Save The Mount!

In 1848, Wheeling Female Academy was founded in downtown Wheeling with a mission to educate young women in the area. Seventeen years later, the academy moved to a hilltop location overlooking Wheeling Creek and adopted a more familiar name: Mount de Chantal Visitation Academy, affectionately called “the Mount” by her students and others in the area. On this hilltop, the Mount has overlooked the city of Wheeling for 145 years; she watched the city through its days as the capital and oversaw the construction of I-70. The Mount's building is not just a part of Wheeling: the bricks were handmade on site, and the tin walls and ceilings are as much a testament to Wheeling's historic industry as the Hobbs, Brockunier & Co. chandelier is to Wheeling's historic culture. The building houses two grand pianos manufactured by Steinway and Sons, an interior stained glass dome that is a testament to nineteenth century engineering, as well as other stained glass windows of note.

Any consideration of razing this building would do violence to the history of Wheeling, to West Virginia, and to women’s history. Please help to preserve this historic jewel of the city, of the Upper Ohio Valley, and of the state of West Virginia.

Your signatures will help.  Preserve Mount de Chantal's Buildings is looking for as much support as possible.  For information on how to let your signature be heard you can go to Preserve The Mount Petition.  Become a fan on facebook, if you have an account, and show your support.

Work In Progress

This is a new piece that I am working on.  I have had a hard time getting this painting to this point.  It has just been a slow one.

Out West

I'm heading west at the beginning of May.  Probably before the 4th.  I would have gone sooner but I had the chance to see a lot of my freinds from college a few times this April.  On top of that I came accross the great opertunity of shooting the Mount De Chantal in WV and everyone knows I can't pass up an old buiilding. 

So far I am going out west in my 1995 Mazda Protege with 188000 miles on it and no AC.  This trip might kill my car and it might get to become a frozen relic of the desert and become part of "Lost America".

My final destination is going to be southern Utah and northern Arizona.  I plan on a lot of hiking and vehicular exploration of the area.  Anything I come across may fall victim to my camera.  My trip could last anywhere from 2 to 3 weeks as I attempt to see as many of the natural attractions as I can along with everything else along the road.  I might not come back...

Durring my reasearch for the trip I found a really awesome collection of places that somone turned into a google map.  I only expect to see a small portion of these locations. Click "View Larger Map" below the lower left corner to see the list of places along with the map.  If you want to zoom around the map in Google Earth I have put that link at the end under links.  Take a look:

View Larger Map

Some of the places I want to go and see for sure:

Antelope Canyon, Zebra Canyon, Coyotte Buttes, Arches National Park, Zion National Park, The Grand Canyon...

This is the weather that I will be dealing with:

For St. George Utah, average temperatures are highs of around 85 and lows around 55.  Average precipitation for may is less then a half inch.  Antelope canyon is about the same as St. George.  The northern and southern rims of the Grand Canyon have average highs and lows of 70-60 and 40 degrees.  Low precipitation in that area as well.  I must say this is going to be great.

Links:

"Lost America" - http://www.lostamerica.com/

Link Google Earth Map - http://members.cox.net/geonerd/Canyon_Hikes.kmz

More Progress

This is the progress I have had on this painting recently.  It is becoming very frenetic and escheresque.  Also I normally rotate my pieces in all sorts of ways as I am working and thus far I have not.  I decided I would rotate it today in photoshop and I came up with this...

For me, the piece flows much better this way.  It seems to have calmed down a bit in this position.  There is much more order to it.  Interesting...

At this point I would have to say that I am either going to be finished soon, after some touch ups and small additions, or I will do something drastic to it. With this painting I'm leaning towards finishing up soon.  There are some regions of the painting that need to be sharpened up to create more focus and visual draw.  It is a little soft at the moment.  I am, however, having trouble deciding what more to do with the bacterial form that I have introduced to the piece.  Some time away from it will be good for me.

In Progress Some More

This painting is at a tough point.  I could either stop or keep going.  This is just another progression image.