Viennese Ball

-Soooo, whadya see in Vienna, Jean?
-Oh, ya know, went to a ball at the palace.



Apparently, well-behaved Americans need to have"Excuse me" written in German on their hand.



You may have already forgotten that I went on a 11 day trip to Vienna, with short trips to Prague and Budapest sprinkled in there. I have decided to show my trip in small digestable pieces here on the blog bit by bit. My first blog topic is the night at the ball!
You heard right. My friend and host in Vienna, Bob, was able to get some tickets to the "Ball der Pharmacie." Yep, the folks who put it on have something to do with pharmaceuticals. Awesome. A ballgown was not in THIS backpacker's luggage. But luckily Austria has a healthy supply of shops. (Cinderella's fairy godmother was on a cruise in a warmer part of the world anyway.) I was able to get a dress that afternoon just in time for the ball.So there was ballroom dancing as to be expected, but at midnight...Michael Jackson came back to life and peformed at the ball!
Note in this video how Austrians are not so eager to cut loose like, ahem- Americans, for example. Go MJ!

Gum in Pill Bottle Form

Europe is, like, so different from America. I've been taking lots of gum here in Vienna.

Books out and about!

I'd like to share with you the exciting showing of some of my book pieces at the School of the Art Insitute of Chicago's Joan Flasch Artists' Book Collection. (That's quite a mouthful, I know.)
I had the rare opportunity of curating my work with pieces from the school's collection in the cases pictured here. The pieces will be up for a short while, only until the end of this month, so if you have access to the 5th floor of the school, go take a look!

Also, here is a description from this exhibit:

This series of experimental book forms explores how to transform abstract thoughts from two-dimensional writings on paper into more physical three-dimensional space. In this way, the pieces experiment with new ways of reading in a non-linear manner. In a digital age that challenges the relevance of the traditional book, these pieces also consider other ways to envision the act of writing and reading. Personal journal writing is embedded in winding and sometimes circular paths. These pathways reference rivers, veins, maps, the Internet, and the changing systems of thinking and communicating information.

The other pieces in the adjacent cases were chosen from the Joan Flasch Artists’ Book Collection. Many were chosen because of their unconventional book structures. Other pieces, such as the scrolls, relate to the winding spool of handwriting. Some pieces were also chosen because of the use of handwriting or because they reference digital media and innovative formats for revealing text and image.