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  • Flourish Part Two: The Art

    As I mentioned, the 21C Hotel contained a modern art museum right in the lobby and lower-level of the building. That, and there was art everywhere else in the hotel as well. It was so fitting to be surrounded by inspiring artwork during our stay. My roommate, Jaci, and our nextdoor neighbor, Eileen, took a field trip downstairs one evening to see the art.

    Right near the elevator was my favorite art installation: a screened wall with a video camera in it that projected your shadowed image back onto the screen like a mirror. As you stood in front of the screen, letters rained down from the top and collected along your figure. It’s one of those things that words and photos can’t really do justice, but here’s Eileen, Jaci and me in front of it:

    I can’t honestly say that I necessarily understood each piece, but we had a lot of fun photographing everything.



    Most of the lower level displayed wall-hanging art:

    The fabulous Eileen and Jaci:

    I don’t know how to explain this next piece, other than to say it’s a half-pipe filled with snow and doves, but I wanted to mention it because this piece was interactive: it had a recording of skateboard sounds playing in the background. I told Eileen and Jaci that I heard skateboarding noises when I was standing near it, but when they came to hear it, the sounds were gone so I’m pretty sure they thought I was crazy. (It turns out the concierge had turned off the sound effects. He turned them back on for me so I could prove my sanity.)


    And my other favorite part of the hotel: the giant red penguins everywhere. More on the penguins in the next post.

  • Flourish Part One: The Accommodations

    I’m back from the Flourish Workshop! I’m still exhausted, but in a good I-just-had-so-much-fun-and-learned-a-lot kind of way. I’ll talk about the workshop in the next few days’ posts, and I’ll definitely need several posts to cover it. The workshop was absolutely amazing. The hotel, the workshop leaders, the attendees, the content, the food – it was all fabulous.

    I stayed at the incredible 21C Hotel in Louisville, Kentucky. If you are ever in the area, you simply must stay here. I had a super fun roommate, Jaci, and you’ll see/hear more about her in the upcoming posts.

    The rooms are gorgeous, the staff is beyond friendly and the food at the Proof on Main restaurant is amazing.

    Each room came equipped with an iPod loaded with great tunes.

    And each room came equipped with a rubber ducky in the shower.

    The hotel/museum concept is “sleep with art…we won’t tell,” because the hotel envelops an amazing museum of modern art, of which I’ll post photos tomorrow!

  • Leavin’ on a Jet Plane

    Tomorrow is the big day! I’m so anxious. I can hardly believe it’s here already. I have massive piles of laundry to do today before I can get started packing. My dad would pass out at the amount of stuff I’m bringing with me for only a 3-day trip! But I’ll still follow his rule of bringing only what I am capable of carrying on my own. Chris has a HUGE suitcase that will easily fit all of my clothes plus my pillow. Plus I’m bringing my large camera bag, and a carry-on tote for stuff to do on the plane. I’m so excited that my Epson P3000 digital wallet/card reader can play movies! I’ll watch The Nanny Diaries (loved the book) on the plane.

    Ugh, speaking of movies, Chris and I saw Cloverfield last night. I was so excited to see it because J. J. Abrams, the creator of Lost, produced the movie. I don’t want to spoil it for anyone, but I didn’t love the movie. Tip: don’t eat before you go see it. Not because it’s violent or graphic (it is) but because the camera work is supposed to look like a homemade movie and it’s extremely shaky the entire 90 minutes. The effects were good though, so it was fun in that respect.

    Also fun: volunteering last night at the Special Olympics with Alia and Michelle. This is our second year with the event, and this time we participated in decorating the auditorium for the opening ceremonies. We blew up tons of helium and mylar balloons in a “superheroes” theme, and bunched them to hang around the room. Here’s a really bad picture of our handy-work (I just had my little point-and-shoot and the room was dark):

    I probably won’t post from Louisville, so have a great week!

  • Two More Days!

    Flourish is just two days away! I’ll be leaving Sunday morning at 11am. I just received the schedule for the whole workshop, and they’ve got a pretty full three days planned. I’m especially anxious for the shoots – I think I’ll learn a lot there. I’ll be debuting a new blog with the posts and photos about the workshop, so look for that next week!

  • Dress Shopping

    I had a kind of a busy weekend, and it started with wedding dress shopping on Friday with Jenn, her mom, and one of her Matrons of Honor, Rosa. The shop was overwhelmingly packed with tons and tons of gowns! But among so many dresses, she did find an incredibly gorgeous gown and I’m really excited for her.

    I wanted to post more about it, but I just realized that if there’s the tiniest chance Stephen might accidentally see this post, I shouldn’t put a picture of her dress on here! So you’ll just have to look for photos later this year.

    Next weekend is when I leave for the Flourish workshop, so I’m really excited even though I have a million things to do before then to get ready. Oh and I found out who my roommate is! I’ve been talking to her a bit via email and photography forum, and she is going to be so much fun. Of course I’ll give you the full report when I get back. I’m actually planning to debut my new blog with that post, so stay tuned!