September 6th, 2020: Experiments with ink and water

It’s been a while since I’ve added a blog post entry. Like a lot of people, I’ve been self quarantining and gotten into a little bit of a rut creatively. There are only so many angles I can shoot of my pets, as cute as they are. I’ve also been focusing a lot of my energy on another project I’ve been working on this year: 52 Creative Endeavors. I try to have one overarching goal for the year that I honestly hardly ever achieve but it helps to have something to work towards. Last year I was complaining to a couple of friends that my work has zapped the creativity out of me and I’ve been feeling a little down over the last few years about it. That’s how the creative endeavors goal was born. So this year I’ve been putting a lot of time and effort into trying new artistic mediums like painting, macrame, calligraphy….etc. Anything that I can try to get that spark ignited. With everything being shut down, it has helped a lot with finding the time to try these new things. Long story short, one of those creative endeavors was to create some tranquil art for my bedroom. I spent a lot of time thinking about what I would put in there. I knew that I wanted something relaxing and I knew that I wanted it to be a triptych. Then one day I had an Aha! moment. I wanted to try photographing ink in water to see what I could come up with. After watching a few youtube videos I ordered some inks and a small beta fish tank. My husband was actually excited to try and shoot this with me which was a bonus.

We set up two studio lights, a black backdrop and then had a small table with the tank on it. I should also mention that we did several trial runs just using a clear class of water so we didn’t waste a lot of it trying to get the settings correct. Once we nailed those shots we tried the real thing. They turned out better than I thought they would and I’m pretty excited to print these off for my triptych.

February 15th, 2020: Artist Photoshoot

A couple of weeks ago I had the privilege of doing a fun photoshoot with an artist friend of mine. She’s one of the most creative people that I know and also someone who is always up for an adventure. This year she has some artistic goals in mind and one of those goals is to have some photos of her artwork in progress and completed. It was really exciting to get a behind the scenes glimpse of her creative process. She’s able to take sketches in a notebook or old photos and turn them into these great paintings. I’m sure we will have more of these photoshoots in the future as her artwork progresses throughout the year.

January 25th, 2020: Mural Club

For our first Mural Club of the new year, we decided to check out Hillsboro Village and West End. It was really cold outside and we wanted to make sure there wasn’t a lot of walking involved. The first place that we stopped at was Title Boxing off of Church Street. It was a fun and short stop before heading over to the parking garage in Elliston Place. I absolutely love this garage! Every floor has a different mural theme and the stairwells are decorated with bright colors and designs. There were also some positive messages painted in the stairwells. One of my favorites stops from the day!

We of course had to see the band wall of fame at EXIT/IN. We’ve gone to see many shows there over the years and I’m always surprised to see some of the bands that have performed there.

On our way over to Hillsboro Village, we made one last stop at a coffee shop on West End. This mural is in a little “alley” next to the coffee shop.

A trip to Hillsboro Village is not complete without a stop at Dragon Park or Fannie Mae Dee’s Park as it’s officially known. It’s not only a really cool park, it also has free street parking which is hard to find. Down the road from the park there are a few murals that are within a short distance from each other.

November 17th, 2019: Fall outting

Christina and I took advantage of a beautiful Fall afternoon by going to Edwin Warner park with her son. After we got bundled up in our jackets, we headed towards the Story Book Trail for a short walk. It was a little muddy in some areas from the rain we had earlier in the week but not too bad. Part of the trail leads you along a creek with a beautiful bridge and then over to a playground. Her son tried to build a cabin for ants out of leaves and scraps of wood but ended up knocking it down before the ants could move in.

After a while, we put a blanket down under one of the few trees that still had it’s leaves. The park was pretty empty except for the occasional trail runner and people walking dogs so it was nice and quiet. At one point he ran over to jump on the blanket and ended up hitting his knee on a tree root that was hidden underneath. One of my favorite photos from the day is Christina holding him to try and comfort him. I always enjoy photos that aren’t staged and you can tell by this photo that there’s a lot of love between these two.

October 28th, 2019: Amy and Dave Costumed Photoshoot

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to take photos of two long time friends. I’ve known Amy for over ten years and I’ve known Dave for almost that length of time as well. They are the type of friends where if you have a crazy idea for something you want to do, they go along with it and don’t ask questions. Which is what happened when I reached out to Dave to see if he wanted to do a costumed photoshoot at some landmarks around Nashville. He was game and even suggested that we turn it into a “couples” shoot since he and Amy just started dating.

The day of the shoot, I showed up at their place and they had costumes all over the living room of the house. Between the two of them, they had enough to fill a section in a department store. It was fun going through all of the costumes to figure out which ones would work best. We had a few landmarks in mind but ended up only having time to go to a few places. That just means there will have to be a part two for this post.

Our first stop was to Santa’s Pub which is a dive bar that Dave loves going to. It’s a bar in a double wide with Christmas murals around the outside and the perfect setting for a ridiculous photoshoot. Amy wore a cat Christmas sweater with a cat skirt and blonde wig while Dave wore a cat onesie. We took several photos around the outside with the reindeer and Santa murals. After that, they changed into their redneck costumes. They both had mullets, trucker hats and cut off jean shorts. This is how you know they are meant to be together! I laughed so hard during these photos that I had to stop several times to compose myself. At one point Dave even whipped out a mouth harp and started playing.

After we left Santa’s Pub, we headed to the Nashville Zoo which is where Dave works. They changed into some animal costumes which included a monkey outfit and lion head. Any time a small child would see them walking by, they would get very excited. As a side note, I finally got to see the tiny monkey exhibit in the women’s bathroom which was amazing. I had heard that this bathroom was voted as one of the best in the country.

Amy and Dave changed back into their redneck costumes for the petting zoo. One of my favorite moments from this day is when Dave posed next to the alpacas. Needless to say, we had a great time at the zoo.

Our last stop was to Sevier Park but on the way we had to stop for gas and of course took advantage of the opportunity for some more photos.

Thankfully, there were not a lot of people at the park since it was a dreary looking day so we had free reign over the playground. Amy and Dave switched into their Mickey Mouse and Care Bear costumes.

At the very end of the shoot, they put on their redneck costumes one more time in order to reenact some of the photoshoot scenes from the movie Mastermind.

November 3rd, 2019: Mural Club

Nashville has some great murals and new ones are popping up all the time. In order to keep up with the times, I try to get together with a group of friends each month to go “mural hunting” in a new part of town. This month we hit up the West side.

One of the first murals that we ran across was off Charlotte Avenue on the side of a brick building near the Global Education Center. It wasn’t on our list of murals to check out but it ended up being one of my favorites from the day.

A trip to the West side wouldn’t be complete without going through The Nations. We saw the beautiful portrait of long time Nations resident, Lee Estes, on the side of an abandoned silo. It’s stunning from far away and even more impressive when you get up close to see all of the details.

If you go down the road a bit, you’ll end up in a newer area of the neighborhood that’s a drastic contrast to the older single family homes that used to make up The Nations. There’s a row of murals on the side of Music City Tents and Events painted by different artists in different styles.

After marveling at these murals for a bit, we got back on Charlotte and headed towards downtown for our last stop. We parked near Avo restaurant and walked across the street to see the murals that are part of Off The Wall Charlotte Avenue. These murals include collaborations with non profit organizations in the area.

Overall it was a great mural outing