Patrick Dougherty will make you rethink your housing situation.

This morning I received a picture text from our friend Kelly who recently transplanted to NYC. The photo she sent me, with the caption "at Brooklyn Botanical," was of this:

Kelly, who knows me well, just sent me the picture because she knows my penchant for tree-loving and my fondness of going into the woods and trying to make art with what I find there, a la Andy Goldsworthy. (Unfortunately, the latter is a more difficult task than it seems. Turns out tying sticks together in the woods ends up looking like something out of The Blair Witch Project much more often than it ends up looking like art.) What Kelly didn't realize is that she had just transported me back to my sophomore year of art school when I did a report on Patrick Dougherty, the artist who created the piece she'd seen at the botanical garden, in my sculpture class.

Dougherty uses twigs and saplings to build monumental installations around the world. The first time I came across his work was in Sculpture Magazine, featuring this piece:

I was immediately drawn to his work because the objects, obviously skillfully crafted, maintained a beautiful serendipitous quality as though they had simply sprung from the earth, fully formed like Athena. I was also going through a stage where I was obsessed with cocoons, so that had something to do with it, too. For my woodworking project that semester I constructed a humble homage to him using Honeysuckle plants I pulled out of the woods behind my dorm and carried in bushels strapped on the back of my bike to the sculpture building. I later released said piece back into the same woods from which I'd sourced it, and the only remaining slide I have is a photo a friend snapped when she stumbled upon it later that winter:
It doesn't do Dougherty any justice, but it taught me how difficult it is to build with wild materials. My piece was only about 5' tall. I can't even imagine building pieces like his.


So thanks Kelly, for reminding me of an artist I really enjoy. Maybe I'll get to see the piece at Brooklyn Botanical Gardens when I visit NYC this fall.

Finally!

In early July you may recall me mentioning that Sean and I were intending to order new bikes. Well, it only took me a month and a half to decide on which bike I wanted (I know, I know), and then another week and a half for them to come in. And let me tell you, that week and a half seemed like an eternity, I was so excited! But at long last I would like to announce the new additions to our little family: yes, friends. Our new bikes are here!

We have been riding like banshees since they came. On Sunday we took them down to a bike path along the Miami River in Hamilton, and they both ride like a dream. I ended up going with a Surly Long Haul Trucker, which is technically a touring bike but I have her set up as a commuter now. She packs quite a punch! She can zoom along with the best of them, even though the frame is relatively heavy, and she is extremely powerful. I took her around town to a consulting meeting and then ran a couple errands and filled my one pannier I was carrying to the brim. She's so steady it made no difference. I had a cheap bike once with rear baskets on it, and the moment you dropped a dime into just one basket and didn't even out the other you could feel the imbalance. The LHT is so sturdy you probably couldn't detect a change if you strapped an anvil to the side.

Sean got a Trek FX 7.3 with disk brakes and it's just plain slick. He's been riding it to school everyday. I hopped on it the other night to see how it handled and it's super speedy AND comfortable. And it handles really sensitively, which is great. I thought disk brakes might feel a little different than cantilever but not so much. Apparently you just have to repair them less and they are more reliable in extreme weather. We also got his set up for commuting, that being our main need right now, but his is all around good for lots of things, even though Trek advertises it mainly as a fitness bike. Sometime before it gets too cold we're hoping to take the bikes camping somewhere with a nice trail that we can wake up early and ride. They've already made it a lot more convenient and fun to get around town, considering the roadways in Oxford are a lot more congested now than they were in the summer.

New Series

I've been working on a new series lately inspired by a gift our friend Alex gave us for our wedding. He found a ton of sweet, old timey looking books and put them in a big box with some really adorable owl bookends and wrapped them up. On top of that, he even added to one of the old inscriptions. So now in "The Home Affections" the front page reads as follows: "To dear Neville with love from your grandma. June 1920." "For dear Stuart, on his birthday, 3 Aug. 1982. With love from Neville." "For dear Hilary and Sean on their wedding day, 11 June, 2011. With love from Alex."

On of the books included in this package is called "Everybody's Speaker" and is a book on oration. In the front it teaches how to speak, and in the back offers speeches and poems. There are these great instructive illustrations in the front above different hand gestures and body language and I've been doing little gouache paintings on them. I just finished the first one yesterday. Here's a little in progress peak at it:

And the finished piece:

Now to frame it or mount it. I think once the whole series is done I might digitally reprint them and make them into a set of postcards. I'll keep you posted.

Yard Sale

If you had happened to be trundling down Central Avenue this past Saturday morning in Jeff Magliche's blue truck with him, this is what you might have seen:

My favorite was the man who bought a Kayak, small handheld drum, and beginners guide to blues harmonica.

ps- I also made this jambalaya last night. Easy and so delicious.

tying up July

I just couldn't let the month out without one last update. I realize it's been about a week and half, and we have been BUSY. So much has been seen and done but alas! I took almost no pictures. You'll just have to take my word for it.

Sean's birthday was on Tuesday so we drove up I-75 for a weekend of good old fashioned fun with his family. World class cook and mother to Sean, Heidi, made this incredible birthday spread complete with prime rib AND beef tenderloin. And it was topped with asparagus, hollandaise, and crab. And we got to eat it the next day for lunch again in the form of philly steak sandwiches. Yowza. Sean also got this incredible set of tools from his family which we have already used a few times around the house, and they came in his Dad's vintage toolbox from 1982, a gift Sean felt very proud to receive.

The last day we were there we went to Cedar Pointe with the whole fam. The last time I was at the park the Magnum was the tallest coaster in the world and I was too afraid to ride it. Much has changed since then. The Millennium Force is about twice as tall as the Magnum, a fact I was unaware of until Sean and I were strapped in, committed, and being ratcheted up to a 300 ft drop. It was a lot of fun riding coasters again, though, and I think my award for favorite ride has to go to the Maverick, even though I felt a little freaked out about it after Sean's brothers informed me the initial drop is 95 degrees, meaning it's more intense than just a straight drop; it actually curves inward. The ride was full of twists and Sean's hair was blown straight back, a la Doc Brown stepping out of the DeLorean. And it wore us out! It made me realize that we are indeed growing older. When I was little I didn't worry about becoming dehydrated or motion sick or my feet hurting, and when I woke up the day after a family excursion to Kings Island, I had energy yet to spare. Not so these days. It seemed like it took us a day of recovery afterwards to get back our usual energy. We were beat, but quite satisfied.

For his birthday I had found Sean one of those old time German hats at an antique store in Iowa City a few months back. Just to keep on theme, we had a nice deutsches Frühstuck to go with it, complete with würst and brötchen and beer.

On Tuesday night we had a pseudo surprise party for Sean, meaning he knew there was a reason his buddies were taking him out for a beer at 5:30 in the afternoon, but he wasn't sure why. It was a lot of fun. All our Oxford friends came out and we grilled brats and drank beer and even the Quays showed up as an added bonus all the way from Colorado! It was so good to see Shannon and Brian again. They stayed with us that night and we got to hang out with them all the next day, but it still wasn't enough time to get our fill. Some people your heart just misses when they're not with you.

Since then things have settled down a bit, except that we've been to 2 going away parties in as many days, and have another yet tonight. It's that time in Oxford when the leases are up and the people are moving on. We're losing some good ones this time, including Hannah, Lara, and Leah. Though this is hard, I think I'm starting to become more accustomed to it. Better at letting people go. Another year in Oxford awaits Sean and I, and who knows what it will bring.

fresh bread + dutch oven chicken

There's not too much to report these days at the old Oswald homestead. Perhaps our most notable triumph this week has been Sunday night's supper. I used my dutch oven for the first time to make a whole chicken we bought at the farmers market, and Sean baked fresh bread. Even though the temperature outside was well over 90, it made it feel like a nice fall day.

Sean with his loaves. This is right after he punched down the dough and separated it before the second rise.

And look at that! The bread tastes delicious, especially fresh. He made it with only whole wheat flour, so it's dense but very healthy.

The chicken was pretty easy, and I browsed a couple recipes online and then sort of winged it(no pun intended). I stuffed the bird with a quartered lemon, diced garlic, and some rosemary from the herb pot outside. Also, salt and fresh ground pepper inside and out.

Next that went into the dutch oven over some sliced carrots, celery, and onion with more rosemary. I remember sometime in my youth learning to stuff a clove of garlic under each wing, and so I did.

It went into the oven at 350 F for a little over an hour. I read online that the steam in the dutch oven would be very important, so not to open it during that time and also to put a sheet of foil over the top in addition to the lid to seal better.

When it came out it was very moist and delicious, though I did read one recipe that said to sear the chicken on the stovetop before putting it in to bake, and I think I'll do this next time. I missed the crispy skin. I removed the chicken to another dish and strained all the veggies out of the natural juices in the pot. Then I put the dutch oven over medium heat and stirred in some flour and cornstarch and a little chef paul's Poultry Magic, and it made a very savory gravy with a hint of fruitiness. Really made the dish in my opinion.

adventures in domesticity

This weekend my husband and I were quite domestic. Here is a short synopsis of our homebody ways:

1. farmers market
2. potluck/beer tasting (in which I brag about how nice our home is looking these days)
3. skunk attack

Farmers Market

We are trying to set goals for this year in Oxford, things like riding our bikes everywhere in town instead of using our car and going to the farmers market uptown for most of our weekly groceries. Well, we've done a little work trying to order our bikes, but we don't have them yet. There's this Trek Soho with all the bells and whistles up at the bike shop that I just find ravishing, and we could afford it because it's slightly used and priced way lower than a new one, but I went and looked at it this week and it's just too big, plain and simple. So now I feel pretty indecisive as far as what I want as a bike. I'm basically looking for a commuter, but I like the feel and speed of a road bike much better. My front runners right now are probably the Raleigh Port Townsend or Trek Belleville. Any suggestions?

As for the farmers market, we started that tradition this week. On saturday morning we walked uptown (we have been walking machines lately!) and got coffee from Kofenya and sat on a bench and drank it with some of the banana bread I made the other night. It was really lovely. And then when the banana bread was all in our tummies we took our coffee and walked through the booths. We bought all our meat for the week from a gentle-eyed, bushy-bearded amish man. Sean, who usually keeps to himself in places like this, really liked talking to him and wanted to be his BFF. We bought fresh eggs from him as well, so fresh they still had feathers in the crate, and he told us that most eggs go through a cleaning process that strips them of their natural coating, a coating that helps to preserve them longer. We also got some very potent onions (I have literally wept every time I've cut one) and a bag of spring mix, which is spicy and flavorful and makes our salads taste incredible. And it was just nice being uptown and feeling part of the community, then trudging home with our wares.

Some little plums we bought at the market. The flesh is very sweet but the skin is extremely tart! "Like eating a warhead," says Sean.

Potluck/Beer Tasting

That day we came back and invited a bunch of people over, and then, after realizing there were indeed folks coming over, we cleaned like the dickens, which was actually very good because we got the house looking better than ever before:

It was nice having people over, and everyone brought a beer or two and we had a little progressive beer tasting with dinner, which were brats Sean grilled on the electric skillet Shan and Brian gave us. I think my favorite was a double IPA that Spencer brought over. I never fail to be surprised by it, but I am liking those dark IPA's more and more these days. We had some really good fellowship, and Hannah showed us this RSA Animates video/lecture about education which was really cool. Its this lecture by sir Ken Robinson that this guy animates on a white board. It was wild how much better I couldunderstand what was being said when I saw it in pictures. Later on we finished off the evening with a few late night rounds of bananagrams.

Skunk Attack

Sunday was pretty chill. We came back from church and just hung out for awhile. Then, when we thought it was going to be just another peaceful evening at home, we saw a bunch of skunks milling around the back of our property. They were everywhere. We counted 7 skunks in all, though not all at the same time, and some were in the front and some in the back, so we felt surrounded and needless to say felt a bit skittish about going out the rest of the night. Also, one of those little jerks came up on the front porch and chewed our Dahlias in the middle of the night! And ate a stalk of one of our tomato plants. I'm just saying: it pissed me off and I don't like them.

two of those little jerk faces snuffling around back there.

Finally, in other news, Sean's friend and fraternity brother Thomas sent him a little something in the mail and yes, it's true, I got lavaliered. Here we are with our handbooks, t-shirts, and the Bible:

Yes, friends, this GDI is now an honorary Theta Chi.