…I was in Stock­holm attend­ing an open­ing with one of my neigh­bors. We were there to see a piece of my work on exhi­bi­tion, one which earned me an award that night. The evening was freez­ing and strangely solemn but there was cham­pagne and a few laughs –not too shabby, really. Time flies…

I don’t usu­ally plug give­aways on blogs, but there is a first for everything–

This month the tal­ented Cecilia, the Swedish artist behind Veja Cecilia, is hold­ing a give­away on her blog spon­sored by Letraset. Up for grabs is a set of Letraset Tria mark­ers and a few other good­ies from Cecilia’s own col­lec­tion of prints and products:

Leave a com­ment on her blog by Jan­u­ary 30^th for a chance to win!

This one reminds me a lit­tle of Swedish artist Alexan­dra Hed­berg’s recent Snow White draw­ings and explo­rations…

My father and I both share a love of cof­fee. It has been part of the morn­ing rit­ual for as long as I can remem­ber; before I even drank cof­fee, it was part of my life. Today, few morn­ings pass with­out at least one cup of coffee.

When I trav­eled to Alaska in 1996, I delighted in the local cof­fee cul­ture from town to town, dis­cov­er­ing that Seat­tle’s pen­chant for the brown elixir extended up the north­ern coast. Each lit­tle town seemed to have a homey, inde­pen­dent café and per­haps a smaller walk-up style cof­fee hut com­plete with per­fect espresso drinks and inter­est­ing syrup options– mango latte, any­one? One town, Seward, I think, even had con­verted a tug­boat into a cof­fee hut; too cool. The high­light though of my Alaskan cof­fee tour, was the dis­cov­ery of Raven’s Brew Cof­fee. Drawn in by their raven-themed art­work, they con­verted a cus­tomer for life with their deli­cious brews.

Years later, I spent lengthy stints in Seat­tle, arguably one of, if not THE cof­fee capi­tol of the world or at least the United States. Cof­fee there is an art­form, but we all know that; I still lament the untimely death of Cof­fee Mes­siah. Van­cou­ver, Canada earned a spot on my cof­fee radar when I tasted some of the best espresso I’ve had in my life at Café Arti­giano.

My years spent in Swe­den revealed another haven ded­i­cated to its cof­fee, one that even had its own verb for tak­ing a cof­fee break– att fika (as I men­tioned ear­lier). I still laugh to myself when recall­ing Amer­i­can col­leagues vis­ited me at grad school who couldn’t drink the Swedish cof­fee– it was just too strong for them! This inabil­ity to han­dle the strength of Scan­di­na­vian cof­fee was beyond me, but charm­ing nonetheless.

This morn­ing, I finally tried Star­bucks’ new Via prod­uct– instant, microground ready-brew cof­fee. And I can hap­pily report, much to my own sur­prise that Star­bucks Via makes a decent cup of cof­fee. As handy as could be and a close match to their other brewed cof­fees– rea­son­ably strong and smooth; not too shabby Star­bucks. Finally I can enjoy decent qual­ity cof­fee any­where I travel and not just the colder climes of Scan­di­navia and the Pacific northwest.

Tell me, read­ers, what is your favorite hot bev­er­age? Where in the world do YOU go for good cof­fee or tea??

Images: Ravens Brew Cof­fee and Star­bucks Girl

Lately, I’ve been going through my hard drive and sort­ing files and have found hun­dreds if not thou­sands of old pho­tos. Some of which have been fun to redis­cover, oth­ers con­tain­ing idea seeds for future work yet to be explored, and still oth­ers that have a sort of arche­o­log­i­cal qual­ity to them in hav­ing doc­u­mented my past homes or work spaces. Since I have been reflect­ing a lot lately on the ideal work­space yet to be cre­ated, I thought I’d share a few of my desks from the last few years:

First year grad school desk

First home office in Gothen­burg

Close-up–Home office in Gothen­burg

Last home office in Gothen­burg

Short-lived ‘home’ desk in the U.S.

Home office, August 2006

Work desk 2006–2008

Work desk 2009

Home office, Novem­ber 2009

How has your work­space changed over the years, readers?

I have another con­fes­sion to make, Inter­net. I am ter­ri­ble at pick­ing out tables– I put it off as long as I can, I will buy a couch before pick­ing out a table, and even then it takes me six months to com­mit to a couch.

When I lived in Den­ver, I went months and months with­out a table, not even a desk! I had kitchen coun­ters and a side table, that was as flat as it got in my home.

But lo! I have found a table that I would gladly wel­come into my home; behold:

I swear my fas­ci­na­tion with this table has noth­ing to do with the year I spent liv­ing across from a ball bear­ing fac­tory. Ok, maybe just a lit­tle bit.

What’s your idea of the per­fect table? And are there any items of fur­ni­ture you find it dif­fi­cult to select?

The last few days of rain and autum­nal gloom have lulled my mem­o­ries back to Göte­borg. I haven’t paid it much mind over the last few years– I fin­ished my MFA and didn’t really look back afterward.

But here I am, back in Bal­ti­more after a move back from Swe­den, and two three 1500mi+ moves. I’m meet­ing and recon­nect­ing with tons of peo­ple, so all of the ground I’ve cov­ered in the last ten years is get­ting shuf­fled around in the fore­ground of my mind more than usual. But today, today felt like another day in Göte­borg.

Here is how I remem­ber parts of it:

Images: Me (scanned from my old printed pho­tos, no less!)

The other day, I read an arti­cle in the Wash­ing­ton Post about one of my favorite things tastes– Old Bay.

I can’t recall the spe­cific moment in my life where I dis­cov­ered this amal­gam of spices, but I’m pretty cer­tain it was my father who made the intro­duc­tion. Since that imper­cep­ti­ble moment in my child­hood, Old Bay has been a fla­vor cen­tral to my love and per­cep­tion of Bal­ti­more and the taste of home. Every time I have moved some­where far away, Old Bay has been a co-pilot. Every­where I have trav­eled for any length of time, Old Bay has been a friendly com­pan­ion. Dur­ing my sojourn in Swe­den, Old Bay was a quiet com­fort– a taste of home in what some­times felt like a sur­real, par­al­lel uni­verse. It is an ele­ment that helps me define home regard­less of lan­guage, cul­ture or postal code.

To see this unusual fla­vor high­lighted in a national news­pa­per is, if noth­ing else, a novel boost. I’ve been back in Bal­ti­more a few short weeks after many, many years away; see­ing a home­town favorite is ter­ri­bly reas­sur­ing– a con­fir­ma­tion that, yes, I belong here. Jane Black’s arti­cle in the Post does an excel­lent job of out­lin­ing the his­tory of the spice and its cult sta­tus among some of the locals of the Mid-Atlantic. I will admit to my mem­ber­ship in the broth­er­hood of the Bay, just don’t expect me to share our secret handshake.

How about you, dear read­ers? Are you Old Bay afi­ciona­dos? Or is it a fla­vor you’ve not yet sam­pled? What condi­ment, spice or fla­vor do you use in a cultish or obses­sive way?

Image: The Per­fect Pantry

One thing I will admit to miss­ing about Swe­den is the con­cept of Fika. Here it is, barely three o’clock and I’m crav­ing an after­noon pick-me-up of a mag­i­cal warm cup of cof­fee. Win­ter was bear­able with a warm mug of the life giv­ing black elixir and a tasty, fresh baked good shared over laughs with a friend or col­league. This was hon­estly my favorite part of the social side of life in Swe­den. It is a cul­tural rit­ual, com­pa­ra­ble to the tra­di­tional Eng­lish tea; and it is a rit­ual of which I am glad to take part.

I always appre­ci­ated the pop­u­lar­ity and avail­abil­ity of fikabröd that fea­tured car­damom as a chief fla­vor or ingre­di­ent. Many cof­fee shops, at least in Göte­borg, would even include a shaker of ground car­damom along­side the sugar and cream in lieu of (or some­times in addi­tion to) cin­na­mon or nut­meg to add a lit­tle zing to your cof­fee, cap­puc­cino or respec­tive fika bev­er­age.

Car­damom Cake

Per­son­ally, I could go for an espresso-based hot drink and a hearty cardmom-flavored baked good right about now. Sound good to you too? Card­mom cake is avail­able for pur­chase online in my Etsy bou­tique if all this talk of cof­fee and car­damom has you as hun­gry as I am.

Hon­estly, an after­noon in a cozy café with a snow storm out­side and a tall mug of cof­fee sounds per­fect about now. Think I need to go home and bake some­thing tonight…

Images: Me

Watch­ing these movies and oth­ers, has got­ten me long­ing for all things French. When I moved to Swe­den, I tried VERY HARD to shove the French I’d so care­fully learned over many years to a remote cor­ner of my brain. And promptly dove in to as much Swedish as I could immerse myself in… it was a bit like an icy dip­ping pool after a swel­ter­ing Finnish sauna– stim­u­lat­ing but crazy! I am now able to speak three lan­guages at once and STILL not com­mu­ni­cate what is going on in my lit­tle brain. I guess I know how my cat feels now…

But seri­ously, the strange lin­guis­tic mélange float­ing about in my head makes for inter­est­ing attempts at for­eign lan­guages dur­ing my trav­els. Sure, I can trans­late what the Ice­landic flight atten­dants are gig­gling about in the gal­ley or fig­ure out wher­ever the hell we are in Nor­way, but ask for a check in any of the lan­guages (includ­ing Eng­lish) I sup­pos­edly know when needed, for­get about it!

What’s scary, isn’t so much that my attempt at one lan­guage effec­tively usurped the posi­tion of another, but that it is extremely dif­fi­cult for me to sep­a­rate one from the other. So, I’ll try speak­ing in French and get Frue­doise (Francaise+Suedoise) and not even real­ize half of what I said was the WRONG lan­guage: Je t’adore, vous två… d’oh!

Do any of you have this same prob­lem with mul­ti­ple lan­guages get­ting mixed up in your head? Or do you find you have sim­i­lar prob­lems with for­eign lan­guages when trav­el­ing abroad?

Amus­ingly, all of this makes me want to go take a refresher course in French…

Flip­ping through old pho­tos from my trav­els, this shot of the ruins at St. Karin’s in Visby struck me. And seemed like a good basis for a quick explo­ration… Makes me want to take a long week­end on the island…
Images: me

Despite three 1000 mile plus moves in the last four years, I STILL have a stack of these that I really should get around to selling:

Designed and pro­duced in 2004, A wolf in sheep’s cloth­ing was a win­ner of the annual Swedish National Paper Screen Print­ing Com­pe­ti­tion that year. It has been exhib­ited at Kul­tur Huset in Stock­holm dur­ing the spring of 2004 and at the 100% Cen­ten­nial Exhi­bi­tion at the Miller Gallery in Pitts­burgh, PA in 2006. It is a 2-color, lim­ited edi­tion A1-sized screen­print on clear plex­i­glass that was hand printed in Swe­den while I was still liv­ing there.

Want one? I’ll be post­ing them on Etsy soon, I hope. But in the mean­time, PLEASE feel wel­come to com­ment or e-mail and I’ll be happy to make arrange­ments with you personally.

Damn.. I’m going to miss this lecture/discussion.. sounds inter­est­ing despite the fact I’ve never been par­tic­u­larly impressed by the lim­ited exam­ples of Heidi Hay’s work I’ve seen..

Heidi Hay Tat­too och ProKult bjuder dig till:
Vem äger din tat­uer­ing? en diskus­sion om tat­uer­ing är konst samt vem som bestäm­mer det och beta­lar för konsten?

Plats: Aulan, Valands kon­sthögskola Göte­borg 22 okto­ber kl. 12.00 – 15.00
Under detta tillfälle kom­mer vi till­sam­mans med tat­uer­are och andra kon­st­närer, kul­tur­ar­betare, myn­digheter, stu­den­ter och andra intresser­ade att diskutera de cen­trala frågeställningarna.

Also have to miss this con­fer­ence too >_< damn..

Really miss­ing Stock­holm.. and Göte­borg… espe­cially long walk­a­bouts through the city..

3 March 2005, 17:00
AFFISCHPROJEKTET ’04
Kul­turhuset, Sergels Torg, Stockholm

Vernissage av SSTFs aff­is­ch­pro­jekt den 3 mars kl 17.00 på Kul­turhuset
Utställ­nin­gen visar de två senaste årens alster och pågår till den 22 mars.
Öppet­tider: Måndag-Fredag kl 11.00−17.00.