BLACK LIVES MATTER & the Street Art of Oakland

Immediately after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, millions of people around the world filled the streets in protest. In Oakland many businesses were already boarded up because they had been closed so long due to Covid-19. After some protests turned violent in the early days, more businesses boarded up. It didn't take long for the artist to come out and full those walls with color and messages of hope and remembrance.

For another view of these images with a little more information about some of the artists, take a look at this post created with Adobe Spark.

spark.adobe.com/page/lCGlIDogUq6cY

Slide Project, Part 2

So then what do you do with all the slides?

Lamps!

My brother had a big birthday coming up and I wanted to figure out a way to make him a gift with the slides. Some type of art would be great for his new home. Lighting made the most sense for showing off the slides so I headed out to IKEA to find something I could hack. Turns out they had these frosted square glass table lamps that perfectly fit eight slides per side. A little gaffers tape, Gorilla glue, and some simple tools helped make it happen. I started with a lamp featuring slides of my older artwork to test the process before moving on to the birthday present.

Slide Project, Part 1

For months I've had boxes and boxes of slides sitting by my desk at home waiting to be copied. Scanning with a flat bed scanner takes sooooo long and the quality is just, meh. I've gone through a couple of configurations for creating an easy way to digitize slides and this is my favorite.

In addition to the inexpensive little set up shown above, I'm using a macro lens on my iPhone, and black board with a hole cut out for the lens along with black Post-Its for reducing the glare on the slides. This takes a fraction of the time to digitize and I'm finding that the quality is just as good or better than I used to get with a scanner.

This is my favorite macro lens so far because it is large and has more lens sharpness to the edges. Images pinch a bit from macro lens distortion, but that is easy to fix digitally. I bought it on Amazon and can't find a manufacturures name. "Cell Phone Camera Lens, 0.6X Super Wide Angle Lens & 15X Macro Lens, 2 in 1 Clip-on Professional HD… $16.99" sold by YouCoulee.

Cam Goes to Prom

16 Years of Brothers

I've been shooting a portrait of these two every November for the past 16 years. Yesterday we shot these. To watch them grow from 2 and 4 to 17 and 19, check out the Brother's Portraits section of my portfolio.

Cameron at 17, Clayton at 19

iTrip 2016 – Iceland to Italy (for the Floating Piers on Lake Iseo)

This year Stewart and I were invited to join some friends at a house they had rented on Lake Iseo in Italy during Christo's installation of The Floating Piers. WOW Airlines was offering great prices on flights, so we decided to stop in Iceland on our way there. We had about five days in each location. The time flew by as we clocked loads of adventures. Here's some of what we saw. 

The Secret Lagoon. Our goal in Iceland was to soak in hot water at least once a day. This was our first night. 

A path to the geysers at The Secret Lagoon.

Greenhouses near The Secret Lagoon. This is 10:00 at night. Though it was cloudy, the nights never got dark.

The Lupin or BlueBells grow like weeds all over the countryside.

Midnight outside of the second nights soak at Laugarvatn Fontana.

Under a waterfall looking up.

Scar on path to soak for day three at the oldest swimming pool in Iceland, Seljavallalaug Pool.

Met this guy on our hike up the hill to find soak number four.

After the 2.5 mile hike up, this view and the hot flowing river made the whole climb worth it.

Our fifth and final soak was the famous Blue Lagoon.

Then it was off to Italy for The Floating Piers!

Amazing experience being out on the water with hundreds of thousands of people and seeing Christo & Jean Claude's dream become a fantastic reality.

The swans loved it too.

We interacted with so many different people each time we ventured out to the Piers. These two were recipients of noses we brought from the whythenose project.

We lucked out with the location of our house. Rather than wait on the hours long line that many people had to endure to get to The Floating Piers, we were able to take a ferry to the large island in the center of the lake and walk a mile to the island entrance of the piers.

The house was also a great place for dinner with a view.

...and to just relax and watch the water.

We took more than just a small piece of the Piers home with us.

Macro Nature and the Postcard Exchange

I recently got a Photojojo Iris Macro lens. The rains we so happily received in NorCal this winter have gifted us with a garden overflowing with flowers. That has been my favorite place to play with the macro. 

A month ago a friend roped me into joining the SPARK Postcard Exchange. SPARK is a call-and-response group combining artists, writers, and musicians to inspire each other. For the Postcard Exchange we were given one month to create 5 postcards to send to the randomly selected people in our group. I knew none of them and they were from all over the U.S. I decided to mix two of my favorite things and print these new macro photos of the flowers in our garden and then sew them to heavy paper stock to use as postcards. I may need to make more...

Getting to Know LA

In December I was promoted to Director of Graphic Design for FIDM. Along with all the new responsibilities comes the opportunity to get to know LA a little better. I am a Bay Area girl through and through, but I love to travel and get to know new places, so one of my favorite parts of the new position is going to LA monthly for a few days at a time. Here's a little of what I've seen so far.

My favorite architect alive today, Frank Gerhy. The Disney Concert Hall.

Installation outside of MOCA.

Haven't been inside The Broad yet.

Love the labyrinth at The Last Bookstore.

Pershing Square is set to be changing.

Welcome to the update of Lisatized

I've given in. I'm not going to take the time to update my website in Dreamweaver anymore. It's just not as efficient for me as an online web builder. I'm a little afraid of my site looking too much like others built with the same templates, but at the end of the day it's about the work I'm sharing and not the design of the site. This blogging platform will also be a handy way to share updates. 

More coming soon!

More images from a project in this space will be coming in a couple of months.