My Russian Ancestry

My Mother's interest into our family's history has existed for as long as I can remember. Handed down to her were numerous family trees dating back as far the 1400s and, more recently, an extremely old and beautiful leather photograph album containing Russian high society figures. This was owned by my ancestor Esther Sumner, whose photograph is displayed in the photograph album.

My Great Great Great Great Russian Grandmother Esther Sumner

Although all of the text accompanying the photographs is in Russian, having lived most of her childhood in Cyprus, my Mother was able to identify some of the letters because of their similarities to those of the Greek Alphabet and was therefore able to identify some of the people. Eventually, after much research, she was able to confirm two of the people as being Dagmar Of Denmark and Tsar Alexander III. How we are related to them is not yet clear.


Dagmar Of Denmark, Tsar Alexander III

Reverse of photographs

The Rabbit Will Protect Us

Follow 2

Follow 1

Kirstin's Room...

Mary Frey

Bathroom Landscape by Mary Frey

Joseph Mann

A friend of mine had his band's video created by GSA graduate Joseph Mann. I was fascinated by it so decided to look into his other work...

300 bits of tape

Homemade Lightbox

One Eight ZeroAll by Joseph Mann
(The music video was for 'One Eight Zero' by Findo Gask)

Cross School Project

Group work

Individual piece

Richard Meier

Douglas House by Richard Meier

My drawing of Douglas House

Shadows

"Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans"

"Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans"

John Lennon

Emotions

I have decided to put up some earlier art work as I believe you cannot move forward without addressing the past. I won't go into to much detail of the process of the works but will brush over what I feel is neccessary in order to understand the final pieces.

Emotions
The Stoics believe that "some things are in our control and others not. Things in our control are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever are our own actions. Things not in our control are body, property, reputation, command, and, in one word, whatever are not our own actions. "
Stoicism was a school of Hellenistic Philosophy founded in Athens in the early 3rd century BC by Zeno of Citium. They believed that negative or destructive emotions were false judgements and that a sage-a person who had attained moral and intellectual perfection-would not undergo them. Stoicism teaches one to control one's mind as a means of bettering oneself.

The Enchiridion By Epictetus
http://classics.mit.edu/Epictetus/epicench.html

Francisco Goya created works of art that, unlike other art of that time, told stories of war, of nightmares ... all depicting and/or evoking strong emotions.

People tend to let their emotions take over ... which leads to overthinking .. which can lead to depression. A while ago I found a series of photographs of my mother taken when she was a child and in each photograph she, clearly, displays a variety of positive emotions.. some even amusing. A large black and white photocopy of the photographs hangs comfortably on the wall that my bed faces. Without intending to, I look at it everyday ... and each day the image is a sort of teaching ... to aspire to be like that small girl.

Food sculptures- the proof is in the making

The other night I went to a sushi making class with my brother as part of his Japanese lessons. We learned how to make inarizusha, nigirizushi (にぎり) and makizushi (巻き).

The process of making makizushi is so much that of a creative (and difficult) one that you don't want to go and destroy the sushi by eating it. It makes you appreciate the food and eat it slowly ... taking time to admire the aesthetics instead of scoffing it down like a fat westener.


My makizushi