Work!

Happy weekend, friends!

I was going to post a blog post last week, but I should have known that that wasn't going to happen. Last week was add/drop week at SCAD (Savannah College of Art and Design), when student can add and drop classes without any financial consequences.

View from the building where I work

What that means is that it is REALLY busy. We have walk-in hours all day every day during that week when students can see us without appointments.

Student work in one of the buildings - it's huge!

It's also the week when most of the departments have student orientations and faculty meetings, which we try to go to.

One of the School of Design buildings decorated with clown shoes

I advise all graduate students in Design for Sustainability, Industrial Design, Design Management, Service Design, Creative Business Leadership, Writing and Dramatic Writing (for theater, movies or television).

From an exhibit at the SCAD Museum of Art

Altogether, I advise about 450 students. It was so fun to see many of them again after winter break, as well as the professors. Yes, we are busy but for me it is incredibly fulfilling work.

The view from my parking garage

As an added bonus, I get to be around art and creativity all day long and work smack-dab in the middle of historic downtown Savannah (although it's a little dangerous that I work only a block from the main shopping street).

Next week will be a lot calmer and I won't have evening meetings to go to, so hopefully I'll check in a little more often.

I wish you all a beautiful Saturday!

❧ Silke

Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

Aside from the Edward Hopper exhibit, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts was beyond impressive. We had no idea how huge it is and only saw about a third of its collection. It definitely calls for another trip!

The Faberge flowers were exquisite.

Ancient art from east and west.

This was a huge piece of art "painted" entirely with pins. I would not have the patience!

This painting was equally large and painted in layers with resin in between, which gave it a lot of depth.

 The details in this piece were stunning as well!

As we were eating lunch we watched this bridal party taking photos. They must have been freezing as it was not a warm day!

We were lucky in the timing of our trip. Just three days before, this statue was moved from Times Square in New York City to it's new permanent location at the VMFA.

A magnificent work of art!

Hopefully you enjoyed this little stroll through the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. It's definitely worth a visit! I know we'll be back...

I wish you all a relaxing Sunday! We are getting ready for the start of school tomorrow. Let the fun begin! :)

❧ Silke

Edward Hopper Exhibit

A few weeks ago we drove to Richmond, VA especially to see this Edward Hopper exhibit. We are both great fans of this magnificent artist.

I have much more to share of Richmond, but first I wanted to show you some photos I took at the exhibit.

They aren't the best photos. Even though it was allowed to photograph the art, I always feel like I'm doing something I shouldn't be doing.

What I found most fascinating were seeing some of his preliminary sketches next to the final artwork and the changes he ended up making. 

Now, here we have an actual hotel room (below) that was recreated from the painting above. 

What we found out just this morning from a radio interview, you could book this hotel room for $150 a night. There would be guards around at night, but we could have slept in a Hopper painting! If only we had known...

❧ Silke

May and June

It's been so long since I last wrote that I thought I'd break things up into months to let you know what we've been up to!

May was all about the end of the school year for Daniel and me working on commissions, some of which I can't show yet. 

However, Lola growing up was a big part of our summer. We all graduated from puppy school (and by now have forgotten much of what we learned). Lola is such a good dog - she loves to play with her toys, she doesn't chew on anything she isn't supposed to and she is the snuggliest dog we've ever had.

By now, she and Winslow are best buddies and love to hang out together. We have to make sure she doesn't get too wild with old Winslow, but other than that they get along wonderfully!

Other than that, May was all about the garden being at its most beautiful! 

Our fruit trees were coming along nicely as well. The kumquat tree has been blooming all summer and is full of fruit that will be ripe in the winter. 

Our quince tree, which had two quince last year, is full of slowly ripening fruit. We are looking forward to the winter when we can hopefully make a good bit of quince jam.

Which brings me to our fig tree and the month of June. 

In June, the figs started to ripen and we picked several pounds of figs every day, which had to be processed immediately. Luckily, they don't all get ripe at once!

We dried many pounds of them and made jam to last all year. My favorite jam from this batch was with added orange blossom water. So good! The dried figs we use in Muesli and a rye sourdough bread I make that is amazing!

We also gave many figs to friends and I baked a few of these gorgeous fig frangipani tarts. By the end of the month - and about 90 pounds of figs later - we were glad it would be a whole year before the next harvest!

And of course, there has to be some art in my post. These were two commissioned paintings I finished and sent off to France at the end of June.

I'm working on one more large one for this client, which should be done in the next few days. 

I hope you have all been well this summer and have enjoyed a slower pace, the joys of longer days and maybe a vacation. I visited Germany in July and will tell you all about that in my next post!

❧ Silke