Considering. . .

Pacific
Pacifist
Pax= Peace

 Atlantic
"Of Atlas"

 Interstitial=
Spaces and gaps between substantial matter

Beach

No Rest for the Weary

Homesick I: Beaches

copper, sterling silver, sand dollar piece, shell, aquamarines, map, mica, ink

So, I finished my first post-thesis piece today. It's small, not very complicated and not rock related. There's no electroforming or enameling involved, and yes, I glued some things together.

Day Dreams

So I'm in western Pennsylvania for the holidays, but day dreaming of North Carolina's beaches. This image by Tim Lisko isn't helping.

Found via dear ada

Coastal Processes Field Trip

I got to go to the beach this weekend. I bet you're super jealous. Ok, maybe you're not, since it was a learning trip to the beach and not a leisure trip, but it was still a lot of fun.
We started off in Duck on Friday at the USACE Field Research Facility. We sat through a brief presentation, saw some cool equipment/vehicles that they use to collect data, and then walked out to the end of this giant pier. It was all pretty cool, and we even saw some dolphins. Although personally I think the diving cormorants were much more interesting than the dolphins. There were bunches of jellyfish too.
Then we went to Run Hill, a place that only Outer Banks locals really know about. We hiked around a bit, found a snake and ate lunch with this spectacular view of the sound.
Next up was more hiking through Nags Head Woods. It was a very pretty little hike. We saw dozens of Bay trees. I never realized that the Bay leaves used in cooking came from trees. I guess I just assumed they were some kind of bush or something. All that green stuff in the photo above is some kind of water plant. We speculated on the likely hood of alligators.
A nice view of the marsh.
The edge of the marsh. We took a core sample of the peat around here.
After that we went to Jockey's Ridge, which was pretty neat. I'd been there a couple times before, but had never hiked all the way out to the top of the dunes. This is a view of the sound from the dunes. There was a hang gliding class going on at the top of the next dune, which was kinda fun to watch.
Our last stop for Day 1 was the beach at Nag's Head which has this fantastic garnet sand. I totally brought some home. It's gorgeous. We also went to a section of the beach where everything's eroding and the beach houses are condemned and falling the ocean. We talked a bit about beach nourishment and management, etc.
The Atlantic at Nag's Head.

We spent the night at a tiny motel in Salvo, grabbed some dinner and some beer and just hung out for the rest of the evening. A few of us hit the beach in the dark, and tried to figure out what the mysterious thing out in the water was.

Sadly, I don't have any pictures from Day 2 because there's something wrong with my camera (sad face). We hit the beach once more at dawn to see if we could figure out what that thing was in the daylight (we couldn't) before heading off to breakfast. After that, we backtracked up to Oregon Inlet, New Inlet, the Haulover, Isabel Inlet and Cape Hatteras, so see where the light house had been and how the beach there is eroding. We did some ground penetrating radar too.

Then we hopped a ferry over to Ocracoke, hiked through all this marsh grass to talk to some Upenn students who were studying the overwash there, and then to the beach where we dug a trench to look at the sediment layers deposited by the tides. Then we caught another ferry back to the main land, which was really great. I like being on boats and this was a 2 and half hour ride across the sound. Much cooler than 2 1/2 hours in a van.

All in all it was a great weekend. I got to hang out with a different group of people for once which was nice. And while I did get asked about my work and what I do, it was nice to not talk quite so much shop. Or at least listen to people talking a different kind of shop. I got to see the ocean, which is always good for me, and collect some sand and some other cool things. I even got some input on how to fix the issue I'm having with my salt crystals for Salt in the Soul. It was exhausting, but good.

Now I'm buckling in for what's sure to be another crazy week. Thanks for reading!

Italy- Day 13 Cinque Terra

Cinque Terra is made up of five small towns along the coast. You can either take the train from town to town, or you can hike the Via dell' Amore, between the towns. We got up early and took the train to the first town and began the hike. He's me in my "geologist" get up:

The rocks along the walk were amazing. To one side were these huge, layered cliffs, that would fold you in like a womb.

The streets and trails were so steep. We actually hiked straight up these terraces a little ways, looking for an olive oil museum, which we didn't find. But the views were spectacular.


Manarola (I think)

I couldn't get over the color of the water.

We made it to Corniglia, which is about in the middle of the whole long hike, then hopped a train back to Monterosso, for an afternoon on the beach.

Blog Break

Sorry it's been awhile. My blogging and internet usage in general tends to drop off during the summer. I sometimes even go days with out checking my email. I'm leaving for the beach for a week today and decided not to take my computer.

The last few weeks have been light on studio work (except for the week everyone else was at SNAG. I swear I'll post those G-Vegas pin swap pins later.) I've been working on my collaboration piece(s), but they're not worth writing about at this point. One looks like a complete piece of poop and I won't be using it. Other than that, there's not much to write about. A little sketching, a trip home on an airplane (I hadn't flown in years), tidying up the apartment and searching for a particular type of vellum which apparently no one carries. It's not like I'm looking for uber fancy Italian vellum or anything fancy, I just want a pad of Canson vellum. I'm also out of Sunprints paper, so I think an order or two will have to be placed when I get back from the beach next week.

I hope everyone has been to busy enjoying their summer to much miss my more regular blogging!

And if you couldn't tell. . .

And if you couldn't tell from my last post, I'm back from the beach (sigh). Here's a pic of the Atlantic at sunrise.