My brother

Posted by Jessica on Nov 9th, 2007

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My brother Jeff has recently started a photo blog. He is a fine artist in Long Beach, California, and I’m happy that he’s now making some of his photos available to view online. The blog also includes some of his reflections on his photos.

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Visit jeffrau.com to reach The Jeff Rau Art and Photo Blog. I think you’ll enjoy it. Jeff’s strength and fascination is with what he calls urban textiles. Also, I have always loved his photos from the cool Long Beach music scene.

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Finally, congratulations to Jeff for being accepted to a Masters of Fine Arts program! He’ll start in January. Very cool.

-Jessica

p.s. To give due credit, the three above photos are obviously Jeff Rau’s work, and he owns all copyright.

Wholehearted Hands

Posted by Jessica on Oct 10th, 2007

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This week, Adam had his photograph, “Wholehearted Hands” published in Seoul Selection’s weekly newsletter for the Seoul expat population. They published Adam’s “Kimchi” photo last December.

Good job, babe!

-Jessica

Many new photos

Posted by Jessica on Jun 26th, 2007

I have just stayed up too late uploading tons of photos.  We had a bit of a backlog, but now there are SEVEN new photo sets.  Just click your way to the photos page to see some of what we’ve been up to.  Adam’s photography is growing with leaps and bounds.  I am so proud of him.

Adam has gained a lot from his photography class in Seoul.  We’ll miss his teacher Giorgia and her husband Luca as they return to their home in Italy this week.  They have become good friends in such a short time.

-Jessica

Lotus Lantern Festival

Posted by Jessica on May 22nd, 2007

To celebrate Buddha’s birthday, Seoul puts on an incredible, annual, international, weekend-long Lotus Lantern Festival. I have never seen so many people. I have never seen so many lanterns.

Seoul Lantern Festival

Yesterday, Adam spent all day in Seoul, and I joined him after work. As I stepped off of my bus onto Jongno, the main urban road in Seoul, I realized it would be no simple task to make my way to Adam’s and my meeting spot. Throngs of people were already flocking onto street-side bleachers to stake their claim on the best view of the coming parade. I swam upstream into Insadong, one of the centers of the Lantern festivities. Annie and Sung Sook were already there with Adam, when I reached the book shop. We wandered through the Buddhist worshipers, tourists, and revelers congregating at Jogyesa Temple.

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As dusk fell, the temple began to glow with a canopy of lanterns. Red, pink, blue, yellow, green, white. The ancient tree looked as though its boughs were glowing lanterns. The first monks and drummers began to pour into Jogyesa’s courtyard, the final destination of the parade. We knew the parade had begun. We ran past the stirring sound of drums, songs, and TV announcers, and pushed through crowds.

Annie, the petite child that she is, was able to squeeze through to the curb for a clear view of the parade, but we weren’t so lucky. She came back to us, and we continued down the sidewalk to an entrance to the subway. There were people sitting all along the edge of the roof, and Annie and I climbed up on the sloping end. It was the perfect seat for viewing the parade. Adam wandered, seeking out the perfect photograph (and I think he found many). Sung Sook milled back and forth in her lovely, helpful way and brought us kimbop and dok boki in plastic bags. Annie and I managed to pick our dinner out of the bags with our chopsticks without sliding off the slanted roof.

Lanterns

After almost two hours of luminous lanterns and colorful costumes, we jumped down from our perch and made our way back to Insadong. The thousands of lanterns that had glowed their path down Jongno were now deposited in radiant piles on the sidewalk near the temple. Annie and I went on a frenzy, filling our arms with lanterns. When our arms were full, we would drop the most ordinary lantern and pick up a prettier one. People started looking at us, and one woman stopped to hand us one of her lovely pink lotus lanterns. “Obviously these girls want these lanterns more than I,” she must have thought.

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On the far end of Insadong, Annie’s dad picked us all up in the van, and we opened the trunk to pile our lanterns inside. Annie and Sung Sook had collected seven lanterns, and Adam and I had nine. Our friends dropped us off at the bus stop, and Adam and I climbed onto the bus, laden with glowing orbs. The bus driver laughed and gave us the thumbs-up sign. We slept the whole way home.

Now we need to figure out a place to hang all of them.

-Jessica

On the mountain

Posted by Jessica on Apr 30th, 2007

Yesterday, we went on a field trip with Adam’s photography class to Dobongsan Mountain. It’s just south of Uijongbu (not that that means anything to you– I just like saying Uijongbu), about 55 km/36 miles southeast of where we are in Paju. Dobongsan is an interesting and beautiful place. It’s the Korean Aspen or Boulder, Colorado.

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We rode our motorcycle through neighboring towns, soggy rice paddies, and blooming mountains out to Uijongbu, enjoying the wind in our hair and the fresh smells of spring. As we pulled up to the Dobongsan subway station to meet our group, we swam upstream in a river of middle-aged Koreans wearing clone NorthFace outfits: windproof pants and shirts, hiking vests, hiking boots, hiking poles, hiking backpacks, sun visors. The current of clone Korean hikers swept our group through the foot of the mountain that was occupied by shops and stands selling what we needed to be clone Korean hikers too and restaurants providing sustenance for the hike and drinks for the post-climb buzz.

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We picnicked in a creek bed, finding an unoccupied boulder to eat our sandwiches and take photographs of the masses of families eating their kimbap and playing in the creek. I enjoyed getting to know Adam’s photography teacher and her husband, an upbeat and funny couple from Italy named Georgia and Luca. We continued back up the mountain, among the stream of other hikers, stopping a few times for photographs. Then, our group split, and we continued the rocky hike up with Georgia, Luca, and Jenine from South Africa.

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The masses of hikers thinned a little as we got higher until we reached a tiny Buddhist monastery at the first peak. We took a rest at the monastery, listening to the chanting, drumming and swaying in the strong wind, like the lanterns that were strung along the perimeter. We looked out across the city below and up at the steep peak above us. Even that peak was crawling with hikers and their climbing ropes. We drank cider and ate tortilla chips then began our descent.

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At the bottom, we found a Korean restaurant with a patio overlooking the creek. The five of us happily ate our dinner as the table of men beside us celebrated their day of hiking by getting totally blasted on beer and soju, laughing and singing loudly with the sappy ballads playing through the speaker. Something about the moment reminded me of exploring San Jose del Cabo, Mexico with Adam on our honeymoon.

We jumped back on the bike and braved the evening chill for the much quicker ride home. I felt like a bear coming out of hibernation.

-Jessica

Would Beauty Transcend?

Posted by Jessica on Apr 12th, 2007
What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

– from “Leisure,” by W.H. Davies

I just read an incredible article by the Washington Post in which they posed the question, “In a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?” They enlisted one of the world’s greatest classical musicians to play on his $3.5 million 1713 Stradivari violin some of the most transcendent violin pieces ever written. And he did this posing as a street musician in a Washington D.C. subway station during morning rush hour.

The article is incredible, complete with video clips. Click here to read it.

-Jessica

p.s. Thanks for the link, Jeff.

Addendum: In contrast, this video currently has 635,911 views on YouTube. Hmm.

Photography

Posted by Jessica on Apr 5th, 2007

There is a lot going on in Adam’s life as a photographer. He has been taking a ton of photos lately with his new SLR camera, and this evening he’s taking his first photography class in Seoul. He has also submitted a few photographs to JPG Magazine.

The photo below was entered for the theme “Entropy”. Click on the photo to vote if you think it’s a good fit for “Entropy”. Voting ends on April 11.

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Thanks!
-Jessica

Photo Haiku

Posted by Adam on Mar 23rd, 2007

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Guitars, violin
and song fill the air. Smiling,
Jin-ju dances free.

-Adam

Getting a groove

Posted by Jessica on Jan 28th, 2007

Just wanted to say hi…

We had our Artist’s Way group tonight at Cheryl’s place. Simon couldn’t come because he was making things happen for his new Speed Dating scheme (go Simon!), but Cynthia was able to join us for the first time. We had a great discussion and set some creativity goals for the week.

My goals for this week are:

1. Sing every day
2. Blog every day
3. Write the first draft of lyrics to a song (even if it’s lame)

Adam’s goals for this week are:

1. Find and begin practicing vocal exercises
2. Sketch thrice
3. Begin cataloging his photographs (with the intention of preparing for an art show)

I feel good. Cynthia and Cheryl both encouraged me about my CD. Even though I released it just seven months ago, I already feel disconnected from it, like it’s so old. I appreciate hearing from friends that they still listen to it regularly and that they love it.

Also, I taught Future World today, and the regular costume was being cleaned, so I had to wear the skinny costume. And it fit! I feel good.

:).

We’ll be home in less than two weeks.

Good night.

-Jessica

Painting with lenses

Posted by Jessica on Jan 23rd, 2007

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What do you know, I did think of something worth writing about…

Tonight I’m teaching my last art class of the twelve-week session. They really want me to do another round, but I’m not going to. Not now at least. I really enjoyed it and everyone seemed to get a lot out of the experience, but it’s time to hang up my hat for now. For one thing, the new semester at DePaul has started up, and I’m taking more than double the credits I took last semester. The real reason though, is that I’m still just not motivated to make paintings right now, and so I don’t have much juice to pass along.

I want to be painting, and I think I could even be really good at it, but I’m simply not driven to do at this point in time. I have tons of resistance around getting down to doing it, even though I always enjoy it when I do. (I do think some of those blocks will become unplugged as we continue through the Artist’s Way course. Hey, that’s something else I need to blog about some time soon!) I just have this massive fear of failure that paralyzes me there.

On the other hand, I have no resistance whatsoever related to my photography. I love shooting photos, and I don’t think twice about shooting something beautiful when I see it. So, for now that’s what I’m going to focus on doing. If I want to paint, I’ll paint, but I’m not going to make it something I ’should be doing’ anymore.

I love the immediacy of photography. I think it’s particularly good for an ADD brain like mine- it’s so instantaneous and stimulating that it’s virtually distraction-proof. I love the way I can play with light and enhance reality too. With a camera in hand, my senses are heightened. Walking around the city becomes a moving meditation on form and light and the narrative unfolding around me. And you get the most amazing little miracles sometimes- beautiful, delicate accidents of life that are just frozen in time.

So, like I said, I dig it. I’m going to try to be more intentional about it, and try to make some money doing it as well.

In support of these photographic aspirations, when we’re back in Nashville, I’ll be picking up a brand, spanking new Nikon D40 that I just ordered. I am SO stoked. I took my friend’s D70 for a spin last week and it rocked my world. SLRs have gotten so much more user friendly with the advent of digital, once again removing resistance from the process of making good art. Excellent. I took some great photos with it that I will be posting soon. (In the mean time you can see some of the fun shots I took in Fukuoka with my great little Canon SD550 on our Photos page.)

I’m off for now. Gotta catch the train in time to make it to art class…

-A.

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