12/30/09

Two Thousand and Niner

I've been editing through photographs from this last year, catching up and slowly chipping away at making a new website. With each grouping of pixels, I'm reminded of all of the surprising and amazing things I've been lucky to experience, and the incredible people, places and emotions I've encountered. As I scan through the thousands of raw files and dozens and dozens of selects, all I can think to myself is 'my god, what a wonderful life.' The photographs all flash before me: a memory, a thought, a question, an answer, a fleeting feeling or dream or tiny miracle that once happened before my eyes, and I sit awe-struck. This year has been full of love, pain, and growth, as any good year should be. One year ago I had just moved back from NYC and before I knew it I was in Vermont trying not to freeze, then a cabin in the woods of Athens, Ohio battling huge spiders and waking up to red foxes, then back home on the farm for harvesting the garden, then in a new home with my non-biological sisters, waking up everyday to laughter and falling asleep every night with a heart bursting with love, and here I am now, sipping on coffee and watching the snow falling.

I am so thankful for every one of you and for this glorious chance to be alive and share all of these things together.

Here's to you and you and you.


And here is a semi-random grouping of photographs from the last year, starting at exactly this time one year ago and ending at the first snow earlier this month.

olivia, moonlight, trees.

town meeting, vermont. (valley news)

blizzard at the atlantic, maine.

somewhere in new hampshire.

self portrait at window. hartland, vermont.

noah's car. burr oak lake parking lot. athens, ohio.

cameron with bubbles at the cabin.

late at night outside of my bedroom.

allegheny mountains.

jenna. allegheny mountains, pennsylvania.

dan laughing. athens, ohio.

zena. summer.

unnatural nature.

east village. flesh.

cheeseburger in the sky. coney island.

noah and ryan. burr oak lake.

mother in the secret garden. chatham, ohio.

welcome home.

johnny and larry.

the giving tree.

golden afternoon. athens, ohio.

sophia.
ryan at strouds run lake.

american escape.

celestial.

caught star. nyc.

first snow. athens, ohio.

love and peace,
shaena

11/20/09

Time has picked up the pace.

Time has filled in the space.


It's funny how the longer you wait to make contact with someone or something, the more difficult it becomes to reach out at all. More time, more important ideas, more important personal events - it all just accumulates in you like old shoe boxes full of memories and then gets lost in space.

I am almost embarrassed of how predictable I've become the last year - I've been moving every three to six months, and each time I do, I seem to drop off the face of the earth for a couple of months, resurface, and then move and disappear again. But, Starting in September I moved into a new house, in a place that finally feels like home. I've started a new chapter, in a place that I will be for longer than three months, with the people around me that I love so deeply. The last few months have been full of resettling and an intense academic workload, but I'm feeling excited and hopeful, moving toward the center, and feeling a firm footing. I am so blessed to have a fresh start in a place I love with beautiful people, in a beautiful little home with kittens, gardens, colorful walls, love, laughter, and so many things that make my heart swell daily. So, after having some time to settle I'm ready to move forward with projects and explorations, and I hope to give the ol' blog some love and attention to reflect those endeavors.

Ever thankful.

8/29/09

Update on the farm

Good news on the homefront - the farm land auction was earlier this week and it won't all be lost just yet.. the eldest brother of the family couldn't stand to see it go cheaply to a stranger so he (going against his sisters that decided to sell in the first place) bought the farm house, barns and 7 acres. A local farmer bought another lot or two, and rumor has it that one of the local Amish families may have bought another lot. We were sure it would sell to another developer but by some stroke of luck it didn't, and the guy who bought the house earlier this summer with the intentions of making a $100,000 profit by reselling it in little chunks actually lost $5,000. Life is funny. Everyone in this small town breathed a big sigh of relief, happy to keep some resemblance of farm land for awhile longer.

8/20/09

left foot “Glory,” right foot “Amen.”

"To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly." – Henri Bergson


The breeze is blowing, the rain is tapping, life is happening, and the time has come to get reflective. Or ramble clumsily.

One year. One year can go by in a blink. One lifetime can happen in one year. It is amazing how much one year can change you, your being, your outlook, your personhood, and yet go by so damn quickly.

This time last year I was living out of a box in New York City. I moved on from tripping through city streets to walking through snowy woods in silence and milking cows in Vermont, lived in an ex-hippy commune in the woods of Athens, understood what it meant to feel home, lost love, gained love, felt humanity, felt the world turn, felt awake, felt dreams, felt high and stared into solitude. It has been a year of drifting into quietude and explosive moments to break the silence, always when the time was right. It has been a year to let go. It has been a year to make peace. Heaviness and loss are some of the best lessons in life, I’ve found.

As a young photographer… or artist… (these words seem shallow.) What is a better way to say it? As a human who desires to share something, something beautiful, something meaningful, and has chosen try visually.. This year has been a whirlwind. There have been so many moments where I have asked myself “why am I doing this?” so many moments of self-deprecation, so many moments of thinking I’ve found peace and then on the drop of a dime feeling overwhelmingly and perpetually not good enough, like a waste of everyone’s time. Fear.

These last few months I’ve been quiet, sinking back into the home within myself, the home I knew before, the home I know now, and most importantly the home within others. Layers lift all the time that I didn’t know where still there. I feel the page turning and the new chapter beginning, and in my heart I say Yes Life. Yes. With open arms, yes. As a woman, as a child, as a spirit, as an artist, I will walk boldly into the future. As a human with a camera, who is to say – what is good enough, what is right, and et cetera… We must be bold. Allow the world to change you and you can begin the change the world around you. Let there be hope. Let there be love. And maybe, if you are lucky, it can flow through you somehow in your photographs. Here’s to being alive. There is nothing to be but thankful. There is nowhere to be but here, now. And there is nowhere to go but forward.

So, “…my left foot says “Glory,” and my right foot says “Amen.” – Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

holgaweather.