[Picks up blog and blows away 18 months of dust]...
Dear readers,
It has been almost a year and a half since my last blog post. At first, I blamed a series of exciting, crazy and sometimes overwhelming events (which I'll begin to touch on below) for my lack of blogging. But I've finally reached a point where I have no valid excuses left - it is time to re-start what was once a crucial facet of my creative practice: the web log.
Not to mention the fact that two of my role models / mentors / friends / former professors are again actively blogging again [1] [2] gave me the extra nudge I needed to jump back in.
I shot this photograph of Louisa on one of our last days in Milwaukee. Oh, did I mention that we don't live in Milwaukee anymore? Or Wisconsin... or the USA, for that matter. We moved to Canada!
I had the opportunity to join the Alberta College of Art and Design (ACAD) as their Assistant Professor in Object Making and Emergent Technologies. A brand new position at the school, my role would entail writing new courses in digital fabrication, designing an interdisciplinary object design minor program, and starting a student-ran digital fabrication lab from scratch.
After three years of teaching and developing curriculum between the departments of Math and Computer Science and Visual Arts at Cardinal Stritch University, I felt ready for the challenges ACAD proposed, and, after several multi-hour discussions with Louisa, took the job.
We sold over half of the things we owned (including my Honda Metropolitan scooter, which I still have dreams about) to help supplement the travel funds ACAD provided.
And everything else was crammed into a standard uhaul truck.
My father and Louisa's parents took turns driving the uhaul, and Walter and Francois joined Louisa and me in our Honda Civic for the three-day journey to the land of the maple leaf.
Some parts of our journey to Canada look like this - flatlands where the skies stretch so far you can almost see the curvature of the Earth on the horizon...
And others are like this - lush evergreen forests and majestic mountains surrounding us as if the land itself was giving us a welcoming hug.
And this is the city we now call home - Calgary, Alberta. The forth largest metropolitan city in Canada, it feels a bit like if you snatched the greater Milwaukee area from the midwest and plunked it down in the middle of the wilderness.
While I miss my home city, Milwaukee, every single day, it is hard to overlook the fact that this may we the best time in my entire life to GTFO of the USA. I doubt I need to explain why...
I also deeply miss Cardinal Stritch and my students there. But am excited to tell you more - in the coming weeks - about my new school and the students, colleagues, friends and challenges I've met there.
Western Canada is one of the most beautiful parts of the world I've ever seen - sometimes it is hard to believe that what I'm looking at is real. Above is one of my favorite places to spend time with Louisa - Moraine Lake - just over an hour drive from our house.
Oh, and I've taken up a new hobby...
I've got TONS to catch you up on in the studio as well... Look forward to MANY projects in my next post. Stay tuned.
Thanks for reading!
-B
