thanksgiving in washington dc and my first 8 hours at the vermont studio center

Thanksgiving was nice i spent it in washington dc visiting my brother. It was a great way to break up the drive to vermont. While we were in dc we had dinner with an old friend of the families, whose new business partner is the brother of connor oberst of bright eyes. I personally didn’t know who bright eyes was, but we had dinner with him and his family and they are very nice people, he is very soft spoken and polite, and his mother was an art teacher and a painter which is okay in my book. After the dinner i looked him up and it turns out he really is a rock star, but i am so out of touch with todays rock music that I didn’t know who he was. I guess if i had known who he was i would have asked him to pose for a picture or something.
here are some pictures from thanksgiving in dc

now on to vermont
I am very excited about the chance to be here at the vermont studio center. It is the first time in awhile that i have walked into a situation and everything seems really perfect. My studio is completely private, but still adjacent to the shop ie. from my studio door to the welding table and equipment is ten paces. I have two windows in my studio, which is the first time i have had windows in my studio in 6 years. the windows look out onto a snow covered field. I keep having memories of alaska from the 90’s when i lived there. The cold weather is just so refreshing and it feels nice to hear snow squeeking under my boots when I walk. On the drive up here I stopped at the ben and jerry’s factory to take a tour of vermonts most famous ice cream factory, pretty cool, and the free sample wasn’t half bad either. For this resindency I only brought the steel spike piece and ten sheets of 38″x50″ paper and some drawing materials. with any luck at the end of the residency I will have 10 new drawings and a finished sculpture to take back with me, if not though I will still enjoy living in a snowy town for a month.
getting to know my new studio in vermont.

this part of the country’s coffee culture is dominated by dunkin donuts, not starbucks. there are 7 dunkin donuts within driving distance of here, while i don’t care for dunkin’s donuts their coffee and coffeee cups are pretty good. if you can’t tell from this picture their lids are the deluxe lids with a built in spill proof snap down part for the mouthpiece, pretty snazzy.