Making Sunset's

Oil on Canvas 40"x 24"

I'm working on several paintings this winter and a few will include summer sunset's which is kind of ironic because I miss every sunset in the afternoon because by the time I'm out of work it's dark outside.

This painting was commissioned for a lady at my work who wanted a sunset piece for over her fireplace. The painting is rather warm and I think with a dark frame it would fit nicely in the space.

It would be nice to actually paint a sunset in real time this summer while the daylight lasts until 8pm.  Although, I can imagine it's a hard thing to do since most sunset's don't last very long.  Most say it's 5 minutes as soon as the sun starts to turn red until it vanishes over the horizon. But either way, the sun setting has to be the best time to capture color in the sky and it makes a much more interesting color palate.

Save the trees

In my family we used to celebrate Christmas with an overly large pine tree. It was such a hassle to tie it to the roof of the car and drag it inside getting sap and pine needles all over the place.  After several weeks the tree started to lose all its needles (mainly because it was dead) so we dragged it outside and kicked it to the curb along with copious amounts of wrapping paper and boxes left over from Christmas. It makes me sick to think of this whole process and how much stuff we threw away that could easily be recycled.

So after years of dealing with real trees, we resorted to a large fake Christmas tree, the one that required 12 different levels of circular color-coded branches that would occasionally fall apart or get lost so that year after year the tree began to look more and more like a stump than an actual pine tree.  I despised our fake Christmas tree it was such a pain in the neck to put together and most the time it made you forget about the joys of the holiday season. To add to the frustration,  The boxes that it came in took up nearly a quarter of our attic space. The whole process of making the fake look real was downright pointless and time consuming.  Decorating should be fun and most of all you should enjoy doing it and enjoy the end product.  

So this year I did some research on different trees you can purchase or create in your home. A smaller real christmas tree would be more ideal, less expensive and more eco-friendly than a large tree. Each year, 33 to 36 million large Christmas trees are produced in America, and 50 to 60 million are produced in Europe. That’s a lot of energy and resources wasted on the production of Christmas trees that get thrown away in the end.  But so is the production of many things  that are produced for consumption.  I decided the best approach is to stick to what creates the less waste and space. 

Choosing a smaller tree over a large tree is definitely a smarter decision. I found a tree that comes in a pot and can be re-planted after its done being used for Christmas.  You can order it or pick it up at a gardening store and decorate it at home, then after Christmas you are not throwing it in the garbage.

The German designer  of the Buro Tree is another innovative tree idea. He made a lightweight Christmas tree that is easy to assemble, takes up virtually no space, is made of recycled materials and can be decorated. 

There are limitless options for creating anything and if you don't mind breaking a few traditions, the end result is fascinating!  This year I created a chalk Christmas tree with a friend of mine.  The wall was painted with chalk paint and we decorated the tree to the size of the wall. Accenting it with ornaments and lights, made of chalk!  It was a fun project that captured the Christmas Spirit. 

Critical Mass in Nap Town!

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A few friends and I are gathering a small group of bicyclists this upcoming year (for one and only one day) to ride through the streets of Annapolis and reclaim the streets that cars generally frequent on during rush hour.  This is certainly a dangerous but extremely exciting event to partake in and the more participants the merrier.  We are trying to spike an interest in other bikers to join in so that we have a large body of bikers to frequent the streets of Annapolis. I made the flyers (shown at left...date is non-specific to the event) that roll up and fit easily in the spokes of wheels with the goal to distribute as many as we can to bikes located around town. And we'll make sure to skip the police bikes.

Critical Mass is a bicycle-centered social movement or as most authorities would call it, a social protest.  It consists of a large gathering of bicyclists that meet and clot the streets slowing cars down and stopping all regular traffic patterns.  In some large Critical Masses, all intersections would reach their "Critical Mass" due to traffic being so heavily backed up.  Contrary to belief, the participants in the Critical Mass see it as a celebration and a unique spontaneous gathering where friendly law abiding citizens from the city would gather and reclaim the streets of their city.  

Past Critical Mass's have gathered up to 300 participants. It's a real traffic jam, but only for those commuting by car!  The event is to be held on the last Friday of every month around 5:30pm (right in time for rush hour) and requires little to no direction at all.  You just show up and follow whomever you wish or lead your own way around the streets.  The idea is not to use any official route when riding that way it is not percieved as a devised attack or social protest.  Sometimes a tactic called "corking" is used so that participants can reconvene back to the pack to keep the numbers strong.  Basically corking is when a few bikers block traffic from side roads so that the mass can freely proceed through red lights without interruption.  

Needless to say, Critical Mass pisses people off and especially those individuals in charge of traffic control. Eventhough all participants are law abiding citizens, people in their cars get frustrated and angry and as one can easily believe, they do outrageous things to release their road rage.  

The event originated in the streets of London where hundreds of bikers started the movement because they were tired of being pushed off the roads-roads that they had every right to frequent on. It's a powerful statement that will surely cause a riot! 

Chicago 2005 Critical Mass

Colorful Retro Sailing Designs

Earlier this summer, in between planning for the annual boat show and preparing for a 4-day sail-a-thon, my co-workers and I brainstormed some ideas for sailing t-shirt designs. Luckily, we have an in-house decoration team that can make customized shirts by a dye-sublimation processes that enables you to use as many colors as you wish. So I came up with some very colorful retro sailing designs, while following the guidelines of...  a.) having the Chesapeake Bay represented in the design, b.) depicting a larger vessel than your average "overused" dinghy and c.) putting the company logo in the design and keeping it low key so as not to be too obstructive. These are just a few samples of the end result... 

Black Friday Well Spent

Instead of lining up outside with hundreds of shoppers for Black Friday a few friends and I decided to skip the deals and go strait for the jack pot by sneaking away for the weekend to a privately owned 35-acre farm in South Eastern Virginia.  This area in Virginia has an amazing landscape and some rich history with battle fields located all around.  The property was perfect.  The land has barely been touched, unoccupied for many years and sits on the water.  The old house on the property was my friends grandmothers house that she grew up in.  It dates back to the 1800's and it still had knick nacks and old remnents from those glory days where sharing a bathroom with 8 siblings puts a whole new perspective on the meaning of patience. It certainly felt strange staying in an abandoned house, kind of delinquent in a way but I enjoyed the outdoorsy pursuit.  I slept on a couch that was definitely from the 1800's and I could not help thinking that at some point in this couches life a soldier from the Civil War had probably crashed here as well. 

I was able to obtain some good photo's of the property and of my experience on the land.  There was wonderful lighting that reached into the house.  The paint that barely clung to the walls in the bedrooms was incredible. The house made me nostalgic for still paintings, something I thought I would never say after doing about 20 during any given school week. 

We roamed the beautiful landscape basked in the sun (it was 45 degrees) and shot guns.  Happy that we live in a free country and that we have the right to shoot off as many rounds of ammunition as we wanted, we spent a good portion of the trip shooting at targets (which actually improves your hand-eye coordination). And to warm up on the cold November night, we made a roaring fire, ate some delicious meats with squash soup, drank beers and star gazed until 1 in the morning. The sky was crystal clear and being that we were in the middle of no where, stars were plentiful.   This was the best Black Friday ever spent and I'm looking forward to topping it next year.

Tug-o-War 2010

Earlier this month, the town of Eastport put on their annual Tug-o-War contest against downtown Annapolis and it was a fascinating display from both sides of the line. Instead of tugging this year, I decided to enter the T-shirt contest (logo above) for best design.  I didn't end up winning but I did have a great time watching the battles and drinking hot Irish coffee on the sidelines. Also, I was able to capture some of the battles on film, video footage below...  

The tuggers used 1, 280 feet of customized rope designed by Nasa Scientists and manufactured by Yale Cordage, and yes the production of this rope was expensive.  $25,000 to be exact. The rope extended across the water from Eastport to historic downtown Annapolis.  All boat traffic is stopped because of the presence of the line floating in the water.  I'm pretty sure this is one of (if not) the largest tug-of -war tournaments in the country and probably the world. There were 7 different teams lined up for the tug. Seeing the 7 minute slaughter of Police department vs. the Fire department was probably the best tug-o-war action ever witnessed.