I was going to post a single image to Facebook in honor of mother’s day, but then I got to looking through my photos… and realized that there were too many good ones to choose only one. So here you have it – a priceless selection of photos from throughout the years. Happy Mother’s Day to my beautiful mom, the original Alaskan of the family, probably the sweetest person who ever lived but also, unsurprisingly, tough as nails.
This is actually me and my aunt, but I liked it.
Bam! I’m twenty-three. What happened? In any case, it’s been a totally wonderful day. I was awoken by the chiming of my cell phone receiving a happy birthday message from Tor Edvin, opened a present from my parents, and talked with them on the phone shortly after. Then there was a legendary breakfast, when Charlotte and I drove to a vegan/gluten-free bakery- envision green smoothies, birthday cake, cookies, and baked goods galore. After a day of photo critique, which I must say Charlotte totally rocked, we ended the evening at one of my favorite Thai restaurants with a surprisingly large number of my classmates. It was a great day.
I thought it might be fun to reminisce, through photos, about some of the memorable birthdays of the past few years. Let’s start in 2007, my seventeenth birthday – the earliest birthday photos I had on Flickr. I had a party at my parent’s house with a TON of friends from high school – I was going to be leaving for Norway in a few short months, at that point. I had a mountain cake, we jumped on the trampoline, etc – I just can’t believe how many people were there, and how young we were. I remember feeling so old.
I turned eighteen in Narvik during my exchange year. Since Tor Edvin’s birthday and mine are pretty close together, we had a birthday party together at our friend Nina’s house with all of our friends and classmates. The sun never set – I remember my host parents were out of town and I spent the night with my friend Zlata in Bjerkvik. We drank champagne (18 is the European 21), ate cake, danced around and laughed all night.
My nineteenth birthday was actually also in Norway, right in the middle of Russ, a 17-day long graduation party. Even better, my birthday happened to fall on the day when all the Russ (graduating seniors) in Northern Norway road-tripped to Harstad, taking over the city and partying all weekend long. We slept in a gym, danced all night, and generally had a fabulous time.
I turned 20 in Lugano, Switzerland, where I attended my first year of college. We hiked all day and made cupcakes, but I also had a birthday party at my house in Alaska when I got home.
I turned 21 in the Himalayas in India. There are no photos taken on this day, because by that point everyone’s cameras were out of batteries, but we had been in the mountains for over a month and were on our way down through a blossoming springtime forest. We befriended some local villagers and stayed with them for a few days.
My twenty-second birthday was in Providence, Rhode Island – I don’t remember doing anything eventful on the day itself, but it was around that time that we went to Block Island for the first time and did a lot of hiking on Mt. Desert Island in Maine.
…and today! What a shame I don’t carry around my 5D casually anymore, haha. Instagram has changed everything. It seems I didn’t document very much, but you get the idea!
Charlotte and I celebrating at midnight last night.
Gluten-free everything.
Ben’s amazing work.
Yes, he dressed to match his prints.
Jackson made a corrupted-code JPG-artifact out of one of my old photos from last year. How cool!
Everyone amazed by Charlotte’s final series. It blew our minds.
Anyway, thank you to everyone who has made this day as wonderful as it’s been. To another epic year ahead!
In honor of Monday, a day on which the impending workload can seem incomprehensible, I now present you with a very nostalgic video from 2009: from when Nic and I decided to classic-ski 50 kilometers in one go. By my logic, if that was possible, so is literally everything else.
Enjoy!
Well, that was intense.
Last week, I finally, finally finished the first edition of the book I’ve been spending all semester on, working late into the night for days on end to finally click “order book” on Blurb at 02:17 one wonderful, exhausting night. I created an ambient video/sound installation project. I got the internship I wanted. I bought round-trip airfare for my next adventure. I got hired to photograph for a magazine. The week ended by dancing the night away at RISD’s annual Take A Break concert. The next day, I decided to buckle down and run my first-ever half marathon. It hurt, but it was just pain, and somehow pain seemed utterly inconsequential – because the book is done. I can breathe again, for the moment. It won’t last, but it’s wonderful.
Here are some Instagram shots from the past weeks! Enjoy.
Delicious Cambodian food with Charlotte.
Looking at all my potential book photos on the wall in a glorious, overwhelming, color-based gradient.
Preparing for a super intense portfolio review.
Providence at night.
Beginning a seriously massive ink transfer piece.
An amazing brochure I found in the computer lab.
Feelings.
Art school napkins.
Second dummy of the book. Check out that packing-tape binding.
Elliott Romano’s Senior Show, about wanting to believe that UFOs exist.
I had begun thinking about stars a lot, and then there it was.
Adorable Charlotte keeping me company in the computer lab.
Colorful RISD cityscape.
Nic came to visit! He took me out for a super fancy dinner as a birthday present from his family.
Flashback to fancy meals in Anchorage.
We went to Block Island and were on the beach before 9 AM.
Epic American breakfasts.
My obsession with Northeastern springtime continued.
Nic hung out while I worked on that giant…thing.
…and cooked me homemade eggplant parmesan!
My apartment is clearly not ideally sized for two people, especially when a giant extra mattress is involved.
I got an inspiring fortune cookie!
Abstracting it.
RISD bathroom.
I ran to the Graphic Design department one desperate night, seeking book help, and found… this.
Daffodils and tree trunks.
Do more always.
Seriously, how is this even real.
I went to Take a Break with Charlotte!
A tree at sunset during my 2-hour run.
One-track mind recently.
Rhode Island has burst into warm, sunny springtime! Daffodils blossom along the sidewalks, their heavenly fragrance filling the air; cherry trees and magnolias are growing thick with heavy pink flowers. I couldn’t be happier about this -yet the city is starting to wear on me. It always does, after a while, with its concrete and noise and suffocating buildings. In my daydreams and that in-between space between consciousness and sleep, I inhabit a world of mountains and ocean, endless day or brilliant celestial night, cold, clean air, and silence.
Thinking about this, here are some more pictures from that wonderful time, a few weeks ago, living on the sea.
Moving camp.
My little home at one of our camps.
Carry on the akevitt tradition begun on our Lofoten trip in 2010.
My dad with a dried triggerfish head.
Morning coffee, with some awesome glasses Morgan brought.
Oh glorious stars and moonlight bright as day. I love the desert.
Fun with headlamps!
Treasure.
Views from a hike.
Some dried stingrays.
Highlight of the day: drinking coffee in the warm desert air and watching the sun rise.
And such brilliant fields of blazing stars over a silent world, save for the lapping of waves and distant breathing of dolphins.
While attending an incredibly demanding art school full-time, working three jobs during the week and extra ones on the weekends, trying to produce an incredibly meaningful and thoughtful body of work while competing for scholarships and trying desperately to secure summer plans that will magically help your artist’s career while earning money - life is stressful. It can be hard to even remember what has happened, but thankfully, this is where camera phones come to the rescue. Here’s an Instagram series from the past month or so to celebrate that, despite unfathomable levels of stress, life is actually full of wonderful things, all the time. Enjoy!
A bright, fun show at my favorite coffee shop on campus.
Figure drawing in class.
A page from a book I made.
A gluten-free cupcake!
With my mom in Mexico!
A very idyllic rooftop view in Loreto.
The antithesis of the world I usually inhabit.
I began thinking about books.
One day, for work as a TA, I went on a field trip to the zoo.
Odd zoo landscaping.
Flowers began to spring up everywhere!
There was a fluffy rabbit present at a weekend shoot.
I made dramatic portrait collages.
I also made purposefully tacky “low art.”
Weekly crit for “Works On Paper.”
A line drawing from a damaged negative.
A surprise gift from a neighbor!
My old work on the wall for a scholarship competition. Didn’t look too bad!
Suddenly there were daffodils everywhere and you could smell them as you walked by.
Celebrating the stress of the scholarship thing being over.
Tom drinking a bourbon milkshake.
Alaskan mail, from my mom.
Charlotte’s cat.
The first of the photography department’s senior shows: Becoming Barbie.
Everything was pink.
The catering was extraordinary, and also all pink.
I hung out in Charlotte’s magical world.
I sliced some beets and marveled at their colors and patterns.
Glorious weekend oatmeal.
Daily smoothie.
But really, the whole time, I was just dreaming of the Arctic.
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