Surfaces, images and Lectures!

I have been so crazy busy!
I will be giving my first lecture tomorrow...yikes!!! Even though i know there will be like 5 people there i am still very nervous. Very extremely nervous. The lecture is for a scholarship I was awarded in 2007 to go to Lamu to research swahili architecture. Yeah long time ago for me to be talking about it now!!! but I am kinda grateful to have the opportunity to learn how to talk about research.

Great news too, I got the chance to have my photographs shown in the student gallery in Bentonville Ar. The concept for the collection of pictures (for the gallery) is surfaces.
While taking photographs for my thesis research in the slums I noticed beautiful details on the buildings, details that tended to go unnoticed when viewed within the chaos of everything else So i thought isolating that beauty might be a plan.

I wanted to show the beauty of the materials giving a glimpse into aspects of the slum that should be celebrated. For each photograph I zoomed in into sections of the wall surface to show texture, shadow, colour, or overlapping materials. The colours of the buildings were so unreal- the paint would mix with rust and dirt to create the most gorgeous hues. Some of the zoomed in pictures look like paintings...that I had not expected but was not surprised at all.
Will try and take pics at the opening this Friday.
Here is a teaser...
*The bottom image is how the pic would be viewed at the gallery- focused in on a particular portion of the wall.

Words floating in my head

It is a little strange standing where i am, time that elusive ever present companion,
has been whispering coded messages to me revealing always a little at a -time that today is really all there is. That my now is the ony thing really gauranteed and that i should celebrate that and do the best that i can with it. What exactly i am supposed to do i do not know... that i guess is the coded part. I believe somewhere inside me i know the answer but i have not learned to listen to myself that well- yet.
Standing here i know my thesis is important, that within this study i am developing my discourse, my purpose through architecture becasue i don't believe we could possibly have one purpose! The one i intend to fulfill through buildings lies here...somewhere; this is the start. That gives me some comfort to know this journey means something, but this journey through school has also kept me really busy, I have not had time to discover other parts of me. My heart and spirit seem different my mind has been slow to catch up. Somewhere along the last 5 years i changed over and over and over again and i could not always keep up, but suddenly standing here things seem to be gaining clarity a little at a time.

I feel like the start of a new year means the begining of a new time...as corny as that sounds. I feel like i am getting another chance to get to know myself, learn my heart and follow it. Kinda scary, mostly exhilarating!...for now at least.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ME!