A perfect blend of the beauty of nature and portraiture! I’m featuring the gorgeous photography of Sara K. Byrne in my Artist Watch on Escape Into Life today. Head on over to check it out!
Sara K. Byrne on Escape Into Life
Artist found via The Artful Desperado. Image via the artist’s blog.
![This Artsy Life: Weekend 16 [ Our Last in Joshua Tree ]](https://artsyforager.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/20130422-132545.jpg)
Happy Earth Day, dear Artsies! I wish I could tell you that in anticipation of the celebration of our beautiful planet that Mr. Forager & I got out and did some hiking during our last weekend in Joshua Tree. But alas, there were errands to run, boxes to pack, and it was close to 90 degrees here in the desert, which when hiking with little shade feels like triple digits!
As we prepare to bid farewell to JT, I thought you might enjoy a few peeks inside our past forays into JT National Park to celebrate Earth Day!
It’s been lovely, Joshua Tree. I wish we could say we will miss you like crazy, but you deserve folks who love you like we never could. It’s not you, it’s us. Farewell.
To see more images from This Artsy Life, follow Artsy Forager on Instagram! We don’t have any adorable kitties or pups to fill up our feed, but there is the occasional super cute image of the gosh darn handsome Mr. Forager.
All images by Artsy Forager.
The end of our time in the desert is quickly coming to a close ( we’re now at less than three weeks to go! ). The desert is a place of strong lines. Folks either love it or hate it. Jagged mountains cut across clear blue skies. Tropical oasis spring up amid the arid sand. Last year, photographer Daniel Kulka spent an artist residency in Joshua Tree National Park studying the juxtapositions of desert elements, The Edge Effects.
By positioning a glass mirror on an easel among the desert terrain, Kukla captures the harsh beauty of Joshua Tree. What is seen may be the stark contrast of a cobalt sky amid the beige or the glass may seem to disappear as it captures what can be a confusing landscape.
The imagery of the single easel, alone in the desert recalls the abandonment seen everywhere in this place. Empty homesteads left to ruin, leftover junk discarded among the cholla and joshuas. In the openness of this place, what is cast away is not hidden, it is stranded for all to see.
To see more of Daniel Kukla’s work, please visit his website.
All images are via the artist’s website.
![This Artsy Life: Weekend 14 [ Artsy & Mr. Forager Get Busy ]](https://artsyforager.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/TAL_Desert3.jpg)
No, not like that. We had one of those crazy running-around-trying-to-get-things-done-before-we-move kind of weekends. Mr. F & I love to hike and I am long overdue a new pair of hiking boots. Which isn’t as easy a purchase as you might think! Good boots don’t come cheap and the last thing you want on mile eight of a fifteen mile hike is to start getting blisters, believe me. So we drove all the way to Rancho Cucamonga to the nearest REI. Like Cinderella, I tried on a bunch of glass slippers boots but alas, no magic. Stopped in at a few art supply stores while there as I had it in my head to finish a large painting before we leave Joshua Tree. In less than three weeks. And next weekend we’ll be in San Diego. Mr. F delicately suggested I might be biting off more than I can chew.. he was right and besides they didn’t have the size I wanted on sale. So I decided to back burner it for a while.
We shopped for toddler birthday gifts and fun stuff like dental floss and toilet paper and took a break for a wine tasting ( thanks over-indulger for spilling red wine all over me! ) and a little sushi, which I’ve been dying for lately. Sunday was spent with me doing a little research for this little blog ( look for another redesign soon! ) and Mr. F bottling his latest batch o’ beer. Oh and we started packing for our move! We have no idea where we are going yet, but we’ve begun preparing for the journey. I think there’s something poetic and utterly hopeful about that. 😉 I didn’t take the time to snap many pics this weekend, but we spied some lovely spring desert blooms on our Sunday evening walk. Hope you enjoy!
[ cholla ]
[ prairie sunflowers, maybe? ]
[ no idea what either of these are, but they sure are pretty! ]
[ prickly pear ]
Anyone else in the midst of a move? Hoping to begin planning one? Any desert plant enthusiasts out there know what my unidentified blooms are? What spring flowers are you spotting these days?
As I mentioned on Monday, I am battling a doozy of a cold. I’m on my third day of confinement and first day of being out of bed before 10am ( although I’m writing this at 10:37am and I’m ready to crawl back in ). I’ve been consoling myself with Pinterest and guilty pleasure tv marathons on Hulu. But the bright colors and quirky compositions of the work of San Francisco photographer Kelly Nicolaisen remind me that there is fun and life to be had on the other side of this temporary yuckiness.
Nicolaisen is an art photographer with an incredible eye for color and composition. Each image is carefully balanced yet they still feel like the capturing of a fleeting, ordinary moment.
Just in case we’d forgotten, Nicolaisen’s imagery reminds us of the color, joy and humor to be found in this life. We aren’t meant to live in worlds of taupes and greys. We need and crave the bright spots. Living in the desert has taught me that. For it is in those moments that we remember there is still delight to be found.
To see more of Kelly Nicolaisen’s work, please visit her website.
All images via Saatchi Online.
More and more of our interaction and how we present ourselves to the world, as well as how we perceive others is based on online representations. In his Off II series, Danish artist Johan Rosenmunthe places digitized images of friends from the internet into entirely analog settings. See more from this series of work in my Artist Watch on Escape Into Life here!
This was our 3rd weekend in a row at home in Joshua Tree.. let’s just say we’re getting a bit stir crazy! Especially since we heard of a possible job assignment for Mr. F in an area we would really like to see and experience ( could possibly have more news on that front even today! *fingers crossed* ). So much of our weekend, in between Mr. F doing coursework, baking bread, making pasta, drinking pina coladas ( we like getting caught in the rain ), piles of laundry, Mr. F’s fourth turn at home brewing, and tending a delish Beef & Ale Stew for St. Patty’s, we talked and dreamed about what could be our next landing spot. All the while melting in the Southern California spring sun.
[ I might miss this view. A tiny bit. ]
[ fresh pasta process ]
[ channelling Bannon Fu ]
[ what could our next view look like? ]
How about you, Artsies? Any daydreaming and plan-making happen in your world this weekend? Want to see more snaps from our artsy life? Follow me on Instagram!
All images by Artsy Forager.
It’s not what you do, it’s how you do it. Double-exposure photography is hardly a new concept, but the way Portland, Oregon photographer Misha Ashton-Moore does it is something special! I immediately feel for her warm + cool palettes and mixture of images, sometimes subtle, sometimes completely yet beautifully disparate. Check out more of her work in my Artist Watch today over on Escape Into Life. See it here!
Misha Ashton-Moore on Escape Into Life
Artist found via Daily Dolan Geiman. Image via the artist’s website.
We’ve been living in Southern California for the last six months. Joshua Tree, CA to be exact, a tiny little hamlet full of Seussian spikey trees just outside the Joshua Tree National Park. It’s an artsy, hippy community full of off-the-grid houses and uh, herbal self-medication. Just an hour to the South of us is a whole other world! The slick, mid-century vacation haven of Palm Springs. Photographer Nancy Baron turns her lens to the habitations and inhabitants of the tropical desert town in her series, The Good Life.
I get myself down to Palm Springs at least once a month. Because sometimes this longtime suburban city dweller just needs to get a Target fix. Each time, I’m struck by the juxtapositions at work in Palm Springs. Beautiful, iconic mid-century style architecture dwells together with big box stores and strip malls ( which I admittedly frequent when there ).
Baron chooses to photograph mainly the architecture and older generation of Palm Springs residents. These are the pillars on which this affluent community was built. I often wonder, will the next generation move into the next world with as much grace, dignity, and elegance?
The people of Palm Springs have much in common with the signature modern architecture. Elegant, secure in their own tastes, with just enough style to make you sit up and take notice. May we all be graced with such.
To see more of Nancy Baron’s work, please visit her website.
All images are via the artist’s website. Artist found via Lost at E Minor.
Doing a little Guest Foraging over on the UGallery blog today! For this month’s installment in my series for UGallery, Curated Persona, I’ve put together a little collection of art for The GlobeTrotter. Methinks I might be feeling a bit of wanderlust myself! Mr. Forager & I are both itching to hit the road on to our next adventure! Check out the post over on UGallery’s blog here!
