blogs

I never understood blogging until I got to college. It was my second semester in and Natalie, and girl who became my buddy the first day I stepped into a drawing room in the basement of my school, struck up a conversation about it. I have been very interested in reading other peoples blogs and its taken me a while to find some really interesting reads. I have found my self reading blogs from vintage life to fixies and outdoors-men. This world of a social sub-culture is intriguing. But people will only read you if they are interested in your general subject or how you present yourself (so you are in a way selling your self) or were your blog is linked from.
Its fascinating to to think that printmaking started it all. one man who discovered a way to communicate without a monk or a educated scribe painting the day a way. If I may put history in a nutshell... It led from moveable type to relief and lithography and then to screen printing and soon to end up with the internet and then to all of these social networks.
Bloggers blog for their readers and other bloggers. -a circle of printmaking.

Time Will Tell

I sat at my kitchen table in Oakdale, Minnesota. The table was an off white oval with unreliable chairs. The lights above it were on its last days of power and my Grandma Nanny sat beside me with her 94 year old eyes staring in front of her in silence. My mom and dad made their way from my siblings’ rooms after putting them to bed. “I want to give you 10,000 dollars to move out of this old house,” demanded my grandma Nanny. How random was her act of kindness, or did she hate the house? She never said anything to my parents, but the house leaked and the basement smelled like burnt cat because my dad accidentally dried the cat with the clothes last month. It lived and so did the smell.

We found a teal sided, five bedroom house in Wisconsin. It was set deep in the woods with a creek no more and 3 acres from our front door. After my family had settled in I started to realize how a person like me falls in love with a building, but hate it just the same. There was a 48 degree incline up to our garage that we climbed every time we came home. In the winter we took turns sledding down on cardboard sheets and plastic cookware. As the house and I grew older I started painting the great city of Rome in my bathroom, but I went to college before I could finish.

I had never shared my space with anyone before coming to college and when I got to my dorm I found myself rooming with two other girls my age. I will always miss my teal sided house. Semesters went by and before I knew it my family had decided to give up my teal house. With sadness I parted waiting for my own teal house.

Something Lyric

Introduction

It’s the start of a new summer. I’ve been doing the same thing for fifteen years. Doing what I do - Spending my days at Trout Lake Camps. As I get older I have started to wonder if I would do anything else, but the summer of 2012 changed my whole perspective.

Though process

Paid in dirt and for is beaten out.

Games in Group Rec

Running in circles as time stands still. Kids around me are screaming my name or something like the people who know me best because I am the tiger who is painted in orange and gold, I give a hundred points.

Still Young, Teaching the Younger

I am only 17 years old and they expect me to juggle by myself fourteen other kids at once? They are only three years younger than I. is that legal? Not my cup of tea. They will flood, if not controlled. My backup singers and I have a week to get every detail of life packed in before we have to say good-bye.

To be or not to be

You don’t stand a chance. Really? I’m not good enough? My life is here standing in front of you ten years more.

19, living with a hypocrite

Even though age makes us older it doesn’t mean it makes people more mature or wiser. I’ve never been hated. Until now in my blindness I’ve sought hardship.

Choice and reason

Possibilities are endless. This is my cliche. Knowing that when a door closes, another window opens. With every choice we are burdened with its outcome. Try something and take a leap.

Pulled

Leaping is rough. My legs get sore.

Chapters

You need not to have a plan, but only to follow. 16 won’t be my number, but a start of another story to tell.

Onward

Contentment - a freshly baked cake.

our little hipsters

Our Little Hipster

                Ever since we were able to pick out our own clothes we have been creating our own personal style. What makes us interested in certain colors, styles, and fabrics? Our interests change as we get older and are influenced by seeing others’ examples around us.  Have you ever heard of a hipster? Even though you think you have not or you are unsure of what that even means. most likely, you have seen them on your way to work, at the grocery store or even in your neighborhood.   A hipster can be defined a number of ways because it’s a very loose term.

The original hipster came out of the Jazz era in the early 1900’s. The subculture was brought out by the middle class, young adults who were mostly all Caucasian that found the black culture that surrounded Jazz intriguing. Jazz was brought into existence when it was ok for dark skinned musicians to have classical training in the New Orleans. When things began to heat up in America with racial issues, New Orleans stayed in its own world for a while. Soon enough, people with non Caucasian ethnicity where not allowed to do normal things as they once had. Life was rough for them in 1910, but it caused many classically trained musicians of that time to mesh with the musicians of the streets. They would not  fully understand the impact they would have on the music  industry . They loved their music and kept playing even in frustrating conditions. There would be no stopping the flame once it ignited. The Caucasian interest spread when the Black culture dressed the part. The black influences are the ones responsible for our Contemporary Hipster. It’s the vintage subculture that stemmed from the very roots of Jazz from the brothels and intriguing look on life that apparently hooked the modern stream.

Times have changed since 1910. The word hipster is becoming main stream. You can find people of many ages wearing the typical outfit, skinny jeans, logo tees and thick-brimmed glasses. The question that comes to mind when I see them, are they a true hipster or a generic stereo type they are stamping themselves with?

                With so many questions and not many of them fully answered. After interviewing many people I came out with the same answer. A hipster in their definition was to be a person who dressed like they have never seen TV in the life or a person who wears the typical outfit.  A boy named Jake from Northwestern College said He feels like hipsters are shallower because they’re chasing after something that’s always changing, but he found that people who live in the Phillips district of Minneapolis are deeper because they are trying to get out of the rough. I wonder why we go right into thinking that the people who have the hipster vibe are not considered as worthy of our time to have deep conversations with?

                There are three kinds of hipsters out there right now. The first kind of hipster is the stereo typical hipster with colored skinny jeans that would be worn with a thicker pair of glasses and who are considered to be a step down from an emo who by definition is their own person trying to make sense of the world.  They have potential to be in the next music video of the Jonas Brothers, and they all own a skateboard. The skater industry has changed their style to become more tailored to the typical young teen to early adult who has the need to fit in to their peers and strive to get attention from anyone.  To me it seems like it’s a stereo typical poser, but who am I to judge.

                The second kind of hipster has been seen in their bland patterned colored clothing. They are our earth muffins of this era. You see eating organic, vegan, and incredibly healthy foods in our fast food culture.  They seek to rub against the grain and bring their own food to venues in their own reusable cloth bag.  I am not saying that going green should be looked down upon because that is not what I am getting at. The point is our second kind of hipster, are people of the earth. They see things in different colors than the rest of the world, and seek richer potential in mainstream things.  They’re influenced by the ever expanding interest of thrifting.  In a sense almost similar to our idea of a gypsy, but more generically excepted.

                Style still lingers to drone the mind of the wearer to become interested in something they feel is right. The third kind of hipster is the free thinker. They are people who have grabbed the idea and concept around the stereo type but they found their ideas “first” they aren’t as brightly decorated as the first definition of a hipster, but they lock on to the unique tendencies that has been past down from the hipster subculture made in the early 1900’s. It’s easy to want to agree with Jake when he suggested that by definition they are shallow. What would they say to you when you got to know each individual who claimed the hipster role? The third category involves fuzzy lines because they might seem like the second kind of hipster, but there is something about them that’s different.  We can never figure out what it is because they are looking for the once organic means of style that become main stream at the end of the day.

Some might consider shinning the light on the not so beautiful a hurtful matter, but truthfully many have found that the average hipster has gotten a bad rep. Drugs have fallowed them like a plague. It goes hand in hand with understanding its subculture because they seem to live mediocre lives with a focus on style. It’s not pretty, but for some it’s how they grew up, who their friends are and what they do in their free time. Hipsters can be caught up in a lifestyle that they think is brilliant, but many fade with the exhale of the joint they puff. 

Will the trend of the mod color people stand to exist in on this planet or will they die like the weeds around my garden or will the popularity of wearing every generation in one outfit continue with peoples urge to be recognizably different stand strong.  The line that threads a hipster to its subculture has shown it’s self to live on for a while longer. Because the hipster is so unique and very broad our culture is bracing itself for its future. Time will only tell how long this phase in style will last.

Whats With Vintage These Days?

Vintage? What does that mean? Does it mean that its generations old or could it be yesterdays trash? When we look at second hand stores are we thrift shopping. Can I find vintage items there or do I have to shop at a vintage store to make my Items vintage? All of these things are so hard for me to register because everything is almost the same if you look. Is it the price? Are we supposed to pay more for a name? I can get the same item at the thrift store verses a Vintage store if I look. I guess I am open to thoughts on this subject, but really, really? Are you catching my drift?

My Rant on a New Trend

Whats Pinterest doing? I will tell you what its doing, its creating a place for girls (and probably some guys) to waste as much time they will allow themselves. I am still personally deciding if it is more harmful than it is positive. being a creative person I love going on it to seek out ideas for my next big thing. though is it really mine even if I say that i made it differently? It still wasn't my idea in the first place. do I still get credit? I am not sure. There are plenty of artist who have more than a hundred people working under them creating something that was first their idea. Are we just the posters or pinners followers? I will let you decide.

Wearing stipes

Stripes are a silly thing. You can wear black and white and look like a prisoner or you can look like a a model who can out of Vogue. What makes the personality of stripes? Is it the persons intention when wearing it or is it place? Lets cross out all linear thought on this subject and close our eyes and ponder this silly little question. I bet you have never thought about something such as a stripe and its context. If I wore it next to my Christmas tree, for example, with its lights on and snow falling lightly outside, would it bring different meaning to its aesthetics than if it where worn even next to the same tree with its lights turned off during the middle of the day? what I am trying to get at is why we associate ourselves with creating meaning behind red and green=Christmas, Black and yellow=color of a bee, blue=sad, black and white stripes=convict? Would if I lived in Africa? Would my logic stay the same? As we grow up we put two and two together sorta like when we are first learning to talk we associate dad and mom with our parents. Maybe it has to do with our human  love of order. We love to have solid answers even when we have one we still look for more beyond what we have or already know. I don't think God created those stripes to represent a convict. If that where the case though would it say in the Bible that Jesus was clothed in stripes before he was lashed forty times?
Even years later, having changed the color of a convict or a prisoners fashionable pattern from black and white stripes to vibrant deer hunting orange, we still come back to the cat and its fiddle.