Picking My Brain
My brain’s randomness - visualized!

Picking My Brain

Again and again and again…

May 17th, 2006 . by Emily

So yeah, I’m really bad about updating my blog. I kept meaning too… but somehow never got around to it. I’ve got lots of things to talk about: a new trip to the Art Museum to rediscover an artist, a college graduation, a birth, a birthday and of course, Wawa news.

The Philadelphia Art Museum is hosting a special exhibition of paintings by Andrew Wyeth. Lorianne from work asked me if I would go with her. I love trips to the art museum and I had studied Andrew Wyeth some in high school and I liked some of his work, so I said yes. So we went and I discovered some more of his paintings that I really like. Unfortunately he’s a local artist, so a lot of his work is hard to find, even on the internet. Click on the thumbnails to view larger images!

These are probably two of his most famous paintings:

Christinas World.jpg
Christina’s World

Master Bedroom.jpg
Master Bedroom

While at the exhibit I bought a print of Wyeth’s Public Sale:

Public Sale.jpg
If I can remember the story behind the picture correctly, Wyeth had attended the public sale of a neighbor’s property. The neighbor couldn’t pay the bills, so all of his possessions were being sold to the public. Supposedly there were many people at this particular sale, many of which were interesting characters that Wyeth did studies of (detail practices of parts of a painting) before he actually painted. However when he finally painted it, he left out all of these unique individuals and all of the people just beyond the hill are ordinary-looking people. Wyeth had found some symbolism in the very muddy road leading down to the sale. All of the people attending the sale traveled that road. Unfortunately I can’t remember Wyeth’s symbolism. I found it more meaningful that the owners of the land, the people standing next to the truck, did not take that road. Not only did they seperate themselves from the sale by watching it from a distance, they were so sad they couldn’t even bear to travel the same road as everyone else. This painting evokes such a strong feeling of sadness in me. It told a story to me. So I bought a print of it, which unfortunatly is still sitting all rolled up. Finding frames is proving to be difficult.
Another picture I fell in love with is Christmas Morning:
Christmas Morning.jpg
Unfortunately this is the only picture I could find and I had to enlarge it so the quality is poor. This painting was very serene and calming to me. It a portrait of a man Denys Zirngiebel, a neighbor of Wyeth’s, who was dying. I loved how the figure turns into the mist which seems to then transform into streams of bands of snow. To me it represented the soul leaving the body and going on it’s journey to heavin, represented by the single star in the dusk sky. It’s hard to notice at first in the original, but there’s also a ghostly figure floating up the hill. Unfortunatly you can’t see it in either the thumbnail or the enlarged photo. I think it’s a beautiful picture.
These are two other pictures that I really like:

Around The Corner.jpg
Around The Corner

Wishbone.jpg
Wishbone

I believe I saw Around The Corner when I was studying Wyeth in high school, but Wishbone I found while I was scouring the Internet for pictures. I also like a painting called Blackberry Picker. The subject of the painting was a man picking blackberries, however he was in the background of the piece, almost invisible. The focal point was a large blackberry bush. Featured next to the paiting in the museum was a study called Blackberry Branch. It was just a sketch of a branch or two of the blackberry bush, but I really thought it was beautiful.

Okay, on to more news. Liesle is now a college graduate!! She graduated from Rowan University on Friday, May 12th. She had a party on the 13th. I don’t have any pictures yet, but hopefully I can get some copies from Liesle and post at a later date. She’s still out on disability, so now she’s really bored out of her mind because she has nothing to do all day.

My friend Jeanice also had her first baby on April 20th! She had a beautiful boy named Cameron Scott Peterson.

Cameron5.jpg
I wish she and Cade (her husband) weren’t living so far away in Washington state. Cameron could have been the first to call me Aunt Emily…or Auntie Em as my friends and I have always joked that I would be called. I wish the new family well, it sounds as if they are happy and everyone is healthy.

Of course, my own birthday fell inbetween this post and my last one. I am now 25 years old. Dad tried to rag on me by reminding me that I am now a quarter of a century old, but then I reminded him that he is a half a century old, so he gave that up. I visited with my family the Sunday before, then Ben’s family came over on my actual birthday. Ben made me a delicious cake and my family sent me flowers on the actual day.

As for Wawa, things have gotten much better since my last post. Just over a month ago we actually got a new manager, Ruth. She’s really nice and a lot of fun. I think she runs the store very well. She’s scheduling me for approximately 45 hours every week, plus she doesn’t complain that I stay on the clock to finish my work in the mornings. She understands how third shift works and does everything she can to help me out. She’s not as nit-picky as John was either so she doesn’t make you feel like crap if you’ve had a really busy shift and the details aren’t as nice as they could be, but she does notice when you do extra and even takes the time to thank you for doing it.

So that’s pretty much my life right now. I’m almost paid off to Stockton, so I should be back there in Sept. finishing up. I’m looking towards a graduation this December. Ben and I have also set a tenitive wedding date, January 19th. No, don’t get excited, my parents haven’t come around. But we decided that it was time to set a date since everyone (my cousin Teal and Lielse, that is) have claimed their dates. I don’t want to have to push mine back any further because somebody else’s wedding will be too close to mine…though I’m not sure anybody else is ready to get married that I’m close too. But, you never know.

Alright, I’m off to eat some dinner, then take a nap before work tonight. Hopefully I’ll update again soon!

Posted in A Day In The Life, A Family Affair | 1 Comment »