This is actually a self portrait collaboration with Boris. I loved the idea of a photo of myself surrounded by the red tulips, with me in my red jacket. Unfortunately I didn’t bring a tripod with me so Boris had to play that role. He didn’t quite get the angle I was hoping for so I made some additions and adjustments in photoshop. The results: an endless field of tulips and nothing but the colour red.

Day 15: Red shoes

Day 17: While the city burned

These are my favorite self portraits from last week. Today I shared number twenty-two which will bring me one portrait closer to the end of this project, which is good because I’m running out of steam.

Day 10: Shadows on the wall

Today I will be shooting a self portrait for day fifteen. Time sure flies and here I am already half-way through this thirty day project. Maybe next month I will do a second thirty day project of shooting a portrait a day for a month…

I think I’m a lot burnt out after a very intense year with too much stress and not enough vacation, and then I started a new part-time job. And while the new part time job is terrific and challenging, it means art and creativity get much less time than I’d like to dedicate to them.

To give myself something good to focus my energy into I decided I needed to get the creative juices flowing and begin a small project. I’ve chosen to do one self portrait a day for the next month. I started shooting a week ago today and I’m already at day 8 of the series.

Day 1: Losing My Head

Day 2: A Moment In The Sun

Day 4: It’s Raining

Click through to flickr to view the rest of the series so far.

Some of the photos have been more creative than others, but it all depends on how much time I have available each day. I’m really enjoying working on this series so far.

I wanted to shoot a fun portrait of Boris and myself to send out as a digital Christmas card. We finally got around to doing this the other evening but I wasn’t quite happy with the results. The portrait wasn’t creative or fun enough to suit me so I decided to take seven photos from the series and make them into an animated gif. I’ve never done this before but It was really fun figuring out how to put it together in photoshop. It was relatively simple too. And now you can watch Boris and I kiss over and over and over…

The tutorial I used is for Photoshop CS3, if you want to make your own animated gif.

One of the things they don’t tell you about being an artist is that it’s a lonely road. But only at times.

It’s my birthday today and I thought I’d mark it with a self portrait. I haven’t taken one in quite some time and last year I didn’t do a birthday portrait because I wasn’t feeling great. A year later and things are much better because I’ve made a lot of the changes and taken my life in a direction I’ve always wanted to go.

This photo didn’t turn out at all how I was visualizing it in my head, but I’m happy with it. I love my goofy facial expression and the magic of floating mid-air in my bedroom.

Ten Good Things about moving:
1. Upgrading from a two room bachelor to a two bedroom apartment. Hurray for more space!
2. Finally having a small studio space at home for art making and housing art supplies.
3. Living in East Van which is a quieter, more interesting neighbourhood than South Granville filled with neat stuffs.
3. Sleeping in a bedroom at last. (The old place had built in Murphy beds and no bedroom).
4. Getting rid of things I no longer need and wonder why I’ve held onto.
5. Unpacking books and art I haven’t seen in almost a year.
6. Having about a zillion times the wall space than before to hang lots and lots of art.
7. Figuring out where to put everything and how to arrange the furniture in the new space. (I see Ikea in our future).
8. Paying a bit more rent than before for a much larger space. We really lucked out.
9. Ending up at La Casa Gelato every other day in the last five (so far) because we live SO close. (Always with different friends though).
10. Unpacking twenty-five Frogboxes and having them all go away at the end of last week.

From the Free Will Astrology Newsletter:

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): “I burn for no reason, like a lantern in daylight,” writes poet Joseph Lease. I think that’s a succinct formulation of one of your central issues, Leo. Burning for no reason, like a lantern in the daylight, can be the cause of either failure or success for you, depending on subtle differences of emphasis. This is how it can be failure: When you’re mindlessly and wastefully burning through your prodigious reserves of fuel without any concern for the benefits it may provide you and others. This is how it can be success: When you are exuberant and self- disciplined in shining your light and radiating your warmth just because it feels so good and so right and so healthy, and without any thought about whether it’s “useful” to anyone.

How’s that for a kick-ass weekly horoscope…?

Live as if you liked yourself, and it may happen:
reach out, keep reaching out, keep bringing in.
This is how we are going to live for a long time: not always,
for every gardener knows that after the digging, after the planting,
after the long season of tending and growth, the harvest comes.

~ Marge Piercy

Because I plan to have a show of the 52 Weeks self portrait series I decided I would produce a self published book using Blurb as part of the process. It felt like the first step in narrowing down the selection from the 52 images (which is too much for a show), and also figuring out whether it could actually work as a show at all. I really struggled with that last part because I experimented quite a lot with different styles and techniques over the course of the series and felt it wasn’t very coherent as a show. Showing the work to a new group of people helped me see it more clearly and convinced me I wasn’t crazy about showing the 52 Weeks photos in a gallery.

The blurb book features only a small selection of the 52 Weeks photos. I chose what I felt are the best and most creative work, while trying to keep in mind how these will work together/compliment one another both in book form and hanging on walls. The 12″ x 12″ copy I ordered this week will work nicely as a one-off portfolio of this body of work that I hope to shop around while looking for a space to show. If you have any suggestions for places that could work in the Vancouver area, please let me know.

The 52 Weeks book can be purchased online through blurb.com. The size is 7″ x 7″ and comes in softcover or hardcover with dust jacket. Click the blurb badge below to see a sneak preview or purchase it on blurb.

52 Weeks

A Year of Self Por…

By Rachael Ashe

Book Preview

Other Blurb books I thought were cool:
Masque de Gaz | Geoffrey Nicholson
The Devil’s in the Details | Laura McCabe
BenoitP | Benoit Paille

It’s funny how the things you want most out of life, the dreams you dreamed as a child, are often the very things that escape you as an adult. Maybe it’s because life is busier and more complicated as you grow up, and some childhood dreams don’t seem to align with the need to make money.

I’ve often felt this way about my desire to become an artist, and so I’ve always left it sitting somewhere on the backburner, somewhat neglected and playing second fiddle to all the other things in my life. I’ve never actually trusted my artistic talents enough to provide me with a source of income, and so I make money some other way.

I’m not sure what I’m trying to say with all this, except maybe to express how much I’ve struggled over the years with wanting to be a real live artist who also makes money doing what I love.

If you are an artist with similar struggles, I highly recommend taking a workshop with Chris Tyrell as well as buying his book, “Artist Survival Skills”. I recently completed his excellent four-session workshop, Professional Visual Arts Career Management, at the Alliance for Arts & Culture. (Download the PDF with a detailed course description.) It is just the thing every artist needs to clarify goals, define a personal idea of success, market your work, and all sorts of tidbits on how to develop your arts practice as a business. These are areas I’ve always been lacking because the business of art doesn’t come as naturally as the creation of art.

The photo I’ve included at the top of this entry is called “To Do List” and is part of my self portrait series “52 Weeks“. I created the shot at a time when my to do list was feeling particularly long, just as it is now. I’m putting the business of art back on my to do list and hope to write more about the steps I take next. If you have any tips or suggestions please leave a comment. I’d love to hear from people about what has worked for them.

I love the horoscope from Free Will Astrology this week:

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): “Dear Rob Brezsny: I really didn’t like a recent horoscope you wrote for me. I’m a Leo, and although your oracle was sort of true, I didn’t want it to be true, and furthermore I didn’t want to lend my belief energy to help make it true. So I went hunting among the other signs, hoping to find a different horoscope that appealed more to the healthiest aspect of my fantasy life. I settled on the ‘scope for Cancer, as it piqued my interest with just the right hopeful twist, and provided a highly motivating kick in the butt. Thanks! – Picky Choosy.” Dear Picky Choosy: I approve of your efforts. These days I would love all of my Leo readers to be as imperious as you’ve been in gathering only the influences you want, and shedding the rest.

On that note, I’d say the horoscope for Cancer also applies:

CANCER (June 21-July 22): The joke goes like this: “Why is a math book so sad? Because it has so many problems.” But of course that’s a distortion of the truth. In fact, the math book loves its problems. Its problems are its reason for being. Besides that, all of its problems are interesting challenges, not frustrating curses. Best of all, every problem has a definite answer, and all the answers are provided in the back of the book. Now here’s the most excellent news of all, Cancerian: I think you’ll be like a math book in the coming weeks.

I have a long blog post about my experiences at Artfest hanging over my head. I had planned to start writing up something today but when I finally got through my other projects for the day I just wasn’t into writing a blog post. I think it’s going to be a weekend project, along with uploading my photos to flickr. Maybe I will also tweak this blog theme because there are little things about it that are driving me batty….

Instead I give you my horoscope for this week from Free Will Astrology:

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): French President Sarkozy’s best friend, advertising mogul Jacques Seguela, has an unusual way of measuring success. If you don’t own a Rolex watch by the time you’re 50, he says, you’re a failure. I’m inclined to propose the opposite: If you *do* have a Rolex watch, no matter what age you are, you’re probably a failure. To be attached to such a conspicuous status symbol is a sign that your values are dominated by the transitory trivialities of materialism. Where do you stand on the matter, Leo? It’s a good time to think about it, because you’re in a phase when clarifying your definitions of high achievement is important.

I’ve always wondered whether the two lovebirds, the only caged birds in Alfred Hitchcock‘s movie “The Birds“, were actually the evil ringleaders causing the bird attacks on people. Lovebirds do tend to be troublemakers…

In my original concept for this shot I’d planned to use fake birds, and spent a bit of time searching for places to buy them. The only birds I was able to find were fake crows and they were far too ugly and misshapen to pass for proper birds. I decided to pull all the bird photos from my archives and composite together in photoshop the shot I had in mind. It took about four or five hours of masking, manipulating, and layering to bring it all together.

It was created for a project called, “Scenes from a Movie” organized by Stephanie Vacher. The idea was for each participant to choose a director’s name from a hat and then create a shot to reference that person’s film work. I lucked out and chose Alfred Hitchcock.

Once upon a time there was a small family of Germans, who lived on a small island called Bowen in the beautiful land of British Columbia. The family was made up of an entertaining German father who made funny jokes, a lovely German mother who looked after everyone, and a Big Cute Fuzzy Strapping Geeky German son (who was also the King of Drupal, but that’s another story…) This small family of Germans really loved to eat meat, as Germans have a tendency to do. They also loved to eat bread as well as cheese, but this particular story REALLY focuses on the meat.

As the Yuletide Season approached, the son who was always full of big ideas, came up with a meat-focused way to celebrate the Christmas season. He decided to call it the Twelve Meats of Christmas, and it would involve preparing and eating a variety of meats twelve different ways. The First Meat of Christmas was Chorizo with kale and chard in a pasta dish. (He was starting light you see.) The Second Meat of Christmas was delicious crispy bacon cooked for breakfast. The Third Meat of Christmas was roasted lamb with parsnips, garlic and lemons. The Fourth Meat of Christmas was Duck Soup with cabbage. The Fifth Meat of Christmas was Creton a spicy pork pate. The Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth meats of Christmas were prepared by his friend Zak and came in the form of Pork Tenderloin Wrapped in Prosciutto, Chicken Forcemeat and Puff Pastry. The Ninth Meat of Christmas was pulled pork cooked for six hours and marinated in delicious North Carolina style BBQ sauce. The Tenth Meat of Christmas was Montreal smoked meat cold cuts for breakfast. The eleventh meat of Christmas was braised beef cooked into a broth in Czechoslovakian cabbage soup.

It was as the eleventh meaty meal was achieved the son suddenly realized he needed something different, something out of the ordinary to be the crowning glory, as it were, of the twelve meats. But as the wintery weather was at its worst outside and the purveyors of further meats were inaccessible from the small island, he wasn’t sure how he could achieve this. Then low and behold, as his lovely German mother was clearing the paths around their home of snow, she stumbled across a poor young deer that had perished from the cold. The son was thrilled, ecstatic, excited beyond words, because now all his meaty dreams could come true! What a prize to find a fresh and tender young deer, and to have it die peacefully in the night.

In a flash, a band of merry revelers came together to help butcher the deer and prepare a magnificent banquet feast. People came from far and wide to taste the wonderful venison and to share in the miraculous meat. There were rare venison steaks, sauteed venison heart flavoured with garlic, beer and mustard, haunch of venison braised in cabbage soup, roasted venison with dried fruit sauce, and jerky marinated in raspberry wine vinegar with soya sauce. It was a happy meal and every reveler left with bellies full from the feasting.

The German son was content having achieved his dream of the twelve meats of Christmas, and in the process to have made so many others happy and well fed.

The End.

(This story is based upon true events from my Christmas on Bowen, and is dedicated to the Mann Family.)

This list is inspired by Degan’s, which was in turn inspired by Hula Seventy’s.

1. Spirals
2. Yuuki tail feathers
3. The colour red
4. Hugs
5. Black tea with milk and honey
6. Japanese paper
7. Yoga
8. Candied ginger
9. Lemon verbena soap from Trader Joes
10. Roadtrips
11. Writing letters
12. Stationery
13. Snuggling with B
14. Watching the snow fall
15. Listening to rain outside my window
16. Chocolate chip banana bread
17. Anne’s German apple cake
18. Chips
19. Bowen Island
20. Walking around Kilarney Lake
21. The P-Sharan pinhole camera
22. Sour key candy
23. Grapefruit
24. Bacon
25. German egg pancakes made by Boris
26. Handmade knitted/crocheted things from friends
27. Taking photos (Duh!)
28. Cuddling Maggie
29. Laughing until I cry
30. Soaking in the bathtub
31. Hot chocolate with whipped cream
32. Art supplies
33. Watching birds
34. Crows
35. Afternoon naps when it’s sunny
36. Crunching through fallen leaves on the sidewalk
37. Dancing
38. Singing
39. Making and sharing food with friends
40. Textiles from India
41. Strawberry rhubarb pie
42. Reading comics
43. Forest walks
44. Postcards in the mail
45. Packages from my family
46. Feeling inspired
47. Talking about art and creativity
48. Contax cameras
49. Toy cameras
50. Blank notebooks.
51. Cilantro
52. Scarves
53. Arm/wrist warmers
54. Lemon tarts
55. Laughing at farts
56. Picnics at the beach
57. Community gardens
58. Looking for Graffiti in back alleys
59. Snow covered North Shore mountains revealed after days of cloud
60. Walking along the water between Kits beach and Jericho
61. Riding my bike with a large group of people
62. Mango ginger stilton cheese
63. Fireweed honey
64. Teapots
65. Poofy duvets
66. Used bookstores
67. Knee socks
68. Weekend brunch
69. Taking art workshops
70. Fish shaped waffles filled with red bean paste
71. Photobooth pictures
72. Art night
73. The silver bird ring from my sister
74. Hand thrown pottery mugs
75. Yuuki chattering quietly to himself
76. Chasing Bogey
77. Artist studio tours
78. Buttons
79. Expired slide film
80. The sweet text messages from B I have kept on my phone for months
81. Writing lists
82. Flip flops in summer
83. Warm slippers in winter
84. Watching herons fishing at dusk
85. Looking through a fresh batch of photo prints
86. Letter press drawers as nik nak shelves
87. Tiny things
88. Poppies
89. The farmers market
90. Dahlias
91. Experimenting
92. Feathers
93. Smooching
95. Drift glass
96. Japanese maples
97. Cherry blossoms in spring
98. Watching eagles soar
99. Letting silence be
100. Patterned and colourful clothing

(It’s harder than you think to write one hundred things you love.)

From Free Will Astrology:

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): “It’s better to be clumsy than clever,” says an ancient Chinese book called *Poets’ Jade Splinters,* “better plain than affected, better crude than weak, better eccentric than vulgar.” That’s a good prescription for you to use in the way you live your life in the coming days, Leo. Here’s another observation from the same text that should also be helpful: “Inspiration enters at the border between hard work and laziness.” That suggests you’ve got to work hard and discipline yourself in order to earn the right to inspiration, but often the inspiration flows in when you’re goofing off or giving yourself some slack.

A few weeks ago I came up with the strange looking portrait of myself for my 52 weeks series. The idea was inspired by double-exposure shots, which can’t be done with digital as far as I know. I decided to take four shots of myself, one sharp, and the others as I shook my head from side to side, and then overlay them in photoshop. I liked the resulting surreal effect so much I’ve decided to shoot other people in a similar manner and create a series of these portraits. Kirsti was my first model, and she looks just as strange as I do. Who shall be next…?

10 Good Things from the Weekend:
1. Being part of the most personal and special wedding I’ve ever attended. My friends Marc and Jacquie really did things right.
2. Sitting at the Blenz in Horseshoe Bay enjoying a lovely morning while waiting to catch a ferry.
3. Hooking up with an excellent road trip companion.
4. Chatting with people I haven’t seen in ages and happily hearing they are doing well.
5. A glorious sunrise on Sunday morning, followed by a beautiful day.
6. Making it back to the city early on Sunday and doing some of the things I thought I’d be missing out on – like the Ruby Dog garage sale.
7. Buying two plants from the awesome store on Main Street.
8. A long phone conversation with Mandy.
9. A much needed Sunday afternoon nap.
10. Enjoying some quiet time to myself, and feeling recharged after the weekend.

Good things from the weekend:
- a delicious meal that came in many small bowls, followed by a very tasty dessert – all made by Zak.
- Saturday brunch at the Sandbar on Granville Island
- the fastest trip through Ikea ever, which yielded excellent results
- a well-timed phone call from Hendrik that led to a fun Sunday afternoon
- the glorious weather on Sunday afternoon
- homemade sky high pizza made by Boris. So-called because it was stacked with toppings.
- having a clearer mind after a few weeks of too much stress and anxiety

From the Free Will Astrology newsletter…

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Resilience is a quality that allows you to rise above setbacks and find resources in unexpected places. It’s a willful instinct to seek the higher ground and a bigger vision. It’s intensely practical, because it shushes the nagging voices in your head that make negative interpretations of your experience, thereby allowing you to act courageously in your own best interests. This is Resilience Week for you, Leo. Call on your dormant reserves.

From the inside cover of Boris’ little red pocket notebook:

Red is one of the few colours – along with white and black – found in every language known to humankind. Red is the colour of fire, the colour of blood, the colour of life.

Red can be found in the oldest artworks on Earth, the Stone Age cave paintings of Southern France. Cave-dwellers mined red ochre and crushed it to create a pigment that has not lost its lustre in 30,000 years.

Derived from the ancient Sanskrit word for blood, “rhudira”, red was believed to prevent evil and disease. Warriors painted their axes red. Scottish farmers tied red string around the necks of their oxen. Ancient Egyptians immersed themselves in vats of red.

In Asia, red is the colour of luck and prosperity. Chinese brides wear red. Hindu women put red bindis on their foreheads. Red is the first colour noticed by babies, the favorite colour of children, the most popular colour on national flags.

Red is the colour of passion and love. A zest for life. A craving for excess. It is no myth that red is exciting. Just looking at red will increase the blood pressure, stimulate adrenaline and speed up the pulse. See what happens when you think in red.

Red is my favorite colour.

Because I’ve been feeling down this evening I decided to dig up and read the inspiring words in last month’s newsletter from Another Girl at Play. You should read it too.

For further cheering up good measures, here a list of good things from the weekend:
1. Friday night hanging out with Mandy to see Dusk Dances in Stanley Park.
2. Some much needed time alone at home on Saturday morning.
3. Surviving the yogathon despite my worries I wouldn’t be able to endure the sun and heat. (Phew!)
4. Buying a new carry-on sized suitcase in preparation for an upcoming trip.
5. Hanging out at Jericho beach reading my book and playing badminton.

I decided to enter a photo contest being run by a new data storage company called PutPlace. They are looking for photos of people making the kind of face one makes when suddenly confronted with a major loss of data. I know I would be absolutely horrified (as evidenced by my photo) and also devastated if I lost any of my best photographs and didn’t have a backup… I suppose I would actually look a lot less campy and over-the-top if it actually happened.

The contest closes on July 31st, and the winner gets a one year subscription for 100 GB of data storage at PutPlace.com and a $200 USD Amazon gift certificate.

The full details on how to enter