Well, it's been a change-y year! A LOT of 2018 was spent sitting on a computer in my house or a classroom in cloudy old Portland, so these photos aren't the most accurate representation of my life. But why not save the good ones and make sure the past will feel nostalgic and warmer than it was, in the future. The big things this year for us were:
- My graduation from graphic design school
- Simon opening his own wine bar, Sardine Head
- Me starting a new job and successfully ending my restaurant career
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| Morning sunshine in our hallway. |
7629 NE Martin Luther King
Simon and I have lived at our apartment for two years now. We love that it's a spacious loft with cheap rent and a view of freight trains and mountains. We don't love that it's essentially a one-room or studio apartment, which makes having guests stay with us difficult. We also don't love that it's a bit of an industrial, concrete jungle outside and we have no yard or garden. But we can't complain, we got lucky with the price and the architecture. We did find an abandoned community garden tucked away, a few blocks down and decided to plant some things this summer. It was better than nothing, but sometimes homeless people left trash everywhere, and some tomatoes were definitely stolen.
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| Our messy place, our cat enjoying the weird architecture, a carrot from our garden and a view of the trains. |
LA in February
I visited Los Angeles and Joshua Tree with some friends in February. I forgot how much I loved cacti and I thoroughly enjoyed the sunshine. I went with 3 friends who skateboard. I don't skate, and I felt dumb sometimes sitting at the skatepark like a poser while they skated around. But it was still fun. LA actually reminded me of Florida in the sense that it was so incredibly suburban feeling, rather than the urban feeling I get from NYC and Chicago. The sprawliness and the car-dependency makes me less likely to want to live there, but I wouldn't totally rule it out. The weather is great.
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| Strange cacti in Joshua Tree. |
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My friends are cooler than me (left). We got back to Portland just in time for Spring to explode! Flowers everywhere! I love the four seasons we have up here.Spring Break, Spring Term, and Graduation
I should mention that my Senior year of design school was pretty intense. I learned motion design (animation), web coding and created a pretty involved Thesis project. School pretty much consumed my life, and I don't have photos to represent those days because they would be really boring photos.
Simon and I snuck in a trip to Washington where we stayed in a vintage airstream trailer on the coast and ate really fresh crab and oysters.
In May, Simon left for France for 5 weeks while I buckled down and prepared to graduate. It was a good time for him to be gone since I was so busy. Then I graduated in June. I now have two BAs, which is odd, but fine.
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| Left: Springtime! Right: Me at my graduation showcase |
Summer
The beginning of Summer was pretty stressful, as I had no real leads on a job or internship, even after working my butt off in school. Finally, I landed a paid internship at a really interesting tiny design studio called Rumors. It was challenging and weird, I was intimidated and timid the whole time. But ultimately I am really grateful that I got to be a little fly-on-the-wall among such talent and watch how they worked.
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| Rumors Studio, downtown Portland |
Dance Studio
At the same time, my best friend Jenny convinced me and another friend to rent a little studio of our own. The three of us had each gone to art school previously, and then ended up in graphic design school together, and felt like *outsider* designers because we were dirtier and weirder than most of our classmates. So we founded Dance Studio, which is so far just a space where we work on whatever we want in our spare time. None of us would be considered successful freelancers at this point, but that's point.
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| Interior and view from Dance Studio
Also, I should mention that Simon and I went from being a two-car couple to a one-car couple when our old beater car officially bit the dust in Spring. Because Simon needs the remaining car more, to transport boxes of wine and whatnot to his winebar, I've become quite the bike commuter. It's not always fun, but I think it's good exercise and I get more inspired by the people and scenes and views than I would if I just drove everywhere.
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Fall
I love Fall. It's a new thing.
My cousin Adrienne (Blumthal) and Steve visited Portland with their new baby Elliot!
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| Adrienne and Elliot (middle), Steve, Simon and friends. |
I started my first design job! I do graphic design for a company called Schoolhouse, formerly Schoolhouse Electric. It started as a lighting company 15 years ago or so and now they make furniture, linens, and more. I suppose you could call it 'luxury home goods', but it stands out from other companies like that for two reasons. The design is top-notch, and almost everything is made in US, in our Portland factory that also houses the shop and the design studio. Adjusting to 9-5 after a decade of not working those hours has been an big change, but I am greatful to be out of food service, and lucky to work for such a cool company, right out-of-school.
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| My bike ride home from Schoolhouse in early fall. |
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| Before starting my job, Simon and I went on a sunny fall hike in the Columbia Gorge, 45 min from Portland. |
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| Goodbye Fall, love you. |
Winter
It's now very cold and dark at 4:30 pm. Bike-commuting isn't as fun as it was during the summer, but at least I can throw my bike on the bus or train if it's too absolutely miserable to ride.
With the gray and cold and long dark nights, it's stay-inside and nest season. I've been trying to make progress on an animated comic. It's hard to have the energy for personal work while working full-time, so it might be a while before my comic sees the light of day. But I don't want to give up. I think the dream is still for me to be a freelance illustrator/motion designer one day, so that I can travel and be my own boss. We'll see.
Very excited for upcoming Florida Christmas vacation where I finally meet my neice, Wrenley and see some family and old friends.
And then, on to 2019!
Some uncategorizable photos.
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| Weenie is 8 years old, an only child, and very good at nesting. Simon and I love her but we also waiting for her to die so that we can move to Europe. |
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| Experimental printmaking collaboration with my friend Zac. |
