SOHO!

I am very excited about being accepted to be a mentor in the Visual Arts Center's program SOHO.
A Space of Her Own.

13 mentors work together with 13 girls from Gilpin court to develop her own space through art based projects. At the end of the program we get to implement all our projects into her space at home.

I can't wait to meet the girls and mentors. I volunteered at Friends Association earlier this year. They are a partner with the Visual Arts Center and they hand pick the girls!

Training for mentors should be next week and the program starts Oct 29 through June 3.

Letterpress

I took a Letterpress class the Visual Arts Center over the summer and it was pretty awesome. The process is very different from how I am working. Most of the time is spent on the preparation or designing the palette that you want printed. This takes forever! You have to fill up all the empty space that has no letters so that the letters you do want to print are tight and you have to layout everything backwards. It is like tetris, first time was killing but after that you get a hang of how to do it effectively. I actually think the palette is much more interesting than the final print!

This is my palette and prints for Thankyou cards I made for all the folks in Akron that showed us around on our company field trip to the Ten Thousand Villages corporate headquarters.



This is the palette for the Mystery Meeat poster. I need to take pictures of the print but I still need to acetone our graphic on the poster, so once I do that I'll post it.



I also printed some tiny cards but didn't photograph the palette or print. This was my first palette and it was quite complex due to spacing. I really wanted to get the most out of my paper so the layout was challenging. I wish I had a picture of it, but I'll post I'll prints soon.

Graduation Cards

I am super late on posting these but 2 of my favorite people graduated in May! I made them some graduation cards from other folks wedding cards.

John my brother in law from University of Pennsylvania - got his MBA - Whooohoooooooooooooooo - now has a killer job in NYC.
[yes...i spelled congratulations wrong on this card...ahm..i was playing of off of the word graduate?]
Divya my cousin/little sister from Virgina Tech - got her undergrad in Spanish and International Studies - yippeeee another Tech grad!!!!!!!!!!!!! - now has her dream job in DC.

Cards

While searching on the Fair Trade Federation website for jobs I came across this at Cards from Africa.

"The idea for Cards from Africa came to British founder, Chris Page, in 2004, inspired by a Kenyan doctor who had started a similar endeavor to generate income for women in a Nairobian slum. Chris teamed up with Rwandan artist Gabriel Dusabe and together they learned how to make paper and create simple card prototypes. Their first employee was a young orphaned woman named Ariette. After one month's time they asked her to bring another friend to train but she brought two! Shortly after, twenty more orphaned youth were trained and the business was born. Our profits are continually reinvested into company operations as well as the lives of our staff. Our hope is to grow to provide steady employment to 300 orphaned young people in Rwanda and to provide a model for sustainable job creation in Africa."

It's a great program and it's fair trade!

I sent in 5 designs and I don't know if any of my cards will be chosen till December but here are pictures of them.

Books

**sidenote**
it's been a while...i don't think i am gonna finish up blogging about our road trip....opss.

While on our road trip I got this book in Santa Barbara called "How to make books" and I've been into stitching now for a while but now I am getting into some book binding.
Here is what I've done so far..
I've been working on the Coptic stitch, it's not perfect yet but gonna keep going at it.

RT journal - Day 5 - Scottsdate + Palm Springs + LA

On our way to Taliesen, Frank Lloyd Wright's winter home....okay my memory is now very foggy of our trip so details are going to far from good!
We got to Taliesen in the morning and took the tour of the house, it is small in scale but massive in terms of the land coverage. I am always amazed to be in a FLW home, such care to be taken to every detail, such passion to create a home that doesn't deny you of nature. We spent far too much time in the gift shop but it was worth it and gotta say this day was our hottest day on the trip and while Amrit chose to stand in the blazing sun and sketch, the 3 of us went to the car to have our lunch. Amrit got a few shades darker in the 20 min he stood there with pen in hand.
Then we were on our way to Palm Springs, just a stopping point to break our 7 hour drive to LA. We drove through the dessert, but it didn't look like the dessert I think we pictured in our heads. We wanted to get this map of mid-century modern homes in PS but we got to the store as it closed and so we just stood outside the door till the 2 people inside took notice of us. 2 awesome guy dudes told us all about not leaving for LA for a good 3 hours so we tried to do the house tour with complete failure cause they were all gated in and couldn't see a darn thing so we gave up on that quick and just went to grab dinner. On our way out of PS, out of no where the car starts being very hard to handle due to the wind outside, I mean it was some crazy pressured wind and then we saw it....a forest of wind turbines. 100's of them, it was incredible! We pulled over and wanted to get out to feel the wind and ah....we did. Sand and rocks slamming into our skin, I think I flashed a few folks when my dress flew up....it was great!
We got into LA late and went to go see the Walt Disney Concert Hall, with great hesitation from everyone, I managed to make them go all over the grounds. It's a maze there, up and down stairs and ramps and you have no idea where it's taking you or if your supposed to be there. I gotta admit it was kinda scary. Went to the Mann theater and unfortunately the Hollywood sign wasn't lit up and that whole area is kinda weird, they don't show on TV the "ugly" part of that area only the glitz. LA is really big and hard to get to places, you gotta drive everywhere and it sucks.....not a fan.

ModCloth and this Terrific Transformations Contest

ModCloth and this Terrific Transformations Contest

Transformation

Almost a year ago I left my family and friends and moved 2 hours away to start a new life with newly wed husband.
I soon realized that with out all the familiarities of my previous life I was coming undone. No job, no friends, no family, no life except being with the person I loved the most.
I was separated from everything that used to define me. I was uneasy in my skin. What I was wearing, how my hair was, how I looked, how my time was spent and what I was saying were all starting to disgust me.I went through periods where for days I would sit at home waiting for my husband, not cooking, cleaning, exploring or doing anything remotely close to useful with my time. It made me feel worthless - I couldn't get myself to do anything except complain to my loving and understanding husband. Then one day I stopped looking for jobs and looked for volunteer opportunities just so I could get out of the house. If I committed myself to someone else then there would be no way I'd let them down the way I was letting myself down. So I just got out there did something and it was really fun to meet people, make connections and tell others about myself. While doing that I put myself back together but I wasn't who I was before I came to this new place. I was hiding within myself before I moved, as a diluted version of me. My familiar comfortable environment had made me content. My previous life was not me, it fit me then because it was easy to follow rather than to lead, easy to be similar rather than different. But now I am at a perfect fit with my life, I felt like a fully concentrated version of me, what I wear, how I look, how I spend my time and what I say are all lead by my passions not my fears. My physical appearance has changed, maybe not enough to really see a difference but inside I feel embraced by my transformation.

RT journal - Day 4 - Flagstaff + Sedona

Sorry been a while to get bag to blogging about the road trip, it's not so exciting as the days go on and I am forgetting all the little details that made the trip so fun. Okay so we are on day 4.
We got to Flagstaff the night before and went downtown, and it was really quaint and really lit up with great signs for all the restaurants, bars and stores. Of course we were too tired to grab the camera when we left the hotel so no pictures on how great it was! We had dinner at a cute pizza place and out booth was tiny and had carvings all over it from people who had been there before.
The next day we had breakfast at Macy's coffee shop which I recommend everyone to go to then started our drive up a mountain to get to a ski resort, but of course as we are making our climb up the gas light goes on and we go right back down the mountain for gas and then back up the mountain where it was FREEZING, around 30 degrees (we all brought nothing for this weather so we basically just put more clothes on). We took the ski lift to the top which was about 15 degrees colder, it was an amazing view and you could see if you looked really hard, the north rim of the grand canyon. Rekha and John we not happy on the ski lift, they both were scarred! We then went back down to the town and had lunch, Navajo tacos = yummy and walked around, it really reminded me of Ashville, NC. I got an awesome red clutch at a vintage store and a lovely little dress at a store that had lots of lovely little dresses!
Now we head to Walnut canyon, about 30-45 min away and what do you know we get there like 45 min before the park closes and so we rush through the whole thing. The canyon has single-story cliff dwellings built on the canyon wall and you get to the dwellings by hiking the Island Trail, which is a 1-mile round trip along the cliff where you can basically fall down the cliff if you don't watch where you are walking. I got yelled at almost the whole time for tripping and not paying attention, Amrit and Rekha were about to kick my ass. The wind was so strong there that at one point we are lunged to the cliff wall to hang on for fear that the wind would push us over the edge! The dwellings were pretty awesome, you could walk in them and the view to the other side of the canyon was filled with more dwellings. The hike down of course wasn't as bad as the hike up, not to mention the fact that we were hustling so that we'd make it up before the park closed.
We left then for Sedona, the drive was quite boring till you hit the point where the red rocks start to appear and then it just feels like you are on another planet. We checked into the hotel and went ot the downtown for some food, on the way we met with the sunset, it was incredible with all the colors and light disappearing. We didn't do much since most things were closed and we ended up at a diner called "Red Planet", it said welcome earthlings....I don't think I need to say any more.

RT- Album

http://picasaweb.google.com/rupa1221/RoadTripJune6142009?authkey=Gv1sRgCPnj4L2j4OzNiQE#

RT Journal - Day 3 - Antelope Canyon + Monument Valley

We took the Antelope Canyon Tour in the morning, [you can't access the canyons without a tour guide since it is on Navajo land], it was about a 30 min truck ride to the canyons. The reason behind wanting to see this place was because while watching Britney Spear's video for "i am not a girl not yet a woman" in 2001 I fell in love with the back drop and actually searched for this place by looking for the video. It was worth it! There are 2 canyons, upper and lower. We went into the upper since it is more widely visited but definitely want to see the lower one day. Water and wind have worn the sandstone down and sculpted this canyon into a museum for light. It's really hard to take pictures without a tripod but Amrit managed to get a few good ones with his steady hands!
After the canyon we had some indecision about weather to stay in Page cause there was so much more to do there or drive 2.5 hours out to monument valley and stay the course of our itinerary.....we took the drive.
Monument Valley blows your mind! Amrit says it looks like the land where the road runner lives. You can either take a tour guided drive through the 17 miles it or drive your self, we drove ourselves. The valley isn't really a valley it is a wide flat landscape but then it gets interrupted by these formations that are 100's of feet tall, called buttes which came about due to erosion and uplift. This is also on Navajo land so there were some native Americans selling jewelry and crafts as we drove through. We bought a the Navajo wedding vase, ours is white with horse hair in it, you'll have to come over if you want to see it! After our drive we had some massive confusion on what time it was! We had JIN [john, the internet nuvi, another track off the album] figure out what the heck was going on....so here it is - Arizona is in the Mountain Time Zone but doesn't observe Daylight-Saving Time the Navajo Nation observes Daylight-Saving Time but we picked up our car in Las Vegas which is on Pacific Standard Time Zone. Therefore in Las vegas it will be 3pm PST, in Arizona it will be 3pm MST w/out Daylight-Saving, in Navajo Nation MST in Arizona it will be 4pm with Daylight-Saving. All kinds of crazy time situation! After monument valley we drove to Flagstaff to spend the night.

RT Journal - Day 2 - Hoover Dam + Grand Canyon

When leaving Vegas in morning we stopped at a Whole Foods and tried to get a cooler but ended up with a cool/warm bag which we put ice in and filled with cheese, meat and fruit for lunch..we also got bread and snacks for the drive.

Hoover dam was about 1 hour away and it wasn't the dam that blew us away, it was a bridge they are building to help with traffic in that area. The arch was almost done, the keystone piece was left to put in place so it looked amazing, just hovering over the Colorado river.

The Dam is pretty impressive for the time it was done, we took the power plant tour cause the other tour that actually takes you to better places in the Dam wasn't available for the time we wanted to go. Of course I got all kinds of confused with all the technicalities they were throwing at me and not having a drawing in front of me to assess the situation I irritated John (brother in law) and Amrit till I fully understood.

We then drove 4 hours to get to the Grand Canyon. These 4 hours were boring for a bit, until we decided to play the movie game. To play the game you say an actor and a movie they were in with another actor [Hugh Grant was in Holiday with Cameron Diaz]. The next person has to take the last actor and do the same [Cameron Diaz was in Vanilla Sky with Tom Cruise] so on and so on. John basically sucks at this game so he had to be hinted all the time, Amrit on the other hand needed a few rounds to access that part of his brain that stores this information. My sister and I kicked ass. Once Amrit found this part of his brain, he basically wanted to play by himself which we let him do because it was so entertaining.......and if you recall my previous post one of our tracks was penne bingbanger....this came from Amrit not being able to remember Renee Zellweger.

The Canyon was unreal, it is so vast it just seemed endless. We walked around the south rim and got to a point where you could climb down a bit, then John and Amrit climbed down further to a point that wasn't easy to get to due to the fact that you could fall into the canyon, nothing dangerous or anything.... Rekha (sister) is freaking out as they make their way down, I wanted to join them but I was too scarred to die so I just sat at the edge and watched them, Rekha stood further away and watched me. After that craziness we got to a point where we could watch the sunset, unfortunately it was spoiled by the family that was fighting behind us.

We then left for the 2.5 hour ride to Page, it was dark and little did we know that part of the road hugged the south rim and was curvy with no lights. We almost hit a moose. We got to Page really late, had a horrible dinner at Denny's, couldn't find our hotel, didn't know what time it was and had a bit of a water leakage from the cool/warm bag filled with ice. Our hotel..turned out to be a motel, america's best value inn, another track off the album.....it was said that I should never book our hotel rooms.

RT Journal - Day 1 - Vegas

We picked up our ride for the trip = PT Cruiser

The best thing about Vegas was the Cirque Du Soleil show KA! It was a "visual orgasmic experience" according to Amrit. The stage was beyond anything that you can wrap your mind around. If you take everything you know about a stage, lighting, music, human ability, horizontal planes and throw it out the window, that is KA. It has a story to it which makes it more involved than just doing acrobatics to music. It was bad ass, you just have to go see it to understand, I can't give any details without spoiling the show so just GO SEE IT.

Besides KA I think we were all a bit uninterested in Vegas.

We stayed off the strip and took the tram everywhere. That day we had been up for 24 hours due to the time change, needless to say we were exhausted!

RT Journal - "the band"

Santa Monica Pier /
Monument Valley

Okay so I was going to start today with writing about Vegas but this was more fun.

Somewhere around the time we were at monument valley, we decided we'd take "band" pictures that would turn into our selection of album covers for our made up band, "The Sa-pa-the's" [this word which has NO meaning is what Amrit (husband) was saying as we traveled to Vegas, he was drunk [that story to come later].


Flagstaff /
Bridge in Santa Monica

Our debut album will be entitled "Grungreg Karma"[this came from a sign posted at a movie shoot that Ashwairya Rai was shooting while we were riding the street car in S.F.,or so the street car driver told us she was there]

Some tracks on the album include [these all came out of incidents in the trip]
1.OTC addiction
2.bugga digga
3.JIN [john, the internet nuvi]
4.lost wadges
5.chicha de mammi
6.penne bingbanger
7.american's next best value inn
8.ophra's vortex
9.the painted whores
10.boochan
11.it's good, right?

Road Trip

My husband, my sister, my brother in law and I went on a road trip to the west coast. We had an amazing time and discovered things we could have never imagined about nature and all her unexpected gifts to us. We wanted to spend more time in most places but we had 8 days to get to S.F. from Vegas we had to make a list of things we'd do "next time". Given the vastness of the little portion of the USA that we saw, I think I'd rather skip our "next time" list and start a list on another little portion of the USA. Everyone should do a little road trip.

Stats [all costs are per person]
8 days
2062 miles
$63 gas
$274 food
$237 fees.fun.transportation
$364 airfare
$206 hotel
$113 car rental

Itinerary
6.6.09
Flight to Vegas
Vegas

6.7.09
Hoover Dam
Grand Canyon

6.8.09
Antelope Canyon (page)
Monument Valley (Utah/Arizona)

6.9.09
Snow bowl (flagstaff)
Walnut Canyon (flagstaff)
Sedona

6.10.09
Taliesin (scottsdale)
Palm Springs
L.A.

6.11.09
Drive up to SF on Route 1

6.12.09
S.F.

6.13.09
Napa
S.F.

6.14.09
Flight to Richmond

I am going to do a little blurb of each of the places we went along with photographs of course and I'll make an album on picassa of all the images and post the link here so keep checking back on the blog!

Volunteer of the Month

I just got this email, it feels good to do something for someone else.
As a side note - I've realized that maybe my path is not one that I should seek out but maybe it is the one I am already on.


Dear Staff, Trustees & Volunteers:

Rupa Singh is “Volunteer of the Month” for May. Rupa is an architect by trade, and has been volunteering in the preschool classrooms at the Friends Family Center since November 2008.

Rupa enjoys spending time with children and assists our teachers with crafts, games and curriculum lessons. Recently, she facilitated a photography project where she took candid shots of all of the children in their classes. She also taught each of the graduating preschoolers how to use a digital camera and allowed them to take the camera home to take their own freestyle photos. The children are very proud of their accomplishment. All of the photos from her project are framed and hung in the hallway leading to the preschool classes for all to enjoy. Take a look when you have time.

Thanks, Rupa!

-Jessica

1004 St. John Street ● Richmond, VA 23220

804-644-2357 (Phone) ● 804-644-0509 (Fax)

www.friendsassn.org

SkirT

Okay I had to take the pictures off since they sucked! I took some this weekend that are so much better so I'll put those up when I can get them off my sister's camera!
With the help of Jenny at Fleur Fabrics, made this awesome skirt!
Button holes are super easy to do! the skirt really isn't photogenic....the fabric is shiny!

Give me a camera and I'll show you my world!

Finally finished taking all the pictures for the project with Friends association that I talked earlier about in my blog. It was exhausting going through all 600 some images and picking out around 30 to get printed, then putting them into frames and putting up the exhibit yesterday!
I spent 5 hours putting it up, which was a good experience in hanging photo frames from the ceiling with fishing line while your hands are super sweaty and unable to hold on to the slippery wire.....
I am hoping to do this project every year so the wall will get filled up.
But we might just have to replace what is there every year with new images because they have some kids that come in to the center in the afternoon that are a bit rowdy therefore the images had to be hung up high. Not the best place for viewing but better for safety.

Here are some pictures of getting ready for the exhibit and the final product!