“I am just beginning a personal photography collection. Yours was the first in the collection that was not taken by my father or myself! I’m really interested in architecture, but not simply buildings. I’m really interested in the stories they tell. Your piece is just that!”

Color me flattered!

Things at 621 Gallery continue to go well. I donated several pieces of art for the auction and they made the gallery a pretty penny.

I donated work to the 3rd Annual Masters’ Mystery Show at the Ritz-Carlton in South Beach, FL. It was held during Art Basel week and all the proceeds benefited the Florida International University art department. It featured over 1,500 original postcards created by over 300 up-and-coming and world-renowned artists from 31 countries as well as a plethora of celebrities. I also exhibited in the Snap To Grip exhibition at the Los Angeles Center for Digital Arts in LA.

My first semester in the Arts Administration Doctoral Program at FSU was amazing! It was thrilling to be in a department where everyone else wants to be there. The professors are fantastic and exceptionally helpful! I’ve been writing a lot about wedding photography and the ritual that surrounds it. But my favorite project was designing an international juried digital photography exhibition as a fundraiser for 621 Gallery. The board accepted my proposal and I’m working on doing some more research, designing the website, advertising (basically all the backend fun preparations) as DIS course for the spring. We’ll see how that goes. Be on the lookout for how to submit!

I’ve been doing some interesting work and am looking towards my dissertation. I’ve been writing about what I know. And what I know is the American white wedding and wedding photography. Crazy, I know! I am a walking talking wedding knowledge source! The latest one I did was on the iconic white wedding dress and its role as a cultural artifact. As strange as it sounds, it’s fun stuff! There are all these remarkable factoids to be found! I’m looking into taking a few courses in the anthropology department. There’s a Symbols and Rituals course that looks like the cat’s meow!

I had a bit of a catastrophe along the way. The Saturday after Thanksgiving I fell down some stairs and severely sprained both of my ankles. I promise I wasn’t dancing down the stairs and I’ve forbidden my friends from doing anything similar. I was in a wheelchair for 3-4 weeks and am hobbling around now. I’m passing the snails at present but don’t see any marathons in my future. Which is ok because the only kind of marathons I did before was running through the rest of a museum 5 minutes before closing.

We watched ‘The Corporation’ in Tom Anderson’s Social Foundations course. It’s one of the few movies I think everyone should see. Get on it! It can be found on DVD at Video 21 in Tallahassee. No, that is not an adult film store.