Welcome to Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada!! Photo Essay, Part One

This trip has been in the making for about three and a half years. Back in January of 2008, I hosted a digital travel photography workshop in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. A friend of mine from Ottawa, Izabel Barsive, spread the word and I ended up with an amazing woman, Tawna Brown, and her friend Rachel, from Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, in my workshop. Since then, Tawna has been inviting me to come to Yellowknife. She is so passionate about the city she grew up in, that I had to come. She doesn't work for the tourism board, but she is the first person I have ever met who carries around travel DVDs about her city. She also gave me a luggage tag, that when she picked us up at the airport today she recognized. She should be paid for all the efforts she makes to bring people to her city.

This summer, the stars aligned, and we were finally able to take her up on her offer to visit Yellowknife. We usually spend over a month visiting family in Ottawa and Minneapolis, but this year, we did that in May. So, we were able to take advantage of the fact that Yellowknife is in our region when it comes to frequent flyer miles, and we were able to book this trip. Also, due to the generosity of Tawna, who has opened her home to us.

Driving through Banff National Park on the way to Calgary

Our beautiful backyard

In the air...

One of many out the window shots....

Touching down on the runway in YK

To be continued, as we are off to play...

Wicked Cool Campers!

I live in a place where there are more tourists than locals, especially in the summer. People from all over the world come to Banff, making it one of the most visited National Parks in the world, with 4.5 million visitors a year. I appreciate the tourists, because otherwise I couldn't live here. I love to see these people enjoying my backyard. I also love that everyday is different and I never know what I will see. This weekend, while going to the Community Greenhouse to water our plot, I saw this camper. It is from Wicked Campers, which have offices beyond North America, in places like the UK and Australia. Andre, my husband, & I, lived for 2 months in a VW van, known as a Kombi, in Australia, with a friend of ours. Three's a crowd? Yes, at times... but rather than break up after the trip, Andre decided he loved me, foibles and all, and proposed 6 months later... anyway, back to this fun camper. It made me smile, and grab my camera. I even went to their website and found out that you can rent one of there campers for as low as $31.50 a day, when booking for more than one day. That's a good price!

As for who paints their campers and thinks up the fun sayings, it is all done by volunteers. Well, actually maybe not all of it, but there is a page about how you can volunteer to paint, write sayings for, and even fix the campers. I do get a bit sick of how artists are always asked to volunteer their services but this would be a fun project if someone was able to volunteer their creative talents.

Are any of you going camping this summer? Do you go camper style or back country tent style?

African Fruit Salad - A Lesson in Geography, Food, & Fun

My four year old has been cooking since she could stand on a step stool next to me. We try to make several things a week, both for the fun of it, and to have healthy, good things around to snack on. Thanks to a well stocked pantry, some of our cooking sessions are impromptu, while others are planned. A few weeks ago, Quin picked a book at the library called Desserts from Around the World. It is a book for older kids but is quite suitable for small children and their parents. The first chapter has the most words and shares different parts of the world and the desserts that are common in each. Quin and I both enjoy curling up with a cookbook and dreaming of what we will make so we looked at a few recipes and their photos before bed each night.

Because we had a large box of mangoes that needed to be used, we decided to make the African Fruit Salad. We also had the bananas and pineapple on hand, but we made a special trip to the store to find a papaya. We actually had to go to two stores as part of this adventure and in the end I bought a not-quite-ripe papaya because it was all they had. For tips on selecting mangoes, pineapple, papaya, and other tropical fruits check out this great link. Quin loves to try new foods, and has not had fresh papaya since I was making her baby food. I recommend a fruit salad as a good way of introducing new fruits to kids.


Africa, on a vintage globe

This is also a good recipe to pair with a geography lesson. We have a vintage globe, which is not the best for showing Quin specific countries, but which she loves to play with so it engages her. It is fine for talking using to show her the continents. We were also able to talk a bit about how in parts of Africa, as in most parts of the world, including Canada, that there are people who are hungry and who need our help. I don't get very political with my small children but I do think it is important to talk about all we have, so we can be grateful for it, and so we can decide how we can help others who are in need.



African Fruit Salad
From the book, Desserts from Around the World


Ingredients
~ Two bananas, sliced
~ One mango, chopped
~ One papaya, seeded and chopped
~ One pineapple, chopped

Directions
Slice and chop all of the fruit into bite sized pieces, combine in a bowl, and serve. If you want to make this ahead of time, do not add the banana. The other fruit will keep 1-2 days when refrigerated. Just add the banana when you are ready to eat it.


"YUM, Pineapple!"

My Summer Vacation - Victoria Beach, Manitoba - Part One

Victoria Beach August 2009 Holgaroid Image by Tiffany Teske

The above image was shot a few days ago, as my family left the cottage we were staying in at Victoria Beach, Manitoba, on Lake Winnipeg. It is a unique and idyllic place where you must park in a lot and then walk or bike to your cottage. The only vehicles allowed past the gate are Victoria Beach taxis. It makes it a safe place for kids to run wild and experience that necessary freedom of childhood. And it makes everyone more physically fit. I was able to shoot several images of this rare place, both digitally, and with my favorite analog camera, my Holga, and will post them in coming days.

Back from THE ROAD

I can't believe it has been three weeks since my last post. Time flies... and I can't way that I was at all bummed to not have internet access while I was away. As much as I love technology, I enjoyed our low tech holidays. I even shot a lot of our trip images using analog cameras, not digital. In coming posts I will share the highlights (and some low ones, ie motel in small town Saskatchewan) of our super road trip. The cast of characters includes me, my super driver hubby, Andre, and our two little girls, ages 3 and 2 months...

The Sculpture of Bruno Torfs

My friend, Maureen, sent me a slide show today. It shows the truly impressive art of Bruno Torfs, a painter and sculpture, who created the more than 300 works of art in Bruno's Art and Sculpture Garden. Sadly, it is located North East of Melbourne, Australia, and during the recent fires it was destroyed. I can't figure out how to get the slide show onto Blogger, so I have included a few images of Bruno's beautiful work here. You can go to The Garden's official website to find out more about this amazing man, as well as how to help them rebuild this wonderful place.


Andre and I spend 8 weeks in Australia in 2002, many of those weeks near Melbourne. I wish that someone would have told me about this truly unique sculpture garden. I often visit and photograph botanical gardens, sculpture gardens, and arboretums when I travel. This would surely have been one of the highlights of our trip... so sad...

Costa Rica Collage Frame

I am really thankful for the month long challenge of Thing-a-day, because I have completed many little projects I have been wanting to work on for ages! Some of them professional projects and some of them personal projects. The one project that had been lingering the longest is this collage frame. I have been wanting to put images from a 2001 trip to Costa Rica in it since I bought it a couple of years ago. Two years ago I went through my scads contact sheets from the trip, had the prints made, then could not find them. Turns out I was looking in the wrong place. I was looking for print envelopes with the prints in it, but apparently I got all organized one day and put them in an album! Just found it last week... hard to find something when you think you are looking for something else, sheesh! But now, it is finally done and on the wall. Yippee!! Hubby and I have been taking a trip down memory lane. This was the first major trip we took together. We had been together less than one year. It was an amazing 6 week journey through Costa Rica, with about a week spent in Panama.

An Anniversary of Sorts...

One year ago today, my then one and a half year old daughter and I left our home in the frozen north and headed for San Miguel de Allende in central Mexico. I had made the commitment about one year before that to teach a digital photography class in this amazingly beautiful place. My friend, and fellow artist, Crystal Beshara, a painter who had taught there once before, was my inspiration, and she and I rented an amazing house from which to teach our set of classes. I am talking one of those crazy breath taking homes you so on TV reality shows. It was lovely with fire places in each room, a gorgeous view of the city, and a cook and housekeeper. The travels TO Mexico rank up there with some of my most horrific travels, not because of my daughter, she was an truly an angel, and at that point it was her 5th series of plane trips (she is now 2 1/2 and has been on 8 plane trips), but because of the horrible airlines. It took us 30 hours to get from the airport to the rented house, and it involved knowing from my first flight that we would be missing the connection, after hours of waiting getting a new connection which got up in the air flew about 30 minutes, then had to turn around and head back to the airport, then arriving in Mexico City, the largest city in the world, at 3 AM, with a baby, and not having a place to stay... maybe I will write out the whole story sometime but I don't have the energy to do it now, or to rehash the letter I sent to the airlines. But I will just say here that kids are remarkably good travelers when they are well fed, rested, and entertained. And when you keep your cool and act like everything you are doing is normal. They could care less about missed connections, delays, and details. Quin was so so wonderful. As was this trip. If you know nothing about San Miguel de Allende, and if you like to travel, you need to check into going there. It is a place that is populated by artists, and is easy to navigate if you don't speak Spanish, since there are many Western ex-pats. Guanajuato is a nearby day trip, equally as colorful and interesting. I really do need to write a travel article about it... anyway, I spent time with old friends (Crystal and her family, as well as my very good friend, Karina), made new friends (my students, including Tawna from Yellowknife who I am determined to go and visit), spent time exploring with my daughter, and made some amazing images, which until now, I have never even uploaded. That's life, eh? SO, on this anniversary, I was determined to sit down and make a slide show with just a few of the thousand plus images I made. I stuck with the colorful. The slideshow is running somewhere under the poll, and can be clicked on to enlarge. I hope you enjoy... I hope to bring my husband to SMA someday, the poor guy had to stay and work in the frozen north :(

Click Here Radio Program TOMORROW

I just got off the phone with Mitchell Caplan, the host of Click Here, an interview based radio show on CHUO-FM89, that focuses on the arts and community issues in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. He has a spot on his program tomorrow, and he would like me be his guest. We will talk about Wanderlust, the show I currently have up at D'OMMA Gallery. I have been on his program before, I think it was back in 2005, for the Red Salon Artists first show. Mitchell has a great voice and is very good at what he does. I am excited to speak with him again. I didn't ask him how he heard about the show. I have not had time to do much PR but I did send an announcement to Art Engine in Ottawa yesterday, I am glad I did. I will be on starting at 3:20 PM Calgary time or 5:20 PM Ottawa time, tomorrow, Wednesday, August 20th. To have a listen go here and click on Listen Live or Listen Now.

We are back...

...from our travels out East. It is good to be home. We recently purchased a home of our own so it is time to let the unpacking and getting settled begin. Yippee! Our recent travels were awesome but I am happy to get back to home sweet home. Before we left I read an article in our local paper about a couple who will spend part of each year, for the next four years, calling their canoe home. Pam, Geoff, and Taq, their dog, plan to paddle across Canada. They started their amazing journey in March of last year in Victoria, BC. The threesome anticipates making it to Ontario by fall, then they will take a break over the winter, when they will plan their next route. I really admire these people, as I was an avid canoeist and I also have a spirit of wanderlust. I wish them the best of luck, wicked adventures, and I pat them on the back for not only their passion for the outdoors but for their commitment to our environment. Check out the Canoe Across Canada website...

On the Road Again

We are busy visiting friends and family, eating delicious foods, and gaining inspiration for new works of art while making photographs. I will do my best to post while on holidays so please keep coming back for more...

Wanderlust

This is the first mixed media piece in my series called Wanderlust, which is a solo show I am having at Ottawa Gallery D'OMMA in August. I also got the artist statement written today...

Artist's Statement for Wanderlust:

Long before talk of fossil fuels and the environmental footprint of travel dominated the news, people have had the need to explore their surroundings and beyond. This wanderlust is practical for some, while for others it is about adventure, curiosity, and a need to have new experiences. The reason that people travel, both now and in the past, are many. I seek to explore these reasons in my newest body of mixed media work. Using recycled materials, including Polaroid transfers made for past exhibitions, I have created a series of collages on 12 1/4" by 12 1/4" thrifted record album jackets. As someone who suffers from a serious need to roam and to learn new things, the concept of wanderlust appeals to me. As someone who is currently grappling with the present state of our world and how best to explore it while keeping my enviromental impact to a minimum, I am presenting an alternative to actual travel for the viewer. My hope is that these works will provide you with a green way to wander, by using your imagination in collaboration with my visuals.

To learn more about my commitment to create art using only recycled and thrifted materials please go to my other blog.

REDUCE REUSE RECYCLE UPCYCLE REPURPOSE THRIFT CREATE

The West Edmonton Mall

I come from Minneapolis, Minnesota, the land of the Mall of America, the largest mall in the states. It takes a lot to impress me mall-wise. Southdale, in Edina, Minnesota, was the first indoor mall, and the movie Mallrats was filmed at Eden Prarie Center. I grew up shopping in both of these malls. The mall I hung out in the most was Ridgedale Mall, which was mentioned in the movie Juno. Maybe this mall heritage is the reason I don't really like malls. I prefer to shop in independantly owned and thrift stores. Chain stores and restaurants are not my favorites, unless they are book and art supply stores. But we did have fun at the West Edmonton Mall. Andre had a meeting to go to today, so we made the 4 hour trek yesterday and spent the night. We stayed at the Fantasyland Hotel, which I mistakenly thought had theme rooms. No such luck. It was theme hallways. We were on the seventh floor which has a stable theme, with a horse painted on each door. Bummer. I wanted to stay in a theme room. The room was large and wonderful, very clean and modern. I can't say I dug eating for two days in food courts, but there were many fun things to see. And my two year old is so amazed by everything right now that it was priceless as always to see a whole new world through her eyes. She could have cared less about shopping, she was too busy sitting in coin operated rides (usually without a coin in them), watching fountains, watching people ice skate, having ice cream, and watching other kids.

Too Much Popcorn...

Urgh, I am ILL! Too much nasty movie theater popcorn. It used to be my favorite snack, I would get huge cravings for it, but after tonight I think I may be off the stuff. Went to see Juno, which was really good. Very real. It didn't glamorize teen pregnancy but instead showed a smart girl, and a sweet guy, a dad and stepmom who were unconditionally loving, and the realities of life, both good and bad, that we are confronted with each day, whether being a teen who is pregnant or not. Plus it was based in my home area of Minneapolis, or just outside of it. I didn't know that when I went to see it, but they started mentioning Stillwater, Mankato, St. Cloud, and then Ridgedale Mall which was the closest mall to me the who time I was growing up! The lead actress who played Juno is really cute and funny, and I have always loved the guy who played her boyfriend, from Arrested Development.

So, I was going to talk about all the recent opportunities. I will do my best here, but really should go to bed because I feel sick.

One, is that Shady Lanes, who curated the Gimme Polaroid V show in San Francisco. emailed to say it wasa a great success and that she is going to be making a book from the show! I am getting the hi res images together to send her, and she mentioned something about including additional images that may not have been in the show, so I may have more (or less) than my 5 original images. I am waiting to hear back from her about whether any of my pieces sold. She has images from the opening in Flickr.

I received an email from Tracy Midulla Reller, the curator of [5]Art, in West Tampa, Florida. The 5 Polaroids that I sent as a submission for the Instant Gratification Polaroid Installation were accepted! Now I just wish I could go to the opening. I believe I sent Ferntebrae 1 & 2, Pink, Bound 1, & one of my papaya images... The are "straight" Polaroids, not transfers. The show opens on February 8th.

Things have been rockin' on both Trunkt & Etsy!

I added about 12 new images to my Trunkt portfolio and it continues to be one of the most popular in photography category :) They have added some new changes that I need time to check out. One is that I can make an ad for galleries, wholesalers, licensers, which is awesome! I really love Trunkt and feel I have received great exposure and results from having my portfolio with them.

On Etsy I have been on two front page treasuries within 48 hours. And Anda from admin put me in an Etsy Picks treasury that highlights a new feature called Suggestions. This is the image that was used:



And there is a lot going on in the Poe forums. There is a great group of photographers in this group. So talented and committed to promoting photograph on Etsy. It does some to be having an impact on both the number of treasuries featuring photography and the number sales people are having. Here are my two latest sales:





In addition to that street team I have joined the Free Thinkers, "a group of Artists, Craftsmen, and Designers who feel that we should live and let live. We are Atheists, Agnostics, Christians, Jews, and Buddhists who try to be respectful of the religious, political and philosophical beliefs of other people: we don't try to change anyone's mind and we try not to be judgmental. We believe in peace, laughter, and giving a helping hand when and where we can."

AND a new group started up on Facebook called Interior Design Etsy, lead by Kristina Law. It is currently an open group that will eventually be closed. "The purpose of this group is to network among fellow Etsy Members and/or Artists that offer things that apply to Interior Design, Home Decore and related topics. It is required that you have an etsy shop and you sell things that fall into Interior Design/Home Decor/Art/Furniture/Housewares etc. category."

There is more to share but it can wait for tomorrow. Here is my newest image, I LOVE it! I shot it in Vermont, at Jay Peak, back in 2001 but never made it into a transfer until this week. I hope to start showcasing the talents of others here soon...