Ginormous Summer 2005 Art Project is underway as of tomorrow morning when I wake up. So... get excited because I am.

I have a million ideas bursting in my head right now and I cannot sleep until I have written them all down because I know I will forget.

I was sorting through the boxes that I have yet to open since I've gotten home from college (yes, I've been traveling and occupied with random things) and I found the phenomenal black and whites that Mike took in New York and in DC that he sent me. I know I've mentioned these at one point because I was so excited when I received them. But I was looking at them today and I was so inspired to start a huge art project. I may be in over my head. But I was recently in New York too and I took a lot of pictures there and I love the concept of black and white pictures because they're just so classy. Anyway, I was thinking of juxtaposing mine and mike's picture by laying them out (and pardon me for not knowing the technical term) in somewhat of a film/photo strip and turning it into a black and white poster... I want it to be horizontal and I want the final product to be 11 3/4 x 36 just like my France Poster with the same layout. Plus I scored some awesome frames today that I've been in search of for the past year. Okay so that was project one.

Project 2: Freestyle canvasing. Yes that will be my term for whatever it is that I'm doing. I was thinking maybe I could score some 8 x 8 canvases paint the background one dark strong color like black or brown and then I couldn't choose which color I would rather use so I decided to buy a larger canvas like a 16 x 16 and separate it into four 4 x 4 squares and paint each square a different color and then paint a white eiffel tower in each of the squares.

Project 3: Concert Poster a la Mary. I have lots and lots of pictures from concerts I've attended this past year. Most of them are of Conor Oberst and Andrew McMahon and because I love black and whites so much I'm thinking of turning them into black and white photos. This may be an ongoing project because I will be seeing many more people in concert this summer and throughout the year so I may decide to wait this one out. But I was either a) going to posterize these pictures in a strip again, but now that I'm writing all of this out, it's beginning to sound redundant or b) do a really bright bold color on a small canvas and mount a single black and white photo onto it and just have a bunch of these for every picture with various background colors so it's kind of like a pseudo picture frame c) get a large canvas and paint it a bright bold color and put a lot of pictures on it (spaced evenly in different ways, zig zags, horizontal, vertical etc.) and incorporate the lyrics to a song by the band on it somehow and do one for each band.

Project 4: "La vie de Romance" That's what the bottom of my Paris photo strip poster says and I really want to tie this whole "theme" so to speak together. I've posted some poetry by Keith Gurgick on my blog last month and I feel that a lot of his poems would work very well with this theme of Paris and the city of romance and all that so... I was thinking of taking his poem I think it was untitled but it went something like "Love is a tear in a shotglass" and just going from there. I'm not exactly sure what direction I'm going to go with quite yet, but I really really want to use this poem. So I'm thinking maybe a good black and white photo or something. I guess I'll just have to keep my camera ready at all times so I can find this perfect shot.

Project 5: DC/Nothern Virgina sans words avec photos. I absolutely love DC and I think that being away at college as made me appreciate where I live so much more. I want to take pictures of Georgetown. I love the culture there. The victorians, the secret gardens, the beautiful people, the bohemian lifestyle. Everything about it I love and DC is home to some great architecture too most of which was designed by none other than a french man (see this going with my theme? - i do) so I think black and whiting those photos would be great and going back to my original inspiration... Mike's photographs... he gave me one of the DC metro so I may actually make that the main focus and blow this picture up and take smaller pictures to place around it. Although the pictures to be placed around it would be of people and buildings because the metro is basically the metropolitan area's mode of transportation and I think that having that as the centerpiece would really be a cool idea because people have to use it to get to all the buildings and monuements...

So it looks like I'm going to have my hands full doesn't it? But I couldn't be more excited. Hopefully I will be able to accomplish all this with all the traveling that I'll be doing. I'm really digging this concept and I really cannot wait to start buying canvases and paints, brushes... all that jazz. I'll try to post the final products when I'm done... if I like them.