Thanks everyone who is now following my blog! BTW, I would have held the drawing at noon, but we had an office meeting until 2!

FREE 8 x 10 PHOTOGRAPH GIVEAWAY!

I'm giving away one free 8 x 10 Photograph of your choice, and you can choose from any image in my etsy shop that is 8 x 10 or larger! All it takes to enter is to leave a comment someplace here on my blog (any posting)! When you leave your comment, be sure to mention you'd like to be included in the giveaway! The drawing will be in two weeks and I will notify the winner by e-mail.

New Year, New Fabulous Cookbook!

For the last couple of years I've treated myself to a new cookbook every year and this year I'm so excited by "My New Orleans" by John Besh. It's a huge beautiful coffeetable book with fantasticphotographs, but what impresses me the most is his mission to save the rituals, incomperable local ingredients, and what makes New Orleans different from getting muddied by post-Katrina influx and disorganization. With sections on celebrations like the Feast of St. Joseph and Revillion, features on strawberries (from the North Shore strawberry festivals), creole tomatoes, figs, seafood and odd items like mirlitons you'll find out alot about New Orleans you didn't even know. The writing is beautiful. Besh grew up in Slidell, LA and trained in restaurants there and in Europe, fought in Desert Storm and returned to the area to settle with his family where he runs several restaurants, so the stories are personal and the photos feature family and people he knows from the city.

I was most impressed with the section on the Vietnamese community and the new Urban Farm Besh is supporting, a 28 acre farm being developed by the community to allow locals to farm, hold a market and sell to local restaurants. Besh also raises his own hogs and cattle in town for use in his recipes. His comittment to local food is a huge asset to rebuilding a sustainable local economy that benefits the residents of New Orleans.

Last year I picked up these two cookbooks at the Big Blue Marble bookstore next to Weaver's Way co-op in Mt. Airy