Life on the Fjord

I have finally gotten around to posting some pics of our Summer life in Norway:
Norway Summer 2011 - a set on Flickr. We don’t have much internet access (a true blessing!), so we are limited to checking email once or twice a day at most.

Yeah, I know, I have trouble holding the camera straight and I didn't take the time to fix them in Photoshop... ;)

Happy New Year

It was a lovely end to 2010 with a long road trip through the South to visit friends and family. After stops in Harrisonburg, Atlanta, Charlotte & Richmond, we spent the night in Williamsburg for a romantic 18th century Christmas evening right as the blizzard hit. We have been hibernating since we returned to Connecticut in preparation for a very busy semester. I have finally learned, after a few decades, that it is critical to have some complete “down time” in order to maintain balance and productivity. I schedule it in now. Purposefully. Of course, everyone’s idea of “down time” is different...

In other news, some of my iPod drawings have been published in a UK drawing journal along with a short essay about the work. TRACEY: Drawing and Visualisation Research, published by the Loughborough University, School of Art and Design, Loughborough, Leicestershire, UK: The Drawing and Technology Issue. I'm very pleased with the drawings, but never happy with the writing. Forgive me - I am an artist, first and foremost.

My first semester as Chair of Visual & Performing Arts has passed, but the tasks continue to mount for this next semester. I am learning so much, which is good, because I love learning. I am also being stretched and challenged in new and different ways each day, which also fulfills my desire for growth. Not all is sweetness and light - I do experience growing pains on a regular basis.

Here’s to a happy 2011, everyone. Best wishes to all.

Fresh Danish Peas ;)

Holiday Craft Session

Pictures of things made with my daughter and niece while in Richmond, Virginia for Thanksgiving break.

Traveling Fool

I am writing this post in Richmond, Virginia. I have been here for a week in order to help my sister take care of her husband – he has just had a liver transplant and is having an amazing recovery.

I have traveled more in the past year than at any other time in my life. The cities list reads as follows: Oslo, Copenhagen, Florence, Volda, Copenhagen, Volda, Stockholm, Lillehammer, New Haven, Richmond, Philadelphia, Princeton, Nags Head, and Richmond, again. I have only listed places I spent two or more nights and I may be forgetting someplace.

It has been a brilliant year. One of the side effects of all this travel is an odd sense of dislocation. No longer here or there, but somewhere in between. It’s almost like I could settle down anywhere I stopped along the way. My continuity has been continually broken – just when I get into a schedule and a rhythm – work, research, exercise, daily life – I am uprooted by car, train, plane, boat or bus. I have an eight-hour train ride back to New Haven tomorrow. I generally use this time to think, read, write, and reflect. Eight hours “by myself” – a rare thing, indeed. I will savor the time.

Distance gives an interesting perspective to your life. Though, I think I have had enough perspective and distance for a while and I long for a good six months or so without travel. I dream of an unbroken daily and weekly schedule – which, hopefully, will settle in at the end of this month when classes resume.

Wake, shower, coffee, breakfast, school/work, dinner, family, sleep and repeat. Mmmmm, it sounds lovely.

The Hybrid Book

I am back from my last public presentation commitment for the academic year. I was on a panel at the Hybrid Book Conference at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. It was a satiating three days for a hungry visual artist. There were two exhibitions and a quite large artists’ book fair attached to the conference. The visual stimulation was overwhelming. My Pentax has died on me, so I have not a single picture to show for it.

I was the very last panel speaker for the event – a schedule I have had before at conferences. It’s a tough spot to be in. You never get relief from the performance anxiety that comes with public speaking. You have to follow everyone else – in some cases quite brilliant speakers. And finally, if anyone on your panel runs over their time, you get cut short. With all that said, I think it went well. My panel was called “The Reciprocity of Books and Digital Media.” I spoke about “the artistic subversion of mobile technologies in the creation of book-like experiences.”

I didn’t get to see much of Philadelphia, but the train station and arts district were impressive. I’m looking forward to getting to spend more time there at some point in the future. Well, it’s back to work – teaching an online class, continuing projects started on my sabbatical, finishing my daughter’s school year and all the other odds & ends that are begging for attention.

*The Amazon Kindling is by Rob Cockerham and Windell H. Oskay. You can read all about it here and see more images here.

Long Weekend in Stockholm

Great city, fun weekend, many pictures.

Three Days in Volda, Norway

Teaching, learning, and communing with Torill. I return to Oslo tonight.

Christmas in Copenhagen

Last weekend we took the boat (DFDS) to Copenhagen. Tivoli was dressed in a brightly lit Christmas market and the entire city was even more charming than in the summer. One of my favorite excursions was the Glypotek - I’ll try to post the Glypotek pictures tomorrow. I finally bought another cable for my camera so that I could download pictures so I have a bit of a backlog...

We are back and...

thoroughly exhausted from walking and looking at art, design, architecture, archeology, and antiques for 5-10 hrs per day. We filled our eyes with the Renaissance - Botticelli, Leonardo, Michaelangelo, etc. A. kept up with us the whole time as we dragged her on buses, trains, taxis, etc. We had a very good time, but it seems weird to be coming back to Norway instead of New Haven. There’s actually a New York Times article today about our street in New Haven. There are lots of pictures and descriptions of all lovely neighbors and I even get a brief mention in one of the paragraphs. Reading it makes me homesick and a bit lonely...

While we were in Florence would do the sites by day and after August fell alseep about 9 or so, we would turn on BBC World News and watch the US unravel. In the past week or so our mortgage company (Washington Mutual) has gone under and now our bank (Wachovia) is either being taken over by Citigroup or Wells Fargo. Being this far away is a bit scary and impotent - what can we do? what do we need to do? what happens if...?

Today, I’m restoring order in the house for back to school and back to work week. I’ll do a blog post on Italy with pictures in the next couple of days and another on Italians and their cell phones on the Mobile Misuse Blog - what a trip...

København 08

I have posted pictures of the annual “vacation from our vacation”.

Train Travel

I spent the weekend in a haunted house. Well, not so much “spooky haunted” as “sentimental haunted.” A. and I took the train down to Virginia last weekend. We stayed in the room that was my father’s – the room that he spent much of the last two years of his life in and the room in which he died. All the pictures in the house look different to me now. When I look at pictures of my father as a child or a young man, I have a completely different view of them. Gazing upon these images brings feelings to the surface ranging from sadness to fear – sadness that he is no longer here and fear that is brought on by the recognition of my own mortality.

I am shifted into an alternate existence when I visit the place I was raised – like a planet in retrograde moving backwards through space and time, reflecting, reminiscing, and losing myself completely in memory. We got back on Monday. It was a long train journey with delays from Virginia to Connecticut. It has taken me two days to readjust – two days to move back to the point I was located before I left. I am here...

Just three and a half weeks until A. and I leave for Norway and there are 1 million tasks undone.

Return from Abroad

Just got back last night from being with this blue alien in Oslo. Need a day or two to recover before I post more. There is photographic evidence...

Early Morning Over Oslo

Puttering in the hotel room before I check out this morning. I have this amazing view over the city, but I left my Pentax cable in New Haven, so all I can post this morning is a fuzzy little shot from my webcam. Bestafar also has a Pentax SLR, so I'll try his cable this weekend while I'm at their house. I want to upload photos from the trip to Flikr.

But, now, for the real news: I have received a Fulbright for research in Norway next year. YeeeHaaa! (as we say in the South)