Mondays.......

......are the best days ever. Had a great day in photography. We worked with pinhole cameras. i.e. boxes with photo paper at the back and a pinhole on the opposite side of the box. you let it sit for a certain number of seconds. And then on the paper you have a negative, just like with film cameras. THen you use the paper negative after its developed to make a positive print. They are SO much fun. I can't wait to make my own out of all sorts of boxes. It was a good day of class. (my photo class goes from 9:30-4:30) 

The picture above is of one of the pinhole negatives. below is the positive print from it.

I gave you them side by side for a better comparison. :)

Again, negative above and positive below. These were taken in the scrap yard behind school

I have more pictures of positive prints but i'll put them on flickr when i figure it out. And now I am off to finish my journey project for Mixed Media. Then dinner. then back to school to build some cameras and get some more drawing done for when I meet with Larry, the drawing and painting professor, for our tutorial on wednesday. 

Uncle martin mentioned in a lovely comment wondering if I was being influenced by where I am. I would answer that no other way but Hell Yes. This place is insane. I can't do it justice here. I will try and get some pictures up of my work so you guys know what I mean. The inspiration from the landscape and the entire country is so overwhelming some of us can't even get over it.

 The first day I climbed the mountain behind school all I could say was "This is insane. This is amazing. I love this place." Matt and I went up the mountain for a long time last wednesday and we were still saying, "Wow, I can't believe we are living here. This place is crazy. This is gorgeous." We had to sprint down the mountain to make it back before dark because we kept stopping to admire the view or the terrain. I wish all of you could visit here at some point. I love it. But I have so so so so so so so much work to do. Which is wonderful. I hope it continues this way. Time to go! Love you!

p.s. Jilli, here is my address

Elizabeth Dargie

c/o Burren College of Art

Newtown Castle

Ballyvaughan

County Clare

Ireland

Dublin post 2

Our hostel was very smart and painted their front door lime green so that when we were walking back at night and having a hard time navigating the new city we could just look for the lime green and it worked every time.

Haha, ok, last hostel picture. We jsut really bonded with this one. So here is Eliza chilling on her bed. But you can also see the sun shining through the large windows. It was absolutely gorgeous all weekend. Not one drop of rain, and Saturday was so sunny and warm that we all walked around in t shirts complaining that we brought so many layer with us. haha. Also, we were all a little sad that everyone had the option to stay another night in Dublin, we just had to book our own hostel night and bet a bus back. And only 6 of us chose to stay. And It was 6 of the 9 of us that chose to stay the extra night in Galway as well. I am making sure I get the most out of this trip and I think that means spending as much time absorbing every aspect of Ireland there is and doing it in a way that I really et to bond with the people here. I hope that on the next trip we can convince more of the housemates to stay and have a good time with us. :)

Here is the archway into Trinity College. It was very impressive looking. Gorgeous buildings accented by the wonderful weather. We walked through here a lot to cut down on walking on the busy sidewalks and it really helped as a landmark for navigating around Dublin, which I must say Eliza and I and some of the others got really good at.

Saturday morning, while walking to the National Library to go to the W.B. Yeats exhibition (which was totally awesome), we saw that someone must have played a practical joke hte night before and put dishwashing soap in the fountain. There were bubbles everywhere. It was hilarious. Matt, Mike and I were walking so fast we almost didn't notice, but Suzie and Eliza told us to slow down and stop and smell the roses and have a look across the road and see the fountain. :)

I included this last picture jsut to prove how many street performers there were around Dublin. I have never seen so many football tricks, guitarists, leprachauns, living statues, and silver people in my life. They were on every street. Multiple performers on every street. I was entertaining. These young boys attracted quite a crowd. And it was funny because they were on the very same street that part of Once was filmed on. THis was the street Glen Hansard performed on. Jilli, by the way, I spent an hour of my Friday night sitting in Meetinghouse Square, Temple Bar watching Once being projecting onto a screen on the side of a building with hundreds of other people from all over the world. I wanted you to be there so bad. It was amazing. I'm happy I got to share the experience of Once on the big screen with Matt, mike and John, becuase I remembered how much of a moment it was when i saw it with you and Maddie. :) Love you guys.

Dublin: Galleries, galleries, museums, and more galleries

And so this past weekend, Thursday through Saturday night, consisted of our trip to Dublin. There was a lot to do and see and I was so overwhelmed I didn't take that many pictures but I think i got a pretty good overview. 

The picture above shows one view of the Ireland Museum of Modern Art from the Formal Gardens. After looking through all of the exhibitions I went outside with the boys to explore the gardens. And they wanted to take naps. (which is understandable considering our bad planning of going to Greene's Pub the night before for traditional music and not going to sleep until 1 am and then waking up to leave for dublin at 5:45 am.) But we got our cat naps in where we could and IMMA was one of those places. They had a really awesome contemporary drawing exhibition in one of the side buildings and it was by far some of the better work in the whole museum. Well, at least I thought so. :)
Then we arrived in Dublin and the streets of Temple Bar, where our hostel was. And just to put this in persepective, our entire college travelled together and stayed together in one hostel, because there are only 26 of us. So this is us walking through the streets together.

After one of our professors took us to like 5 contemporary art galleries Eliza and I went off wandering and exploring Dublin. We found some good places to eat, some cool bookstores, awesome ice cream and we kept an eye out for where things were going to be happening the next night on culture night. We hung out on one of the statues on the main street, O'Connell Street. I tried to find the statue Grandpa climbed and took a picture from but I couldn't so this is one view looking down the same street I think he told me to go. I tried....

Once again, I have more hostel pictures. We all really got attached to all of our hostel rooms. They were so cozy and when you are in such close quarters it is hard not to get to know people and just laugh about everything so we really enjoyed hanging out in the hostel. Which is good for bonding, but not good for exploring the city. Haha. So we had to find a good balance. But this picture shows that where my housemates are standing is the only open area in the whole room. Om the right wall there is one bunk bed you can see that leads right up to the window. And next to the mirror, on the left hand wall are two other sets of bunk beds that also lead right up to the window with about a foot and a half of space between each bunk bed on either side of the room. It was awesome. The windows were huge and you could stand on the ledge and lean out the window. It was so much fun. More hostel pics and dublin pics in the next post. 

Galway Post 2

I didnt get any whole room views of the hostel (becuase I'm dumb haha) but I added some of these ones just documenting hanging out and simultaneously making a huge mess of the room. But im taking the picture from one bunk bed. The second bunk bed you can see to the right, the third one you can see by the striped pillows way to the right. The picture below was taken from the same place so that is the fourth bunk bed and then mike slept on a mattress on the floor. So all in all there are 9 beds. Awesome. :P
We did a lot of hanging out in the hostels resting up from our long days of walking, tours, gallery visits, and museum outings. So these are the boys reading and ipod listening

The nest morning, Sunday, before we went to mass, three of the housemates and I went on a walk around Galway and went and watched the birds for awhile. This little girl was feeding the swans and pigeons with her dad. I think we all just stood there taking pictures of them for like 20 minutes. hahaha.

THere was also this really cool civic museum free to the public and it was the Galway City Museum. It was mostly historical stuff but there was an exhibition full of photographs and prints by this man Paidric Reaney, if I remember correctly. I have it written down somewhere. :) But the prints fascinated me and so I took some pictures so I could hopefully track him down on the internet and learn more about his work. The rest of our time in Galway we just hung out and walked around and went food shopping so that is it for this city. It was so much fun and I would love to go back and explore more of the stuff on the side streets and the galleries.

Galway Post 1 (what a boring title)

Ok. I am going to try and recap the past week and a half because lots of fun and exciting things have happened. But that is a lot of time to cover so I'm going to pick select pictures and talk about them so i'll be leaving out a lot of detail but i'll pick the fun ones for you. :P

Ok so the picture above is one of the many Martello towers dotting the Irish coast. We went to a field trip on the Flaggy Shore about 25 minutes from Ballyvaughan with our Irish Studies Professor Gordon D'arcy. Anyway, the english were worried about Napolean attacking through Galway bay so they built these towers around the bay with cannons on the top. If one of the soldiers were to see Napoleans fleet they would set off the cannons. Not, in defense but to warn the next Martello Tower that there was danger. Once the next tower got the message they as well fired cannons and this let the soldiers in the tower in Galway know to alert the army and navy, etc, etc. The fun part about going here, besides listening to Gordon's insane capability to know everything about everything, was that we ot to climb into the tower. You can see the rope dangling down outside the little window. First you climb up that, without slipping on the perfectly smooth outer surface of the tower, then you  had to climb down that same rope inside, so you pull the rope up and drop it down inside. Now you're in the tower. However there is another rope on the other side which you can climb up and then climb the stairs and get to the very top of the tower. Now that seems easy enough. False. It was quite an adventure and a good bonding activity to build trust in each other, give people boosts, help them with insructions and so on. It was awesome. And then of course to get out you climb down the stairs. Climb down the rope. Climb up the first rope to get to the window in the wall, and then down the same rope out from where you first came. It was so fun. I of course got some cut and bruises but it as all worth it. :)
Here is the infamous Gordon. One of our housemates does push ups randomly around the house and everywhere and Gordon saw him doing some and challenged him. And of course, Gordon won. Twice. THis was the second challenge and he one once again. It is because we have a theory that Gordon is God. And its true. :P
This brings me to Galway, the next day. This picture is of the rose window and insane organ inside the Cathedral in Galway. We went here on the first day during our tour, which was one of the best tours I've been on. I'll save the other pictures though for flickr because I don't want to explain all of them. You guys can ask me if their is a picture you wan tot know more about. Anyway, we actually went to mass the next day to hear the organ being played and we were blown away. Its was a beautiful sound. I was really happy we all went.
After the tour we went to the farmers market. THis was one of the most visually aesthetically pleasing stand so I took a picture, not because I actually liked the olives. hahaha. But the farmers' markets here are insane and I will miss them greatly when I go home.

Then we checked into our hostel. This isn't the best picture but I was reading on the window ledge nook while we were all hanging out getting ready for dinner and stuff. and the room was quite crowded with 9 people in it so I was out of the way for a little while. I love that window. I would request that room again just for the window. We had so much fun all staying in one room we wanted to move into one room when we got home.